The Tempted Soul (19 page)

“Or not seen, as the case may be.” Emma stitched with serene concentration. “I have no problem with my wedding quilt being for Grant’s and my eyes only.”

“It makes me happy to think you’ll be sleeping under something that has part of all three of us in it.”

“Though I do wish we’d got it done by your wedding day.” Amelia stitched carefully into one of the corners. “I suppose we could have if we’d been stitching more than talking.”

“At the time, the talking was more important,” Emma said. “I don’t know what I would have done without Tuesday afternoons. When we finish this one, we’ll have to start a new one.”

“A baby quilt for Lydia Zook.” The words popped out of Carrie’s mouth before the idea was much more than a bud. “Goodness knows that girl hasn’t much else.”

“She’ll have all she needs after we get together tomorrow,” Amelia said. “I’m sure it will comfort her to know she’s not alone in this, even if it might have felt that way on Sunday.”

What happened in the members’ meeting was supposed to stay in the members’ meeting, but Amelia filled Emma in on the details anyway. Carrie reflected that nobody seemed to be paying much attention to that rule lately.

“I don’t think she’s coming,” she said.

“Not coming?” Emma’s stitches halted. “How can she not come? Does she have to work?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I went to see her on Saturday and she told me to mind my own business.”

“She’ll be sorry she said that when her back aches and she has to let out all her dresses,” Amelia said. “What foolishness—to turn down help when it’s offered freely? What is she thinking?”

“I don’t believe she is thinking,” Carrie said. “It sounds like she’s going to ignore the unpleasant fact that she’s getting fatter, not bother with a doctor until it’s time to have the baby, and leave it there in the hospital.”

“For what?” Amelia looked honestly perplexed. “Is there something wrong with it? How would she know if she won’t go to the doctor?”

“For adoption,” Carrie said quietly. “By
Englisch
people.”

Amelia’s face lost its color. Even her hands, flat and motionless on the quilt top, looked as though the blood had drained from them. “She’s giving up the baby to the
Englisch
?”

Carrie told them what she’d learned there in the creek bed, and the facts lost none of their sting in the retelling. She felt emotionally bruised once the last word had fallen into the quiet room.

“How could she?” Amelia whispered at last. “And you right there practically offering to give her child a loving home. How
could
she?”

“She’s desperate,” Emma said. “Desperately unhappy, emotional, and not thinking straight. She’ll change her mind. Surely when the little baby is put into her arms, she’ll decide to do what’s right.”

“What’s right for Lydia, or what’s right for the baby?” Carrie couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her tone. “I have to say that taking it home to Abe Zook’s tender mercies doesn’t seem like the right thing for anyone.”

“What a mess.” Emma watched Amelia from under her lashes. “Amelia, are you all right?”

“I’m sorry.” Amelia picked up her needle. “I’m shocked, that’s all. I didn’t think one of our—I mean, it seems so heartless, just to leave the child there as though it were one of those paper gowns you leave behind on the table when you’re finished with your examination.” Tears welled in her eyes. “We have to change her mind. We can’t let this happen.”

“It’s her baby,” Carrie said.

“It’s a soul born into God’s family,” Amelia retorted. “We can’t give up on her for the baby’s sake.
You
can’t give up.”

“Me?”

“
Ja
, you. If she’s determined to put it up for adoption, then you should be the one to adopt it.”

“But I’m not
Englisch
,” Carrie said, “and not likely to be by June.”

“That’s crazy talk. Of course the child should grow up Amish. It’s his or her birthright. All we have to do is convince her.”

“You’re welcome to try. I practically got down on my hands and knees to beg her, and it didn’t do any good.”

“We’ll work on it from all sides.” Color was coming back into Amelia’s face the more the idea took hold. “The men can work on Abe Zook, and the women on Lydia.”

“What do you mean, ‘work on’?” What was wrong with her? Carrie asked herself. She should be diving headfirst into plans to bring Lydia around to their way of thinking, not finding reasons to stay out of the metaphorical orchard—and all those painful tree trunks.

“A continual dropping on a rainy day,” Amelia said. “We just won’t let up until she agrees to either keep the baby or allow you and Melvin to adopt it.”

“Wait a minute.” Emma held up the hand with the needle in it. “Does Melvin want to adopt Lydia’s baby?”

“I haven’t talked about it with him. I mean, he knows she’s pregnant, of course, after Sunday, but he doesn’t know anything other than that the news upset me.” She paused, uncertain about whether to tell them the next part. But these were her friends. They had bared their souls to her more than once, and had held her while she wept over her own shortcomings as many times. “His mother is all in favor, though. In fact, she was the first one to bring up the idea of an adoption.”

