The Forgiven (6 page)

“But surely the parents of your students will make them stop.” She couldn't believe this was happening, not here.

“Some might want to, but they're afraid. They don't want to be seen as German sympathizers. It's not an easy thing, to stand up to a crowd.” Mrs. Dill patted Anna's hand. “You can't do anything here. Let Jacob see you and Peter safely home now.”

“We can take you home as well,” Jacob said. “You don't want to see this.”

Mrs. Dill's gaze softened as it rested on him, but she shook her head. “No, thank you, Jacob. I must stay.”

Jacob nodded, as if he understood. He clasped Anna and Peter by the hand, and Anna was glad enough to feel his fingers around hers, communicating his strength.

They'd just started down the lane when a roar went up from the crowd. Anna glanced back over her shoulder. Mrs. Dill still stood where they had left her, her slight figure seeming as indomitable as ever.

Beyond her, the pyramid of books had blazed up in a tower of orange and red.

No, not a pyramid, not a bonfire. Mrs. Dill always insisted on precise language from her students. This was a funeral pyre.

Anna was shaken by a feeling so unaccustomed that she wasn't sure at first what it was. And then she realized. It was anger. How could God let this happen?

M
att
glanced around his new workshop with satisfaction a week after Rebecca had agreed to rent the space to him. He'd taken his time getting organized, methodically arranging his equipment to suit his needs and the space available in the stable.

He hadn't wanted to pull apart any of the stalls that had been built, presumably for the work horses he'd heard Paul had intended to breed. Instead, he'd worked around the existing interior, using the stalls as storage areas for the time being. The center section had plenty of space to set up his workbenches.

Now, finally, he was ready to actually get to work on some new pieces of furniture, and something that had been restless in him was stilled at the thought.

It wasn't that he didn't take pleasure in working alongside Onkel Silas in the carpentry business, because he did. Their talents blended well together. But however smoothly the work went, that job was always accompanied by a sense of obligation and an awareness that even though he'd never say it, Silas must consider him a poor substitute for the son he'd lost.

Matt ran his palm along the smooth curve of the maple rocker he was making, feeling the wood grow warm beneath his touch like a person's skin. This was where his heart was, after all. How many people had the chance to spend their lives working at a job they loved?

He turned the question over in his mind as he arranged the spindles for the rocker's back. More people among the Amish were satisfied with their work than in the general population, he'd guess. To the Amish, work was to be enjoyed as praise to God, no matter what it entailed. It was so much the better if a person could do something he really enjoyed.

The friends he'd had when he'd lived among the Englisch had seemed to see their jobs as nothing more than a means to earn money to do what they really wanted to. Still, they'd been young and restless, like him. Maybe they'd eventually find the pleasure in their work that he did when he felt a piece of furniture taking shape under his hands.

The boy was there, watching Matt as he had been for the past few evenings. Matt had spotted him peeking around the edge of a box stall a few minutes after he'd started work.

Joshua was a bit closer tonight—either feeling more daring or becoming more convinced that Matt hadn't noticed him. Matt had been careful not to let on that he saw the child, but maybe he could risk talking a bit.

“Looks as if this spindle is just a tad too long.” Matt kept his voice low, as if he were talking to himself. “Pity, but I'll have to shorten it. No point in rushing through a job and ending up with less than my best.”

He tackled the offending spindle, shaving a fraction of an inch off the end. “There's no hurrying in woodworking—that's what Asa used to say when he was teaching me the craft. Take it slowly and do your best. You'll get faster in time.”

He fitted the spindle against the back, measuring it with an experienced eye. “Just a touch more, I think.” He suited action to words and shaved off a bit more, holding the spindle so Joshua could see what he was doing.

“There's no room for temper in woodworking, either.” He smiled, remembering. “I mind the time a piece I'd been working on for a good hour came apart in my hands just when I thought it was done. I was so mad I threw it across the shop.”

He heard a rustle from the direction of the stall and the faint creak of a board.

“Asa just looked at me, disappointed. ‘Wood will forgive a lot,' he told me, ‘but not bad temper.' Far as Asa was concerned, the wood was a living thing.”

“Who was Asa?” The small voice, coming after days of silence, startled him.

Careful,
he told himself. Making friends with Rebecca's son was a lot like coaxing a sparrow to take a bread crumb from his hand.

