Loving Mariah Read online

  “None of this makes a damned bit of sense,” Jake muttered. “I don’t like it. Jannel in an Amish settlement? And you’re sitting back and thinking, sure, I’ll wait? No way. This is all crazy. Unless...”

  “Unless what?” Adam asked sharply. He knew that tone. Jake drew the word out as his mind caught up with his mouth. It was something that happened with some frequency.

  “Chew on this one a minute,” Jake said slowly. “What if she’s not hiding from you, bro? What if she’s hiding from, say, a drug dealer?”

  “We’ve been through that. I was thinking the other day that she couldn’t have been so miserable with me as to hide here,” he answered, “that she’d have to be hiding from something worse than I ever was. But it still doesn’t wash.”

  “Why not?”

  “Same old thing we’ve been butting our heads up against all along. If she was in trouble, if she was running from trouble, then why the hell did she take Bo and put him at risk, too?”

  “You’re asking me to understand a woman who didn’t exist, stole your money and your kid and took off?” Jake burst out. Then he heard himself. “Sorry.”

  “You’ve been in and out and through all her drug friends a hundred times over the years.” Adam pointed out, ignoring the outburst. It was still too painful to consider anyway. “You’ve interviewed every one of them. And no one seems to think that her coke habit had anything to do with why she’d gone.”

  “So I’ll go through everyone once more. One more time. Can’t hurt, right?”

  “Thanks, Jake.”

  “And then I’ll fly up.”

  “I just told you—”

  “Bro, I gotta meet the woman who can make you sit back and wait.”

  Mariah paced in her living room.

  She was chilled to be bone, and it had very little to do with her not-quite-warm house. She had long since reconditioned herself to the cold. She had been back in the settlement for nearly two years now, and she could scarcely remember what central heating felt like. Still, every time her bare feet moved from the hooked rug and fell on the cool hardwood floor beyond its edges, she winced unconsciously and drew her shawl a little tighter over her full white nightgown.

  She finally went to the wood stove in the hearth and yanked open the door. Her mahogany hair, free now and streaming to her waist, swung forward and nearly ignited. Angrily she swept it back again. She pushed some wood in and when the fire was going strongly, she slammed the door and resumed her pacing.

  She didn’t know what to do now.

  She couldn’t be sure what was right, and there was no one to talk to about it. It wasn’t just that they didn’t see her. It was more that they wouldn’t understand her dilemma even if they did.

  The deacons would simply put the boy they called Noah in Adam’s path, she thought. They would do that much and no more, would let God’s will prevail. She pressed her fingers to her temples. Maybe, she thought, just maybe, she was wrong and they were right.

  She had no right to stand between this man and his child. Theirs was a sacred bond, and she could not interfere with it. She could not make the decision as to whether or not it was right to reunite them. One part of her—the part of her that was still staunchly Amish—strongly believed that God had already made the decision for her. He had allowed that milk carton to fall into her hands, had He not?

  But then there was Noah.

  No, not Noah, she corrected herself. Adam called him Bo. He was the same child. If nothing else, Mariah was certain of that. He had the scar Adam had spoken of. And he had that funny way of sliding his eyes, the way that always made her laugh. He looked so very much like Adam. Blue eyes? No, she thought, when Adam had described them that way, he had been generalizing. She had never met a man with eyes quite like Adam Wallace’s or like his son’s. They were not blue. They were not gray. They...changed.

  She covered her face with her hands. What was she to do?

  Someone had to protect Noah, she thought. He was an innocent, merely a child, with no real apparent memory of what had happened to him before. She had taught him for two years now and she was sure he did not realize he was adopted, though that was an anner Satt Leit word. The Lapp family had simply opened their arms and had drawn him in, giving him love and a home.

  Noah had been then, and was still now, at the mercy of adults. If she told Adam who he was, would Adam pluck him out of the settlement, no matter that he was a flower that needed the nurturing earth to grow? Noah—Bo—had spent more than half his life among the Amish. These ways were all he knew anymore. It would be so cruel, so devastating, to snatch him abruptly away.

  The church would not stop it from happening. They would not protect Noah—Bo—from such culture shock. The Amish way was one of nonresistance, of following God’s will. And God had put Noah—Bo, she told herself yet again—on a milk carton.

  She went to the kitchen and stood on tiptoe to reach it. She had cleaned it out and had stored it neatly on the top shelf of a cupboard. She had not seen Adam’s Bo in the farmers’ market. That had been a lie she could only hope God would forgive her for. She’d just needed to bring him here—had needed anyone from that ChildSearch place to come. That this man had turned out to be Noah’s natural father was coincidental, and perhaps better. When they had told her on the phone that was the man who would be coming, she’d had mixed emotions.

  But she wasn’t yet sure of that, and from the beginning she’d needed to be able to retreat if it looked as though Noah would be hurt. She couldn’t let Adam Wallace get too close to the truth until she was sure. That was why she had told that one small, misleading white lie.

