Chapter Thirty-Four
“We are alone, in our own bed,” Priscilla whispered late that night into Joseph’s ear.
“Mmm-hmm,” he sighed.
She knew he was exhausted after the day of overseeing the building, not to mention the strange but wonderful occurrence with his
daed
and Sarah, but she’d missed him, missed his body and his touch.
She bit her lip and leaned over him, studying his dear face in the light of the single kerosene lamp. His lashes were thick as they lay on his sunburned cheeks and his beautiful lips were parted slightly.
She was so grateful that he’d been matter-of-fact about Hollie’s mention of an angel; it had made Priscilla feel infinitely better. And Hollie and Bear were in her very own pink bedroom tonight . . . which led Priscilla back to the issue at hand.
She experimentally swiped her tongue across his bottom lip and he turned his head in her direction, his dark hair rumpled against the white of the pillowcase.
She slid the crisp sheet down to his hips, glad that he was back to sleeping naked, now that Hollie and Bear were out of the bedroom. She bent her head and sucked gently on the male nipple nearest her, loving the erect nub in her mouth and the way he arched his neck, still half asleep.
She drew harder on him and she smiled against his skin when he moaned faintly. “Mmmm . . . Priscilla . . .”
“Yes, Joseph?”
“Kiss me,” he murmured.
She complied gladly, slanting her head, using deft, artful strokes of her tongue, teasing his mouth, until he opened his emerald eyes and stared up at her, his pupils dark and dilated.
“Are you too tired?” she asked with a faint smile.
“Are you?”
He grabbed her with easy strength and pulled her beneath him, the sheet tangled between them. She loved the sight of him hovering over her, balancing on his elbows and forearms, his face intent.
“Put your fingers in my mouth,” he commanded suddenly and she obeyed, surprised at the odd request until he drew two of her fingers into his mouth, sucking hard. The double sensation of his body and mouth working over hers was more than amazing and she felt herself begin to slip toward that edge of pleasure that blurred between the passionate and the surreal. But then he turned her again, so that she was atop him, her fingers still in his mouth, and she gasped aloud. “Joseph.”
“Don’t wake me up unless you really want to play,” he murmured against her flesh.
“Oh, I’ll remember that,” she panted.
He released her hand from his lips. “
Gut
. Now suck your fingers like I was doing.”
She hesitantly did as he asked, feeling slightly foolish, until she tasted his mouth on her hand and stared down into his eyes, seeing the faint look of male pride and satisfaction reflected there. She closed her eyes and found sweet release with him, then fell forward to collapse on his chest.
“How was that, my
frau
?” he asked, nudging her with his shoulder.
“You know exactly how it was, Joseph. Now be quiet . . . I’m sleeping.”
“We’ll understand if you don’t want to drive us to Dr. McCully’s,” Joseph said to Mr. Ellis. “Priscilla can always drive her car, sir.”
Joseph had chosen to
kumme
alone inside Mr. Ellis’s home while Edward, Mary, Priscilla, and Jude stayed out on the porch with their
daed
. He knew that the community had been ministering to Mr. Ellis, that the older man had truly been shaken by what had happened with Heath. Now Joseph was surprised to see the quick grin beneath Mr. Ellis’s graying mustache.
“Joseph, I’ll drive you anywhere you like. Don’t be afraid that one crazy man is going to put me off a lifetime of loving your people. And . . . I can now honestly say that I’ve been almost everywhere in that ice mine—including nearly inside the hole in it.”
Joseph laughed and clapped the older man on the shoulder, so grateful that things had turned out the way they had. He debated telling Mr. Ellis about Hollie’s angel, then decided he’d save that for another time as the man was jingling the car keys and looked ready to go.
“I don’t understand,” Dr. McCully said slowly to the family gathered in the waiting room.
The doctor had been past the waiting room nearly a dozen times in the last four hours and Joseph had begun to worry. Now the physician stood before them studying the pages of a chart and shaking his head.
“What’s wrong?” Joseph asked finally.
“Wrong?” Dr. McCully shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong. Nothing.”
“What do you mean?” Edward asked.
The doctor sighed. “The chemical enzymes in your father’s blood show that he had a massive heart attack within the last twenty-four hours, but his heart shows no damage . . . and his cancer is apparently . . . in remission.”
“What?” Joseph met Priscilla’s wide eyes and tilted his head, wondering if he’d heard correctly.
“I mean what I say.” Dr. McCully shrugged. “I have no logical explanation for it, but Abner King has turned a corner. I want to write up an article about his case and send it to a medical journal.”
“Dr. McCully,” Joseph said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but could your tests have been wrong initially about the cancer?”
