Chapter Seventeen
After all she’d been through, it did Max’s heart good to see her looking so content with life. “You look happy, Willa. Really happy.”
“I am. I’m proud, too. I know that’s a sin, so please don’t tell the bishop!”
“Your secret is safe with me,” he said, laughing.
“It feels so good knowing that I’m finally making choices that everyone approves of.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone who matters.” She kissed him. “You, for instance.”
He kissed her, too. “Feels good, hearing that my opinion matters.”
While she rested her head on his shoulder, Max’s mind raced...
She’d traded the conveniences of the modern world for the Plain life. Spent countless hours working toward a CNA certificate—even though she’d already earned a college degree—because she loved contributing to the community. Dedicated additional hours to win the right to become baptized. And she’d done it all in her usual do it right or not at all way. Still ... if Willa had a loving family out there somewhere, people she could trust and rely upon, would she have made any of those choices?
“What do you suppose your mother would have thought about your becoming Amish?”
The question erased her happy smile. She didn’t reply right away. It took her so long to respond, in fact, that Max didn’t think she’d answer at all.
“Everything my mom did, she did to make my life better. So I think she would approve, wholeheartedly.”
Her smile had returned, along with the serene expression that warmed it.
“You were with the bishop for a long time this afternoon.”
“It didn’t seem long at all. I’ve come to think of him as a friend. I think he’s wonderful.”
“Not everyone agrees, you know.”
“I felt that way, not long ago. But working with him, one on one, helped me see him in a different light. It can’t be easy, watching over everyone here in Pleasant Valley. And yet he does it without complaint, because like a doting parent, he loves and wants what’s best for them.” Her smile grew. “For us.”
“You are right.” Fingertips tracing the contours of her jaw, he said, “How long has Frannie been asleep?”
She looked at him as if he’d grown an extra pair of ears. “You were here when I put her down. An hour? A little more, maybe?”
“Long enough that you could take a walk with me?”
Leaning close, she kissed his cheek. “I’d love that. Just let me grab my coat. And the baby monitor.”
Their boots crunched over hard-packed snow as they walked, arm in arm, toward the end of the driveway.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” she said, pointing up. “I mean, of course I knew there were billions of stars in the sky, but the bright city lights and smog made them hard to see. And that moon ... Why, it’s so big and bright, like our very own spotlight.” A soft breath puffed from her lips. “God is quite an artist, isn’t He?”
“When you talk this way, you make me feel guilty.”
She looked up at him. “Guilty? Why?”
“I have lived beneath this same sky all of my life, but I didn’t fully appreciate it until just now. See, that is an example of the many things you’ve taught me . . . taught all of us in the community.”
It was too dark to know for sure, but Max had a feeling the compliment had inspired a blush. He stopped walking, took her hands in his. “You are a treasure, and more beautiful inside than out ... and that’s saying something.”
If there had been any doubt in his mind about her feelings for him, they vanished as quickly as the snowflakes that had landed on her long eyelashes.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he continued, “but in the world of the English, a man asks permission to marry the love of his life.”
Willa laughed. “My orphan status got you off the hook, didn’t it!”
“I would gladly—proudly—have done it. And promised to be your safe haven, always.” Max took the neatly folded handkerchief from his jacket pocket, gave it a flap, and said, “And once they’ve received permission, they present their intended with a ring, yes?”
“Yes, but I know about the no-jewelry rule. I don’t mind a bit. Honest.”
“Nevertheless . . .” He stooped, spread the hanky on the ground, and got down on one knee. Looking up at her, he extended one hand, to show her the tiny circle of twine resting on his palm. “It’s our secret,” he said, slipping it onto her ring finger. “A bit too big, but see here?” He tapped the small knot on the top. “It symbolizes eternity, my way of saying I’ll love you, forever.”
Willa sat on his knee and threw her arms around him. “Now I feel guilty,” she said, her voice raspy with tears. “I’ve made you violate the rules, and you’ll have to ask forgiveness.”
“There’s nothing to ask forgiveness for. You won’t wear this ring.”
She held it to her heart. “Never?”
“Well, I suppose you can slip it on from time to time, if you need a reminder of what’s in my heart.”
“It’s more beautiful, even, than silver or gold, and I’ll treasure it always.”
“So . . . you will marry me, then?”
She pressed her lips to his and mumbled, “I will. I do. Yes. And I love you.”
What a peculiar time for the meeting with Joe to come to mind, he thought. If he told her about it now, he’d destroy this moment for her ... for himself.