  She’d had the milk carton for nearly five weeks now, torturing herself over it, wondering night after night what was right. Perhaps she would have agonized over the decision indefinitely, but then the previous Friday little Lizzie Stoltzfus had disappeared.

  That had finally decided her, at least to take the first step. To attempt something. And if the settlement hated her for it, if they punished her even more when they found out about it, well, then, they punished her.

  Mariah laughed a little giddily. When she had called ChildSearch’s number, she had been so sure she was ready for whatever came of her action. She had control of the situation. Though it went against everything she had been taught, she still and always would believe that knowledge was good. It lent power. And all the knowledge in this was on her side. She knew who Noah was. She knew where he was. And Adam Wallace was in the dark.

  When had everything changed? With the first thump of his impatient fist on her schoolhouse door? Before that, when she had seen the way he carried himself, the way he walked? She had no control here, she realized, none at all. Perhaps there wasn’t even a decision to make. He could probably find Noah now without her help. He was here in the settlement, and she knew he would keep looking until he found his boy. He would show those pictures around, and sooner or later someone like Katya would tell him just a little bit more, enough to lead him the rest of the way.

  He was a strong man, so much stronger than she was, and so much more than she had bargained for. Despite the eight years she had spent away, first earning money for her schooling then going to college, despite her Meidung, she was still very much a part of the settlement. She was a woman sheltered in too many senses of the word. She was no match for Adam Wallace. How proud of her, how arrogant, to think that she might be.

  He had held his temper in check today with an effort, and it had still nearly gotten away from him. She shivered and drew her shawl tighter.

  He was so intense. So...powerful. But, she thought again, but there was something kinder there, too, underneath. It was just all tangled up with his pain and his impatience.

  So she would believe in his kindness. She would trust it just a little, but she would have to trust herself more, no matter that she was a little frightened of him. She had to protect Noah, she decided finally. That was paramount. She would get beneath the hard, impatient
surface of Adam Wallace to the kinder man she sensed beneath, because that was the only hope Noah had.

  Adam was also the only hope Lizzie Stoltzfus had, and the three children who had disappeared from the settlement before her. Nonresistance. Curse it, she thought angrily. Someone was stealing their children, and the church wouldn’t do a blessed thing about it. They wouldn’t go to the law, because they had no use for the outsiders’ government They would let it happen, because it was God’s will.

  “The hell it is,” she whispered aloud, and flushed beet red at her own blasphemous words. But if God had anything to do with the disappearances of those children at all, then it was in leading her to Adam Wallace, in leading her to a man who might find them.

  She finally forced herself to go to bed, and tried desperately to believe that.

  Adam came back to the schoolhouse at nine o’clock the next morning. Mariah hadn’t expected that. She wasn’t prepared for it.

  She was just getting the children seated—they had arrived half an hour earlier, after the milking and morning chores were finished on their parents’ farms. But they were still excited, chattering, milling, and she was just barely establishing some order when she heard Adam’s boot heels on the porch outside.

  Impossibly, she recognized the rhythm of his steps, though she had heard them only once before. Impossibly, she could hear the confidence, the surety in his stride. Her blood went rushing and wild.

  For a horrible moment, she couldn’t even think. Noah. She looked frantically for his blond head in the crowd. He was at the back of the room with the other second-graders. Someone had drawn an unkind picture of someone they shouldn’t have, and they were all crowded around it, laughing.

  Not like this. Dear God, he can’t find him like this, she thought. He would just barge in, recognize the boy, and shatter his world with the truth. Though she thought Adam Wallace had some kindness underneath that gruff exterior, she also knew that emotion would not allow him to heed it when he saw his child again. Not unless she could somehow prepare him first.

  She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t in control. Had she ever been, even once, since he had first set foot on her schoolhouse porch?

  Mariah flew. She dropped a pile of books she had just gathered off the floor where someone had left them. They thumped and scattered all over again, pages fanning, and she ran to the door, wrenching it open even as Adam raised his hand to knock.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she cried.

  Her vehemence startled Adam. Here, once again, was the fire he had noticed before, in that singular moment when she had discussed her one sin. He stepped back.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Not now, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Why not? You said to come earlier.”

  “Don’t you think you’re overdoing it a little bit? I meant after school!”

  “I can’t wait that long, Mariah.” His voice held a warning now. It was tense, and something hot flowed right beneath his words. Her heart exploded, because she knew it was a miracle that he had even waited overnight.

  “You must,” she managed.

  Adam stared at her. He wondered again who she thought she was, that she should just ordain that he be patient and that he would blindly and meekly obey her. He was even more sure this morning, after sleeping on it, that she knew where Bo was. Or at least she knew something.

  “What the holy hell am I supposed to do with myself until this afternoon?” he demanded.

  “Hell is not holy!” Mariah stepped quickly out onto the porch and closed the door behind her, trying to get a grip on herself. “You might take a peek inside yourself,” she answered finally.

  “Huh?”

  She closed her eyes a moment and took a breath. When she was steadier, she started over.

