Loving Mariah Read online

  Her smile became pained again. “If that’s true, then I think it’s probably because going to college was no big deal for you, while I had to give up everything for it. So I cherished it. I wrung everything out of the experience that was there for the taking. Besides, this isn’t learned knowledge, Adam. It’s faith.”

  “I never had any.” And in that moment, he knew it was true.

  She got up and took his plate. “Can you afford to stay in your motel for a while?”

  “Yeah.” He bit the word out, still watching her, still frowning.

  “If you prefer, I could probably find you a family to stay with. Some of the Gemeides don’t practice the Meidung. Some practice it, but only for the harshest of sins. This area is strict, maybe the most orthodox of all. But I have friends in Berks County who see me. They would take you in if I asked.”

  “No. I don’t like...I’ve never been any good with strangers.” Besides, he thought, it would increase his driving time back to this little hamlet, if he stayed in another county. And if Bo was here, this was where he needed to be.

  “Another difference between us,” Mariah murmured thoughtfully. “Solitude is only comfortable when it’s an option.”

  Adam stood. “I should go. I’ve probably caused you a million problems already.”

  She half smiled at him. “Slicing off a few pieces of beef? That’s hardly a problem.”

  “It’s late.”

  “I don’t sleep much anyway. Not anymore.”

  “I meant, you know, what I mentioned at the door.”

  “Ah.” She smiled fully. “And I told you then that you didn’t understand.” Without even thinking, she reached out and zipped his coat for him. They were both startled, then embarrassed. She stepped back quickly, tucking her hands beneath her shawl.

  “Nurturing again?” Adam asked hoarsely.

  “I...yes, I imagine so.”

  “You should be somebody’s mother.” He said it impulsively and hated himself immediately because her face blanched.

  “I would have liked that very much.” She seemed to swallow carefully. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the door.”

  How could she be so warm and yet so...removed? he wondered, following her, watching her dark head bow. But then, almost as soon as he wondered, he understood. Her pain was private. She would hold it close. Of course he understood that. Hadn’t he been the same way for too many years to count?

  She didn’t walk. She glided. He was struck again by how beautiful she was, especially without the trappings of her Amish faith. He thought again that it was just as well if he left now.

  “Sure I shouldn’t sneak out through the window?” He tried for humor, but his voice was oddly raw again.

  She glanced back at him. “Everyone’s asleep, Adam. And if someone is awake, they’ll certainly look the other way when you leave my door. We’re not puritans.”

  He thought of the plain dress she wore to school, and the neat bonnet. And the fact that she was punished so severely for having gone to college. “You could have fooled me.”

  “You’re thinking contradictions again.” She opened the door. “Family, Adam. Remember family. And consider what one must do to make one.”

  His gaze glanced over her nightgown. He had seen a lot of women in a lot less over the years, and he was suddenly glad for the shawl she covered herself with.

  “I’d rather not.” It was out before he could stop himself. She seemed to flush, though in the dim light from the lamp and the stove he couldn’t be sure.

  Mariah rushed on, looking away from him now. “Yes, well, romance is encouraged. One can’t marry and make babies without spending a little private time together first, hmm? Not that that’s what we were doing...” She trailed off, and this time he was absolutely sure she blushed. He was mesmerized. She cleared her throat. “I only meant that that’s what anyone watching will assume,” she finished lamely.

  “I see.” They were the only words he trusted himself with. He pushed his hands a little deeper into his pockets.

  “I mean...” Her voice faded again, then she laughed, a lilting, self-amused sound that reminded him of bells. “What do I mean? For instance, if you were to park somewhere in the rural settlement just before dawn on any Saturday or Sunday morning, and if you should listen carefully, you would hear the clop-clop of many horses traveling home.”

  “I would, huh?”

  “Yes. The young people have been courting, you see. They wait until the girls’ parents go to bed for the night, then the young men will shine flashlights on their bedroom windows. They’ll sneak in. And of course everyone knows it, but no one speaks of it. In fact, if you saw that same young man and woman at church or at any public social, they probably wouldn’t be caught speaking to each other at all.”

  “Why?”

  Mariah shrugged one shoulder. “Courting is private, personal. Some things are just expected to be kept quiet. I—” This time she broke off abruptly.

  “You what?”

  She took a breath and continued, but her voice changed. “I left a tablecloth in a boy’s buggy once, and I was teased mercilessly for weeks.”

  “A tablecloth,” he repeated blankly.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s so scandalous about a tablecloth?”

  “It was proof that he had given me a ride home.”

  “For shame.”

  And then she did it again. She looked back at him quickly and she laughed so clearly that it was like something silvery raining through the air. She leaned back against the open door and hugged her arms over her waist.

  “Adam, you do have a way with words.”

  Suddenly, he wanted to have a way with many, many other things. Things he had not given any thought to in a very long time.

  You need a woman, bro. But not this one. Definitely not this one.

  “I have to go,” he said abruptly.

  “Good night, then.”

  He was halfway to the car before he stopped. He told himself he was asking because this was his son’s world now. Because he wanted, needed, to understand the place where Bo had been living. “These kids...are you saying they’re doing what I think you’re saying they’re doing? You know, when they...sneak around?”