He had the rest of his life to explain, and if her stubborn pride caused her to disagree with what he’d done to protect her from the amoral drug dealer, he’d have the rest of his life to make up for it.
* * *
As winter gave way to spring, Anki’s progress seemed to stall.
“I am at a complete loss,” Dan said one afternoon as he and Max were reviewing construction plans.
He’d been pacing like a caged wolf for five minutes straight. “You will wear a path in the linoleum,” Max said. “Sit. Finish your coffee. Then we can go over the plans for those last cabins at Lover’s Leap.”
But Dan continued walking from one end of the construction trailer to the other, and back again. “I have never felt more helpless.”
“Easier said than done, I know, but what can you do, except continue being patient?”
“She worries me, and—do not misunderstand—I love her. But I have never been more angry with her. Not even when she cut her hair. She behaves as if no other woman in history was barren. Why does she refuse to be satisfied with all that she has, instead of thinking only of the one thing she does not have!”
In Dan’s shoes, Max would feel angry, too. Angry, and hurt that his life’s mate seemed incapable of facing a future with just him.
“Willa seems to think Abigail has a lot to do with Anki’s behavior. Seems she’d held fast to the belief that God would answer her prayers, find a way to bring Abigail home. But the suicide killed that hope as surely as Abigail killed herself.”
That, at least, put Dan into a chair.
“I need some good news,” he said. “Where do things stand with you and Willa?”
It took concerted effort not to grin from ear to ear. “She will marry me.”
“And you are not concerned that someday, she will miss living the English life?”
“She is strong. And willful—so she’s well named. I believe she has put her old life behind her, as much for Frannie as for herself. So my only concern is whether or not I can give her the good life she has earned.”
Despite his show of confidence, the conversation shadowed Max for the rest of the day. That night, as Frannie stacked blocks on her highchair tray and Willa washed dishes, he leaned beside her at the counter. “Why are you so determined to trade the freedom of your old life to live Plain?”
“Well, that came from out of the blue.” Taking a moment to measure his mood, Willa dried her hands, led him to the table, and pulled out a chair. “I can see why you’re apprehensive,” she said, on her knees in front of him. “I mean, why would someone like me trade the so-called excitement of the English world for the restrictions of being Amish!” She kissed his knuckles. “But the real question is, why did I ever see that as freedom!”
Willa held up her left hand, showing him a faint rash on her ring finger. “Every chance I get, I put on that sweet little ring you made for me. It’s scratchy and itchy, but I don’t care.” She giggled quietly. “Once, after wearing it all night, I woke up with a red splotch on my cheek. Dan said it must have been a spider bite, and suggested I try to find and kill it before it could bite Frannie, too.”
Max laughed, although he couldn’t quite connect his question with her story about the ring.
“It’s almost as symbolic as the knot you tied at the top of the ring. Don’t you see? I’m not giving up anything ... I’m gaining the life I’ve always dreamed of!”
Heart pulsing with love, he pulled her into a hug. “I don’t know what I ever did in my life to deserve a blessing like you, but if God ever sees fit to show me . . .”
He felt the prick of tears behind his eyelids, and to hide them, he kissed her. Kissed her as he’d never kissed her before.
Dan clomped into the room, and seeing them, spouted a nervous laugh. “Just wanted you to know I am going to the trailer,” he said as they stepped apart, “to balance the company checkbook.”
When he opened the door, Frannie waved. “Aw, nice Dan. Bye-bye!”
“I will be back soon, little one.” He smiled, rolled his eyes, and told Max, “Feel free to finish ... the dishes . . .”
The door closed, and he was gone.
“This is his house,” Max began.
And Willa finished with, “I think we should do what he says.”
As their lips met, Frannie said, “Max kiss Mama. Aww.”
“Now really,” Max said, laughing, “how is a man to do . . . dishes . . . with all these interruptions!”
* * *
It had been a quiet day at the clinic, and Willa insisted that Emily go home to relax and put up her feet. “You’re not going to have a lot of opportunities to do it once those babies get here!” she’d said.
And Emily quickly agreed.
Willa had entered the day’s log into the computer and was about to clean up the exam rooms when the phone rang. “Aw, nuts. Please don’t let it be something that’ll force Emily to come back,” she muttered.
The phone rang a third time, and she answered with her customary, “Baker Free Clinic.”
“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
She’d recognize that reedy, whiny voice anywhere. During those first months in Pleasant Valley, Willa had skulked around like a thief in the night, worrying that Joe would find her. But as time passed with no contact from him, she’d allowed herself to relax.
