Chapter Twenty-Six
WEDNESDAY EVENING, LUKE fed himself and Abby, then chose to go out and attack the blackberries in the pasture again. For the past day and a half, he hadn’t been able to do anything but battle the rage and anguish inside his head and heart. He needed to throw his body into this fight, too, however symbolic that might be.
As strubly as ever, pigtails sagging, the old blackberry stain on her sacky unicorn T-shirt, Abby sat cross-legged on a blanket just on the other side of the board fence where she could see him and he could see her. Snatching up occasional bunches of grass, Charlie had evidently decided to stay away from Luke, who was inexplicably tearing thick roots from the ground, bleeding from innumerable scratches on his arms. In this fight at least, he had an opponent that didn’t hold back.
It might be exhaustion that had begun to mute the savagery of his emotions. Physical exertion was good that way.
He could not go back and save Julia from the horror done to her so many years ago. If her brother and the other police hadn’t been able to find and arrest the man, Luke had no hope of hunting him down now—assuming his deepest beliefs would allow him to do such a thing.
As he groaned and straightened his back, a faint singsong voice came to him. He looked to see that Abby had lifted one of her faceless Amish dolls to show the horse, who’d stuck his head between the rails to touch the doll with his muzzle. Was Abby talking to Charlie, or just singing?
Luke stopped in his labors, leaning against the shovel he’d planted hard in the soil. Some of his anger lifted at the reminder of how far that frightened little girl had come. When he opened his heart to her, she had done the same to him, and was healing from her painful beginnings before his very eyes.
I could heal Julia, too, if I were given the chance, he thought.
The chance he’d have only if he left the Amish and most of the people he loved. He’d read scripture last night after tucking in Abby, and for all his anger known that he trusted in God.
Blinking sweat out of his eyes, he accepted that vengeance was not his to take. Forgiveness . . . that would come, too. Given his faith, he had to trust that it would.
Several cars had passed on the road since he started working, as well as two buggies. Those he’d noted, recognizing the horses and therefore knowing who was driving them.
Now another came down the road, not from town but going toward it. He shaded his eyes against the setting sun. He knew that horse, too, Bishop Amos Troyer’s mare Finola, distinctive with her flashing white socks worn only on her front legs.
He automatically checked again on his daughter, to see her patting Charlie’s nose. The gelding nickered, but as Luke watched, pulled his head back through the fence and raised it, staring toward the road. When the buggy turned into Luke’s driveway, his horse trotted and then cantered to meet it and race it along the fence line.
Puzzled, Luke picked up his shears and carried the shovel with him, too, as he crossed the short distance to the gate. When he closed it behind him, Abby jumped up and ran to him.
Sweaty, dirty, and bloody, he took her hand rather than lifting her to his hip, and led her to where the buggy had come to a stop. Finola and Charlie were snorting and nickering to each other now as Amos climbed out of his buggy.
“Friends, I think,” he said, nodding toward the horses.
“Have they ever met?”
“Shared pastures on Sundays, maybe.” He smiled at Abby. “I’m glad to see you. Watching your daadi work, were you?”
Shy, she hid behind his leg.
“Has something happened?” Luke asked.
“Ja, something I had hoped for, but still came as a surprise.”
Amos loved to be cryptic to draw out the suspense. He’d only get worse if Luke revealed his impatience.
The bishop smiled. “I had a visitor. We talked for a long time.” His eyes stayed keen on Luke’s. “An Englischer, who wishes to join the Amish.”
An Englischer who wanted to become Amish? That happened so rarely—
For an instant, the world seemed to stop. The beat of his own heart was all Luke heard.
“Julia?”
“Julia?” Abby whispered.
But the bishop looked at Luke, not at the child who loved the same woman.
“Ja.” This smile was incredibly kind. “I had the feeling she hadn’t told anyone except your sister.”
If so, Miriam had some explaining to do.
Luke shook that off. “Did you agree?”
“Why would I not?” Amos spread his hands in acceptance. “She already speaks our language with great proficiency for someone who only started learning a few months ago. She knows the Bible well. She convinced me that she believes the Gospel and is prepared to forsake sin and put on true righteousness and holiness. By luck, I have classes scheduled to start soon.”
Luke came near to falling to his knees under the force of an explosion of joy and hope.
“I need to see her,” he blurted.
Bishop Amos smiled. “I thought you might want to. That’s why I came to let you know.”
Luke looked down at his daughter, who would like to see Julia almost as much as he did—but that reunion could wait. “Will you take Abby to my parents?”
“I expected to do that, too. What do you say, little one? Will you go for a ride with Amos?”
Luke crouched down and looked into her eyes. “Please. Amos will take you to Grossmammi and Grossdaadi’s. I will come and get you soon.”
She was confused, but he didn’t let that dissuade him. He bundled her into Amos’s buggy, gave her a big kiss on the cheek, and closed the door.
