The Heart's Journey: Stitches in Time Series #2 (2 page)

“Who was that?” Leah asked as she walked over to sit in a chair next to Naomi.

“John.”

Surprised, Leah stared at her. “He didn’t want to come in?”

Naomi shook her head. “He was just making sure I was here.”

“Where else would you be this time of day?” Leah pulled her chair up to the quilting frame and threaded a needle.

“He likes to make sure I’m where I said I’d be.” Her voice sounded flat.

Leah’s hands, which had been busily threading her needle, stilled. Her eyes searched Naomi’s face. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there? It’s not my imagination.”

Naomi started to say it was nothing, but her grandmother placed her hand over hers.

“Tell me,” she said quietly. “Tell me.”

That’s all it took. The floodgates opened.

“John’s turned into—into someone I don’t know,” she said, reaching into her pocket for a tissue. “He tells me what to do and where to be and checks on me all the time. Just like now.”

She dabbed at her cheeks. “I want to be obedient and learn to be a good
fraa
,” she said. “But he—he scared me the other night.”

“How?” Leah asked, her voice almost a whisper. “How did he scare you?”

Naomi couldn’t look her in the eye.

“Tell me, how did he scare you?”

“I went to walk away from him and he grabbed my wrist and hurt me.”

Leah reached over and unerringly chose the very wrist John had grabbed. Naomi winced. Her grandmother didn’t release it but pushed the sleeve of Naomi’s dress back, exposing a bruise.

“I thought you were favoring it,” she said, frowning. She looked up at Naomi.

“It only hurts a little,” she said, wiping at her cheeks again with her tissue.

“It only hurts a little there, but a lot in your heart.” Leah’s eyes were damp and filled with sympathy.

“He said he was sorry.”

Leah pulled down the sleeve. “And how many other times has he said he’s sorry?”

Sobs rose up in her chest. “Too—too many,” she admitted.

There was a knock on the door. Naomi jumped.

“You go wash your face,” Leah said. “Then let’s go in the back room and talk.”

“We don’t have time. We have to work.”

Leah stood. “We’ll make time.”

True to her word, after Leah opened the door and took care of the customer, she got Anna and Mary Katherine to run the shop while she and Naomi talked.

“You have to break it off with him.”

“Maybe counseling—”

“Counseling is a good idea. For you.”

“Me? I’m not the problem.”

“But how you responded to John’s treatment of you worries me. I want you to think about it. Really think about it.” She hesitated, then forged ahead. “I know that some people who act like John can be helped, but I wouldn’t count on it. And it’s a terrible way to start out in a marriage. I don’t want to be harsh or seem unforgiving. But it’s too big a risk to take.”

Naomi nodded. “I know.”

“Next time it could be a bigger injury.”

“I know. Don’t you think I know?” she burst out. “That’s why I kept it to myself.”

“Which is what he counted on, so he could exert more control.”

Leah got up and paced. “It’s so important to make a good match. There’s no divorce. You’d be with him until one of you dies.”

Naomi shuddered and got up to take some aspirin for the headache that was pounding behind her eyes. She turned to her grandmother. “I don’t think I love him anymore.”

“Yes, you do,” Leah disagreed gently. “Otherwise, you would have spoken up by now.”

The door opened and Anna poked her head inside. “Everything okay? We heard Naomi raise her voice.”

She glanced at her cousin and saw the tears. “What’s wrong?”

Naomi started to say it was nothing but then realized that holding everything in was how all of it had started. “I’m breaking up with John.”

She watched one emotion after another chase across Anna’s face. “I thought something was wrong, but I could never get you to talk.”

“I didn’t want to burden anyone.”

“You thought I wouldn’t understand, didn’t you?” Anna asked her. “Happy, carefree Anna hasn’t got the depth to understand, right?”

Shocked, Naomi stared at her. “No, I didn’t think that at all. But you’ve had enough sadness.”

“You have no idea what I’ve experienced,” Anna said. “Maybe I haven’t wanted to face it myself.”

With that, she spun on her heel and went out, shutting the door firmly behind her.

“I need to go after her.”

Naomi stood but Leah put her hand on her arm, stopping her.