“Aleta?” Amelia sat back in astonishment. “She is the last person I would have—”

“—seen downstairs,” Emma put in smoothly. “I heard her come in a few minutes ago.”

As though she’d been waiting for her name to come up, Aleta climbed the stairs and stood in the doorway watching them load their needles as industriously as though they’d been working all along.

“It’s a nice quilt,” she said at last. “Is it for the auction?”

“It’s my wedding quilt,” Emma told her. “We’ve been working on it for a year.”

Aleta’s eyebrows rose. “Seems you would have had half a dozen made in that time.” She raised a hand when Carrie took a breath to explain. “But I know how it is. It’s what we talk about while we quilt, sometimes, that’s as important as the patches and stitches.”

“That’s how I feel, too,” Emma said. “So I hear you’re in favor of Carrie and Melvin giving a needy child a home?”

“I just got back from seeing Abe Zook.”

Carrie could swear she felt the floor heave, her surprise was so great. “But I thought you didn’t want him to think—”

“This is not about me,” Aleta said briskly. “It’s about what’s best for that child.” She didn’t specify whether she meant the baby or Lydia.

Amelia pulled over a chair, reached into her sewing box, and handed Aleta a needle. “Come. Join us.”

Any other week but this, Carrie would have jumped up with an excuse to get her mother-in-law out of the room. To not sully the stitches in their quilt with those of a stranger—or someone who wasn’t a kindred soul. But somehow, Aleta seemed to have changed. Or perhaps Carrie herself had.

Carrie couldn’t put her finger on it, but she seemed less critical, less vigilant about Carrie’s faults, and more inclined to lend a hand or a piece of advice. Even though her tactics hadn’t changed—she was still as sharp as vinegar. But the vinegar tasted more mellow somehow.

With one glance, Aleta took in the direction of Amelia’s stitching and began on the other end of the panel. Her stitches were close and even—ten to the inch, for sure.

“I was lucky enough to find him in the barn,” Aleta said, picking up where she’d left off. “Trapped between his horses and the buggy, where he couldn’t weasel past me.”

“Was he inclined to weasel?” Emma asked.

“I’d say so. He couldn’t do it physically, so he laid into me verbally.” Aleta snorted. “As though he was ever any competition in that department. ‘You just listen to me, Abe Zook,’ I said. ‘What do you mean by looking so happy when your girl had to humble herself before the whole
Gmee
?’ And you know what he said? That even the Lord rejoiced when one of His own humbled herself before Him. The nerve! As though he had personal insight into the infinite mind of the
gut Gott
.”

“He was happy?” Amelia echoed. “Not ashamed?”

“Not happy,” Aleta told her. “To my mind, he was gloating, and there’s just no cause for that, no matter what your child has done.”

“So then what did you say?” Emma asked.

“I learned a long time ago that Abe Zook holds a short fuse and a long grudge,” Aleta replied. “I counted the cost, and then I decided I’d rather get to the bottom of this and risk offending him than play nice. So I set out to rile him.” A smile touched lips that were usually pressed together, whether from annoyance at the world or a desire not to voice that annoyance—Carrie could never decide.

“You riled Abe Zook on purpose?” Amelia shook her head. “You’re a braver woman than I.”

“I just know him better. ‘Abe,’ I said, ‘Rachel would have been ashamed of you. She never meant for Lydia to grow up this way—running around and looking for attention from who knows who because you never had time for her.’ Well, that was all it took. I thought he was going to strike me.”

Carrie gave up all pretense of stitching, and even Amelia poked her needle into the quilt and left it, eyes wide.

“But instead, that fuse got itself lit well and proper. ‘You know nothing about it, woman!’ he roared at me like I was standing half a mile away instead of right there in his barn. Which was as neat as though he was about to have church in it. Have you seen the house? My stars. I went there first, and a hasty retreat I made down those steps. Anyway. Where was I?”

“Being shouted at,” Emma prompted.

“So I was. ‘I know a thing or two,’ I told him. ‘I know that girl is starved for love, and she wouldn’t have been chasing after it from any summer tourist if you’d brought her up with a shake of it now and again.’ So then you won’t believe what he said.” She didn’t wait for anyone to answer. “‘If that girl was my own, I’d have loved her the way a child is supposed to be loved. But if she’s chasing everything in pants, then she comes by it honest. Her mother was no better.’”

Carrie gasped. “How could he say that? His own wife!”

“He married Rachel,” Aleta allowed. “But according to him, she was expecting when he asked her. Expecting another man’s baby.”

A long breath eased from Carrie’s lungs. There it was. An old mistake, an old deception…and a lifetime of retaliation and misery.
The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children
.

