Almost Amish (3 page)

“Mrs. Reynolds, you nodding off on me there?”

Susan jerked awake, and it took her a moment to realize where she was. Her face burned as she looked up toward the hairdresser. “I’m so sorry.”

The girl waved her hand dismissively. “Not to worry. Lots of people get sleepy when they’re getting their hair done. I don’t take it personally. Come to think of it, I don’t take much personally.”

Two years ago, Susan might have made the same statement. That, of course, was before she’d asked the question whose answer changed everything.

“This is where you get out.” The man behind the wheel of the black Suburban pulled to the side of the dirt road and motioned his head toward the passenger door. It was only the second time Julie had heard his voice since beginning this journey almost two hours ago.

“You can’t be serious.” She looked toward the driver, waiting for the punch line. His black wraparound sunglasses made it difficult to read any kind of expression, but the firm set of his jaw showed no hint of a smile. Julie glanced toward the backseat.

Whitney’s blue eyes were huge, and she shook her head in small, quick snaps. Brian’s mouth was open, but he managed to stab Julie with an “I told you this was a bad idea” expression.

Not for the first time today, Julie wished that Thomas had come with them. He would know how to handle this. But Thomas wasn’t here, and her kids needed her to summon up some courage and stand up right now. “You can’t just leave us here.” Her voice wobbled, betraying any pretense of authority she hoped to convey.

“Sure I can. Haven’t you ever watched reality TV before? This is what happens.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere, and we have no idea where to go from here.” She looked out the window for any sign of life—a farmhouse, another car, anything. There was nothing but rolling green hills dotted with a couple dozen cows on the right and a crop of . . . something green and leafy . . . to her left.

The driver pointed slightly behind his left shoulder. “You see that mailbox back there? That’s yours. Your new home is down that dirt drive a ways. Start walking. You’ll find it.”

“Then you need to drive us to the house.” Julie managed to at least keep her tone even this time. “Otherwise, I’ll have to report you to the producers.”

“Mrs. Charlton, the producers are the ones who told me to drop you here.”

“Oh.”

There must have been a more intelligent response, but at the moment, it eluded her.

“How far?” Whitney had her arms crossed across her chest and was leaning back hard into her seat. No self-respecting teenaged girl was going to take off walking down a dirt road without at least a hint of a fight.

“You’ll find out when you get there. Now get moving. We’ve all got a schedule to keep.”

Julie grasped the door handle but couldn’t bring herself to pull it just yet. “I . . . uh . . . what about our things?”

He reached down and pulled the release. “Back’s open. Now, you’ve got sixty seconds to get your stuff out of there before I drive away and take it with me.”

The entire car shook with the force of Whitney’s door flying open. Before Julie had even processed what was happening, Whitney was at the back pulling out her duffel and backpack.

Julie opened her door a bit more reluctantly. “Come on, Brian, get your things. You don’t want to lose your telescope, now do you?”

Once again the car shook. “Hurry up, Whitney, my telescope’s more important than your stupid old shoes.”

“Shows what you know.” Whitney didn’t look at her brother, but she did reach in and pull out the hard telescope case and hand it back to him, soon followed by his bag. “Hey, what about our . . .” Instead of finishing the sentence, Whitney raced around to the driver’s-side window and pounded. “What about our phones? We want our phones back.”

The driver rolled the window partway down. “My job was to confiscate them and deliver them to the appropriate person.”

“If that’s true, then why aren’t you taking our luggage to the
appropriate person
?” Whitney looked toward Julie. “Mom, he’s going to steal our phones.”

His window began an ominous ascent, but just before it reached the top, he called out, “I wish you all the best of luck.” Then the SUV with blacked-out windows pulled away, leaving them all alone, two thousand miles from their home and with no idea of what to expect.

“That guy’s a jerk.” Brian stared after the car with squinted eyes.

“He’s just doing his job, like they told him to.” Julie studied the empty country road and tried to smile brightly as she gripped her suitcase. “Well, I suppose this is where our adventure begins. Why don’t you pile your duffels on my rolling bag, and let’s get moving.”

“I told you this was going to be a disaster.” Brian put his bag on Whitney’s, then wrapped his right arm around the telescope case. “This is heavy. Hope it’s not far.”

So do I.
The driveway was mostly dirt, a much deeper red color than Julie had ever seen. Pulling her suitcase onto it from the pavement immediately made it more difficult to pull. There was no house in sight, and the temperature had to be in the high eighties. She’d heard about the humidity of the South in the summer, but it took today’s arrival in late-May Tennessee to make her fully understand it. She suspected they would see much worse before this summer ended. Still, there were worse things than heat.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” Whitney adjusted her backpack to the other shoulder and looked toward Julie.

“I told you, I think it is a good idea for all of us to slow down a little. Living simply for a few months will give us a chance to de-stress and think about what it is that’s really important to us.”

“Getting dumped on the side of the road, in this kind of heat and humidity, in a place I’ve never been, doesn’t exactly seem the ideal way to de-stress to me. There’s just nothing logical about it.” Brian mumbled just loud enough that Julie knew he meant for her to hear.

“I already know what’s important to me,” Whitney put in. “It’s the travel volleyball team that I can’t be a part of this summer, because I’m here. Now all the other girls will be way ahead of me for varsity. Not to mention the City College biology class I’d planned on taking.”

“We’ve been over this already, Whitney. You’re sixteen years old and it’s too much pressure. When I was your age, it never even occurred to me that I needed to take college classes in the summer, or that we should play a single sport year round or risk losing our spot.”

“Things were different then,” her daughter said, and Julie tried not to take it as,
Yeah and look at you now.

