An Amish Wedding (10 page)

Luke lowered his hand, feeling like his mouth still burned from Rose’s attention, and glanced at his
bruder
. “What?” he asked finally.

“She sure gets riled,” Mark offered.

Luke smiled. “I like that.”

“It’s no wonder—you like thunderstorms too.”

“Did you hear much?” Luke’s brow furrowed.

Mark shook his head sheepishly. “Told you I was fixing that sill. I wasn’t trying to listen.”

“All right. And?”

“Josh and I have been talking. We know you don’t like being cooped up in that office all day. And—well—now that you’re about to marry, you might find the place even more confining. Women can be a passel of trouble sometimes . . .”

“And you know this how?”

“Shut up. I’m trying to help you. Josh and I want you to tell
Daed
how you really feel.”

“How I really feel?”

“
Ya
, you know, about fooling with the books and the customers. Tell him you want to do woodworking—even if it’s just part of the time. It’ll be
gut
for you.”

Luke smiled, but rolled his eyes. It felt good to be cared for and thought of with such kindness, even though his brothers could drive him
narrisch
. But he didn’t want to listen to another lecture on doing what was true to himself. He had enough trouble just being true, or so it seemed.

“I’m fine, Mark. Really. Somebody’s got to do it, but
danki
for caring.”

His brother snorted. “You’re not going to brush me off that easily. After I got over
Daed
’s praise—which rightly belonged to you—I found something of yours in the workshop.”

Luke shrugged. “What?”

“This.” Mark pulled a folded piece of paper from his pants pocket and strode across the room to hand it to Luke.

Luke opened the drawing, already guessing what it was. “I wondered where this got to. I must have left it one night.” He stared down at the intricate design for a mantel shelf that he had hoped to carve for Rose as a wedding gift.

Mark cleared his throat. “That’s a fine vision of work, Luke. Better than anything me or Josh could design. You owe it to yourself to work a talent like that. Maybe you owe it to
Derr Herr
too.”

Luke exhaled slowly at his brother’s unusually serious tone and leveled his own voice in response. “I said I’m fine as I am. That’s all.”

Mark gave a wry shake of his head. “All right. I tried. Suit yourself.” He cuffed Luke lightly on the shoulder as he turned from the bed.

Luke smiled at the veiled affection. Then he carefully folded the drawing and slid it into his pants pocket.

“Hey.” Mark paused. “Do you want me to drive you over there tomorrow to talk to her? It’s no fair runnin’ away on a one-legged man.”

“Would you?”

“
Ya
, but maybe she needs a while to cool down.”

Luke smiled. “Told you. I like it when she’s riled. Keeps me on my toes.”

Chapter Sixteen

R
OSE KNEW HE COULDN’T CHASE AFTER HER WHEN SHE
slammed the door on his pleas. She jogged down the steps, feeling a bit guilty, and slowed briefly to say good-bye to Mr. Lantz.

“Is everything all right, Rose? I heard the door . . .” He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “I know the engagement time can be stressful.”

Rose gave him a wan smile. “It’s nothing. Luke is just tired, and I should leave. Please forgive me for hurrying so.”

“All right, child. But if there’s anything you’d like to talk about—I’m always here.”

Rose nodded her thanks and slipped outdoors. She knew exactly where she was going . . .

C
ARRYING A FLASHLIGHT
, R
OSE RETRACED HER WAY
through the woods. The light faded fast in the fall evenings, and the dense trees made it appear even darker. She huddled more deeply in the folds of her cloak as she approached the tumbledown shack. She felt nervous for some reason—not afraid of the twilight or the crack and rustle of small creatures among the forest branches, but rather of what she might find at the shack. It was pure instinct that drove her, searching for something, anything—a clue to the
Englisch
woman Luke spoke of and her place in his life.

Rose shone the flashlight over the open threshold of the door and shuddered a bit when she saw the pile of rubble from the caved-in roof. Luke could have been hurt a lot worse. The small circle of light played against the walls with their peeling dry wood and then back to the floor again. She almost turned away, feeling foolish, when a piece of paper poking out from under a board caught her attention. She tiptoed across the creaking floor and scooped the paper up, then rushed back outside. She had no desire for another board to come tumbling down while she was out alone.

A safe distance from the shack, she balanced her light in one hand and unfolded the lightweight paper with care. It was the page of a coloring book. Amish parents would sometimes allow coloring books and wax colors to occupy very young children during the long Sunday church service, but the pictures were of simple objects like a wagon or an apple. This was an outline of a beautiful rainbow and clouds, obviously colored with diligence and signed by its artist in uneven block letters—TO DADDY LUV ALLY.

Rose bit her lip to stem the sudden welling up of tears that threatened to pour from her eyes.

