Chapter Nine
Elijah guided the horses into the Grabers’ drive, flicking the reins to keep them moving at a trot. Sadie put a hand on her son’s forehead, then pressed a kiss against his flushed skin. He should drop her off, turn around, and head back to the Yoders’ farm. That would be the wise course of action right now, but he realized he didn’t want to.
It was stupid. He knew why he was back in Morinville, and it wasn’t to get himself emotionally entangled with Sadie again. But he was finding himself more and more drawn to her, despite his better instincts, and he felt a strange surge of protectiveness toward Samuel, too.
This was what it would be like to have a family, he realized, to have a wife and a child under his care. Absolom had a little family of his own . . . was it terrible to want this for himself, too?
“Do you want a hand in there for a few minutes?” Elijah asked.
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind.” She shot him a grateful smile.
And that was that. He’d offered now. They were alone—the whole family was at the Sunday service. There was no one to walk in and interrupt in silent disapproval. It was both freeing and unnerving.
Sadie gathered Samuel into her arms, and Elijah helped her down from the buggy. She cast him a smile as she eased past him, and he caught the scent of honey in her wake. His heart sped up, and he forced himself to take a step back. She still awoke the man in him—that much hadn’t changed.
Elijah brought the horses into the buggy barn and set them up with some oats, then as he angled his steps toward the house, he found his stomach flipping in anticipation. It was an old feeling that he wished was connected to his adolescence, but it wasn’t the case. She still made him feel like this at the prospect of being alone with her. Except he wasn’t seventeen anymore, and it couldn’t be about sneaking a kiss or holding her hand. He’d have to cut that out.
Elijah tapped on the side door before he let himself in, and when he came through the mudroom into the kitchen, he saw Sadie clutching a whimpering Samuel on her hip as she attempted to work one-handed at getting another wet cloth.
“Let me help,” Elijah said.
Sadie looked between the cloth and her son, and then eased the boy into Elijah’s arms. It was strangely gratifying that she trusted her little boy to him, even for a little while. He looked down at his flushed cheeks and teary eyes.
“Hey, buddy,” he murmured.
“You can just sit and hold him,” she said. “I know where everything is. Just take his shirt off, would you? He’s so hot.”
Elijah sank into a kitchen chair, balancing the boy in his arms somewhat awkwardly. He unbuttoned the little shirt and took it off, then took the wet cloth she held out to him and wiped down Samuel’s face and arms. The Amish Budget lay on the table, and Elijah used it to fan Sammie as the boy leaned back against Elijah’s broad chest.
“Here, Sammie.” Sadie crouched down next to him and held a glass of water to his lips. “Have a drink.”
Samuel drank half the glass, then held out his arms for his mother, and she picked him up again. “Let’s move to the sitting room. It’s cooler in there.”
Sadie was definitely deeper, stronger, more intriguing now, which only made his feelings for her more complicated. He was supposed to be finding a way to purge himself of her, not getting more attached, but Elijah followed her through to the sitting room. She sank down onto the sofa, and he was struck with a memory of her from years ago when he’d be visiting Absolom, sitting in that exact spot, and how he’d felt looking at her—like his heart would burst out of his chest.
“I should probably head out,” Elijah said, jutting his chin toward the hallway. “Now that you’re settled.”
It was inappropriate for them to be alone together. People would talk.
“You don’t have to.” She smiled faintly. “I don’t mind the company.”
“You sure?”
She nodded toward the couch next to her. “It’s a good breeze from here.”
Either appearances mattered less to Sadie now, or Elijah wasn’t much of a threat to her reputation. Elijah sank into the sofa next to her, and he looked over at Samuel, whose eyes were shut, his breath starting to slow. She was right about the breeze, and Elijah let out a long breath. It was strange to be sitting here with her like this, when both of them were supposed to be in church. Normally, a man and a woman did this on the day their wedding banns were read in the church—sitting in her parents’ home together as a couple and unchaperoned for the first time. Except he and Sadie weren’t a couple.
