A Secret Identity (7 page)

By the time the books were finished, I wanted to meet my own Scott Henderson. He was tall and handsome, intelligent, and had a heart for God. He also knew how to make a woman happy. He was always there to support Marci through her trials. He held her hand when she was hurt and offered a strong shoulder to cry on. He prayed for her and loved her unreservedly. He accepted her just as she was, encouraging her in the process of becoming God’s woman.

Sometimes I was afraid that men like Scott existed only in fiction. I certainly wasn’t meeting guys like him. Then I thought of Mom and Pop and Ward and Marnie. They’d found true love…real love. And I prayed almost desperately that God would let me find the same.

I rubbed a finger softly over the cover of
So My Soul
. Others wrote trilogies. I wrote series of two. Duologies? Maybe some day I’d think up enough stuff to warrant a trilogy, but for now, two did it. And these two were doing it exceedingly well.

I was standing there grinning to myself when someone bumped my arm. I turned to say I was sorry and found myself face-to-face with the handsomest lawyer in Lancaster County.

“Hey,” I said cleverly as I tried not to stare at his magnificent jawline.

“Well, hi,” he said, slightly more articulate.

“Here for dinner?” I asked.

He nodded. “I find restaurants good places to come for dinner, don’t you?”

I grinned. It was either that or blush a zillion shades of red for my inane remark. “Chitchat’s not my strong suit,” I said. “Whatever comes to mind comes out, idiotic or not.”

He grinned politely back.

“Guess what I did today?” I said.

Of course he hadn’t the vaguest idea.

“I called all the Biemsderfers in the phone book.”

He nodded as if he were actually interested. “Any of them confess to being long-lost relatives?”

I shook my head.

“I’m glad,” he said. “I’d hate to lose a billing before I had a chance to reap all the profits possible.”

“Ah,” I said. “Res ipsa loquitor.”

He shook his head.
“Carpe diem
.”

“I know that one,” I said. “Seize the day. I also know
et al, ipso facto
, and
et cetera
.”

“I’m impressed,” he said. “I’ve always appreciated multilingual people.”

I think that this time I actually did blush at his gentle teasing, but I’m not certain. It could have been the heat from my afternoon sunburn.

A woman’s voice said, “Two?” and I realized we were standing before the hostess. She looked at Todd, obviously anticipating that yes, he and I were two and here for dinner together. I definitely flushed now, expecting him to say, “Oh no, I’m not here with her. I’m just making pleasant conversation because she’s a client. I’m really here with that beautiful woman over there.”

Instead he looked at me and raised an eyebrow in invitation. Surprised and pleased, I gave a small nod.

“Yes, two. Reasoner,” he said. Then, in an aside to me, “Thanks for being here. Now I can claim the meal as a business deduction.”

Startled, I looked at him and caught a gleam of humor in those brown eyes, those bottomless brown eyes. I’d been right.

“Thirty to forty minutes,” the hostess said.

We nodded and moved away. Just then a couple got up from a bench along the wall and we took the deserted seats.

“Tell me about your phone calls,” Todd asked. And for the next twenty minutes, I did. He listened attentively, asking questions every so often, laughing at Mrs. Marlin, Sr., hanging up on me.

“So I’m going to have lunch with Alma next Thursday when she comes to get her mother. She’s bringing the family tree with her.”

When I finished, he just looked at me, a smile on his face. “And you’re not the least bit excited about this meeting, are you?”

“It shows?”

“You’re positively vibrating.”

I stared at him. “Me? Vibrating? I never vibrate. I’m low-key. I’m quiet and laid back.”

He looked at me skeptically.

“Truly,” I said. “I’m a writer. I lead a quiet life. My brother and sister-in-law say I only live through my characters. Mom and Pop kept at me all the time to get a life.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know about then, but this is now and you’re having a hard time sitting still.”

I grinned. “I am fidgeting a bit, aren’t I? But isn’t it exciting? I may be meeting my family!”

Todd seemed to just then catch my admission to being a writer. “Did you say you’re a writer? What do you write?”

