Called to Order (33 page)

Across the field, still quite small from their vantage upon the buggy, worked a hundred men. They looked like a colony of colorful ants dangling from beams like acrobats. Their arms swung hammers and propelled long, jagged saws. Underneath many of the crawlers, stood the skeleton of a house that had not been there when Anna and Adam had left two days ago. Amazing. They were building her home.

In the distance a bit, rested a tapestry of quilts over the land, each blanket forming a patch itself across the grass, making the communal spread appear as one gigantic quilt. Children in pastel and black clothing dotted the area, twirling and playing adorably. Mothers and wives manned a long table spread with jugs of lemonade and sandwiches. Some sat and stitched work draping from their laps to supple baskets tucked below their feet. It was charming and bizarre to see wooden furniture carried out to the lawn for such a thing. She supposed the Amish did not invest in plastic picnic wear like the rest of the world.

Anna was slightly intimidated by the work ethic she was witnessing. One hundred wooden chairs carried over eight hundred acres that would no doubt be carried back to their kitchens again that night was exhausting just to think about. They truly were like worker ants. Each set of hands busy, creating items from resources they nurtured and pulled from the land. Anna could take blood pressure and mix a mean cosmopolitan, but she was clueless how to do the things these women did.

She suddenly thought of Adam’s socks and the way they were not a simple tube with machine-woven elastic cuffs, but rather two cuts of wool sewn together with fine black thread. Did Abilene mend his socks? Surely she would expect to retire such responsibilities once Adam was married. Yet, Anna had no idea how to even thread a needle.

And Larissa. Anna had only seen the older Hartzler sister once in her time here. She was married. Once married, Anna supposed she and Adam would be eating separately from the family most days. Sure there would be family dinners still going on at the big house, but she would at that point be responsible for feeding her husband. She couldn’t very well expect Gracie or Abilene to continue to do it.

She remembered averting her eyes one morning as little Gracie roughly tugged handfuls of feathers from some kind of bird filling most of the sink basin. Anna could not even bring herself to watch the process let alone imagine doing it herself. It wasn’t like she was some chicken advocate, but just seeing those gray and white feathers pulled from pink, pimpled flesh… Oh God, she was going to be sick.

Her stomach lurched with the carriage as Gracie expertly pulled it beside the barn. Anna’s heart was beating way too fast. How was she going to do this? She didn’t even have the patience to bake cookies. She usually just bought a tub of dough, and sometimes she didn’t even waste time with the oven, just simply dug into the raw batter with a spoon. If she had to cook for Adam, she would wind up poisoning him. Only when he was falling to his knees being sick, he would have floods on because she would never learn to make him a decent pair of pants!

“Oh God!” Anna moaned, and she covered her eyes with her hands and frowned.

“Anna? What is it, dear?”

“I can’t do this. He’s going to hate me,” she cried.

Abilene’s panicked look told Anna she was unsure whom she was speaking of. Gracie had just emerged from the barn when her mother said, “Grace, go get Adam. Quickly. Something’s wrong with Annalise.” Gracie tore off toward where the construction was taking place, and Abilene turned and pulled Anna to her shoulder. “There, there, child. Everything’s all right. Whatever it is, Adam will fix it. Here he comes now.”

Adam ran up to the buggy so fast Anna jumped. “What has happened?
Ainsicht?
Tell me what happened.” He pulled her into his arms and began carrying her into the shade of the barn. Anna saw Abilene standing by the door, clearly wanting to provide them with privacy but also wanting to be close in case she was needed.

Adam straddled a long bench and held Anna on his lap. She was a sniffling, drippy mess. “Anna, tell me what has gotten you so upset.”

“You. Me. This place.” Her shoulders quaked as she took a long shaky breath. “I can’t do this.”

“What are you talking about? Did something happen in town?”

“You built us a house,” she sobbed.

“I told you I would.”

“But don’t you see. You say something and always do it. You don’t curse or lie. You are capable of anything you put your mind to. Cain was right. I’m not good enough for you.”

He held her away from his chest. “Cain? When did you speak to Cain?”

“In my dream this morning.”

“Why didn’t…” He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Anna, you should have told me. Tell me about the dream. Did he hurt you in it?”

“No, he barely touched me.”

“Barely?” he growled.

“We talked. We were sitting in a field. It wasn’t like the other dreams. Well, until the end. The end was a little scary.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Mostly you.”

Adam hesitated for a moment. “What did he say?”

“Nothing I didn’t already know. How perfect you are. How dependable.”

“I am far from perfect.”

“Not as far as I am. Don’t you get it, Adam? I love you, but this life here, it’s not me. I don’t know how to do any of the things women are supposed to do here. They will all make fun of me, and then when I send you out in shirts with crooked buttons and safety pins for suspenders, they will laugh at you, too. I will be an embarrassment to everyone.”

A chuckle echoed deep in his chest as he kissed the top of her bonnet. “Anna, you will never embarrass me.” He pressed her shoulders back until she was looking at him. “Don’t you see? You are whom God has chosen for me. There is no mistake in that. We are meant to learn from each other. The fact that we are so different only goes to show you how much we both still have to learn in our lifetimes, you and myself. If I were perfect, I would have spent my life alone, never needing another soul. I need you, Annalise, no one else, but you.”

