Adah’s heart did a two-step stutter that made her chest hurt. She busied herself over the tub of dishes, not wanting her mother to see the flash of chagrin that surely colored her face. “What makes you bring him up?”
“Emma stopped by last night to pick up the tablecloths I embroidered for the store.” Mudder rubbed an already dry platter so hard with the towel, it was a wonder it didn’t break. “She mentioned his visit. She seemed to think you had some sort of spat with him. I told her that couldn’t be. You had nothing to say to this boy. It must’ve been purely accidental. You haven’t seen him in weeks and have no plans to do so.”
Adah opened her mouth, then closed it. Nothing could be said that wouldn’t amount to a lie. She couldn’t lie to her mother’s face. Nor could she tell her the truth. Mudder swiveled toward Adah, her eyebrows drawn up so far they almost met in the middle. “I told her, unless I miss the mark completely, I suspect you already have someone special. I told her I suspect we’ll be hearing from Thomas about it in the fall.”
Had someone special.
Had.
In the past. Adah gritted her teeth, the ache in her throat worse than when she had that terrible strep throat last winter. She couldn’t tell Mudder. It would break her heart.
“I told her right, didn’t I?” Mudder tugged a plate from Adah’s hand, her gaze drilling Adah between the eyes. “You have nothing to talk to this Englisch boy about.”
Her breakfast in her throat, kaffi burning her stomach, Adah swished the skillet back and forth in the soapy water, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her whole. “Mudder, I…”
Her stomach heaved. She whirled and dashed through the open back door and lost her breakfast in the petunias and impatiens planted along the steps.
“You’re sick. Maybe you’d best stay home today.” She felt Mudder’s hand on her back, rubbing. “I thought you looked awful peaked.”
“Nee.” Adah gasped and wiped at her face with the back of her sleeve. If she stayed home, she’d lose her chance, her only chance. She found she desperately wanted that chance, as much as leaving her mudder hurt in every muscle and inch of tissue in her body. “I’m fine. Emma’s expecting me.”
Mudder handed her a dishtowel. Her face had lost the hard edges of a few minutes earlier. “It’s natural to feel uncertain, to be a little scared. I know I was, but after your daed and I were married, we settled in. Matthew’s a good man. You’ll find your way.”
What was she talking about? Heat curled around Adah’s ears and scorched her cheeks. Her problem wasn’t what happened after the wedding, it was whether to go there at all. She couldn’t tell Mudder, standing there so expectant, so sure her dochder would do the right thing.
“It wasn’t perfect. You know, with your daed. Especially after Ruth died in the fire. It took us a long time to get back on an even keel, but
Daed was patient with me. He wanted things back to normal, so we got them back to normal.” Mudder touched Adah’s forehead with the back of her hand like she used to do when Adah was small and had a fever. “We grieved, but we knew Ruth was with God. We had no right to be selfish and question God’s will.”
If Adah didn’t know better, she’d think Mudder could read minds. She questioned God’s will. She was selfish. She hadn’t appreciated what she had in Matthew and now he’d found another, better woman to be his fraa. “You’re human.”
“We have faith.” Mudder’s somber expression deepened. “So must you. It’s what is expected of you. If you’re sure you’re all right, go to work. I’ll get your dirty clothes from your room. Don’t keep Daniel waiting. It’s bound to be busy at the store today, what with a lot of the Englisch folks getting their paychecks.”
“Nee, nee, I’m fine. I’ll get the clothes.” Relieved to escape those knowing eyes unscathed, Adah scurried toward the door. She didn’t want Mudder to find the note. Not yet. Not until tonight when she didn’t return for supper. Her throat closed. The ache was unbearable, worse than any cold or sickness she’d ever endured. “He’ll wait. I should’ve brought them down earlier.”
“That’s fine, but be quick about it.”
Adah turned back. “Love you, Mudder.”
Mudder couldn’t look more surprised if Adah had suddenly turned into a goat in the middle of the kitchen. “What’s gotten into you, dochder? You must be sick. I can fix some chamomile tea and get out the castor oil.”
