Marrying Jake Read online

  Jake shot a glance skyward. Damned if there wasn’t almost a full moon peeking through the clouds. He watched the guy get in his cruiser and drive away.

  Married. Adam had gotten married.

  Surely Jannel, Adam’s first wife, had taught him the unholiness of the union—especiaUy after the harsh lessons their parents, Emma and Edward Wallace. had imparted first. Married? Married. With responsibilities that couldn’t possibly be met, needs that could never be realistically fulfilled. Married. And then the irrational thought came back into Jake’s head again: Gone to me.

  Gone to a woman. Gone to a marriage. Gone to another family.

  Jake finally started walking because the only thing that would find him at Mariah Fisher’s old house this time was the dawn. And if it was anything like this night had been, it was going to be rotten and wretched.

  Chapter 2

  Katya Essler had forgotten how to sleep.

  It had begun ten years ago, stealthily, a little bit at a time, after she had first married Frank. She had learned to listen for his approach up the stairs, for the heavy, staggering thump of his footsteps that would tell her he had been out behind the barn again, getting drunk. She had learned to hold herself so incredibly still then, scarcely breathing, that her bones would literally ache. She had learned not to make a sound, a twitch, the slightest movement, because then, if she was lucky, he would just forget she was there and he would pass out.

  Those were the good times.

  She had escaped Frank, with Mariah’s help, almost a month ago. But Katya still wasn’t quite able to let sleep take her completely. She knew, in her heart, that it would be a very, very long time before she relearned how.

  Suddenly her throat burned. It felt as though a line of fire came up from her chest, where her heart was, and she was ashamed enough of that that hot tears scalded the corners of her eyes, too. She should have been grateful, to Mariah, to her new husband, Adam Wallace, for saving and protecting her. And she was, oh, God, she was.

  But Katya would never really be free, and for that she wept. That was why her chest burned with a fury she could scarcely bring herself to acknowledge. She should be grateful, and she was, but she also felt more hopeless than she had even when she had been married to Frank.

  By some miracle of a true and loving God, the vast majority of her gemeide—her church district—had chosen the same time to break off from their old church elders. They had done it mostly because the outside world had begun touching them in hideous ways, and the people disagreed with their deacons as to how to handle it. Someone was stealing their babies, and the old deacons had proclaimed that they should let the little ones go. They would not allow the parents to search for them because nonresistance to trouble was the Amish way. They said it was God’s will that the babies had vanished. God wanted it that way. He had a better plan.

  Too many people had been unable to tolerate that. So, as had happened a few times before throughout history, a hundred or so families had split off, forming their own gemeide. And they had changed things, important things, though they were still Old Order, the most strict and old-fashioned of the Amish and Mennonite faiths. The new gemeide had sought the help of the FBI to find their babies. They had lifted Mariah’s meidung—the shunning that she had been subjected to since returning from college because the old gemeide had considered it a sin to educate oneself past the eighth grade. Education was still a sin, but the new deacons said that Mariah had repented enough with her devout behavior since then. And they had thrown the meidung on Frank Essler for his sins against his wife and children.

  Frank was shunned and he no longer existed to the community. He was invisible to them. Should Frank ever choose to walk among the people in this new gemeide, they would turn their backs upon him. He was not welcome at their tables, and joyous, ample meals were the cornerstone of their ways. He could not spoon food from the same bowls they used, and his wife certainly could not have any sort of relations with him.

  Frank was gone. Yet Katya lay in the dark of Adam and Mariah’s new home, trembling with fury because she would always and forever be his wife. There was no such concept as divorce among her people.

  There was no hope left. She would be twenty-nine years old next month, she thought, and these days of loneliness would stretch out forever. Unless Frank repented and somehow worked his way back into the fold—and she prayed to God that he did not—she would never again enjoy married life. She would never love, be loved.

  Through no fault of her own.

  That was what enraged her the most, what made her throat close and her eyes burn and her heart pound. She had wed Frank Essler in good faith. Perhaps she had never loved him, not in the way Sarah Lapp loved her Joe, but few Amish women ever experienced that kind of joy. Holding out for love was considered “silly,” at least to hear the deacons tell it.

