The Amish Blacksmith (42 page)

I laughed again now, lightly though, because as much as I wanted to ignore it, the shuddering barrier inside of me was still rumbling. “Horses are easily frightened by what they don't understand, Priscilla. They have a heightened sense of their need to survive. That's all it is.”

She cocked her head. “My point exactly.”

“What? What's your point?”

“You, too, are easily frightened by what you don't understand. And you've a heightened sense of
your
need to survive. You just want to eat, sleep, and pull a buggy. Because that kind of life seems easy and you won't get hurt. But what kind of life is that, Jake? It's an empty one. You were created in the image of God Almighty. You were never meant to live a safe and easy life. You were meant to exhaust yourself in loving and serving people with everything you have.”

The crumbling inside threatened to topple me, split me in two. I willed the shuddering to stop. This was nonsense.

“You're wrong, Priscilla,” I said, a second later. “I'm happy with my life, right now and in the past. Nothing
happened
. And I have no desire to eat, sleep, and just pull a buggy. I have plenty of goals for my life. Being happy doesn't have to be that complicated. I like where I am headed, how I plan to get there, and who I want to spend it with. I'm sorry, but you're wrong.”

Priscilla stared at me for several seconds, and then I saw her eyes fill with tears. She reached up a hand to wipe the shimmering wetness away. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

She pulled herself up onto Voyager. “I have to go home and pack,” she said as she looked down on me, fresh tears rimming her storm-colored eyes.

Voyager eased past me, and Priscilla tapped her bare feet against him. She leaned forward and the horse took off in a gentle gallop away from the creek, the birch trees, and me.

This time, her
kapp
stayed put.

Priscilla didn't want the same attention at her farewell that she'd had when she'd arrived a month before. She asked Roseanna not to trouble all the immediate family to come say goodbye, but her aunt wouldn't have it any other way. All the Kinsinger brothers and sisters, spouses, and children came for breakfast the next day to see her off in the hired car that would take her to the train station in Lancaster. I stayed in the background when everyone came outside to wait for the car. I wasn't a member of the family and not expected to be in the mix of those hugging her goodbye and wishing her well in Indiana.

I hung back by the barn, fiddling with tack that didn't need fiddling with, watching and waiting to see if she would look for me in the huddle of cousins, second cousins, and aunt and uncle. I wanted to assure her that she needn't worry, that she was wrong about me, but I had slept poorly the night before, and her words to me at the birch trees were still echoing in my head. I doubted I could say I was fine and sound believable.

My desire to make sure she knew she was mistaken about me was as much for me as it was for her. There was no terrible thing in my past that made me
afraid to surrender to deep feelings. She was wrong. I was just an average guy, that's all. There were plenty of men like me.

I wasn't the horse.

While I spied on the family huddle, Comet saw me standing there, and he came bounding over, calling attention to my presence. Several heads turned my way, including Priscilla's. She said something to everyone and then she started walking toward me. Stephen called Comet to return to him and the dog happily obeyed.

Priscilla's expression turned pensive as she neared me, and I felt an apology from her coming on. I didn't really want one. Apologies nearly always felt a bit awkward and unnecessary. And she didn't owe me one. She didn't owe me anything.

“Guder Mariye,
Jake.”

I nodded, eager to take control of the conversation. “Morning. All set, then?”

“
Ya
. My train leaves Lancaster at eleven.”

“Is she a nice person, your Great-Aunt Cora?”

Priscilla smiled at my concern. “She's quite the character, but in a good way. She's actually fun to be around and full of stories. I'm sad to hear her health is failing, but I am glad I can help her stay in her own house.”

“I'm sure it'll go well.”

She inhaled, drawing strength from the morning air. “Look, Jake. About yesterday—”

“You don't have to apologize, Priscilla. Really.”

Her eyes widened a bit. “I wasn't going to. I just wanted to ask you to please, please think about what I said.”

After some initial surprise, I opened my mouth to protest, but she placed her hand on my arm, gently, the way a mother might. “I know you don't want to think about what I told you. So I am
asking
you to. For me. This whole time I've been back in Lancaster County, you've been the only person I felt connected with at all. That's why I thought I'd finally figured out why God wanted me to come back here, because you… it just makes me sad to think that you'll forget everything I said. I don't want you to. Will you promise me you won't?”

“Priscilla, I don't—”

Her hand on my arm increased its grip. “Please. Just promise me you will
think about it. Pray about it. Ask God to help you see what I see. If you want, ask Him to prove me wrong. Will you do that?”

From behind us a car pulled onto the gravel driveway.

“Priscilla!” Amos called.

“Your car is here,” I murmured, stating the obvious.

“Promise me.”

