Tiffany blinked, closing the curtains of her black eyelashes for a moment to keep from laughing. “Bluetooth technology,” she explained, tapping a pointy little gadget hooked to her opposite ear. “Don’t guess you Amish are into wireless, hands-free communications, eh?”
Oh, but he wanted to communicate with his hands! Mostly wanted to ruffle the top of her spiked hair to see if it felt as bristly and stiff as it looked. Instead, he humored her with a patient smile. “Don’t laugh, but I’ve never had a pizza delivered to my house, either.”
“
That
’s against your rules, too?” She shifted to sit cross-legged then looked up from the screen resting against her ankles. Her expression suggested he might have sprouted a second head—or horns.
And maybe he had, at that, flirting with the Devil the way he was. “Don’t s’pose food delivery is so wrong ... your
mamm
gets food delivered from Zook’s Market several times a week, for her bakery. But she—and all the other women—cook at home. Fresh stuff from the garden in summer, and what they’ve pressure canned or frozen durin’ the winter. Get our meat at Zook’s locker, or from another fellow who butchers the local cows and hogs and sheep.”
“So, like, you don’t even shop for groceries?”
Micah shrugged. “Not much need, except to buy flour and other such stuff to make our bread and desserts. Your
mamm
and sisters, now
those
gals make pies like nobody’s business!”
“No microwavable meals, I bet. Man, I couldn’t live without a microwave or my computer.”
“No electricity at home, remember? It’s only on account of the health department and their Mennonite partners that they’ve got electricity at the Sweet Seasons.”
Tiffany nodded absently. She’d already gone back to staring at the pictures that flickered across her handheld screen, which gave him yet another chance to feel guilty about standing Rachel up. He could be eating her butterscotch bars with a big bowl of homemade ice cream now, basking in the adoration of her sky-blue eyes, as they chatted with their friends ... planning a long ride home along the quiet country roads, now that the rain had stopped.
“So what’s that you’re lookin’ at? Mighty tiny to be a computer, ain’t so?”
Tiffany’s grin crinkled her nose, as though she thought his accented speech was too quaint for words. Probably thought he was really stupid, too. “It’s an iPad. Sorta like a computer, ’cause you can check e-mail and go online to ... not that you have any clue about those things, probably.”
“
Jah
, not so much. You’re right about that.” Micah paused for but a moment before saying what had been on his mind all along. What could it hurt to have another girl mad at him when he’d surely broken the only heart that really mattered to him? “But I’ve got a clue or two about
you
, Tiffany. I think you’re hurtin’ worse than you can say—maybe worse than you even know. And I bet ya feel like those folks who raised ya really dropped a pile of it, and ya stepped in it before ya knew how ... stinky it would get.”
For just a moment her mask slipped. Tiffany looked as
ferhoodled
as her sisters when they’d learned about her—except this poor girl had lost her mother and felt like her father had betrayed her, and then found out that’s not who the Oliveris were at all. Who could she believe? What did she have to hold on to as she slipped in that pile of emotional horse hooey?
“You can’t tell me you came here to play shrink, Micah. Why
did
you meet me tonight?”
Now
there
was a question! Just like her sisters, Tiffany had a sharp mind and a quick tongue. Micah shifted, feeling the unfamiliar tug of the tight jeans around his thighs and the way this girl watched the T-shirt hug his shoulders. “I’m curious about ya, for sure and for certain. But I ... I just have this feelin’ there’s more to ya than makeup and skulls and such. And when I dig deep enough—find our girl Rebecca underneath all that—I bet I’d like to be her friend.”
Her hand slipped into his. For a moment she looked vulnerable ... almost fragile. “So then ... why aren’t you kissing me? Touching me like you’re interested?” she pleaded. “I
know
you’ve been checking me out! Don’t tell me you big, stud-puppy Amish boys don’t
do
it! I mean, my God—
look
at you!”
Was that how she was used to being treated? Pawed at and played with like one of the girls’ faceless dolls, and then dropped when the game grew tiresome? Micah wished his clothes weren’t in her dryer, for he was being sucked into this quicksand of his own making ... drawn deeper by those wounded blue eyes that watched him so closely. Eyes that widened and apparently liked what they saw.
“That’s not how a decent man treats a woman. Especially one he barely knows,” Micah replied in a tight voice. “
Jah
, I’ve thought about it some—doin’ it, as ya say. And I decided, long time ago, that Rachel was the girl for me.”
“So you’re saving it for her? Yet you came
here?
” Tiffany crossed her arms, challenging him with her incredulous gaze. “No way am I falling for that one.”
