Seasons of Tomorrow (42 page)

He rolled up his pants legs and sat beside her. The water rippled across the pool, catching sunlight that sparkled off the top and swayed shadows through the depths. Sitting there with her, chatting, he felt a sense of peace that burrowed into his soul. It was perfect.

The funny thing about Esther was that, in her own way, she was every bit as private as he’d been before he met her. So he paced his multitude of questions, asking only a couple of important ones each time he came. Some
he’d asked a few times but she’d gently refused to answer or had changed the subject. “So, why house pregnant girls?”

“Because they need it.”

“Ya, I get that, but it puts you and your life under a microscope. So you’ve added to the challenges of the Old Ways by making yourself the object of suspicion and prejudice in your own community.”

She watched the water, swishing her legs through it, then shrugged. Obviously, she wasn’t ready to talk about her reasons.

He cupped a handful of water and dumped it back into the pool. She seemed lost in thought. Even though they engaged in plenty of lively banter and laughter and talked about lots of serious topics, this subject seemed off limits.

She turned to him. “You know …”

He chuckled. “I know that tone. You have an idea.”

She grinned. “Late this afternoon we could use the outdoor kitchen and cook dinner. Doesn’t eating by the pool in the cool of the evening sound perfect?”

“It sounds nice. Perfect would be that meal at the ocean.”

Her eyes grew large. “You’re right.” She raised her eyebrows. “After the kitchen is done, let’s set up a weekend to get Bailey to take us there as a celebration.”

Jacob started to get up.

She looked at him. “Where are you going?”

“If that’s the deal on finishing the kitchen, I’m getting back to work.”

She laughed. “Sit.”

“But I need to work.”

“Sit.” She patted the concrete. “I know Bailey’s schedule, and he can’t take us to the beach for at least two weeks.”

Jacob sat and plunked his feet into the water, splashing her. Without so much as a flinch, she propped her hands on the cement behind her.

Jacob did the same thing, settling his hand near hers. “I’ve been thinking, Shark Bait.”

She closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the sun, soaking in a few rays. “Ya? What about?”

His brushed his fingers over hers. “Maybe we should … think about dating.”

She sat upright, eyes wide with disbelief. Was she that surprised? Seemed to him she should be shocked if he wasn’t leaning in that direction.

He waved his hand away from himself. “I’m talking a long, long way down the road.”

“Jacob …” She shook her head. “Don’t do this. Don’t ask it. Please.”

“You’ve
never
had that thought?”

“Well, I … I have, but thoughts don’t matter. Actions do, and we talked about this.”

“That was months ago—hours of phone conversations ago, many trips and working side by side ago. Just admit what you feel, what
we
feel, and say it’s a possibility in a year or so.”

“But it’s not.”

He scoffed, a bitter laugh that he immediately regretted. “You can’t be serious. Why is it so hard for you to own up to your feelings?”

She started to stand, and he grabbed her wrist. “Come on, Esther. Don’t get all skittish.”

She pulled free and grabbed her shoes, knocking the soles of them together, probably to release some of the angst inside her. “I told you men aren’t good at being just friends.”

Her words slapped across his soul, and anger rushed to the surface. He stood. “And how many men have been where I am now, Esther? How many have navigated over the line of friendship and landed square in the middle of a budding romance, and then you blamed them for crossing the line because you couldn’t admit how you felt?”

“You should go.” True to form, her words were softly spoken, but he knew she meant them.
Why
had he started this conversation?

She started walking away. “Esther, wait.”

She paused and turned to face him. He studied her, seeing a dozen emotions mirrored in her eyes, and even though she stood right here, he
knew she was running from him. Jacob closed the gap. “If it helps you, then let’s agree to forget everything I said. You can count it as a moment of insanity brought on by daydreaming.”

“It’s too late. I can’t pretend like that.”

“But you could pretend to be married. Doesn’t that tell you how mixed-up you are when it comes to admitting who you really are and how you really feel?”

The sliding glass door whooshed open, and Dora stepped outside, carrying a cardboard box about half the width of a shoebox. Squinting against the sun, she angled her head and looked at him. “Jacob?”

His heart sank. “Hi, Dora.”

Dora glanced from Jacob to Esther, looking dismayed and offended. “What are you doing here?”

“He’s building an outdoor kitchen for Bailey and Althea.” Esther took a few steps back, motioning at the kitchen.

“Esther,” Jacob whispered. Was she really going to continue the cover-up?

Esther turned her back to Dora, faced him, and whispered, “Leave it alone, Jacob.”

Dora walked toward the kitchen, looking at the set foundation, timber framing, and almost-finished roof. Her eyes moved to Jacob.

He’d told her that he wasn’t dating her anymore. If she’d accepted that, she wouldn’t feel betrayed right now. But how could he remind her of that as they stood in front of her sister? The situation was ridiculous.

“Dora.” Jacob bent, rolling down his pants legs, using the time to think. He didn’t want to apologize for going out with her. That would only be an insult. And he certainly wasn’t sorry for the time he’d spent with Esther. He stood upright. “I know Esther isn’t married, but I learned it a month after you and I stopped dating.”

“So you’re dating my sister?”

“No.” Esther shook her head.

Dora pointed the package at Esther. “I found this in the attic, and when I realized what it was, my heart fluttered, thinking you’d found a way for
me to make contact with Jacob and for us to have a connection. I’m such a fool. I should’ve known you hadn’t changed. You planned the breakup from the day you met him, didn’t you? You’d get him to dump me and chase after you, the pretty one.”

“Dora, I haven’t told you everything, but it’s not like that.”

“It’s
always
like that! Did she tell you, Jacob? The men are either unworthy of me, so she runs them off, or they look past me to her. What is it about a used-up, older woman that attracts the men, Esther?”