  “You never gave me your name,” she began. That was the first thing that had to be cleared up here and now, she decided. She was trying to hold too many reins at once. So many times she had almost slipped and called him by name, and that would be disastrous. She had to tell him the truth gently, carefully.

  His eyes narrowed. “Adam Wallace.”

  “May I call you Adam?”

  “I don’t give a damn what you call me, as long as you start talking.”

  “I can’t do that right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there are thirty-six children inside, waiting for me to teach them something. And if you think that’s an easy task, instructing eight different groups all at the same time, all something different, think again.”

  Adam felt that bemused feeling coming on again.

  She had done this to him yesterday, too. He had come here with a purpose, and somewhere along the line those violet eyes had searched his face, she’d gone off on a tangent and he’d ended up forgetting for a while what he had come for and why. She wouldn’t do it again.

  “Damn it—”

  “Stop swearing at me, Adam! Stop it now! If not out of respect for me, then do it because it’s in your own best interest. I can’t think when you act angry.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “And if I can’t think, I can’t help you.”

  Guilt and panic rolled over in his gut. “Okay, okay. All right,” he said hoarsely. “Calm down.”

  “I’m trying to.” She choked back a wild laugh. She was about as calm as a windstorm at the moment.

  “I’ll come back,” he said. “Don’t get upset.”

  “Thank you,” she breathed.

  “What time? Tell me exactly what time I should be here, then we won’t have this misunderstanding again.” Dear God, he thought, how did she do this to him? She’d turned everything around. He was holding on to his temper for all he was worth, and he didn’t even know why.

  “About three,” she nearly whispered.

  “Fine.” He snapped the word out, cutting off the end of it. He had no idea whatsoever what he was going to do in the meantime. There was no orderly way to proceed with his search, until he had exhausted the avenue of Mariah Fisher first.

  He went back to the car, angry and amazed at himself all over again. Her voice stopped him.

  “Adam.”

  “What?” he snarled, looking around at her again.

  “Think. While you’re waiting, think.”

  “About what?” He just narrowly avoided swearing again.

  “What troubles you?”

  He stared at her in disbelief.

  “You’re angry,” she went on. “You move too fast. Something has you all tangled up inside.”

  He couldn’t control himself any longer. “Well, what the hell do you expect of me, woman? What do you think has me tangled? I want my kid back!”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “And perhaps now you will find him. The question is, what are you going to do with him?”

  And with that she stepped neatly inside again. She shut the door in his face hard.

  Chapter 4

  A thousand times during the course of the day, Adam determined to go back to the school. He would force her to cough up whatever she knew. Hell, there were laws in this country. Her people might think they were above them—he considered the way they had gone to war with the Supreme Court for the right not to send their children to high school. But he’d show them that they were wrong. He’d get a judge to force Mariah Fisher to comply with him.

  Which would take all day, if not several days. It would alienate her as well. He shouldn’t have cared, not as long as he got the information he sought, but oddly, he did. So he waited.

  At precisely 2:50, he drove from the motel back to the schoolhouse. When he stopped in front of it, the clock on the car’s dashboard read 2:59. He measured his steps to the door to reach it at precisely 3:00, wondering if he had finally, completely lost his mind.

  Once again, she opened it before he could knock. This time she held a mug in her hand.

  “Coffee, Adam?” she asked politely. “I have pie as well, if yciu’d like a snack.” />
  He stared at her. “You want some kind of coffee klatch now?”

  “I’d like to talk. Would it hurt if we were comfortable while we did so?”

  He was starting to hate that reasonable tone. It tied him in knots he never saw coming. It invariably had him doing things he would never have dreamed of otherwise.

  “Yeah,” he said shortly. “Fine.”

  Mariah told herself she was much more in control than she had been earlier. And she believed it, until he brushed against her to come inside. It was an inadvertent touch and she doubted very much if he was even aware of it. He was in a hurry. Again. But she felt the strength and the intent of him even through his jacket, and some sense of heat that she was sure she imagined. It startled her. It flustered her. It made something curl in her stomach and her skin pull into gooseflesh.

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry?” She looked at him, her violet eyes huge, a faint blush coming to her skin.

  “The coffee, Mariah. Where’s this coffee?”

  “Oh. Oh, right here. I’ll...get you some.”

  She was nervous, he realized. Why? He watched her rush to a small table in the far corner of the room. Her hands were a flurry of motion as she poured a mug of coffee from a thermos there and cut carefully into a pie. She carried everything back to the desk and he thought she trembled.

  “Please, sit down,” she almost gasped.

  “And where would you like me to do this?”

  Mariah looked dumbly around the schoolroom. Where indeed? Suddenly she felt herself blushing even deeper as she tried to imagine his large, muscled body easing into one of the child-size chairs.

  Muscled? She had no way of knowing whether he was muscled or not. Ah, but he would be, she thought.

  “Take my...you can use my desk,” she managed.

  He watched her a moment longer. She thought his scowl was one of confusion now. At least it wasn’t as fierce. He went to her chair and sat. After a long moment, his eyes left her and he took a bite of the pie she’d placed on the desk.

  “This is cake,” he said, chewing.