Micah shrugged. “Got a lotta fences to mend, for leavin’ Rachel on the sly tonight. I hope she’ll forgive me, on account of how I’d be a sad, sorry man without her.” He paused to gather his courage: it wasn’t the easiest thing, to talk about deeply personal matters with someone dressed like Tiffany, showing so much skin and shape. But if he didn’t try to reach her, he’d made the trip through the rain and upset his Rachel yet again for no good reason.
“I wanted ya to know, Rebecca, that your Amish mamma and sisters love ya and nothin’ can change that,” he murmured. It felt like praying out loud, and he sure hoped God was listening even though he’d gotten himself into a sticky situation. “That love’s yours, if ya care to accept it. But once again, I’m tellin’ ya: if ya go meddlin’ and messin’ with their lives for the fun of it, because ya think we Amish are simple-minded instead of just simple ... you’ll be real sorry. And so’ll we.”
Tiffany’s eyes widened until he once again couldn’t miss the resemblance to Rachel. And one more time he kicked himself for betraying her trust. This look-alike seemed ready to say something—
“Pizza man!” somebody cried as the door flew open. In walked a guy carrying a flat black bag, grinning at Tiffany—until he saw Micah. “Hey, dude. Love the shirt and jeans.”
“Uh, Micah, this is Hayden, my best friend’s guy ... our other roommate,” she explained as they stood up. “He sorta loaned you those clothes.”
“And I thank ya for that,” Micah said as he extended his hand. Easy enough to see this fellow wanted to laugh at his longish, hat-flattened hair, just as he knew Hayden was jumping to the wrong conclusions about why he wasn’t wearing his own clothes. But that didn’t really matter, did it?
He excused himself to wash up, leaving Tiffany and her housemate to talk in low voices. When Micah caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he laughed sadly. Who did he think he was, trying to convince this young woman she had another family ... more love in her life than she knew? And why did he think she’d listen to a fellow like him? He was a fish out of water here, flopping around awkwardly when it came to saying and doing what he should.
When he returned to the main room, Tiffany was sitting on the couch with the pizza box open on the coffee table. She held a cheese-draped wedge in one hand while she kept looking at that iPad gadget ... sure was more interested in that than she was in him, or his message.
Time to get your clothes on and leave
, he thought, realizing how suggestive this whole situation had become, even though he’d not so much as held Tiffany’s hand. Was she worth the risk of shattering Rachel’s trust in him? It didn’t appear that he’d made any progress at all.
Micah cleared his throat. “I’d best be gettin’ my shirt and pants—”
“But you’ve gotta help me eat this huge—Here! I ... guess I’ve been kinda rude, haven’t I?” Tiffany looked up, holding out a huge slice of pizza on a napkin. Was she offering him an olive branch, as well?
He sat on the edge of the sofa, farther away from her, taking the pizza without touching her hand. “Well, it does smell wonderful-
gut
—”
“And you’re a carpenter, Micah? There’s this cool YouTube piece—” Once again she was flicking her fingertips across her iPad screen and then tapping it. “It’s true what they say about so much junk being on the Internet, but this guy in Hong Kong—here, look what he’s designed!”
Micah closed his eyes over a mouthful of chewy crust, seasoned meat, and warm, gooey cheese. He
must
ask Miriam or Rachel to make pizza sometime. Music burst from the iPad and then a voice, telling about a young Asian fellow who’d converted a tiny old apartment into a sleek modern home for himself.
He sat glued to the quick-moving images of walls that rolled on wheels and ceiling tracks, converting one main room into a sitting area, a bedroom, a kitchen, a small office. All by shifting these walls—with built-in shelves and nooks for appliances—to the other side of the small apartment. His bed folded up into the wall. His huge TV screen came down from the ceiling. He had created this compact space for himself by taking what he already had and organizing it so only the things he was using at the time were out. Then he tucked them away—everything into its place—and moved another wall when he needed the function of a different room.
Form and function. Wasn’t his life work centered on those interwoven concepts?
The little movie ended too soon. Micah chewed, thinking. “Can I see that again?” he asked breathlessly. “Maybe a couple more times?”
His mind was spinning with ideas. Amish farmhouses were huge and sometimes unshapely from numerous additions: three generations of a family often lived under one roof. The downstairs rooms of the larger ones were often fitted with removable wall partitions to accommodate benches for a couple hundred people on preaching Sundays, so the compact form and function he’d just witnessed were impractical. Yet if a builder approached an Amish home from a nontraditional angle ...
