For Sure & Certain (33 page)

She needed to do something with her hands as she sorted the mess out in her mind. Needles always helped.

Abel

The next day Abel finished organizing the office and contacted the company to come pick up the wool delivery. After speaking with the driver, Abel had a better sense of where the miscommunication had occurred with his father and them. As he carried some invoices to the mailbox, he watched Marigold sneak back into the yarn shop, a few cardboard boxes in hand.

Not wanting to blur the lines, or the reason for his choices, he went back to the barn and used his father’s business line to make a phone call he never expected to ever make.

Lily answered his call and voiced her surprise as Abel explained the last few days. When he hung up the phone he knew he needed to act fast before he changed his mind.

That evening he sat down with his parents in the living room, after the house had gone to bed. Speaking with his father relieved the anxiety in his chest. He couldn’t let him have another heart attack while he ignored the facts. His family needed him, Jamestown was not what he expected, and in the ways that mattered it was too easy.

He had tried to compartmentalize his life, but matters of the heart didn’t work that way. Separating what mattered from what mattered more didn’t work. Everything was connected, him and Jamestown, his parents and Marigold,  her sister and his sister, and Joshua and newborn Abe. It was a large mass, continuing to grow, and it was joined in ways he hadn’t expected, but also in ways he couldn’t ignore.

***

He left early the next morning before anyone woke, and made his way back to his dorm. He didn’t care that when he walked into his dorm room and flicked on the lights, it wasn’t even eight am.

“What the fuck?” Jordan yelled, throwing his arms over his eyes. The girl curled next to him whined and pressed a pillow to her face. Abel didn’t care.

He threw his bag on his twin bed, not realizing another naked girl slept under his own sheets.

“Are you kidding me?” Abel’s voice was incredulous, with reason. The girl in his bed was so passed out she didn’t even stir as Abel folded the quilt covering her. A quilt his mother had made.

Abel pulled out his duffel bags and began tossing his clothes in. Socks, underwear, bathroom toiletries, and shoes. He opened another bag and loaded his bookshelf in it. He didn’t have much, two bags and a backpack. He packed in fifteen minutes. Not even long enough for Jordan to fully wake up and realize what was happening.

              He kicked open his door and stepped into the hall loaded down with his stuff. Making his way across campus, he did what needed to be done, even though it wasn’t what he’d expected.

              The registrar’s office was just beginning to wake, but the office manager listened politely then found Abel the form he requested, not understanding the weight of the paper she gave him.

He filled out the change of address form, pressing the ballpoint pen to the paper, his hand shaking as he did. Not wanting to live with regret, he made his choice. He handed back the paper, and said good-bye. A chapter was closed, once and for all.

There was no going back.

Marigold

She stood in the yarn shop that was really a shed. A place filled with glorious colors, representing a rainbow she glimpsed when she’d first come. Now all she saw was a burden, a small box that closed in too tightly around her.

A box she thought she needed in order to be free, but what she really needed was to come to terms with the fact that it’s okay to not know everything about herself. It’s okay to continue to change and grow. A month ago she thought she’d turned into a new sort of butterfly, one with wings wider than she’d imagined, but as she took one of her weavings off the wall where it had stayed since she’d finished it with deftly moving fingers, she knew people weren’t like butterflies.

One set of wings would never be enough for her, or for anyone, really. Life was in the changing, the evolution. The dying of dreams and fitful fluttering of new ones. She thought she’d spent her summer learning to fly, but now she realized she’d just been resting in a cocoon. In a sheltered, safe, space where her body could recover from the beating she’d given herself.

The beating for not being fully realized by the tender age of eighteen.

“Marigold?” Mrs. Miller pushed open the door and stepped inside the shop. Looking around at the cardboard boxes and packing tape in Marigold’s hand the truth dawned on her. “You’re leaving.”