“A man with red hair?” Emma asked after a long moment.

“Many a woman has had a baby come early,” Aleta said. “But it’s hard to explain away hair like that when there are no redheads within three or four generations, and your husband is no slouch between the ears.”

“How cruel,” Carrie breathed. “None of that is Lydia’s fault. How could he blame her for her mother’s sins?”

“You don’t think he—” Amelia stopped. “No. I’m sorry. That is wicked, to even say such a thing aloud. Please forgive me.”

“Let Rachel die of that infection on purpose?” Aleta’s gaze into the past was as grim as the lowering sky outside. “Only God and Abe himself know that—and I’m thinking Abe would never face that head on. Because that would make him an even greater sinner than his wife, and he’s gone his whole life putting her down and raising himself up.”

“I can’t think about this,” Carrie whispered. “It’s too horrible. If it’s even true.”

“It’s true she died,” Aleta said. “And it’s true their marriage was unhappy. And it’s true he said those things to me. Draw what conclusions you like.” Her tone softened. “That man needs our prayers. Maybe God will bring him to confession—even if God Himself is the only one who can hear.”

“I hope she does get away,” Emma said suddenly. “Lydia, I mean. Carrie is right. That’s no house to bring an innocent child into. I wish she didn’t feel there’s only one road open to her, but there it is. If she can’t take care of her baby, then we need to make it clear to her that Carrie can.”

Aleta took a breath, but Carrie forestalled her. “I’ll talk to Melvin. We’re to go up to Rigby on Thursday, coming back Saturday, so he can talk to this man about cabinets in his RVs. I’ll do it then.”

They had never discussed adoption before, but she had no reason to believe he wouldn’t be open to it. After all, it was a far better option than IVF when it came to the will of God—many Amish families adopted children who had lost their parents to accidents and disasters.

If she had Melvin on her side, and the women of the community, surely it would only be a matter of time before Lydia would be convinced, too.

C
arrie had learned how to wait in a rigorous school. She had waited on weather to bring rain and sun for the garden that would sustain them through the winter. She had waited on human nature when it seemed that all that stood between her and hunger was the compassion of her neighbors. And she had waited on God to send her the one thing she prayed for—a child.

So waiting to speak until they’d traveled up to Rigby and Melvin had had his meeting with the RV man was easy by comparison. Brian had provided enough money for supper in the hotel restaurant, which was good, because the last of the cold meat and other supplies she’d brought in the little cooler had gone for their breakfast this morning. But two suppers were paid for, and from the relaxed look on Melvin’s face, the talks had gone well.

“He’s ninety percent convinced that we should have the work.” Melvin settled back in the red leatherlike booth and spread the menu out in front of him. “He’ll travel down to Whinburg next week, which will give us time to make a few different prototypes.” A wry expression settled around his mouth. “What we really need is an old RV that we can remodel, but what would we do with it afterward?”

“Rent it out to someone’s hired man?” Carrie smiled and settled on a Reuben sandwich, her favorite. And fries. She hoped there was a nice pile of fries as big as the sandwich. She was ravenous. “Or use it for a fancy chicken house.”

He laughed. “Trust you to say something like that. I’m glad Joshua is able to look after your birds while we’re gone.”

“They don’t need much looking after for just two days. I filled the feeders and the waterers and left them a heap of peelings. But it makes me feel comfortable that someone is looking in on them.”

“He’ll have the barn loft floor roughed in by the time I get back, and we can finish it together once the snow starts falling.”

They gave their orders, and when their meals came, Carrie finished her sandwich before Melvin was halfway through his lasagna. She simply couldn’t wait a moment longer.

“Hungry,
Liebschdi
?” He eyed her plate with amusement.

“I was, and it was
gut
. But mostly I wanted to talk to you about something without my mouth being full.”

“And what’s that? I’ve hardly let you get a word in edgewise, have I, with all my business talk?”

So she told him. About Abe and Rachel, about Lydia and her plans, and about the idea that she and his mother had been led to through both compassion and conviction.

“My mother?” He laid down his fork. “I think this must be the first time the two of you have agreed on anything.”

“Second time,” Carrie said, twinkling at him. “Both of us agree her watermelon pickles are far better than mine.”

But he did not smile back. “But you’re content to go along with this…this plan you’ve hatched up, you and my mother and all the women, all without asking me?”

“Of course not.” Carrie shifted on the booth seat. It was too soft. It swallowed her in a hollow that others had made, and didn’t let her sit up straight. “This all may come to nothing anyway if I can’t convince Lydia that leaving her baby on the firehouse steps is a bad idea.”

