Gabriel's Bride (34 page)

Gabriel was surprised to see Mary Elizabeth sitting on the porch when he returned from town. Even more surprised to see the shiny tracks on her cheeks left by tears.

He pulled the buggy to a stop and hopped down as she stood and wiped her hands down the front of her apron.
“Dochder, was iss letz?”

She had been so melancholy since returning home, so sad after trying to live her dream of being a doctor to animals, yet unable to hold her own in the tough
Englisch
schools. But this,
this
seemed more than that.

“It’s Rachel,” she sniffed. She held out a wrinkled envelope, his name penned on the front, the letters slightly smudged.

“What?”

She shook the letter at him. He took it, not yet comprehending what she was trying to say. “Rachel,” Mary Elizabeth started again. “She’s gone.”

Gone
. The word knocked around in his head, pinging off his whirling thoughts. “Gone where?”

Mary Elizabeth shrugged. “Ohio, maybe.
Dat
, you have to go get her.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.

“Go get her . . .” the words sounded foreign. He stopped, not quite able to comprehend what had happened. Then he walked past his daughter and into the house. Everything was clean and neat, nothing out of place. He checked in the kitchen. Nothing cooked on the stove. His wife was nowhere to be seen. Maybe they would have sandwiches for their noonday meal. Or one of those cans of store-bought soup.

He peered out the window that overlooked the backyard. He could see the goats frolicking in their pasture. Rachel wouldn’t leave without her goats.

From upstairs he heard Samuel stir. “Wachel?”

Gabriel left the kitchen and headed for the stairs. But Rachel wasn’t in any of the rooms. Just a sleepy Samuel rubbing his eyes with his un-bandaged left hand.

“Hi,
Dat
.” His boy smiled, that sweet snaggle-toothed grin that melted hearts. “Where’s Wachel?”

Gabriel could deny it no longer. He sat on the edge of Samuel’s bed and tore open the envelope. His eyes devoured the words.

“
Dat
?”

“She’s gone.” His voice broke, cracked like thin ice in early spring.

“When will she be back?”

Gabriel bit back his tears, folding the letter to rights and placing it back in its envelope. “I don’t know, son.”

Samuel yawned. “I’m hungry.”

Gabriel nodded.

Rachel was gone.

Life went on.

He ruffled Samuel’s hair and tried to smile. “
Kumm
then, I’ll fix you something to eat.”

He somehow made it through their noon meal with his
buwe
looking at him as if they expected him to jump up and run after her. Pride kept him glued to his chair, though, slowly eating as if nothing was wrong in the world.

Haste had gotten him into this mess. A rash promise to marry a girl he hardly knew. He had acted without thinking when he had taken her into his bed.

No, this time he would measure his steps, think through a plan. But that didn’t mean he was going after her. Why should he follow her if Ohio was what she really wanted? From the words of her letter it seemed they both harbored regrets.

Marrying you was a mistake. I can see that now. I’m sorry for the pain that I have caused. So very sorry that I bent the Lord’s will to fit my own
.

He’d let her go for now. Give it a week or two . . . maybe three. Then he’d decide.

Gabriel knocked once on the door and let himself in his parents’ house. “
Mamm
?”

“Gabriel? Is that you?” His mother poked her head out of the doorway that led to the kitchen. “Come on back.”

Reluctantly, he did as she asked. Some things had to be faced head-on.

She had gone back to kneading the dough, but his sister was nowhere to be seen. “Where’s Katie Rose?”

“She and Zane Carson headed over to the deacon’s house to check on him.”

Gabriel nodded, not bothering to point out that he was the deacon. Some habits were too hard to break, and calling Ezekiel Esh the deacon was one of those.

He cleared his throat. “Rachel left.” Some things were better said quickly, lest he lose the courage to utter them at all.

His mother stopped kneading the big ball of dough. “Left?”

He nodded, unable to repeat it. It was hard enough to get out the first time. “She went to Ohio.”

“What did you do?”

“Do?”

“To make her leave?”

His brow furrowed at her question. “Why does it have to be something I did?”

His
mamm
wiped her hands on a dishtowel and clasped his face in her palms. “Gabriel, you are my firstborn, and I love you dearly, but you are not the easiest person to live with.”

Her touch nearly sent tears streaming down his face. The last two weeks had been filled with so much trauma and emotion, he felt lucky to be standing on his own two feet. And now Rachel. He pulled his
mamm’s
hands from his cheeks. “I came home for lunch, and she was gone.”

She nodded as if to say,
There you have it
.

Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how telling that statement was. He pulled out one of the chairs surrounding the table and sat down, his legs wobbling and unable to hold him up any longer.

“Perhaps if you wanted to keep your wife, you should have treated her as such.”

“Like I wanted to keep her?”

“Like a wife.”