“No, I’ve double-checked and triple-checked every test, every image we have. Abner had stage four cancer—no doubt. But now he’s in full remission. It’s nothing short of a miracle. All right, well, he’s raring to go, so I’ll let him get dressed and send him out. I’ll see you all in a month.”
Joseph watched the white-coated gentleman leave the waiting room and looked at Edward and Mary then Priscilla. His heart was beating fast and he didn’t know what to do except bow his head and thank Gott
.
“Joseph, Daed had cancer . . . caaancerrrr,” Edward hissed later that afternoon as they put the finishing touches on the new construction at the cabin.
“I know.” Joseph shook his head for the tenth time that day.
“You know . . . What do you know? You’re not as good as engaged to that—that girl.”
“Sarah? What are you talking about? She healed Daed or Gott used her to heal him.” Joseph squinted at a measurement and made a notch in a door frame.
“Yeah, and you don’t think that’s the tiniest bit weird?” Edward demanded.
“Weird?
Nee
—wonderful more like. Look, what is wrong with you? You have the chance to marry a very special person.”
“Maybe I don’t want to marry anybody,” Edward admitted, slouching against a chair back.
“
Ach
, I’ve heard that before—used to say it all the time. And then I met Priscilla . . .”
“Yeah, I know.” Edward smiled sourly. “The whole lousy, romantic story. But maybe it’s not my story.”
“You don’t love Sarah?” Joseph asked.
“I don’t know what I know anymore.”
“Well then, maybe, little
bruder
, you don’t know much at all, but that’s okay . . . Our
fater
is well. And you’ll figure things out. I’ll give you a hand.”
Edward’s forlorn look didn’t reassure him, but Joseph had faith that his
bruder
was both the
buwe
who’d brought home injured birds and nursed them back to health as well as the man who could stare down anyone—
Englisch
or
Amisch. A soft heart in a tough exterior, and all mixed up . . . but he’ll be all right.
Joseph went back to measuring and started to whistle, ignoring Edward’s groan.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Priscilla walked solemnly with a handful of other women through the trees to the meadow at the top of the mountain. They were gathered to say good-bye to Mary Malizza, who was leaving that day to drive back to her other life at the inn. Edward was to escort her down the mountain to where her big SUV was parked at Mr. Ellis’s house. Mary held up pretty well until they got to the top of the trail, then she turned and cleared her throat.
“I’m not much of a speech maker, but I’ll say to you here and now that you all are real people—not what we see on TV or what we read about in them books but real . . . with real problems and heartaches and blessings. And you’ve all blessed me by letting me be a part of you. I thought I was comin’ for a vacation, but what I found was a family. So let’s not cry . . . even though I’m cryin’. Let’s jest say good-bye . . .”
Priscilla saw that she might have gone on but Martha Umble suddenly caught her in a fierce hug. The two women clung together, a strange meeting of
Amisch
and
Englisch
, but that was only their clothes; aside from their dress they were just two people, two friends, and the image made Priscilla’s eyes water. It was a picture of her and Joseph too, the blending of their lives—and a reminder that Mary Malizza had been responsible in a way for their union.
But God had a good hand too . . .
Priscilla smiled through her tears as she gave her good-bye hug, then stepped back for others to do the same. Edward was looking impatient with all the feminine outpouring, but Priscilla knew he’d never interrupt. Finally, Mary blew her nose and took Edward’s arm as they started down the mountain.
“She’ll be back,” Priscilla said with confidence to Martha Umble.
“She’d better . . . I need a friend to wash my hair in the creek with . . .” Priscilla caught the older woman’s speculative look and smiled even though she could think of a hundred other things she’d rather do. But Martha was the bishop’s wife . . . and a real person.
“Anytime.” Priscilla smiled. “Anytime at all.”
“So what’s eatin’ you, Edward
Amisch
?” Mary Malizza asked, looking up at the set jaw of the young man beside her.
He helped her over some roots and shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Want me to shut up and stop pryin’? Well, I owe yer people somethin’ and if I can lend an ear to help some fella, I might do it.”
She felt him look at her, and then he gave a wry grin. “All right, Mary, I’ll tell you. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life here.”
“You liked the rigs better?”
“Nooo . . . but there was freedom there, a—a bigness, a wideness, for a man to feel alive, like he could run and keep on running. Here, there’s . . . peace.”
Mary couldn’t contain a brief laugh. “Peace, you say? And you’d rather be runnin’? Aww, but ye’re young, that’s what. But I can tell you that you can search the world over runnin’ and never find peace, or satisfaction fer that restlessness inside. I know—I’ve tried. In a way, I’ve been runnin’ since I was seventeen, and I’ve had a lot of regret, until now, until here.”
