Chapter Twenty-Six
“What?” His bewilderment and a hint of hurt shook her.
She had to quit being a coward. Letting her hands fall back to her sides, she turned her head. The bench was as close as she remembered.
“Can we sit down?”
“Ja.” His fingers kept flexing, as if he felt the need to do something.
Like tug her back into the security of his embrace?
No, she had to tell him about the self-doubt she’d held close all these years, and the piercing relief of Esther’s confession.
They sat down, side by side. Miriam twined her fingers together.
“When Levi died,” she began, “I grieved terribly for him. For what we’d lost—”
“I know you loved him.”
She shook her head. “Ja, I did, but—I told you I knew he wasn’t going to ask me to marry him. I tried to prepare myself, but couldn’t . . . and then he was gone in a different way. I never had to tell anyone else that he didn’t love me. He didn’t even like me anymore.”
“That’s not—”
She ignored David’s protest. “Levi talked to you much more than he did to me. He must have told you that he couldn’t trust me because I was too friendly to other men.”
“He said some things.” His voice seemed even deeper than usual. “I told you that. They were ridiculous things that anyone would have known weren’t true. You haven’t believed him? All these years?”
Shame must be blazing on her cheeks. “Did he say that I touched those men the same way I touched him? He even said—”
David’s fingers tightened. “Said what?”
“That you were one of those men. How could I, when you were his best friend?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the way his broad chest rose and fell with a deep sigh.
“He did say some of that. It’s why I was so angry that day. I told him he was an idiot. I don’t think you ever once touched me, even in kindness, or in passing. What I didn’t say was that he was about to throw away what I wanted most: your love.”
Suddenly, she had to see his beloved, stern face. His jaw muscles were knotted, the skin over his cheekbones taut, his eyes intense.
“Today . . .” Miriam’s voice cracked. “I asked Esther whether she was responsible for Levi believing those things about me. She admitted she was. That she thought he wasn’t ready to marry. Not steady enough, she said. She tried to talk sense into him, and when that didn’t work, she made sure he wouldn’t marry soon by pushing me away.”
David leaned toward her, lifting his free hand to cup her cheek. His thumb slid beneath her eye, as if he were catching tears. “He was a fool.” In contrast to the tenderness of his touch, his voice came out rough. “That’s what I told him, even though—”
When he didn’t finish, she said, “Even though?”
“If he’d quit courting you, you would have been free.” He sounded rueful, saying, “But you’d never once looked at me. Sometimes I wondered if you’d even recognize me if we met in some unexpected place. You would not have turned to me.”
“Not then,” she whispered. How could she not have seen what was right in front of her? “I was a girl, stubbornly determined to have him.”
David removed his hand from her face, but not without letting his fingertips trail over her cheek and even down her throat. “You can’t have forgotten. He was handsome, likable, had a gift for talking, telling stories, that made me feel in comparison as if I tripped over my own tongue like a growing boy over his feet. All the girls liked Levi. He liked them. He flirted with other girls.”
She stared at him, remembering. “Ja. I hated that.” She gave a small, shaky laugh. “Especially when I was too young to start my rumspringa. I was so afraid.” If he’d been a quiet, solid young man whose eye had already fallen on her, would she have been afraid the same way?
I would have believed in David, she knew with deep conviction. Just as she did now.
“Maybe,” she said with a sense of certainty, “he snatched at the excuse his mamm gave him because he knew she was right. He wasn’t ready, and shouldn’t have let me think he was serious.”
Ach, she thought suddenly, David told her he loved her. He wanted to marry her. Miriam had needed to be sure he hadn’t believed the things Levi told him about her, but she should have known better.
“I think we need to put Levi behind us,” she announced. “Remember him with love, but not as if he’s here, tangling our feet so we keep tripping. I’ve let the hurtful memories stick to me like burrs. I won’t do that anymore.”
“Are those memories why you didn’t marry?” David asked.
Was this too bold to say? But on a burst of recklessness, Miriam thought, I must be myself with him. So she lifted her chin and finished, “There wasn’t anyone I could feel that way about. Not until you came home.”
His expression transformed from tension to blazing joy in a heartbeat.
“I love you, Miriam Bowman.” He lifted his hand to run his knuckles over her cheek and jaw. The touch of his thumb on her lips was so soft, she could have imagined it. “You’re generous, warm, and humble. Brave and loving.”
“Brave?”
He grinned. “You didn’t like it when I pushed you behind me so that the man with the gun couldn’t shoot you.”
“He might have shot you!” she exclaimed. “He’d have been less likely to shoot me. I wouldn’t seem threatening to him, but you might.”
“So you wanted to protect me.”
“Ja!”
“See? You are brave.”
Was he teasing her? She peered at him suspiciously, but couldn’t tell. The idea of her, barely coming up to his shoulder, defending a man of his size and strength probably was ridiculous.
But suddenly, he was the serious man she had gotten to know and even understand. Voice gravelly, he said, “I never want to have to be so afraid for you again.”
Blinking back tears, she leaned against him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. Why cry again, as happy as she was?
“You’re sad?” He sounded alarmed, even as he wrapped his arm around her.
She shook her head, swiping wet cheeks against his shirt.
“These are happy tears?”
“Ja.” She looked up with a tremulous smile. “So happy.”
“Will you marry me?”
“You’re certain?” Even as the words tumbled out of her mouth, she knew how foolish they were. She lifted a hand to his face, laying it against his jaw, reveling in the scratchy texture against her palm and fingertips.