The car stopped in front of the milling family members. The driver got out and popped open the trunk.

“Promise me!” she said, urgency cloaking her request. The driver placed both her suitcases and a third bag into the trunk and closed it.

I was a man of my word. I always had been. I would not tell her yes if I did not mean it. And a niggling, itching, piercing sensation within me was prodding me to say yes.

I thought back to the night of the volleyball party at Chupps' field when Priscilla promised she would make an effort to get to know people. She did so even when nothing within her wanted to, simply because I asked her. How could I not extend the same courtesy back to her now?

“All right.”

The desperation in her countenance lifted immediately. She raised the hand that she had placed on my arm and now pressed it gently to my right cheek in farewell. “Thank you,” she whispered.

She spun away from me and walked back to her family. She hugged Amos and Roseanna one last time and then got into the car. The driver shut her door and walked around to the other side.

“Write to us!” Roseanna called out, and from behind the window on the passenger side, Priscilla nodded.

Stephen held onto Comet as the dog barked a cheerful goodbye. The driver eased the car into a wide circle to turn it around, and then it crunched on the gravel back down to the road.

Priscilla shifted in her seat to look at me as the car eased onto the street. She pressed her hand to the glass and then she was gone.

PART THREE

T
HIRTY

I
n the days and nights following Priscilla's departure, I did nothing intentional to fulfill my promise to her, yet quite often I found myself pondering her words just the same. Mostly, I couldn't stop wondering if there really had been, as she claimed, something in my past—some incident—that had rendered me incapable of deep emotion. Whenever I considered the possibility, I vacillated between two uncertainties. First, that there
had
been such an incident, and second, that there had
not
.

The way I saw it, if there really had been an incident, then I was going to have to learn what it was. Not only would that mean I was in for an odd and arduous journey to a place far outside my comfort zone, but once I found out the truth, it might be more than I would want to know.

If, on the other hand, there hadn't been any incident after all, then that meant this was just who I was, a guy whose feelings only ran so deep. My life would be one of emptiness and mediocrity, and I would die never having truly felt alive at all—at least, according to Priscilla Kinsinger.

I didn't discuss these things with Amanda. Not the challenge Priscilla had given me or my thoughts and feelings about it since. A couple of times I almost broached the topic with her, but then I would remember what Priscilla had said to me in the birch grove, that I didn't truly love Amanda and, in fact, wasn't even capable of such love in my present state. I finally
decided that until I got my head on straight about this one way or the other, I wouldn't bring it up with her at all. And though I half expected Amanda to catch on to the fact that there was something I was holding back from her, she never seemed to notice or care. Amanda had been moody since Priscilla left, and in a way I didn't blame her. It had to be disappointing that despite her massive efforts—including her brilliant plan to match up Priscilla with Matthew—in the end it had all been for nothing.

Amanda wasn't the only one who had grown out of sorts in the days following Priscilla's departure. At the shop, Owen barely said a word to me as we worked. Granted, shoeing was noisy business and conversations were usually short, but even between hammer blows he seemed caught up in a myriad of thoughts he didn't want to share. Amos too. If I hadn't known better, I would have said Priscilla had cornered the two of them the way she had me and left parting challenges they weren't eager to face either.

More likely, though, I had a feeling their preoccupied states had something to do with finances. Ever since Priscilla told me money was tight for the Kinsingers and business over at the welding shop was light, I had tried to be more aware of the situation. She had been so right—and I so oblivious. No question, the welding shop was hurting for customers, and all three sets of Kinsinger couples were pulling in their belts.

The wives were doing what they could to help. Treva opened an honor-system produce stand out at the road, Roseanna upped her hours at the quilt shop, and the generator for Beth's sewing machine—she made quilted pot-holders and placemats for a local craft store—often ran late into the evenings.

I felt bad for all of them. And though I knew Amos would never openly acknowledge the situation to anyone outside his own family, I wanted Owen to know I was here for him if he needed a friend. I said as much one day when the shop was quiet and he and I were in there alone, but he just smiled wanly and said, “Thanks, Jake. Appreciate it.”

As tight as the money situation was for them right now, I seemed to be facing the opposite problem. Because of my success with January, Natasha contacted me not long after Priscilla left to offer me a job as her assistant stable master. I thanked her for her interest but explained that I loved my full-time work as a blacksmith far too much to ever give it up.

She was persistent, however, calling me back twice more in the coming weeks, each time upping the amount of the offer. Her final figure was so ridiculously over the top that after I turned her down yet again, I called Eric to
ask him if he knew what this was about. It seemed to me that there had to be more going on than the simple matter of a satisfied customer wanting to hire the man who had helped solve a problem with a horse.