A Secret Identity (16 page)

“You misunderstand,” he said softly when my eyes finally met his. “I’m not worried about my lack of family. I’m worried about you! What will happen to you,
in
you, if all you have are Ward and Marnie? If none of this pans out?” And he flicked a hand toward the chart. “I don’t want to see you disillusioned and frustrated by what you don’t have when you’ve had so much and you have so much. You’ve got love and support and people who care. Can’t you let that be enough?”

“Oh, Todd.” I reached out and rested my hand along the line of his jaw. I felt the hard strength of bone and the soft warmth of skin, an admixture much like what I saw in the man himself. Tough yet tender. “I’ll be all right. I will.”

He studied me intently for another moment before nodding his head, as if accepting my comments.

With his nod, I suddenly felt awkward with my hand on his face in what I now saw as an unsuitably intimate gesture. I dropped it hastily to my lap and cast about for something to talk about to release the fizz of electricity in the atmosphere. My eyes fell on my purse lying on the floor by the sofa and the flat package lying beside it.

“Oh!” I said brightly. “I brought you a present.”

He looked absolutely astounded, and I wondered when the last time was that someone had given him a gift. He took the flat box, its contents obvious by its shape.

“Is this what I think it is?” he asked.

“Probably.”

“You don’t like this one?” He fingered his tan tie with the thin, thin brown stripe.

“It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just that you tend to the monochromatic, and I’m offering a change.”

“You, Miss Beige, are criticizing
my
wardrobe?” The smile took away any hint of reprimand.

“It’s easier to redo you than me.”

With a cautious expression, Todd opened the tie box. When he saw the wild splashes of color lying within, his caution turned to incredulity.

“You actually expect me to
wear
this?”

“Of course. You wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings, would you?”

“Don’t pout at me. I know manipulation when I see it.”

“And I know a button-down personality when I see one. Take that tan thing off.”

He put a protective hand over his tie. “Now?” He sounded like I’d asked him to strip in front of the Ladies’ Missionary Society.

“Now.” I lifted an eyebrow and stared, daring him to be brave.

Slowly his hand went to his throat and, with a deep sigh, he loosened the knot and removed the tie. I lifted the new tie and held it out to him.

“How nice you wore your tan suit today.” I beamed. “Just like you knew to come prepared.”

He rose and walked to the closed door of his small bathroom. He opened it, turned on the light, and stood in front of the mirror.

“Go on,” I encouraged. “You can do it. If Mrs. Smiley can have wild nails, you can have a wild tie.”

He looked daggers at me via his reflection, but he slid the tie under his collar and began the ritual of making a Windsor knot. As he did that, I folded his old tie and placed it into the empty box.

He was looking at himself in the mirror, seemingly paralyzed at the rakish sight, when the buzzer on his desk announced his next appointment. He spun around, his tie fluttering with the abruptness of the move.

“Where’s my real tie?” he asked, eyes searching the table where he’d dropped it.

I looked at the table and then at him with an innocent expression. “Looks to me like you’re wearing the only tie I see. And it looks very handsome.”

And it did. The rich colors made the crisp, deep brown of his hair and eyes even more arresting. He seemed to disagree.

“Cara.” His voice was low and threatening.

“I’ll see you at six for the trip to Tel Hai, right?” I headed for the door with my purse and the tie box with its contraband contents clutched to my chest. “I’m so glad you’re going with me to meet Lizzie.”

“Cara!” He took several steps toward me, and the glint in his eyes told me he couldn’t wait to get me…or rather the item I held close…in his hands.

I grabbed the doorknob at the same time Mrs. Smiley pulled the door open. I sailed cheerfully past her and a startled client.

“Don’t you love his new tie, Mrs. Smiley?” I stage-whispered on my way by. “Matches your nails for style and pizzazz.”

I glanced back over my shoulder and saw Todd, his flashy new tie swaying beneath his chin, shaking hands with his client as he glared over the man’s shoulder at my retreating figure. I grinned and waved. His eyebrows rose, he shook his head, and I heard, “Look out, woman! I’ll get you back,” as clearly as if he’d actually said it.

Laughing happily, I went out to the parking lot.

