Chapter 5
They say you never hear it coming,” Grant Williams remarked as Jacob forced himself to be still while the vet sutured.
“What? The bullet?”
Grant laughed. “Or the engagement.”
Jacob wanted to hit something. He found himself actually liking the man who’d taken Sarah’s heart. They were in a back room at the King house and the sounds of the crowd were subdued by the thick wooden walls.
Lilly Lapp had gone along with his narrish announcement, then apparently explained the situation of his wound to Grant under cover of a congratulatory embrace. He’d soon found himself hustled off by the groom and no one seemed to notice as they surrounded Lilly. The last he saw of her, she was composed and smiling, fending off more questions than trout nibbles during a storm.
“I’m putting a small drain in. You can see me in a week to have it out. The stitches need another two weeks after that. Which—” Grant grinned at him. “Should put you somewhere around your wedding date, right?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Grant cleaned up the small mess from a table and put a few things back in his bag. “Guess it’s lucky that around here folks expect me to be able to treat people sometimes as well as animals. I’ve learned to stock up on a few supplies.”
Jacob sighed. “Look, Grant, you can turn me in, all right?”
“What?”
“You know it’s a gunshot wound and that I stole the horse. I don’t want to intrude on your day any more than I’ve done. You could probably get in trouble for helping me.”
“You think I’d turn my wife’s best childhood friend in to the police? On our wedding day?” He snapped his bag closed. “Nee, danki.”
“All right, then—thank you. And congratulations.”
“Danki. Now make sure you get those antibiotics down every day and no lifting saddles or anything else heavy. I don’t want those stitches torn out. I’d offer you some pain medicine but you wouldn’t take it. Right?”
Jacob shook his head and Grant grinned. “Stubborn Amish man. All right. See me in a week and I’ll see you—back out there with your lovely betrothed.” Grant smiled and closed the door behind him, leaving Jacob to rest his head against the wall. His mind whirled as he wondered in surreal confusion what he’d been doing with his life—especially over the past twenty-four hours.
I thought that you weren’t a gentleman.”
“I thought that you couldn’t really create a diversion.”
They were in the long queue of buggies heading home from the wedding in the winter twilight. Lilly scrunched her eyes closed for a moment against the headache of recalling the afternoon. She sought for something else to say.
“Well, at least the police are no longer interested in you.”
Jacob nodded, and she swallowed, thinking about the moment when the young officer’s apparent superior had entered the room. He’d seemed appalled at his junior officer and had sent the young man out. The older officer then apologized profusely to the bishop and the room at large, assuring them that they would look elsewhere for the horse thief.
“And how is your arm?”
He shrugged. “Sore. Thank you for telling Grant.”
She nodded, then spoke in a brisk tone that didn’t match how she felt. “So, shall we go tomorrow and tell the bishop that the engagement is broken?”
“What?” He turned to face her in the dim interior of the buggy.
She stared ahead, resolute. “The engagement. I didn’t expect you to speak back there. You should have just let them believe my excuse.”
“What kind of a man do you think I am to hide behind a woman’s skirts? And you, throwing away your teaching position—how are you going to support your mother?”
Lilly clenched her lips tight against his words. She knew why she had spoken in defense of him, no matter how strange a reason it seemed, even to her. She searched her heart and felt the conviction of Derr Herr to tell him the truth.
She pressed her hands together and found her voice. “I would imagine that you haven’t ever given me more than a passing thought in this life, but I’ve always admired you—since we were in school together and you saved that dog.”
“What dog?”
“It’s not just that. I don’t want you to think I was angling for an engagement. I wasn’t.” She took a deep breath. “When you kissed me in the barn, I know you thought of Sarah. I pulled away because I do not wish to be a substitute for her.”
“Then how could you even consider an engagement, a marriage, when you know that I—”
“That you still love her, and I’d be second-best?”
“Jah,” he whispered miserably.
“At the reception, Derr Herr gave me an idea before I ever stepped forward to speak in your defense. Maybe you’d call it an affirmation. Anyway, I had this vision of quilts.”
“Quilts?”
“Yes, quilts are made from scraps and secondhand things—but never from the original whole piece of cloth.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I like quilting. I don’t have time for it much anymore, but I used to love taking secondhand fabric scraps and making something beautiful from them. If Derr Herr gives us the ability to do that with pieces of cloth, how much more of a gift does He give us to patch scraps of lives together to bring Him glory?”
