The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) (23 page)

Nodding, Hazel barely looked up from the green scribbles she’d drawn on her paper. Deborah slipped out the door, prepared to go in search of Phineas.

She didn’t have to go far. He sat on the curb, head down, elbows propped on his knees. Using her hand to shield her eyes from the fierce afternoon sun, Deborah eased onto the hot concrete next to him. “Hazel’s all fixed up.”

“Gut.” He sounded congested, his voice low and hoarse. “Sorry.”

“Sorry? About what?”

“Bailing on you.”

“You got us here, didn’t you?”

He sat up straighter and clutched his arms to his chest as if cold. “I don’t come into town much.”

Or ever, according to Belinda. “Yet you came because you knew Hazel needed help. I . . . we appreciate it.”

His gaze skated across hers and then back at the cars that raced past them, leaving the stench of gas fumes and oil behind them. The pavement shimmered with heat and the air seemed to sizzle over it. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “It’s like a nightmare I remember in snatches. The smells . . .”

“You have nightmares about the accident?”

His head bobbed, but his gaze stayed on the trash and bits of grass and rock that littered the street at their feet. “I don’t remember the accident, but I dream that I do. I see the truck that hit us and I know what’s coming and I can’t stop it. I feel it smash into us, feel the pain of hitting the dash and then going through the windshield. I hear the screeching of rubber and metal. I see the look on Mr. Jenkins’s face and then I turn and I see Mudder. She’s all crumpled up.”

His voice broke.

The rumble of a truck engine mingled with the conversation of a couple passing by. Apparently they were arguing about whether caffeine increased stress or helped reduce it. Deborah breathed, trying to find words to soothe such a terrible, gaping wound. A wound that had festered for twelve years. What could one say about something so painful?

“I have nightmares too.” She plucked at a bloodstain on her apron. It had dried to a rusty brown color. “I dream my daed was still alive when we put him in the ground.”

“That’s awful to contemplate.” He picked up a pebble and flicked it across the road. A truck honked, a strident, blaring sound that made Deborah jump. A car returned the favor. “You know that couldn’t happen?”

“It doesn’t matter. Just like you know your dream is your mind playing games with your heart and your memories. I know my daed is gone.” Saying the words aloud made Deborah feel the pain of that empty spot at the supper table as if it were fresh and new. “He was gone days before we buried his body. Still, I always wake up with this sick feeling in my stomach and tears on my face. I didn’t cry at the funeral, yet I cry in my sleep.”

“They’re in a better place. They’re where we all want to be. So we don’t cry.”

“Yet we do when no one is looking.”

“We do.” He shook his head. “Your daed left before you were ready for him to go. Gott took him home. The days of his life were complete. For me, it’s different.”

“Why is it different? Gott made a mistake and took your mudder home too soon? Gott doesn’t make mistakes.”

“Nee. It was my fault.”

His tone said he truly believed this to be true. Deborah grabbed his hand and squeezed. It took her a second to realize what she’d done. The billowing heat of the July sun seemed cool compared to the fiery embarrassment that raced through her. She jerked her hand back, but Phineas curled his fingers around hers and held on. The naked anguish in his face held her captive as much as any physical touch.

“It was an accident,” she whispered. “You were a little boy. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I was wiggling around in the front seat. I blew this big bubble. It was huge and pink and I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t want it to pop, so I turned and pointed at it to show Mudder. She was laughing at something Abram had done. My elbow knocked into Mr. Jenkins. The van swerved and I fell against him. He yelled
at me to sit still. The next thing I know, I opened my eyes in the hospital and Daed was telling me she was gone.”

Deborah tugged his hand into her lap. She smoothed her fingers across the wicked, grooved scars. “And you’ve been punishing yourself ever since.”

“Gott punished me. I had a concussion, a broken nose, and a dislocated jaw. The asphalt ripped the skin off one side of my face. My left ear hung by a thread.” He traced the outer edge of the ear with one finger as he listed his injuries in a tone that said he might have been reading a grocery list. “Daed brought my bruder Samuel in to see me because he didn’t believe I was still alive. He didn’t recognize me. He still didn’t believe it was me.”

“Our Gott doesn’t punish little boys for having fun on a trip to the ocean.”