Chapter 8

T
he day was so lovely that I decided to wait for Todd on the front steps. Rainbow sat beside me, eyeing the grass with alarm. With a sniff she walked to the door and stood, tail straight up, asking to be let back in.

“Get down there on the lawn and be a good kittie, you coward,” I told her as I lifted her. She burrowed into me as I walked down the steps. When I leaned over to set her on the grass, she wrapped her paws around my arm, clinging to me, a difficult proposition for a declawed cat.

I put her in the middle of the lawn and stood back to watch. She looked at me in a panic and began walking as quickly as she could back to the porch. She lifted each foot high above the grass, which must have felt strange under her pads. She looked like she was prancing.

“She looks like Elam’s Tennessee walker,” Jake said as he wheeled around the corner. “He just got a new horse from a dealer that specializes in race horses, especially sulky-trained ones. Blue Grass lifts her legs just like that.”

As Jake spoke, Rainbow hit the bottom step and flew up to the porch. She sat in front of the door, casting a begging glance in my direction every couple of seconds. I decided she was safe there and turned my attention to Jake.

“Anything new on your mother?” I asked.

“She’s doing much better. She’ll be coming home at the end of the week.”

Nothing had changed from what I already knew. That was good. “I’m sure she’ll like that.”

Jake looked unconvinced. “It’s not that she won’t like coming home,” he said. “She just won’t like being confined to the bedroom. Mom’s a doer, and she’s going to go crazy with someone else taking care of her house—even someone as nice as Esther.”

“I think Esther’s got her eye on Elam,” I said, thinking of Jake’s dark-haired, gray-eyed, wiry, energetic younger brother.

“Poor Esther.” Jake looked genuinely sad.

“Why do you say that? Does Elam have a girl?” I asked.

“He wishes. He’s had a crush on Mary Clare Epp for years. I don’t think he sees anyone but her.”

“And Mary Clare doesn’t return the favor?”

“I don’t think so. You understand, I only know what I overhear. Not hanging around in Amish circles these days, my sources are very limited. But the last I heard Mom and my sister Ruth talking, it seemed Mary Clare was about to get engaged to young Joe Lapp.”

“Poor Elam,” I said. “But maybe having Esther here will turn his attention to her.” Ever the romantic, I didn’t need much of a plotline to perk me up.

“Well, this setup should let them know whether they can stand each other well enough to get married.” Jake rubbed absently at a spot on the front of his T-shirt. “I’ve decided that’s the most important thing for a marriage. You need to be able to stand being around each other.”

I looked at him and laughed. “Ah, the bachelor who knows all about marriage from observation. Sort of like a childless expert on raising kids.”

“I speak the truth as I see it,” he defended with a smile.

“What about love?” I asked, unable to resist.

“What about it?”

“Doesn’t a good marriage need it?”

He shrugged, his rugged shoulders rising and falling as if the question wasn’t even worth asking. “Maybe love is simply being able to stand each other with a little chemistry thrown in for good measure.”

“Well, I can tell you one thing, guy,” I said. “I don’t want to miss the chemistry part. Still, I do think you’re right about the getting along part. It’s the commonalities that make a marriage flow.” Then I thought of Mom and Pop and Ward and Marnie and how dissimilar each of them was from their partners. “I’ve noticed though that it’s the differences that give marriage spice and excitement.”

“You want spice and excitement?” He seemed surprised.

“Sure. Don’t you?”

He was silent for a minute, his face shuttered. “I don’t let myself think too much about things like marriage in a personal sense. I choose to stay philosophical about it. It’s safer.”

“But dull,” I said as I sat there in my boring tan slacks and tan-and-white striped shirt.

He smiled tightly. “Sometimes safe and dull are the way to go.”

We were quiet for a couple of minutes while I wondered whether marriage was a possibility for him. I didn’t know the extent of his injuries beyond the obvious, and maybe his thought patterns were to protect himself from what he saw as a solitary and lonely life stretching ahead of him. I’d have to ask Todd what he knew.

“Marriage is sort of expected in the Amish culture, isn’t it?” I finally asked, reverting to Elam and Mary Clare and Esther.