“Asa Wagner was my neighbor when I lived out in Indiana. I was his apprentice. That means he taught me about woodworking so I could make furniture.”

Asa had taught him more than that; he'd given his endless patience with the headstrong teenager Matt had been. It was just a pity Matt hadn't taken his lessons to heart in time to prevent some of the worst of his mistakes.

“Is that going to be a chair?” The boy's voice came from just behind Matt, and he risked a look. Joshua had crept up without a sound. His wide blue eyes were fixed on the pieces laid out on the worktable.

“A rocking chair,” Matt said. “This will be the back of it.”

Joshua's small finger reached out to touch a spindle, tracing the rounded curve. “It's smooth.”

“I like to get every piece as finished as I can before I put it together. Otherwise it can be hard to get the sandpaper into all the curves and corners to finish them.”

That had been one of Asa's pet peeves, he remembered. Every bit of a piece should be smooth as silk, even the parts that didn't easily show. That's how you could tell a piece was handcrafted, not made by a machine, he'd say, dismissing machine-made products with a shrug of his wiry shoulders.

“But how do you get it so smooth?” Joshua met Matt's eyes, his curiosity finally outweighing his shyness.

Matt reached for the box that contained his sandpaper, sorted according to grade. “You go over it with finer and finer paper each time, wiping it down completely after every rubbing. Can you feel the difference between these?” He pulled out a coarse paper and an extra-fine one.

Joshua touched each one, his small face serious. Then he nodded. “But why don't you just start with this one?” He indicated the extra-fine.

The youngster was sharp for a five-year-old, it seemed to Matt. Rebecca must have her hands full, raising two youngsters without a husband's help.

“You don't start with the fine one because the wood would be too rough at first to respond to it. You can't take shortcuts and have a piece come out its best.”

Joshua grinned, his solemn face lighting up. “That's what Mammi says when Katie wants her to hurry with the baking.”

“Your mammi is a wise woman,” he said, wondering what Rebecca would say if she heard.

And speaking of Rebecca, someone had just stepped into the path of late-afternoon sunshine that streamed from the open door. He turned to greet her, but his smile checked when he realized it wasn't Rebecca. It took him a moment to recognize Simon, her next younger brother. He'd been little more than a child when Matt left.

“Simon—” he began, but he paused when he realized Simon was rather obviously ignoring him and staring at Joshua.

“I think your mammi wants you at the house, Josh.” His face, a more masculine version of Rebecca's with its straight nose and fresh color, seemed to tighten. “You shouldn't be out here with him.”

Matt found his own muscles growing taut in response. Simon made it sound as if the stable were a dangerous place now that Matt had moved in.

Leave it alone.
He had no business interfering between Joshua and his uncle.

Joshua's expression clearly asked a question, but he didn't say it aloud. Instead, he gave Matt a shy smile and sprinted from the stable without a word.

“No need to scare the boy off,” Matt said mildly once Joshua was gone. “He wasn't bothering me.”

“It wasn't you I was thinking of.” Simon took a step closer, his youthful face suddenly pugnacious. “I don't want Joshua hanging around you.”

Matt squashed the tiny flare of temper. “Is that what Rebecca says?” he asked.

“That's what I say.” There could be no doubt of Simon's attitude. Was his obvious opposition to Matt shared by the rest of Rebecca's family? She'd certainly given no indication of it, if that was true.

“It seems to me what Joshua does is up to his mother.” Matt turned back to his worktable, hoping that would put an end to an obviously fruitless conversation. “If she doesn't want me talking to Joshua, all she has to do is say so.”

He heard a hasty step behind him, and then Simon's hand gripped his shoulder as if to spin him around. Matt grasped the edge of the table.
Don't lose your temper. Whatever you do, don't lose your temper.

He stood, rocklike, long enough to make it clear to Simon that his efforts wouldn't move him. Then he turned to face Simon with an assumption of calm he didn't feel.

“You're not looking for a fight, are you, Sim?” He deliberately used the boyhood nickname. “The church would frown on that, ain't so?”

“You should know.” Simon's temper flared. “Now that Paul's gone, it's up to Rebecca's family to protect her and the kinder. I don't want you influencing my nephew or taking advantage of Rebecca's good nature. You understand?”

