Threads of Grace (17 page)
“I am so sorry,” Seth said. “Why did you marry him, Grace?”
“I had to marry him to save my family. I couldn’t worry about saving myself.”
S
eth looked at his wife as she lay next to him. He couldn’t fathom the pain she had been through, but he was fairly certain he had only gotten a glimpse of it. He didn’t know if he’d ever hear the whole story.
But he did know that the Lord gave back. That God was capable of restoring the lost years, capable of healing the pain. And he knew that he was part of that giving back to Grace.
He was determined to be part of it.
“Grace,” he whispered, “I want to help make your life better.
To give you joy and peace. It doesn’t matter to me if we never have another child. I want you to be healed.”
“I know. I believe that of you.” Her lips quivered as she managed a faint smile. “But I don’t know how to do that—to be healed.”
“You can’t heal yourself,” he said. “Only
der Herr
can do that. And I have to tell you the truth, Grace. So long as you let him, Silas Beiler is going to be a ghost between us—a ghost that I can’t fight.”
She began to cry, and Seth moved closer to gather her in his arms. “Please don’t cry, sweetheart. That’s not what I want.”
She looked up at him, her violet eyes flooding with tears. “Don’t tell me that everything will be fine if I just let Silas go. You don’t understand. You’re perfect, whole; I am flawed and damaged.”
He moved closer to stroke her hair. “Grace, I dreamed of you the night before our wedding. I slept under a quilt called Bachelor’s Choice. The legend is that when a man sleeps under it, he’ll dream of the woman he’s to marry. And I dreamed of an Amish woman with pansy-colored eyes, porcelain skin, and black silky hair that was short, so short. That confused me, but in that dream, as I tried to hold you, something sinister rose up from the ground and came between us.”
He moved his hand to her shoulder and then to cover her heart. “I know you are troubled inside. Let me help. Please.”
Without warning she slipped an arm up behind his back and pressed her mouth against his.
Seth Wyse had kissed any number of girls, but this wasn’t like any of them. It was a simple kiss, just her mouth against his, and it
was one of the most intimate things he’d ever encountered in his life. Colors flashed behind his eyes, golden-hued starbursts and green, fertile valleys. He had difficulty focusing from the sheer, stilled exuberance he felt.
Maybe
Gott
was teaching him a lesson. Because, for the first time in his life, he experienced the true wonder of a kiss.
A
lice lay awake while both Abel and Pretty snored beside her. The furry body next to her stretched and shifted, and she gained comfort from the pup’s nearness.
Maybe she should get a dog. They’d never had one; Bud had been allergic.
The thought jarred her awareness: she was a widow now. Single. Alone. Not for the first time, she felt like an alien. What did she think she was doing? Here she was, in a bed in a farmhouse in the middle of Pennsylvania Amish country, instead of in the home that Bud and she had built over all their blessed years together.
But that house held only emptiness—Bud’s watch, his glasses, his Bible. His things, his spirit, his memory. But not him.
Everything had happened so fast. The diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, a few months of treatment. And then he was gone.
The morning he died she had gotten him breakfast; he’d eaten a little, then she’d wheeled him back to the home hospice bed
where he spent most of his time. Suddenly he couldn’t breathe. She had tried not to panic. She turned up the oxygen to its full five liters, called an ambulance, and listened while Bud breathlessly fussed at her for it. She tried to give him some morphine to relax him, but by the time the ambulance got there, it was too late.
She’d been allowed to ride in the ambulance, but before they could get to the hospital, the love of her life had turned ashen and gasped uselessly like a fish on dry land. A ghastly, wide-mouthed, gaping caricature of all she had known and loved.
The doctor had said that he was in agonal heart rhythm but was no longer breathing. Alice had kissed his still-warm cheek and said good-bye. She couldn’t bear to stay when she knew he was gone. She went outside to wait for her sister to come get her, and sat on a bench outside the ER as it thundered and poured rain.
As if the earth itself shared her mourning.
She curved closer to the dog and tried not to think anymore. But she couldn’t bring herself to pray.
G
race knew she was dreaming but was caught in the horror of the moment and could not make herself wake. She was trapped beneath the ice with Silas; she saw his body, foreign and familiar, blue and gone. She tried to come up through the same hole into which she had fallen, but she could find no escape. She wanted to cry out, but icy water filled her throat. She was suffocating, collapsing, dying. She sat straight up in bed and screamed.
Seth was beside her, holding her. “What’s the matter, sweetheart? A bad dream? Tell me about it,” he urged softly.
“I—I was with Silas, under the ice, under the water. He wanted me to be dead too.”
“It’s over now. You’re with me, and I want you to be alive and happy.” She could feel his chin on the top of her head, and then she listened in wonder as he began to pray for her out loud.
