Amish Passion (Erotic Romance) (Amish Heart Trilogy) (3 page)

The next day came
and Rebekah was so full of nervous excitement she could barely contain it.  She almost didn’t hear Mother Yoder harping about her eggs not being cooked “properly.”  Rebekah didn’t care.  She had come home the afternoon before to find Mother Yoder burning the pillowcases Leah had embroidered for her dowry. 

“These were not stitched well at all,” Mother Yoder had sniffed.  “I will not have them
used in
my
house.”  Rebekah felt sick.  The pillowcases, beautifully worked, were the only thing she had that Leah had made for her.  Now, as things were, Leah would never make anything else for anyone.  Rebekah was awash with a mix of misery and rage.  She had turned away and tried not to cry, her fists clenched tightly. 

This morning, however, all her thoughts were on the day to come. 
Her hands fairly shook as she went about her morning tasks. 
What will Nick say?  What will he do?  What will I do?
  She had tossed and turned the night before, finally rising so as not to disturb Ezekiel.  She needn’t have bothered.  Ezekiel’s snores sounded like the pigs out in the pen and twice as loud.  There was no way he could be disturbed.

As she prepared to go to the gas station, other thoughts began to plague her. 
Can Ezekiel and Mother Yoder see a difference in me?
  She felt that her intentions to meet Nick today must be painted on her face, but no one noticed. 
Why should that surprise me?  No one ever notices what is happening inside me.  Why should they start today?
  She had lived with a sharp loneliness now that Leah had lost much of her former perceptiveness.  While Rebekah had been available to her sister and saw her frequently, their relationship had become one-sided in most respects.  Leah was often mentally absent due to oxygen deprived brain damage which occurred when her heart stopped for six minutes after giving birth to Eli.

Her only reprieve to
her isolation had been Ezekiel’s small daughter, Sarah.  Sarah liked to help in the kitchen and listen wide eyed and open mouthed as Rebekah read the stories of the Amish martyrs to her.  This morning she bounded in Rebekah’s room and showed off one of the cat’s newest litter, dressed in her doll’s clothes and bundled tightly to prevent his escape.

“See, I have a baby, too!”
  Sarah proudly showed off the orange kitten that was resigned to its fate as a toy until the moment freedom could be gained.

“Your baby is so nice
.” Rebekah played along, smiling. 

“Not as nice as Rachel.  He scratches sometimes.”  She rubbed a
miniscule injury inflicted recently by the kittens.

“Let me see.” 
Rebekah took the small hand in hers and kissed a tiny wound.  “There you go.  Now it will heal.” She smiled down at the child.  “Now go play outside before you are caught with a cat inside the house.  I have to go.”  Mother Yoder would have a hissy fit if a cat was found in ‘her’ house.  The last time, there was a huge tirade and the cat got several swift kicks.  Rebekah had observed that Sarah had been more traumatized than the cat.

“Please, Mama, take me with you.”  This was not a new request.  It was something that had become more frequent and ardent as her oldest brother
Jakob’s nasty cruelty had intensified.  Most recently, he had gouged the eyes out of a squirrel.  He relished the blood and screams of the animal and cackled heinously before setting it loose.  The poor creature frantically scurried about, blindly slamming into branches, until it fell on the ground and was ripped apart by the dogs. Jakob’s malicious laughter grew increasingly louder until there was nothing left but a wisp of the squirrel’s tail.  The whole scene had made Rebekah nauseous and made Jakob’s siblings distraught.

Rebekah shook her head. 
“I can’t bring you with me.  I’ve got to go.”  She shooed Sarah out of the room.  “Go, before you get in trouble.”  Reluctantly, Sarah moved away, cradling the cat.

With Sarah gone
, Rebekah finished tying Rachel’s tiny black boots.  “Are you ready to go see your father, Baby?”  Rachel made happy sounds in reply.

Yeah, that’s the way I feel.

