Until the End of Time (28 page)

“Thank you for coming. You were brave to come,” Lilli said softly, as she walked him to the car. Her father had allowed her to do that. He trusted Bob. “I wish I were leaving with you,” she said miserably. It was the first time she had ever said anything like it, and meant it.

“So do I,” he said, searching her eyes. “He’s a tough guy,” he commented about her father.

“Yes, he is.”

“Lilli, honestly, if you ask me to, I won’t publish your book. I don’t want to ruin your life to publish a book.”

“No, I still want you to publish it.” There was determination in her eyes.

“What if they shun you?”

“I don’t think they can. I’ll go live with Margarethe if I have to, my mother’s friend. She might take me in.” But she wasn’t sure. If her father convinced the elders to shun her, no one could help, nor would they dare, for fear of being shunned themselves. But she told herself her father wouldn’t do that. He was hard, but she knew he loved her. Enough to punish her, but not shun her.

“You can come to New York,” he said with a wry smile. “You might like it.”

“I’d like to see it one day. Just for a visit,” she said.

“You will.” He squeezed her hand then—he didn’t want to kiss her cheek in case someone was watching. “And we still have to edit it.” She nodded, not sure how they would do it. Especially now.

“Thank you for coming,” she said again, as he slid into the car and started it. He looked at her for a long moment and pulled away. She waved as he drove off, and he felt as though he were abandoning her. He hated to leave her there in her medieval life, in her father’s control, with no one to talk to her who understood her, or protect her from the rigors of her world. It was a strange feeling, and she felt as though she had watched a ship sail away. The ship she wanted to be on, with the only friend she had in the world. There were tears running down her cheeks as she went back into the house and walked upstairs. It no longer felt like a home to her—it felt like a prison.

Chapter 18

The day after Bob’s unexpected visit, Henryk seemed slightly mollified, and kinder when he spoke to Lillibet. Bob’s gesture of respect had not been lost on him, and he thought he was a good man, although he thought it was strange that he wasn’t married at his age, but the English were like that. And he wasn’t worried that he was going to try and court Lillibet. He seemed too sensible and too respectful of the Amish to do that, and Bob’s interest was clearly business, not romance. But however much Henryk liked him, he was not going to allow Lillibet to publish the book, now or at any later date. As the head of the family, he had decided and he knew that Lillibet would accede to his wishes. She had no choice, and no wish to be shunned. Henryk had made himself clear. And he was a very determined man. Bob had understood that too.

Lillibet didn’t argue with him again after Bob’s visit. But her decision had been made too. She wouldn’t stop the book from being published, and she was counting on her father having too much heart to shun her. She knew he loved her, and she loved him. He
would be angry with her, but she felt sure he would get over it. He and the boys needed her too much. So she did her chores and said nothing to him about it. There was no need to confront him. The book was a year away. And discretion seemed to be the better course, rather than full-on confrontation, which only fanned the flames of their anger, both his and hers.

She was waiting to hear from Bob about what she needed to do to edit the book, and they hadn’t figured out where to do it, or how. She thought it best if he sent the material to Lancaster for her to work on alone, and she could mail it back to him from the dairy. Bob thought she would need guidance and conversation about it, and for this first time at least, he thought that she needed to work with an editor face to face, either the one currently editing the book or himself.

Mary Paxton had been working on the manuscript since Lilli signed the contract, and she came back to Bob with it at the end of September. There was less work to do on it than she thought there would be, but it still needed some polishing and a few changes. She was surprised by how clean the manuscript was, from a novice writer, but Lillibet had been meticulous in her work.

“It won’t take more than a few days,” Mary reassured him after she sat down in his office, using considerable effort to lower herself into a chair. She looked like Agnes Gooch in
Auntie Mame
, and was expecting twins in two weeks. She felt like she was about to pop. She had been miserable in the heat all summer and could hardly wait. Mary was the Yalie he had hired when he started his business, and he thought she’d be perfect to work with Lillibet. “How soon can she be here?” Mary asked with a look of concern. “Would tomorrow be too soon?” She was kidding, but not by much. “I’m planning
to run around the block until I drop tonight, so I can get these guys moving.” And she was planning to take three months off to be with her babies. They were her first and she had no idea what to expect, times two.