Still, she’d invited him to stay.
“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” Sadie said quietly, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb her slumbering child.
“Yah?”
“What did my daet say to you, exactly? When you left, I mean. Back then?”
Elijah sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly. “First of all, I was seventeen,” he said. “And that makes everything a little more dramatic, I suppose. But your father told me straight that I’d never be enough for you, or for the family. He said that you were above me, and from that moment on, I was no longer welcome on this farm. I was to stay away from you, or my father would pay.”
“Pay how?” She frowned.
“I don’t know. It was a broad threat, but I took him seriously.”
“So that’s what pushed you away?”
Elijah’s mind went back to that fateful day when he’d stood there in front of the bishop, his palms sweaty and his heart pounding. He’d been scared, angry, resentful. And the bishop’s tone had been dripping with disdain.
“He said I should know my place.” Elijah shook his head slowly. “I know that sounds like nothing, but it pounded everything home for me. There was a place for me here in Morinville, but there was no flexibility, no choice on my part. I would work with my daet at a business I found deathly boring, and I would marry some girl I didn’t love. I don’t think your father understood how much I loved you. Watching you marry another man, being forced into finding some appropriate plain girl to drive home from singing.... It was too much . . .”
Sadie was silent.
“Does that make sense?” he asked, turning toward her.
“So leaving was your only option?” she said. “Going English.”
“I saw a future with the Englishers, a chance at more. I still do. Besides, you were right.” Emotion hollowed out his voice. “Absolom wouldn’t have left if it weren’t for me.”
“I thought you said he was angry with my father.”
“He was. He was furious. But leaving? That was my idea, and he didn’t want to go. I said I’d go without him, and I knew that would allow me to get my way. Absolom and I were best friends, and he figured he could talk me into coming back.”
“So what changed?” Sadie shifted Samuel in her arms. He was sleeping now, his pale lips parted.
“It’s different out there, Sadie . . .” How to explain this to a woman who knew nothing but the sheltered life in Morinville? “There’s freedom like you’ve never experienced it. I was tired of being told who I was and where I fit. I wanted to define that for myself.”
“But Absolom wanted to come home?”
“Until he didn’t . . .” Elijah searched her face, looking for some understanding. “He had girlfriends, freedom. There comes a point when you know that the stain is too dark. If you go back, you’ll always be the one who left. Besides, we’d both changed. Do you remember the place in the Bible that says it’s better to cut off your hand than to go with both hands into hell?”
“Coming home wouldn’t be like that—”
“It would be,” he interjected. “You grow as the years pass, and in order to fit back in here in Morinville, you’d have to cut all that growth away.”
She winced at the imagery, and he shook his head. “Sadie, I know what I did, and I know how much is my fault. I was an angry teenager who loved a girl he’d never have. I was stupid, stubborn, and if I’d just left by myself . . .”
He sighed. If he’d left by himself, maybe he could have made the adjustment to come home again. Maybe he could have cut off that pound of flesh. But this wasn’t about him anymore . . . at least not him alone. He’d dragged his best friend with him. Elijah had been the one with no future. Absolom had been an angry teen, but he’d have been able to marry any girl he liked. He would have had a future.
“You feel obliged to stand by my brother,” she concluded.
“Yah. Among other things. I owe him. He stood by me for all these years. We’ve helped each other get jobs, we’ve navigated the Englisher ways together.... We’ve been there for each other through all the hard stuff. I owe him more than walking out on him now.”
“If you came back, he might, too,” Sadie countered.
“If I came back without him, he’d probably never come back at all,” Elijah replied. “Besides, our business needs both of us. He can’t do it without me.”
“It isn’t like you have a wife and children out there—” Sadie shook her head.
Elijah reached out and caught her hand, annoyance simmering deep under the surface of his conflicted feelings.
“Are you going to call me a boy again?” His voice came out in a growl, and her eyes widened, but she didn’t answer. “I may not have married yet, Sadie, but I’m no boy. I’ve taken care of myself since I was seventeen, and I’ve seen more in the last nine years than any of the men living here. I’m every inch a man.”