“Dora …” Esther’s calm response was a huge contrast to Dora’s flaring emotions.

“Don’t you ‘Dora’ me! When you learned that a new man in town had asked me out, you promised to stay away from him. You gave your word!” Dora’s face was scarlet red.

Esther drew a deep breath. “We ran into each other, almost literally.”

Dora scoffed. “I bet that
happenstance
took a lot of planning, didn’t it?”

Esther’s breathing became labored. Did she have asthma? “You know better than that. You’re just upset—”

“What I know is this was the last straw.” Dora shoved the box toward her, the package shaking.

Jacob understood better why Esther had hoped Dora wouldn’t find out about their friendship until she had someone else. Dora resented her sister to the point that she couldn’t balance her emotions with facts and couldn’t be reasoned with.

Jacob removed his hat. “Maybe we should’ve told you that we’ve become friends. But you and I went on only three dates.”

“You liked me, and then you bumped into her. Even after you broke up with me, you kissed me. Did you tell her that?”

She was using any weapon she had to hurt her sister and come between Jacob and Esther—as if they needed any help with that. All by himself he was doing a fine job of messing up what they had. “There was only one kiss, and you kissed me.”

Dora blinked, looking shocked. Hadn’t she expected him to defend himself? Her surprise soon faded, and she slammed the package on a nearby
table. “Esther, don’t ever speak to me again. From here on I have two sisters, not three.” She stormed to the gate of the blind fence and slammed it behind her.

Esther remained glued in place, seemingly resigned to the ugliness Dora had spewed at her. She sighed. “She meant every word. It could be years before she’s willing to forgive me, and make no mistake, she’ll view the whole thing as my fault.”

Where did this leave him and Esther?

Esther went to the table and picked up the box. “I should’ve told you the truth from the start, and after you found out, I continued the cover-up with Dora. It makes me a horrible person, and I hate who I end up being because of her, but I never know how to handle her.”

“Maybe you should stop trying to ‘handle her’ and just be yourself and live your life. I can’t see how you two could’ve ended up worse off than you are now.”

“I can’t argue with that reasoning.” Esther flipped the narrow box from one side to another, staring at it. “She was upset and saying things she shouldn’t have. Her depictions and insinuations about me aren’t true.”

The fact that Dora had tried to turn the kiss she gave him into something seductive was his proof that she twisted the truth. “I believe you … not that anything in your past changes how I feel.”

With his past cleaned up so that he didn’t need to hide and his talking to Esther about anything and everything, his thoughts and understanding had become clear. He now saw situations for what they really were. And he knew they weren’t just friends. There was a spark and something magical between them. And more than that, each of them had a hope of a future together. That wasn’t his imagination lying to him.

“But what is true, Esther? Do even you know?” Could she see that how she felt didn’t match how she treated him?

She pursed her lips, tears falling. “Ya. What’s true is I can’t do this. I know it’s me, and I … I’m sorry.” She put the box in his hands. “This is for you. I’ve been searching for it since before you discovered I wasn’t married. At the time I wanted it to be a thank-you gift. A good-bye gift.” She paused,
staring up at him, confusion and hurt floating in her misty eyes. “And as it turns out, that’s what it is. You take good care of yourself, and find a girl you like who didn’t decide never to marry.” She hurried across the pool deck and into the house.

Jacob stood there. An outdoor kitchen waited for him to finish it, and he’d complete the job before he left.

He looked at the parcel. He would be twenty-five at the end of this month, but part of him felt as foolish as a child who’d broken his mother’s favorite item, one that had been passed down for generations, one he wasn’t supposed to have picked up in the first place.

But he’d asked Esther about the two of them dating one day, and now he had no choice—he had to give Esther time before he approached her again. That’s what she did when she mediated with the pregnant girls’ parents—remained available to the parents and protected their children while giving them time to adjust and think about who they really were and what they wanted to do with the facts of the situation.

He opened the box. A doorknob? He picked it up. It was a particularly plain one that appeared to have been painted black a very long time ago. According to what Esther had shared with him, that meant it’d been in a Plain home—either Amish or Mennonite. It had a tag on it: House, circa 1750. Doorknob, circa 1899. Taken from the one-time home of Moses King on Ashen Wood Lane, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by Esther Beachy, July 2000.

She would’ve been fourteen and visiting her grandmother’s for a few days that summer. It would’ve been right before her Daed got sick. Jacob wasn’t one for looking back, but wasn’t the Moses King at that address the original King homesteader in Lancaster? How many generations back was he? Even with Jacob’s math skills, he didn’t know.

He clutched it, feeling the power of a connection that went back hundreds of years. The question on his mind was, could he get Esther to stop holding on to the past and step into the future?

And if he could, how many years would it take?

THIRTY-SIX

Rhoda, Samuel, and Leah sat in the waiting room filled with Amish people. The three of them had arrived almost an hour ago, and although they’d visited with plenty of relatives, they hadn’t seen Steven yet. He was allowing his parents and Phoebe’s to take turns seeing Phoebe, and the next time he returned to the waiting room, he’d see them.

Her pulse thumped inside her ears. After all this time the next few days would tell where Phoebe and her son would land. Phoebe’s lungs had hardened, unable to stretch as needed to absorb the oxygen the machines pumped into them, and the antibiotic-resistant infection wouldn’t clear up unless they could get her off the ventilator.

But the doctor who’d said Phoebe should start improving once the baby was delivered had been right. Phoebe was still in ICU, and the baby was in the NICU, but Phoebe had improved enough that now, just three days after they’d taken the baby by C-section, they were going to bring her out of the coma. The elasticity to her lungs would slowly return to normal once she was breathing on her own.