“I need to harness Charlie—”
Amos stopped him with a hand on his arm. “A smart man would clean up and change his clothes before he asked a woman the question I think you want to ask.”
It was all Luke could do to glance down at himself. “You’re right. I can take that much time.” He held out a hand and said simply, “Denke, Amos.”
They shook, and Amos got back in his buggy and steered his mare in a sweeping circle and back down the driveway.
Luke ran for the house.
JULIA STARED AT the page and realized she didn’t remember any of what she’d just read. She was too restless, too—she didn’t even know what to call it. She was going to do this. Her life would change drastically . . . but not right now. This was still her apartment. Who would know if she turned on the TV? Her digital clock would wake her in the morning in time to go to work. She’d drive her car to get there.
When would all of this change? Abruptly, between one night and the next, or gradually over the course of weeks?
She was driving herself crazy.
“I have to do something,” she said aloud.
Quilt. What else? Unfortunately, her mind could still roam free while she quilted, since her hand knew so well what to do. Still, that would engage part of her attention. Plus . . . quilting was one thing that wouldn’t change, except that she’d no longer have the benefit of electric lighting.
She’d recently pieced a wall hanging with buildings of different sizes and shapes, including a steepled church, different pitches of roofs, interspersed with trees, evergreen and deciduous. To do the hand quilting, she stretched the quilt in a large hoop instead of the frame in her spare room. Picking up where she left off, she began to quilt a picket fence in the frame below a row of houses.
At a knock on the door, her hand jerked. Who on earth . . . ? Surely not Nick, come to renew his disapproval.
She set down the hoop and went to the door, with its tiny peephole. Pulse racing, she looked through it . . . and saw Luke. His hair was wet and disheveled. Stubble showed on his angular jaw. As she watched, he knocked again, firmly.
Why was he here?
Julia made herself close her eyes and take a few deep breaths before she undid the dead bolt and opened the door. “Luke, is something wrong?”
He walked in, crowding her back. Eyes intense, he said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” How could he have already learned . . .
“Bishop Amos came by to say you’d asked to join us.”
“Oh. I had no idea he’d do anything like that.” She was wringing her hands together. Her gaze lowered to his arms. “You’re injured!”
With a glance down, he said, “Only scratched. I was cutting back blackberries.” He shook his head as if rattling his brain into place. “How long have you been thinking about this?”
“I . . . would you like to sit down?”
His jaw flexed. “No. I don’t think I can make myself sit right now.”
Her knees felt so weak, she wasn’t sure how long she could keep standing.
“Answer my question.”
“You’re being a bully.”
He let out a huff that might have been a laugh. “You had to know I was torturing myself.”
“I . . . no.” Torturing himself? Sometimes she’d imagined, but . . . “I talked to Miriam a few weeks ago. Until then . . . well, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could convert. I mean, I hadn’t seen anyone who talked as if they’d had any other kind of life. Miriam told me that you don’t proselytize, but that occasionally outsiders do join you.”
“I almost asked if you’d consider it, but it’s such a big change, I didn’t think there was any chance,” he said gruffly. “It will be like jumping back a hundred—no, two hundred years in time. No horseless carriages for us. It will mean giving up so much.” He gestured, as if to encompass her entire apartment, or maybe her world.
“You’re trying to talk me out of it?”
“No. Only . . . hoping you’re being realistic, that this isn’t a rainbow that will vanish when you reach for it. If you change your mind again, I don’t know how I’d—”
The intensity wasn’t just in his eyes, but in his voice, too. How he’d what?
“Julia.” He reached for her hands. Pried them apart, then wrapped them in his much larger ones. “I told you I was in a fight with myself.”
Breathless with what might be hope, she said, “I didn’t know exactly what you meant.”
“That I gave thought to walking away from the Leit, if that was the only way I could have you.”
Shocked, she made herself meet those glittering blue eyes. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to. But . . . seeing you, never able to say what I need to . . .” His throat moved. “I didn’t know if I could bear it.”
That’s what he’d almost said a minute ago. That he might break if she gave him hope and then snatched it away.
She returned the clasp of his hands. “I was going to quit my job.”
“What?”
“If I made the decision not to convert. I didn’t know if I could stand seeing you every day, either. It . . . hurt.”
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he said in a low, raw voice.
“If I’d wanted my life to stay the same, I shouldn’t have taken the job. Those first few days, you scared me and made me feel things I never have.”
“You scared me, too,” he admitted. “That’s why I didn’t want Daad to hire you. From first sight, I knew what a temptation you’d be.”
“It wasn’t just, oh, that I reminded you of what you’d given up when you came home? As if one part of you still longed for the kind of women you knew before?” She hadn’t even known she carried that worry until the words came out of her mouth.
But Luke was almost smiling as he shook his head. “No. If so, I’d have been out of luck. You’re nothing like most women I met out there. But I do like knowing that you understand the man I was in the Englisch world will always be part of me. I can never go back and be who I might have been if I’d never left the faith. You see all of me, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Why was she so close to tears, when she was also happier than she’d ever been in her life? “Just as you’ll understand why I can’t remake myself instantly. I’ll bumble around and offend people and . . .”