  But she had respected Frank—at first. She had liked him. She had believed they would have a good life together and she had tried hard to make one. He had betrayed his vows. He had sinned. And she was trapped. Forever.

  Her freedom should have been enough. The health of her children should have been enough. Her skin burned with shame in the darkness because, in one small, secret place in her heart, they were not. She wanted to know she might someday have hope again. And she needed desperately to stop depending on Adam and Mariah—or anyone else, for that matter—to support her and her children. She hated being pitied, dependent upon the charity of others, but what else could she do?

  Those words echoed in her head again and again. What else? She had an eighth-grade education from an Amish parochial school. The settlement was her life, all she had ever known. She couldn’t leave, dared not leave. Yet here, in the Amish heartland, she was not permitted to work. Or, at least, there were precious few ways for her to earn a living that were acceptable to the ordnung, the Amish rules of faith. Here, in the Amish heartland, she was permitted to do, to feel, virtually nothing.

  Her hands curled into fists at her sides. She forced herself to breathe—aloud this night—evenly, strongly, getting control of her emotions. And then, beneath the sound of her own exhalation, she heard a footstep from somewhere below.

  Her body reacted first. If a moment before her heart had been chugging in silent anger, now it erupted in terror. He had come for her. Frank would get to her anyway, even here, even with Mariah and Adam, because he respected no laws.

  She sat bolt upright in the narrow bed, her hands still fisted, listening, trying hard to hear over the roar of her heart. Outside . The movement seemed to be coming from outside, on the porch below her window.

  If it had been inside, she would have relaxed, maybe even felt foolish. The new house, constructed only a few days ago, was full to the brim. In addition to her and her four little ones, there was Adam and Mariah and Adam’s son, Bo. And Bo’s best friend, the boy he had been raised with here in the settlement before Adam had found him, was sleeping over also.

  There were nine people in the three bedrooms. But someone was outside. No one should be outside, she thought. It wasn’t even dawn yet.

  Katya felt the cool, hard wood of the floor beneath her bare feet before she even realized she was standing. No, no, no, not anymore. It was a litany in her head, pounding, hurting. She crept to the window, looking down, but she could see nothing. The porch overhang was in the way.

  She tiptoed to the hall door, stepping over Rachel, her oldest, and Delilah, her four-year-old, who shared a corn husk mattress on the floor. She skirted around the makeshift crib that held her youngest boy, eighteen-month-old Sam. No, no, no, she thought again. She moved down the stairs like a wisp of smoke, barely disturbing the air. She had learned to do that, too, while she had been married to Frank, to move with a minimum of motion so as not to call his attention to herself. It had broken her heart when she had noticed Rachel moving that way also, at only ten years old.

  No, no more.

  She reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped into t
he living room. She hovered a moment, trembling, holding her breath. And then she saw him through the window on the front porch.

  The sky was still dark. The sun did not yet show on the horizon, but the air had taken on that odd, almost glowing hue that came just before sunrise. It threw the man outside—Frank, who else?—into deep silhouette. Her eyes riveted on his hat, the broad-brimmed head covering that all Amishmen wore.

  No more. She was shaking hard now. But her fear was gone. She was furious again.

  It had to be his brother’s house, Jake decided. And if it wasn’t, he was too tired and cold to care.

  It was new enough that the pungent smell of fresh plywood seemed to hang about it. And there was a section over on the right side where they hadn’t finished putting up the siding yet. The wood there was still yellow golden, new. The small barn in the back was unpainted. The chicken coop beside it was all shiny new wire.

  The chicken coop? Adam?

  Jake took one more stealthy, quiet trip around the house, just to convince himself. He hesitated in the back a moment, studying the place, and felt something warm, large and alive push between his legs from behind. He jumped out of his skin and came around, his fists up and ready.

  He’d been expecting the bull that Officer Langston had mentioned and had wondered how he was going to argue with it. But it was only a horse.