“Let me. I think I know what’s wrong. And I’ve let her get away with it for too long.”

Leah hurried after her and Naomi followed, watching helplessly as her grandmother opened the front door of the shop, stepped out, and slipped and fell.

2

N
aomi rushed out the door and found her grandmother sitting on the concrete in front of the shop.

Mary Katherine was right behind her. “What happened?”

“Are you all right?” Naomi asked her grandmother as she knelt before her.

“
Ya
,” Leah said quickly. “It was just a little fall. Stupid of me. I wasn’t watching where I stepped.”

But her face looked pasty white and perspiration dotted her forehead. She reached out her hands. “Help me up. Please.”

Naomi and Mary Katherine looked at each other. “Maybe we shouldn’t move you.”

“I’m fine. The only thing that hurts is my ankle. I probably twisted it a little.”

They each took one of her arms and lifted her, but when Leah stood she winced and cried out. “Oh, my ankle! I must have sprained it.”

“You could have broken it,” Mary Katherine told her.

Slipping their arms around her waist, they guided her slowly back into the shop and set her carefully into a chair. Mary Katherine pulled another chair over and gently lifted Leah’s foot and placed it on the seat cushion.

Naomi hurried to the shop telephone.

“Who are you calling?” Leah wanted to know.

“911.”

“Don’t you dare!” she said. “You put that phone down now!”

Shocked at the vehemence in her voice, Naomi did so and nearly said, “Yes, ma’am!”

“You call Nick. Ask him to come take me to the doctor.”

Naomi looked at Mary Katherine, who nodded. Resigned, she made the call.

A few minutes later, he was striding into the shop. He was a handsome
Englisch
man, tall and dark-haired, with piercing green eyes. Although those eyes lit often with laughter as he drove them around, Naomi felt uncomfortable with the way he always seemed to be observing her—studying her.

He was a favorite of Leah’s and she often found him visiting her grandmother, clearly enjoying her company as well as the baked goods and coffee she’d fix for him in her kitchen. Naomi often heard him asking questions about the Amish faith in a way that didn’t seem like prying or idle curiosity. The two of them seemed to enjoy discussing a passage or a person from the Bible.

Leah looked up from supervising the application of ice on her ankle. “Well, that was quick.”

“I happened to be in town. Aren’t you the one who’s often said there’s no such thing as coincidence?”

She nodded, looking serious. “
Ya
. Well, shall we go? Naomi’s already called the doctor and he insisted we go to the hospital and get an X-ray.”

“Could have just let me call for an ambulance,” Naomi muttered.

“No need to pay for something like that when our Nick is around.”

He winked at Naomi. “Let’s get you in the car, Leah.”

Before she could say anything, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the shop door. Naomi hurried to open it.

“Now there’s no need—” Leah began.

“For you to fuss,” Nick finished for her. “Gets you up and out faster than helping you and hurting your ankle more.”

He gave her one of his intense looks. “Did you hit your head when you fell? Truth, now!”

“I’d say if I did,” she said with some tartness. Then her face softened. “Just like you to ask such a thing.”

Naomi felt a stab of guilt. She and Mary Katherine had asked their grandmother if she was hurt anywhere besides her ankle, but neither of them had thought to ask that particular question.

He paused at the door. “You coming?”

She nodded. She’d already put her and Leah’s purses on the counter, along with their sweaters.

“Don’t worry about a thing,” Mary Katherine told her grandmother as she bent to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Anna and I will take care of the shop and make the deposit.”

“If Anna comes back.” Leah frowned.

“She’ll be back. She just needs to walk it off,” Naomi assured her. But she couldn’t help scanning the sidewalks as Nick carried Leah to the car.

“How’d it happen?” he asked when he settled Leah in the backseat and made sure she fastened her seat belt.

“Just a silly accident,” she said, looking up and down the street.

Nick turned back to start the car, and as he did, Naomi saw him glance in the rearview mirror at Leah. “Looking for someone?”

Leah sighed. “Anna. She left the shop a little while ago.”

“Do you want her to go with us?”

Naomi looked over her shoulder, then met Nick’s gaze. “I don’t think we should look for her,” she said in a low voice. “Grandmother looks like she’s in a lot of pain.”

