Huckleberry Harvest (13 page)

His eyes flashed, and his icy expression seemed to thaw momentarily, as if he believed her. “Kristina would love to shame me in front of everybody.”

Mandy bit her bottom lip. Her best friend could be unpredictable and, yes, vindictive. Why had Mandy never noticed it before? They were definitely traits that Mandy found unattractive. “You keep talking as if Kristina and I have some secret plan to destroy your life.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You spied on me. That sounds like a secret plan.”

“She pushed me into the river. If it was a plan, it wasn’t a very good one.”

He let one corner of his mouth twitch upward. “Unless you planned that too. Kristina finagled a hug out of it.”

Mandy frowned. “Jah. She did.”

A shadow traveled across his face. “She’s tricky that way.”

That lump was still lodged in Mandy’s throat. “You and Krissy were never boyfriend and girlfriend, were you?”

With his gaze riveted to hers, he rubbed the stubble on his jaw and shook his head.

Her face got hot. “And I came over and unjustly bawled you out.”

“You believed Kristina’s version.”

“But why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

He looked sideways at her. “Would you have believed me?”

She lowered her eyes. “I suppose not.”

Noah leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “She and her gaggle of friends followed me around all summer. There was the spying and the texting and the messages on my voice mail. She asked me to drive her home from a gathering. One gathering. She lives close. I was trying to be nice.”

“She believed what she wanted to believe.” Kristina had made a pest of herself for a boy who had no interest. She should have been unendurably embarrassed. Right now, Mandy felt embarrassed enough for the both of them.

“It’s partly my fault. I should have put a stop to it sooner,” he said.

“Nae. You are not responsible for Kristina’s infatuation.” Except he
was
to blame for his good looks. They were kind of hard to resist. Kristina’s fascination was understandable. Her behavior was not.

“One day she . . . well, she did something that finally ended my patience. I texted her and told her to stay away from me and not to contact me ever again. I might have been a little harsh, but I wanted to make sure she understood. She’s not one to take a hint.” He let out a long sigh and rested a hand on Chester’s head. “I suppose I should have had the conversation in person, but I didn’t want to embarrass her and I didn’t want her to blubber all over my boots.” He inclined his head toward Mandy and pulled his phone from his pocket. “I apologize for doing it over a text. Somebody told me it’s cruel to break up with a text message.”

Mandy wanted to crawl into a tiny little hole. “Under the circumstances, I don’t think it could be considered a breakup.”

He frowned, concentrating on the phone as he twirled it in his fingers. “The bishop consented to the phone. The bar calls me when I need to come get my dat.”

Oh.

Mandy wanted to crawl into an even tinier hole and cover her head with dirt. “Sorry,” she said, her voice cracking like a carton of smashed eggs.

He didn’t reply, just played with his phone and kept his eyes away from her face.

Mandy leaned toward him and rested her hand on the table. “I won’t say a word about your dat to anyone,” she whispered.

“Denki,” he said, still twirling his phone, still averting his gaze, but sounding as if he’d just released a breath he’d been holding for a very long time.

Her heart swelled in her chest. For some reason she couldn’t explain, Mandy wanted Noah to share his pain with her, to express his deepest emotions. She wanted to laugh with him, be with him, understand him. Would he ever consider the possibility of being her friend? Did she dare invite him to? “I know this is none of my business . . .”

He looked up, probably expecting something horrible to come out of her mouth.

She cleared her throat. “If you don’t like the question, you can kick me out of your house. But if you kick me out, I get to keep your coat.”

His lip twitched almost imperceptibly. “Okay?”

“I barely know you. I know you don’t like to talk about your family.”

The muscles of his jaw tightened. “What do you want to know?”

“How long has your mamm been gone?”

He lifted his chin and seemed resentful of the question. “It’s no secret. Your grandparents must have told you all about my family.”

Mandy jiggled her head slightly. “My grandparents don’t tell tales on anybody except their grandchildren. When Mammi’s scheming to make a match, all the grandchildren know about it except the grandchild she’s scheming against.”