Her stomach was fluttering as Ezekiel dropped her off at the station and she agreed to meet him at three o’clock that afternoon.  This would get her home in time to cook supper.  Schedules were of vital importance to the Amish and the family’s supper must be on the table on time or Mother Yoder would harangue her to death.  She watched Ezekiel drive off in the buggy and wondered what the day had in store for her
.  No matter what, I must not let Nick kiss me
.  It would be her unraveling. 
No,
she told herself,
I don’t want to kiss him.  I am a married woman. Amish, obedient.  I would not kiss him again.
  She rallied her strength as she waited for his van.

She did not wait long.  He was several minutes early.  He exited the van and took her burdens, save Rachel
, from her and loaded them in the back of the vehicle.  “I drove by three times already but you hadn’t shown up yet,” Nick confessed with a sheepish grin. 

Rebekah
, not knowing what to say, only blushed in return.  Nick took Rachel and buckled her seat securely in the seat behind him where Rebekah would have access to her should she wake up and need her mama during their drive.

Nick asked after her family while they drove the few minutes to Leisure Lake.  She told him about everyone in the family, leaving Leah for last.

“She is not well.  No one has expected her to make it this long.  It’s like she’s not even Leah anymore.” She grappled with words, trying to describe the vacancy in Leah’s expression.  “It’s like she’s not even there most of the time.”  What she didn’t want to say is that Leah could no longer feed herself or control her urine or feces.  When Leah did speak, it was with a thick slur.  And what Rebekah really didn’t want to say was that it was all her fault for loving Nick.

“Becca, I am so sorry.”

She nodded.

“What do the doctors say?”

“They don’t know.  They don’t give her any hope of recovery.  They expected her to die a while ago.”

“I am really sorry.”

He pulled up to a secluded area close to the water’s edge and killed the ignition.  He swung around in his seat to face her, visibly rolling thoughts over in his mind.  His eyes were searching her face while his own remained deathly solemn.

“Becca why?
  Why did you do it?”

Her eyes were downcast, not able to meet his.  This was going to be rough
.  No matter what, he won’t understand. 

“When I was in the hospital that day, I promised God if he saved Leah, I would stay with her.”

“What in hell gave you the idea that God wanted you to stay with Leah?”

She stole a glance at him.  His mouth, always
before with a smile playing at the corners, was now pulled in a taut line.             

“She asked me to stay.”

“She asked you . . .”

“I had told her I was leaving with you.” 

“I see.  But why in the hell did you marry Ezekiel?  I mean
Ezekiel
of all people!  You hated him!”

He was angry. 
He has a right to be.  You fucked him hard in the hospital bathroom and then walked out on him in the middle of his proposal of marriage without an explanation.

“You’re angry.”

“Well, yeah!  Of course I am!  And a bit confused.  So, please just answer my question.”

She tried to collect her thoughts.  The conversation wasn’t going as she pictured it
would. 

“I was pregnant. 
I couldn’t be pregnant and unmarried in the Community.  I had to get married.  I was already promised to Ezekiel.”

“But why would God want you to stay with Leah?” 

“Because I had sinned.”

“How?  With us?  Are you talking about us?  But I asked you to marry me!”

She shook her head.  “I would have been shunned and not able to stay with Leah.”

“Okay, let’s talk about this ‘God wanted you to stay with Leah
’ thing for a moment.  Even if He did, how does that tie into what happened to Leah?”

This was the difficult part.  It didn’t make sense when she said it out loud.  Nick was not going to understand it any more than she did herself.

“She almost died because of my sin, Nick.”

“Bullshit.”

“Whaa?”

“God doesn’t work that way.  He isn’t this vengeful, eye-for-an-eye bullshit crap kind of being.  He is much more intelligent than that.  What happened to Leah was not your fault.  You didn’t cause it; it wasn’t made worse by what we did.  You can believe all you want that God wanted you to stay as a part of Leah being alive today, but I say that’s bullshit, too.”

“But what happened to Leah . . .”

“These things just happen.  There’s no sense or reason to them.  They just happen.  Maybe God had a plan for it, maybe He didn’t.
I don’t know.  I just know that nothing you did or didn’t do made any difference.”  His anger spent, he reached over with the side of a fingertip and caressed Rebekah’s cheek.