Phineas closed his eyes and rocked. After a second, he took a deep breath and tried to tug his hand from hers. Deborah held on. He opened his eyes and stared down at her hand gripping his. “It’s not the ocean. It’s the Gulf.”

“What?”

“It’s the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t.”

“I don’t want your pity.”

“Gut, ’cause you’re not getting it.” She stared at him, mesmerized by the welter of emotions on his face. A mixture of defiance and determination not to show her any more of himself than he already had. Too late. Phineas had let her in and she wasn’t going to let him back down now. “Did you ever tell your daed about what happened?”

“Nee.”

“Why not?”

“I already lost Mudder. I guess I thought . . .”

“You thought he’d stop loving you if he knew you thought you were responsible?”

He smoothed his finger over the skin on the back of her hand, his gaze never leaving her face. A shiver ran up her arm, across her neck, and lost itself in her hair. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I guess . . .”

She tried to follow his train of thought and not get lost in the feel of his fingers caressing her skin. “Mordecai would never do that.”

“I don’t know.”

“I do.”

“We shouldn’t be . . . doing this . . .” He glanced around as if registering where they were for the first time. “People will talk.”

“Do you care what strangers think?”

“I care that we set a good example that reflects what we know is right and proper in Gott’s eyes.”

“Gott doesn’t want me holding your hand?”

He closed his eyes again. His grip tightened. His eyes opened and his hand dropped. “There’s a time and a place for everything. I’d like to believe that includes holding your hand.”

“It could.” She cradled her hands against her chest, not wanting to lose the feeling of his skin against hers. “If you stop worrying about things that don’t matter.”

“Don’t say that if you don’t intend it. That would be . . . cruel.”

“What makes you think I don’t mean it?”

“Look at me.”

“I am.”

“I know I’m repulsive. As repulsive as this place you find so ugly. This place you want to leave so you can go back to the beauty of Tennessee. I’m sure the man waiting for you there is much more pleasing to the eye.”

“You think I’m that shallow, then? It’s all about how a man looks? I will get used to this place and there’s no one waiting for me. Not anymore.”

“You’re not leaving, then?”

“I don’t know.”

Phineas scooted away from her. “Let me know when you make up your mind.”

“I’m trying to—”

Her words were drowned by the growl of a bus engine as it strained and rocked past them, its brakes squealing as the white bus halted at the red light. DOCJ was lettered on the side. A man with a shaved head and a teardrop tattooed under one eye stared out at her. He waved. Surprised, she raised her hand and managed a small wave in return. He smiled, stuck out his tongue, and licked his lips in a complete circle.

“What are you doing? Don’t look at him.” Phineas’s hand gripped her shoulder. He popped to his feet, taking her with him. “Turn around. Now.”

“Ouch! What’s the matter with you?” She had no choice but to follow his lead and face the building. “What? What is it?”

“You don’t want the attention of anyone in those buses.” Anger made his voice deep and the words sharp. “Never wave or talk or even look at them.”

“Why? What bus is it? What is D-O-C-J?”

“Department of Criminal Justice. The men on that bus are going to the prison.”

Her stomach rocked. She hadn’t meant any harm. Even if these men had committed crimes, they still belonged to God. They still deserved forgiveness. A smile and a friendly wave might make them feel life still held promise. “You’re judging them and you don’t even know what they did?”

“I know they’re in prison and they’re dangerous and I don’t want them doing anything to . . .” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Just don’t do it again.”

“They’re locked up. They can’t hurt—”

The growl of Mr. Carson’s station wagon interrupted her bewildered reply. The engine backfired and black smoke rolled from it. Phineas moved back from the curb. He didn’t make eye contact. “I’ll settle the bill with Belinda and get Hazel.”

“Phineas.”

He stomped into the clinic, leaving her standing on the curb wondering if they’d taken two steps forward or three back. Why had her interaction with the prisoner made him so angry? Had she done something wrong?

Phineas surely thought so. Anger mixed with hurt. She hadn’t meant to do anything wrong. Three steps back. Definitely.

TWENTY-FOUR

Her stomach rumbling and her mouth watering at the aroma, Abigail popped a juicy chunk of sausage in her mouth and almost sighed in bliss. Susan’s venison sausage hit the spot. Still chewing, she speared another thick slice. A sharp, jagged pain shot along her jaw.