Chapter Seventeen

L
UKE KNEW HE WAS DREAMING, BUT HE WAS TOO CAUGHT
, too enmeshed in the images playing inside his mind to force himself to wake. He was losing Rose in a thousand different ways; fast-forwarded images—Rose in a boat on storm-tossed waves drifting away from him, the eerie lights of a carnival’s Ferris wheel and Rose spinning high to the top in a swinging singsong motion, Rose standing on the edge of a cavernous drop while he tried desperately to reach her. Everything that was human in him recognized the fear, the distance, and he knew he had to tell her the whole truth. It was the only way he was going to be able to stay close to her, but when he opened his mouth to speak, he awoke shivering and knew that dawn couldn’t come fast enough.

“S
URE YOU’RE NOT GETTING SICK
, R
OSIE?” HER FATHER
asked with genuine concern when she appeared wan and sleepy at the breakfast table.

“Nee, Daed.”
Though she wondered if she actually was sick, as awful as she felt inside. She had spent the night clutching the child’s drawing, examining it by the light of a kerosene lamp from every angle, and was no nearer the truth than she had been standing outside the shack the night before.

She tried to think logically. Ally was not a traditional Amish name, yet she had no doubt the drawing had been a gift of some kind to Luke. It must have slipped from his jeans pocket when he fell. She noticed that the child had drawn faces on the clouds, so that their raindrops looked like tears. What would clouds weep for? And for so young a life’s imagination?

And then that single word:
Daddy
. The letters had rung through Rose’s mind with all the cadence of a loud and clanging bell, merciless in intensity and reverberating possibility. Luke was twenty-three . . . The child had to be at least four or five, judging from her letter formation . . . That would make Luke eighteen if he were . . . She couldn’t finish the thought, not once the whole night through nor now as she tried to concentrate on her scrambled eggs.

But like a bad canker sore that attracts the tongue, her mind kept running over the possibilities with drawing pain. She and Luke had both had a
rumschpringe
, but it had been nothing like some she knew. At least for her it hadn’t been . . . She’d ridden in a car once, gone to two
Englisch
baseball games, and stayed out all night singing round a campfire with some of her Amish friends. She racked her brain for what Luke had been doing and realized she couldn’t fill in all the blanks of time. He’d been to her then what he always was . . . devoted. But friendship or not, she didn’t see him all the time. Could he have met an
Englisch
girl? Could he have had a relationship that she didn’t know about?

She poked at her eggs and wished now that she would have stayed and listened to his odd request for help instead of running away like a child. She began to pray for guidance as she determinedly ate her food under the watchful eyes of her father and thought that life could be as difficult as navigating in the dark sometimes. Then she recalled the Bible verse that said “all the dark was as light” to the Lord; it gave her something to cling to as she ate her eggs.

L
UKE KNEW THAT HE WAS PROBABLY CATCHING
R
OSE’S
family right at breakfast, but he hadn’t been able to go back to sleep. Consequently, he’d poked Mark out of bed with one of his crutches just after dawn, and they now rode through the chill morning air in the buggy.

“I don’t mind takin’ you.” Mark’s teeth chattered as he spoke. “But isn’t this kind of early for working out your differences?”

Luke waved a vague hand at his brother. “Never too early to make things right.”

“Well, I hope breakfast is still on the table. I’d love to have a stack of pancakes made by a woman’s hand.”

Mark soon had his wish. Mrs. Bender hustled them in out of the cold, and Mr. Bender filled their coffee cups before they could get their coats off. Luke glanced at Rose and found, to his dismay, that she looked worn and weary. He had to get her alone to talk, but the Bender men appeared to love company at any hour.

And in truth, though he was worried for Rose, there was something infinitely soothing about the stack of pancakes that was placed before him, steaming with goodness and light as air. He toyed with his fork, wondering whether to take a bite or just ask to see Rose alone for a moment first.

“Eat up,
sohn
,” his future father-in-law urged him. “And tell us how you’re feeling with that wrist and ankle. Rosie wasn’t quite straight on how it all happened.”

Luke caught the daggered look Rose threw him across the table and decided she was still mad enough. He also had no clear idea how to answer her father. He took a careful bite of pancakes and smiled at Mrs. Bender. “Wonderful.”

“Ach, ya,”
Mark agreed with him.

Mrs. Bender gave a quick nod at their appreciation. “
Danki
. Eat hearty—there’s plenty more,” she said, moving back to the stove.

Luke cleared his throat and looked back to Mr. Bender as Rose arched a delicate dark brow in expectation of his response. He knew that look; it was a blatant challenge. He’d seen it enough when she’d dared him to climb higher in the old oak or to ford a rushing stream. He gave her an enigmatic smile.