“I don’t know how to skin a chicken.”

He laughed and wiped a tear from her eye with the hem of his crisp, green shirt. “Why should you?”

“I can’t sew.”

He leaned in close and whispered, “Let me let you in on a little secret. There is a shop in town that sells Amish wear already made. You can buy my shirts, and I will take just as much pride in wearing them, knowing my wife had lovingly selected them for me.”

“Sometimes I eat Nesquik with my fingers. I don’t even use milk.”

“What is Nesquik?”

“Powdered chocolate.”

He laughed again, this time kissing each of her eyes. “Now you are just being
kintish.
If you want to eat such things, I will not stop you.”

“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t know how to cook anything from scratch.”

“Well lucky for you what our
abedits
will most want, we already have.”

“Adam, you’re talking funny again. I have no idea what you just said. What’s abbey-tits?”

“You do make me laugh,
ainsicht.
My apologies. I meant appetite. Our main source of nutrition is blood, Anna. You do not need a kitchen to provide that for me.” She wrinkled her nose, and he said, “That is not the face you made last night when you talked of drinking from me.”

“That was different. We were making love. Thinking about it as food seems barbaric.”

“How do you suspect we will do such things? It will always be during our time making love. It is a beautiful sacrament between a bonded male and female.”

“Oh, well, I guess that’s easier to imagine.”

“This is silly,
ainsicht.
You are working yourself up over nothing. Everything will be fine. No one expects you to settle into this lifestyle over night. It is a lot to adjust to. You will be evolving into a species you only just found out exists, as well as, giving up many of the luxuries you were raised to depend on. I will never force you to give up something you wanted. If you decided the only way we could be together was if I agreed to follow you and live among the English, I would do it.”

“You would?”

“In a heartbeat. It matters not to me where we live. I love my home and find the outside world overwhelming and noisy, but if that is what you wanted, I would do it for you. I’ve already promised you a radio. You should know there is little I could deny you.”

“I love you, Adam.”

“I love you, too. Now, what do you say I return you to my mother who is anxiously waiting for you by the door?”

Anna looked in that direction and saw Abilene’s shadow quickly disappear. “Okay. Where will you go?” She didn’t want to be away from him.

“I will be right over there in the shade attaching hardware to our new cabinet doors before they go up.” He paused for a minute and gave her a peculiar look. “Come here.”

He pulled her close and kissed her jaw. She sighed as warmth spread across her chest. His lips caressed along her jaw where they then gently pulled on the lobe of her ear. When his warm tongue licked softly up her throat, her nipples reflexively pulled tight. His palm cradled the back of her neck and held her close.

The unexpected pinch of his fangs had her sucking in a deep breath and straightening her spine. As he suckled from her vein, his thumb drew soothing circles over her hairline covered by the delicate hem of her lace bonnet. The shock of the pinch disappeared and was replaced with a lulling sensation that seemed to pull from her womb all the way to Adam’s lips.

It was an indescribable feeling, having a vampire drink from you. She supposed it was akin to a child nursing from a mother’s milk, yet there was a sensuality to it that Anna assumed would be absent in the other case. Her loins tightened and her toes curled as sensations amplified with each pull of his mouth. Her head fell back, and his hardness pressed into her hip. A small moan escaped her lips, and he groaned appreciatively in response.

Adam’s left hand slipped under the breast of her apron and found her stiff nipple pressing against her linen smock. He pinched, and she moaned again. She felt his lips close over the spot of flesh he punctured as his tongue soothed his mark. He spared a few soft kisses as he turned her and righted her bonnet and apron.

Anna’s body appeared drowsed and dazed as if she were waking from a dream. Her skin was tingly and moist with arousal. Adam smiled and kissed her slowly on the mouth. His lips were warm with a trace of tang Anna supposed was her blood.

“Thank you, beautiful Anna. Now, if you shall need me, I will feel it and come to you at once.” He stood and helped her do the same. She frowned. She wanted to stay in the barn and fool around. “Tonight, my love. For today, there is work to be done.”

It took Anna a while once she was back in the house with the women, to get Adam and the erotic thoughts he provoked out of her mind. Gracie immediately yelled at her and swore she would get even. For once Anna felt guilty for torturing the girl so. It was not her intention to submit Adam’s sister to images of him breathtakingly naked, but it seemed to be the only thing Anna could think of at the time.

Once she had her thoughts under control, Gracie began to come around. Abilene had gone to check on Jonas and the other men and women working on the house while Gracie took Anna’s measurements. Anna stood on a small stool before the younger girl and watched as she held a cloth tape with numbers over different parts of Anna’s body and jotted down her measurements. Every now and then they would make eye contact and Gracie would blush.

“Could it be, Gracie, that you have taught yourself to block
my
thoughts,” Anna teased.

“It was either that or gouge out my mind’s eye, and I do not think I have a crochet needle long enough to do the job.”