“How did you find me?” But no sooner were the words out than she remembered the scary man in the diner parking lot, who’d stared . . . and taken pictures.
“Here’s a better question for you . . .”
She could almost see his watery gray eyes, eyes that appeared smaller because of thick nearsighted lenses, and cringed.
“How many times did I say if you ever left me, I’d find you, no matter how long it took?”
Hundreds . . .
“And yet you ran off like a junkyard dog, after all I did for you!”
After all he’d done? Like turning me into a common junkie? Using me as a drug mule? Raping and beating me whenever the mood struck?
“I put a roof over your head, you ungrateful witch. Put food in your belly ... Speaking of which, where’s my kid?”
Willa looked over her shoulder, toward the spare exam space that she and Emily used as their babies’ playroom. She could hear Frannie back there, chattering happily to each of the three tiny dollies that went everywhere with her.
“She isn’t your kid. Never was. Never will be,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Easy now, Willa, better climb down off your high horse, and think about this: If I found you, I’ve found her, too.”
How had he learned that the baby was a girl? Calm down, she told herself. He doesn’t want you or Frannie.
Willa looked at her framed CNA certificate, hanging above the computer. “I have a good job now,” she said. “How much do you want?”
He laughed. Laughed!
“Silly Miss Nurse’s Assistant. I need the money now, not in ten or twenty years ... which is how long it’ll take you to . . .” He faked a cough. “. . . to earn it. And I’m going to need a whole lot more than I got the last time I went to Pleasant Valley.”
She didn’t understand, and said so.
“Your hardworking Amish boyfriend handed me a fat stack ... a hundred one-dollar bills, strutted like a sus-pendered peacock, and said if I showed up again, he’d go to the cops with video and audiotapes. Proof that I intended to sell you, if I could find anybody dumb enough to buy you, to get my dough back. Sell your brown-eyed kid, too.” A sinister snicker filtered through the phone line. “Y’know, it feels kinda good that she looks so much like me.”
Had he seen her? How else would he know that she resembled him? It seemed totally out of character for Max to reveal so much personal information, especially after learning Joe’s identity and what he wanted. But if not Max, who had supplied Joe with so many details?
Yet again, she remembered the stranger at the diner. Joe had sent him. She was sure of it now. But how many times had he watched her? And how long had he been watching?
From the sound of things, Joe was desperate, so not long.
Later, she’d find answers. Right now, she gave in to fear. And a measure of anger. Joe said he’d met with her Amish boyfriend, that Max had outsmarted him. It meant he’d made a decision that put himself, Dan and Anki, and Frannie in danger. If he’d discussed it with her, Willa would have reminded him that before moving to Pleasant Valley, she’d taken care of herself, that she could have done it this time without endangering anyone ... except maybe herself ... if only he’d given her the chance. Why hadn’t he given her the chance?
“Don’t worry your drug-fried brain over that money, Willa. Like I said, I found other ways to earn it back.”
Earn, indeed, she thought, and immediately pitied anyone involved in his evil plot to make it happen.
“Wasn’t easy, on account-a you, but I did it.”
Thank God she’d had the foresight to lock the door after Emily left, because for all she knew, he was right outside, high on cocaine and loaded for bear. If she riled him, he’d just follow her home, and only the good Lord knew what he’d do after that.
Oh, Max would hear from her about this, that much was certain!
“If you earned back the money,” she said, “why are you calling me?”
“Well, Willa, it’s like this . . .”
She pictured him, straddling his black Harley’s saddle, squinting into cigarette smoke while inspecting his long, oval-shaped fingernails. Had he cut his shaggy hair? Shaved his scraggly brown beard? Worn something other than chains and black leather? What had she been thinking, getting involved with a man like Joe? Thank You, God, for saving me from that life!
“Yeah, I got my money back, but that doesn’t mean I consider us even. One way or the other, you’re gonna pay for leaving me, for making me look like a fool. You won’t see it comin’, but trust me, li’l Amish girl, it’s comin’.”
He hung up, and for a long time, Willa stared at the now-silent phone.
“Mama,” Frannie called. “Bye-bye?”
“Yes, sweet girl. We’re going home.” For as long as we can, every chance we get, we’re going home.
* * *
On countless occasions, Max had witnessed her frustration with Anki. She’d looked worried on the night Frannie spiked a fever. Anxious as she studied for the CNA exam, and fretful while memorizing Bible verses to impress the bishop. But he’d never seen her angry, at least, not at him, and Max didn’t like the feeling one bit.