As Tiffany touched the screen to show the piece again, Micah sensed the
rightness
of this moment—sights and ideas that could change his work forever, brought to him from a most unlikely source while he was where he wasn’t supposed to be. And wasn’t that how the biggest things had happened in the Bible, to God’s movers and shakers throughout humanity? They might’ve been liars and cheaters—or even murderers, like King David—yet the lessons they learned prepared them to accept greater responsibilities and a higher purpose from their Creator, when next He sought them out.
Let it be this way for me, God. Show me what You’d have me do with this fascinatin’ idea.
It was too providential to ignore, this five-minute peek at such innovative thinking.
Spellbound, Micah paid closer attention to the nuts and bolts of how this Asian architect had designed his system of wooden walls that rolled silently, effortlessly ... oh, this was gonna be so good when he measured that loft again and convinced Aaron to custom-weld him some hardware ...
“Micah? You want your clothes now?”
Micah blinked. He could’ve kissed Tiffany, he was so excited, but he would go back to Willow Ridge instead. The ride would be a good time to let his thoughts jell while he also figured out how to win Rachel back. He had no doubt she was fuming right now, and she had every right to give him a talking-to. Micah hoped the inspiration he’d gotten these past few minutes would give him ways to impress his girl, too—not to mention how it would prove he loved Rachel even more than before.
He dressed quickly, unconcerned about the wrinkles in his white shirt and dark trousers. After he put on his hat, he offered Tiffany both hands. She rose to grip them, her expression wary yet hopeful. “
Denki
—thank you—ever so much for puttin’ up with me and showin’ me that movie,” he said in a husky voice.
“Well, I’m glad
one
of us had a good time.”
Micah’s lips curved. Better to leave that line alone and not fall for the
wanting
he saw all over her so-familiar face. “I wish ya my best as ya come to grips with your
mamm
’s passin’ and figure out what comes next.”
And before those beautiful blue eyes could lead him any closer to perdition, any farther from where he needed to be, Micah headed home to whatever Rachel would dish up.
Chapter 13
Tired of stewing at home, Rachel watched Mamma drift off on the couch and then slipped quietly out into the night. The rain had stopped, but her personal storm still rumbled within her. The later it got, the more she believed Micah might not stop by: If he’d gone to see that witchy sister with the black hair and mascara, why would he bother with
her
tonight? He’d no doubt sneak in his own back door and avoid her altogether.
She wouldn’t give him that chance! As she strode down their lane, Rachel didn’t care that her shoes got wet and muddy ... far worse if Micah Brenneman’s soul got soiled from his association with that freewheeling girl her
mamm
had claimed as one of their own. What was the attraction there? She’d known Micah most of their lives, yet now she wondered if she hadn’t paid close enough attention to the man behind those serene green eyes.
What would she do if he renounced his Amish ways? Forgot his promises to her? While she hadn’t yet whispered to her friends that she was working on wedding plans, folks in these parts
knew
she and Micah had been sweet on each other for years. How would she stand it if he backed out on her now? How would she endure the humiliation of facing her friends ... going to singings and hoping, like a sixteen-year-old, that a nice fellow from around these parts would drive her home?
I’m too old for that now. What if I end up a
maidel
like Eva Schrock ... grim and unsmilin’, peckin’ away at everyone like a biddy hen?
The stark image made her walk so fast her leg muscles ached, yet she needed this release. Along the dark highway she strode, ducking behind the bushes at the intersection of the Brennemans’ lane when she heard laughter and young voices coming from an approaching buggy. Never mind who it was! They mustn’t see her walking alone. Once the courting couple had passed, Rachel headed for the large farmhouse up ahead, beyond the small orchard where pears and apples glowed in the moonlight. Suited her fine that the lights were all out: she’d simply park herself on the front porch, so’s not to miss Micah’s homecoming.
But when she was within earshot of the two-story house, a familiar voice called to her in the darkness. “That you, Rachel? What’re ya doin’ out and about at this hour?”
Naomi. And now that her eyes were adjusting to the shadows beneath the overhang of the porch roof, Rachel saw the shape of Ezra’s wheelchair, too. No way to act as though she hadn’t heard the question, so she countered it with one of her own. “Micah home?”
“Why, no, dear. Thought he’d gone with you and the others to the social in—”
“Well, he never showed up.” It wasn’t the time to spew her suspicions about where Micah had spent the evening, but there was no turning around and heading home, either. “Not like he didn’t know I made his favorite cookies and a new dress—”
“He’s been mighty quiet this week. Tuckered out, I’m thinkin’,” Naomi remarked. “The boys’ve been workin’ on a big job east of New Haven. Tables and chairs for a lodge conference center and—”
“Glad for the business, too,” Ezra cut in. He leaned forward in his wheelchair to peer at her from the shadows. “So ya didn’t bring any of them cookies?”