What was it about the Fisher women that made them so mouthy? He’d tried to make Rachel his wife, in every sense of the word, but . . . “That’s not what we agreed upon.”

“I guess that’s neither here nor there.”

He grunted and gave a nod knowing it wasn’t an answer, but it was the best he had to offer right then.

“You are going after her.”

“I thought I would give her some time.”

His mother shot him a shrewd look. “Pride is a dangerous thing.”

Best if he ignored that. “I’ll need some help with Samuel.”

“I can help.” John Paul picked that moment to walk into the room. He wore his shirt from his job in a nearby factory. He’d taken the job to help pay the medical expenses for his
mudder’s
cancer treatment, and then stayed on despite his father’s objections.

Gabriel shook his head, touched by the gesture. “What about your job?”

“I don’t work all the time,
bruder
.”

“He has a point.” Ruth nodded.

“Him or me?” John Paul asked.

“Him. What would you do about your job?”

John Paul shrugged. “I suppose I could ask for some time off.”

Their
mamm
turned to Gabriel. “Or you could bring him here. One of us is around the
haus
most all of the time. Samuel will have someone to care for him every hour of the day.”

Gabriel hated the thought of being away from Samuel when he needed his father the most, but what choice did he have? Matthew was watching him now, but he was needed at Gideon’s. His family would care for Samuel—that was the Amish way. But it wouldn’t be necessary if Rachel hadn’t left.

A tiny spark of anger burned in his chest. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. He needed to be angry with her for leaving. He needed to feel hurt and resentment. Otherwise, he’d have to deal with the other feelings, of being abandoned, sadness, and like someone had bored a hole straight through his heart.

The first Sunday service after Rachel left was the hardest for Gabriel. Word had spread like wildfire, most likely through Beth Troyer and Hester Stoltzfus. Whatever the cause, everyone in the district—in the entire settlement—knew that Rachel Fisher had left her husband.

He supposed that was the reason why Bishop Rueben Beachy preached on the sins of gossip that sunny Sunday morning, and it was the reason why he felt like everyone was watching him.

He had been chosen by lot, deemed by God to serve his church, but to face the district newly anointed and wifeless was almost more than he could stand. Surely they had made a mistake in choosing him. There was no other answer that added to the sum. He should have never become deacon of the district. For if it were God’s will that Samuel was to be bitten by the snake, then surely it was God’s will that Rachel left. How could God expect him to hold others to the
Ordnung
if he couldn’t even keep a wife?
Nay
, someone had made a mistake, and it needed to be corrected and soon.

Gabriel filled his plate with Sunday afternoon fare and went in search of Rueben Beachy. He found him just about to sit down on the bench next to Ezekiel Esh.

“Bishop? A word, please?”

The light in the bishop’s eyes said he’d been waiting on this summons. He nodded toward the plate in Gabriel’s hands. “Finish your
middawk
and we’ll walk.”

Reluctantly, Gabriel complied, easing himself down onto a patch of grass and casually eating as if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if he hadn’t lost not one, but two wives. As if his mother wasn’t able to attend the church service because she was taking care of his youngest
sohn
.

In due time, the bishop finished eating and gave Gabriel a nod. He pushed himself to his feet, and they headed off alone. Gabriel could feel the eyes of the congregation on him as he and Bishop Beachy walked. He suspected they were thinking the same thing as he, how unworthy he’d become of the title of deacon.

“I know what you want to talk to me about and the answer is
nay
.”

“You will not even allow me to voice it?”

Rueben Beachy gave a stern nod. “You may, if that’s what you care to do.”

Gabriel nodded in return. “I’d like to have my say.”

“It will not change matters any a’tall. The elders of the church are chosen for life. Whatever God’s plan is for you, you have to work with it, adapt to it. It is how our people have survived all these hundreds of years. We adapt ourselves within our own spirit and let the world move ahead in the direction it’s going. Let me ask you this, Gabriel Fisher. Did you do anything to make Rachel want to leave?”

It was a question he’d been asking himself time and again since he’d found her note. “
Nay
,” he said, though doubts still plagued him.

He could say that she didn’t want to be there. If she did, then she would have stayed. Yet she had given up on them when times got tough. If that were the reason, then he was better off without her. All of them were better off without her, even Samuel who asked about his Wachel with nearly every breath.

How did a body explain to him that he had to fight to live, fight to relearn all of his tasks with his hands, writing and such, yet Rachel had given up? How did he explain that indeed.

“If you can look at yourself in the mirror, could stand before God and say with truth in your heart that you played no part in the choice that Rachel made, then there is nothing more to talk about.”

Gabriel let those words wash over him, let them sink in. Could he say that Rachel’s leaving was her decision and nothing more? Thoughts pinged through his mind: the day at the auction, the evening in the hotel, the kiss they shared, the night she spent in his arms. Had any of those moments steered her course?