The Tempted Soul (16 page)

“Looks like I missed out on getting a singing partner,” Joshua said. “I’ll be at the farm tomorrow afternoon as usual, Carrie.”

“It’s the singles table for you. I’m going to be here tomorrow, helping with the cleanup. I guess I’d better go and take my place, too, before Emma thinks I’ve deserted her.”

Joshua loped off, and Carrie would have followed him except that Aleta laid a hand on her arm. “Just a minute.” She swung Carrie’s jacket off her shoulders and handed it back to her. “
Denki
for this. The wind is cold.” She paused and pursed her lips. “I was a bit hard on you.”

Was this an apology? Carrie couldn’t very well agree with her, and to deny it would be a lie, so she kept silent.

“I came up here to talk to you, and when I saw that man, I suppose everything Mary told me rose up and got the best of me.”

“Does Mary believe all that?”

“I don’t think so. She doesn’t believe hardly any of what people tell her. She winnows through it all, looking for bits of truth, but it’s like trying to find a grain of wheat in a measure of rice sometimes.”

Is that what she did? Pass on the winnowings as though they were truth? Carrie shook her head. Really, the ideal bishop’s wife should be deaf to gossip, blind to faults, and dumb when it came to the first two.

“Well, now you know the truth,” she said at last. “Melvin likes Joshua, and he trusts me, and between the two there’s no room for…winnowings.”

Aleta nodded, watching Abe Zook head across the field to find his horse. “Now, there’s a man who’s been winnowed so many times there’s nothing left. And to think we courted once.”

If Carrie hadn’t been standing firmly on two feet, she would have fallen over. “You? And
Abe Zook
?”

“Oh yes. Years ago, before I left Whinburg. I went to take a job as a school teacher in Douglas County, and I met Melvin’s father and stayed. But Abe Zook and I…” Her voice trailed away while Carrie tried to wrap her imagination around this stormy woman and sticklike Abe Zook, living together in that awful house and riding roughshod over their daughter and any other children the union might have produced.

“Lydia works at the fabric store in town now,” Carrie said.

“Does she? Well, it gets her out of the house, I suppose, though goodness knows it must need looking after. Does no one come?”

“We do what we can. What he allows us to do.”

“That girl. I would never believe she was his daughter. That coloring must come from Rachel’s side of the family, though I can’t recall any redheads there, either.”

Rachel was Lydia’s mother. Or had been. “Didn’t Rachel have a sister?”

“A twin. An older sister died when they were real young. That branch of the family’s had its share of misfortune, and now here’s another bushel of it on the way.”

Carrie eyed her, very much afraid that they were gossiping now, themselves. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s as plain as the nose on your face—or will be, soon. Believe me, when you’ve had as many
Bobblin
as I have, you know the signs.”

“What?” Something was squeezing Carrie’s chest, as if a pair of massive hands had her heart and lungs between them and she couldn’t get a breath.

As though she’d heard them talking about her, Lydia Zook emerged from the barn and trailed reluctantly across the yard to the pasture gate. She moved so slowly it looked like some magnetic force was pulling her back in the door. She gripped the post and gazed back toward the barn, looking for a face or a silhouette in the lamplight that glowed in its sashed lower windows.

“The girl’s breeding,” Aleta said. “She’s not very far along yet, but far enough to know it. Abe is going to have his hands full, and that’s a fact.”

Carrie watched the slender figure push open the gate and stand next to it as her father drove the buggy through. At a word from him, she closed it and climbed in beside him, stiffly, the way a teenager would if she were doing it under orders and not because she wanted to.

Pregnant.

Pregnant
.

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

E
mma and Grant left at eleven o’clock to spend their first night as husband and wife at the Stolzfus
Daadi Haus
. Lena had gone home with Katherine and her family hours before, and when Christina Yoder asked if the children were going with relatives, Emma shook her head.

“We’re a family now,” she said, taking little Katie’s hand and hefting a sleeping Zachary higher on her shoulder. “We’re going to start off as a family.” Smiling, Christina had taken her own children home.