“I should think not! Micah’s got some explainin’ to do before I feed him treats!”
Ezra grunted but then raised his head to look toward the road. “Looks like you’re about to get your wish, missy. Try not to whittle him down with that tongue of yours. Took us this long to see him baptized into the church—”
“Ezra! We’re goin’ inside so—”
“—so I don’t wanna hear about him jumpin’ the fence to live amongst outsiders if ya scare him off!”
Rachel clapped her mouth shut. It was always hard to tell when Micah’s
dat
was teasing, even as Naomi grabbed the handles of his chair to wheel him inside. Did the Brennemans know their boy had gone to visit Tiffany, or was Ezra pulling her leg? She’d hoped not to bring this sensitive subject to light in front of anyone else, so she turned to watch the approach of the courting buggy.
Her heart pounded. She hated nagging him ... would rather not pick a fight at this late hour. But didn’t she have a right to Micah’s reasons for leaving her behind tonight? After all, if he’d been visiting her sister on the up-and-up, why hadn’t he asked
her
to go? Rachel stood a few feet in front of the deserted porch, watching him: Micah handled the reins and Rosie with such expertise, he appeared not to be driving at all but merely along for the ride.
He stopped about ten feet in front of her, with his mare between them. “Rachel,” he said with a nod.
“So ya still recognize me.
Des gut
.”
He grimaced. “I owe ya an apology,
jah
. And I’m hopin’ what I learned tonight will prove why I love ya even more than—”
“How’d your clothes get so rumpled, Micah?”
“—before! And it’s lookin’
gut
for your
mamm
’s relationship with Rebecca, I’ll have ya know!”
There it was, like that imaginary elephant in the front room folks avoided instead of talking about. She fought back a sob, wrung out from this endless evening of having her highest hopes dashed. “Seems to me
you’re
the one workin’ on that relationship. Am I right, Micah?” she blurted. “That’s where you’ve been, ain’t so?”
He gazed down at her from the buggy seat, daring to smile kindly at her. “Wait’ll ya hear about what I saw on her little computer gadget! Somethin’ so perfect for the little nook Rhoda and your
mamm
’ll have above the smithy—”
“Well, hoop-de-do! I’m hearin’ everyone’s name but mine, Micah!” Rachel scowled, detesting that selfish whine in her voice. She sounded like she was six years old, having a hissy fit over not getting her way. And she certainly hadn’t been raised to
expect
her way from the man she would marry! Yet the fellow in that buggy had the nerve to babble on about—
“—so when we get hitched, we can—”
“Ya sure about that, Micah Brenneman?” Like steam building up in a teakettle, she felt herself ready to blow, and there was no holding it back now. “I’ll be twenty-one in a couple months!” she spouted. “Most of my life, I’ve been
waitin’
for ya to get established in your family’s business! That’s happened now,
jah?
But I’ve been waitin’ for ya to latch on to property, too, so’s you could build us a home—except the way I understand it, Mamma’s givin’ ya full run of
our
place!”
She stepped backward, blinking rapidly. Powerless against the rant that bubbled over like pie filling in a hot oven. “How long do I have to
wait
before ya see this Tiffany’s nothin’ but trouble, Micah?” she continued in a terse whisper. “The bishop’s warned ya—twice now! The property and the house don’t mean a thing if the People bring the ban down on ya for spendin’ more time alone with that Englisher who wears all the makeup and that skull tattoo!”
Still Micah sat there, watching her. Waiting for her to run out of steam ... to unwind and fall silent, like a top whirling at full speed eventually slows and topples over. “I understand why you’d feel this way, Rache, and I—”
“You understand nothin’ of the sort!” she cried. “Sometimes I think ya just enjoy windin’ me up and watchin’ me spin this way. Ya
knew
how I was lookin’ forward to the ice-cream social—with
you
—and yet ... and yet ya left me alone all night without so much as a fare-thee-well.”
He glanced at the house behind her and then patted the buggy seat. “Got an audience,” he murmured. “Let’s take this somewhere else, Rachel, on account of how I want to share so much more than what I learned at Rebecca’s—”
“And what might a man like you learn from a girl wearin’ chains and witch-black hair?” she challenged.
