Huckleberry Summer (15 page)

Anna came up behind Lily and laid a fleecy soft, white knitted blanket over Pilot. “I was saving this for the next baby in the district, but Pilot deserves it tonight, don’t you think?” Anna gazed expectantly down the lane. “Where could Aden have got to?”

“Pilot,” Lily said, caressing his ears, “where is Aden?”

“He must be close behind,” Anna said. “Pilot would never come home without Aden.”

Surely Anna was right. If there were danger, Pilot wouldn’t leave Aden for a minute.

Anna patted Pilot’s head and led him toward the house. “You have been a very gute dog. I will make something special for you and Sparky for supper tonight.” Pilot followed her up the porch steps. “But maybe after a bath yet. Do you like baked tofu?”

Smothering the panic, Lily stood and marched down the lane. Would Pilot find his way home if Aden no longer needed him? Like if he were dead? A quiet sob escaped her lips as her throat constricted, and she quickened her pace.

If he lay dead in the bottom of a river somewhere, she would never forgive herself for letting him leave her. Why, oh why hadn’t she clamped her arms around his ankles and held on for dear life?

Her heart stopped beating as she came around the first bend and caught sight of Aden—handsome, wonderful, alive Aden—trudging up the hill. His head was bowed, and he looked as if each step took supreme effort.

“Aden!” she screamed.

He looked at her and gave her the most beautiful smile she had ever seen. Ever.

Losing all sense of restraint, she ran to him and threw her arms around his neck. He caught her in his strong embrace as if he’d been expecting her, as if he wouldn’t ever let her go.

Lily wept as relief washed over her. The feeling proved so strong and cleansing that she didn’t even try to choke back the great sobs that racked her body. She buried her face in his rock-hard chest and cried as if she had been waiting for a hundred years to release her heart.

He stroked her wet cheek with his thumb. “Hush, sweetheart. I’m back. It’s all right. Everything is all right. You’re safe. That’s the most important thing.”

“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” she sobbed, pounding his chest with her fist. Her voice sounded muffled against his shirt, but she was certain he understood her.

He stood there, letting her cry, until she felt the tension leave her body. She sagged against him. She shouldn’t have leaned on him like that. He had been chasing a bear all afternoon.

“If you greet me like this every time I do something dangerous, I will have no motivation to mend my ways.”

She growled—a loud, I’m-so-annoyed-with-you growl—and thumped her fist on his chest.

He didn’t loosen his grip. “And you’re going to give me a bruise, you know.”

Lily giggled through her tears. “You’ll get worse if you ever leave me hanging like that again. Get a cell phone if you plan on running off into the woods on a regular basis.”

His eyes sparkled as he stared at her and then bent his head to hers and kissed her on the mouth.

Just like that.

No warning. No advance preparation. No indication whatsoever that he was going to lay a feather-soft kiss on her lips and send her floating to the moon. What was he thinking, being so hasty?

A girl would like to be able to prepare herself first.

He pulled away and looked into her eyes. “You are completely irresistible.”

“And you are . . . you are not thinking straight when you . . .”

Before she could finish the sentence she had no idea how to finish, he lowered his head and kissed her again. This kiss was as unexpected as the first, but sweeter and longer and more floaty. She must be standing on Mars by now.

He pulled away, gave her a wide smile, and studied her face. “What would your dat say if he knew I kissed you?”

“He wouldn’t like it,” Lily said. Should she be worried that at this moment she didn’t really care what Dat thought?

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Did you like it?”

Lily couldn’t be anything but honest, especially with her arms clamped tightly around his neck. “I think I liked it.”

Aden’s lips quirked upward. “Did you like it better than a kiss from Tyler Yoder?”

Lily felt herself blush, but his impertinent question motivated her to pry her arms from around his neck. “Tyler Yoder wouldn’t dream of kissing me.”

“Oh, believe me, he dreams about it all the time. He just wouldn’t be so reckless as to do it before he married you.”

“Tyler is anything but reckless.”

Aden grimaced and massaged the back of his neck. Lily caught sight of a dark, broad stain on the sleeve of his navy shirt.

