The Choice (18 page)

Mattie tilted her head. “Are you having money troubles?”

Carrie hesitated a moment, listening for the pop of the jam jars to indicate the lid suctioned into a seal. “Not troubles, exactly. Not yet.” She had refused Veronica McCall’s offer to buy Yonnie’s quilts. She just couldn’t let Yonnie part with any more of them. She was sure there had to be another way to pay the bills.

“Can’t you ask Esther for help?”

Carrie winced. Esther had never truly forgiven Carrie for insisting that Andy come live with her. “Her solution would be to move back in with her.”

“You could talk to the deacon. He would be able to help.”

“I know. If I need to, I will.” She wiped the counter with a clean rag. “For now, we’re all right. It’s looking like this will be a good apple year.” She took the jars out of the water and set them down. Mattie ladled the jam into the clean jars and put a lid on each one. “So if keeping the orchards is what you want for Andy, what do you want for yourself?”

Carrie shrugged a shoulder carelessly. “We don’t get everything we want, Mattie.”

Mattie bent an ear down to hear the
pop! pop!
of the lids. When she heard them, she smiled, satisfied. “No, maybe not, but the Lord promises us everything we need.”

A few days later, Carrie made hotcakes with apple butter for breakfast. She was pouring Yonnie a cup of coffee as Abel came in from the barn.

“Mmmm! They smell delicious.” Abel grabbed a plate and forked a few steaming hotcakes onto it, spooning apple butter on top.

“Daniel loved Carrie’s hotcakes too,” Yonnie said.

“Only time I ever saw him give an all-the-way-to-the-toes smile,” Carrie said.

The words flew out of her mouth before she caught them. She clamped her lips shut as Abel’s chin snapped up. He looked straight at Carrie, but she kept her eyes lowered to her plate.

The morning was already so hot that Carrie went down to the barn to make sure the animals’ water buckets were filled. Abel came in from the workshop when he heard her.

“Got a minute?” he asked.

She finished pouring water into Lulu’s bucket, then straightened. “No. I’ve got an apple snitz in the oven.”

“I was pulling off some rotted boards on the barn to replace them and got a nasty splinter in my hand.” He held up his hand to show her.

“Come over to the window.”

He held out the hand with the wood splinter. As she tried to pull it without breaking it off, he said, “Those Cooper’s hawks need to be set free. They’re nearly grown.” The hawks were squawking a raucous call at them from the cage Andy had made for them by converting a horse stall.

She nodded.

“They’re wild creatures. Keeping them in a barn is no place for them.”

“I’ve said as much to Andy, but he won’t part with them. I think it’s the last link he had to Daniel.”

In a voice low and kind, Abel asked, “Carrie, was Daniel good to you?”

She dropped his hand as if it was a hot coal. Abel’s gaze was steady—he looked at her with brown eyes that were warm and concerned. He made her uneasy, though, asking her questions that no one ever asked. Sometimes she couldn’t believe he and Daniel were related. He must have been a perfect complement to Daniel. Abel liked to talk. He probably filled in the emptiness of Daniel’s silences, she decided, turning her attention back to the splinter, ignoring his question.

“Done,” she said. “Best to put a bandage on that.” She turned away quickly.

Abel put his hand on her forearm. “Was he good to you, Carrie?” Her gaze shifted to the birds in the stall, staring at her with their beady black eyes.

Abel waited. And waited. The silence in the barn took on a prickly tension. Carrie knew he expected her to pour out all the grief and sorrow she had stored up for so long. She felt close to tears and she didn’t know why. How could she admit to him that the sadness she felt whenever she thought of Daniel was caused by guilt, not grief?

Keeping her eyes averted, she answered, “Daniel was always good to me. Very, very good to me.”

Walking back to the farmhouse, she realized she had spoken the truth. Daniel had been good to her. Still, her feelings about Daniel were a tangled mess. She felt terrible about how things had been left between them. She felt a deep guilt that shadowed her, the way Daniel’s burden had shadowed him. But 127 most of all, she felt a sorrow that things were left unfinished between them.

The following day, Veronica McCall came to Carrie’s house and walked right into the kitchen without knocking. She didn’t close the door tight, so Carrie hurried past her to shut it before hot sticky air could rush in.

“Where’s Abel?” she asked.

“I heard him nailing some boards on the back side of the barn,” Carrie said. “That barn is so old it’s nearly falling apart.”

“I came to ask him if he could do some carpentry work for us at Honor Mansion. A carpenter is having surgery for a hernia or a kidney or something like that.”

Carrie tilted her head. “A hernia or a kidney?”

“Well, something’s wrong with him.” Veronica waved the thought away. “So he’s out for a while and we need to get the interior woodwork finished. I thought of Abel. Don’t all Amish men know carpentry?”

Carrie turned to Yonnie, who was watching Veronica McCall with a curious look on her face. “Yonnie, does Abel do carpentry?” “Oh sure,” Yonnie said. “And he knows all about electric. And motors too.”

“He’s an electrician?” Veronica asked. “Even better! Our electrician hasn’t shown up in three days. They all keep quitting. Perfect! I’ll go talk to him.” She blew out the door, not bothering to shut it. Hot, heavy air swooped in.