  “It’s called Rumspringa. It means...sowing wild oats, I guess, experimenting a little before you settle down to a life of duty to the church. We probably don’t experiment to the extent you’re thinking, though. I think mostly our girls are virgins when they marry. But they get a decent head start. They know what they’re getting into.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  She leaned a little more lazily against the open door. Her hair spilled and seemed to glisten in the moonlight. “We can only marry in October and November,” she explained. “That’s the only time the church allows it, when the fields are fallow and we don’t have to ignore our work to host a wedding, before Thanksgiving and Christmas demand our attention. Sometimes the wait for nuptials is agonizingly long.” And sometimes, she thought with a pang, it was long enough to allow you time to change your mind. Her smile faded. “We marry for life, Adam. There are no ex-wives here. So, you see, before you marry you must really be sure of your choice.”

  He realized he couldn’t even fathom that kind of surety. He realized that when he had married Jannel he had always figured that if it didn’t work out it would just cost him a little bit of money. They would not live together forever, bitter and angry and drunk, as his parents had done.

  How wrong he’d been. He’d certainly lived bitter and angry, although not together with her.

  He finally got into his car. He went back to his room and returned Jake’s calls.

  Chapter 6

  Mariah was crossing the Esslers’ fields the next morning when she heard a furtive hissing sound. She immediately stopped and smiled. After a moment, Katya poked her head out of the barn, looking about warily.

  Mariah pulled her shawl tighter when the wind would have snatched it. She
hurried that way and Katya urged her inside, out of the wind. Mariah frowned as they both moved back from the drafty door. Katya was limping again.

  Katya waved her hand as though it was nothing. “Frank got drunk last night,” she explained in an undertone.

  Mariah shook her head. They had been so close once, as girls. Then Katya had married Frank and Mariah had left the seulement, and now the best they could do was whisper in barns. There was nothing either of them could do to help the other. Mariah consoled herself with the fact that there would have been little she could have done for Katya even if she wasn’t living under the Meidung.

  “Did he bring the liquor out here?” she finally asked. “To the barn?”

  “Of course. He’s not stupid.” There was more resignation in Katya’s voice than anything else. “I wish he was.”

  Mariah understood. If Frank would only stumble, make a mistake, get caught, he would probably be shunned. Then Katya could at least separate from him. In fact, she would have to. But here was another of the contradictions that seemed to trouble Adam. If Frank Essler drank in a tavern, that would have brought the Meidung upon him for sure, at least until he confessed and repented. As it was, liquor was frowned upon by the church, but as long as it was consumed at home and out of sight the deacons looked the other way. Everyone suspected what he was doing to Katya, too, but no one had actually seen him strike her, so they couldn’t say for sure.

  Frank Essler was a snake, Mariah thought angrily. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked anyway, knowing again that there wasn’t.

  Katya smiled sadly. “They don’t even see you.” She changed the subject. “What happened with that man?”

  Mariah’s heart gave an odd little thump. “You mean Adam Wallace?”

  “The one I sent to you. He was asking about Noah Lapp.”

  Mariah swallowed carefully. “Yes. I know.”

  Katya watched her. She had always known her so well, too well, Mariah thought.

  “He looks like Noah.” Katya ventured finally. “He said he was his father.”

  Mariah turned haunted eyes on her. She didn’t answer.

  “You called him, didn’t you? How did you ever find him?” Katya cried.

  Mariah put a hand to her friend’s arm. “It’s best that you don’t know the details.” What she didn’t say was clear, too. If Katya didn’t know, then her husband couldn’t beat the information out of her. Then Mariah relented a little.

  “He works with an anner Satt Leit company that looks for lost children,” she explained vaguely. “I found the number on a milk carton.”

  Katya finally nodded, her eyes pained. “Did you take him to Noah, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “What will he do?”

  “I don’t know yet. I don’t think he knows himself. But he won’t act rashly.”

  Katya nodded. “He’s a good man, then?”

  Mariah stared thoughtfully over her shoulder into the darkened barn. She could hear horses chewing and snorting from the shadows. “Yes,” she said finally. “He’s lost all his peace, Katya. Someone took it from him. Maybe it was his wife, but I think it happened before that.” She thought of the little he had told her about his family. “He needs to get back to himself. And I think, once he does that, he’ll do the right thing by Noah.”

  “You think he’ll stay here?”

  Mariah looked back at her quickly. “No. Oh, no. I think our contradictions make him a little crazy. But he’ll handle the situation... right.”

  Katya looked over her shoulder again. “When he came here to the farm, when he showed me those pictures, I didn’t know what to do. And Frank was yelling. I couldn’t think.”

  “You did just the right thing,” Mariah assured her.

  The door at the other end of the barn opened. A shaft of sunlight cut through the gloom, then disappeared again. Footsteps hurried. They both looked and saw Rachel coming, Katya’s ten-year-old.

  “This is about more than Noah, isn’t it?” Katya blurted. “You’re going to ask him to find little Lizzie and the others.”

  Mariah hesitated, then nodded.