“I was going to tell you, that very day, and many times since. But it just never seemed to be the right time. Sort of the way you and I tried and tried to share our feelings for one another, and life kept interrupting.”
“No, Max, this is different. This is about our lives.”
“Saying I love you, planning a future, protecting you from that animal is not?”
“I know it makes me sound like a melodramatic female, but I learned the hard way that Joe is a dangerous man, with dangerous friends. If he decides to make good on his threat . . .” Willa heaved a shaky sigh. “If anything happened to Frannie, to Dan and Anki, to you, I’d never forgive myself.”
He tried to hug her, right there in the parlor with Dan and Anki witnessing everything, but she shied away. “I need some time to process things.”
For purely selfish reasons, everything in him told Max to talk her out of that mindset. What if while she was processing, she decided that what he’d done was proof he couldn’t be trusted?
“How much time?”
She turned away from him, not completely, but enough that Max felt the chill all the way to the soles of his feet.
“I don’t know.” Looking into his eyes, she said, “You’re busy, I’m busy, let’s just see how things play out.”
“But Willa, what if during this time you say you need, he comes back? How will I protect you and Frannie if you are here and I’m . . . not?”
“Now you’re starting to get it. He can’t be trusted. It’s better for everyone concerned if I go somewhere for a while, until he forgets about Frannie and me.”
“Are you listening to yourself? You’ve been here the better part of a year, and in all this time, he hasn’t forgotten about you. What makes you think that going somewhere will make that happen? He found you once; he can find you again.”
He was pacing now. Ranting. Flinging his arms in the air. Max knew he must look like a raving lunatic, but he didn’t care.
“Where would you go? How would you support yourself and Frannie? And ... and how long is long enough?”
“I can take care of myself!” she shouted. “I did just fine on my own. I don’t need you to make choices for me. Okay? Let me take Frannie and we’ll go where he’ll never find us. And when I believe it’s safe, we’ll come home.”
“You are not going anywhere,” Dan said. “You will be safe, you and Frannie both, right here in Pleasant Valley.”
“Stay at my house. You and Frannie can have the entire second floor. People will not judge. They will understand. And if they don’t?” Max raked his fingers through his hair. “If they don’t, damn them!”
“He is right, Willa. What good can come from you leaving this place?”
“No good can come from it,” Anki said. “You must stay.”
In the wake of her simple statement, everyone fell silent.
“He will not come for you,” Anki added.
“You can’t know that,” Willa said.
Shrugging, she said, “I have no explanation, except that as soon as you told us about this man, I prayed. Prayed as I have never prayed before.” She shrugged again. “You are safe now. It is something I feel in my heart.”
Anki sounded calm, self-assured, and completely at peace with what she’d said. Max wanted that for himself, and so he prayed. Prayed that Anki’s perfect, peaceful demeanor had been heaven-sent, and that soon, he’d feel it, too.
He left the Hofmans’ parlor and joined Willa, who stared silently out the back door, as if by sheer willpower, she could keep Joe away. “He isn’t out there,” Max said. “I saw how right you were about him. He’s a despicable, wicked man. Which is why he planted those terrible thoughts in your head. He wants you to be as miserable as he is. Don’t let him do that to you, Willa. Please. Don’t let him do it to Frannie. To us.”
Again, he tried to hug her, and again, she stiffened. He’d broken two bones, falling from a tree. Nearly sliced off a thumb, using the chain saw. Caught his arm on a protruding nail. Buried beloved family members. It made him feel guilty, admitting it, but none of it hurt as much as having her turn away from him.
“I am sorry,” he said. “Nothing like it will happen again. From here on out, we’ll be partners, you and I, partners in life. I will never keep anything from you again. You have my word.”
She continued staring into the yard, so he added, “How can I make this up to you?”
Willa faced him, rested both hands on his forearms. “I want to stay here in Pleasant Valley. But I need a little time. If we marry, it won’t be until October, so can you give me that? Time, I mean?”
If they married? Max could hardly believe what he was hearing. There were tears in her eyes when she’d said it, and knowing that he’d put them there hurt like crazy.
“All right. Take as much time as you need. I’ll wait. However long it takes, I’ll wait.”
Willa lifted the corner of her apron, wiped her eyes, and said, “Thank you, Max.”
She left him then, and he watched as, step by step, she made her way toward the stairs. On the landing, she turned and smiled, and he memorized the look of love in her eyes.
Yes, he’d wait, and trust that God would bring her back to him.
Because Max didn’t know how he’d face life without her.