“So you come to me with it now.”

“
Ja
. We’ve never really talked about adoption. And now with—with the IVF idea given up, I wondered how you felt about it.”

He opened his mouth just as the waitress came and collected their plates. Carrie felt bad that she had not thought to stack them neatly, but the girl didn’t seem to mind. She loaded everything on one arm, said, “I’ll be back with more coffee,” and wound her way out of sight.

“I can’t talk about this here,” Melvin said. “Too many people listening, too much noise.”

Carrie choked back her dissatisfaction that he had not given her an answer while he paid the bill and even as they were walking upstairs to their room. But when the door closed behind her, she couldn’t keep it back any longer.

“Do you think we can do this, Melvin? If Lydia agrees? It could take us months to convince her, but in the end I hope she’ll—”

“Do you want to know what I think?”

She resisted the urge to say,
Wasn’t that what I just asked?
Instead, she merely nodded.

“I think this desire for children has become unhealthy. Carrie, you know my feelings on this. If it is God’s will that we become parents, then we will. But all this running after first one idea, then another…it has to stop.” He took a breath as though trying to control himself. “You break my heart,
Liebschdi
. One crazy plan after another, when if you’d just find peace in accepting God’s will, you would be so much happier.”

“I am accepting God’s will. He keeps putting opportunities in front of me and I am following them.”

“The devil is throwing temptations in front of you, you mean. Eavesdropping on two women in a shop is not an opportunity from God. Witnessing the shame of a girl who can’t say no to temptation is not, either. Listening to those who sin is no way to seek God’s will. It’s just the opposite.”

How he twisted her words! “And what is listening to your mother? Is that a sin?”

“Much as I love my mother, I also know her faults. She is a widow who loves to meddle in the lives of her children. All of us know that. And you weren’t so slow to see her faults not so long ago.”

“We’re becoming better friends,” Carrie managed around the lump in her throat. “So you will not do this with me, either? Is that it? We can only become parents in the one way—your way—despite my feelings about it?”

“There is only one way to become parents, Carrie.”

“Don’t treat me like a child. Of course there isn’t. Lots of our families adopt—why, look at Young Joe’s youngest daughter. She and her husband adopted his sister’s children after their parents died in that pileup on the freeway.”

“That’s different. That’s family. Not the random offspring of a child who will never know his father—or his grandfather, for that matter. The child has bad blood, and I don’t want it under my roof.”

Now we are getting to the truth
.

“The child is not responsible for the sins of his parents.” She and Melvin never argued, and she never raised her voice to him. Then who was this red-faced virago she could see in the mirror over the desk, whose voice was perilously close to being audible in the next room?

“Maybe not, but his parents can certainly be responsible for him. Lydia must take care of her own mistake, and if she cannot, then it is good that an
Englisch
family will make a home for it, and keep this sin out of the church.”

Maybe he would make sense to Daniel Lapp—or Abe Zook—but her own beloved was making no sense to Carrie. “And this is your decision?”

“
Ja
. It is, Fraa. Be content in His will, and God will provide.” He tried to take her in his arms, but she shrugged out of them and went into the bathroom.

The water in the gleaming shower was gloriously hot, and never-ending. But it didn’t do much to wash away the tears that stung her eyes. She squeezed them shut, closing out the bright electric lights and the glint of the steel faucet and taps.

Behind her lids, the darkness of the orchard stretched on and on in front of her. And everywhere she looked, there were trees.

Emma had written a piece for
Family Life
not so long ago about back sides—the back sides of people’s houses, the back sides of their businesses—the things you saw from the train and not the road. The messes people left where they thought others wouldn’t see them.

Carrie had hardly been aware of them on the way up. It was true she hadn’t been that excited about the trip in the beginning, but the novelty of traveling so far with Melvin and excitement over how she would broach the adoption plan had overshadowed things like back sides.

Unfortunately, she had no such happy thoughts to occupy her mind on the trip home. Mess after mess slid by the train windows, to the point where she wondered if there was any beauty left along the whole line, from Pittsburgh to New York City.

Melvin spent the two-hour trip sketching and making notes of his conversations with the RV man. She put on a brave face and smiled when it was required, but the only real smile of the whole day was getting home to the chickens. Dinah and the others were glad to see her—she was away from home so rarely that they weren’t used to it.

“Did you think I’d been eaten by a coyote?” she said into Dinah’s feathers as she cuddled the bird, then put her on her roost. “I’m safe, and so are you.”

She had to snap out of it. Was this how her life was going to be now? A roller coaster of highs and lows as hope was kindled and then extinguished? One temptation after another until her strength was exhausted?