Carrie glanced around the barn to make sure there weren’t any stray dishes left on the tables. Melvin found her with a drinking glass in one hand and a small stack of empty candy dishes that had somehow found its way on top of a crossbeam. “This will all be here tomorrow,
Liebschdi
. I have the buggy outside.”

Feverishly, Carrie clutched the dishes and hustled them out the door. “Are the dishwashers still here? We should get these—”

“
Nei
.” He took them and set them on the end of one of the tables, where someone would see them first thing tomorrow. “Carrie, you’ve been working like a plow horse ever since the Singing. Now that Emma and Grant are gone, aren’t your duties done?”

She wished there were more. Thank heaven for work. Work was a blessing, keeping the hands and the mind busy so that she didn’t have to think about teenage girls barely out of the schoolroom who were facing motherhood without neither husband nor home.

Carrie spent a sleepless night, which meant that getting up at four the next morning was a relief—an end to the torture of her own thoughts. She made a big breakfast for Melvin, let the hens out of their coop and fed them, too, and they were back at the Stolzfus place by six to break down the tables, scrub the barn floors, and pack the silverware and dishes into their chests, ready for the next wedding.

Early as she was, Emma and Grant still beat her there. But then, they had only been a few steps away, which was the very reason the newlywed couple usually spent the night at the bride’s home. Besides, if the couple were young, they often didn’t have a house built yet, so there was no time to waste on cleanup, because a farm’s other jobs still waited.

By noon, the work was mostly done, and after Carrie helped cook the lunch for the cleanup crew, Emma practically had to force her to sit and eat a plate of it herself.

Carrie finally came out of the inferno of her own mind to gaze at her friend across the plate of ham, macaroni and cheese, buttered beans, and biscuits. “Emma. Look at you.” Emma blushed and looked down at her own plate. “Happiness is beaming out of you.”

The flush on her cheeks made her look softer, and her eyes glowed in a way Carrie hadn’t seen before, even if the corners of them drooped just the tiniest bit from lack of sleep. Marriage definitely suited her.

“I have every reason to be happy,” Emma said quietly, her gaze finding Grant at the men’s table. As though he could feel it, he looked up and smiled at her, and Emma blushed again. “Even if between us Zachary and I managed to spill his milk down his shirt this morning. I wonder how on earth Amelia managed with
two
boys under two. Zachary is a good little guy, but my goodness, he takes a lot of watching.”

“You should ask her,” Carrie said. “Do you still mean to have our quilting time on Tuesday?”

“I do. Nothing can keep me away.” She tucked into her macaroni and the words that trembled on Carrie’s lips fluttered into silence.

She would save the news about Lydia until then. It would do no good to bring it up now, at a table with twenty other people clattering their dishes, and brothers and sisters close enough to hear what she said. And what if she started to cry? No, no. Tuesday, in the quiet of her own spare room, was soon enough.

Maybe by then she’d have found out a thing or two. Like whether it was actually true, or if Aleta was just imagining things.

She hoped Aleta didn’t plan to stay for the Peachey and Kurtz weddings next week. At best, she could encourage her to do some visiting on Tuesday afternoon, so that the three of them could have privacy to talk.

Melvin decided to join Eli Fischer for the remainder of that day at the pallet shop, which meant he took the horse and buggy into Whinburg. After all the busyness of the past week, a quiet walk home along the creek bed would be good for her. The old-man’s-beard—the seedpods of the wild clematis—was finished now, and there were hardly any left, but there might be something she could make into a wreath.

She had no idea if Joshua was at the house or not, but worrying about it wouldn’t get her there any faster. She was just about to head out across the field when Emma leaned out of the Weaver buggy.

“Can we give you a ride?”

Carrie shook her head. “I know you want to start setting up your house right this minute, so I won’t keep you from it.”

“Nonsense.” Grant backed the horse, and Carrie walked over to Emma’s side of the buggy. The two girls were in school, so only Zachary rode on Emma’s lap. “She’s had her kitchen set up the way she likes it for weeks. And after all you’ve done for us, the least we can do is give you a ride. Hop in.”

