Her Brother's Keeper (4 page)

She'll be here a month.
Hannah bit her lip and smiled.
“Ya.”
She turned to Mary. “Unless you want a day to rest from your travels.”

Mary shook her head. “No, I'm fine with visiting town.”

Hannah nodded, dreading having to put on a happy face. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe her cousin liked pizza. Jacob wouldn't eat any type of tomato sauce, so Predisio's Pizzeria was never an option on the rare times that her family ate out.

“Gut, gut,” Mamm
said. “You girls go and have fun today. After lunch, I'm going to finish some sewing projects.”

Hannah forced another smile before she headed in to clean up. A short while later, she hitched the horse to her spring buggy.

Charlotte climbed into the topless buggy and reminded herself not to let on that this was her first time to travel this way. There was an air of excitement about the adventure, even though she was unsure if she wanted to be friends with her tour guide. But being friendly was the only way she was going to find out about Ethan.

After a bumpy ride down the gravel driveway, they turned onto a blacktop road. Riding into the breeze was
refreshing until the horse began to relieve himself. She cringed, but forgot about it when she saw them approaching a highway. Bracing herself, she hoped Hannah would be able to get them safely across the busy intersection. But instead of crossing to the other side, she turned left and took up a steady trot on a narrow lane to the right of the traffic. Charlotte held her breath as cars whizzed by, and she could feel the color draining from her face as she white-knuckled the dash in front of her.

“Wow,” she said as a large truck whipped past them.

Hannah picked up speed, but turned briefly toward Charlotte. “It wonders me if you are all right?”

Charlotte released the breath she was holding. “Sure. Yes.
Ya
. I'm fine.” She paused as she struggled to control her erratic breathing. “We just don't usually travel on busy highways like this in our wagons.” She glanced quickly at Hannah, just as another big truck almost blew them into oblivion. “Buggies.” She kicked herself again. “We, uh . . . sometimes . . . we, uh . . . call them wagons.”

Hannah didn't react as she steered the buggy down a road on their right. “I thought you might like to visit the Gordonville Bookstore.”

Charlotte didn't care where they visited. She was just thankful to be off the highway. “
Ya
, that would be . . .
gut
.”

She stepped out of the buggy and waited in the small parking lot while Hannah tethered the horse at the hitching post. Around them were several buggies and a few cars. She took hold of the opportunity to really study
the woman beside her. She was tall, several inches taller than Charlotte. And slender. Her hair was dark as coal, and her face lightly tanned. Even without makeup and her hair tucked underneath her cap, she was truly beautiful.
On the outside
, Charlotte reminded herself, and an uneasy feeling swept over her again. In Ethan's last letter to her, he said he was worried about his relationship with Hannah. He hadn't shared any details, but Charlotte wondered if maybe Hannah had called off the engagement. Had she broken Ethan's heart?

“This is where the locals shop for books and school supplies.”

Charlotte nodded as she got in step beside Hannah. She knew the Amish only went to school through the eighth grade, and she couldn't help but wonder how they got away with that. In most places, children were required by law to go to school or be homeschooled until they turned seventeen.
What keeps the officers in charge of truants away from the Amish community?

The store was obviously owned by Amish people: no lights, no air conditioning. Large skylights streamed natural lighting into the store. A lanky, older man behind the counter greeted them when they walked in. In Pennsylvania Dutch. Charlotte's chest tightened as she recalled her visits with the Amish women in Beeville. They spoke almost entirely in English. This was going to be a big problem if these Lancaster Amish people constantly reverted to this other language.

Hannah replied to him. In Dutch, of course. Then she turned to Charlotte, folded her hands in front of her, and seemed to be waiting for Charlotte to respond. “Uh,
gut
. . .
gut
to meet y'all,” she finally said. She cut her eyes in Hannah's direction, and her brother's ex-fiancée nodded, then spoke to the owner in their language again. Based on Hannah's expression, Charlotte's response must have been okay. When Hannah started to walk around the store, Charlotte took off in another direction. She needed a few minutes to gather herself, and she'd already seen several Amish women where Hannah was headed. She didn't want to face having more conversation she wouldn't understand.

Right then, she laid eyes on a book she needed to have.
Pennsylvania German Dictionary: English to Pennsylvania Dutch
. She looked over her shoulder to make sure she was alone, then she picked up the book and thumbed through it.
Perfect
.

She tucked it under her arm, turned around, and headed toward the counter but stopped dead in her tracks, did an about-face, and went back to where she'd found the book. She placed it back on the shelf and stared at it.
Stupid, stupid
. Hannah and the owner would wonder why she was buying a book about a language she was presumed to know and understand. Glancing over her shoulder again, she pushed her purse up on her arm and had a thought.

