In Plain View (44 page)

“All right,” Rufus said, “let’s walk down toward the road.”

Annie turned to follow him, catching her foot on the hem of her dress. She would have to turn up the hem on this dress to wear it regularly. A year ago she never would have thought of doing that herself. She would have taken the garment to a dressmaker or, at the very least, her mother. Or, more likely, she simply would have stopped wearing it and bought something new. Much had changed in a year.

Once they were free of the crowd, Rufus let Annalise step in front of him as they made their way down the hill toward the road. Her form, even under the drape of an Amish dress, enchanted him. The way she held her shoulders. Her slender neck rising from the collarless garment. Her certain steps that made her skirt swish more than she realized. From a step or two behind her, he could feast without making her self-conscious.

How beautiful she is
, he thought. How easily he could let himself imagine a future together. She would let down her hair and he could freely revel in the wonder of her loveliness. Someday their own children could romp on the playground that Karl proposed to erect, while he and Annalise sat on a bench he had crafted.

He reached for her hand, squeezing it as he fell in step beside her.

At the road, Annie inhaled heavily and let it out in controlled measures. This would not be an easy conversation. She hoped she could form her words more smoothly if they were walking and not looking at each other.

“Rufus,” she said, “I made some assumptions about Karl Kramer that were not accurate.”

“Many people did.” His answer was mild, and she knew he had no sense of what she proposed to talk about.

“He did some bad things in the past. Last year, when he hurt you and you ended up in the hospital—”

“We don’t know for sure that was Karl.”

“Well, he scared the living daylights out of me one time.” Annie pressed on. “All this spring, ever since I discovered that stash of supplies, I’ve thought the worst of Karl Kramer. I confess even I had my doubts when you said you wanted to work with him.”

“Annalise,” Rufus said, “I sense you are working up to something. What is it you feel you must say?”

Annie kicked the dirt. “Karl Kramer is the last person I would think could ever make me examine myself. But all this business has made me realize I’ve been judging him based on his past, and now it looks like he wants to be something different in the future.”

“We all have pasts,” Rufus said. “We carry them with us into the future.”

Annie swallowed. “I don’t want to carry my past into the future… into
our
future. I don’t want to have secrets that might disappoint you later, when you find out.”

Rufus paused in the road and turned her to look at him—just what she had hoped to avoid. “We are plain people, Annalise. You can speak plainly to me.”

“I love you, Rufus,” she said.

“I know. I love you, too.”

She lowered her eyes to the ground. “If we marry, I want our marriage to be everything you’ve ever dreamed of, everything you’ve been waiting for.”

“Annalise, what is on your heart?”

“I’ve…not been pure.” She could not look at him as she said these things. “I wasn’t going to church much in those days. I suppose I put my faith in a box off to the side. Jesus didn’t have much to do with certain choices. I had a boyfriend in college, and we…we should not have, but we did.”

“I see,” Rufus said quietly.

Annie swallowed hard again and blew out her breath. “That’s not all. I went to a technology convention once and had what the
English
would call a one-night stand. I don’t think I ever even knew his last name. I have never been proud of that. I’ve hated myself for it.” She tensed her arms and balled her fists. “Even now, I hate remembering it.”

“Annalise—”

“Please, let me finish.” She moistened her lips. “Last summer, when we met, I was running from my intellectual property attorney because he betrayed me and was trying to steal my business.”

“I remember.”

“He was also my boyfriend, and he often stayed the night. At some level, I knew it was wrong, but everybody was doing it. The box my faith was in was up on a shelf by then.”

Rufus was silent, and Annie lifted her eyes to his at last.

“I don’t know what assumptions you’ve had about my past,” she added. “But I wanted you to know the truth. My faith is off the shelf now. I want to follow Jesus and be a new creation. But I can’t change the past.”

Those violet-blue eyes bore into her.

“If you’d rather find an Amish woman who has always had strong faith,” Annie said, “I understand. You probably want someone who hasn’t…I don’t want to be in your way.” Annie laughed nervously. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re what the
English
would call a great catch. You could have any Amish woman you wanted.”

Say you want me. Say you want me. Say you want me
.

Rufus turned his head at the sound of his name, and Annie startled. Karl Kramer appeared from around a clump of bushes at the side of the road. How long had he been there? Annie wondered.

“Rufus, we can’t have this party without you,” Karl said. “People are asking for you.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“You’d better be.” Karl turned and began to climb the hill.

Voices and children’s squeals wafted down. Annie realized she was holding her breath.

“Annalise,” Rufus said, glancing up the hill.

She could see in his eyes that he wanted to say more. Dread rose up. “You’d better go,” she said softly.

On the way up the hill he did not hold her hand. A thickness came over her chest, squeezing her throat.