  Jake took a quick dip sideways to ascertain that it was a male, a gelding. He had a little experience with horses, though not much. Once, as a boy, he’d thought maybe he’d be a real cowboy. One of the last of a dying breed. The legend and the mystique had appealed to him until his father had put an end to such daydreams. Edward Wallace had beaten him within an inch of his life for taking on a low-paying summer job on a ranch outside of Dallas. Edward rarely worked. It fell to the kids to help bring in his beer money. Admittedly, most of Jake’s earnings that summer—before he had quit—had gone into cab fare, getting back and forth to the Flying Bar.

  He closed his palm over this horse’s nose. “Tell you what, buddy,” he said in an undertone. “You’ve just gone where no man has gone before. Keep it to yourself, and we’ll forget about it.”

  The beast snorted at him, studied him, then apparently decided he was bored with what he saw. He tossed his head, jerked his nose free of Jake’s hand and trotted off again into the darkness.

  Animals running loose. Well, hell, Jake thought.

  Enough was enough. He was going inside. He was so cold now he could barely feel his extremities, although, thank God, the snow had at least stopped falling. But his hair was frozen with it, or at least the ends were, where they stuck out in the back beneath his beloved cowboy hat. He didn’t want to know what the snow had done to the soft gray suede. He’d kept the hat on only because he knew he needed to trap his body heat beneath it. What little body heat he had left.

  He ambled around to the front of the house again and tried the front door. He was moderately amazed to find it unlocked, then he was gratified. He could see no sense in knocking, in waking everyone up. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going to talk to anyone about anything right now anyway. He’d been awake for nearly twenty-four hours. He didn’t want to talk about his brother’s marriage. He didn’t want to exchange niceties with Mariah Wallace. He didn’t even want to talk about Bo. He needed sleep, even if it was just an hour’s worth before the sun demanded his awareness again.

  He stepped into a living room and was immensely gratified to recognize the sofa, the wood-burning stove, the hooked rug on the floor, from Mariah’s old house. He glanced around at all of it, but the sofa drew him.

  Just an hour’s sleep, he thought longingly. However long he could steal until the sun came up and the house began bustling. He started toward it.

  As Katya stared, her pulse slamming, Frank came inside. Inside. But then, she had known he would.

  She slipped reflexively to her left, through the door there, into the kitchen. She hid from him as she always had, before rage consumed her completely. Her gaze began flying about wildly, looking for something, anything, some sort of weapon. He would not strike her this time. He would not hurt her. She would no longer allow it. She’d had enough.

  Her eyes fell upon the solution. Mariah hadn’t finished unpacking the kitchen things. “Thank you, God,” she whispered aloud. Hot tears were scalding her cheeks now. She could no longer contain them. She tiptoed to the first box and hunkered down, and a rolling pin was right there, right on top of the clutter. She prayed again, gave thanks again and hefted it.

  She crept back into the living room. He was still just standing there with his back to her. She had yet to see his face, but she didn’t need to. He turned and headed in the direction of the sofa.

  Katya screamed and ran for him.

  She had the rolling pin in both hands and she wielded it like a baseball bat, putting all her strength into the blow, though admittedly it wasn’t much because she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d kept a whole meal down. Still, adrenaline and fear were on her side and it connected with a satisfying thud that reverberated up her arms. His hat came off and went sailing. And Frank went down.

  Katya dropped the rolling pin with a clatter onto the hardwood floor and simply stood, sobbing. “No more.” She whispered the chant aloud now. “No, no, no. No more.”

  Pandemonium erupted at the scream she’d given. Footsteps seemed to thunder on the stairs, then Adam was shouting something and all the kids were creating their own unique brand of bedlam. Katya turned to them quickly, still crying, but her children had been her reason for surviving for too long to count now, and she didn’t want them to see their father this way. It helped her to move, to function, after what she had done. Nonresistance. You’re not supposed to resist. She gave a tense, fractured laugh at that.

  She had to get the children back to their rooms.