He let down his guard. “Your mammi is scheming against you, in case you didn’t know.”

Mandy winced. “I know.” She thumped her head down on her arm, which rested on the table. She bobbed her head up and down, lightly tapping her arm with her forehead as if she were banging her head against a wall. “She wants to make at least six more pot holders. You’ve got to save me, Noah.”

He made a face. “I’ll stay out of it. Felty asked me to fix his roof. He’s not paying me to help you find a husband.”

“I don’t want to find a husband.”

Noah rubbed his chin. “Davy Burkholder has three stuffed elk heads hanging in his living room. There’s hardly room for furniture. And Melvin Lambright, he’s nice enough, but he can’t whistle a note. He’d make a gute husband if you don’t mind that little disability yet.”

“Ha, ha,” Mandy said.

“The girls love Adam Wengerd.”

Probably almost as much as Adam loved himself.

Noah’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “Kristina says Adam’s handsome. She spies on him too.”

Mandy groaned.

“She was trying to make me jealous,” Noah said. “But I wasn’t.”

The goofy look on his face made Mandy giggle.

He leaned closer. “I’ll tell you a little secret. Adam Wengerd used to have the crookedest teeth you’ve ever seen. It took five years of braces. With headgear. If you marry him, don’t be surprised if your children look like beavers.”

Mandy playfully shoved Noah’s arm off the table. “Stop it. I don’t want to marry a Bonduel boy.”

This news seemed to sober him a bit. “Why not?”

“Charm, Ohio, has a better selection.”

“But we’ve got quality up here. What about Freeman Kiem? He’s got that nice cleft in his chin.”

“And I’ve got a face full of freckles. He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“I like freckles,” Noah said. He cleared his throat and lowered his eyes.

Mandy rested her elbow on the table and propped her chin in her hand. “We’ve strayed wildly from the subject.”

“What were we talking about?”

Ach. She should have been smarter than that. In an attempt to steer him from the subject of prospective husbands, she’d brought them right back to the question she shouldn’t have asked. They had been getting along so well, and Noah had found his smile. Not an easy feat considering where they’d been an hour ago.

If Mandy had owned a third leg, she would have kicked herself under the table.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Never mind.”

Noah wilted slightly. “I remember. You want to know how long my mamm’s been gone.”

“It’s late. We can talk another time. I should get home.”

He reached over and laid his hand on top of hers. She didn’t move a muscle. “It’s okay. You might as well know. Then you won’t be wondering, and I won’t be avoiding eye contact every time we see each other.”

She curled her lips and tried not to stare at his hand touching hers. “I guess that’s so.”

“My mamm’s been gone three years.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” he said. He seemed to remember that his hand still covered hers. He pulled it away.

“How did she die?”

“Die?” Lines of confusion appeared around his eyes. “Your grandparents really don’t gossip, do they?”

“What do you mean?”

“My mamm isn’t dead.” His voice grew raspy and soft, as if the pain were too great to talk louder. He reached out and petted Chester again. “She left us. Took my five brothers and sisters and moved back to Missouri to live with her parents.”

Whatever Mandy had expected to hear, that wasn’t it. She caught her breath. “She . . . she left?”

He wouldn’t look at her. “I don’t blame her. She did what she had to do.”

“Because of the drinking?”

He nodded. “My sister Edi died of a heart defect seven years ago. She wasn’t yet one year old.” He swiped a tear away and then tried to pretend he hadn’t just swiped a tear away. “It was hard for all of us, but my dat especially. He didn’t know what to do with all his grief. My mom gave hers to God, but Dat just didn’t know how to do it. He had developed a taste for the alcohol during
rumschpringe
and went back to it to forget how sad he was to have lost Edi. The bishop used to come over every week, but he didn’t know how to help. He quit coming after a while. My mamm put up with Dat for four years, and then she just couldn’t do it anymore.”

“So she divorced him and left the church?” Mandy asked.