Micah leaned down, beckoning her forward with a bent finger. “All I saw in her fridge was beer, Rache. Not that she could cook if she had any food—and she admitted as much.” He tried to rest a hand on her shoulder, and smiled again when she jerked away. “And I learned how precious you are to me, with your Plain ways and your sweet, clean face. We’re travelin’ through this world at the same pace, you and I, and I want it to be
you
I travel with from here on out, honey-girl.” Again he patted the buggy seat. “Please? It’s you I love, Rachel Lantz. Even if your sister looked just like ya, I could never care for her serious-like.”
Was he wearing her down? Or was she finally ready to listen to what this handsome, if rumpled, man had to say to her? With a sigh, Rachel clambered up into the buggy and sat beside him, leaving a conspicuous space between them.
Micah cocked his hat farther back on his head, smiling now. He clapped the reins lightly against Rosie’s back and waited until they were halfway down the lane before he spoke again. “Have I ever mistreated ya, Rache? Or forsaken ya? Or lied to ya—except for this visit to Tiffany’s tonight?”
Rachel stared warily at him in the darkness. The buggy swayed over rough spots in the road, making her bump into him now and again. “We ... we’ve been sayin’ for weeks we’d be goin’ to the social—”
“And it was wrong of me to keep my intentions to myself, after your sister invited me last week to see her again tonight. I knew you’d feel betrayed—anybody would,” he added with a heavy sigh. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t straight with ya, Rachel. Knew it was the wrong thing to do, even if I told myself I was seein’ her for the right reasons.”
He steered the mare into a right turn at the county road, away from her house. “But all week, while I was thinkin’ about why Tiffany dresses and acts that way, that Bible verse from Micah reminded me about how the Lord requires us to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with our God. I maybe wear that out, on account of how I was named for that prophet,” he admitted, “but those words spell it right out—how we’re supposed to treat other people even if they’re not our People. And even if they don’t treat us the way we’d like to be treated.”
His voice wafted over her like the night breeze. It wasn’t her favorite thing, to hear Micah talk about how well such a brazen intruder should be treated ... and Bishop Knepp disagreed with this way of applying that Bible verse to outsiders. If the brethren heard Micah had gone to see Rebecca again, she fully expected them to discuss a shunning—as much because he’d disobeyed the bishop’s dictates as for chasing after the likes of Tiffany Oliveri. Rachel tried to formulate an answer as he pulled the buggy off the road into a little grove where they’d often sat talking in the moonlight.
“I won’t be goin’ back, Rachel,” he said firmly. “Truth be told, she paid more attention to her iPad and a phone contraption clipped to her ear than she did to me.”
“Ah! None of that second-fiddle stuff for
you
,
jah?
” she blurted. “So how’d it feel to be ignored, Mr. Brenneman? And ya still haven’t told me how your clothes got so rumpled. A girl could get ideas about that, ya know!”
“Got caught in the downpour on the way to Morning Star. Sat around in the apartment she’s sharin’ with her best friend and that gal’s boyfriend ... wearin’ the boyfriend’s jeans and T-shirt while my clothes were in the dryer.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I know that sounds mighty suspicious. But I hope you’ll believe me when I say your sister’s got a lotta important pieces missin’, far as what I want and need in a wife, Rachel. Coulda had whatever I wanted—more than pizza—on account of that’s what she was offerin’. She laughed at me when I said I was savin’ all that for marriage. For
you
.”
Rachel’s eyes widened. She sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Was there such a thing as too much honesty? As Micah described his evening, the pictures in her mind were anything but flattering, yet ... his voice and his tone sounded sincere. Weary of the outside world after just two visits with Tiffany.
“I love ya, Rachel,” he murmured. “Will ya still give me the rest of our lives to prove that to ya, every single day?”
She closed her eyes, wanting to believe such sweet words from the man who sat beside her. So many fellows went wild with women during their
rumspringa
, yet Micah had not. So many of her friends, married for a few years and balancing babies on their hips now, acted as though the romance they’d known during their courting days had evaporated like morning dew ...
After tonight’s episode, she had a lot to consider about things she’d naively taken for granted, lost in the haze of new love. Never before had she doubted Micah’s intentions. It didn’t feel good, assuming the worst about where he’d been and what he’d done this evening while she fumed at home in her new dress with her tray of cookies.
Micah gently lifted her chin with his finger. He scooted closer and draped an arm loosely behind her, on the seat. “You’re not much on hearin’ about this, I know, but Tiffany—Rebecca—has a lot in common with you and Rhoda right now. She’s not only lost a parent, she’s learned that some mighty disturbin’ secrets were kept by the people she trusted most. Gotta be tough, findin’ out you’re not who ya always thought ya were.”