  She glanced up at Adam as she tried to step past him on the stairs. But Adam wasn’t even looking at her, and that made her pause. He was staring over her shoulder at Frank. Mariah had crowded up behind him. One hand was plastered to her mouth, and with the other she held a lantern high. Her eyes were wide...and aghast.

  Mariah, of all people, should have understood.

  “What?” Katya asked shakily. She turned around, even as Sam and Levi crowded against her, clutching her nightgown. Only Rachel remained farther up on the stairs, holding little Sam. “What?” she said again.

  And then she looked into the living room, where Adam had lit another lantern. She saw that it wasn’t Frank she had struck.

  Katya felt her blood almost literally drain out of her. She swayed, and she knew she would probably have fallen if her children hadn’t been bolstering her. “Oh, my!” she gasped, then she, too, clapped a hand to her mouth.

  “Okay,” Adam said hoarsely. “Everybody calm down. It’s all right.”

  Katya saw one of the man’s boots move as though his leg had twitched. Cows did that when they died. She had killed him!

  “Who is he?” she cried. “Who is that?”

  “My brother. Although what the hell—heck,” Adam snapped quickly as his son shot him a dirty look, “what the heck he’s doing creeping in here in the middle of the night is anybody’s guess.” He knelt beside his brother. “Come on, cowboy,” he muttered. “Roll over. You’re all right. Ever hear of knocking and letting people know you’re coming in?”

  Katya stared at the man, her hand still clapped to her mouth. What had she done? Despite his light words, Katya heard real concern in Adam’s voice. She closed her eyes, feeling faint. Surely Adam would throw her and her children out for this. His brother?

  Then what he had just said about the man rolling over finally registered. She cried out again, pulled away from her children and rushed over to kneel beside them.

  “No,” she managed, her voice choked.

  Adam looked up at her, startled. “What?”

  “Don’t roll him over. I m-might have...” Oh, God! “I might hav
e cracked his skull. I...let me check first.”

  Behind her, one of the little ones started crying. Probably Delilah. If Rachel had learned to move like smoke, then Delilah cried at the drop of a hat. Another legacy from Frank.

  But this wasn’t Frank.

  Her hands trembling, she ran her fingers over the back of the man’s head in the general area where she thought she had connected with the rolling pin. She closed her eyes to concentrate, to follow her touch, as her grandmother, a respected Amish healer, had instructed her. Then her eyes flew open again.

  His hair was dark, almost black, and straight. It was long. Not by Amish standards certainly, but by those of the anner Satt Leit, the other sort of people who lived outside the Amish settlements. People like Adam, the first non-Amishman Katya had ever had any real dealings with.

  This man’s hair covered the collar of his dark blue jacket. It was soft, thick, and the ends were going damp with melted snow. It felt like cool water sliding between her fingers, and suddenly, for a reason she could neither dwell on nor understand, it made her skin pull into goose bumps.

  “No,” she whispered, snatching her hand back. “I...didn’t—I didn’t crack his skull. He’s fine.” Except he was still out cold, she thought, flinching.

  Adam rolled him over. Katya gasped, her eyes widened, and she pushed back to her feet again fast. The man she had nearly killed had the most fascinating face she had ever seen in her life, and she could only stare at him.

  Part of it was that all Amishmen wore beards. It was part of their Old Order ordnung, their rules, that once a man was to be married, he allowed his facial hair to grow. And most Amishmen married in their early twenties. The only man of any age whose whole face she was used to seeing was Adam’s, and even he was growing a beard now.

  Adam’s face had never affected her like this.

  Even in repose, his brother looked...arrogant. He had dark brows and strong cheekbones and a long, straight nose. But more than anything, his mouth struck her. It looked so...well, soft in contrast to everything else. His features were unapologetically male and that frightened her, even as something about him made her pulse quicken in an odd sort of way. He wore a white T-shirt under the open blue coat. He was not even remotely dressed for Lancaster County’s cold. She prayed that that was why his lips were blue, that he wasn’t dying.