Jacob's Return (33 page)

His great fear was that he might, somehow, have put a stop to the anger between them years ago.

God forgive him if it was so.

Jacob sighed. No going back.

An uncertain future hovered just beyond dawn.

Still holding Aaron, Jacob knelt before his brother’s bier.

Simon had paid for his vengeance with his life. Had he known the cost in advance, would he have sought retribution?

Jacob did not ponder the question long. He expected Simon would have deemed vengeance necessary at any cost. But a life was too high a price, for any reason, except perhaps to save another … as Simon had ultimately done.

So Jacob would not dwell on Simon’s vengeance, but on Aaron’s life as the gift his brother left him. And he would be grateful. He pulled his son close and wept silently for the brother he’d never really known.

Rachel was glad when Squeaky woke hungry. Feeding her would occupy some of the long, dark hours of the night. Jacob had ordered her to sleep … as if she could.

When her daughter suckled with contentment, relief shot through Rachel. They were safe. Her children were safe. She’d experienced bone-deep fear during the service over Simon’s frenetic actions, a fear that somehow her babies would be snatched away, but they were safe.

She should not feel anything akin to relief, she knew.

Simon was dead.

She had, in turn, feared and hated him today …
Sorry, Lord, I know it is a sin to hate.
She had feared him almost to the point of wishing him dead.

Oh, God. And when she’d been told he was, for one tiny portion of one tiny second, relief made her giddy. Then as swiftly, remorse shattered that relief.

What was the matter with her? She had cared about Simon once. He was her husband.

Her husband had died today.

She should feel more. But sorrow was lost to shock.

Would she ever forget the sight of Aaron running toward the flames? Jacob bloody and hitting the ground?

Plague Ruben for carrying her away when she should have been going after Aaron. Thank God he was safe.

Rachel shifted Squeaky to her other breast, hoping Anna slept a while longer so there would be milk for her too. She fluffed the curly down on her little girl’s head, as awed by the miracle now, as she’d been when she realized she conceived … in love, not sin, as Simon accused. He was wrong about that.

But how would the Elders and the rest of the community see this love?

She and Jacob had a lot to face. And they would … together. Beginning with Simon’s funeral.

Her husband’s funeral.

Her husband was dead.

Rachel thought of the man who’d snitched fudge while holding her slapping spoon in the air, who’d presented puddle-making pups at Christmas, who threw the little boy he loved in the air with a laugh. The same man who’d died to save the life of that very boy.

And she wept.

* * * *

Jacob drove his buggy toward the cemetery, Aaron silent beside him, his little hand resting on his father’s leg. Aaron could not seem to give up contact, as if he was uncertain of everyone and everything. With good reason. Jacob put his arm around shoulders too small to carry such burdens and brought his son close. The look on Aaron’s face was so needy, Jacob pulled him on his lap and gave him the reins.

Aaron looked up with a question on his face.

“Teach me what Unkabear taught you,” Jacob said.

Aaron’s smile was wistful as he flicked the reins. “Yup,” he said.

For three nights, he had cried for his Unkabear and nothing would soothe him but to sleep tucked against his father’s side. Truth to tell, Jacob had needed him as much.

Jacob hoped, more than anything, that Simon was happy in the next life, for he had never been in this one. At least now he had Mom’s full attention.

It near broke his heart this morning to see Rachel in the buggy beside Levi, when she should be in his buggy with him.

“A man’s widow cannot drive with her lover to her husband’s funeral!” the Bishop had snapped when he questioned the decision, draining the color from Rachel’s face, and the heart from him for her pain.

When the Bishop arrived home the day after Simon’s death, and was told the gruesome story, he’d aged before their eyes.

He blamed himself … almost as much as he blamed Jacob.

The funeral procession wound down Buttermilk Lane, along Maple Street and up Crooked Hill. Deacons and preachers from other districts came to pay final respects to a fellow Elder.

Though no one would ever speak of it again, Simon’s mental instability the day of his final sermon would never be forgotten. Neither would anyone forget his revelation.