“Why would anybody be offended? You’re a devout, compassionate woman who is doing something extraordinary. They’ll want to help you adjust.” He paused. “You’ll have me to help you.”
THAT SOUNDED LIKE he was offering friendship, not more. They couldn’t marry until she’d been baptized anew—assuming she had been as a baby—but that didn’t mean they couldn’t make promises.
Yet somehow Luke found himself seated after all, with Julia needing someone to answer her many questions.
“It felt like a letdown, coming home. You know? I talked to Bishop Amos, but then I could have spent the evening watching television. I don’t want my commitment to be questioned, but I’ll need to find someplace to live, and . . . and someone to help me make dresses. And can I keep banking the same way? I’ll need to learn how to drive a buggy, and harness a horse, and—”
Luke laughed and captured her hand again. He loved the feel of it, fine-boned, with smooth skin but for the calluses left by the quilting needle. The fit was perfect, making him think of a dovetail joint.
“We’ll ask my parents if you can live with them,” he suggested. “You know them well already, and Mamm would love to guide you. Abby and I can eat dinner there every night so we can spend time together. Once Rose has her baby, Miriam will be there, too.”
“Oh. Do you really think . . . ?” There was the fragile hope that always moved him.
“I really think. Mamm will be so happy. She hasn’t understood why I haven’t married.” Ach, there, he’d said the word. But he decided to finish answering her torrent of questions first. “She loves to sew. You will not need to harness a horse or drive yourself for a long time, although we’ll teach you. If you want to keep working for Daad and me, you’ll ride to work with us each day.”
The hope on her beautiful face was now blinding, as if the sun had crested the horizon and spread glorious color across the sky. Basking in it, he said, “You will marry me, won’t you, Julia?”
“If you’re asking me—you’re sure?”
“I’m more certain than I’ve been about almost anything else in my life.” Peace washed through him, smoothing away the jagged emotions that had kept him on edge for months. “Do you know how happy Abby will be to find out you’re to be her mammi?”
Suddenly her eyes were awash with tears. “I can’t wait. I fell in love with her right away.”
“I could tell.” He smiled crookedly. “And with me, too?”
Tears still hanging on her dark eyelashes, she squeezed his hand hard. “With you first. You must have known.”
More soberly, he said, “At first I hoped for both our sakes that wasn’t true. But I haven’t been able to deny how much I love you. It was as if”—he looked down at the seamless clasp of their hands—“you were perfect for me.”
“With only one big problem.”
He hesitated, knowing this was something they had to talk about. “Not one. Two. You were not Amish, and I frightened you when I stood too close to you.”
She bowed her head. “Now you know why.”
“Yes.” With his free hand, he lifted her chin. “I will be as patient as I need to be. Amish don’t make vows often, but this one is important.”
“A few times I dated,” she said, sounding choked, “but I always ended up panicking. Especially if the man tried to kiss me. But when you did, there wasn’t even a hint of the old fear. I’ve always known I could trust you.” Cheeks pink, she finished, “I don’t think you’ll need very much patience at all.”
“God was with us when you walked into the store that day,” he muttered—and then he kissed her again, as he’d done a hundred more times in his imagination. Her lips were soft, accepting. Eager.
No, he didn’t think he’d need much patience, either . . . except that they had to wait until they could be married.
When he told her Amish weddings were commonly held after the harvest, November being a popular month, she nodded and said she’d read that. He continued, “You must be baptized first, but Amos thought that wouldn’t take so long with you already speaking our language and so familiar with the Bible. I think November would be a fine month for our wedding.”
She did cry a little when she told him about her talks with her parents, who had been upset, and her brother, who surrendered with less fight than she’d expected.
Swiping away the tears with her free hand, she said, “My parents will come around when they see I’m happy. I’m sure they will. And they’ll love Abby. They both want grandchildren.”
“My parents already have several, and they still want more,” he said, smiling broadly. Heart full, he looked down at her. “Will you come with me tonight, to Mamm and Daad’s? We can tell them and Abby, too.”
Nerves showed in her eyes. “But it’ll be late . . .”
“Why don’t you pack a bag,” he said gently. “You can sleep in Miriam’s bed, or my old bedroom. Tomorrow when it’s light, we can come for more of your things. We can eat dinner together every evening, drive to work together, go home to Abby together every day.”
“A step toward my new life,” she said slowly.
“A big step,” he agreed gravely. “Is it too big a one?”
This smile lit her from within and made his heart swell until he wasn’t sure his rib cage could contain it.
“No.” She pushed herself up and kissed his rough cheek. “It’s just right. Give me five minutes, and I’ll be ready to go.”
When he carried her suitcase out four minutes later, leaving her only to bring an enormous tote bag filled with an unfinished quilt and a wooden hoop, she didn’t even look back.