Fraying at the Edge (18 page)

A
riana's stomach was queasy as the GPS said, “You've reached your destination.” A trailer sat fifty feet off the road, but the entire side yard seemed to be a parking lot, and it was filled with vehicles. Was she really going to do this? Thoughts of how well things had gone with Cameron came to mind. If she and Cameron could clear the air and choose to be friends, surely she and Quill could.

She pulled in and turned off her car.

A woman emerged from one of the vehicles. Was Ariana at the right place? The trailer wasn't very big. How could five brothers live here?

Ariana stepped out of her car. “Excuse me?”

The woman had opened the trunk and one of the car's back doors and was doing something, but she didn't seem surprised by Ariana's presence. “Yeah?” She lifted a child out of the car and put the adorable blond-haired, blue-eyed boy on her hip. The little one caused Ariana to miss her nieces and nephews, that is, Skylar's nieces and nephews. Pushing that heartache aside, she tried to stay in the moment.

“Hi. I'm not sure I'm at the right place. Does Quill live here?” Ariana asked.

“He does, but I don't think he's here right—”

Ariana thought she heard a door opening, but she couldn't see around the open trunk of the car.

“Honey,” a man said, “you need a hand?”

“Please. Is Quill here?”

“He's on a run,” the man said.

Quill was a runner? Did Ariana actually know anything about him?

“Ah.” The woman shrugged. “One never knows how many miles he'll log.” She appeared disinterested in who Ariana was and why she'd come. Was it an everyday thing for a young woman to come looking for him? Seemed like it.

Quill's golden retriever came toward Ariana from the direction of the trailer, wriggling with excitement.

“Hey, Lexi.” Ariana rubbed her ears, and Lexi licked the sleeves of her coat.

“Ah, she knows you.” The woman sounded curious now, and she gestured toward the trailer. “He's stopped carrying his phone with him on his runs, so I can't reach him. But you're welcome to wait.”

A man came around the side of the car, strolling into view. He wasn't just any man. He was the drunk who'd stumbled into Berta's home maybe two years ago, thinking it was his own. His eyes met Ariana's, and he froze.

The pieces fit now. He hadn't been a confused drunk. He was one of the Schlabach brothers.

The woman studied them, looking from Ariana to the man and back to Ariana. “So you two know each other?”

“Ariana,” the man said as if announcing it to a crowd.

The woman's eyes widened, and her curiosity seemed to turn into surprise. “Oh.” She motioned. “I'm making lasagna. Please join us for dinner.”

Respond to her.
But Ariana couldn't. All her energy was focused on the man in front of her. If he was a Schlabach, he and Berta had worked together that day to trick her. Ariana had watched out for Berta for five years after Quill disappeared, and she'd learned only two months ago that Berta's sons had occasionally visited her during those years.

The Schlabach brothers needed to choose a side and be bold about it. Either live Amish or leave the Amish alone.

Ariana's mouth was dry. “You are…”

“Dan.”

“Berta's oldest.”

He nodded. “I can explain about the day I was in Mamm's house.”

Movement near the trailer caught her attention. At the foot of the steps to the trailer were three men, three women, and several children. Quill's brothers, no doubt. Until this moment they'd felt more like a myth than real people, but there they stood with the women who loved them and the children who relied on them.

How many other deceitful, somewhat embarrassing stories about her did they know that she didn't? Her ears pulsated to the beat of her heart, and if she was going to control her response, she had to say something. “I…I just…need a minute. Okay?”

“Sure.” His eyes showed respect and understanding.

She hated to turn her back to them, but she had to, taking in deep breaths while looking skyward. Had she played the fool for Berta? After Dan had startled her that day, she'd spent months worrying that the drunk might return when Berta was alone. Ariana had asked her brother-in-law to install better locks, which he did, and she started going by Berta's more often.

Berta…If Quill and his brothers were cloaked in secrets, their mother was too. Ariana had sort of realized that after learning about the sons' visits, but the weight of how deep that secret life went hadn't unloaded on her until now. Berta had known how worried Ariana was about her after the incident with the supposed drunk. But Berta continually discounted the event, talking as if it'd been nothing and telling Ariana she had nothing to worry about. Why hadn't Berta broken her silence and spared Ariana the concern?

Breathe, Ariana.
Cold air rushed into her lungs time and again as she tried to put the event into perspective. She had come to apologize to Quill, and she would
not
stir discord with his siblings. “Okay.” She turned back around and realized the brothers and their families had moved closer. They were still hanging back a little, as if unwilling to remain where they couldn't hear what was going on but not wishing to crowd her.

She held out her hand to Dan. “Ariana.” What was she doing? He knew who she was.

He shook her hand. “This is my wife, Regina.”

Ariana shook her hand.

“Listen, Ariana,”—Dan rubbed his clean-shaven jaw, and the gold band on his finger gleamed—“I feel the need to clarify that Mamm had little choice. She longed to see her children on occasion. You can understand that, right?”

Dan was the eldest, and it had seemed he had drawn each brother away from the Amish. But maybe not Quill. Last month he'd told her he hadn't connected with his brothers until two years after he'd left the Amish. She didn't know why he'd waited that long any more than she knew why he'd left in the first place.