“More certain than I’ve been about anything in my life,” he said quietly. “In fact . . .” He hesitated.
She only waited.
“If you want a long courtship, that’s what we’ll do, but I’m eager to take you home as my wife instead of sneaking a few minutes to be alone once in a while.” Passion rang in his voice, sheer need showing in his darkened gray eyes.
Oh, her eyes were welling with tears again! “I want that, too,” she whispered. “So much.”
His relaxation was subtle. “Think how easy it will be to visit your mamm and daad.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m pretty sure I heard their buggy a few minutes ago.”
“Then we shouldn’t waste a minute,” he murmured, and bent his head to kiss her.
Miriam had never even imagined a kiss like this, sweet and hungry and claiming. David would lift his head now and then, looking at her as if asking whether she truly loved him. All she had to do was squeeze his shoulder or caress the hard line of his jaw, and he came back for yet another kiss that shook her to her foundations, awakened unfamiliar, urgent feelings, taught her what she might have missed if David hadn’t come home.
Truthfully, she wasn’t sure what would have happened if they hadn’t both heard her daad calling her name.
David lifted his head, drew a deep breath. She sucked in air herself, wondering if not breathing didn’t explain some of her dazed state.
“I’m here, Daad!” she managed to call. “I’ll be right in.”
He made a grumbly, affirmative sound.
“You should have said, we’ll be right in,” David suggested.
“Ja. I should. If you’re ready to tell them?”
“Hard to plan a wedding if we don’t tell them.”
Miriam chuckled. “You’re right.”
“I hope we don’t have to wait until November.”
That was the traditional month for weddings. Elam and his Anna Rose were already defying that tradition.
“That is only four months away, you know.”
“If we have to wait, or you’d rather have the time, that’s what we’ll do.” David rose to his feet, looking down at her so tenderly. “I think your parents will be able to tell the minute they see you. I’ve scraped your cheeks.”
If her cheeks hadn’t already glowed red, they did now as she blushed. “They’d already know,” she told him, “because I don’t feel as if my feet are touching the ground.”
David laughed, swept her into his arms again, and spun her in a circle until she was truly dizzy.
Mamm did know the minute she saw them. She began to cry and laugh at the same time, until Miriam started up, too.
Daad’s eyebrows rose, and then he inspected her face and his eyes narrowed. David hovered behind Miriam, probably feeling nervous despite all the times he’d been welcomed in this house.
“I hope you two have news,” Daad said, sounding acerbic.
“We do.” Miriam seized David’s hand again and smiled up at him. “David asked me to marry him.”
“Oh, my!” Mamm grabbed a dish towel to stem her tears. “I’ve been so afraid you’d never have a family.”
“I did have one,” Miriam said gently. “I do. You and Daad and Luke and Elam and . . .”
Her mother sniffed. “You know what I mean.”
“Ja.”
“And you’ll be right next door!”
“You may be sorry,” Daad told David, who only laughed.
“Never.”
Mamm collected herself eventually, immediately hurrying to pour coffee and bring out giant cinnamon rolls left over from today’s meal, as if any of them could possibly still be hungry.
It was Daad who began, “With Elam marrying in July—”
Ach, here he went already. Miriam didn’t let him finish. “That’s what we want, too. Maybe August or September.”
“Two weddings so close together . . .”
“Oh, Daad. Anna Rose’s family will be doing the work to put on Elam’s wedding. Why can’t we hold another one?”
He complained a little, but his eyes twinkled, too, and he quit arguing. Mostly, she suspected, because he had liked David so much from the beginning. Also, although he’d been less vocal than Mamm about his disappointment in her remaining a spinster, he must have shared her worries.
Or else he assumed Amos would insist they wait, since David had been home such a short time.
“You might want to warn Ruth she’ll be losing you,” Daad said, his way of conceding.
Miriam met David’s eyes. Was that what he expected? Somehow, she wasn’t surprised at his smile. So she spoke up.
“I’d like to keep working like Julia has until we’re ready for our first boppli.” She would pray that happened soon.
Under the table, David squeezed her hand, and she knew he was thinking the same.
“Usually I’d start a quilt.” That’s how she’d marked the important moments in the lives of everyone she loved.
But Mamm shook her head. “That’s for your friends to do, you know that. You can’t tell me Julia won’t be as happy as we are. Ach, Luke, too! With the two of you already brederlich . . .” She beamed at David.
The two men were brotherly, Miriam realized. Her entire family had done their best to absorb him into it from the beginning.
“Do you think your mamm and daad will be happy?” she asked, feeling guilty that it hadn’t occurred to her yet to wonder.
The skin beside David’s eyes crinkled even before his mouth curved. “Over the moon. Mamm has been despairing of me. She’ll burst into tears, too. You must know that.”
“Esther may take it harder.” Oh, why had she even said that?
But this man who intended to stand with her for the rest of their lives only shook his head, eyes warm on her face. “After your talk today, I think she’ll come around fine.” His smile widened. “Miriam, Miriam. You aren’t trusting in God.”
Now he teased her. And yet . . . she wondered if she’d been running from him, afraid to trust herself to him.
“I do,” she said softly. “I trust Him, and I trust you.”
His gaze didn’t leave hers. He warmed her, uplifted her, inspired her—and renewed her faith.
Miriam took a very brief moment to bow her head and thank her Lord for opening her eyes to this man. Her life with David and any kinder they were blessed enough to have would always be filled with love.