A Marriage of the Heart (33 page)

J
OSEPH WATCHED THE CAR DRIVE AWAY AND FELT THE PULL
of desire so badly that he could taste it. As she said good-bye, Molly had offered him a bottle of pain pills with the same nonchalance that she always had. He’d wanted to say no, had heard himself say no in his head, but everything that was flesh in him was crying out yes. And he’d taken them. His eyes burned as he thought about the good feeling, the elation the pills had always given him. He’d felt more confident, productive, and kind. He’d asked himself a million times when he was with the
Englisch
why painkillers couldn’t just be legal for everyone—especially when he’d believed they made people not just feel better but
be
better people. He was amazed now that he ever could have thought like that, but that was part of true addiction. And so was the fact that he now clutched the white-capped bottle until it imprinted his palm.

He swallowed hard and shivered as he looked at the dust rising from the lane as Molly’s car turned onto the highway. He started to pray, just as he’d done the first time he’d said no, when it had nearly killed him to do so. Withdrawal, done alone in an empty apartment, with no support or food, had been a nightmare. He hadn’t emerged victorious, just alive, and barely at that. God had been the only One with him, and it was then that he first felt the incredible desire to return home to his Amish roots. So then why had he taken the bottle? He stared down at it in his hand. Was he crazy? He had peace, freedom, a new way of life, and he was standing there willing to throw it all away.

The creak of the screen door brought him to his senses, and he turned to face Abby, who stood uncertainly on the porch.

“So that was Molly—the redhead,” she said in a small voice.

He thrust the bottle into the pocket of his pants, mounted the wooden steps, and caught her unyielding figure in his arms.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Holding you.”

“Why?” She tried to shrug him off.

“Because I need to right now. Hold me back, Abby—please.” He rubbed his hands up and down her back and nuzzled his chin against her soft neck.

“I will not,” she snapped. “Not when you’re just pretending that I’m her.”

He pulled away from her then and stared down into her hurt blue eyes. “Don’t think that. It’s not true.”

“Then why do you want me?”

The question hung in the air between them.

He moved to thumb her delicate jaw. “You’re my wife,” he whispered. “Not her.”

He ignored the sudden parting of her lips, the yielding of her thick eyelashes against the cream of her cheeks, and began to feather kisses along her temple and down her jaw. He felt rather than heard the small sigh escape her as the tension unwound in her body, and she lifted her chin to give him better access to the line of her throat. He made a choked sound of pleasure and let his mouth trail along her sweet-smelling skin. He stopped and stared down at her; her hair was coming undone, and a few hairpins pattered to the porch below.

He gently lowered his mouth to hers, and she began to kiss him back. He closed his eyes against the wash of sensation, drowning in the honeybee-light touch of her lips. She lifted her hands to touch each side of his face and rub the soft lay of his beard.

“I’ll hold you,” she breathed. She lifted her slender arms and
encircled his shoulders, and he gave in to the gentle touch, rocking his weight forward.

His eyes filled with tears as the thought came to him that perhaps the Lord Himself had had His hand in their marriage.

A sudden clearing of a masculine throat startled him and he pulled back, glancing over his shoulder. His father-in-law stood on the steps of the porch.

“It’s lunchtime,” Mr. Kauffman announced in a gruff voice.

“Right,” Joseph agreed, turning fully to shield Abby’s disheveled appearance. He felt her press against his back.

“I’ve a few chores to take care of in the barn. I’ll be in directly.” He stomped down the steps and walked away while Joseph turned back to his wife.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

She nodded, clearly flustered, and bent to retrieve her hairpins. He stooped to help her at the same time and they knocked heads.

“I’m sorry.” He laughed. “Are you all right?”

“Ya,”
she said, smiling. “I’m fine.”

He handed her the pins and she rose to hurry inside, her hands at her hair, leaving him to stare after her.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
HE BOTTLE OF PILLS STOOD AMONG THE CASUAL CLUTTER
on Abby’s bureau with deceptive innocence. Part of the everyday landscape to someone else, the bottle screamed to him with a chilling audibleness that reached to the edge of the bed where he sat and into his very soul. Abby was downstairs, cleaning up after supper, and he was wrestling a demon he thought he’d defeated. He rose and walked to the window, staring out at the moonlit fields. But out of the corner of his eye, the bottle called. Maybe just one . . . just one and he’d feel beyond good. He might even get up enough nerve to press Abby into a few kisses . . .

He shook his head, amazed at the pulse of addiction that riveted through his veins. Then he thought of Molly. She’d been the one to first introduce him to the drug, to drugs in general, but specifically to the pain pills. And he’d been in pain when he’d first met her, hurting deep inside for want of a family, a future. Now he had those very things, but he was still willing to pick up the drug.

He touched the lid with his fingertips, then gave the bottle an experimental shake. He clenched his jaw and unscrewed the lid, automatically doing a visual count of the white pills inside. A good twenty or so. He hadn’t had anything in over a year, so just one would probably be enough to produce the familiar feeling. At the end, before, he’d had to take four at a time to get there. He spilled a single pill out into his hand, and a roaring like wind in a train tunnel filled his ears. His eyes watered; his mouth burned. But then it came to him—peace. The peace of
Derr Herr
. It crept
softly in on the breeze of the dark air, swirling around him, touching his fevered head and heart. He drew a shaky breath and put the pill back in the bottle. He knew for sure that he could lean on the Lord, that Christ in him could defeat this unholy desire over and over again, if need be.