Outside, the clop of horse hooves and the rattle of a buggy pulled both of their attention away, and they looked out the window to see the Graber buggy coming down the drive.
“You can’t come back without him,” Sadie said hollowly. “And you won’t leave him alone out there, either.”
“I won’t. A man has responsibilities, debts, obligations. Englishers are no different in that respect.”
Outside, Elijah heard the bishop’s voice. “Whoa, now.”
Their time alone was over. Elijah suspected the news that he’d brought Sadie home was more alarming than Sadie intended. He was a bigger threat to their daughter’s future than Elijah liked to think.
“So I’ll have to say good-bye to you again,” she said, looking away.
“We knew that,” he countered.
“Did we?”
Maybe she’d expected something different, but he’d been up front from the start. He wasn’t the kind of man who would mislead her . . . not again. There were footsteps on the stairs outside, and Elijah’s heart jammed in his chest. There was so much more to say.
“Whatever we’re feeling for each other,” he said quietly, “we’ll just have to keep it under control. We know how this ends.”
“We aren’t feeling anything,” she snapped.
That was a lie. Their kisses, their moments alone . . . they were all charged with some undeniable energy. They weren’t the same teenagers they’d been nine years ago, but whatever they’d started back then hadn’t been snuffed out.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Elijah murmured.
The door opened, and Rosmanda’s voice filtered through the walls, her words muffled. Footsteps sounded from the mudroom, and then the kitchen.
“Nothing.” Sadie smoothed a hand over her sleeping son’s forehead, and her chin trembled ever so little. “I don’t want anything from you, Elijah.”
And even though he knew that he was in no position to offer her any of the things he longed to, that “nothing” gouged deeper than being called “boy.”
“There you are.” Sarah appeared in the doorway, and her sharp gaze moved between them, evaluating the situation silently. “Come, Sadie. Let me help you with Samuel. Elijah, my husband will need you for the chores. He says that you can finish early and then go home.”
There was a slight emphasis on the words “go home,” and he smiled wanly. Apparently, he was still very much a threat.
* * *
Sadie watched as Elijah tramped out the side door with her father.
“Your daet isn’t feeling as bad as before,” Mamm assured her. “And Elijah won’t let him work too hard.”
The door slammed, and Sadie cast her mother a thin smile. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she hoped it wasn’t noticeable. Elijah had a way of filling up that space in a room, and squeezing out her peace of mind. That man shouldn’t be preoccupying her thoughts when there were more serious things to worry about. And yet he did.
He was making her feel things she didn’t want to feel—like the way her heart sped up when he stared down into her eyes like that. He was every inch a man, he’d said, and she was grudgingly forced to agree. He was, and the woman in her was responding to him as urgently as she had when they were much too young. She wanted to feel his arms around her, to lean into his kisses. And, wicked as it was, she yearned for even more. She might resent him for a good many things, but she hadn’t expected to feel so betrayed at his plans to leave town again—his eagerness to build a decent Englisher life for himself—and she tried to push back the nagging emotions as she worked with Rosmanda and Mamm, putting together a meal of chicken, potatoes, and gravy.
Two hours later, the side door opened and the sound of men’s boots tramped into the mudroom. Sadie’s back was sticky with sweat, and she wiped her face with a handkerchief. Rosmanda’s cheeks bloomed red from the heat of the stove, but Mamm managed to look as cool as a winter’s morning. How she did it, Sadie would never know.
“I’m hungry, Mamm,” Samuel said, standing next to his chair. He looked like he was feeling better, and she bent to touch his forehead. He still had a bit of a fever, but it wasn’t as bad as before.
“Are you?” she asked with a smile. “Here.”
She slipped him a roll to munch on while he waited for the meal. An appetite was a good sign. Sadie lifted him up onto his seat atop a wooden booster that had been used in this family for generations. She’d sat on that same booster as a little girl. It nudged her up high enough to let her eat from her plate at the table. The men came into the kitchen at that moment, hands and face wet from their wash-up at the pump.
“It smells delicious,” Daet said, and Sadie was relieved to see that her father didn’t look quite so tired as she’d expected. There was still some color in his face.
Elijah’s nose looked sunburnt, and he held her gaze a beat longer than necessary—then he turned away. Just like the old days, she realized, when Elijah would stay for dinner and stand there all awkwardly—freckled feet and hands too big for the rest of him. He’d grown into his limbs, finally, and he still made her feel too many things at once.
“Sit down,” Mamm said, and if she noticed any tension in the room, she ignored it. “The food is hot. Everyone’s hungry.”
The men slid into their places—Elijah opposite Sadie, and Daet at the head of the table. Sadie reached over to stop Samuel’s hand from creeping toward the bowl of dinner rolls.
“Bow for prayer,” Daet said, and they all did as he bade, bowing their heads in silence. A moment later, Daet said, “Amen,” and they all raised their heads and reached for the food.
“Your mamm and I were discussing things,” Daet said as he speared a baked potato and plunked it onto his plate. “And we’ve come to a decision.”
Sadie glanced toward her mother, but Mamm’s expression remained carefully neutral. Whatever it was, Mamm hadn’t even hinted about it.
“About what, Daet?” Sadie asked.
“You’ll be going to see Absolom’s child.” Daet’s somber gaze met Sadie’s, and she stared at him in shock.
“I’m going to visit Absolom? Really?”
“Yes. Really. Pass the chicken, please.”
Sadie’s hands shook as she picked up the platter of chicken with both hands and passed it over her son’s plate to her father. Daet took a wing from the side of the platter and put it on Samuel’s plate, then took a leg for himself.
Sadie looked over to Elijah. Had he known about this? But he looked as stunned as she was. At least she wasn’t the last to know this time.
“Who’s going?” Rosmanda asked excitedly. “Because I’d so love to see my brother . . .”
“Your sister,” Daet replied. “And Elijah. He’ll be able to escort her to and from most easily.”
“Can’t I go, too?” Rosmanda pressed. “I want to see him! And the baby—”
“No.” Daet didn’t raise his voice, but his tone was final.
Elijah was to bring her to her brother.... She looked over at Elijah again, and misgiving rose up inside of her. She’d see the world that Elijah had chosen over theirs, see the home that her brother had built for himself.
Daet passed the chicken along to Rosmanda, who sullenly took some meat onto her plate. She chewed the side of her cheek.
“I haven’t seen my brother in so long,” Rosmanda said quietly. “I want to see him.”
“Sadie is going,” Daet replied. “You are too young and impressionable. Sadie is old enough to see the evils of the Englisher world for what they are. She won’t be lured astray.”
Elijah coughed, reaching for a cup of lemonade. Should Sadie tell her father about Elijah’s confession that he was going back? But if she did, he was liable to change his mind and forbid any of them to see Absolom, and the very thought closed off Sadie’s throat. A chance to see her brother was dangling in front of her . . .
“What about Mamm?” Rosmanda pressed. “She’ll want to see Absolom, too!”
Mamm’s chair scraped back, and she turned to the counter to fetch another bowl of buns. The extra bowl of buns wasn’t needed. She was hiding her face.
“Never mind, Rosmanda,” Mamm said as she turned back toward them, more composed. “There will be work enough to keep us busy with Sadie gone for the day. And you, my dear, are not ready to care for the house alone, even for a day.”
Mamm wanted to see her son, too. Desperately. Sadie instinctively reached toward Samuel and placed a protective hand on his back. Sammie wasn’t eating much more than the bun she’d already given him. She felt his head, and while he was still warm, he wasn’t as feverish as earlier.
“Send me along!” Rosmanda pressed. “If I’m useless here—”
“Do not question your mamm,” Daet barked. “As for being useless, don’t take that as a compliment. You need to learn to care for a home if you intend to marry! Your mamm was married by sixteen.”
Rosmanda clamped her mouth shut, her cheeks flaming, and her eyes filled with tears.
“And Samuel will stay here,” Daet added. “I think Sadie will agree.”
“Yes, I agree with that,” Sadie said quickly. She didn’t want her child exposed to any of it. She didn’t want him to have some lurking memories from his toddler years, some image that would take root in his sensitive little mind.
“And the appearances, Benjamin . . .” Mamm prompted quietly.
“Yes, of course.” Daet wiped his mouth. “We will not speak of this, if we can help it. We are an example to this community, and if we appear to weaken in our resolve, we will hurt more than just ourselves. We must keep this visit to the city private. No one is to mention it. If anyone asks where Sadie has gone, you will only say that she’s gone on an errand.”
“It will look like there is something between Sadie and Elijah,” Rosmanda said. “If I was along, though—”
“More reason to keep your own counsel,” Daet replied curtly. “We don’t want to tarnish Sadie’s reputation, either. But she has options in Pennsylvania with the Hochstetlers. She’ll marry again. You, Rosmanda, are my bigger worry.”
Silence descended around the table, and Sadie eyed her father cautiously. This would be a secret—something done for Absolom’s sake alone. This wasn’t for them, because if it were, Mamm would be the one going, and Sadie’s reputation wouldn’t be risked. If she wanted another good, Amish husband, she could back out of this fool’s errand. She could protect her image and find another solid, pious man who would embrace Samuel as his own . . .
But she wouldn’t do that, because she wanted to see her brother too badly. This was a priceless opportunity, one that wouldn’t come again. If she let this chance pass her by, the only way to see her brother would be in defiance of her father.
“Absolom is most likely to listen to Sadie,” Mamm added. “They were always close, and he seems to have a soft place in his heart for her still. But this is delicate. You all understand that, don’t you?”
They were bending for Absolom’s sake. According to the Ordnung, tough love was the way to deal with these things—silence and disapproval until Absolom returned to them and admitted his sin. And returning to the community was supposed to solidify a person back into their place. Except that wasn’t working with Elijah, and Sadie was beginning to doubt it would work with her brother, either. But this wasn’t the Ordnung’s way, and Elijah’s words sprang back to her mind: Your father is capable of great flexibility. Where it comes to Absolom, he’ll bend so far that he’ll brush the ground—wait and see.
She could feel Elijah’s gaze burning into her, and she refused to meet it. Instead she filled her plate and forced herself to take a bite, her mouth dry. Daet was bending for Absolom, and she didn’t blame him one bit. Elijah might judge her father for this, but she didn’t. Absolom was Daet’s child, and Elijah had no idea how viciously a parent could love.
If this were Samuel, she’d camp herself on his doorstep and sit there night and day until he came home again—anything but lose her son. She expected nothing less of her daet.
“When will we go?” Sadie asked.
“Soon. I’m aiming for Tuesday. I’ll let you know when I have it arranged,” Daet said.
Somewhere just outside of Chicago—a place that meant nothing to her in a concrete way—her brother would be sitting down to his own dinner with his own little family. In her mind’s eye, he was still wearing his Amish suspenders and straw hat, even though she knew logically that he’d be dressed like any other Englisher. But he’d be there, eating a meal cooked by the woman he’d had a child with, but hadn’t married.
Was that bond strong enough to hold them all together through the good and the bad? Did that woman fill his heart? She’d always thought that marriage would miraculously instill a blessed sort of love between the partners, and she’d been proven very wrong. And yet her brother had a woman he wasn’t married to . . . a woman who had given him a daughter, and who had a son from another relationship. And yet, she seemed to be enough for him. Absolom had found something that Sadie missed out on, despite doing everything the Amish way.
On the coming Tuesday—the weekday that the Amish held their weddings, ironically enough—she would meet that scandalous woman, and see the Englisher life that Elijah had left behind . . . the life he intended to go back to. Everything she’d believed to be so obviously true seemed to be slanting now, tipping off balance.
But someone had to go after Absolom, and, as Mamm had said, Sadie might be the only one he would listen to.