Charlotte had never stolen anything in her life, but
if she was going to pull this off, she needed that book. One more glance behind her, then she grabbed the book and stuffed it into her purse. But the moment she'd safely gotten away with it, her stomach began to churn. She reached back into her purse and pulled out her wallet. The book was $12.99, so she pulled out a twenty and placed it on the bookshelf before she turned to leave the scene of what was almost a crime.

She ran into Hannah on the next aisle and was happy to see that she was alone. When Hannah wasn't around other Amish people, she mostly spoke English. Charlotte had no idea why, but she was thankful just the same.

“Would you like to go to Bird-in-Hand next?” Hannah smiled, and for a couple of moments, Charlotte just stared at her. She could certainly see why Ethan had been so attracted to this woman. But Charlotte would do anything if she could go back in time and talk Ethan out of ever coming here.

“Mary?”

Charlotte blinked a few times. “Uh, yeah.
Ya
. Sorry.” She took a deep breath. “Sure. Bird-in-Hand. That sounds fine.
Gut.
”

She wanted to ask if they would be traveling on the main highway again, and she briefly considered saying she had a stomachache so she could go back to the farmhouse. But based on the number of buggies she'd seen on the way to the bookstore, this was the prominent mode of transportation, and she was going to have to get used to it.

Hannah picked up the pace once she was on Lincoln Highway, but quickly slowed back down when the color drained from Mary's face. “Mary, are you all right?”

Her cousin nodded. “I think so.” Her eyes darted back and forth between cars in front of them and the ones coming up behind them. “I'm just not used to being in a buggy with all these cars whizzing by at high speeds.”

Hannah slowed down even more, although it was probably more dangerous to go so slow. “You must live in a very rural area in Texas,
ya
?”

Mary reached for the dash when Hannah hit a bump in the road. “Uh . . . I guess you could say that.”

“We are turning in about half a mile, and that road is less traveled.”

They were both quiet for a few minutes, but when the silence started to become awkward, Hannah began searching for something to talk about. She was curious to know if Mary had a boyfriend back home. Maybe not, since she had gawked at Isaac Miller. Her mother had already told her that their cousin wasn't married. Hannah felt like an old maid at twenty-four. Mary must feel even worse at twenty-six. But starting a conversation about relationships would only lead to talking about Ethan, and she wasn't ready to share such intimate details of her life with a stranger, cousin or not.

She finally asked Mary about her life in Texas, even
though she didn't really care. She didn't care about much of anything these days. But in an effort to keep her family from worrying, she faked her way through each day. Hannah prayed every day for Ethan's soul, but her biggest fear was still heavy on her heart.
Was Ethan in heaven?
Hannah had lost her grandmother to cancer, and she'd attended plenty of funerals over the years. But not once did she question whether or not the person had gone to their eternal rest with the Lord. But it was different with Ethan.

By the time Charlotte and Hannah got home, the last meal of the day was already laid out on the kitchen table. Charlotte nibbled, but four thirty seemed early for supper, especially since she'd eaten so much at the pizza place. She already knew the Amish called the evening meal “supper,” and “dinner” was at lunchtime. And that they started their day at about four in the morning, but luckily Lena had suggested Charlotte sleep in on that first morning, assuming she was weary from her travels. By the time she'd gotten up this morning, Hannah's father and brother were already gone, and her nap last night had run past their supper hour. This meal was her first time to meet Hannah's dad and brother.

Hannah's father, Amos, was quiet. And sixteen-year-old Jacob was . . . strange. But in an interesting sort of
way. Charlotte had always been fascinated with meteors, the Big Bang theory, planets outside the solar system, and anything to do with space. Jacob seemed to share that passion, even though Lena's frequent glares at her son seemed to insinuate that she didn't think it was appropriate supper conversation. A comment about the heat generated a list of factoids from young Jacob. And thankfully he spoke in English. A few times, Lena and Hannah had drifted into their native dialect, but luckily none of the conversation seemed directed at Charlotte.

“The sun is fifteen million degrees Celsius at its core, but only fifty-five hundred on the surface,” Jacob said as he reached for a slice of bread. To Charlotte's horror, there was only one slice left, so she snatched it before someone else did. Full or not, she didn't think she'd ever get enough of the bread here. She was pretty sure Jacob had already had several slices. As Charlotte spread butter over the moist, warm bread, she thought about Ethan as a teenager. Her brother had always had a healthy appetite. She listened with interest to Jacob talk about moon landings, Pluto, and space debris, but when he started talking about NASA funding and the political aspects of space exploration, Lena shut him down.

“That's enough, Jacob.” Lena scowled at her son.

Too bad.
For Charlotte, it had been the most interesting conversation she'd had with any of them. After the meal, she excused herself. She wanted to start studying her new book.