“Okay, don’t laugh, but I write inspirational romance novels.” I waited for the inevitable incredulous reaction, but Todd only paused a moment, taking in this new information.

“Well, I guess this is where I should be embarassed to say I don’t think I’ve read any of your books,” he finally said.

“That’s quite okay. I generally give a pass to men when it comes to reading my books.”

“Reasoner, party of two,” a metallic voice called over a PA system. “Reasoner, party of two.”

We followed a young woman with a head covering to a booth along the outside wall of the restaurant. She left us studying two large menus with amazingly inexpensive meals.

“Is she Amish?” I asked Todd.

He glanced at the hostess’s retreating back and shook his head. “No, she’s Mennonite.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked. “They both wear those prayer cap thingys.”

“They come from the same Anabaptist heritage, but they’ve diverged through the years.”

“How?”

“While the Amish have stayed as separate from the general culture as they can, the Mennonites have accepted change and integrated it into their religious lives. They share the Anabaptist heritage of nonviolence and adult baptism, but they’re thoroughly modern.”

I laid my menu on the table. “I know Southern Baptist and General Baptist and Regular Baptist and lots of other Baptists. What’s Anabaptist?”

He leaned back in his seat and rested a hand on the edge of the table. He lowered his menu so he could see me more easily. “Back in the Protestant Reformation, a group of dissidents decided they didn’t agree with the Catholic Church practice of infant baptism. They argued that a person shouldn’t be baptized until he was old enough to understand what faith in Christ was all about. So these dissidents rebaptized themselves in the early 1500s. That’s what Anabaptist means. Rebaptized or baptized again. One group of the Anabaptists followed a man named Menno Simons and became known as Mennonites. Another group broke from the Mennonites more than a century later and followed a fiery preacher named Jakob Ammonn. They became known as Amish.”

“How did the two groups end up in this area?”

“Religious persecution.”

“Pacifists were persecuted? But weren’t they gentle people?”

“Yes, in that they wouldn’t retaliate. No, in that they stood against the institution of the state church and were considered very dangerous to the political and social order of the day. That was a time when church and state were intricately linked, and those of differing religious views were seen as seditious.”

“So they got kicked around?”

“Kicked around nothing. They got drowned and burned and murdered in great numbers. They came here to escape, and by chance they ended up in one of the most fertile areas in the world.”

I grinned at the way he emphasized
by chance
. It made me think that he might understand how God can make the evil that people do praise Him in the end. Persecution meant flight, which meant the New World and Lancaster County. Plenty after famine.

Our waitress came for our order. I decided on stuffed chicken breast, baked potato, and a salad. Todd had pork and sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, and cottage cheese with apple butter. We both ordered sweetened iced tea.

She returned in record time with our drinks, my salad, and Todd’s cottage cheese, topped with a dark brown substance the consistency of burnt applesauce.

“What’s that?” I asked suspiciously.

“Apple butter.”

“It’s brown.”

“Umm.”

“You actually eat brown food?”

“With great relish,” he said, taking a forkful. “And you eat brown food too. Meat’s brown.”

“Meat doesn’t count. It sort of matches your eyes,” I pointed at the apple butter.

He made a choking sound. “What?”

“Well, it does.”

“If you say so. No one’s ever made that comparison before. Want to try some?” He offered me his dish.

I looked at it dubiously.

“Come on,” he said. “When in Rome…”

“Res ipsa loquitor,” I said.

“Precisely,” he said.

I stuck my fork in his dish just enough to get the tines damp.

“Coward,” he said.

“Precisely,” I said and with great trepidation stuck my fork in my mouth. I was very pleasantly surprised. “It’s sweet.”

He laughed. “What did you expect?”

“Brown food? Meat. Gravy. They’re not sweet.” I took a real forkful this time, making certain to get some of the cottage cheese too. “I like it.”

“Uh oh,” he said and pulled his dish back to the safety of his own placemat. I politely ate my own salad.

“Tell me about your family,” I said as we started our main courses.

He shrugged. “Not much to tell. I’m an only child of elderly parents. My mother died when I was five, and my father tried his best, but it was hard.”

