Double Take (6 page)

Madison held up her hands hopelessly, admitting that she knew it was wrong but couldn’t help it.

Rachel studied Madison with a creased brow, then asked in German, “What happened to Anna? Did she get taken away, replaced with another girl?”

At least that’s what Madison thought she said, but she wasn’t sure because this dialect was so different from what she’d learned in school and what she’d spoken in Germany last summer. Anyway, it seemed obvious that Rachel had figured her out. She appeared to know that Madison was an imposter. What now?

Madison just shrugged, ready to quit this crazy game. She felt slightly sick to her stomach, not to mention tired.

Rachel put a hand on Madison’s forehead as if to see if she had a fever. That’s when Madison remembered her “get out of jail free” line. Perhaps it was worth a try. She would do her best for Anna’s sake. Using her best German mixed with English, and showing a sad expression, Madison told Rachel a whopper, saying she’d suffered a concussion that had damaged her memory and language skills. Not unlike a device employed in a poorly written soap opera. Would Rachel buy this story, or would she see right through her and throw her from her house?

Rachel looked concerned, asking when this fall had happened.

Madison thought fast and then continued her pathetic little story in broken German and English, saying how she’d slipped on the ice last winter, falling and hitting her head on a rock and lying there unconscious for some time. Rachel nodded as if she understood how this might happen. Madison pointed to her mouth, saying her words got jumbled at times, and it was very odd, but she now understood English better than German.

Again Rachel nodded. Finally Madison pointed to her head, saying her thoughts were jumbled too and that she forgot many ordinary household things like how to wash dishes. Rachel put an arm around Madison’s shoulders and squeezed her. “Poor Anna. I know something is
unnerschittlich
—I mean you are
different
.”

Madison begged Rachel not to tell her mother about this. “Mamm will worry,” she said, going on to say how her mother had been anxious about letting Anna come to help, but that she’d assured her mother she would be all right. Most of all, Madison wanted to ensure that Rachel didn’t report this tangled tale back to Anna’s mother.

“
Ja
. I know what we will do.” Rachel gave her a firm nod. “I will help you. And you will help me. Together we will work this out.”

“Together?” Madison asked hopefully.

“
Ja
,
ja
.” Rachel pressed a forefinger to her lips. “It is our secret.”

Rachel helped Madison to finish up the kitchen work in the proper way. She showed her “simple” tasks like how to store perishable foods in the icebox. She reminded her of the right way to dry the dishes and where the dishes went. How to save the food scraps into the right containers—blue bucket was for compost, black bucket was for pigs and chickens. Rachel was basically treating Madison as if she were learning impaired. Maybe she was.

After that they worked together to put the boys to bed, all the while Rachel instructing Anna step-by-step how to do this and that, which pegs to hang which clothes, where to place the dirty clothes, where the boys were to set their boots, how to help Jeremiah wash his face with a rough cloth, how to listen to their prayers, and to be sure not to leave the kerosene lantern behind since Jeremiah nearly set the curtains on fire recently. Finally they stood in the hallway next to the door to the bedroom that Madison was to share with Elizabeth.

“
Denki
, Anna.” Rachel clasped her hand. “Good
Nacht
.”

Madison told Rachel good night and thanked her too. With a kerosene lantern in hand, she tiptoed into the room where Elizabeth was already tucked into her small wooden bed. Madison paused to listen to the even breathing of the baby, and not for the first time, she felt guilty for being an imposter in this family. She shuddered to think of how these people might react, especially the sullen father, if they discovered she was not Anna but an interloper from the outside. It was frightening.

But Madison was so exhausted, she didn’t have the energy to consider these things too seriously. By the time she searched through Anna’s duffel bag—not bothering to hang anything on the pegs by the window, just digging until she found what she assumed was a nightgown since it was plain white cotton—all she wanted to do was sleep. The narrow bed creaked as she climbed into it, and despite the grainy feel of the rough sheets, the hardness of the mattress, the musty smell, and the strangeness of everything, Madison was thankful for this bed. Every bone in her body felt tired. As she was drifting off to sleep, she knew she would not be able to continue her charade. It was impossible.