“I’m fine. I just…I’m fine.”
Wiping at her eyes with her sleeve, praying Mudder hadn’t seen the tears that threatened to betray her, Adah whirled and trotted through the living room. At the bottom, she paused, one hand on the banister, and closed her eyes.
Gott, I’m sorry. Forgive me for the pain I will cause Mudder and Daed. I’m so sorry.
“Adah, hurry up!” Daniel held open the screen door. “You are forever daydreaming, girl. I don’t have all day.”
Another person she wouldn’t see again. Bruder Daniel, a bigger
joke teller than even Matthew, hot of temper, quicker to forgive. The best big brother a girl could ask to have. She ran up the stairs, dashed down the hallway, and scooped up the dresses she’d left on the bed in her haste to leave. She couldn’t bring anything with her that didn’t fit in her denim bag. It would raise suspicion and who knew what she would wear in that strange new world called Branson.
At the door she took one last look around. “Bye, room,” she whispered, feeling silly.
Goodbye to all the memories and all the dreams and hopes and songs written in this room.
Goodbye to the only life she’d ever known.
T
rying not to sneeze in the billowing cloud of cloyingly sweet perfume that wafted from Mrs. Billingsly, Adah smoothed her customer’s twenty dollar bill on top of a stack in the register and snapped the drawer shut. “Here’s your change.” She fumbled with the quarters. One dropped to the counter, wobbled across it, and fell to the floor where it proceeded to disappear under the display case. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Her huge gold hoop earrings swinging, Mrs. Billingsley accepted the alternate quarter Adah slid from the register, along with the rest of her change. She picked up her bag of homemade candles and a jar of honey, smiled at Adah, and padded away on flip-flops that made a
slap-slap
sound on the wooden floor. “Everyone has a bad day now and then. Tomorrow is a fresh start.”
A fresh start. If this lady only knew what she was saying.
“Thank you. Have a nice afternoon.” Adah’s stomach rocked.
What are you doing? What are you doing?
“Enjoy the honey.”
“Will do. You have a good evening too.”
A good evening. An evening that would change her life forever. In the last eight hours she’d gone back and forth a thousand times.
Go. Stay. Stay. Go.
Seeing Matthew sitting on the porch with Elizabeth had changed everything. They looked so content sitting there side by side in their lawn chairs. The fact that Elizabeth had slipped in the house without saying hello told the story. She felt guilty. Matthew didn’t seem
to feel the same. Adah understood that. Matthew never did anything he didn’t want to do and he never lied. If he said there was no courting, there was no courting.
But maybe there should be. She wasn’t a good Plain woman and Matthew deserved a good fraa. Someone content to sit on the porch and eat ice cream on a summer night. Not gallivanting about to music shows at the rodeo or writing songs with an Englischer. Matthew would be better off without her.
She dropped to her knees and peered under the display case. The errant quarter lay near the center. She flattened herself to the floor and wiggled her arm under the case until she could reach it. Dust bloomed in her face.
She rolled up and sneezed. Served her right for being so clumsy. Shaking out her apron, she glanced at the battery-operated clock sitting on the window sill next to the table where Emma hunched over the ledgers, doing a final count for the day. “It’s five o’clock. Shall I put up the closed sign?”
Emma rubbed her eyes and looked up. “Might as well. You’ve been dropping things and knocking things over all day. You best get home before you hurt yourself or a customer. You’ve been itching to close up for the last two hours.”
“It’s been slow today.”
“Not that slow.” Emma slapped the ledger shut with a definitive bang. “You act like you have ants crawling up your legs.”
“Just feeling unsettled.”
“Are you nervous about baptism? If you have any questions, you know Thomas will answer them. Don’t be afraid to ask.”
Why did everyone immediately assume this had to do with baptism? She only had two classes left, plus the makeup sessions. She would never take that final step. Never become truly Amish. Adah’s stomach flopped. She put a hand to her mouth, afraid she would vomit. She couldn’t ask Thomas about Branson. Nor could she ask Emma. They would tell her parents and they would intercede. If she were going, she had to go before baptism. While she was still in her rumspringa. Now or never.