Her heart did a somersault. “Is that blood? Aden, are you bleeding?”

He instinctively covered his upper arm with his hand. “I ran headlong into a thicket and a sharp branch caught me. It’s nothing.”

She pulled his hand away from the wound and got light-headed when it came away soaked in blood. “Aden, this isn’t nothing!” She pulled apart the folds of his sleeve and found where the fabric had ripped. Parting the fabric, she pressed her lips together in concern. A deep gash, probably four inches long, curved from his shoulder to his biceps. “This looks awful.”

He grinned, and she could tell he wanted to laugh at her response. “It’s not bad, really.”

“Not bad? You need stitches. I’m taking you to a hospital.”

“I don’t need a hospital.”

“Are you afraid? Is the fearless Aden Helmuth afraid of needles?”

“No,” he protested with a chuckle.

Lily wiped her hands on her apron and all but growled at his stubbornness. “You must be in terrible pain.”

“You kissed me and made it all better.”

Would it be bad to smack an injured man? Maybe not if she hit his good arm. “Let’s get back to the house and see what your mammi has to say.”

“To tell the truth, after all I’ve been through, I’m numb.”

Unable to stop herself, she took his hand just to reassure herself that he was back and relatively unharmed.

He stared at her hand. “I’m warning you, Lily. If I get this sort of treatment every time I do something dangerous, I’m going to take up skydiving.”

She rolled her eyes. “Tell me what happened to the bear.” She thought for a minute. “And Anna’s frying pans.”

They trudged slowly up the lane. “I ran for a long time through the woods, following the sound of Pilot’s barking. I think I chased that sound for half an hour. At some point I ran into a poorly placed branch and lost a gute chunk out of my arm.”

“You need stitches.”

“I finally found Pilot stuck in a tangle of green branches. With the way he dives headlong into things, it didn’t surprise me.”

“Was he hurt? I didn’t see any wounds.”

“He was limping a bit. I’ll take him to the vet tomorrow and have him checked out. I didn’t see the bear again. Pilot scared him away. He’s probably in Canada by now. Praise the Lord for such a gute and brave dog. We made such a wide circle around the slope of the hill that I thought it would be easier to go down to the road and hike up the lane instead of through the woods. It took a long time but was easier going.”

“What about the frying pans?”

Aden chuckled. “I told you I wouldn’t need a gun. I didn’t even need those frying pans. By the time we got to Mammi and Dawdi’s lane, they were so heavy, I left them at the bottom. I’ll fetch them in the morning.”

“Felty will be happy to know that you didn’t have to kill a bear with one of Anna’s frying pans.”

Aden kept hold of her hand and stopped and stared at her. “My dog saved your life.”

“He saved your life too. I will love that dog forever.”

“Then, because he is my dog, you owe me something.”

Lily narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“An answer.” He squeezed her hand. “Do you like me, Lily, or did I just imagine that you kissed me back?”

Lily savored the sensation of her hand in his as they resumed their walk up the lane. Where she tended to lose her head in an emergency, Aden remained calm and sensible. She had already witnessed how kindly he treated everyone and how patient he was with her, even when she acted irrationally. He was tall and muscular and had nice hair, besides which, he took very gute care of his grandparents.

And his lips felt nice on hers. Very nice.

Lily sighed. After today, Tyler Yoder wouldn’t be able to measure up.

She swung their hands back and forth and kept her eyes on the Helmuths’ barn, which had just come into view. “I like you very, very much.” She sighed. “To own the truth, I am quite jealous of Erla Glick.”

His eyes danced, and he looked as if he would burst with joy. “You should be jealous. Her dat has never insisted on the four-foot rule.”

Lily pulled her hand from his and doubled her speed toward the house.

Aden caught up with her in a matter of seconds—curse those long legs of his. He took her by the shoulders, wincing at the pain in his arm. “Lily, I am not interested in Erla Glick. As I told you, I am interested in you.”

To punctuate his point, he kissed her and let his lips linger on hers. When he finally pulled away, Lily was convinced that if something felt this good, it was probably a sin. She should be ashamed of herself. Instead, she eyed his mouth and wondered if he would be shocked if she asked him to kiss her again.