Emma slid over and he put his arm around her and the baby both, still holding the reins. “Eyes on the road, you,” she teased.

“I can see this old road any day. Seeing my bride is a different matter.”

“You won’t be saying that in ten years.” But Emma couldn’t keep the impish smile off her lips.

“Watch me.”

The three miles over to her house had never seemed so short as they laughed and talked over the wedding. How often was a woman’s heart’s desire granted to her? And yet Emma had both—her book was to be published, and she was married to the man she’d loved since she was eighteen.

Thank you, Father, for little gifts like a steady hand with cake frosting, and for big gifts like a lifetime’s happiness for someone I love. Father, You know my heart’s desire. You also know I’ve given it into Your hands. I know I’ve done that a hundred times over the last ten years, but this time I won’t be taking it back. It’s staying with You, to do with as You will. Give me the strength to leave it there, Lord. Amen.

“Looks like Joshua Steiner is here,” Grant said as he pulled the horse to a halt in the yard. Joshua’s horse cropped grass placidly in the pasture closest to the barn, while the buggy had been pulled neatly to the side of the lane to allow others to pass.

“The weather is supposed to be clear today and tomorrow,” Carrie said. “I hope he plans to paint my chicken house.” She gave Emma a quick hug and jumped down. “Enjoy your day at home. Are you beginning your wedding visits right away?”

Emma nodded. “We’re going down to Katherine’s first, but we’ll be back Monday night. I told you I wasn’t missing our quilting time, and I meant it.”

“I look forward to it. I want to talk something over with you.” With a wave, she stepped back and Grant turned the horse, shook the reins over his back, and they rolled down the lane.

“You mean women are scheduling their gossip now?” Joshua came around the corner of the barn wiping his hands on a rag. “That doesn’t sound godly to me.”

Carrie climbed the steps. “What goes on at our quilting frolics is not for men’s ears. And we don’t say anything we wouldn’t want the Lord to hear, anyway.”

“The Lord hears it whether we want Him to or not.”

“If He is fine with it, then you should be, too.”

Joshua laughed as though he’d gotten the rise out of her that he’d wanted. “Do you ever talk about me?”

Carrie rolled her eyes. “Such pride, imagining that of all the subjects in the world, we would choose that one.” Which, of course, they had.

“I’ve probably given you reason to.”

Something in his tone told her that they were no longer being frivolous. She put her big bag—now full of pieces of the cake’s architecture, washed and dried—on the porch, pulled her jacket around her against the chill, and walked with him over to the chicken house.

It was freshly painted. All that was left to do was the green trim, and she could do that herself. “You’ve done a good job,” she said. “This place looks nearly new.”

“I had to let the chickens out. They were getting a little panicky.”

“That’s all right. They usually wander all over the yard anyway, keeping the bugs down.”

“Carrie—”

“Is there something you want to talk with me about?”

“
Ja
,” he said on a long breath that could have been relief, or maybe trepidation. “There is.”

She busied herself filling the feed cans. Sometimes it was easier to talk when your whole concentration wasn’t on the other person, making them uncomfortable. “I’m listening.”

“I wasn’t just being
batzich
, you know, about being the subject of people’s talk. I know I am.”

“In what way?”

“In a ‘who is he seeing now’ kind of way.”

“Are you courting Lydia Zook?”

“Is that what they say?”

“I don’t know who
they
is, but I’ve noticed you in her company, so it looks to me like you might be courting.”

“And if I am?”

“Honestly, Joshua, you don’t need my permission. But if you did, I might say you ought to look at someone who isn’t two years out of the schoolroom.”

She took the basket down from the wall and began to collect the eggs. Dark brown, light brown, green, and blue, their colors delighted her. When she put them in the egg cartons to sell in the summer, she would put them in an order that made pretty designs that probably only she could see, twelve at a time.

But it was November, and there were only three eggs in all six nesting boxes. The birds had begun to molt last month, so that was to be expected. A bird could use her body’s protein for eggs or for feathers, but not for both, so most hens stopped laying in the winter.

