Kitabı oku: «Her Secret Amish Child»

Chapter One

Pinecraft, Florida—a midsummer afternoon

Had she made yet another mistake?

“Don’t touch that seat again,” Lizbeth Mullet said, stretching across her son’s extended legs to wedge their carry-on bag in front of his small brown shoes, hoping to block his incessant movement.

Three times in the past hour Benuel had slapped or kicked at her when she’d scolded him. Each time she hadn’t known what to do, how to change the overactive four-year-old boy’s behavior. She knew what she wanted to do, what felt like the right thing to do, but her built-in insecurities held her back, forced her to doubt her abilities as a single parent. A torturous night without sleep and little to eat added to her misery.

“Pinecraft, Florida,” the bus driver announced. With the flick of his wrist he turned the bus’s steering wheel and headed off the highway to his designated stop.

Several people milled around the parking lot of the Pinecraft Tourist Church, waiting for loved ones to arrive. With her father running late, no one would be waiting for her and the boy. They’d left Ohio in secret, telling no one except her father they were leaving or where they were going. There would be no going back. Her late husband’s family could not hurt them now.

The Amish and Mennonite people scattered throughout the Pioneer Trails bus began to reach under seats for bags and wake up sleeping children.

Memories of the quaint little resort town she once called home beckoned. Pinecraft Park was on her right, and her father’s prosperous chicken farm a few miles down the road, on the outskirts of the small town of Sarasota. She had grown up in this community of Old and New Order Amish people. This is where she belonged. Gott willing, she would heal and regain her strength here, around the people who knew her best and loved her.

Scrambling to gather up their belongings while trying to keep Benuel from climbing over her legs and escaping, Lizbeth tucked his bag of toys under her arm and scooped up their satchel from the floor.

“I want my car,” he demanded, grabbing for the toy sack.

Standing, Lizbeth put out her hand and forced a smile she didn’t feel. “Not now, soh. When your Grossdaddi comes for us I’ll find it for you.”

“I’m thirsty.” Tall like her and lightly dotted with ginger freckles across his nose, he allowed her to take his hand after a moment of debate and shuffled by her side to the front of the bus. He touched each seat as he passed, counting aloud. “One, two, three.”

“That’s very good,” Lizbeth encouraged. Early on Benuel had showed signs of being slow with numbers and letters. Perhaps his developmental delay had been caused by the long, painful labor she’d endured, but she noticed he’d come out of his shell some since her husband Jonah’s death and was beginning to respond to her positive encouragement.

Taking the bus driver’s extended hand, Lizbeth stepped down into the sultry heat of the cloudless summer day. She had missed the smell of the sea.

Benuel hopped down each step. His eyes darted around, the enthusiasm in them making her grin. He’d spent too many hours on the farm and was seldom with children his age. Seeing only her husband’s family had left him shy and unsocial and sometimes angry, but today he looked different, ready to conquer the world.

“Do you have more bags on the bus, ma’am?”

Lizbeth nodded and let go of Benuel’s hand as she dug through her purse for the silver ticket she’d been given when she’d relinquished their larger suitcase back in Ohio. Blond hairs escaping from her crushed prayer kapp blew around her face. “Yes. A small one, but I’d like to pick it up a bit later when my daed arrives, if that’s all right. He warned me he’d be running late.”

“Sure. You hold on to that ticket and come get it inside the church when you’re ready.” He tipped his head. “Thanks for riding Pioneer Trails.”

She turned to make sure Benuel was at her side, found him gone and held back a groan. He was nowhere to be seen. Twisting back and forth, she searched the remaining cluster of people standing close by and then saw movement near a row of picturesque shops on her right. Her heart began to pound against her breastbone. It was Benuel, and he was running.

Forgetting to breathe, she chased after him, her black lace-up shoes slapping hard against the hot pavement. Fear pushed her forward. She had to catch him before he made it to the street and oncoming traffic. He had no fear of roads. His experience with the small-town streets of Iris, Ohio, could be counted on one hand. Someone had always been holding on to him, directing his path. But not now.

“Benuel James, stop!”

Startled by her shout, a swarm of shiny black grackles took flight and made their way to treetops across the street.

She quickly crossed the shop’s parking lot and pushed off the curb, fear building and twisting her stomach into knots. She couldn’t lose Benuel, too.

Her son rushed on, laughing, his reddish-blond hair blowing in the breeze, blissfully unaware of the danger he was in.

Crossing the road, Benuel’s body mere inches from her grasp, she glanced both ways as she sprinted close behind him.

Sunrays reflected off the silver scooter approaching. Her heart skipped a beat, uncertain she could reach Benuel before it was too late. She ignored the blast of the scooter’s horn and lunged forward, desperate to reach her son before the speeding scooter. Bent forward, she stumbled, but managed to grasp the back of Benuel’s shirt as she went down.

Dread grabbed her by the throat. Hot, sticky air filled her lungs as she gasped for breath.

Please, Gott, please. Don’t let us be hit. She pulled his squirming body close to hers and rolled.

The whirr of the scooter’s motor and the screeching of the tires braking caused Lizbeth’s body to tense. She held tight to her son and squeezed her eyes closed.

The raw sounds of scraping metal enveloped them and then stopped.

The fast-paced beat of her heart hammered in her ears, her chest, ticking off the seconds.

Close by, birds squawked high in the trees lining the road, and then all was silent.

What had happened?

Afraid to look, she slowly opened her eyes.

Heat shimmered off the deserted two-lane road where they lay. She scrambled up and searched her son’s body for injuries.

A startled expression widened Benuel’s sky blue eyes. She hugged him close and whispered, “You’re fine. Don’t be frightened, soh.” He seemed unharmed, with the exception of an insignificant graze on his left elbow, no doubt caused from being pulled down on the hot asphalt.