“Ouch.” She slapped a hand to her mouth and tried to breathe through the fierce pain without spitting food on the plate in front of everyone at the table. In her haste to eat, she’d forgotten to avoid the sore tooth that had been plaguing her for weeks now. “Oh my, oh my.”

“What is it? Did you bite your tongue?” Mordecai’s fork, also laden with a plump chunk of sausage, hovered near his chin. “I hate it when that happens. Try a drink of water.”

“Nee. It’s not my tongue.” She rubbed her jaw with her free hand, as if that would help. “It’s fine. I’ll survive.”

“It’s that tooth, isn’t it?” Deborah picked at the fried potatoes on her plate. The girl never really ate. She simply pushed food from one side to the other. “How long before you’ll admit you need to go to the dentist and get it looked at?”

“Yeah, Mudder. You always tell us not to be babies about it,” Leila chimed in.

“Yeah, Mudder.” Hazel mimicked her big sister’s tone to a T.

“Hush, all of you.” She sipped water, hoping it would ease the ache that throbbed from her jaw into her cheek and back toward her throat. “Dentists cost money.”

“Not as much as you would think. Not around here.” Mordecai tossed his napkin on his plate and leaned back in his chair. It creaked under his weight. “We have a dentist in Mexico we’ve been seeing for years. Real reasonable, he is.”

“Mexico! You go to Mexico?” Deborah looked as animated as she had since they arrived in Bee County. “How do you do it? How do you talk to folks in Spanish?”

“Progreso is a town across from a place called Weslaco not far from here. A lot of those folks speak English.” Mordecai pointed a finger in what Abigail surmised must be a southerly direction. “Enough to communicate, anyway. And I’ve picked up a few words of Spanish here and there.”

“And the dentist is affordable?” Abigail brought the conversation back to the big issue, at least in her mind. Visiting a foreign country for dental work seemed a strange proposition fraught with hidden dangers. “And safe? Does he do gut work?”

Mordecai tugged down his lip on one side, displaying a tooth toward the back of his mouth. “He charged four hundred dollars for a crown. Less than half what a dentist charges in the States. And I can’t complain. Seems to work just fine.”

“I heard there’s a lot of bad stuff happens south of the border.” Abigail racked her brains for the tidbits she remembered hearing the men talk about back home—back in Tennessee. There wasn’t much reason for them to worry about a faraway place like Mexico where she’d grown up. “Shootings and such.”

“In the bigger towns, but Progreso is a little town and ’bout the
only thing going on is the snowbirds popping across the border for pills and liquor and haircuts. The ladies get their fingernails and toenails painted.”

Leila and Rebekah tittered. Abigail shot them a look. “Snowbirds?”

“Retired Englischers who come down here for the winter.”

The throbbing in Abigail’s mouth made her decision for her. If elderly Englischers could go there to get their fingernails painted, it must be all right. “When can we go? How far is it?”

“You’re forgetting one thing.” Susan stood and began to clear plates, a signal for Abigail and the girls to do the same. “Abigail doesn’t have a passport card.”

Mordecai tapped his knife on the edge of his plate in a
plink,
plink, plink
sound, his expression thoughtful. “Jah, I did forget that. We’ll have to get you into town to fill out the application and get your picture taken.”

Abigail froze, the bread basket clutched in both hands. “Picture?”

“Since all that mess with 9/11, folks have to have a passport or a passport card to come back into the country. That means a photograph.” Mordecai smiled up at her. “It’s all right. The
gmay
voted. For this one purpose, it’s allowed. It’s the only way we can go to Mexico and get back into the country. I reckon you know plenty of Plain people who’ve taken family members to Mexico for doctoring. It’s not a question of vanity.”

He crumpled a piece of bread into tiny pieces. “It’s a question of survival for our district. It’s one more way to make sure we don’t have to fold up shop and move up north.”

“The kinner? They get their photographs taken too?”

“That’s left up to the parents.” He met her gaze again. “No one is forced to do it. But if one of your kinner got a sickness like
cancer that needed a lot of doctoring, you’d probably want to get it done. If not, you can wait to decide.”