“I heard that,” Leah spoke up from the backseat. “I’m hurt, not deaf.”

Turning in her seat, Naomi nodded. “Sorry. But I don’t think we should wait. You’re hurting.”

“Don’t need to tell me what I know,” Leah said tartly.

Naomi touched Nick’s hand. “Wait just a minute, okay?”

She scrambled out of the car and heard Leah protesting, “Now where is she going? She was the one in a big hurry to get to the hospital.”

Mary Katherine glanced up, surprised, when Naomi ran into the shop. “What—?”

Snatching up the ice bag that lay on the chair Leah had vacated and grabbing a set of kitchen towels that lay on a nearby display table, Naomi turned and ran back out of the shop. She opened the back door of Nick’s car and after quickly wrapping the ice bag in a towel, placed it gently on her grandmother’s injured ankle.

She climbed back into the front seat and shut the door. “Okay,” she said to Nick. “We’re ready.”

His mouth quirked into a grin. “Yes, ma’am.”

Naomi surreptitiously studied him as he drove. He was so different from John. Nick was easygoing and pleasant. Well, maybe not pleasant. Not that he was unpleasant. But pleasant sounded dull—and he wasn’t dull. He had a whole bundle of stories that he’d pull out and entertain them with if prompted.

While Nick was easygoing, he didn’t have that same charm that John possessed, which had been one of the reasons she’d fallen in love with him … and which now worried her. It hadn’t
taken long for her to realize that instead of being charmed, she’d started to feel manipulated.

On the seat, she felt a hand on hers—and realized that Nick was patting it. “Stop worrying. She’s going to be okay. We’ll be there soon.”

He’d mistaken her silence—and no doubt, her frown—for anxiety. She nodded, not knowing what to say. He wasn’t a person in whom she should be confiding her growing doubt about her engagement.

She knew he wasn’t married. Her grandmother had mentioned that once in passing. He never talked about a girlfriend, and she wondered about that because he talked so easily about other areas of his life: his travels, the books he’d read, all sorts of things. Lately he’d taken up running, and it was a change from the relatively sedentary driving he did for the Amish and tourists each day.

The hospital came into view. He pulled up at the emergency room entrance. While Naomi went to get a wheelchair, he helped Leah out.

When Naomi returned, he helped Leah into the chair. But when Naomi started to reach into her purse for money, he held his hands up. “No charge,” he said. “Listen, I’ll go park the van and sit with you while Leah’s seen.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s my pleasure,” he said. “Besides, I don’t have any other jobs this afternoon so I might as well wait for you. I’m sure they’ll send Leah home after they X-ray her ankle and wrap it or cast it or whatever.”

A car horn honked. A driver was motioning for him to move his vehicle so he could pull closer and let someone out.

“Let me help you with her chair.”

“No, go, go!” she said, waving her hands. “Those people could have an emergency.”

She pushed the wheelchair toward the magic doors—she always called them that because they were the kind that opened on some mysterious signal. She always thought a person didn’t need such, but today she was grateful she didn’t have to try to open the doors and maneuver the chair inside at the same time.

The waiting room was filled. Naomi sighed. They were in for a long wait. She sat filling out paperwork, thankful that she’d remembered the ice pack, as her grandmother sat there, her face etched with pain.

Finally finished with the paperwork, Naomi carried it over to the clerk.

“I need your driver’s license and one other form of identification,” the woman said, not looking up.

Naomi stood there, waiting, and the clerk looked up, frowning, until she saw who was standing before her.

“Here’s my grandmother’s identification. No driver’s license,” she said with a slight smile.

She handed it over and watched as the clerk photocopied it before handing it back.

When she returned to her grandmother, Nick was sitting there, saying something that made her smile.

It was an unusual friendship, she thought, watching them as the clerk looked over her grandmother’s paperwork—an
Englisch
driver and an older Amish woman.

When it came time for Leah to be seen, she refused Naomi’s offer to accompany her. So Naomi moved to take a seat beside Nick.

But it was empty. She shrugged. Maybe he’d decided to leave after all. It wasn’t as if she and her grandmother hadn’t insisted. Vaguely disappointed, she took a seat and waited.