I could tell by the expression on his face that it was still hard, or at least the memories were.

“How old is elderly?” I asked.

“My father was fifty-five when I was born, my mother forty-three. They had long since given up on the idea of a child.”

“So your mother was only forty-eight when she died?”

He nodded.

“Mine was twenty-nine,” I said. “I was one.”

We looked at each other with sympathy.

“So your father raised you too?” Todd asked.

I shook my head. “My dad died with my mother. Automobile accident. One of those massive pileups where they had the misfortunate of being between two semi trucks.”

“Ouch,” he said. “My mother died of ovarian cancer.”

We were quiet a minute, chewing, contemplating.

“So who raised you?” he asked.

I spent most of the main course telling him about Mom and Pop, laughing, filled with warm memories.

Todd listened, a sad kind of envy just below the surface. “You had a wonderful childhood in spite of everything, didn’t you? Just like in books.”

I nodded. “Lots of love, lots of laughter, and a real, practical faith modeled rigorously.”

Todd sighed. “Well, I had the faith part anyway, and I truly am appreciative of that. My father loved the Lord and saw to it that I had opportunity for real faith too. Church and Bible school every Sunday morning and youth group every Sunday night. Vacation Bible school. Church camp. But the love and laughter part weren’t there.” He put his knife and fork on his empty plate and leaned back against his seat, trying to keep his face impassive but not quite succeeding.

“My father is a nice enough man, I guess,” he said. “He has a PhD in English literature and taught at Millersville University for years and years. He was there when it was a state teachers college, then a state college, and finally a state university. He is very scholarly, highly respected in academic circles, and very introverted. His life is medieval literature and culture. Samuel Pepys and his diary and John Milton are much more important to him than I’ve ever been.”

I thought of Pop and his great lust for life. I imagined little Todd being read a bedtime story from
Paradise Lost
. I shivered. Certainly one of the rings of Hell.

Todd reached for his iced tea and turned the glass in circles on the table. He stared at the watermarks as he talked. “I learned as a little boy that my father was happy when I was quiet and invisible, so I became quiet and invisible. He almost smiled when I got good grades, so I got good grades, always hoping. He was almost impressed if I excelled in whatever pursuit I followed, from academic teams to science fairs. I tried everything I could think of to please him, but I don’t think I ever got a compliment.”

I leaned my elbow on the table and looked at the handsome, competent, well-educated man across the table from me. I concentrated on his words, trying to see the deeper truths behind them, marveling that he was telling me all this information. I was willing to bet he rarely talked about his father and certainly didn’t talk about their painful relationship. And certainly not with someone he barely knew. I felt complimented beyond reason. He looked up suddenly and saw my intense look.

He smiled wryly and shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to whine.”

“Hey.” I reached across the table and put my hand on his arm. “I didn’t hear whining. I heard part of a life story. I was just imagining that little boy sitting in an overstuffed chair too big for him, his legs sticking straight out in front of him as he studied the encyclopedia so he could converse with his father.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “But it was a sofa with a brown print that was ugly as sin, and it was
Paradise Lost
.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as I put my hand back in my lap. “We, on the other hand, saw all the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “Now what do you want for dessert?” This last was asked as our waitress began clearing the table. He smiled and rubbed his hands, apparently glad for the opportunity to relieve the emotional tenor of our conversation. “How about some shoofly pie?”

“What’s shoofly pie? It sounds awful.”

“It’s a molasses pie,” answered the waitress, obviously used to the question.

“A molasses pie?” It still sounded awful. “Filled with flies?”

“It’s delicious,” Todd assured me.

“I’ll take coconut custard,” I said emphatically.

“Warm shoofly with whipped cream,” Todd said. After the waitress walked away, he looked at me. “You should have trusted me on the pie. You’ll be sorry.”

When the desserts came, I looked at his. “It’s brown! What is it with you Pennsylvania Dutch and brown food?”

“I’m not Pennsylvania Dutch,” Todd said. “And what is it with you tourists that you won’t try new stuff?”