  “Oh, Mariah. The settlement will be so angry at you.”

  “They’re already angry. But I owe it to the children.” She simply could not bow her head in acceptance when she believed something was wrong. And the church was wrong in not looking for those little ones.

  “Will he help, this Adam Wallace?” Katya asked breathlessly.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Why not?”

  Because she couldn’t trouble him with the problem now, Mariah thought, not until he had worked through his own pain and difficulties. That was the easiest answer, but maybe not the only one. She also knew that when he figured out that she herself had made that phone call and realized how long it had taken her to do it he was probably going to be angry with her. And suddenly she realized that that was going to be very hard to bear.

  Her eyes widened a little at how very important Adam Wallace’s opinion had already become to her, in so short a time. She knew why. Of course, she knew why. He’d eased her silence. He’d given her companionship. She enjoyed him and cherished their conversations. And oh, how she dreaded losing that.

  Was that why she had told him last night to take his time, to remain in the settlement? So she could enjoy being with him a while longer? The possibility that she was that selfish shamed her and made her face go warm.

  “What?” Katya whispered. “Mariah, what’s wrong?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll talk to him soon enough,” she promised, evading the question.

  “He’s coming, Mama!” Rachel interrupted.

  The warning brought Mariah back to more immediate problems. “Would you like to walk to school with me?” she asked the girl. If Frank was angry and hungover, she wanted to get Rachel out of the line of fire. Even more than she bled for Katya, her heart broke for the Essler children, who had to witness their mother’s torments. Unlike those domestic-abuse victims in the anner Satt Leit world, neither Katya nor her children had any means of escape. The Ordnung prohibited divorce. The idea of a woman leaving her husband was blasphemous. And unlike her husband, Katya could not clandestinely commit such a sin behind the barn.

  Mariah wondered how the deacons thought Katya’s children would possibly want to grow up to embrace a life where such abuse was sanctioned because escape was forbidden. It was just another traitorous opinion she never spoke aloud.

  Mariah took Rachel’s hand. “Come, we’ll hurry out this way.”

  “I left my books.”

  Katya was already hurrying back to the other door. “I’ll send them with Levi. Now go on.” But then she stopped, looking back at them. “You care for him, the Wallace man,” she said to her friend, as though they had not been interrupted.

  Mariah felt a warmth spread across her chest. “Yes, I think I do.” And oh, she thought, that was dangerous indeed.

  Adam came back to the school exactly at three o’clock. He didn’t knock.

  Mariah was sweeping when the door swung open. She was too lost in her own thoughts to hear him coming this time. She looked up sharply and felt something good and soft fill her heart.

  “Adam! How are you today?” Not good, she thought, when he stomped inside, closing the door hard behind him.

  “Can I go watch the hockey game?” he demanded without preamble.

  “Of course.” She put the broom back in the closet. “Coffee?”

  “Hockey,” he snapped.

  He was, she thought, a long, long way from peace right now.

  Adam watched her. He could still see her hair as it had been the night before. And he thought again that she was still beautiful, even with it all tucked up. All he had to do was step into this room with her and he began feeling soothed, quiet...warm.

  He wanted more. He wanted to reach out and touch her, the smooth curve of her jaw, the frown lines on her forehead.

  “We could go stand out
in that field,” she explained, breaking his thoughts, “and we could wait there. But we’d get very cold, Adam. They won’t be playing for a while yet.”

  He had to drag his mind back to what she was saying. “They were there at this time yesterday.”

  “No. They were there at three-thirty yesterday, and that was unusually early. I’m not sure why it happened. I think Paul Byler’s milking machine broke down. The fathers were all off fixing it, so the boys got to postpone their after-school chores.”

  “And that won’t happen two days in a row.”

  “Probably not.”

  “So what time do they usually get there?”

  “Around four. They’ll play for a quick hour, then go home for supper.”

  “I’ll have a cup of coffee.”

  She smiled at him. “Good.”

  Today she had brought lemon sponge cake. Adam wondered when she had found time to bake it. He hadn’t noticed it in her kitchen last night, nor had he smelled it baking in her wood stove. And with that simple thought, it all rushed back at him again, how feminine, how soft, how absurdly alluring she had looked with her feet bare, in that virginal white nightgown.

  A dead-end street if ever he’d been faced with one.

  He took a large gulp of coffee. It was scalding hot and he choked, his eyes tearing.

  “Are you all right?” Mariah asked, alarmed.

  “Yeah. Fine.” He blew across the top of the mug. “Do you think I should just turn around and leave here and let Bo be? That I should leave well enough alone?” he asked abruptly. “Is that what you were leading up to last night?”

  Mariah’s heart spasmed, because she knew what it had cost him to even speak the words. She had been right. His heart was good, so very kind and caring, to be able to entertain such a heart-wrenching possibility for Bo’s sake. She felt something swell inside her, something warm and even more fluttery than when she had been speaking to Katya. Was it respect? That was all she dared feel for him.

  “No,” she answered softly. “I don’t think that’s what you should do.”

  For a moment he doubted his own ears. He had been so sure she would say yes. “What?”