The Saddle Maker's Son (21 page)

Silence could be the best blessing of all. Tobias let the brush ride along Butterscotch's long, graceful back. Slow, even strokes that matched his heartbeat. The sound of hay crunching in the mare's mouth crackled in the quiet. The smells of horse, manure, and hay blended in a memory that went back to his childhood. All things simple and peaceful and certain were tied to those early memories of mucking out the stalls and feeding the animals. He longed for that peacefulness again. It seemed so far away, what with his daed's injuries and the situation with Lupe and Diego. And now this thing with David.

Rebekah hadn't wanted to tell him, that was obvious. Her voice had quivered with the knowledge that it would hurt him. He had taken it well. He hadn't yelled at the messenger or showed his emotion. There would be time for that later. When he confronted David about where he'd gone after Mordecai dropped him at the house. David hadn't been at the fireworks. Hadn't eaten ice cream with the kinner.

Daisy was missing from the stall. Which was why Tobias stood here brushing Butterscotch and waiting when he'd rather be in his bed sleeping.

He tightened his own grip on the brush and kept at his job. Butterscotch tossed her head and nickered as if enjoying the rubdown. When all else failed, a person had to keep doing what he knew how to do. Tobias had experienced what David felt for Bobbie. He knew how it felt to want something so badly and know it would only cause heartache for the ones he loved. He'd made the right choice. His feelings for Rebekah proved that.

He would talk to David. He would make him understand.

He snorted. Butterscotch whinnied as if in response. As if she knew what Tobias knew. His daed had moved the family across the country to get him away from Serena. From temptation. Only to find it in a new person with another son.

A cheery whistling sound reverberated in the silence he'd cherished only seconds earlier. He swiveled, brush in the air, his other hand still on Butterscotch's back. David strode through the open barn door, leading Daisy behind him. He murmured under his breath. Was he singing? The words didn't sound familiar.

“What did you say?”

“Ach, you're out here. You should be in bed asleep by now.” David turned his back, one hand on Daisy's neck. The smell of a woman permeated the air. The smell of roses. The smell of Bobbie McGregor. “I figured everybody would be in bed by now.”

“That's obvious.”

“Did a cocklebur get under your saddle?”

“Where have you been? You missed the barbecue and the fireworks. Rebekah said you came back with her and Mordecai.”

“Little tattletale. She told you, didn't she?”

“She's worried about you.”

“I'm fine.” David grinned. “I had barbecue. It just wasn't hot dogs cooked on sticks over a trash can.”

“You went back and spent the evening with Bobbie McGregor after Mordecai spoke to you.”

“I thought you of all people would understand. You would be with Serena right now if it weren't for Daed. You know you would.”

Heat washed over Tobias. His plan to simply talk to his brother had gone awry already. He swallowed his anger and worked to corral emotions that galloped in all directions. “How do you know what I would or wouldn't do?”

“I heard you and Daed arguing. Those walls were mighty thin in the old house.”

“Daed doesn't argue.”

“He says his piece and calls it a day.”

“Right now he doesn't need the aggravation. He's still trying to heal. He's trying to do too much too soon. You're not helping.”

“You told him about Bobbie.”

And cause the man more anguish? “Nee. I was hoping you'd come to your senses so I wouldn't have to do it.”

“You don't have to do anything.”

“So you're thinking of leaving the district?”

David's shoulders heaved in a mammoth shrug. He was so barrel chested it was a wonder his shirt didn't rip. The bravado of a few seconds earlier disappeared. “I don't know what to do.”

Tobias understood the despair that permeated those words. “Back away while you still can.”

“That's the thing.” David wrapped his stubby fingers in Daisy's mane. His expression was hidden in the barn's shadowy darkness. “I don't know if I still can.”

“You can. Stay away from her.”

“Every night I pray and I confess my sins and I promise to do
better.” He raised his head, letting Tobias see his red eyes. “Every morning I wake up and the first thing I think of is her and when I can see her again.”

Tobias's heart lurched in his chest. He remembered that feeling, that awful aching sensation, that void that simply had to be filled and could only be filled by one person. “I felt that way about Serena.”