If Veronica McCall hired Abel on, Carrie thought, maybe he would stick around and help them get through the harvest. Just one harvest, she prayed, whispering cautiously to God above, if she could just make it through this first harvest without Daniel. She closed the door and turned to Yonnie. “What else can Abel do?”

“He’s good at fixing things. Abel can fix anything.” She looked up to the ceiling, pensive, as if trying to pull down a memory like a book from a shelf. “I’m pretty sure he could build a nuclear submarine if he put his mind to it.”

Carrie stared at Yonnie, trying to make sense of her. “Yonnie, what do you know about nuclear submarines?”

Yonnie smiled, and the wrinkles on her face fell into their natural grooves. “I know about all sorts of things.”

Carrie went over to sit next to her. “Well then, what do you think Abel plans to do with himself, now that he’s out of jail?”

She picked her quilting up off her lap. “Stay here, of course, and help us. We’re his family. He belongs here.”

“I’m not so sure that others are going to understand an English-looking fellow just set free from jail is family.”

Yonnie kept her eyes on her quilt pieces. “Abel is still in his Rumspringa.”

Carrie doubted that. Abel seemed a little old for running-around years. “So you think he just hasn’t decided yet about joining the church?”

“Oh sure,” she said, but not with conviction. She started to concentrate on a row of tiny stitches.

“Yonnie, was Abel so . . . ,” she hunted for the right word, “. . . devout before he went to jail?”

She gave a short laugh. “Oh my, no.”

“He’s changed, then?”

Concern pulled down her wrinkled features. “Haven’t we all.” She started humming, which was her signal that she was done talking.

Abel didn’t return for supper that night. He wasn’t even home in time for evening prayers. Carrie was nearly asleep when she heard a car zoom up the driveway, skidding to a halt in front of the barn. She got out of bed and looked out a corner of the window to see who it was. In the full moonlight, she saw Veronica McCall reach out to plant a kiss right on Abel’s lips. She quickly stepped away from the window and jumped back in bed, ashamed of herself for spying on them like, well, like Emma. But one thing she did notice: Abel didn’t seem to be objecting to the kissing.

A few days later, about dinnertime, the bishop’s grandson, John Graber, showed up at the farmhouse, carrying a big smoked ham. “My mother thought you might be needing this,” he said in his awkward way.

“Oh my, yes. This will feed us for . . . weeks,” Carrie said, taking it from him. Months, even.

Abel came in from the barn, bursting through the kitchen door. “Well, hello there!” he said. “Just noticed your buggy out front.” He reached a hand out to John Graber. “I’m Abel, Yon-nie’s grandson.”

John Graber looked at Abel’s hand as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Then his head turned from Abel to Carrie, completely confused. But then, the wheels in John’s mind had always turned slowly.

“This is the bishop’s grandson, John,” Carrie said, filling in the silence.

John just stood there, looking ill at ease and bewildered. It was one of the many reasons Carrie thought he was strange. He ran clean out of words after the first greeting.

Abel, not a bit put off by John’s lack of loquacity, went on merrily ahead and invited him to stay for supper. Carrie tried not to let a relieved smile spread over her face when John declined and abruptly turned to leave. She could only imagine what John would report to his grandfather after hearing Abel pray like he was on a first-name basis with the Lord God Almighty.

“Another time, then, John!” Abel called out cheerfully from the kitchen door.

Carrie scowled at Abel after he closed the door.

“What? What did I do?” he asked her.

“John Graber is sweet on her,” Yonnie whispered. “She doesn’t want to encourage his attention. She thinks he is strange.”

“He does seem a little strange.” Abel grinned at Carrie. “Maybe a little weak on the social skills.”

As Carrie watched John’s buggy turn onto the road, she wondered how long it would be until Esther showed up. She hurried upstairs and pulled open a trunk where she had stashed Daniel’s clothes. She had meant to pass them on to someone in need but hadn’t found time yet. She picked up the shirts and trousers and held them close to her, burying her face in them and inhaling deeply. There was still a lingering hint of Daniel in them—the sour smell of wood smoke mixed with the sweet smell of hay. She took them downstairs and handed them to Abel.

He lifted his dark brows at Carrie, puzzled.

“Perhaps you could look Plain while you’re here,” she told him.

Abel frowned, scratched his chin, then dropped one hand to rest on his dead cousin’s shirt.

The next morning, after breakfast, Esther arrived in her buggy with Emma and a large suitcase. “I’ve decided you need help,” she told Carrie, eyeing Abel suspiciously. “Emma will stay for a while.”

At least Abel was wearing Plain clothes, Carrie thought. Daniel was much taller so the pants legs puddled around the ankles, but Abel could pass for an Amishman.

Emma clomped upstairs to claim a spare bedroom while Carrie made coffee for Esther and brought out a day-old cake. For as long as Carrie could remember, Esther had an effect on folks like a thundercloud that had just poured rain on their picnic. Abel stayed for coffee and did his best to try to engage Esther in conversation, but she nearly ignored him. It wasn’t long before the conversation at the kitchen table drizzled to a cold stop.