“Nae. She wanted to stay in the church. They’re still married.”

Mandy sat with her heart in her throat, staring at Noah as if seeing him for the first time.

He didn’t hide his distress now. Resting his forehead in his hands, he let his tears drip onto the table. “My mamm begged me to come with her, but Dat needed me. I had to stay here.”

“Of course you did.”

He glanced at her. “You think I did the right thing? My brother Yost says I should have come with them and left Dat to suffer the consequences of his drinking. But I just couldn’t. I had to be the man my mamm raised me to be.”

“She raised you to be gute.”

He shook his head. “I’m not gute. I feel like I’ve been cut into two jagged pieces.”

“Are you angry with your
mater
?”

“Nae.” Noah rubbed the tears from his face with the back of his hand. “She was miserable. She did what she needed to do, what was best for my little brothers and sisters.”

“And you did what you thought was best.”

“Yost can’t forgive me for it,” Noah said. He ran his hand down the side of his face and nearly lost his composure. He looked so forlorn that Mandy couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. Not caring if it was proper behavior, she scooted her chair close beside him, put her arm around his shoulders, and grasped his upper arm with her other hand.

He didn’t acknowledge her gesture, but he didn’t pull away either. They sat in silence until Noah regained the power to speak. “Yost hasn’t had anything to do with me for three years. Mamm writes and calls once a week, but Yost hates me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We used to be best friends.”

“Is he close to your age?” Mandy whispered. Was she asking too many questions? She didn’t want to upset him any more than he already was, but she knew from her experiences helping people that it usually did a person good to talk about their troubles. That was one of Noah’s problems. He didn’t seem to want to talk about anything.

“He’ll be twenty next month. I knew he could take care of Mamm if I stayed with Dat. I thought he would see it as us working together. To him it was a betrayal.”

“Does he have a gute job to help your mamm?”

“He works construction, but I want him to be able to save up enough money to buy his own farm someday. My mom and siblings live with my grandparents, so they don’t have rent, and I send as much money as I can.”

That explained the house the size of a postage stamp with the forsaken yard and peeling paint.

Noah pressed his fingers into his brow. “Yost is gute with a hammer, but he needs a big brother to show him how to do the mechanical repairs. I’m grateful to your dawdi for the job. Reshingling their roof will bring in gute money. Lisa is nineteen. I want her to have a beautiful wedding.”

“My dawdi is a kind man, to be sure, but I know he didn’t hire you out of pity. You are very talented. Everybody knows that.”

Noah took a deep breath and looked into Mandy’s face as he seemed to be considering something very carefully. He stood up, moved away from her, and came to rest leaning against the wall. Chester followed him. “I can guess what you must think of me now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Godly men don’t have fathers who drink or mothers who leave.”

Mandy frowned. “That’s not true. Everybody has problems. You’re not less worthy because of your parents.”

He looked away from her again, as if facing the truth were too painful. “Tell that to the old ladies at church who rattle their tongues about my family.”

“Well,” she said, looking at him as if he were deliberately trying to annoy her, “I haven’t heard any tongue rattling. Maybe you’re imagining things.”

He slumped his shoulders. “It’s out there. Kristina likes to spread it.”

She bit her lip. Lord willing, Kristina would keep her mouth shut about tonight’s incident. If they’d just kept on driving like Kristina had wanted to do, she would never have seen Noah’s dat come out of the bar in a drunken rage. “I’m sorry I stuck my nose into your business tonight,” she said. “You tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen. I shouldn’t have interfered.”

“You didn’t know.”

“But I should have known. It’s plain as day that you can handle your dat by yourself.” She waved her hand in his direction. “You have all those big muscles and such.”

He tilted his head and eyed her teasingly. “You like my muscles?”

She squirmed in her chair and cleared her throat. “I didn’t say I liked your muscles. I just said you have them. Anyone with two eyes can see that.”

“You have two eyes,” he said, almost knocking her over with his piercing gaze. “Greenish blue. Like looking into an icy spring lake.”