“How did you stop?”

“Just like a person who has an addiction. Cold turkey. I simply refused to give in to the desire.”

“I'm not that strong.” David rested his forehead on the horse's neck. “I'm not sure I want to be that strong.”

“You are.”

He lifted his head and gazed at Tobias head-on. “I think I love her.”

“You hardly know her. Besides, it doesn't matter.”

“How can you say love doesn't matter? It's everything.”

“Loving a woman isn't as important as being right with Gott.”

“Gott made us to love women. And them us.” David led Daisy into her stall and slammed the gate shut. “I'm going to bed.”

“Gott expects us to exercise good judgment and avoid temptation.”

“How do you know what Gott expects?”

“I listen on Sunday morning.”

“I listen too.” David brushed straw from his shirt and stomped toward the door. “I listen to my heart and my head. Life is short. Look at how we lost Mudder. Look what it did to Daed. He's still broken after six years. A person should take the love that drops in his lap while he can.”

“It might be better to do without an earthly love than to give up the heavenly one.”

“You really believe if I leave the district, I'm defying Gott?” David paused at the door and swiveled. “How do I know He didn't send Bobbie to me?”

Tobias couldn't answer that question. He'd asked it himself about Serena. “All I know is I wasn't willing to give up my family and my faith for an Englisch woman. Are you?”

Emotion etched David's face, making him look older than his years. “I'm still trying to figure that out, Bruder. Give me time. Don't tell Daed.”

Tobias dropped the brush and strode to his brother. He put one hand on his shoulder. “I'm asking you.” He stopped, forced to swallow the emotion that threatened to burst in his throat. “Don't do this to him. His heart has only just begun to mend.”

“I'm not doing this to hurt him.” David's Adam's apple bobbed. His gaze broke from Tobias's and landed on the night sky over his shoulder. “If I could do anything different, I would. I can promise you that.”

He broke away from Tobias's grip, whirled, and fled.

Tobias watched him go for a few seconds. Then he turned back to the barn. The chances of sleep coming anytime soon were slim to none.

Susan padded barefoot through the front room headed to the kitchen. She'd spent too much time on her letters to Lilly and Thomas. She tried to write them at least two or three times a month. Lilly returned the favor with great regularity. Thomas, less so. Her youngest bruder did not like pen and paper. Or talking. He was the opposite of Mordecai. Just as Lilly was bony to Susan's rounded figure.

The patter of rain on the roof and the low hum of conversation between Phineas and Mordecai as they jarred honey harvested before the rains came had lulled her. She'd forgotten all about the time. Time to start supper. Rebekah was helping Martha with house cleaning and laundry. She was spending a great deal of time at the Byler farm this summer. Abigail had gone to deliver a baby. Susan slipped into the kitchen, contemplating whether she had celery and carrots to add to the leftover chicken to make chicken noodle casserole.

Phineas glanced up from handing a bowl of honey to Mordecai, who began pouring it into the jars. “Good first harvest.”

“Gut. I noticed the shelf was empty when I was in the store yesterday. Sales have been gut.” She opened the door to the
propane-operated refrigerator and snagged a plastic container of chicken she'd deboned and chopped into cubes earlier in the day. “Are you staying for supper?”

Her nephew picked up a pen and wrote on a label. “Nee, Deborah is expecting me.”

“I'm making chicken noodle casserole.” A dish Phineas normally couldn't resist, but married life had changed him. He rarely strayed far from his fraa and son. “You could fetch Deborah. She might like a rest from cooking.”

“She had enchiladas in the oven the last time I stopped by.”

“Then maybe we should go to your house and I should rest from cooking.”

She laughed and Phineas joined her. Mordecai's gruff belly laugh did not mingle with theirs. She glanced his way. He had that look of a man deep in thought. Phineas shrugged and stood. He slapped his hat on his head. “I better head that way. I have a sow about to deliver and I haven't seen the kinner since morning.”

A mann and a daed who could barely stand to be away from his small family. Rebekah hardly recognized her nephew as the silent, morose young man who'd been so sure the scars on his face would keep him from finding love in his life. A reminder that Gott had answered her prayers on many occasions.