“I’m not sure she can,” Bob said, looking worried. “How much do you think you can get across to her in an e-mail?” He had mentioned to Mary that Lillibet was Amish but not how violently her father objected to the book. They didn’t need to know. And Mary had been impressed by how smoothly Lillibet described things that she had never seen and didn’t know, like air travel, other cities and countries, what people looked like, how they thought, the way they dressed, and the choices they made in life. She had amazing insight for such a young woman and seemed to be able to channel herself into other people’s heads, in situations she’d never been in. She was a true writer to her core, and clearly had an immense gift, just as Bob had thought.

“I don’t think we should do it by e-mail the first time,” Mary said, looking pensive. “Maybe after we’re used to working together, but I really want to get this right. The book is too good not to. Can she come to New York?” Bob sighed in answer and thought about it.

“It’ll be tough. Her family needs her on the farm. And realistically, she’s never traveled out of Lancaster. They’ll be nervous about it.” That was a major understatement of her father’s reaction—“atomic explosion” was more like it. “And it will be like taking her to another planet. I hoped for a gentler introduction to the process and the modern world. She’s never been off the farm, or used a telephone. I took her for her first ride in a car. Bringing her here will be pretty extreme for her.”

“Well, unless she’s trained as a midwife, I can’t go there,” Mary said ruefully. “And I really think we should meet.” He did too, he just didn’t know how to pull it off. He wrote her a letter, not wanting to rely on her young brothers to get an e-mail to her, now that he’d met them. He just hoped that she’d get the mail before her father did. And two days later she called him from Joe Lattimer’s office at the dairy, with panic in her voice. Fortunately, Bob was in when she phoned him first thing in the morning. He took the call the minute he heard it was she.

“How can I come to New York?” she asked him. It would have been hard enough if he came to Lancaster, and she couldn’t have explained his visit to her father, especially for several days. But disappearing for a week to go to New York was even worse. The logistics of it seemed impossible to her, and almost equally so to him. “I’m too old for
rumspringa
,” she said, sounding anxious about it, and using a term he’d never heard.

“Rumspringa?”
And then she laughed and relaxed a little.

“Sorry, it’s an Amish term. We are baptized as adults, not children, when we’re old enough to make a choice about the way we live and embrace the Amish ways. Some families allow young people and teenagers to kick up their heels a little before they’re baptized. Some even smoke and drink a little, have English friends, ride in cars. It’s a very liberal way to look at things, so they know what they’re giving up. But no one in my family has ever done that, and my father would probably have killed us if we did. And I don’t think a week in New York would qualify as
rumspringa
to him—more like Sodom and Gomorrah.” They both laughed, and what she had described sounded like an interesting concept to him. So many things they did were
sensible and carefully thought out—it was the extreme position and the rigidity of the old guard like Henryk that made her life so difficult, but she had accepted it till now and planned to for the rest of her life. As long as Henryk was alive, nothing would ever change for her.

“My parents weren’t so keen on
rumspringa
either,” Bob said, laughing. “I was picked up for drunk driving once in college, and joined a traditional freshman jogging event at Princeton with a friend there, where all the freshman boys ran around the campus naked at the first snow. We got a little carried away, jogged to a bar off campus, and got arrested. My father had to come down from New York to bail me out. He cut off my allowance for two months.”

“That’s a little racier than
rumspringa
here.” She was laughing at his story. “So what are we going to do? Is it really important for me to be there in person to work with this woman?”

“She thinks so, and she can’t come to you. She’s having twins in two weeks, or sooner, so that rules out her going to you. And she’s a better editor than I am and has been working on the book.”

“Then I’ll have to come there. I’ll find a way,” she said, sounding frightened but sure.

“I’m sorry, Lillibet,” he said sincerely.

“For what? Giving me the biggest opportunity of my life?” He was glad she still felt that way.

“I’ll send a car for you. And you can stay at a hotel near the office. We’ll pay for everything, of course, and I’ll drive you back myself if you want, or have a car take you back.” He realized that it might look better if a car and driver took her home, so her father didn’t think she had spent the week with him, shacked up in his apartment or at a hotel.

“Will I be safe at a hotel?” she asked, sounding as young as she was and brand new in the world.

“Of course. It will be a very nice hotel. And I’ll get to show you New York.” He sounded happy about it, and she was excited at the prospect. She just had to get through her father’s fury and threats before that, whatever it took. “How soon can you come?”

“I don’t know. This week? Next?” Her father would be livid whenever she went, and she wasn’t going to lie to him. She had to tell him now that she was going forward with the book, and going to New York for several days to edit it.

“I think it should be sooner rather than later, given Mary’s condition. She looks like she’s going to explode any minute.” He had never seen anyone so pregnant in his life.

“So did my mother when she had Markus and Josiah.” She had been a tiny woman like Lilli. “All right. Let’s say Friday then.” It was Tuesday as they were speaking. “How long do you want me?” He wanted to say “forever,” jokingly, but he didn’t dare, because there would be more truth to it than she knew. But he didn’t want to cloud the work issues with feelings he couldn’t explain and might make no sense to her. He couldn’t make sense of it himself.

“Why don’t you plan to stay a week, and you can go back sooner if you finish? Give yourself a little time.” She found herself thinking of the old saying “Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.” Going at all would infuriate her father, five days or a week wouldn’t make much difference. The principle and the fact would enrage him, and her disobedience to him. She didn’t want to push him so far that he shunned her, but she knew how much he loved her and even though she worried about it, she couldn’t really imagine his
doing that to her. “I’ll have a car and driver at your house on Friday morning,” Bob said simply, relieved that she was coming and had agreed, although he was worried for her too.

“Send him to the dairy. I’ll have Willy drop me off. It’s better than putting it in my father’s face that I’m leaving in a car.” She thought of her drive to the bank and the ice-cream store the day they met. Her father would have been horrified by that too, but she had enjoyed it, and still cherished the memory of being with him.

“I’ll take care of it,” Bob assured her, and then in a gentle tone, he took off his publisher’s hat and donned that of a friend. He felt like both. “Good luck with your father. I promise I’ll take good care of you while you’re here.” She knew he would. She hung up and thanked Joe Lattimer for the use of his phone. He had left her alone in his office, so she could talk freely. Her life seemed very complicated these days since she had sent her manuscript to New York and Bob had discovered her. Joe hoped he hadn’t done anything wrong. He had just wanted to help her and still did. He didn’t want her to get shunned as a result, and neither did Bob. It clearly wasn’t what Lilli wanted either.

She took the buggy back to the farm then. She had come alone and brought the milk in with her. She hadn’t asked for permission. She just did it, and her father had been out when she left. She stopped at Margarethe’s on the way back. Her father still wouldn’t allow Margarethe at their house, since she had tried to get him to let Lilli do the book. Lilli missed seeing her but had gone to visit several times. And she needed to talk to someone now. She told Margarethe about Bob needing her to go to New York to work on the book, and the editor expecting twins and unable to come to her.

“I have to go,” Lilli said with a sigh over a cup of mint tea that Margarethe had made herself, with peppermint leaves from her garden. And she had baked hot buns with the peach jam she was famous for. “Papa will kill me,” Lilli said, worried. She really had come to a crossroads with the trip to New York. Either she went, with all the potential consequences from her father, or she had to abandon the book now. She was almost sure that Margarethe would tell her the risk was too high and to stop while she still could. Lilli looked at her with big sad eyes, with her black bonnet in her lap, her long braid streaming down her back.

“You have a choice, of course,” Margarethe said cautiously—she didn’t want to influence her, only help. “And your father is a stubborn man. We all know that.” She smiled ruefully. He hadn’t spoken to her in weeks, and they had always been close. “He sincerely believes in his position and thinks it’s best for you. And as an elder of the council, he has to stick to the principles of his beliefs and to the Ordnung. But I think there is more at stake here than your father and the council and the Ordnung, Lilli. There’s your heart and your life and what you need to do. We don’t get to make decisions very often, in our way of life. And certainly not once we’re married. You’re young and free, and you have to respect your father, but you have to honor yourself and God. I believe He gave you this opportunity and your talent, and you shouldn’t waste it.