Katie's Way (31 page)

Moments later, holding a paper plate with an overstuffed roll in one hand and a can of soda in the other, Katie began navigating her way back to the store, taking care lest she drop sausage and peppers on someone's clothing.

And then she saw him. Caleb, moving straight toward her. Her breath caught in her throat. He was looking down, frowning, and he hadn't seen her yet. She waited until he was within a few feet of her. They couldn't talk, not in this public place, but she could say two words.
I'm sorry.
He would know why.

“Caleb.”

He stopped dead, staring at her.

“I—”

His face was closed, as if a door had been slammed shut on everything he thought and felt. “I must go.” He turned and elbowed his way through the crowd, moving so fast she couldn't possibly follow.

And even if she could, what good would it do? Caleb was in there, someplace, but she would never be able to reach him.

 

 

Saturday
was the busiest day his shop had ever seen, and as far as Caleb was concerned, that was fine for several reasons. He was pleased about the sales, of course, and it did his heart good to see Becky darting from customer to customer, forgetting her shyness in her role.

Most important, though, was that the busyness could keep him from thinking about Katie. Or at least, if not that, from glancing at her and listening for the sound of her voice. He'd come to work the outside tables for that very reason.

“Ja, those are traditional Pennsylvania Dutch designs.” He handed the set of bookends to a customer. Smaller things were most popular, that was certain. Things folks could fit into their trunks and bring home easily.

“I'll take these. And the pair with the birds on them, as well. I'll put them away for Christmas gifts.”

He started to reach for them, but Becky beat him to it.

“I will be happy to ring this up for you,” she said.

Caleb nodded his thanks as Becky took over the customer. She understood that waiting on people was not his favorite thing to do. Now, if he were upstairs in his workshop . . .

Running away from people,
Katie's voice said accusingly in his mind.
That's what you do.

Well, maybe so. But that was his business, wasn't it? Katie didn't understand.

From the corner of his eye he caught the movement of Katie's shop door and a flash of blue dress. She was coming out to the sidewalk, maybe to take over from her friend Donna, who'd been handling customers at the outside tables for the last hour or two.

He headed for the door, raising his hand to Becky. “I'm going upstairs for something. Will you take over out here?”

“Ja, for sure. Do you think I could run and get some lunch soon?”

“In a bit,” he said shortly, and escaped inside.

William, showing a cabinet to a customer, gave him a questioning look as he hurried to the stairs and started up. Why was everyone looking at him that way? His irritation edged upward, accompanied by a growing sense of guilt.

Becky didn't deserve a short response from him, and William was doing his best to deal with customers despite his stammer. Neither of them was to blame for the fact that he felt raw and exposed every time Katie looked at him.

They'd already carried down most of the furniture from the workroom, but there were a few more carved wooden items that might be put out for sale. He began filling a box with pairs of bookends and some wooden toys he'd experimented with. He'd begun to think tourists would buy almost anything as a souvenir of their trip.

Footsteps on the stairs had him turning around. It was William, running a hand through his shock of yellow hair.

“Andy and your m-mamm came in to h-help. I'm g-glad to g-get away.”

“Gut.” Caleb was ashamed of himself, hiding away up here when it was so difficult for William to be talking to strangers. “Sorry I rushed off. I wanted to take a few more things down.” He gestured with the box.

“N-no problem.” The tension eased out of William's voice now that they were alone. “Things are really g-going gut, ja?” He leaned against a half-finished jelly cabinet.

“Guess so.”

“That K-Katie, she d-deserves the credit, ain't so?”

Caleb's fingers tightened on a duck decoy, and he forced them to relax. “Ja.” The last thing he wanted was to talk about Katie. He picked up the box. “I'll go down and price these. Why don't you take a break for a while?” He went back downstairs before William could reply.

If he'd expected a moment's respite, he hadn't gotten it. Everything about this day only served to remind him of Katie. Of Katie's words. Of the expression on her face when he'd pulled away from her.

He set the box down on the counter and began methodically putting stickers on the items. Andy was dealing with a customer, and he could see Mamm out on the sidewalk, helping Becky. No one to talk to him right now, to sing Katie's praises.

That wasn't fair. Katie had worked hard and done a fine job. It was his fault that—

“Caleb.” The soft voice was the one that had haunted his dreams last night. He looked up from the box to find her standing at the counter.

“Katie.” He fought to sound natural. “Busy day, ain't so?”

She gave a slight gesture, as if to dismiss the activity as unimportant. “I saw you were having a bit of a break. I just need to say—”

“You don't need to say anything.” He hurried the words out. “The fault is mine.”

She shook her head, lips pressing together. “I had no right to say what I did. I'm sorry.”

He sucked in a breath, trying to find a way to say the words without hurting her. “I was wrong. I should not have . . .”

Kissed her? He shouldn't have, but he couldn't regret it.

“It's all right,” she said quickly. “That's all I wanted to say.” She spun and went back to her shop, but not before he caught the glint of tears in her eyes.

This was no good. He had to talk to her, in private. He couldn't let her blame herself, and the only way was to try to be honest, both with her and with himself.

The opportunity to talk to Katie didn't come until evening, when the tables had been removed from the sidewalks, the banners taken down, the CLOSED signs put on the doors. Only a few last stragglers were making their way out of town, and peace settled over Pleasant Valley again.

Katie had sent Rhoda off with Becky at Nancy's invitation to spend the night. Nancy was, he supposed, trying to make amends for her harsh words.

He could hear Katie moving around in the shop, probably trying, as he was, to put things back in order before the Sabbath. It wasn't church Sunday tomorrow, so they'd have a quiet day after today's busyness.

