Her other letter, the one to Jonah, I would not deliver. I knew it would serve no purpose. Nor was there any reason to keep any of the notes he had written to her either. After setting the one for Sarah aside, I took all of the others and stuffed them into my pocket. Downstairs, I grabbed some twine from the mudroom, pulled on my jacket and boots, and headed outside to the pond, thankful that it was not yet frozen solid.
I looked about for the right-sized rock, and then I withdrew the pages from my pocket. With the twine I secured to the rock the pages that revealed the truth of why my mother left, making sure the knots were taut. Then I flung the rock with its cargo to the center of the pond my mother loved and missed so very much, where it sank out of view.
The paper would become fragments, the fragments would become nothing. Even the twine would eventually disintegrate. In time, there would be only a rock at the bottom of a lovely pond.
I waited until the water’s surface was calm again and then I turned back toward the house. I would save the delivery of Sarah’s letter for another day, as God would lead.
Right now, there was someone vitally important I needed to see.
I made it to Rachel’s a little after five, though it felt later. Thanks to the early-setting sun, it was already dark. The moment she opened the door, the blue of her eyes was the only spot of color I saw in the whole room.
“Rachel,” I said, removing my hat.
“You’re back,” she said softly.
“Ya. I’m home.”
I wanted her to drop the pan and towel she was holding in her hands and run into my arms. Instead, she simply turned and led the way back to the kitchen.
“Can you come out for a walk?” I asked, now gripping the hat brim nervously in my hands.
She shared a look with her mother, who was busy dropping dumplings into a large vat of bubbling broth.
“Ya,” Rachel said finally, and then she went to pull on her winter coverings.
Outside, we ambled down the driveway in the crisp evening air toward a small grove of walnut trees that flanked the nearest pasture. We were silent as we moved from the shoveled pavement of the drive to the crunchy snow of the lawn and then continued on, side by side, our boots breaking twin paths in the snow as we went. I wanted so much to hold her hand, but I knew I didn’t dare try. Not yet, anyway.
For the first time that I could ever remember, I felt nervous around her. If only I could know what was going through her mind. She seemed deep in thought. Far, far away. Before I began what I had come there to say, I asked if she’d had a chance to think things over herself since we talked.
“That’s all I’ve been doing since we last spoke. Thinking. And praying.”
She didn’t offer up more than that, so I began to share my heart with her.
“I have so much to tell you, Rachel. It’s amazing, really, everything that God showed me while I was in California.”
Praying for the right words as we continued to stroll, I launched into a summary of all that I had questioned and explored and come to understand during my time away. I knew she’d heard much of it before, in our phone calls and my letters. But this time I needed to make sure she understood fully the path I’d been on and how it had led me directly back home, back to the Amish life and back to her—for good.
Once we were standing in the midst of the grove, I took her elbow and slowed to stop, giving her arm a gentle tug so that she would turn to face me. Even there in the darkness, her eyes were sapphire against the white.
“I’m sorry it has taken me so long to reach this point,” I told her, releasing my hold on her arm. “You deserved better.”
She looked down, so I reached out and put a finger to her chin, tilting her face up toward mine.
“You did, Rach, but the point is, I’m here now. I’m finally where you’ve been wanting me to be all along.”
She nodded and then glanced away.
“Now that I am here, there’s just one question left to ask,” I whispered.
To my dismay, she took a step back, away from me.
“I think I know what that question is,” she said. Again, I sensed fear from her.
“Rachel, I—”
“And it’s not that I don’t want to marry you, Tyler, because I do. I always have. I just…I…” Her voice trailed away.
“You’re afraid.”
She turned to me. “Ya!” she exclaimed, obviously relieved she didn’t have to say those words herself. “I am afraid! I hear what you are saying, but how am I to believe you? How am I to know you will still feel this way ten, twenty, fifty years from now?”
I stepped forward, taking both of her hands in mine, wishing she could see straight into my heart. “I know you’re afraid I might regret joining the church, that I’ll find out some day down the road that I don’t want to be Amish anymore, and that my other life is calling to me. And I’ll be stuck.”
“Ya,” she whispered.
“But I’m not my mother, Rachel. That is not going to happen.”