“Dear Lord, thank You so much that You have ordained things so that Grace is my wife. Comfort her, free her from the past, and help her to remember that You love her. Help her to know how beautiful she is on the inside. Painter, Father, take the past and reframe it into something beautiful, bright with new color. In Your Son’s name, I pray.”
Grace felt him draw away from her and she missed the comfort of his touch. She found herself longing to turn to him, to kiss him as she had done the night before, but she resisted.
It was almost dawn. The grace of the prayer still lingering in her ears, she would get up and begin the new day with the new blessing.
T
obias Beiler grabbed his pen and journal and lay down on the small bed. He had already been up, milking and feeding the cows, even though it still wasn’t light. He was unused to such manual labor; it didn’t suit him at all. Still, the rewards of being so close to Grace far outweighed any pain he felt.
He began to write:
My dearest bruder, Silas, how unfortunate that you can no longer enjoy the pleasures of your wife. I have crept close enough
to the Wyse farm to see her at her chores. It comes to me, through a vision of the Lord, that there must be some way to rid the delightful Grace of her burdensome younger husband. Surely such a young man cannot manage the headstrong, sinfully beautiful woman that she is. And as you are caught beneath the ice, I will take the place that you can no longer fill . . .
He jumped at the sound of a knock on the door and thrust the journal beneath his mattress.
“Jah?”
“Be you well, Abraham?” Mr. Zook’s voice came, faintly concerned but also irritated. “There is work in the fields.”
Tobias flung the door open and smiled. “Simply looking for a pair of gloves. I’ll come now.”
S
eth came in from putting up the horses, tired and dirty. He and Grace were scheduled to go to Jacob and Lilly’s for dinner. He wished it might be another night, but it was a good opportunity to get out with Grace. He greeted Abel, who was playing with marbles on the floor, and smiled at Alice. Violet was nowhere about. Grace was washing cups at the sink.
“You look pretty,” he said
“Thank you,” she murmured. “You look dirty. You’d better hurry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Seth said. “It’ll only take me a minute.”
“I could bring you some clean towels.”
“Offering to assist me in my bath?” he asked.
Grace shook her head at his foolery and gave a warning glance over her shoulder at Alice.
“Well, bring them in then, if you please.” He headed up to
their room and within a minute or two heard her stumping up the stairs on her cast.
“Your towels,” Grace said when he opened the door.
“Would you like to come in for a minute?” he asked.
Her eyes strayed to his chest. “We’ll be late.”
“Sometimes being late is worth it. Do you know how many family dinners Jacob and Lilly have arrived to flushed and late over the past months?”
She shook her head. He smiled and closed the door softly behind them.
H
er heart fluttered like an excited bird as she gazed up into his deep blue eyes. She said the first thing that came to mind.
“You look tired.”
“I am.”
“
Ach
, then maybe we should wait until—”
“Until what, Grace?” He reached to take the towels from her and tossed them on the bed.
She wet her lips. “I—I don’t know.” A thought crossed her mind abruptly. “Have—have you kissed other girls before?”
He turned his eyes away.
“Have you?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
She spun from him and sat down on the edge of the bed, her knees together, her hands clenched in her lap and her chin tilted upward. “I want to know.”
He moved to kneel at her feet. “What do you want to know? And why?”
She forced herself to answer. “Because you know about my . . . past. I want to know about yours.”
He took her hand and laid it over his heart, pressing her fingers to his skin.
“Grace, you alone hold my heart and always will.”
“I would know,” she insisted.
He smiled and let her go, sinking back on his legs to put his hands on his thighs. He looked up at her.
“Sweet, sweet Grace, very well. There was my first kiss—”
“How old were you?” she snapped, surprised at the prick of jealousy she felt at his honest words.
“Fifteen . . . Her name was Ada, an
Englisch
girl, visiting the
Amisch
country from Ireland. She tasted of fresh mint and clover and—” He half closed his eyes.
“All right,” Grace cut him off. “I get Ada. Who else?”
He tilted his head, considering. “Mary and Martha. They were twins, not very charitable to one another but especially indulgent where I was concerned.”
Grace huffed with displeasure.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
“Ellen was
Englisch
too. Her
daed
had a big house. He was never home—”
“All right, Seth Wyse!” She slapped her palms on her knees and stood up, hobbling past him.
“What? You asked.” He stared at her innocently.
She ground her teeth in frustration and whirled to go out the door, trying to ignore the sound of his soft laughter behind her.
When she gained the hall, she pressed her back against the wall, attempting to compose herself. But the words she’d demanded of
him echoed in her head and she feared that she would never be good enough to match the memories that burned in his brain.
S
eth lifted one of the cotton towels from the bed and went to splash water on his chest and arms. He knew enough about women to know she was jealous.
Which meant she cared.
At least a bit.