“Ja.” Marigold’s eyes flooded with tears. “I’m so sorry.” Mrs. Miller came close and wrapped her arms around Marigold, holding her tight.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Shhh, no apologies.” She took Marigold’s face in her hands and spoke directly to her heart. “The tears are okay, don’t wipe them away. They wash away what was to make space for what will be.”

Marigold had always thought the same thing about crying, that it was nothing to be ashamed of.  Mrs. Miller and she were so alike, saw so much the same way.

“It’s okay to no longer be the girl you were.”

“You don’t think I’m a failure?”

“It’s not giving up, it’s accepting yourself for who you are.”

Marigold nodded, awed by this woman’s grace and understanding. Mrs. Miller was giving her permission to be herself, and right now she needed that reassurance that it was okay to change. That it was okay to be a girl unsure but certain.

Certain that being unsure was okay. Certain that this place was not her forever home. Certain that Lily had been right. She resisted everyone in her family because she was scared of the truth. Truth, that as it turns out, was maybe not all that scary to begin with. The truth being that she was unsure of what she wanted from life.

Scarier things could happen than admitting that. Like taking kneeling vows to a god she didn’t really believe in, forsaking her parents and herself because she didn’t want to admit that this wasn’t what she wanted forever. Her parents had made her angry, for sure and certain, but still they held a space for her. They were willing to try, to make a way for their differences.

“What will you do?” Mrs. Miller asked, taking a weaving from a hook on the wall.

“I want to keep making these.” Marigold had accumulated fifteen pieces over the fall. Once canning season had ended all she’d done was move her fingers, pulling yarn in and out, up and down. In the slow evenings around the fire with the Millers, she created pieces that had no real purpose here.

She counted herself lucky that Mrs. Miller enjoyed dying yarn without an end goal in mind, because other Amish women wouldn’t put up with her frivolous artistic pursuits for so long. Marigold knew it would only be a matter of time before she was asked to put this hobby aside for a more productive use of her time.

Marigold didn’t want it to come to that. She didn’t want to force the people who’d been so good to her to be put in that position. She would act first.

“They’re so beautiful, Marigold. I will do anything I can to help you.”

She pressed packing tape over the box, tears stinging her eyes again.

“Why have you always been so good to me?” Marigold asked. “I always thought it was because you wanted me to Amish so Abel would stay.”

Mrs. Miller sighed, “No, it was never about that.” When Marigold cocked her head with a question mark, Mrs. Miller laughed softly. “Okay, maybe it was that for a minute. But then I fell in love. With you. With the way you spun Ruthie on your hips and brought Bekah back around, the way you managed to get Jakey to eat Brussels sprouts. You made us smile; you made the loss of Abel so much easier to bear. Maybe you were never meant to be here forever, but I do know you were meant to be here when you were.”

“I wanted this to work, I wanted this to be forever.”

“I know but, Marigold, forever is a very long time.”

“Bekah is going to be so upset.”

“She’ll be fine, look,” Mrs. Miller pointed out the window. She saw Joshua meet Bekah at the back door, wrapping her in a stolen hug. They’d have each other, they’d take baptism vows, and they’d be married, and they’d figure out life together. “And you, Marigold, you’ll be fine too. More than fine, you will be back. The family in your locket is not the only one you have.”

Marigold hugged Mrs. Miller again, relieved to still be accepted.

She’d go back home, try to be like her great-grandmother, a woman she didn’t know at all, but a woman she’d clung to when finding herself.  For some reason she never believed the words before her father spoke them,
you don’t have to be the same to be a family
. Holding that truth tight to her chest, her wings stretched once more.

chapter nineteen

Abel

He knocked on the front door and it signaled an official start to this new chapter in his life. He breathed deeply, a sense of courage filling him. He had made the choice and now standing on this familiar porch it felt final.

The door swung open and confusion flashed over his face. The last thing he expected to see, the ghost-girl of his dreams, was before him.

“Marigold?”

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“What are you doing here?” he asked at the same time, dropping his bags, suddenly exhausted. Suddenly only wanting one solitary thing. Her to hold him. The weight of the last day suddenly pressed down, and he felt weak. He needed her to steady him.

