Quill strode across the top of the rafters, unrolling coiled wires throughout the attic of the unfinished house. But his mind was on WEDV—Women Escaping Domestic Violence. A woman named Melanie from WEDV had called him last night, asking if he’d meet with her today. Her organization helped women in violent relationships get to safety when the local authorities couldn’t protect them. She explained that she had Quill’s contact info and knew of him because a former Amish person he’d once helped now worked for WEDV.
She’d been very professional throughout the conversation, but he heard a sense of urgency in her voice that made him think there might be a specific woman WEDV needed help getting to safety. It would be hard to turn down a volunteer position. The idea sounded good for several reasons. One was that he needed a distraction from thinking about Ariana—a loud distraction that might have to last a lifetime.
As grateful as he was for work and family, there was something deeply satisfying about helping those in need to get to the other side and begin life anew. Freedom was often hard to come by for some, but without it, life withered, causing hardships on the imprisoned and on future generations as well.
His phone vibrated, and Ariana’s designated tone chirped. The surprise of it literally threw him off balance, and he grabbed a truss overhead. They’d texted briefly after she’d arrived home on Saturday, but he hadn’t expected to hear from her again anytime soon, maybe for months. And it was only Wednesday. He dropped the remaining coil of wires on the rafters and insulation before pulling the phone from his jeans. The message was in a bubble across his screen.
His heart picked up its pace, but that was the norm whenever Ariana was involved.
His Mamm called her the Thread Gatherer. Mamm believed life was like an heirloom quilt that life ripped at the seams, and gatherers were rare. But Ariana took the frayed pieces and worked with them until the quilt could fulfill its purpose once again. Quill had seen her do it. At least once she had done it for him, when he was eighteen and his Daed died of a heart attack.
Her text made him chuckle. Should he tease her? She was home and happy, with Rudy by her side, so he saw no reason to repress being himself.
Are we breaking up?
’Cause if we are, I’m busy.
We are.
But it’s hard to make that official without a first date.
Dinner?
What? Seriously, Quill Schlabach?
The text arrived, but the bubbles indicated she was still texting, so he waited.
I have to ask you out, buy dinner, and do the breaking up?
Your mama raised you better than that.
I was minding my own business, wiring a home, when you…
Fine! I get it. You’re bored and need some drama.
I’ll buy your dinner.
Do you think you could possibly drive to where I am?
Or do I also have to handle that part?
You’re very needy for one so fiercely independent.
No. It was planned.
I thought, you know what sounds like fun--going hungry!
See, this is why we have to break up.
Because you have a very warped idea of fun.
If there wasn’t a great divide between them, they could have fun. Dinners. Movies. Roller-skating. Ice-skating. Sledding. Horseback riding. Bowling. But they had only fleeting moments of laughter over silly things or of gathering threads for the other before life reeled them back in.
You say warped. I say free food.
Sorry. It won’t be free. You will pay. Dearly.
Just not money.
I’m with Salome at a place called Scarlet Oak B&B.
It’s ninety minutes north of Summer Grove, off Hwy. 22.
What? He stared at the text for probably too long before responding. He’d thought they were completely teasing about having dinner, expecting that they’d have to meet somewhere odd like a barn, or he’d pick her up on a side road in town, and they’d talk in his car. Ariana was at a B&B? That was just weird, but it shouldn’t be much more than thirty minutes from this job site.
He wasn’t too concerned about what was going on. Ariana had passion and emotion to spare, and it got the best of her occasionally. But with a little time, she rallied and got her feet under her.
It’s better than winding up at Long Shots, right?
She’d received the most shocking news of her life that night, and she’d reluctantly called him because she needed to talk to someone, and he was the only one from her past that Nicholas hadn’t banned from her life. The conversation went badly, and she hung up on him. Things didn’t go much better once he found her inside the bar. But he got her home safely, and the next day she came to him to apologize. It was the beginning of rebuilding the friendship he’d destroyed five years earlier when he disappeared with her best friend, Frieda, leaving Ariana to believe for all those years that he and Frieda were married. He’d been twenty when he left with Frieda, and Ariana had been a child really, only fifteen, so he never allowed her to know how he felt. He’d intended to let her grow up before hinting at his feelings. But before that could happen, he needed to leave with Frieda, and he let Ariana believe the same lie everyone else in Summer Grove believed—that he and Frieda ran off to marry. He had different reasons for needing the community to believe that, but for Ariana it was his way of freeing her. She had a crush on him when he left, and he wanted her to build a life without holding on to any schoolgirl hope that he might return. Because he wouldn’t, not in the way she needed. But then circumstances made him step out of the shadows and tell her the truth…or most of it anyway.
For a moment he questioned whether he should cancel the meeting with WEDV. But that would be a complete overreaction, and it made no practical sense. He would aim to keep the appointment on track so he could be finished on time if not early. When the bubbles went away, he texted.
The bubbles appeared again.
Salome’s heading home in a few hours.
Could you come after that?