Never was such a long time.
“Jackson Hart seemed like a nice man.”
Adah halted, her hand on the sign hanging from the door, glad her back was to Emma.
“He is.”
“I can imagine how charming he could be.”
No, she couldn’t. Adah forced herself to turn and move back to the counter, hoping her face didn’t reveal her turmoil. “He’s a nice man.”
“So nice you had to stop working for his mother.”
Adah ducked her head as she trudged back to the counter. “It’s hard to explain.”
That was an understatement.
“Before I married Thomas, I had another special friend.” Emma turned the pencil end over end between long fingers. “A man I
thought
was special.”
“You did?” Adah didn’t remember that. Maybe she’d been too young. “What happened?”
Emma’s expression said she’d gone far away to some other time and place. “He left.”
“He turned Englisch?” Adah didn’t want to be Englisch. She wanted to straddle two worlds, to have her cake and eat it, to have her music and her community. “He left the district?”
“Jah. But then he came back and tried to fit himself back into our life.”
“What happened?”
“He couldn’t do it. He’d changed and he’d made decisions that made it so he had to go back to his Englisch life.” Emma’s tone remained soft and calm. Whatever pain this had caused her had long since dissipated. “There were people he’d left behind to whom he had obligations.”
“Were you hurt?”
“The first time, jah, but not the second time.” She gathered up the ledger and stood, her chair making a harsh scraping sound on the wooden floor. She moved to the counter where she deposited the ledger on a shelf and then turned to look at Adah. “By then Thomas had made his feelings known. It seemed complicated at first, but then it wasn’t at all.”
“You didn’t want the other man back?”
“Not under those circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“His Englisch life was more important to him. It changed him.” Emma’s gaze seemed to seep under Adah’s skin, searching her head and her heart. Adah feared what she might find. Emma was older and wiser and too knowing. “It changes a person so much that most can’t come back.”
Adah searched for another road to keep the conversation away from her own situation, her own thoughts, her own weaknesses. “Like your sister Catherine.”
“Catherine has never wanted to come back. She made her choice and she’s happy with it.” Adah wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. Emma’s gaze held her prisoner. “If you start down that road, most likely you won’t come back.”
“What makes you think I’m going down any road?” She’d been so careful to not say or do anything. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Jackson Hart.” Emma smacked the lever on the cash register, making the bell ring and the drawer open. “I should count the receipts for the day.”
“Didn’t you ever have dreams?”
Emma began withdrawing the bills, counting as she went through each denomination. She plopped down a small stack of tens and wrote the number on a piece of scratch paper. Then she turned to look at Adah square in the face. “I dreamed of becoming a fraa and a mudder. That was my dream.”
Adah swallowed. She too wanted those things. “But nothing else?”
“What else is there?” Emma waved a hand toward the store. “It’s fun doing this, working here, and having a little business, helping to pay the bills, but nothing gives me more pleasure than the look on Thomas’s face when I set a bowl of his favorite beef stew in front of him with a big hunk of sourdough bread and he’s so happy. Nothing makes me happier than to see my little ones eating the fry pies I made. You’ll see, when you marry.”
Cooking or making music. It didn’t seem possible that she would get the same satisfaction from the former as she did the latter. How she wished she could. “I’ll straighten things up, get ready for tomorrow.”
Adah took her time with the straightening and sweeping, making sure everything was ready for the next day. She didn’t want to leave Emma and the other women in a lurch. Yet that was exactly what she was doing. Mudder had relied on their kindness to get her this job. They didn’t really need her.
Stop justifying.
Still arguing with an inner voice that sounded a whole lot like Daed, Thomas, and Matthew rolled into one, she picked up her canvas bag, heavier today than normal. She hadn’t been able to put much in it, not without drawing attention to it. A dress, a clean apron, her Sunday shoes, her nightgown. Most importantly it contained her savings from her cleaning jobs and the few weeks that she’d worked at the store. Her nest egg. “Goodbye, Emma.”