Forty-Seven

June 1780

J
acob climbed the hill in the afternoon sun hoping he would not regret leaving his horse behind. At a brisk clip, the familiar walk from his home to the big house took barely twenty minutes.

While Maria was staying at the big house, Jacob felt less pressure to check on his mother frequently. After the gunpowder explosion threw Maria against the tannery six months ago she had no choice but to remain in Berks County while she waited for the leg to heal. Jacob had heard the bone snap. A slight limp now reminded Maria of one careless gesture, but her determination was undeterred. But Maria was gone now, and Jacob was never sure what he would find when he arrived at the clearing his parents had carved out forty years ago. His mother had not been on a horse in years, but he kept one stabled near her house just in case someone else might need it.

Maria agreed to stay with Sarah in Philadelphia, rather than chase the front lines of battle. At least there she could seek out the remnants of her own old network of subterfuge and perhaps uncover word of her missing husband.

No encouraging information had come through yet, but Jacob understood why Maria held on to hope. He had not heard from any of his brothers in almost a year. The most he could do was follow news of the battles and suppose that Joseph, John, and David were enmeshed in the fighting or working the supply lines. Jacob still manufactured gunpowder when he could find the saltpeter to keep the mill going. If he could get a load to Philadelphia, Sarah seemed to be able to feed it into channels effectively and sometimes even produce a fair price for it. He found comfort in imagining his own brothers loading their muskets with powder from his mill.

His mother was in the garden. He and Franklin helped her with the planting eight weeks ago. No doubt she was inspecting the shoots that carried the promise of bushels of vegetables. She looked unsteady to Jacob—more unsteady every day. she stumbled, and his heart lurched. He was still yards away.

Elizabeth fell. Jacob broke into a sprint.

“Mamm!” Jacob had his arms under her before she could sink into the soft soil.

Hours later, while his mother rested in her own bed, Jacob and Katie murmured in the kitchen.

“She should not be on her own. She should come stay with us.” Katie put her hand on top of Jacob’s as they sat at the table where he had eaten the meals of his boyhood.

“She has lived in this clearing since she married. She will not have it any other way.”

Katie nodded. “I’ll talk to Joseph’s wife, and John’s as well. We can all drop by more often. Some of the grandchildren are old enough to help, too.”

Jacob exhaled. “I wish my brothers could make it home, even for a visit. She has not been the same since David and John decided to enlist.”

“Age and heartbreak are not a productive combination.”

Jacob disentangled his fingers from Katie’s. “I can at least send a message to Christian, and we should let Sarah and Maria know.”

Katie straightened. “What are you saying?”

“She’s weaker all the time. We cannot deceive ourselves about what is coming.”

“What does it say,
Daed?”

Christian handed the letter to Magdalena, who scanned it quickly.

Magdalena held the page with thumb and forefinger on each side. “Elizabeth is failing. Jacob says she hardly gets out of bed anymore.” Elizabeth was the one who gave Magdalena her first reading lesson using an old primer of Maria’s.

Anxiety filled Christian’s chest, the pressure building until he lifted his shoulders in three quick breaths.

“Daed?”

“I’m all right,” he said. He could not manage more words at that moment.

Elizabeth Kallen had come into their lives through the will of his widowed father. She was not Amish and had no thought to become Amish. For years, Christian held that against her. But Christian could not imagine his boyhood without her. she had opened her heart to five motherless children. Never had she suggested he try the ways of the
English
. Except for not being baptized and joining the church—and the colorful fabrics she dressed Sarah in—Elizabeth lived as plain as any of their Amish neighbors.

Christian was only eight when his own mother died. The truth was he had far more memories of Elizabeth caring for him in maternal ways than he did of Verona Yoder Byler. He was not yet prepared to mourn Elizabeth Kallen Byler, but if Jacob’s note was an accurate assessment, he had little time to ready himself for the coming reality.

“Are you going to go see her?” Magdalena asked.

“I suspect I will be sorry if I do not.” Christian lowered himself into a chair. “She was always so kind.”

“May I come with you?”

Christian was at a loss to know what to do with this stubborn daughter. Magdalena should have been married six months or more by now. She ought to have been busy on Jonas Glick’s farm, making the place her home, perhaps waiting for a child to quicken within her.

Instead she had called off her engagement. If she could not be wife to Nathanael Buerki, she said, she would be no wife at all. Christian could barely bring himself to look Jonas Glick in the face. What was he supposed to do with a daughter unwilling to become a wife?

When Christian spoke to Babsi later that evening, she confessed she suspected she was with child again. A wagon ride over through the countryside with a passel of children had no appeal. The next day he rode out to the farms where his older sisters thrived. Although they burst into tears at the news of Elizabeth’s decline, both had family pressures that would make the trip with him impossible.