But Simon had not caused their problems. He had not committed adultery. Even Rachel could not be faulted for that. As Jacob drove into the cemetery, he promised himself that he would make the Elders understand and accept that it was his fault, all his. He would by God.

Beside the open grave, by Simon’s open casket, people offered condolences to Levi and Bishop Zook. But they were ‘politely’ shunning Rachel and him.

Oh, no one openly avoided them, but they would, if the Bishop called for the
Meidung
, the shunning. And how could he not?

If he and Rachel confessed and offered apology for their actions, they might be forgiven. But Jacob fought the notion. To apologize would be tantamount to denying their love. And he could never do that.

Their future and their children’s would be settled at their separate hearings in two weeks. Anna and Mary would be four months old that day. Despite everything, there was something to celebrate. Still, waiting would be difficult.

At the end of the service, Jacob was not invited to throw dirt onto his brother’s casket as he should be, but he stepped forward anyway, Aaron’s hand in his. “Simon loved Aaron,” he said to everyone, yet to no one, “And Aaron loved him. For that reason, I wish my son to have the honor denied me.”

When no one spoke, Jacob whispered in Aaron’s ear and handed him a clod of dirt. Aaron looked at it a minute and threw it on the casket. “Good bye, Unkabear,” his boy said. “I love you.” Then he buried his face in his father’s coat and cried.

Jacob vowed then and there that he would allow no one to tarnish Aaron’s memory of his uncle. Simon’s nature would be buried here with him.

* * * *

Rachel trembled with nervous energy. After the Funeral supper, when everyone left, her father stayed, asking her, Jacob and Levi to sit down.

The scent of cinnamon buns did not soothe, sitting untouched as they did in the center of the table, as if the occasion did not warrant their sweetness.

“I want to know everything,” her father demanded of Jacob, in his hardest Bishop’s voice. “About how you came to be the father of Rachel’s babies.”

In her nervousness, her father’s words not being what she expected, Rachel giggled, and her father slammed his hand on the table so hard, a cinnamon bun rolled off the stack and landed icing down on the table.

Everyone looked at it, but no one moved to touch it.

“
Mein Gott
, Rachel, but when you marry, whatever kind your marriage, good or bad,” he shouted, his voice louder with each word, “You keep yourself only unto your husband!”

Jacob was hard put not to yell, himself, but he had no right to tell Rachel’s father to stop bullying the woman he loved. No right at all.

Levi intervened, giving Jacob a chance to calm down, and told what he knew of the night Simon hurt Rachel for the last time. His Datt told of Rachel’s bruises over the years, and he cried in shame for saying nothing.

Datt, of all people, blamed himself for everything.

Jacob remembered his first morning home, wondering why Datt had not mentioned Rachel’s bruise. Now, he understood that Datt had not wanted to see the truth. If he had, something extreme would have been called for, and it would have broken his heart to hurt Simon. Datt had blamed himself for Simon’s problems as far back as Jacob could remember.

His father told of Rachel’s broken arm, and how he only recently learned Simon caused it.

“He broke your arm?” the Bishop asked. “Didn’t that happen on your wedding night?”

Rachel lifted a cup of coffee to her lips with shaking hands and nodded.

The Bishop paled. “How?”

She put the cup down and ran her finger along the rim, back and forth. “His anger always made him grab hard and move fast.” She looked up at them. “I ran to get away. But when he caught me by the arm, he shook me so hard, we heard the crack, and he let me go. That’s when I felt the pain. The shape of my arm surprised us both, as if it had no bones in it.

“Simon was so sorry, he cried,” she said. “I believed and forgave him, and I never told anyone. He never hurt me so badly again … not my body, anyway. But sometimes I think maybe he hurt something deep inside me even more.”

Rachel placed her hand over her father’s and did not begin to speak again until he looked into her tear-filled eyes. “I think, when there is not a cut or a bruise to see, it is difficult to believe you are being hurt. And when you do begin to realize it, you think it must be your fault, so it is easier to forgive, or to pretend it is not happening. Sometimes I felt foolish to let it go on, yet I did not know how to stop it.”