Lord, I already put this matter of babies in Your hands. I don’t understand. Am I reading too much into the people you send me—reading signs and wonders where none exist? Help me, Lord. I don’t think I can do this anymore. Please give me the peace Melvin talks about. Or at the very least, some sleep.

She shouldn’t have been so surprised, that night in her own bed, when she slept deeply and woke feeling refreshed. The
gut Gott
answered prayers, she knew that. Little ones and large ones, He heard them all. She just needed to have more faith in His plan for her.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

The Lord knew what she hoped for. She just needed to believe in what was hidden from her right now, that was all.

She read that verse after breakfast, when she and Melvin and Aleta lingered in the kitchen over their coffee. Aleta was seven eighths of the way through her annual reading of
The Martyrs’ Mirror
, and Melvin read the German bible with quiet concentration. Carrie loved the off-Sunday mornings…the peace, the knowledge that it was the Lord’s Day to rest in and savor, without the bustle of getting ready for church.

Aleta looked up from her reading, removed her glasses, and regarded her son. “Has Carrie spoken with you about Lydia and her baby, Melvin?”

It took him a moment to surface from God’s word and bring his mind back to the kitchen table. “
Ja
, she did. And we agreed that this was another crazy plan, and she should seek peace in waiting on the will of God.”

“She agreed to that, did she?”

Carrie resisted the urge to take Aleta by the arm and hustle her outside for a quick summary of the situation. “I did,” she said quietly instead. “And I feel at peace—I must, because I finally got a good night’s sleep.”

Aleta made a noise halfway between a snort and a cough. “I don’t believe it.
Ja
”—she held up a hand—“I know you’re being a good Amish wife and submitting to your husband, but Melvin, you remember there’s another side to that verse.”

“I remember.”

“
Husbands, love your wives as your own flesh
. Is it so easy to make the desire for a child go away in your own body, son?”

Melvin closed the Scripture. “Mamm, this is a matter between Carrie and me. I appreciate that you’re supporting her in this adoption scheme, but I’ve already made up my mind. I don’t want the child of some nameless
Englisch
boy growing up in my home, bringing who knows what bad blood with it.”

“You make it sound like it would have some kind of disease. He or she would just be a baby. A baby who needs love and food and a warm home.”

“And I hope the child finds it.” He gazed at her. “But I’ll hear no more about it, Mamm. This is one bowl you can’t put your spoon into and mix things up. I’ve said my say, and that’s that.”

“And you would take away Carrie’s dream so easily?”

His cheeks reddened. Oh dear.

“It’s my dream, too, Mamm. Don’t make me into the villain here.”

“You’re allowing your imagination to run away with you. You, my boy, are making an innocent child into some kind of juvenile delinquent, ready to poison the well and burn down the house.”

“I can’t help how I feel.”

“No. Well, neither can I. And I feel your wife has the right of it, and you’re being a stubborn mule who is letting pride get in the way of giving a needy child a loving home. Maybe the women of this community can’t convince that girl to do one good and right thing. Fine. But I would have expected more of you.” She pushed away from the table. “Maybe you’d be kind enough to call an
Englisch
taxi.”

His mouth fell open. “On Sunday? Are you going somewhere?”

“I am going home.”

Carrie finally found her tongue. “But you were staying for Thanksgiving.”

Aleta’s face softened in a way Carrie had rarely seen before. “I’m finding it difficult to count my blessings right now. I can’t stay and not be tempted every single day to bring this matter up until Melvin yields. And that’s not right. He is the head of this household, and in order to respect that, I must take myself back to my own.”

“Mamm,
nei
,” Melvin protested. “I won’t have you leaving on such bad terms.”

“I’m not.” She put a comforting hand on his shoulder on her way past his chair. “But if I stay, I might, and that would be a shame. I’ll pack my bags and see if I can get the noon train. If not, I know there’s a bus.”

And nothing they could say would change her mind. That was the Millers all over. Once they turned all the information over until there was nothing left to examine, they made a decision and stuck with it.

The taxi came and Carrie clutched her shawl tightly around her as Aleta turned in the backseat to wave a final good-bye through the rear window. “I wish she hadn’t gone,” she said. “It isn’t right.”

“She’s gone plenty of times before, and I’ve never heard you say that.” The angry color had long faded from Melvin’s face, and she had a feeling he wished he hadn’t spoken so harshly to his mother.

But what was done was done.

“It’s true,” Carrie admitted. “But I never felt I had a friend in her before. Isn’t it strange that it’s taken more than ten years for me to see her good qualities?”

“Then at least someone has learned something from this experience.” And Melvin turned and walked across the yard. The barn door closed behind him with a hollow sound.