He set a quilt stand back in its proper place, took a deep breath, and walked through the archway.

Katie looked up from the place mats she was folding, and her expression seemed to tell him that she had been listening to him, as well.

“I have to tell you this,” he said abruptly, before he could lose his courage. “You know about Mattie. About what happened between us.” He shook his head when she seemed about to say something. “I know what you will say. That it is in the past, that everyone has forgotten about it except me. But you don't know everything.”

“Tell me.” She reached across the counter, as if she would touch his hand, and then seemed to think better of it.

The store was so quiet . . . as if it, too, needed to recuperate from the noise of the day. Its warmth and color, so like Katie, seemed to enclose him. But he couldn't accept the comfort it offered.

“After Mattie left, when folks found out about her, I went to the city to find her. To tell her . . .” He let that trail off, not wanting to remember the boy he'd been. But the memories were there, whether he wanted them or not.

“I was nineteen. I'd never been in a place bigger than Mifflinburg in all my life. Neither had Mattie, but there she was, living in the city, sharing an apartment with some Englisch friends I didn't even know she had.”

“I'm sorry.” Katie's murmur was soft with distress.

“When she opened the door, I didn't even know her at first, she looked so different. But then she seemed glad to see me. She asked me in, and I told her what I'd come to say.”

He took a breath, his throat tight. “I said I still wanted to marry her. I said if she was determined to leave the Amish, I would leave, too. Even though I knew the baby wasn't mine, I would love it anyway.”

His throat seemed to close entirely. He remembered saying the words, the feel of them on his lips. The way Mattie had shaken her head, her newly short hair swinging out from her face.

“She said no. She had been meeting an Englisch boy in secret the whole time we were engaged. When she realized she was pregnant, she thought she would marry me, but when the time came, she ran away instead.”

“You did all you could,” Katie said. “No one could have done more. How can you reproach yourself?”

He shook his head. She didn't understand. “I never knew. How could that be, that I never even suspected there was someone else?” He had to make her understand. “Mamm says my heart's been frozen for a long time. That you started it thawing. But I can't be sure, Katie. I just don't know if I have it in me to give my heart to someone again.”

 

 

Katie
automatically slipped the straight pins into the bodice of her dress, hardly needing to think about the fastening after all these years. She stepped to the window as she settled her kapp in place, glancing out at the street. Sunday morning was sunny and also very quiet, after all that had happened yesterday.

Everything that had happened, from the success of Pennsylvania Dutch Days to the truth she'd heard from Caleb. Pain pierced her heart as if she'd driven one of the pins straight into it.

Faced with the pain of Mattie's rejection, he'd followed his natural instincts and withdrawn. She understood that. It was his way of coping. But he'd withdrawn so far that he doubted his own heart.

He had been honest with her. That was all she could expect. Only now that the dream was over, she knew she had begun to hope for more.

She brushed a hand down her apron, straightening it even though it already hung perfectly even. She should be happy. Everything she and Lisa had planned had worked out well, and the crowds had been even better than they'd expected. Some of those people would surely come back to Pleasant Valley to shop, meaning good things for all of them. Perhaps she could even stop worrying about the shop.

She wandered out to the living room, feeling vaguely unsettled at being alone on a Sunday morning. Rhoda had spent the night at Becky's, and since it was an off Sunday, there was no rush to get ready for church.

Katie sank down in her rocker and reached for the Bible on the table next to it. Ordinarily on an off Sunday Daad would read the Scripture out loud, his deep voice making the High German words resonate. When she was a child, she'd thought that must surely be what the voice of God sounded like.

Well, today she would have devotions on her own. Independence could be a fine thing, but it could also be a bit lonely.

She opened the Bible to the passage they'd reached in Isaiah and began to read aloud, even though there was no one to hear.

“‘Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.'” Her voice shook a little. “‘Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness,
and
rivers in the desert.'”

Her eyes filled with tears as she reached the final line. That was how she felt, and she couldn't deny it. Like a desert that would never blossom.

But God promised a way in the desert, streams in the wasteland. She sat for a long time, her hand on the page, pondering those words. Somehow, she must try to hold on to that promise.

Finally, her prayers over, she stood. She set the Bible back in its place, and looked around the tidy rooms. The sunshine seemed to be calling her outside. Perhaps she would take a walk down Main Street. By then it would be time to go and fetch Rhoda from Becky's house. Somehow she suspected Caleb would make himself scarce when he saw her coming. They had nothing left to say to each other.

Katie went down through the shop. She unlocked the front door and stepped outside, tilting her head back to feel the sunshine on her face.

Denke, Father,
she prayed silently. She would be content. She must be content.

A buggy came down Main Street . . . a family on their way to spend the off Sunday with relatives, no doubt. Once she'd picked Rhoda up, they'd go out, also, to Sarah Mast's to have dinner with her and the rest of the Miller family.

The buggy drew closer, and her stomach clenched. That was Caleb's buggy. He was driving, and Rhoda sat beside him.

Katie pressed a hand against her heart, as if that would ease the pain she felt there. Nonsense. She had to lecture herself. It was nonsense to think she'd gotten over Eli and fallen in love with Caleb in little more than a month.

Unfortunately, she didn't quite believe herself. His face grew clearer as they approached, and she struggled to accept the truth. Caleb had made her see how foolish she'd been to think that she could never love anyone but Eli. Unfortunately, the end result had been to discover that Caleb was trapped just the way she had been, and he didn't seem to see, or even to want, a way out.

She forced a smile to her face as the buggy drew to a stop. “I did not expect to see you this morning,” she said.