In the morning she would come clean about everything. She would confess the truth to Rachel, beg to be taken to a phone since there was none in the house, and call Anna and tell her to come back here. Really, it was ridiculous to think she could pull this off. As for taking a break from her real life . . . well, she’d been wrong, wrong, wrong. For starters, this was no break. Even if her real life had some forms of stress, compared to living the Amish life, it was easy-breezy. It seemed her illusions about the simple life were just that—illusions!

Anna’s heart pounded as she stepped onto the big silver bus. She’d never been on a bus before, had no idea what to expect. She hurried to find a seat, setting Madison’s purse in her lap and waiting to see what happened next. The bus started to move, slowly at first and then faster. Suddenly she was clutching the seat, fearful that this big bus might go so fast it would fly right off the road.

To distract herself, she looked out the window, watching the countryside whizzing past. Fields, barns, horses, cows . . . What if a loose cow wandered in front of the bus? Surely there would be a horrible wreck. What then?

A young woman dressed in gray pants and a red jacket sat across the aisle from Anna. She opened a black leather satchel—or perhaps it was a briefcase—and slid out a smooth black object, opening it up like a book, only sideways. Anna peered at it curiously. Was it a computer? She knew what computers were—sort of—and she knew that Mr. Riehl supposedly had one (strictly for business use and something he never spoke of). She’d read of them in books, but she’d never actually used one herself.

Anna tried not to stare as the woman peered intently at a blue screen, pausing now and then to do something with the buttons. Anna wished she was brave enough to ask the woman what she was doing. It was taking all her confidence and self-control simply to sit there—to not stand up and scream, “Stop this bus and let me off!”

Anna looked ahead of her to see an elderly man reading a newspaper. On the other side, a woman about her mother’s age was reading a hardback book. Anna wished she’d had the foresight to have purchased a book before boarding this bus. That would have helped to pass the time. She couldn’t imagine how long it would take to reach New York. Wasn’t it an awful long ways away? Perhaps she wouldn’t even be there until morning. Yet if that was so, where would she sleep? Right here on the seat? Why hadn’t she thought to ask? Madison had written it all down—perhaps that was the “book” Anna needed to read right now.

As she dug for her notes, Anna wondered how Madison was doing with Uncle Daniel. Had she tried to engage the silent man in conversation? It would be futile. Anyway, they should be nearly home by now. What would Madison think of Aunt Rachel? Would she be disappointed?

Now, it wasn’t that Anna didn’t like her aunt. She did, but she just didn’t understand her. Anna had grown up hearing whispered things about Aunt Rachel—words like too lazy, too fat, too old, too clumsy . . . she’d never find a husband. As a result, Anna had probably lost some respect for her aunt. Then being in Aunt Rachel’s home and seeing that her housekeeping skills were sloppy at best, her cooking just so-so, her children ill-behaved . . . well, Anna had come to her own conclusions. Still, she had wondered why Aunt Rachel hadn’t tried harder to make friends within her community. Or perhaps she had tried. Perhaps the other women simply didn’t like her. But this wasn’t Anna’s problem today. Right now she needed to get ready for her own challenges. She opened up the notes and started to read.

Soon after, Anna heard a jangling sound. It seemed to be coming from Madison’s purse. She opened it to see the little purse phone all lit up. She picked it up and stared, trying to figure out what to do. Hadn’t Madison meant to take it with her?

One of the little squares said talk, so Anna pushed it and said, “Hello?” Perhaps it was Madison, calling to tell her that she’d changed her mind.

“Madison?” a male voice said.

Anna bit her lip. “Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.” Anna glanced around to see if anyone was looking at her. She felt so strange talking into this tiny purse phone, not even knowing who she was speaking to.

“You don’t sound okay. Are you still mad at me?”

“No,” Anna said slowly.

“I told you I’m sorry, Maddie. Really sorry. Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

She didn’t know what to say. She’d been taught from an early age to forgive everyone, but she suspected this was Madison’s boyfriend, Garret.

“Can’t you give me one more chance?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Where are you anyway?”

“On a bus.” She looked out the window where the countryside seemed to be changing or getting tighter, because the houses were closer and the fields were smaller—or was it simply because the bus was going so fast?