“Rachel,” her father said covering her hand with his. “You must tell me all of it.”

Rachel took a deep breath and stood. “Stand up, Pop, and I will show you how his anger would begin, before there would be worse to come.”

The Bishop stood.

Using the belittling words Rachel said Simon used, she backed her father across the room poking her finger into his shoulder over and over again as she spoke to him, until she backed him flat against the wall.

The Bishop was clearly insulted but whether it was because Simon had done it to Rachel, or because Rachel was doing it to him now, was unclear.

Jacob understood, seeing it, how Simon could make her feel less worthy each day, and as she continued to demonstrate, he wanted to shout for her to stop.

When she stopped to describe Simon’s disgust over the shape of her body, Jacob fought even harder to keep himself from going to her.

“Tell me the rest,” her father said.

Rachel’s eyes were bleak. “Then, he would push me down on the bed and … however scared I was, I would try to lie still and do my duty. You don’t want to know what happened after that.

“Rachel, I need to know.”

Rachel stared far into the past and began to speak in a very detached way.

And there they were, three strong men, glancing at, and away from each other, because she shocked and embarrassed them with her words.

“Bishop Zook,” Jacob said. “If we cannot bear to hear it, imagine how she felt going through it.”

The bishop scowled at that raw truth, especially, Jacob thought, because it came from him.

Rachel’s explanation faltered. “Simon blamed me because he could not … could not seem to … reach a state where … that is—”

Jacob stood so fast, his chair hit the floor. “Enough! I don’t care how high you are in the church. I don’t care if you are her father. I would not care if you were God. I would say the same. Enough. No more.” Then he pulled Rachel from her chair and into his arms. “Never will you be made to speak these things again,” he whispered against her hair. “I promise.”

Her father rose as swiftly. “You cannot make such a promise. If she told these things, she might be forgiven, which cannot be said for you, you selfish—”

“Selfish? You ask your daughter to repeat these things before her neighbors, so you will not be called the father of a sinner, and you call me selfish!”

“Jacob!” his father shouted.

But Jacob ignored the warning. “Can’t you see how she suffers before her own relatives in the telling?”

Jacob did not let Rachel go even when the Bishop stepped menacingly toward him. “You are not her relative, Jacob Sauder. And if I have my way, you never will be.”

And that, Jacob thought, was because he was right. Guilt cut both ways. He should know. “I am Rachel’s husband in all but fact. And I will tell you this; I am proud of our love.”

The Bishop’s shoulders fell and he shook his head. “With that attitude, you will never be forgiven.”

“So be it,” Jacob said, shaken by the Bishop’s words, though he had already acknowledged the fact in his heart.

Levi touched his friend’s arm. “Ezra, my son may be a sinner, as are we all, and he is rude to his Bishop, for certain, but he loves your Rachel. There are many sins for which to fault him, but fault him not for his need to keep her from harm.”

“Keep her from harm! He has caused it.”

Jacob stepped away from Rachel. “I love her in every way a man loves a woman. And I will never deny it.”

“Then you will never be forgiven.”

Her father examined her face and Rachel saw the sadness in his eyes. “And you?” he asked. “Will you be able to say you are sorry for your sin?”

“I will forever regret that I am as responsible as Simon’s own tortured soul for his death. He was angry with me since the day we married, Pop, and this time with justification.” She touched her father’s arm and let her hand fall away. “I’m more sorry for what I’ve done to you.”

She turned to Jacob and placed her hands on either side of his face. “I will never deny loving you. Nor the love that brought our babies into the world.” In an unspoken act of unity, they joined hands and turned to face her father together.

He shook his head and looked at Levi. “It will not be an Amish world our grandbabies will know.”

“I do not want to leave my Amish world!” Rachel cried out, as if she’d been wounded. “It would be like dying.”

Those words nearly felled Jacob. His hand to her back, he urged her into her chair, wondering which of them trembled more. When she drank the glass of water he brought her and nodded that she felt better, Jacob looked straight at the Bishop, allowing him alone to read the anger he tried to hide from Rachel. “You would ban your own daughter? Even if I say I sinned, not her?”