The Preacher's Son, page 25
“It’s going to be okay, Bethany,” Daet said quietly. “We’ll figure this out. But with Isaiah’s help, it will be better than okay. You’ll come out of this and, Gott willing, you’ll find a good husband who will see what a treasure you are.”
Bethany swallowed and forced a smile. “Can Gott bless a lie?”
“Gott can forgive an awful lot,” her father replied. “Let’s leave that up to Him.”
That was a hedging answer, but her father couldn’t tell her that Gott would bless this. All they could do was hope that Gott would allow their plans. This child was coming, and it couldn’t be Gott’s will that a baby and a mother be separated, could it?
Bethany led the way into the house, and when she got into the kitchen Mamm and Lily were at the table with Micah. He had pie in front of him, but when she came inside he pushed back his chair and stood up immediately.
“We should talk,” Bethany said.
“You go on and use the sitting room,” Mamm said. “We’ll give you some privacy there.”
Lily stared at them both with open curiosity, and if it were possible to eavesdrop, Bethany knew that her sister would. Mamm put a restraining hand on Lily’s shoulder, however, and nodded at Bethany.
“Shall we?” Bethany said, and she gestured down the hallway.
Micah pushed back his chair into place and gave Barbara a nod. “Thank you. The pie was great.”
Mamm didn’t answer, and Micah headed down the hall, his shoes squeaking against the hardwood floor. Bethany followed, and when they emerged into the sitting room she moved as far from the door as possible, casting a glance over her shoulder.
“You were out with Isaiah—” Micah crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you two . . . I mean, it looks—”
“I was asking him if he would be willing to hold up our deal—the one we talked about at your parents’ home,” Bethany said. “And he is. He’ll be the one you can talk to, the one you can visit.”
“If I’m not shunned,” Micah said.
“You aren’t baptized yet . . .” Bethany felt her heart clench. “You’re free to come and go. It’s me who’s bound by the rules of the church.”
She was the one who’d been baptized right after her Rumspringa, joyfully stepping into church life. And she was bound by those rules and expectations now.
“Do you love me still?” Micah asked hollowly.
Bethany blinked. “What?”
“Do you?” he pressed. “Do you love me enough to be my wife, and to raise this baby together?”
Her heart skipped a beat, and for a moment she thought she might throw up. Was he willing to marry her after all? Would this be her penance—marrying Micah?
“I—” She cleared her throat. “I’m not quite so naïve as I was before, so you can’t expect me to feel quite the same way . . .”
“But do you love me?” Micah stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“Do you love me?” she countered.
“If you loved me enough to marry me, it might be enough,” he said. The words were like a slap. He wanted to know if she felt more than he did....
“Are you willing to make a life here?” she asked. “Because that is the only way this will work.”
She’d be a good wife—cooperative, patient, gentle. She might not love him, but she could choose to respect him, and do her best to make his life a good one.
“I’m asking once more if you could come with me. And we’d find our footing. Because I do love you . . . still . . . I mean, circumstances have changed, but we’re still the same people, aren’t we?” He looked at her helplessly. “Aren’t we?”
There it was—he wanted her to be the savior of this relationship, the one to make up for his own deficits and go along with him into perdition.
“No, we aren’t the same people now,” she breathed. “I’m not the same person, at the very least. I don’t love you enough to go English with you and make you feel like you’re a good man after all this.”
He winced and took a step back. “You’re angry.”
“I’m not, actually,” she said. “I was before, and maybe I will be again, but right now? I’m just . . . tired. This baby has changed things, hasn’t it? This isn’t about us going off to start a life together because it’s the only thing we’ve ever wanted. This is about two people who would have called off the wedding and not looked back if it weren’t for a baby coming along. You don’t love me, Micah.”
“I don’t think we have the luxury of thinking of that,” he said.
“I’m not going English with you.” That was what he was driving at, wasn’t it?
He nodded, then sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry I’m not a good Amish husband, Bethany. I really am.”
“This sounds like a goodbye,” she said.
Micah nodded. “It is. I’m going to the bus station first thing in the morning; I’m going back to Pittsburgh. If I wait any longer, I’ll lose my job.”
“Won’t you miss us?” she asked. “I mean . . . all of us: Bountiful, the community, the Amish way.”
“Yah.” He swallowed. “Yah, I will.”
“And you’ll still leave?” she asked.
“Just because something hurts in the leaving doesn’t make it the wrong choice,” he said quietly. “My daet told me that years ago, when I’d been dating an Englisher girl during my Rumspringa.”
Somehow it still stung to hear Micah talk of other girls he’d dated. And she was no different than that Englisher, it seemed, swept into the past as a girl who wasn’t quite the right fit.
“Micah, if you’re going, you should go. If you aren’t happy Amish, then I wish you only happiness with the English, if that’s even possible. But don’t tell me lies you think I want to hear. Now is the time for us to be honest with each other.”
“Will you let me know when the baby is born?” he asked.
“Yah.”
“And when I come to see Isaiah, you’ll . . . come, too?” he confirmed.
“Yah, Micah. I’ll stand by my word.”
Was this what they’d come to, making cautious deals between them? But whatever they’d been before, it felt strangely far in the past. The Micah she had known before—the earnest, pious, determined young man—he never had been the real Micah. That was the man he’d wanted to be, but this was the real man—desperate to escape, excited about the unknown, and genuinely not in love with her.
“Should I use the same address?” Bethany asked.
“Yah, that will reach me.”
Bethany dropped her gaze. “Okay, then.”
Micah leaned down and bussed a kiss across her cheek, then he moved toward the door. She followed him out into the kitchen, and Micah gave her parents a solemn nod before heading for the door.
“Are you getting married, then?” Lily asked loudly.
The side door shut with a click and Micah’s boots thunked down the stairs. He was gone, and she suddenly felt the urge to cry. Not because she loved Micah, and not because she’d miss him terribly, but because everything was changing, and everyone seemed to be slipping from the pedestals she’d had them on.
“No, Lily,” Bethany said, wiping an errant tear from her cheek with the palm of her hand. “I’m not getting married.”
“He’s such an idiot!” Lily burst out.
“You will not speak about your elders that way!” Mamm said sharply.
“No, she’s right,” Daet said. “He’s an idiot. But Lily, you aren’t allowed to say so.”
Mamm exchanged a look with Daet, and then she forced a smile. “I think that your heart will mend, Bethany, and I have an idea on how to help you get over the heartbreak. You and I are going to visit my aunt Dorcas in Indiana. She needs help at her age, and I think it would make a good rest for you—help you feel better.”
“Can I come?” Lily asked breathlessly. “I could help, too!”
“No, no, Lily,” Mamm said. “Your daet will need your help in the shop and your sisters might need help with babysitting.”
“True . . .” Lily seemed to accept this excuse at face value. “When are you going?”
“In a couple of days,” Mamm said, sliding an arm around Lily’s shoulders. “But don’t worry, we’ll be back soon. You can help take care of things while I’m away for a few days, can’t you?”
And the scene was set—the trip to visit an aunt that would be extended for Bethany for approximately nine months.
At least there was a plan.
Chapter Eighteen
The next afternoon was Saturday, and Bethany sat on the side of her bed, folding her dresses one by one and laying them into her suitcase. Outside, wind whipped through the trees and the first drops of rain splattered against the window pane. A flash of lightning was followed by a distant peel of thunder. Bethany looked toward her hope chest, now halfway emptied. A matter of weeks ago she was joyfully filling it. Now she was filling a suitcase.
Micah’s visit last night had been strangely freeing, and enlightening. Why had Micah proposed if he hadn’t really loved her all that much? Or had he only realized that after he’d left and didn’t miss her all that much? If she weren’t in the position she was in, she’d think it was a blessing to find that out before irreversible vows were taken, but it didn’t feel that way.
She’d been just as foolish, allowing herself to be seduced by a man she didn’t really love half enough to marry either. Just because it was “that time” that everyone seemed to be settling down wasn’t reason enough to bind oneself to a man for life. But she would be bound to Micah, not as his wife, but as the mother of his child. That wasn’t going away.
“I wish I could come, too.” Lily sighed from her seat by the window.
“Daet needs you at home,” Bethany said. “You know that. Besides, we’ll be back in a few days. You won’t even miss us.”
A lie. It felt heavy in her chest to lie like this, willingly telling untruths to benefit herself. A few months ago she would have been horrified at the thought of doing such a thing and now it came almost naturally. When would she have the luxury of complete honesty again . . . ever?
Lily leaned her elbows onto the window sill and looked outside mournfully. “Maybe if I went I’d meet a boy who’d want to court me one day.”
“Oh, stop that,” Bethany said with a chuckle. “You’re nine. You have eight years before your Rumspringa, you know. Right now you’re supposed to be a little girl—playing outside, helping in the kitchen, and not worrying about boys.”
“Maybe you’ll meet a man who will want to marry you,” Lily said, and she stood up from her seat and headed over to the dresser, the top drawer open. She pulled out a kapp and looked at it thoughtfully.
“Do you want to try it on?” Bethany asked.
“Can I?” Lily asked hopefully.
Bethany rose to her feet and went to where her sister stood. She grabbed a brush and swiped it through Lily’s sun-kissed locks before twisting up her hair into a bun at the back of her head and securing it with a few pins. Then she slid the kapp over the bun and pinned it in place, too, the strings hanging down over her shoulders.
“You look so grown up . . .” Bethany said quietly.
“I think I’m ready for kapps and aprons,” Lily said primly.
“You’ll have to convince Daet of that, not me,” Bethany replied. “Besides, kapps fall off if you run around too much, and aprons take some real work to get white again if you make them too dirty.”
“I’d be quiet and clean,” Lily said.
“Yah?” Bethany chuckled and Lily shrugged.
“Maybe not.”
Bethany pulled the pins from the kapp and out of her sister’s hair, letting her long, thick waves hang loose down her shoulders again.
“Don’t grow up too fast,” Bethany said. “You have no idea how many times you’ll look back on these years and wish you could go back to when it was simple.”
Back before she’d gotten pregnant, before she’d agreed to marry a man who would never quite love her enough, before she’d fallen for her fiancé’s friend. Because Bethany had fallen for Isaiah, and while she was sad to be leaving her mamm, her daet, and her little sister, the thought of not seeing Isaiah for the better part of a year was aching in a strange, untouched place in her heart.
Lily headed back toward the window, and downstairs there was the clatter of pans. Mamm was making bread and she’d refused any help. When Mamm was stressed, she took it out on the dough, and Mamm had good reason to be stressed right now.
“Isaiah’s here,” Lily said.
“What?” Bethany went to the window and looked over her sister’s shoulder. A buggy was just pulling up to the house, and while she couldn’t see the driver at this vantage point, she did recognize the buggy.
“Isn’t that him?” Lily asked. Isaiah got down from the buggy and headed for the side door.
“Yah, that’s him. . . .” And seeing Isaiah wasn’t going to make this any easier. But she’d best go down and see what he needed. The way her heart sped up . . . that would take care of itself over the next few months. Her baby would come first—there was no competition there.
Bethany headed down the stairs just as Isaiah knocked, and Mamm looked up with a distracted smile.
“You’ll get that?” Mamm asked.
“Yah.”
Bethany went through the mudroom, and when she opened the door her heart gave a little squeeze at the sight of Isaiah standing there in the spitting rain. His hat was pulled down low over his forehead, and he cast her a rueful smile.
“Hi,” he said quietly.
“Hi.” She smiled, then glanced over her shoulder. She couldn’t see her mother, but she could hear the thump of dough being flopped onto a countertop. “Are you here for my daet or—”
“For you.” He licked his lips. “Can you talk?”
She nodded. “Let’s go outside, though. Little ears and all that.”
Bethany grabbed a shawl from a hook and held it over her head as they went back down the steps, the smell of earth and ozone swirling through the damp air. They headed across the grass toward the buggy shelter where Isaiah’s horses were already standing out of the rain. She let her shawl drop when they got under the roof. The horses and the back of Isaiah’s buggy blocked anyone’s sight from the house, giving them some semblance of privacy.
Another flash of lightning lit up the sky, and then there was a boom of thunder, this one much closer than the last, and the skies opened up in a downpour.
“I’m leaving Monday,” Bethany said.
“Already?” Isaiah reached out and caught her hand, the gesture seeming to be a natural one between them now.
“I can’t wait much longer,” she confessed, running her free hand over her thickening waist, and his gaze dropped to her hand in his.
“Will you write to me?” he asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said quietly. “If I do, I can’t say anything about the baby. I don’t dare put that into writing. So what would I tell you? About pies? About the weather?”
“I’d be happy to read about pies and the weather,” he said, and he lifted his gaze to meet hers. “If that’s all you could say, it would be something.”
Would it be wise, though, to keep writing to him when she knew how she felt? Or would it only make their inevitable distance harder to bear later on?
“I came by to tell you that I handed that money over to the police this morning,” Isaiah said.
“You did?” She smiled.
“I’m also broke,” he said, then shrugged. “I know who I want to be, and I don’t want any more lies or falsehoods pulling me down. That money isn’t mine. If they decide I have any right to it, they can give it back.”
“Is that what the police said?” she asked.
“Pretty much.” He nodded. “I’ll have to tell my daet what I did.”
“You’ll write to him?” she asked.
“I don’t think I can put it off anymore,” he said. “He’ll probably be upset I handed it over, considering he was trying to help us in the only way he could from prison . . . But I’ll do what everyone else is forced to do—I’ll work for what I can get and live within my means.”
“I’m glad you did that,” she said, stepping closer as a whisk of rain-chilled wind wound around her. “It makes me feel better.”
“About what?” he asked.
“About . . . everything we stand for,” she said. “About the community, about our faith, about any of it mattering at all anymore. . . .”
Isaiah frowned slightly. “You’re considering Micah’s offer, I take it?”
“No!” That was what he thought? “He came by last night and gave me one last offer of taking me with him. I turned him down. We don’t . . . love each other.” She felt her cheeks heat. “I shouldn’t even say that. I should keep up appearances and say he left me bereft and heartbroken.”
“But you aren’t,” he said, a smile tickling his lips.
“No.” She sighed. “I’m not. If it weren’t for this baby, we’d have broken up and I’d have considered myself fortunate not to have married someone I didn’t love enough. A baby changes things, but . . . not enough to have me go English with Micah.”
“I’m going to miss you,” he said, lifting his finger and running it down the side of her face.
“You should forget about me for a while,” she said, sucking in a shaky breath. “When I get back you can tell Micah. But while I’m gone . . .”
“I’m not forgetting about you,” he said gruffly.
“You have a life to put back together, Isaiah.”
“Yah, I know that,” he retorted. “And I’m supposed to just wish you well and forget everything between us?”
“Yah!” Tears misted Bethany’s eyes. “That’s what I’m going to try to do!”
Isaiah took a step back, as if he’d been slapped. “And you can do that?”
Could she? She’d certainly try. It was the only way to keep Micah at bay. It was the deal, wasn’t it? They’d all promised that was how this would go, and in return she’d be able to raise her child with a somewhat tattered, but generally respectable reputation.