“A bus? Where are you going?”

“New York.”

“Where are you right now?”

She told him the name of the town they’d just passed through, and when he asked why she was there, she got nervous and confessed she’d been in Allentown, but that only increased his curiosity. What had Madison said she should do about Garret? That she should dump him out? That didn’t sound quite right, but her notes were folded up and zipped in a pocket of her purse right now. “I am very busy, Garret,” she said crisply.

“So you won’t forgive me?”

Anna frowned. Really, what could it hurt to forgive someone? “Yes,” she said slowly, “I do forgive you. Now I must go.”

“You sound kinda weird, Maddie. Are you really okay?”

“Yes. I said I am fine. Now I need to say goodbye.” She pulled the phone away from her ear, wondering how to turn this thing off.

“Wait—wait!” She could hear his voice still calling to her.

She put the phone back to her ear. “What do you want now?”

“I want to make it up to you, Maddie. What can I do?”

Anna remembered now that Madison had said Garret was persistent. “Promise to never do that again.”

“Sure, of course I won’t. But I need to do something else.”

“You need to say goodbye,” she told him. She pulled the phone away and looked closely at the buttons. Although she could still hear his voice, she pushed the one that said
end
. That seemed a good choice. End the conversation and end the relationship with the cheating boyfriend—end of story.

Thinking about boyfriends sent her mind straight to Jacob. She looked at the purse phone still in her hand and wondered if this might somehow help her to find him. Was it possible that he had a phone too? If so, how did one go about finding the right number? How did one go about locating someone in a big city like New York?

She looked out the window and was surprised to see that she was no longer in the country at all. Now there were buildings of different shapes and sizes clustered together with barely any room between them. She saw roads filled with cars, red taillights strung together in a long line. The bus must be coming into the city.

She pulled out her notes, trying to organize them so she could study them, perhaps even memorize some things. Why hadn’t she done this already? She hadn’t realized the bus would be so fast. She looked at Madison’s watch to see that it hadn’t even been two hours, yet she had a feeling she would soon be there. To come so far this quickly made her feel dizzy.

She stared at Madison’s handwriting, memorizing the numbers of the building where Madison lived, the name of the housekeeper, phone numbers. She wanted to plant them like seeds in her head. She would need them.

But as she looked out at the buildings, which seemed to be growing taller, she knew it was impossible. She would be lost in this huge maze of cement and bricks. How did Madison do this day in and day out?

Anna closed her eyes. It was something she’d taught herself to do as a child whenever she felt overwhelmed. Not that it happened too often, but if a school test was too difficult, or if a sewing project seemed impossible, she would simply close her eyes and imagine clear blue sky and fluffy white clouds, and she would breathe deeply. That would calm her. With eyes closed, that is what she envisioned now—blue sky, fluffy white clouds rolling gently, a summer breeze, the sound of birds.

She was startled back to reality when she realized the bus had stopped moving. The woman across from her was already gone. Others were gathering things, making their way off the bus. She knew she needed to do the same, and she should have felt glad to escape this big, fast, moving bus, but that meant she’d have to do something else completely foreign to her, something equally frightening—she would have to ride in a car. Worse yet, a taxi car driven by a complete stranger! Oh, why had she agreed to this?

The driver was standing now, looking at her. “Isn’t this your stop?”

“Yes.” She stood, clinging to the strap of Madison’s purse. “I will get off here.” With trembling knees, she made her way to the door and down the steps to where lots of people were walking around. So many people . . . It reminded her of the time she’d poked a stick into an anthill and all the little creatures had gone in all directions, some even climbing up the stick, which she’d thrown. At the time she’d wondered if they’d all find their way back home, but now she knew ants never got lost. Still, she wondered how all these people would find their way in such a big, busy city.

As she walked through the bus terminal, she noticed a mom with a baby in a pack and a toddler in a stroller. The young woman didn’t seem worried about all these people, so Anna decided perhaps she should relax a bit too. She began to watch other people—people of all ages, sizes, and colors—and all of them seemed unconcerned about getting lost. In fact, many of them seemed quite happy to be here.