There was a time when Matt would have responded to those words by seizing Simon by the scruff of the neck and tossing him out the door. Those days were gone. They had to be if he expected to stay in this community.

“Is that all?” Let Simon try to figure out whether that was sarcasm or not. “Because if so, I need to get back to work.”

He turned to the workbench again, reaching for the spindle.

He felt Simon behind him and imagined he sensed a certain bafflement in the air. Simon, he suspected, didn't know quite what to make of his reaction. The question was, how far did Simon want to push him?

Heavy shoes scraped on the floor. Simon's body blocked the light from the door again for a moment, and then he was gone.

Matt unclenched his fists, one finger at a time. He'd been so intent on getting Rebecca's approval for his plan that he hadn't stopped to consider how anyone else might react to his presence on her property. Maybe he should have.

And maybe he should reassess the likelihood that he was going to keep the promises he'd made when he returned to the Amish, especially here in Brook Hill. He'd thought this would be a good place to test his resolve, back where he had started. Maybe he'd underestimated the power of people here to set his rebellious temper flaring all over again.

•   •   •

Sometimes
Rebecca thought that the more they sorted in her grandmother's attic, the more things they discovered. That was impossible, of course, but certainly the job was taking longer than they'd anticipated, and today only she and Barbie were working, since Judith's youngest was down with a fever.

Rebecca couldn't help murmuring a quick, motherly prayer that her own kinder would be spared. Spring colds seemed to go on and on, just at a time when the young ones most wanted to be outside.

Rebecca lifted a box filled with old sheets, revealing yet another dower chest beneath it. She bent, looking more closely at the front, and traced the faded paint with her fingertip.

“Barbie, komm see this.”

“Another chest?” Barbie frowned, her arms filled with a quilt she'd just unearthed. “What's so special about that? The attic is full of them.”

“But look at the date on this one.” She knelt to get a better angle, peering at the inscription on the front. Two birds faced each other from matching apple trees, and between them she could just make out the lettering.

“Martha Esch, June 1856,” she read. “Can you imagine? I wonder if it's been here in the attic that long?”

“It couldn't be.” Barbie, her attention apparently caught, came and knelt beside her. “The Leit haven't been here in Brook Hill that long.”

“No, of course not.” Rebecca was forgetting her history. “This must have been made when the family was still in Lancaster County. Amazing, that it's in such fine shape.”

“It is, isn't it?” Barbie ran her hand over the smooth grain of the top, blue eyes sparkling. “You know what? This is a genuine antique. I'll bet we could get a lot of money for it from one of those dealers in town.”

“Money?” Rebecca let her outrage show in her face. “Barbie, that's a terrible thing to say. This is a piece of your family's history.”

Rebellion flared in those blue eyes. “Family history. Is that all you can think of—stuff that's old and dead? I'd rather concentrate on the here and now. And on the future.”

Rebecca sat back on her heels, looking at her cousin. Barbie's pert face, with its fresh color and rosy lips, was filled with a mix of impatience and eagerness, and Rebecca had a sense that there was more going on in her cousin's busy mind than sorting her grandmother's attic.

“Your future?” she asked, not sure she really wanted to encourage Barbie's confidences. It seemed an eternity since she'd been so young and eager.

“Maybe.”

For a moment Rebecca thought Barbie wouldn't say any more, and then the words seemed to burst out of her as if she couldn't hold them back.

“Don't you know what it is to be bored to death with the same old thing?” Barbie's hands fluttered, as if trying to express something she wasn't sure how to say. “Sometimes I feel so restless I think I'm going to burst right out of my skin. I want to go places, do things. I want to see what's on the other side of the ridge. Didn't you ever feel that way?”

Rebecca wanted to empathize, but she couldn't lie to her cousin. “No, I never did. I always knew that what I wanted was right here—marrying Paul, having his children, being together always.”

“I can't imagine feeling like that about anyone.” Barbie's gaze rested on her face, questioning. “But your dream didn't work out the way you thought it would.”

Rebecca winced. “No.”

“I'm sorry.” Barbie's expression changed, quick as a hummingbird darting from one flower to another. “I didn't mean to be unkind. I just feel so trapped sometimes.”

Feeling inadequate was becoming a habit with her, Rebecca decided. But what on earth was she to say to Barbie? Presumably she'd confided in Rebecca because she wanted understanding or advice. Rebecca felt ill-equipped to offer either.