“When’s the last time you really enjoyed volleyball, Whitney? The way you talk about it sometimes, it’s become just another chore in your day.”

“Mom, volleyball is what I do—it’s who I am.”

“I’m missing astro camp, and you don’t hear me back here whining about it—even though I think we all know that my hopes for this summer have been decimated.” Brian coughed from behind them. “Mom, could you maybe roll that thing somewhere a little less dusty? I can’t even breathe back here.”

Julie turned to see puffs of dust coming from behind her suitcase wheels. Somehow it reminded her of smoke signals. SOS, indeed.

“Sorry. Why don’t you walk ahead of me?” Julie paused and watched her son struggle past her with his load, his face already beginning to redden from heat and exertion.

“I really don’t see the necessity for coming all the way out here if you just want us to slow down,” Whitney started in again. Her words were beginning to pick up speed. “All you had to do was tell me you didn’t want me to play volleyball this summer. At least I’d still be near my friends. I could even work that summer camp for the Westside kids. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Julie said nothing. She knew better. The kids’ lives had become so high-pressure, so overly scheduled, that it was going to take more than just telling them they needed to slow down. They needed this. A radical lifestyle change. All of them—maybe Julie most of all.

But there was much more at stake here. “This is about more than us slowing down for a while. You know it’s important to Aunt Susan that we do this. We’re a family, and families support each other.”

Whitney nodded, her face suddenly soft. “You’re right, and we will.”

“Yeah, we will.” Brian wheezed. “I just think there must have been a way to help her that was a bit less”—he stopped walking and took a couple of deep breaths—“disruptive to our lives. Where are Aunt Susan and Angie, by the way?”

“Good question.” Julie had no idea why the producers had been so insistent that the two families travel separately. Somehow, she’d just gone with it, like she always did, without asking too many questions. Without asking enough questions, perhaps.

Whitney grabbed Julie’s arm and whispered, “Mom, look, there’s a man up in that tree. The third one on the right.”

Julie looked toward the dark shape in the tree line. It certainly was a man. She could see his jeans and tennis shoes dangling near the trunk about halfway up, his face hidden behind a leafy branch. “Let’s speed up a bit.”

She caught up to Brian and whispered, “We need to hurry.”

“Why?” His face was bright red, so that his freckles barely showed. “It’s too hot to go any faster.”

Whitney grabbed his arm and pulled. “There’s a man up in that tree, dumbo. You want to stand here and wait to find out whether he’s looking for a fresh-off-the-plane California family to rob? Maybe he likes telescopes.” She looked toward the tree again, then turned back, a hint of panic in her eyes. “Mom, I think he’s got a gun.”

Brian jerked around, stumbling over his own feet as he did so. He somehow managed to catch himself before he or his telescope fell. As he straightened up, he began laughing hysterically. “That’s not a gun, it’s a television camera, dork-o.” Brian continued to laugh, but whether it was from relief or showmanship at the idea that he might be getting filmed, Julie didn’t know.

Whitney blew out an irritated breath and stomped away. A few seconds later when they caught up with her, she turned to Julie and said, “So tell me the truth, how bad do I look? I’d rather hear about it now than be caught off guard when I see it on television.”

“You look just beautiful.” Julie reached over to pull Whitney’s hair behind her shoulder. Always a bit wild and wavy, it was taking on a life of its own. Her daughter’s face was damp with perspiration, and orange dust spotted her legs and arms. “And I’m sure they’re just warming up. That won’t be for the show.”

Brian, who was now in front, reached the top of the hill and pointed. “Hey, look, there’s the house.”

Julie caught up to him and almost gasped. Nestled into a lush emerald nook stood the most charming farmhouse she thought she’d ever seen. It was white and gleamed in the sun, waiting for them. Just off the house was what appeared to be a small storage barn, and there was a much larger barn just behind that, surrounded by fences and corrals.

“Doesn’t it just figure that we’d have to get all the way to the
top
of this hill, to see
down
to where we’re going? Don’t you think they could have given us a ride to here at least?” Whitney laughed as she said it, her voice suddenly higher-pitched, the intoxication of cameras and crews and a completely different life obviously affecting her, too.

Julie nodded. “You read my mind.”

The house was made entirely of planked wood painted white, no shutters, with a tin roof on top. It was neat and tidy and appeared freshly painted. Julie had read enough about the Amish way of life to know this was more or less what to expect, but the simplicity of the place carried a charm that fancy accoutrements just couldn’t bring. The red paint was peeling on the little storage shed . . . barn . . . whatever it was, as well as the much larger barn farther back on the property. “It looks like a Norman Rockwell painting.”

“Norman who?” Brian leaned a bit to his right side with the weight of the telescope in his hand.

“He was an artist from a long time ago—before my time even.”

“Was paint even invented back then? Were there dinosaurs, too?” Brian grinned up at her through reddish-orange lashes. His face had gone so red from heat and exertion, his freckles had nearly vanished.

“Brian, you refrain from the old-people humor and I won’t call you ‘kiddo’ on national television.” Julie smiled at her son, happy to see him in such good spirits.

“It smells funny here.” Whitney wrinkled her nose.

Julie took a deep breath. “That, my darling, is clean, fresh air.”

“Perhaps.” Brian sniffed the air. “But I’d say there’s also a bit of freshly turned earth, the sweet smell, I think, is honeysuckle, and there’s just a dash of . . . hmm . . .”

“Manure?” Whitney cocked one eyebrow at her brother.

“Most likely. Animal waste of some kind is nearby, likely near the barn Mom thinks looks like a painting.”

Honeysuckle or horse manure: Which one was the summer going to be?

Julie looked again at the scene ahead, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay, you two, let’s go do this.”