Joshua watched her. “What would you say if I told you it wasn’t true?”

“What wasn’t?” She shouldn’t have let her mind wander. She didn’t want him to think she didn’t care about his confidences.

“Me courting Lydia Zook. Because it isn’t.”

She nearly dropped the last egg, which would have meant no chocolate-zucchini loaf for Melvin’s breakfast.

“Then if it isn’t you, who’s the—” She clamped her mouth shut and put the egg carefully in the nearly empty basket. Blurting out something like that—well, that really would be gossip. People were going to talk quite enough. She didn’t need to add to it.

“What have you heard, Carrie?”

“Nothing.”

“What were you going to say?”

He wasn’t going to let her get out of this. “I was going to say, ‘Who’s the father?’ but that would be cruel and unkind if—if people are wrong.”

“You know?” He sounded astonished. “She just told me yesterday, at the wedding. Who told you? Lydia herself?”

“No. My mother-in-law. Right after you left us.”

It took him a moment to absorb this. “Mamm Miller was having a busy afternoon.”

Carrie wasn’t going to touch that. All she needed was for it to get back to Aleta that she was talking about her behind her back, and things would become even more prickly than they were now. Bad enough she’d be coming home at any time from visiting Mary Lapp, and Joshua would still be here.

“She’s had five boys and four girls. I guess she knows the signs,” she said. “Nobody told her that I know of.”

He took a sharp breath and let it out just as sharply. “But the baby isn’t mine, I’ll guarantee you that. Lydia and I—well, it hasn’t progressed to that.”

Hasn’t progressed? But to progress, you had to start somewhere. People didn’t practice bed courtship anymore in Whinburg Township, but that didn’t mean things still didn’t get out of hand.

“I know everyone thinks I’m courting her,” Joshua went on, “and as soon as she starts to show, everyone will say I’m the father, but I’m not. I can’t be.”

He’d said that twice now. It sounded almost desperate. “Then who is?”

“She won’t tell me,” he said miserably. For once in his life, he wasn’t the joker, the careless scapegrace who turned every word to produce a laugh. “I’m practically the only person she has to talk to around here, and she won’t tell me.”

If she thought they were an odd couple before, it was nothing compared to this. “Doesn’t she have friends? She needs to talk to a woman about these things, not you. Isn’t there an aunt in Strasburg?”

“And how is she going to get there? Abe won’t let her out of the house, so she has to wait until he goes to sleep or gets busy with something and doesn’t notice she’s gone. Taking the buggy to Strasburg would be next to impossible.”

“She must have girlfriends with mothers.”

“Who is going to let their daughter get close to her?”

Carrie thought of the peach-colored fabric. “Sarah Grohl used to be her friend. And the girls certainly follow her lead.” Or maybe it was more a case of watching to see if she was spoken to, and if not, then assuming it was safe to do the same.

“That may be true, but it doesn’t mean she has the kind of friends she could confide in.” He finally met her gaze. “Otherwise, why would she say these things to me?”

Because you dance along the edges of God’s will, too, just like her
. “You know, my mother and some of the women who have been looking out for her—making her a project—they could—”

“Carrie, she needs someone like you,” he interrupted. “Even if she tells you to mind your own business, it’s all a show. She needs someone desperately who knows about—about—”

“Pregnancy?” Carrie’s stomach turned over and she tasted something sour in the back of her throat. “I am the last person who could talk about that.”

Joshua didn’t seem to hear the bitterness in her tone. “But you have friends who have. You have sisters—and a mother who can advise you. Lydia doesn’t have any of those things. Maybe she can—I don’t know—use your family instead. Through you.”

“Do you know what you’re asking me?” she said hoarsely. “What I’ve been longing for and praying for these ten years past? Are you mocking me?”

“Of course not. I’m begging you.”

For probably the first time in his life, Joshua was putting someone else ahead of himself—someone whose loneliness and need were probably even greater than his own. Even if people would think he himself had been the cause of the latter.