The Revealing (5 page)

Rose hadn’t had a chance to talk to Galen since he’d asked to marry her. This morning, she caught sight of him striding across the yard and stopped what she was doing to watch him. She studied his familiar walk—the efficient steps, his long legs, the way one shoulder was a little lower than the other, the way he tapped his fingers against his thighs as he walked when he was puzzling over something.

He spotted her and walked toward her, meeting her by the privet. His hat brim hid his eyes, but there was a slight smile to his lips. “I was going to come over today. I’ve got a little spare time and want to get working on Silver Queen’s training. It’s time she learned how to be a buggy horse.”

Rose smiled. She knew that Galen King didn’t know the first thing about spare time. He worked. And worked and worked. Sunup to sundown, he never stopped. She knew he was just looking out for her. Her buggy horse Flash was long past retirement age and could only be used for short trips around town. He couldn’t even stand and wait during church with the other horses because it made his joints too stiff.

“Now’s as good a time as any,” he said.

Side by side, they walked to the barn, the morning frost crackling beneath their shoes. Galen stopped by the oats bin and scooped up a handful, then slid open the door to Silver Queen’s stall and offered her the oats. With his other hand, he stroked the horse’s long neck and absently combed his
fingers through her mane. That was one of Galen’s ways, Rose realized. He taught a horse to trust him by giving her what she loved best: a handful of honeyed oats and a loving touch. In return, the mare gave him her best.

In the stall next door, Silver Queen’s colt pricked up his ears, whinnied and stamped his foot, snorted, then tried to wedge his nose between the stall bars, eager for attention. Or oats. Or both. Rose stood by the colt’s stall and let him nuzzle her hand.

Galen looked up. “Soon, it’ll be time to get that one started.”

“Oh, but he’s young yet. Scarcely a year.”

Galen slipped a bridle over Silver Queen’s head. “Too young to pull weight, but not too young to condition to traffic.”

Rose ran a hand over the colt’s velvet nose.

Galen tossed the lead line over Silver Queen’s neck and came back outside the stall. “Rose, I’d like to talk to the bishop. Make it formal, set a date for our wedding.”

She looked at him in surprise. “I thought we could wait until Tobe is released from jail. It shouldn’t be much longer.”

“Why do we need to wait?”

“There’s so much that needs to get figured out first.”

“Like what?”

She could feel his gaze. She glanced at him and found him watching her with concern from beneath the brim of his black hat. “Where we’ll live, for one. If we live in your house, what should I do about the inn? A guest is due in tonight. And I’m starting to take reservations for the summer. And who will care for Vera?” She took a few steps away. “But if we live at Eagle Hill, then what about your house? What about Naomi?”

“Naomi has a lot of options. Besides, the houses are only fifty yards apart. Hardly a difficult thing to navigate.”

“Then there’s Bethany. She’s counting on Jimmy Fisher to propose soon.”

“Really?” His brows lifted. “He hasn’t said a word to me.”

They looked at each other, sharing a mutual thought. Jimmy talked a blue streak about anything and everything. If he were going to propose soon, wouldn’t he be crowing about it? “I thought, perhaps, Tobe might be interested in running the inn.”

A moment passed, then Galen dropped his chin to his chest. “You’re expecting too much of Tobe.”

“Maybe you don’t expect enough of him.” Rose spoke the words and knew them to be true, and the thought behind them was true, and yet she was sorry she’d said them aloud. She found herself always defending Tobe, although she understood Galen’s assessment. Understood . . . and even agreed with him. But unlike Galen, she wouldn’t give up on Tobe. She held hope that he was becoming a new man. His letters, though infrequent, certainly seemed to be showing evidence of maturity. “Tobe is broken, Galen. You saw that when he was here last summer. He’s lost. Sincerely lost. He needs us.”

Galen made a small sighing sound, as if he’d heard this before. “I just don’t think we should arrange our plans around Tobe.”

Just then the wind kicked up hard, blowing through the open barn door, slapping her skirts and rattling the loose shingles on the eaves. The weather had turned cold again, with no hint of spring at all. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling deflated. “I just need a little more time, Galen. To sort things out.”

He walked up to her, put his arms around her, and gently pulled her against his chest. She could hear his heart beat
ing, so steady, so sure. “Then take all the time you need,” he said softly.

The temptation to pull the covers over her head and never get up was so strong that it frightened Brooke Snyder into dropping her legs over the side of the bed. Cold linoleum met the soles of her feet. She made her way across the bedroom to a utilitarian bathroom. Although small, it had been modernized. Perhaps this Amish inn wasn’t quite as run-down as she’d imagined it to be when she arrived late last night. And it was thoughtful of the innkeeper to leave the guest flat open for her and a small kerosene light burning, though the hiss of the light took getting used to.

She stared at herself in the mirror, then her fingers constricted at the edge of the sink. Her face was haggard, gaunt, drawn. She looked like she had aged a decade in the last few weeks. She splashed water on her face, trying to detach herself from her bleak situation so she could make a new plan. She stared glumly down at the soap dish. Right. As if any of her big ideas had worked lately.

She showered, wrapped herself in a towel, and returned to her room, where she slipped into a pair of jeans and a comfortable sweater. She sat cross-legged in a chair and opened up a notebook, brainstorming ideas for a new life. She scribbled down a few, reviewed them, then tore out the page and balled it in her fist and threw it at the wastebasket. All the ideas she jotted down were awful. She was getting the uneasy feeling that she didn’t know how she was going to get herself out of this mess. She closed the notebook, wondering when breakfast might be served. For now she simply wouldn’t let herself
think about her messy life. Maybe if she didn’t dwell on her upsetting circumstances, they’d disappear.

And maybe not.

She walked over to the window and pushed back the curtains. A shower of lemony light drenched her. It streamed through the window as if it had been poured from a bucket, rays so intense she had to close her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she saw the rolling hills of Lancaster County lying before her.

“Oh, my . . .” She rested her arms on the windowsill and took in the red barn, the pastures with horses and sheep milling around. And was that a billy goat? She wanted to see more, and she turned away from the window, then stopped as she saw how the light had changed the character of the room. Now the butter-colored walls were beautiful in their sparseness, and the simple furniture spoke more eloquently of the past than a volume of history books. She moved through each room, opening the curtains. The living room, which she’d barely glanced at the night before, felt cozy and homey.

The door opened and a woman in her sixties walked in. She had a dumpling figure, doughy cheeks, small dark eyes, salt and pepper hair that was primly twisted into a tight bun and capped with a white covering. Brooke had heard the Amish were known for their friendliness, but this woman didn’t look at all friendly.

“You must be Rose Schrock,” Brooke said.

“No.” The woman set a breakfast tray on the kitchen table. “I’m Vera Schrock, Rose’s mother-in-law.”

“Denki.” Brooke liked to demonstrate her exceptional mastery of the Penn Dutch language. She considered herself a whiz at foreign languages.

The woman didn’t seem at all impressed. “Leave the tray outside the door when you’re done.”

“Do you happen to have a newspaper?”

“No. You’ll have to go into town to get it yourself.”

Vera opened the door, then stopped and looked back at Brooke. “If you don’t eat everything, don’t throw it out. We don’t waste food around here.”

Got it. Eating was serious business with these people.

Brooke looked past Vera at the door and saw a road curled against the hills in a pale, smoky trail. This beautiful place! To think that only yesterday she wasn’t even sure she wanted to be here. The woman’s dark mutter broke the peaceful mood, and she startled, realizing the woman was waiting for her to respond. “I’ll do that. Thank you.”

Even the dour expression of the woman couldn’t detract from the enchantment of this quiet, peaceful location, and the knots inside Brooke began to loosen.

Finally, something had happened to ease her discouragement. She started the day with a much lighter heart. She walked to the window to gaze up at the sky. The high, fluffy clouds looked as though they should be printed on blue flannel pajamas.

It was a beautiful Sunday, and she wouldn’t let even a surly Amish grandmother spoil it for her.

Mim and her brothers arrived at school just as Danny rang the bell. He had asked her to call him Teacher Danny like the other children, but she refused. Instead, she never addressed him at all. She hurried to put her lunch on the shelf in the back of the schoolroom and slipped into her seat. As
she took out her books from her desk, she noticed a buzz of conversation in the classroom. She felt a gentle tap on her shoulder and turned to discover the horrible boy who had tripped her was seated next to her.

“Remember me, Miss Humility?”

Mim gave him the stink eye, a look usually reserved for her brothers.

“You never told me your actual name.”

She turned forward in her chair, ignoring him.

“I’m Jesse Stoltzfus,” he whispered loudly. “We moved in across the road from your farm. My father bought the Bent N’ Dent.”

Something red caught her eye and she realized there were more students in the schoolhouse. All redheads. Carrot tops. All with that same sticky-up hair. Her gaze traveled across the room as horror set in. There were so
many
Stoltzfus children! Were they all as awful as Jesse? “How many of you are there?”

“Six. I’m the only manchild. It’s a sore trial.” He motioned toward the teacher’s desk. “She’s the oldest. Katrina. Dad sent her to get us registered for school. She’s seventeen, nearly eighteen. I’m fourteen. Nearly fifteen.”

Standing next to the teacher’s desk was that girl who had come out of the Bent N’ Dent after Jesse tripped Mim. Danny was listening carefully to the girl, then laughed at something she said.

Jesse leaned across the aisle. “Boys go crazy over Katrina. They always have.”

Katrina was beautiful, delicate yet curvy in all the right places. She had perfect teeth, and her neck was long, like a gazelle. She had a face like an angel. Mim, she hated her.

As soon as school let out that afternoon, Mim hurried
home, ran to her room, and locked the door. On the top shelf of her closet, too tall for snoopy Mammi Vera to find, she had hidden a hand mirror that she bought at a yard sale last summer. She took it out and examined her face in the mirror. It was a perfectly reasonable face. Why then was she lacking sparkle, like Katrina had? It wasn’t a lively face. It looked flat somehow.

She turned to Luke’s big dog, Micky, who was staring at her with a soulful look on his face. “What do you think, Micky?”

His tail thumped once, then twice. He seemed pleased. He stretched his big creamy limbs in front of her door.

“Move, Micky. I need to go downstairs.”

She found her mother in the kitchen and grabbed an apple from a bowl on the table. “Mom, do you know anything about those Stoltzfuses?”

Her mother stopped chopping vegetables and looked out the window toward the Stoltzfus farm. “I know that their father is a minister, David Stoltzfus, and he comes trailing clouds of respect.”

“I’ve heard he’s a man to be reckoned with,” Mammi Vera added.

Mim would not mind having David Stoltzfus for a neighbor. She was less sure about his son, Jesse, who both irritated and intrigued her. “His son Jesse is abominable.”