“Definitely.” Jake pulled his stare back from his contemplation of the shimmering haze over the fields across the street. “Faith and family are all.”

“How would they look at someone like me?” I asked. “If I were Amish, I mean.”

“You mean because you’re unmarried or because you’re a writer?”

I shrugged. “How about both?”

“As an unmarried woman, you’d be treated politely, but you’d probably live with relatives. Since you’re not a married woman, you’d sit with the unmarried folks at services, which in many districts means with the teens, even if you’re much older than them.”

I made a face. The idea of sitting with the teens forever didn’t appeal to me, and I couldn’t believe it appealed to any single Amish woman, no matter how obedient to the church she was.

“More and more unmarried woman have jobs outside the home,” Jake said. “But being a writer would still be very rare. And being a published writer would be almost unheard of…except for being published in Amish newspapers such as
Amish Life
. But you wouldn’t be writing romances. You’d be writing religious stuff.”

I decided not to tell him that I wrote about religious stuff in my romances. “How about an unmarried man? Say that Elam decides to suffer for his lost love forever.”

Jake shrugged. “Getting married’s just the thing to do, and Elam would get married eventually in spite of Mary Clare’s rejection. He’d find someone else. That’s what Amish men do.”

Jake’s German shepherd, Hawk, ambled across the lawn and sat beside him. I glanced over my shoulder at Rainbow. She’d seen Hawk, though he hadn’t noticed her. Her back was arched, and she looked panicky about the eyes.

“I think I’d better let the cat in before she has a heart attack,” I said, getting up to open the door for Rainbow. At the last minute Hawk saw her bushy tail zipping through the narrow opening to safety. He lunged up the porch steps and plastered his nose against the screen, whimpering. Rainbow was an orange-and-black blur as she dashed upstairs to our rooms and her hiding place under the bed.

I patted Hawk’s head. “Sorry, guy. She’s not very friendly.”

Hawk looked up at me, and I realized I was making an assumption when I thought friendship was what he wanted. Anabaptist nonviolence did not appear to beat in his canine heart.

“Do the Amish ever adopt children?” I asked as I sat on the steps again.

“You thinking of your grandfather?”

I nodded.

Jake snapped his fingers at Hawk, and the dog regretfully left the door to sit by him. Jake’s strong hands gently ruffled the animal’s hair. “Certainly they would readily take in any child within the community who needed care. I don’t know that they’d legalize it the way the English would, but the child would be raised as a member of the family. All the Amish value children, seeing them not only as hands to work the farm but as the future of the community.”

Hawk raised up on his hind legs, front legs planted on the arm of the wheelchair, and kissed Jake wetly on a cheek. Jake made a face as he hugged the animal about the neck. “Ugh! Have you got bad breath! What have you been eating?”

The dog didn’t answer but settled happily on the ground at his master’s feet.

Jake wiped at his slobbered face and continued the conversation just like Hawk hadn’t interrupted. “As far as taking a child from outside goes, if they were approached, I’m sure they’d consider it. It’s not a usual circumstance to cross those cultural lines because the gulf is so wide, and they would raise the child never to cross that chasm.”

Of course they would. Everyone who adopts raises the child to share their beliefs and values. If you’re from a cloistered community like the Amish, you raise the child to the cloister. If you’re a Christian, the child’s your personal home missions project.

I tried to imagine how our lives would have been altered if Pop had been adopted into an Amish home. How would he have submerged his vibrant, authoritative personality in a peace-loving and submissive culture? What would he have done with that great business acumen of his? What would I be like as a third generation Amish woman? The stretch was too great even for a creator of tales like me.

“You going out with Todd again tonight?” Jake asked, looking wickedly nosey.

I nodded. “We’re going down to Tel Hai, wherever that is. Everyone seems to feel it’s not too far, so I guess it’s not. Do you know where it is?”

“Yep. I’m all too familiar with that area,” Jake said. “It’s right down the street from where I had my accident. There are these two big hills south of Honey Brook, and in the low part between is the turn to Tel Hai.” He sketched the hills with his hand, then looked at me. “That’s the infamous intersection.”

“How did it happen?” I asked. “A drunk driver?”