Mordecai still didn't speak.

Phineas elbowed him on his way out the door. “Wake up there, Daed.”

His father grunted and dumped dirty utensils in a tub of soapy water. “Tomorrow then.”

“Tomorrow.”

Susan waited until Phineas disappeared through the door. “What are you so deep in thought about?”

“I'm not.”

“You are.” As his sister she knew Mordecai better than anyone—even Abigail. “You're like an old man half asleep on a bench outside the dawdy haus.”

He ladled honey onto a slab of bread and handed it to her. It didn't matter how close it was to suppertime; room always existed for fresh honey. “You and Rebekah have been spending a lot of time at the Bylers'.”

She wiped at honey that dribbled down her chin with a finger she then licked clean. “Jah.”

“How are things going with . . . all that?”

“All what?” She uncovered the plate filled with homemade noodles ready to be cooked.

“What we talked about before.”

“Nothing to talk about.”

“Susan.”

“Mordecai.”

“I know it's none of my business—”

“Then?”

“You're as crabby as Mudder used to be when Daed went to Missouri and was gone a week.”

“Why did you bring this up?”

Mordecai patted the chair across from his. “Sit, Schweschder.”

“I have supper to make.”

“It'll wait.” His tone brooked no argument. It was his deacon voice, not his bruder voice. “Now.”

She sat.

“I spent some time with Levi at the hospital and now, since he came home.”

“Jah.”

“He's a good man with a good heart.”

“Yet there sounds like there's a
but
in there somewhere.”

Mordecai eased into the chair across the table, his knees cracking and popping like the old man she'd accused him of being only minutes earlier. He splayed calloused, sun-beaten hands across the pine boards that separated them. “There are scars on that heart.”

“I know about the scars. They're an awful lot like yours.”

“Mine have disappeared in recent years.”

“His could as well.”

He cleared his throat. For once her bruder looked uncertain, even embarrassed, a rare moment in the many years they had known and cared for each other.

“What is it, Bruder?”

He shook his head. “You sacrificed for us, for me. As a young girl and later, when I . . . when we needed you after the accident.”

“It was no sacrifice. I did what family does.”

“You gave up much and I want you to know, I mean, I never said it, I should've said it. I value your sacrifice.”

Susan stood and bustled to the counter. “This casserole won't make itself.”

“Schweschder, I want you to have what I have, if that's your heart's desire.”

She pulled a paring knife from the drawer and swiped a large carrot from the pile she'd cleaned earlier. “Gott's will be done.”

“Jah. Levi hasn't married all these years for a reason.”

“Twelve years passed before you found the fraa for whom you waited.”

“Gott blessed me, and I pray He does the same for you.”

“What makes you think Levi is not that man?”

“He hasn't come to grips with his loss.”

The image of Levi sitting in the chair next to her on the Fourth of July floated before her. The pain in his voice reverberated around her. “It's time he looked forward rather than backward.”

“Sometimes it's easier said than done. He lost his fraa in childbirth. A moment of great joy confounded by terrible loss. Such a confusing, terrible confluence would change a man.”

She slapped the carrot on the cutting board and chopped in a rhythmic motion born of years of experience. “You think he might not want to take a chance on such a thing happening again?”

“I think you have sacrificed much for others in your life and now it's time to consider how much more you're willing to give up.” The
clomp, clomp
of his boots and scent of sweat told her he'd risen and stood close by. “You're still young. Young enough to be a mudder if you think that's something you want.”

“He might not want it, I know. He's said as much, in that garbled way men do.”

“It's in the way he looks at Liam. Such pain and joy in one dreadful bundle. It hurts a heart to see a man so torn over the blessing of a son.”

Her throat ached with the desire to let go a floodgate of emotion. She breathed and picked up another carrot. “Love can heal anything.”

“I hope you're right.” He paused in the doorway. “I hope you plan to make an extra-big casserole.”

She could stretch a casserole with extra noodles with the best of the fraas out there. “Why is that?”

“I invited Levi and his kinner for supper.”

Susan turned, paring knife in midair. After a second she remembered to close her mouth. Her brother had already fled.