“Now,” he said, his lips inches from hers, “how do I get on your dat’s good side?”

 

 

Aden flexed his newly bandaged arm and arched his stiff back. Every muscle ached for his bed. His mad chase through the woods had not been kind to his body.

Pilot slept on the rug next to the sofa with his pile of socks and Sparky beside him. He hadn’t moved a muscle for over an hour. Aden knew the feeling. Any kind of movement took too much effort.

Hearing the crunch of buggy wheels on the gravel, he groaned and stood to look out Mammi’s kitchen window.

Dawdi had returned.

Once Lily had tended to Aden’s arm, she had helped Mammi give Pilot a bath on the porch. She had insisted, adamantly so, that Aden not lift a finger to help with his dog. Good thing too. His arm throbbed painfully, and he would have been panting in agony by the end of the bath.

They ate supper at almost seven o’clock. Mammi’s baked tofu slid down his throat so slowly that he thought he might gag. But he ate it. Mammi’s feelings were more important than his discomfort at eating goopy tofu.

After that, Dawdi had driven Lily home. No one wanted her walking in the dark.

Mammi sat knitting in her rocker. “You are going to need stitches, you know.”

Aden nodded. “I didn’t want Lily to worry. I’ll go see the doctor tomorrow when I take Pilot to the vet.”

Moving like a man several years older than Dawdi, Aden shuffled out the door to help Dawdi unhitch the buggy. He might have felt like a cripple, but Dawdi wasn’t as young as he used to be.

Dawdi saw him coming and held up his hand. “I can do this. Your arm don’t look so gute.”

“It’s a gute dressing,” Aden said. “I can help.”

Dawdi gazed skeptically at Aden. “I ain’t that old yet.”

“Nobody said you were.”

“You’re the one who looks old,” Dawdi said, before relenting and guiding the horse into the barn. Aden limped to one side of the horse and unbuckled the straps. Dawdi did the same on the other side.

“The frying pans was a gute idea,” Dawdi said as he led the horse out from between the buggy shafts.

They walked together as Aden led the horse to one of the stalls in the barn. “Dawdi, if a boy wanted to gain your approval to court one of your daughters, what would he need to do?”

“Anyone in particular?” Dawdi said, his eyes twinkling in amusement.

“You know there is.”

Dawdi took off his hat and slapped it against his leg. “There’ll be no stopping your mammi now. She won’t rest until she’s matched every young person in Bonduel with one of our grandchildren.”

Aden found the currycomb and brushed the horse with his good hand to release his growing frustration. He liked Lily a lot, and her dat’s approval seemed like a mountain too high to scale.

“What can I do, Dawdi?”

“Think about your own daughter, if you had a daughter. What would a young man need to do to impress you?”

“Organize a neighborhood recycling program?”

The corner of Dawdi’s lip curled up. “Okay, maybe we should take a different direction. What do you think would win over a typical Amish father?”

“A boy who has a clean police record.”

“Well, stuff and nonsense, Aden. You can’t let your past steal your future. The only thing you can do is help David Eicher see you as a gute husband for his daughter.”

“I could buy some land and start a farm.”

“Do you have the money to buy some land?”

“Jah, enough, I think.”

“What else?”

“Maybe I could go to Lily’s house and work. Like Jacob did for Rachel.”

“You should have a conversation with her dat. Get to know him. Parents don’t like boys who stay away because they’re too afraid to meet the family.”

“Okay, get to know the family. See if they can be tricked into inviting me to dinner.”

“And Aden. The most important thing. Every father wants a godly man for his daughter.”

“I’ve been baptized.”

“You are careful and troubled about many things, Aden.”

Careful and troubled. That’s what the voice had told him at the lake. Was it a coincidence that Dawdi used those very words? A thrill pulsed through his veins.

Dawdi studied his face in the shadows of the barn lit by a single propane lantern. “The other boyfriend is a godly man—charitable and devout.”

Aden’s heart sank to his toes. If even Dawdi thought Tyler was a better man than Aden, his own grandson, then Aden didn’t have a chance with Lily’s father.