Then she noticed a man sitting on a bench who seemed to be staring right at her. He had grimy clothes and a dirty face, and when he smiled at her, she saw that his teeth looked dark and rotten. He reached out his dirty hand toward her, and she jumped back in fear, turning to walk in the other direction. What did that man want from her? Was he a beggar? She’d never seen a real beggar.

“Madison!”

Anna paused. Had the beggar man called out that name? If so, why would he know her—or Madison—or whoever? She looked over her shoulder as she continued to walk the other way.

“Madison!” the voice called again.

This time she looked to see a young man waving at her. Smiling brightly, he hurried toward her—and her heart leaped to see those big brown eyes.
Jacob!
Waving eagerly, she rushed toward him and then realized he had called her Madison—not Anna. She stopped suddenly. This was
not
Jacob.

“Madison!” He threw his arms around her. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“I, uh, I didn’t hear it.”

“I decided to surprise you,” he said as she tugged away from him. “I looked up the arrival time on your bus and figured out that you’d—” He stopped speaking, peering curiously at her now. “I still don’t get why you’re riding on a bus. And why you were out by Allentown.”

“It’s a long story,” she said, remembering how she’d read that line in a book once.

He put his arm around her shoulders. “Well, you can tell me at dinner. I made reservations at Palo’s.”

Suddenly Garret—at least, she assumed it was him—was leading her onto a very busy street with vehicles everywhere and lots of honking and people and noise. He waved to a shiny black car, which somehow managed to squeeze past the other cars, pulling right in front of them. Garret helped her into the back of the car. It was roomy, similar to a wagon, only much nicer, and the seat was very comfortable—softer than a bed. The next thing she knew, she was actually riding in an automobile. Thanks to all the other cars clogging the street, they weren’t going very fast.

“I assume you’ll want to change.” Garret leaned back and smiled at her.

“Change.” She nodded as she tried to absorb his meaning. She had already changed from Anna to Madison. But she suspected he meant her clothing, that she would want to exchange it for other clothes, something suitable for dinner. How strange this all was. “Yes. I want to change.”

“Don’t worry, there’s plenty of time. I know how you don’t like to be rushed.”

She looked at Madison’s watch and nodded. She needed to get into this role better. Having him pop up like that had caught her off guard.

“So you didn’t go to Tuscany.” He sounded pleased about this. “You didn’t go to Palm Beach or Boston either, so . . . what does that mean?”

Anna had no idea what that meant. She just shrugged and opened her purse as if something in there was highly interesting. She wanted to pull out her folded notes and study them closely, but she knew that would only make him curious. Thus far, she felt he was so pleased about being forgiven that he was slightly blinded—or maybe he wasn’t a very observant fellow. If so, that was good.

He leaned over, gently placing his hand on the side of her face. “Did I tell you how beautiful you look?”

She felt her cheeks grow warm as she pulled away. Somehow she had to slow this down with him. “Just because I forgave you does not mean I—”

“I’m so glad you did forgive me, Maddie. Do you know how hard this has been on me? You know how much I love you.”

She snapped her purse closed and looked evenly at him. “We have gone through a rough patch,” she told him, again using words she’d read in a book. “For that reason I want to take things slow now. If that’s not accept—”

“That’s fine, Maddie.” He threw back his head and laughed. “Why are you talking weird like that? You sound so different.”

“Maybe I am different.” She stared directly at him now, almost as if to challenge him to question her real identity, but he looked baffled.

“Okay, I get you.” He frowned slightly. “You’re acting all prim and proper just to keep me at arm’s length. You probably expect me to prove myself to you. Right?” He looked at her with those big brown eyes so much like Jacob’s—puppy dog eyes.

She nodded. “Right.”

“That’s what I plan to do.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back. “You’ll see.”

Anna turned to look out the window. She had really meant to observe everything as she rode through the city. Perhaps she’d even imagined she would spot Jacob walking by, that she would tell the driver to stop, and she would jump out and call his name and they would embrace and all would be well. But as she watched people and cars and buildings moving past her, she began to question the likelihood of a scene like that actually unfolding.

“Here we are,” Garret said as he reached across her to open the door. “Want me to walk you up?”