In Plain View (15 page)

“I’m not going back in time, Penny. I’m just choosing a simpler way to live. Simpler values. A faith that asks me to measure my decisions more carefully.”

“In the end, you’re still choosing Rufus Beiler. So you’d better be sure. Don’t think I didn’t notice your reaction when Beth Stutzman showed up. You’re not sure.”

Penny was right, of course. Annie was not sure she was the right wife for Rufus. Someone like Beth Stutzman would know how to be an Amish wife who brought no disgrace or embarrassment to her husband. Annie moved to the stairs.

“I’ll go get your room ready,” she said. “Make yourself comfortable for a few minutes.”

Upstairs, Annie opened a chair that unfolded into a twin-size bed and stretched sheets across it. She moved to the small desk and stacked up the papers there, clearing a surface for Penny to use. While her hands were busy, her mind also whirled. Sitting in the desk chair, she pulled open the bottom drawer and riffled through file folders. Her fingers settled on one folder, and she paused to think.

When Annie heard Penny’s footsteps on the stairs, she made a rapid decision.

Fifteen

T
he night was deep when Ruth left the sleepy house. Even the Stutzman girls, who seemed to giggle behind their teeth more than Ruth remembered, had settled in for the night. She had taken a flashlight from the kitchen drawer, and now she turned it on and aimed at the path. Even without a light, though, her feet knew the way. Clouds hung low, a curtain hiding the stars. Her frame ached to lie against the solidity of the broad rock and stare into forever.

She wore her brother Joel’s warm jacket because it was handy on the hook next to the back door. The flashlight beam bobbed ahead of her steps. Ruth moved swiftly, remembering the tree root she once tripped over and the low branches of an evergreen, the depression in the ground that often collected water, and the bushes with hidden spurs. Ruth’s parents had no idea how many times over the years she had escaped to the rock, whether by light of sun or moon.

With two families under the roof, fragmented conversation had bounced around the rooms during dinner and games. If she was hearing right, this might be the last time she could find solitude at the rock. At the very least, because of the park improvement project, the acres around the rock would be more populated. And at the very worst, the rock would be blasted. Its pieces could be used to outline a footpath with no hint that they had stood united and unmoved for eons.

If she walked briskly, Ruth could reach the rock in twelve minutes. On a cloudy night, Ruth estimated fifteen. She moved through trees to a clearing, and there, even under a dull, dim sky, the rock beckoned. The boulder stood more than five feet high and spread six feet long and nine feet across. Ruth knew where to put her foot on the rear side of it in order to heft herself to the top in two wide climbing steps. The flashlight turned off, she lay flat on her back and stared up.

Without the ornamentation of stars, the view lacked the unfathomable sense of infinity. Instead, clouds veiled the secrets of the sky, leaving Ruth to ponder the shroud around her own life.

On this rock she had imagined her future as a public health nurse. On this rock she plotted to escape her own baptism and go to college. On this rock, she chose to break Elijah’s heart.

Now she lived in the in-between, sure of her life calling to nursing, but not yet qualified to carry it out. Sure that leaving the church was the right decision, but not truly finding her place among the
English
. Sure that she could not drag Elijah away from his promises, but not able to keep him out of her heart. She should not have answered his last letter. She should not even have read the last letter. He was getting brazen.

A glimpse of one star would reassure her that it was not for nothing.

The rock was cold, as it always was. Eventually the chill seeped through Joel’s jacket, through Ruth’s sweater, through her skin. Ruth gripped the front panels of the coat and held them tightly around her, but in truth she did not mind the cold. Inhaling, she took in the fragrance of spring, the murkiness of apple blossoms carried on a breeze jumbled with The smell of mud in the damp earth below. Surely rain would come before the night was over.

Ruth flinched at the sound of a cracking branch. The night was too cloudy to cast a shadow, but she knew someone was there. She sat up and turned her head in the direction the sound had come from.

“Ruth? Are you here?” The voice was a solid sort of whisper.

Ruth fumbled for the flashlight and pointed it toward the voice. “Elijah?”

He emerged from the nearest tree.

“What are you doing here?” Adrenaline surged into Ruth.

“I might ask you the same question.” Elijah found the footholds and climbed onto the rock. “Turn off that light.”

She clicked the flashlight off and lay flat again. “I don’t get many chances to come here anymore. I hear they may blast this rock to smithereens.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.” Elijah lay down beside her.

The hammer in Ruth’s chest pounded harder, faster. More than two years had passed since she and Elijah used to meet at the rock in daytime innocence—and nighttime guilt.

“Elijah,” she said staring into the gray again, “how did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t.”

“Do you come often?”

The length of his silence confounded her.

“I feel you close when I come here,” he said. “This is where I first knew I loved you.”

Ruth’s pent-up lungs deflated. “Elijah, I’m sorry I answered your letters. I was thinking of myself and not what is good for you.”

“My feelings are the same, Ruth.
You
are what is good for me.”

“We can’t keep going around this circle, Elijah. We can’t be together.”

“You made your choice. I could make mine.”

“No! Not because of me. You’ve been baptized. They would shun you. I would always know what I took from you.”

“I hope,” he said, his voice low as he turned his face toward hers, “that you would always know what I gave willingly.”

They were not more than twelve inches apart. A familiar tremble began when she felt his breath, warm against the cold, mingling with her halting respiration. He raised a hand and grazed her cheek and neck then settled on her shoulder. Ruth could barely feel his touch through her layers of clothing, but memories roused, and she closed her eyes and breathed in his smell.