“I know.” He lifted a hand as if in defeat. “I know that I should be grateful for peace . . . that it is hard to find, but I’m also sort of promised to this girl . . .”
“Sarah?”
“How does everybody know that? I sure hope Mahlon Mast doesn’t know. He’d kill me if he knew I’d been courting his daughter.”
“Had been courting . . . but not since you’ve come back?” Mary brushed a ladybug off her arm with care.
“No.”
“Well, why not? Because you come home and don’t find some passive
Amisch
miss but a real woman, learnin’ to be a healer and all that?”
He gave her a baleful look and was silent.
“So you loved the girl, but not the woman . . . That’s a curious thing.”
“Yeah, real curious.”
“I’d say ye’re scared to death fer some reason. What is it?”
She watched him consider as he held branches back out of her way with easy strength. “I don’t know, honestly. If I knew, I’d do something about it. But . . . I see Sarah and then I think about how different she seems from when we . . . well . . . before, and I cannot seem to reach her.”
“So it’s her problem.”
Edward groaned. “No, it’s my doing. I thought when I came back that everything was going to be the same—then Daed’s sick, and Mary has a baby, and Sarah’s gonna be a healer woman in a cottage, handing out herbs . . .”
Mary smiled. “So you think you’re marryin’ Grossmudder May, in a way? That might scare me too. But you’re not. Sarah’s plain but pretty at the same time with those big gray eyes that look like a kitten’s eyes. You could do far worse.”
“But I don’t want to settle.”
They’d reached the bottom of the trail and Mary turned to him. “Love is never settling, boy—it’s a decision you make. To stick together through all them good times and bad times, like a preacher says. You got that in you. I can tell. Remember that.”
They turned and walked past the newly boarded-up entrance to the ice mine and on down to Mr. Ellis’s house.
“Well, thank you, Edward, for bringin’ me here and seein’ me down.”
“Thanks for listening.” His voice was quiet.
“I hope it done some good.”
He nodded and she stretched up to give his tall frame a brisk hug, which he returned.
“I’ll go get your keys,” he offered and she nodded.
When he’d gone into the house, she stood still in the strange quiet of the woods all around her, the mountain like a bulwark against the evil in the world, and she breathed in the rich, floral-scented air and knew she was truly alive.
I’m comin’ back . . . I’m comin’ back to you.
She swiped at her eyes and listened to a robin’s song and knew she’d never be the same again because of Ice Mountain.
Joseph walked out to the woodshed, which had been cleverly enlarged as part of his
haus
plans and discovered all four of his
buwes
working on Hollie’s hope chest, though it was still early morning.
“Hiya, men, when did you get here?”
“We’ve been working all night,” Dan said, straightening proudly.
“All night?” Joseph exclaimed. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“We wanted to,” Ernest said in his still squeaky voice. “Look how it’s coming.”
Joseph bent down to stare at the nearly completed softwood chest. There was an interior end compartment and several ingeniously concealed secret drawers, as well as a massive lock that looked like it belonged to a treasure chest.
John handed him a skeleton key and shrugged. “We thought she’d like the big lock and her own key—like in a fairy story.”
“
Ach
, she will,” Joseph said, still in awe of the workmanship before him. One of the lads had sketched out with pencil grand decorations to be painted on the front and sides. Tulips, daisies, stars, and angels vied with unicorns and cardinals, and Joseph could only imagine how it would look, fully painted and highly lacquered.
He shook his head, then rose to his feet. “Fellas, I owe you all an apology.” He studied the face of each
buwe,
even Jay Smucker, whose nose was smudged with dust and whose shock of red hair was askew with sweat and effort. “I thought, when Bishop Umble asked me to teach you about sex and temptation, that it was a burden, that it would be too difficult. Our first Wednesday didn’t go great, but what you’re doing here, what you’re showing me and giving me, is a hope for me also. I hope that we can become friends and that you can
kumme
to me when you have questions—about anything—or if there’s something you need. And we are going to make this carpentry shop, and I’m going to give each one of you all that I have in teaching and knowledge and wisdom—from my heart.
Sei se gut
, forgive me.”
It was a long speech for him, Joseph realized, but he meant every word. He waited, looking each boy in the eye until Dan broke into a wide smile.
“
Danki
, Joseph. I think we all would appreciate your friendship.”
The others murmured and nodded and Joseph looked once more at the pencil drawings on the chest front.
“An angel, hmm?” He smiled. “You don’t know it, but that’s actually most appropriate.”