As he moved to replace the lid on the bottle, the door opened and Abby walked in. He started and spilled the bottle, the pills falling in a splatter on the hardwood floor. She stared at him, confusion on her pretty brow.

“Joseph, are you ill? Have you been to the doctor?”

He wet his lips, uncertain of what to say. But then his heart convicted him, and he began to speak in measured tones. “No, Abby—I–I’m not sick, at least not in the way you’re thinking.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, bending to pick up a pill.

“Don’t . . .” He broke off, and she rose to her feet, extending her hand to him. He shook his head. “Abby, when I came back here, I told you, or the community, only part of my story.”

She dropped her arm and walked into the room, closing the door behind her. She sat down on the bed and looked up at him.

“Well then, tell me the whole story.”

He gave her a wry smile. “You’ll hate it—and maybe me. You won’t understand.”

Her bosom heaved indignantly. “You can try at least—does Molly know the whole story?”

He sank to the floor, his back against the wall. “Here.” He stretched out a long arm. “Read the prescription on the bottle.”

She leaned forward and took it from him, and he watched her face as she processed the name.

“Molly Harding? Why do you have her medicine?”

He waited while she clutched the bottle against her apron.

“I took it from her.”

“You—stole it?”

“
Nee
. . . She offered, and I took it.”

Abby shook her head in confusion. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m a drug addict, Abby. Those are pain pills. I used to take them all the time, just to feel good.”

She bowed her head, staring at the bottle in her hand. “You say ‘used to.’ Do you still?”

“No. But I wanted to—tonight, today. And I’ll probably want to again. But for now, right before you came in, I felt like
Derr
Herr
was with me, and I was able to stop. I believe that as long as I cling to Him, hide in Him, that I’ll be able to stop.”

She took a deep breath. “And Molly. Are you—addicted to her?”

He frowned, not understanding her trail of thought. “Molly . . . No, she means nothing to me.” It was true, he realized, deep inside. There wasn’t anything left for Molly.

“So whatever you had with her, with the pills—it’s over?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want it to be?” She looked him square in the eye. “I mean . . . You know what I did, we both know—how I got you to marry me.”

“We’re a
gut
pair, aren’t we? Both of us thinking we’re not worth the other . . . but maybe the Lord has a plan in all of this.”

She placed her heavy shoe lightly atop a pill beneath her foot and pressed. “I want these pills gone. I want her gone. Will you let me help you?”

It was not what he had expected—her calmness, her steadiness. Where was the petulant, demanding girl who’d had the boys dangling after her barely two months ago?

“Well?”

“What?”

“Will you let me help you—do something, anything?”

Anything
. The word echoed across his mind. When had someone last offered selflessly to do anything for him?

“Pray for me,” he choked finally.

“I’ll pray for you, for us.”

“Me too.”

“Gut.”
She pressed her foot fully to the floor, leveling the pill into fine powder. “I’ll get rid of the pills?”

It was a question. He nodded in agreement, then spoke the truth.

“But it would be easy for me to get more.”

“From Molly?”

“Not just her. Anywhere, really . . .”

“Are you going to get more?”

“I can only promise you moment by moment, day by day, Abby. If I say no forever and then fall, I’d be lying to you, and I don’t want that. Not for you. Not for us.”

It was the closest he’d come to admitting his feelings for her, but as he watched her beautiful face, he knew she was already on to another thought.

“Dr. Knepp . . . and his wife . . . they know about all of this, don’t they?” She gestured with the pill bottle.

“Ya.”

“How?”

He sighed deeply. “Dr. Knepp was at a conference in Philadelphia. He—found me, on the streets. I had pneumonia and was out of it with a fever. I was speaking Pennsylvania
Deitsch
. He heard it and brought me back to the home of some friends there. He and Mrs. Knepp nursed me back to health, then they asked if I wanted to come here. It was the Lord who made it coincidence that he practiced in the same community where I was born.”

“So he got you to stop the pills, then?”

“
Nee
, I did that alone . . . or with
Derr Herr
, I should say. It was before I got sick. I left Molly, all of our so-called friends, and went to an empty apartment and battled it out. But then I had no money, no food. I got sick—but I told Dr. Knepp the truth. He
said—he said that he believed in second chances and persuaded me to come back, so I did.”

“But, Joseph, how could you let Molly here then today? How could you even have her around?” Her voice rose in confusion, in accusation.

He hung his head. “How could I take the pills then too? I can’t explain it to you . . .”

“Then you kissed me like that, on the back porch . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I thought—I thought that you . . .”

He looked at her. “I meant that kiss, Abby, every second of it.”

“I don’t know if you did or if you didn’t, Joseph.” Her shoulders sagged then straightened. “Please go, leave the room. I want to deal with these pills.”

He slid back up the wall, needing to touch her, but he felt the barrier of her hurt, her confusion. Yet what did he want? It was enough that she’d said she’d pray—he didn’t expect her to love him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN