The Amish Groom ~ Men of Lancaster County Book 1 (35 page)

I was the first one awake the next morning, Liz’s first full day home. After my devotions, I took Frisco out for a daybreak walk and then returned to the house to find Brady helping Liz maneuver down the stairs. She appeared to be in greater pain today. We had decided to leave one crutch upstairs and one crutch down, so at the bottom of the staircase, Brady handed her the downstairs crutch and helped tuck it safely under her arm.

“Want any coffee, Liz?” I asked as I watched her grimace.

“Yes, please.” She made her way slowly to the couch, Brady trailing her with her iPad and cell phone. I followed them and turned into the kitchen.

“Can I make you some breakfast, Brady?” I poured coffee for Liz and turned to my brother. “Scrambled eggs or an omelet? My omelets aren’t pretty but they are tasty.”

“Nah, I’m good,” he answered without looking at me.

“I’ll take an omelet,” Liz said. “What have you got to put in one?”

I opened the fridge. “Mushrooms, asparagus, and some kind of cheese.”

“Sounds wonderful to me,” Liz called out.

Brady turned to face me. “I guess I’ll have one, then.”

“Coming right up.”

While I made breakfast, Brady took a chair at the kitchen table and tapped at the screen on his cell phone. Liz turned on the morning news, which seemed to be one story of conflict and chaos after another.

It was a beautiful November morning, unseasonably warm, even for just a few minutes after seven. When the omelets were ready—they actually didn’t look too bad—I suggested we eat breakfast on the patio. It was my way of unplugging from the TV and its doom and Brady’s cell phone. But Brady said he didn’t have enough time before his ride came, and Liz said it was too chilly to eat outside.

We remained where we were and ate, each one of us in relative solitude.

Liz’s appointment for her new cast was at ten. On the drive there, I asked her how she became interested in overseas humanitarian work.

“How could I not be? There is so much need out there. So many hurting and sick people, especially children. Thousands die needlessly every day. Nothing will change for them if people like us don’t step in. I’m lucky I can take time off from work to do it. I would have done it long before this if we weren’t always moving.”

“So what do you do when you go?”

“Everything. On this trip we were conducting immunization clinics and diabetes management training. Last year when I went to Guatemala, I assisted two doctors who performed clef palate repairs to fifteen kids who had literally no future without surgery. The year before that we were in Haiti. And before that, in the Dominican Republic removing benign-but-life-threatening tumors and growths.”

“Must be hard to see so much suffering.”

“Oh, it would be far more difficult to look away from it, I think. I couldn’t live with myself if I did nothing in spite of having the means and opportunity to do something.”

Liz began to share with me some of the amazing stories from her past trips, and I found my admiration and respect for her growing. In all the years she had been my stepmother, I hadn’t known that she, like Rachel, was very much moved by compassion to do something when a need arose.

“I feel like I am just beginning to know you, Liz, after all these years,” I said as I turned into the parking lot of the hospital where she worked. “I’m sorry if I’ve kept you at arm’s length. I didn’t mean to.”

This seemed to surprise her. “You don’t owe me any apologies, Tyler. I’m the one who didn’t know what to do about how you were raised. I’ve never known. It just seemed such an unfixable situation. And I’m a fixer. It frustrated me.”

I pulled into a spot with my brow furrowed. Lark had said the way I was raised was crazy. Liz just now called it an unfixable situation. But for me, it was simply the way my life had unfurled as I had lived it. I didn’t like the idea that to other people my life to that point seemed crazy and unfixable.

When I said nothing, Liz touched my arm. “I don’t mean that you’re unfixable, that you’re somehow the problem. It’s your dad and me. We’re the ones who let what happened, happen.”

“But there is no problem.” I turned off the ignition.

“Well, maybe not for you,” she said as she unclicked her seat belt, so softly that I wondered if she had said it at all.

“What was that?”

She had her hand on the door handle, but she paused. “Hey. Do you want to have lunch after this?”

She said it casually, but I could tell there was a purpose to her question, and that it had to do with why she hadn’t really answered mine.

“Sure. If you’re up for it.”

“I’ll be due for another pain pill when they’re done with the new cast. If I’m not hallucinating or near comatose, I’d like to take you to lunch.”

“Sounds great.”

It was tough waiting for Liz to be seen and then tougher still waiting for her to emerge with a new cast. I was eager to continue our conversation.

Lark texted me as I sat in the outpatient waiting room to see if we could meet the next day instead of Saturday. The reception in the hospital was terrible, so I stepped outside to text her I was fairly certain I could make the switch, but that Liz had returned early from Central America with an injured ankle and shoulder and everything was now a little different.

That text prompted her to ask me what had happened.

I texted back:
Can I just call you?

Her answer back to me:
No. I’m in class. Just tell me.

She was in a house that collapsed while she was inside it.

No way! Really? Is she okay?

Like I said, she has some injuries. But overall she was lucky. Could’ve been worse.

Is it weird having her home?

You could say that. She’s seeing the doctor now and then we’re going to lunch. I have a feeling there’s something she needs to tell me.

You want to call me later?

I really didn’t know what I wanted—except for the hundredth time I wished I could call Rachel.

I’m sure it’s not that bad.

Okay, but holler if you want to talk about it.

Will do. See you tomorrow.

I went back inside the hospital. Fifteen minutes later Liz emerged from the casting room with her injured leg bent at the knee and resting on a scooter-type contraption that she operated with her other foot. She was surrounded by colleagues who were wishing her well and offering sympathetic goodbyes until she returned to work. At least the sling was now gone from her arm.

As we headed back out to the car she told me the fracture wasn’t as bad as she thought but it was still going to keep her off of her leg for at least six weeks.

“I have a few bruised ribs too, and a few contusions on my back that are blossoming into a hideous, purple road map. But I’ll live. And it’s nice to lose the stupid sling, which they said wasn’t really needed anyway.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“I just took another pain pill, so by the time we get to a restaurant, I’ll be able to be pleasant to people.”

I helped her into her car and then we headed for a Mexican place she liked. Once we were seated, I noted with a quiet laugh that the Baja fish tacos were a house favorite. I opted for cheese enchiladas. Liz ordered flautas. When the waitress walked away with our menus, I could see that Liz was still in pain.

“Would you like me to change our order to go?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be okay.” She took a long sip of her water.

The feeling that she’d brought me here to tell me something was even stronger now, so I waited for her to begin the conversation. After a second or two, she did.

“I’ve been thinking about what you told me last night. You know, about your wanting to know if your mother was happy.”

“
Ya?
”

“It’s not like we were best friends. She was just my neighbor for a few months.”

I waited.

“But I do know she wanted something she couldn’t have.”

“What? What did she want?”

Liz swirled a finger on the condensation sparkling on her glass. “She wanted both.”

“Both what?”

“Both lives.” Liz met my eyes. “She wanted to have the life she had
and
an Amish life. She wanted to return to Lancaster County, but she wanted to stay with your father. But she couldn’t have both. Having one meant not having the other.”

I sat, stunned, speechless, wondering how Liz could know this.

“I was working the night shift, so I was home during the day. One afternoon your mother was sitting on the steps of our duplex watching you play in your wading pool, and I had come out to wash my car. It was a blistering hot day. She asked me over for some lemonade, and we got to talking. I already knew she had been raised Amish because we had spoken before. But for some reason, on that particular day, she was feeling especially talkative—or maybe just homesick. She talked about the farm where she grew up and her family and how sad it was that her own son would never know the joy of an Amish life. She said she wished there was some cosmic way she could have both worlds.”

I still could not speak.

“I didn’t know much about the Amish, and I asked her why she couldn’t just have both, like a cousin of mine who had a Korean husband. They lived in Korea, but she managed to be a Westerner while still embracing his culture.”

Liz looked to me as if I would agree that these were valid suggestions. I just stared back at her, waiting for her to continue.

“Anyway, your mother told me it was different with the Amish. That that was impossible. That the two cultures were mutually exclusive. She said that living an Amish life meant giving up all other ways, not merging them.” Liz took another long sip of her water. “Your mom told me your dad was on one side and the Amish life was on the other. And that those two sides would never meet. Ever. It was one or the other, but not both.”

I looked away, out the window next to our table, where the busyness of life rushed past, trying to absorb what she was telling me.

“It wasn’t that she was unhappy, Tyler. She didn’t want to go back there if that meant leaving your father behind. But she wished there was a way she could go back and keep him too. And she knew that wish would never come true.”

I slowly turned my head to look at her as she added, “I’m telling you now because I think she would want you to know.”

We were both quiet for a minute, each lost in our thoughts.

“I honestly didn’t think I would ever run into your father again,” Liz said, breaking the silence. “I hardly ever saw him in those eight months they—you and your parents—were at the base in Texas. Then, five years later, when I was stationed in Spain, he came into the hospital one day with a burn from some equipment he’d been working on. I was his nurse. He barely remembered me, but I remembered him. I asked him how his wife was. And when he told me what had happened, I started crying, right there in the exam room. I don’t know why. For some reason, I had hoped Sadie had finally come to peace with the choices she’d made. With her passing so young, though, I figured she probably hadn’t. And that thought was just heartbreaking to me.”

Our food arrived and we began to eat. I suppose it was cooked perfectly and I might have enjoyed it had my head not been brimming with new thoughts.

“Why did you say you thought my situation was unfixable?” I asked a few minutes later. “Earlier, in the car. That was the word you used, unfixable.”

“Because it was. Duke waited too long to come back for you. And then
we
waited too long to come back for you. I should have insisted the minute we were married to come to Pennsylvania and get you. You had just turned eight. It had only been two years since you’d been there. But I got pregnant pretty soon after we were married and we just kept putting it off. By the time we got our act together, it had been five years since your grandparents had taken you. And we had Brady. And you…well, it was too late.”

Too late.

She was right. For all intents and purposes, by that time, I was fully ensconced in the Amish world, fully a part of my grandparents’ household. But had that been a good thing or a bad thing? I wondered. Then I realized that it didn’t matter either way.

All that mattered was that it had been a God thing. Growing up Amish had been His will for me.

“I’ve had a good life, Liz. I’m not bitter about the way things turned out.”

“I know you’re not. And I’m really glad you’re not. But you need to know that there’s nothing keeping you there now but you.”

“Are you telling me you think I shouldn’t go back?”

“I’m telling you that right now, you have what your mother didn’t have. The ability to choose.”

I processed this for a long moment. Then another thought occurred to me.

“Can I ask you something?”

She nodded, waiting.

“When you were stationed in Spain and my father came into your hospital that day and you asked him about my mother…” My voice trailed off, unsure of how to say it.