“But no girl is willing to settle for scraps or to be thought of as secondhand.”
Lilly laughed. “I could simply tell you that some leftovers are better than the fresh dish itself.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“I guess I am.”
He stared at her in the dim light. “You’re strong, Lilly Lapp. Courageous. And I think you know how to meet life with all of its unpredictability. I admire those qualities, but I’m not going to lie to you—I guess I can’t anyway if you knew what I was thinking in the barn. I don’t have much of a heart left to give, in fact, it’s mostly scraps itself—a secondhand heart.” He grimaced. “I think it’s one thing to have an ideal like your quilt notion, and a whole other challenge to actually live it out.”
“It’s a challenge to live anyway sometimes,” she said low. “At least for me.”
The sound of horses’ hooves echoed in the stillness as she finished speaking. She stole a glance at him, now in profile, as he eased his hat back on his head, revealing more of his handsome face. “Yeah, me too.” He took a deep breath. “You’re like your father. When he’d treat a horse, he’d kind of mutter to himself for a moment, decide what to do, and then he did it. No doubting, no worry—he just moved ahead.”
Lilly smiled in the darkness. “He used to quote that Scripture verse, ‘Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained.’ So, I guess he’d get a vision of the way things are supposed to be and hang on to that.”
“I haven’t had much vision lately, but I know this much about horses—certain jobs go better with two at the pull rather than one. And you and I are strong, Lilly Lapp.”
“Is that a real proposal, Jacob Wyse?” she asked, her voice laced with humor.
“It’s a lean proposal; I’ll admit that. But it’s honest.”
She thought for a moment, her heart beating with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. “So we go through with the engagement?”
“With the wedding. Bishop Loftus cornered me at the root beer table and pressed for a date.” He grinned at her, a flash of white in the growing dark. “So I gave him one.”
“You did?” An Amish engagement was supposed to be a secret thing, with courtship carried out just as secretly until the engagement announcement was made at Meeting, at least two weeks prior to the wedding. But what did she expect, announcing herself to being with Jacob alone?
“I did.” He chuckled. “No one’s likely to forget our engagement for a long time to come.”
“True enough,” she said, wondering at the stepped-up beating of her heart. “What date did you give?”
“December twenty-third. They’ll announce it at the next Meeting.”
She looked at his big hands, wishing he’d squeeze her cold fingers with reassurance.
“Our school Christmas program is on the twenty-first.” Her head swam at the idea of things to be done in the coming short weeks.
“The bishop wants you to finish the spring term and to go on teaching until—” He broke off.
“Until what?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
He sighed. “Until the kinner start to come.”
“Oh …” she whispered.
Jacob cleared his throat. “Let’s have this out in the open then, Lilly. I have no desire to force you into a marriage, a marriage in truth anyway, until we’ve had a chance to get to know one another—for quite a while.”
“For quite a while,” she agreed, wishing she could slide down the buggy seat and disappear into a spot on the floor.
“Gut … gut. So, here we are. Let’s go in and tell your mamm.”
Lilly gave a wild glance out the buggy window and realized they’d turned into her own lane. This was what she’d been dreading the most—facing her mother. And she didn’t expect that he’d accompany her. She hadn’t thought that far.
“I assumed I’d just go in by myself,” she said.
“Nee, you don’t have to do it alone.”
You don’t have to do it alone. His words echoed in her mind with layers of meaning. Ach, if only it were true, and he became someone she could share her everyday fears and burdens with, like she had done with her father. Of course, there was Derr Herr and His Word, but sometimes even He felt distant.
She realized that Jacob had gotten out of the buggy and stood waiting, hand extended to help her down. She gave his palm a light touch as she jumped down and then squared her shoulders to face the white house. Only a single lamp burned in a downstairs window, its flame little welcome against the night.
“I don’t know how my mamm will be, and I—”
“Lilly, I understand about your mother. I mean, well, not everything. Don’t try to apologize for her or anything she says. Sometimes people are just hurt, and they need time to heal.”
“All right.” Lilly nodded, thinking he had absolutely no idea what he was in for.