“Yeah, but—”

“There are really no
buts.
The bishop decreed there was to be no contact between her and us. I'm sorry we had to deceive you, especially my pretending to be a drunk. Mamm had to choose either not to see any of us or to see us without making you a party to disobeying the bishop.”

If Ariana had learned anything since leaving Summer Grove, it was the heartache of longing to see loved ones. How could a mother not want to see her children? Maybe Ariana's viewpoint of either live Amish or leave the Amish alone wasn't as easily done or as right as she'd thought.

“Mamm misses you.” Dan lifted the little boy from Regina's arms. “She's counting the days until you get back. You won't hold the incident against her, will you?”

How many people were lied to and tricked the way Ariana had been and still kept the relationship intact? “It's a lot to ask.”

“It is. But in our own way, we—you and us—try to help the world go round for people we care about. Mamm is one of those people. You can disagree with how we keep her world moving, but don't hold Mamm responsible.”

Ariana wasn't sure that people like Dan helped the world go round as much as they helped pull it apart. “I'll need more than a moment on that one.”

“Sure. I get that, but—”

“Guys?” Quill came to a halt on the far side of a red car. He put his hands on his knees, staring at the ground and breathing heavily. “What's everyone doing out here?”

“You have company,” one of his brothers answered.

Quill took a few more breaths before he stood upright. “Yeah?” His dark blond hair was disheveled, and he looked very different in shorts and a T-shirt. A few moments later his eyes landed on Ariana, and he said nothing as he walked toward her.

“Okay, guys,”—Dan looped his finger through the air as if it were a lasso—“everyone inside.”

Regina grabbed some grocery bags out of the car and hooked some on Dan's hands as he held the little boy in the crook of his arm.

Dan turned back to Ariana. “You're more than welcome anytime, either here or at our homes in Kentucky. If you arrive here and nobody's home, we keep a key in a toy under those rickety steps.”

She looked at Quill, who'd moved in closer, easily able to hear what Dan had said.

Clearing her throat, she hoped to speak without her voice wavering. “That's a kind invitation, Dan.” But she wouldn't return. Quill's family lived between two worlds, and she found it dishonest.

Quill studied her, but neither spoke until everyone else was inside. “I wasn't expecting you.”

She took in the man in front of her, the stranger she knew all too well. “I had things I needed to say—an apology—but now my emotions are all over the place, like that crazy roller coaster we used to tease about…the Thunderhawk. And I'm on it once again, and I…I can't think straight.”

“It's fine, Ari. You're here, which is nice. Let's talk.”

His calmness settled her jittery nerves, and she took a cleansing breath, trying to slow the roller coaster. “Nothing about us is ever normal or easy, is it?”

He leaned against the car parked next to hers, looking tranquil. “Our relationship is unique, but then again, for better and worse, we're unique. So it fits.”

“Are the lies and trickery befitting of us too?”

“Every deception had a purpose, and none of it was done for selfish reasons. Some were poor decisions, but not selfish. What's this about apologizing?”

Was he serious?

But he was right. That is what she came for. “Ya, about that.”

Some birds dipped low and rose again with such uniformity they reminded her of a huge flag waving in the wind. She closed her eyes, listening as the wind rustled through the trees, birds cawed, and thunder rumbled in the distance. Her thoughts began to gather again.

“Sometime during last night's fitful sleep, I realized I've been angry with you since you left five years ago. Then when I learned that I wasn't a Brenneman and that you were involved in uncovering the truth, being angry with you was the only familiar thing left in my life, and I've been clinging to it with all I had.”

“That's a tough thing to have to use as your anchor. I'm sorry for my part in—”

“Shh.” She leaned forward and touched his arm, shaking her head. “I know. We've been there before—you apologizing, me forgiving. Let's not rehash it. I'm here to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry for how I behaved last night, and I'm sorry for waffling in my forgiveness, allowing old hurts to rise up and control me, making me feel justified to invite you in or kick you out of my life at will.”

His eyes never moved from hers. “Apology accepted.” His voice was hoarse. “Thank you.”

The air between them seemed to vibrate with awkwardness…and some indefinable emotion. Maybe he felt it too, because he looked away. And then Lexi dropped a tennis ball at his feet. He picked it up and threw it a long way.

“You're welcome. Also I really appreciate your help last night. You came when I called, and you protected me from myself.”

“Ari, we're friends, and that's what friends do.”

“Are we friends? Because if I'm really honest, this relationship”—she pointed at him and then herself and then back and forth—“is a one-way street. It's pastoral care by you, and I'm the flock.”

When Lexi dropped the ball at his feet again, Quill picked it up and threw it even farther.

“What you do for Mamm makes you the best friend I have.”

“That's just so not how relationships work.”

“I'd say it works pretty well. We are two very different people, working through frustrations. Maybe your idea of friendship is people who hold the same views about right and wrong.”

“Maybe.” She was a long way from knowing how to accept her parents, herself, her new role as their daughter, and the Englisch ways without criticism and discontent. She longed to at least close the distance between Quill and her, but there was so much debris to deal with. “It's just hard to think in friendly terms when I hate what you do, sneaking in to help Amish people leave. My sister? Really?”