“I just got here, literally five minutes ago.”

“I thought.” He stopped. He didn’t know what he thought. “Aren’t you supposed to stay in Lancaster until your vows?”

“I’m not taking them. I decided to move back home. I thought you were moving home too.”

His chin quivered, his head fell back, his body unnerved. The wishing well angel was here. She reached out for his hand. “Are you okay, Abel?”

“I think so,” he said, clutching her fingers. Not wanting to let go.

Lily popped her head out the door, interrupting them. “So, this is a strange turn of events,” Lily said, grabbing his bags, her eyes gleaming. “Abel, come in, Marigold literally just got here, which no one expected, and Mom and Dad are in the living room. They want to talk.” She grimaced, but Abel could hardly relay what she was saying.

Marigold was here.

Here.

With him.

“Okay,” Lily said, beaming. “I’ll stall for five minutes, but then they’re gonna want to see you both. This was not what they expected when they told Abel he could live here.” She squeezed the arms of the bewildered pair and shut the door on them.

Marigold

Abel’s fingers pressed tight against her own, as if he feared he’d fall over if she didn’t hold on.

“Living here?” she asked, processing her sister’s information.

“Uh, yeah … I couldn’t be at the dorm anymore. My roommate kept having sex, which is actually worse than it sounds.”

“It sounds pretty bad.”

“I can’t do what I need to do on campus. It wasn’t a good fit.”

“And what
is
a good fit?” Marigold asked, realizing it was finally time to finish their game of twenty questions. She thought moving back to D.C. meant giving everything up, yet somehow, minutes after coming home … here he was. “That was question fifteen, by the way,” she added, her voice suddenly filled with hope.

The memory seemed to dawn on Abel, and he gave her a knowing nod and answered seriously. “Last night I told my parents that my father’s condition didn’t change anything. I won’t let them define who I am no matter how much I love them.”

“Wow.” Marigold stood breathless. When she decided to move home, never in a million years did she think it meant she would have another chance with Abel. “Yesterday afternoon I told them I was leaving. I’m surprised they didn’t say a word about it to you.”

“That makes sense, they are Amish, after all. Private, respectful.”

“And generous,” Marigold added. “Your mom’s letting me run her business from D.C., I’m gonna make an Etsy shop.”

Abel shook his head.

“What?” she asked. Sixteen.

“I asked my dad the same thing. If I could take over a bunch of the farm, but streamline the accounts. By working there a few weekends a month I could do the rest online.”

“He’ll let you?” Seventeen.

“Ja, I mean other Amish farms contract out like that. It’s just a different route than he ever expected to take. But life is full of the unexpected, isn’t it”? Abel took Marigold’s other hand, and she let him. She wanted him too. “But you, why are you here?” Eighteen.

“Being there wasn’t an act, but it also wasn’t forever,” she answered.

“What is your forever?”

“I don’t know, but I want to find out … without any pressure on myself for changing my mind down the line.” She offered him one of her secret smiles before adding, “That was question nineteen. You better make the last one count.”

His mouth curled into a knowing smile, as question twenty formed on his lips. “If you don’t yet know your forever, what do you know, Marigold?”

“I know there is no such thing as coincidence,” she answered, knowing this was end she had been looking for, without even knowing it. Her eyes glistened with tears as she explained, “As I left this morning, your mom told me,
providence has a funny way of working out
. I didn’t know what she meant … but now I do.”

“Us, together, ending up in the exact same place. We are providence,” Abel said, pulling her close.

“Kiss me.”

Standing on the front porch of Marigold’s house, with his lips on hers, their worlds could finally collide, for sure and certain.

Not how either of them expected, it seemed in the giving up of what they thought to be true, they found out what really was. They’d let people down. They’d let one another down. They had so much to discover about what creating their own little universe meant. What it would mean. They would find out what sacrifices came with choosing to live their lives for themselves, but together they would create a life completely theirs.

                          
 
the end