She had hunched her body over, holding herself, trying not to cry.  At Nick’s touch, hot tears sprung forth
; the ones she had held onto in fear of Leah’s life.  These were the tears of her guilt and shame.  These were the tears of regret.  Try as she might, she could not reproach herself into regretting loving Nick, and that caused its own vicious cycle of derision, self-blame, and regret.  She often wondered if she had been fully and truly repentant in her heart, would Leah be well and whole.  As much as she knew the answer to this was logically ‘no,’ her heart still held the verdict that she was guilty, and would always be so.

“Hey, hey.”  Nick’s voice was soft in her ears, and before she knew it, she was in his embrace again, letting the sobs shudder out of her onto his strong shoulder.  She held tight to him, crying out her grief and guilt until her wailing grew hoarse and Rachel’s cries accompanied her mother’s.
  She wiped her eyes and turned her attention to her daughter.

“She’s hungry.” 
Rebekah lifted their daughter to comfort her.  “And she needs a change.”

“Go ahead.”

She was flustered.  “I should go in the back.”

“Why?”

“Because I breast feed.” 
Are you just going to sit there and watch me?

“Like I haven’t seen those breasts before.”

She couldn’t tell if he were teasing or not. 
Alright, fine!  I’ll meet your challenge.
  He wasn’t going to get the upper hand.  She offered him Rachel. “Well then, would you hold her for a minute?”

“Gladly.
  Come here, little one.”  Again, he handled the crying baby with utmost delicacy, rocking her back and forth.

Rebekah put a small blanket over a shoulder for modesty and unpinned her dress in the front.  Taking Rachel, she put her to the hidden breast and smiled as the child soothed. 

“You do that so well.”

“So do you,” she complimented back. 

“Thank you.”

“Usually men aren’t so comfortable with babies.”

“Well, she
is
mine. I should be comfortable.”

“Yes.”
  Again, it was evident that Nick was not going to go away.  Like it or not, he was going to be part of Rachel’s life and therefore her life for a very long time.  The only question was what part he would play and how.

After a time
, Rebekah switched breasts to let Rachel have more to eat.  Fully mollified, the baby was ready for a diaper change and a nap. 

She turned back to see Nick.  He had gotten out of the van and was putting a blanket down in the grass along with a sack and bottles of water
for their lunch.

“My lady.”  He extended his hand to help her out of the van and with her hand in his, led her to the blanket. 
Ezekiel never holds my hand
, she thought and then guiltily pushed the treacherous comparison away.  Sitting beside Nick on the blanket, she suddenly knew that her being there with him could only have one outcome.  She envisaged the two of them, again together, naked and moving together on the blanket and her face began to burn. 

“Becca
.” His voice was almost a whisper.  “Let me see your hair.” 

She could have refused.  She should, quite probably, have refused.  Yet at the same time, seeing the glow in Nick’s eyes, she knew she didn’t want to refuse him.  She slowly took off her bonnet and unpinned her hair
.  With her delicate fingers she combed out the braids, letting her thick mane of copper fall to her hips. 

He leaned in close. 

“You have only gotten more beautiful.  How do you do that?”

Breathless by his proximity, she barely got the words out of her mouth.  “You’ve gotten more beautiful, too.”

With his hand curved, he touched her face with the front of his fingers.  Again, she could have gotten up and gone to the van.  She could have told him to stop.  And she should have.  Yet the will to do so had long been killed in her. She realized that she had not been voluntarily touched since Nick had last done so.  At night, during the times Ezekiel chose to spray his seed into her, she felt nothing either physically or emotionally.  There was no, never had been, and never would be any form of lovemaking between them.  She had deadened any feeling she had so she wouldn’t have to endure what amounted to a form of consensual rape where she didn’t want Ezekiel to fuck her, but there was no way she could prevent it. She would lay under him, trying not to cry while enduring his mercifully short exploitations of her.