The yard of the simple, white schoolhouse at the intersection of two country roads was filled with buggies, and more were pulling in as Rebekah climbed the steps after Joshua. She was glad Sammy could manage the steps on his own, because it was more difficult each day to pick him up and carry him. Inside, the schoolroom looked almost identical to the one she had attended. The same textbooks were on the shelves at the back of the room, and the scholars’ desks were set in neat rows with the teacher’s desk at the front of the blackboard.
An air of anticipation buzzed through the room. The scholars were eager to begin their program as well as their summer break. Younger kinder looked around, excited to get a glimpse of where they would be attending school. Parents used the gathering as a chance to catch up on news.
Most of the mamms sat at the scholars’ desks, but Rebekah decided to remain at the back with the daeds and grandparents and other relatives. She was unsure if her ever-widening belly would fit behind one of the small desks.
The room was filled with sunshine, but its glow wasn’t as bright as the smiles on the scholars’ faces while they stood near their teacher’s desk. On the blackboard behind them, someone—probably Esther Stoltzfus, their teacher—had written in big block letters: HAVE A FUN AND SAFE SUMMER!
Joshua’s younger sister looked happy and harried at the same time. Levi and Debbie talked with fondness and respect for their teacher who was also their aenti. Now Esther was trying to get each of the scholars in the proper place for the beginning of the program. The youngest ones complied quickly, but the oldest ones, knowing this was their final day of school, seemed unable to stand still or stop talking and giggling.
But Esther treated each kind with patience and a smile. When two of the younger scholars went to her and whispered below the buzz of conversation in the room, she nodded. They ran out the side door and toward the outhouses at the back corner of the schoolyard.
After she turned to scan the room, Esther smiled warmly when her eyes met Rebekah’s. She went to her desk and pulled out her chair. She rolled it to the back of the room and stopped by Rebekah.
Esther motioned at the chair. “Would you like to sit down?”
“I don’t want to take your chair.”
“I won’t have a chance to sit.” Her dimples rearranged the freckles scattered across her cheeks and nose. “Please use it.”
“Danki.” She wasn’t going to turn down the gut-hearted offer a second time.
Joshua took the back of the chair from his sister and shifted it closer to the last row of desks. “You should be able to see better from here, Rebekah.”
“Danki,” she repeated as she sat with a relieved sigh. She settled Sammy on her knees. While the men talked about farming and the weather and the latest news on their favorite baseball teams, she pointed out the posters and hand-drawn pictures tacked on cork strips that hung about a foot below the ceiling. He was delighted with each one and asked when he could come to school with the older kinder. With a smile, she assured him it would be soon.
When the two young scholars returned, they took their places. Rebekah smiled when she saw Debbie at the far right in the front row of girls while Levi peered over the head of the scholar in front of him from the other end of the back row.
“Debbie! Levi!” called Sammy as the room became silent.
Everyone laughed, and Rebekah whispered to him that he needed to be quiet so he could hear the songs.
Sammy bounced on Rebekah’s knees as the kinder began to sing. He clapped along with the adults at the end of each song. The recitations made him squirm with impatience, but each time another song began, he tried to join in with a tuneless, “La, la, la.”
Rebekah enjoyed the program and was pleased when Debbie and Levi performed their poems without a single hesitation or mistake. She glanced up to see Joshua smiling. Though pride wasn’t considered a gut thing among the Amish, she could tell he enjoyed seeing his kinder do well after their hard work to memorize each word.
Sammy grew bored during a short play performed by the oldest scholars. Other toddlers were wiggling and looking around, as well. Even a cookie couldn’t convince him to sit still.
“Down,” he said. When she didn’t react, he repeated it more loudly.
Not wanting him to disrupt the program, she let him slide off her knees. She whispered for him to stay by her side.
“Hold hand?” he asked.
She nodded and held out her hand. She was astonished when he took Joshua’s fingers. Leaning his head against Joshua’s leg, he smiled when her husband tousled his hair without taking his eyes off the program.
Sammy obviously had changed his mind about Joshua. A warm glow filled her. She’d seen signs of the change in recent days, but her son had remained tentative around Joshua in public. For the first time, he wasn’t clinging to her.
Her joy disappeared when Sammy suddenly darted past her as the kinder began to sing again. She jumped to her feet, but he grasped Debbie’s hand and announced, “Sammy sing, too.”
Rebekah’s face burned as she started toward the kinder who were giggling at her son’s antics. Her sneaker caught, and a broad hand grasped her shoulder, halting her. Time telescoped into the past to the night Lloyd had kept her from leaving the house by seizing her from behind and shoving her against a wall. Her reaction was instinctive.
Her arm came up to knock her captor’s hand away. “No! Don’t!” she gasped and whirled away so fast she bumped into a desk and almost tumbled off her feet.
Hands from the people around her steadied her. She was grateful, but as panic drained away, she saw startled and alarmed expressions on all the faces around her.
No, not all the faces. Joshua’s was as blank as the wall behind him. He stood with his arm still outstretched. To keep her from falling, she realized. His eyes contained a myriad of emotions. Mixed in with confusion and annoyance was...hurt. A new wife shouldn’t shy away from her husband’s touch. She had embarrassed him in front of his family and neighbors. If she could explain without risking Sammy’s future...
Esther’s cheerful voice sounded forced. “Let’s start over with our final song of this year’s program. Sammy and any of the other younger kinder are welcome to join us.”
While more little brothers and sisters rushed up to stand beside their siblings, Rebekah groped for her chair. Joshua steadied it as she sat, but she couldn’t speak, not even to thank him. She lowered herself to sit and stared straight ahead.
Sammy now stood beside Levi in the back row with the other boys. As the kinder enthusiastically sang their friendship song, he looked up at Levi with admiration and tried to sing along, though he didn’t know the words.
It was endearing, but she couldn’t enjoy it. Adrenaline rushed through her, making her gasp as if she had run a marathon. Her pulse thudded in her ears so loudly she had to strain to hear the kinder’s voices. She clapped along with everyone else when the song came to an end.
The kinder scattered, seeking their parents. Hugs and excited voices filled the schoolroom.
Rebekah pushed herself to her feet again when Levi, Debbie and Sammy eased along an aisle to where she and Joshua waited. She hoped her smile didn’t look hideous while she thanked the kinder for a wunderbaar program. If her voice was strained, the youngsters didn’t seem to notice.
However, the adults around her must have. More than one gave her a smile. Not pitying, but sympathetic, especially the women who carried small babies. Their kindness and concern was almost too great a gift to accept.
And, she realized, nobody looked toward Joshua with censure. None of them could imagine him hurting her on purpose. That thought should have been comforting, but who would have guessed Lloyd could be a beast when he drank? She certainly hadn’t.
She’d made one mistake. Now she wanted to avert another, but would the mistake be trusting Joshua or not trusting him?
* * *
The schoolyard was filled with happy shouts and lighthearted conversation. Everywhere, including where Joshua stood with his family. The noise came from the kinder, who were as agitated as if they’d eaten a whole batch of their grossmammi’s cookies. But he was glad no one paid attention to the fact neither he nor Rebekah said anything as they walked with their kinder to the buggy. Everyone was too wound up in happiness to notice his misery.
And Rebekah’s?
He wasn’t sure what she was thinking or feeling. She hid it behind a strained smile.
What happened? he wanted to shout, though he seldom raised his voice. Nothing could be gained by yelling and things could be lost, but his frustration was reaching the boiling point.
He hesitated as he was about to assist Rebekah into the buggy. Would she pull away as she had in the schoolhouse? Humiliation burned in his gut as he recalled the curious glances aimed in his direction, glances quickly averted.
But stronger than his chagrin was his need to know why she’d acted as she had. Until she’d pulled away from him, he’d thought they were becoming accustomed to each other and had found a compromise that allowed them to make a gut and comfortable home for the kinder. He had dared to believe, even though theirs was far from a perfect marriage, it had the potential to become a comfortable one.
Now he wasn’t sure about anything.
God, help me. Help us! Something is wrong, and I don’t know what it is.
Wondering if he really had anything to lose, Joshua offered his hand to Rebekah, and she accepted it as if nothing unusual had happened. As the kinder, including Sammy, scrambled into the back, he stepped in, as well. He picked up the reins and slapped them against the horse.
Rebekah remained silent, but he doubted she would have had a chance to speak when the kinder chattered like a flock of jays rising from a field. Sammy was eager to learn the words to the final song they had sung, and Debbie was trying to teach him while Levi described every bit of the program as if none of them had been there. They kept interrupting each other to ask him and Rebekah if they’d liked one part of it or another.
He answered automatically. Every inch of him was focused on the woman sitting beside him. Her fingers quivered, and he was tempted to put his own hand over them to remind her, whatever was distressing her, she wasn’t alone in facing it. He resisted.
The kinder rushed out of the buggy as soon as it stopped beside the house. When Rebekah slid away and got out on her side, he jumped out and called her name. She turned as he unhooked the horse from the buggy.
“Come with me and Benny,” Joshua said simply.
“I should...” She met his gaze and then nodded. “All right.”
She walked on the other side of the horse as they went to the barn. She waited while he put Benny in a stall and gave him some oats.
He stepped out of the stall. “Rebekah—”
“Joshua—” she said at the same time.
“Go ahead,” he urged.
“Danki.” She paused so long he wondered if she’d changed her mind about speaking. He realized she’d been composing her thoughts when she said, “I don’t know any other way to say this but I’m sorry I embarrassed you at school. I will apologize to Esther the next time I see her.”
“Rebekah, if I was embarrassed or not isn’t important. What’s important is why you said what you did. Tell me the truth. Why did you pull away like you did?”
“Haven’t you heard pregnant women often act strangely?” Her smile wobbled, and he guessed she was exerting her flagging strength to keep it in place.
“Ja, but...” He didn’t want to accuse her of lying. Not that she was, but she was avoiding the truth. Why? “I was trying to prevent you from falling.”
“I know.” Her voice had a soft breathlessness that urged him closer, but her face was stiff with the fear he’d seen at school. “I need to be careful I avoid doing anything that might injure my boppli.”
Maybe he’d misread her reaction, and her anxiety about the boppli had made her words sound wrong. He hadn’t always been correct in his assumptions about Tildie’s reactions, either.
The thought startled him. Since Tildie’s death he hadn’t let such memories into his mind. At first he’d felt ungrateful if he recalled anything but the gut times they’d shared. Even a jest from his brothers about married life had fallen flat for him. He didn’t want to admit, even to himself, his marriage to Tildie had been anything less than perfect.
But that was the past. He had to focus on keeping his current marriage from falling apart before it even had a chance to thrive. He refused to believe it was already too late.
“One of the reasons I asked you to be my wife is to make sure you and your kinder are taken care of,” he said as he walked with her out of the barn. “I told you that right from the beginning.”
“I know you did.”
“Do you believe I was being honest?”
When she paused and faced him, he was surprised. He’d expected her to try to keep distance between them. Now they stood a hand’s breadth from each other. She tilted her head enough so he could see her face beneath her bonnet’s brim. Even as she drew in a breath to speak, he wondered if he could remember how to breathe as he gazed into her beautiful blue eyes.
“I believe you aspire to being as honest as any man can be, Joshua Stoltzfus,” she whispered.
“Then believe I don’t want you to worry about you and your kinder. I take my vows seriously to face every challenge with you, Rebekah. God has brought us together, and I believe His plans are always for gut.”
“I do, too.”
“It pleases me to hear you say that.” He admired the scattering of freckles that drew his gaze to the curve of her cheekbones and then to her full lips. His imagination sped faster than a runaway horse as he speculated how her red hair would brush her face and his fingertips if it fell, loose and untamed, down her back. She was his wife, and he’d thought often during the long nights since their wedding of her sitting in their bedroom and brushing out those long strands.
She was his wife, and he was her husband.
He framed her face with his hands before another thought could form. Her skin was soft and warm...and alive. How many times had he reached out in the past few years and found nothing but the chill of an old memory?
Her blue eyes beckoned but he hesitated. A man could lose himself within their depths. Was he ready to take the step from which there would be no turning back? The memory of Tildie and their love remained strong, and Rebekah’s loss was still fresh and painful.
But didn’t God want them to put others aside and cleave to one another, heart to heart, now that they were wed? The thought shook him. He wanted to live the life God had set out for him, but he hadn’t been when he let the past overwhelm the present.
He saw her lips forming his name, but the sound never reached his ears as he bent toward her...toward his wife...his lovely Rebekah...
The squeal of tires on the road jerked him back to reality, and he released her as Timothy strolled up the driveway whistling. His son grinned as he waved at Alexis who tooted the car’s horn to him.
Joshua heard the kitchen door shut, and Rebekah was gone. He stood there with his hands empty. He had let his opportunity to hold her slip away. He prayed it wouldn’t be his only chance.