Ruth heard Elijah shift his weight, putting himself up on one elbow and turning his whole body toward her. He shielded her now from the chilled breeze, casting a stillness between them. When She opened her eyes, his face was right where she thought it would be, so close to hers that she could barely focus on his features. He was going to kiss her. It would be sweet and ardent and complete. She moistened her lips and swallowed in anticipation.

A star glimmered through the fog above them. Ruth rolled away from Elijah and sat up out of his reach.

Sixteen

June 1776

G
eneral Washington has fallen back time and again.” Joseph moved mashed potatoes around on his plate. “If he doesn’t have a victory soon, we’re going to lose Philadelphia.”

John reached toward the basket in the center of the table and helped himself to a thick wedge of bread. “Washington has had his share of victories.”

Joseph let his fork clatter against his plate. “Not lately. I don’t think you appreciate how precarious our position is.”

Jacob observed that while one brother’s analysis of military realities caused him to leave food on his plate meal after a meal, the other’s unflagging enthusiasm for the cause fed his appetite. He glanced at his mother and winced. At least their wives had already taken most of the dishes to the kitchen to wash up.

“I think I’ll go help the girls.” The Byler matriarch rose from her chair. “I never know where I’ll find things when someone else cleans up.”

Jacob waited until the broad door closed between the main room and the kitchen. “You know
Mamm
does not like when you talk about the war at the dinner table.”

“I cannot help it,” Joseph said. “I must do more.”

“Your crops help feed the militia. You play an important role.”

“You and John could look after my land.”

“We have our own fields, and the tannery and the powder mill.”

“I know. But all the powder in the world will not matter if Washington does not have enough soldiers.”

“Washington is a better general than you give him credit for,” John said.

“We are all trying to do our part, Joseph.” Jacob tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “You cannot take the weight of winning the war on your own shoulders.”

They heard the wagon and sat alert.

“That will be David,” Jacob said. He crossed the room to open the front door in time to see David sling down from the wagon seat and hitch the horses to a post. He raised his eyebrows in question as his youngest brother stomped the dust off his boots before entering.

David shook his head. “I delivered the load just as we planned, but I did not find much to haul back.”

“How much?”

“More coal and brimstone than saltpeter.”

Jacob tilted his head and sighed. “I have some saltpeter left from May. Perhaps we will be better off than we think.”

David reached inside his shirt. “I have this as well.”

“From Sarah?” Jacob took the envelope.

“I did not get to see her, but she left the letter with her maid.”

Jacob laughed. “She’s using her maid for subterfuge. There is no telling what Sarah would do right under the nose of a British officer if she had the chance.” He opened the envelope and scanned the note. “Thomas Jefferson, eh? She says he is the best man for the job.”

“Apparently he has a knack for wordsmithing,” David said. “I’m sure the rest of the Congress will hack his effort to pieces, but somebody has to get something on paper.”

Jacob could not help but wonder if Sarah had made any inquiries that might lead to Maria. If she had, she did not mention them.

“Is there any food?” David asked.

“There’s bread on the table. I’ll see what else is left.”

As David sank into a chair, Jacob pushed through the door to the kitchen and scanned the room. “Where’s Katie?”

“I sent her to lie down on my bed,” his mother answered. “The poor thing is worn out. The new
boppli
will be here soon. I sent all the children upstairs.”

“David is home.”

“And hungry, I suppose.” Elizabeth held out a hand, and John’s wife put a plate in it.

“Of course.” David always wanted food.

Elizabeth moved to the pie cabinet, where the leftover food sat, and began to fill the plate.

“I think I’ll go check on Katie,” Jacob said.

On his mother’s bed, Jacob found his wife turned on one side with a hand on her swollen belly. She smiled when he appeared in the door frame.

“I noticed you did not eat much.” Jacob sat and massaged Katie’s arm from elbow to wrist.

“Indigestion.”

“That’s what you said before Catherine, and before the twins. It went on for days.”

“I know. It won’t be much longer.”

“Catherine needs a sister.”

Katie nodded. “I want to name her Elizabeth. Do you think your mother would mind if we called her Lisbet?”

He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “She would be honored to share her name, and pleased that you want to remember my sister.” He stroked the back side of her hand. “Would you like to go home to your own bed?”

“After I have a nap. Do you mind waiting?” Katie snuggled her face into a pillow.

In the end, his mother insisted on putting the children to bed upstairs so Jacob would not have to disturb Katie to take her home. She would need her rest before hard labor began.

John and Joseph collected their families and rumbled off the homestead, which had become a productive farm in the last thirty years. Jacob’s mother occupied a widow’s seat—the house and a few acres around it, where she kept chickens and sometimes a pig, and had a couple of cherry trees. Though he built his own house near the tannery after his father died and Jacob owned the rest of the land that had once been his father’s, he would provide for his mother as long as she lived. David still resided in the big house, hesitant to buy his own land because he dreamed of North Carolina.

“After independence,” David said often, “America will open wide.” It would not be long now, Jacob hoped.

Mother and son sat on the front porch together admiring the stars.

“I’m sorry the boys are not more careful about their war talk,” Jacob said.

Elizabeth let a long moment lapse. “Until the day your father died, Christian hoped he would return to the Amish church and peaceful ways.”

“Daed was a peaceful man, but he would do whatever was necessary to protect his family.”

“I am not Amish,” Elizabeth said, “but that does not mean I love war.”

“I know. I hope you do not think any of us loves war.”

“I am a mother of four able-bodied sons. Of course the thought of war distresses me. And do not think I cannot guess what is really in those wagons you send David out with. You could not possibly be tanning that many hides.”

Jacob chuckled. “No,
Mamm.”

“Just remember that the British soldiers are sons and husbands and fathers as well.”