Her breath came fast. She had to force herself to calm down. The boy didn’t need to see her fear. He’d had enough trauma in his young life. He was her only living child and so precious to her. What if Gott had snatched him away, too? How would she have lived?

She placed him on his feet and watched for signs of pain, but saw none. Relieved, she crushed him to her and cooed as if he were a baby. “My sweet boy. Mamm loves you.”

“You’re hurting me,” Benuel squealed, the flat of his hands pushing her away.

Lizbeth sighed with relief. She was upset. Not her son. It had been an adventure to him. “I’m sorry, liebling. I didn’t mean to squish you.” She forced a smile, tried to look normal.

The midday sun beat down on them, penetrating her starched white kapp. Sweat beaded on her upper lip. The wrecked scooter had to be somewhere close by.

She grabbed Benuel’s wrist and urged him out of harm’s way, to the side of the road where a ragged palm tree’s fronds rustled in the breeze.

A few feet away, a row of blossoming bushes nestled against sturdy privacy fencing. She scanned under them, and then along the curb where several cars and adult tricycles were parked. The silver scooter had to be nearby. I know what I heard.

But there was nothing. No scooter. No rider.

“Look at that man, Mamm,” Benuel said. “He’s sleeping on the ground.”

Lizbeth glanced in the direction her son pointed. “Oh, no.” Hidden behind a parked car, a ginger-haired man dressed in traditional Amish clothes and black boots lay sprawled across the sidewalk a few yards away. The silver scooter teetered on its side a foot from him, its back wheel still spinning.

Benuel’s hand clasped firmly in hers, she hurried over, pausing long enough to instruct her son in a trembling voice, “You stay right here.”

His bottom lip puckered. “But I want to see.”

Releasing his hand, she said, “I know you do, but stay put, please.” Dreading what she might see, she fell to her knees in front of the man’s prostrate body and gave him a quick once-over, searching for twisted limbs and blood. He groaned and then stirred, his single status clearly stated by his clean-shaven chin that scraped the rough sidewalk as his head turned in her direction. Dirt and grit smudged his face and neck.

Why is there no one left on the street? I need help, Gott.

“Lie still. You may have broken something,” she instructed.

His hand moved and then his arm. Blue eyes—so like her son’s—opened to slits. He blinked at her. A shaggy brow arched in question. Full, well-shaped lips moved, but no words came out.

She leaned back in surprise. She knew this face as well as she knew her own. The man on the ground was Fredrik Lapp, her brother’s childhood friend. The last man in Pinecraft she wanted to see. “Are you all right?” she asked, bending close.

His coloring looked normal enough, but she knew nothing about broken bones or head trauma. She looked down the length of his body. His clothes were dirty, but seemed intact.

The last time she’d seen him she’d been a skinny girl of nineteen, and he’d been a wiry young man of twenty-three, with shaggy auburn hair and blue eyes the color of a summer sky. Unbaptized and not yet a member of the church, he’d had an unruliness about him, a restlessness that kept his mamm and daed worried for his future, and the rumor mill turning with tales of his latest wild escapades.

Now he was a fully matured man, with a thick neck and neatly trimmed hair, cut in a traditional Amish style to his ears. A man who could rip her life apart if he learned about the secret she’d kept all these years.

She leaned in and eyed his clean-shaven chin. Why is he still unwed and living in Pinecraft? There were no significant scrapes on his face, with the exception of a small cut above his left eyebrow.

The sidewalk under him had to be uncomfortably hot. She jerked a length of attached quilt squares from her bag and squatted, carefully slipping the soft folds under his head.

He coughed several times and scowled as he drew in a deep breath.

“Do you hurt anywhere?” Lizbeth used her clean handkerchief to wipe away the blood slowly oozing from the small cut above his left eye.

“Ouch!” He twisted his head out of her reach.

She jerked her hand away and rose. “I thought the blood might blur your vision.”

“Is the kinner all right?” Fredrik’s voice sounded deeper and raspier than it had years ago. He coughed, and with a grunt braced himself with his arms and struggled into a sitting position.

Lizbeth glanced Benuel’s way. He was looking at them, his young face pinched with concern. Her heart ached for the intense, worried child.

“Ya, he’s fine,” she assured him, and tried to hold Fredrik down as he started to move about. “Please don’t get up. Let me get some help first. You might have really hurt yourself.” He had no family left in the area. Why had he come back?

He ignored her direction and rose to his feet, dusting the long legs of his dark trousers down, and then bent to pick her fabric off the ground. He handed her the bundle after doing his best to refold the length of colorful cotton squares. “I got the wind knocked out of me, that’s all.” He laughed.

He peered at his bleeding arm, shrugged his broad shoulders and rotated his neck as she’d seen him do a hundred times as a boy.

“That was a foolish thing you did,” he muttered, his brow arched.

“What was?” she asked, mesmerized by the way his muscles bulged along his freckled arm. It had to be wonderful to be strong and afraid of nothing.

He gestured toward the boy. “Letting your soh run wild like that? He could have been killed. Why didn’t you hold his hand while you crossed the road?”

She took exception to Fredrik’s sharp tone, the disapproving expression on his face. The knot in her stomach tightened and grew. She pushed the ribbon of her prayer kapp away and then wiped sweat from her top lip, her frustration growing. She may not know how to properly raise an energetic, belligerent boy, but she was learning and doing the best she could. How dare he chastise her like Jonah and his family had done so many times? “I know we could all have been killed.”

Her face grew warm. If only she had been more careful, grabbed Benuel’s hand as soon as she’d handed over the ticket to the bus driver. She knew what the boy was like lately. Acting out, not listening to anyone. She looked toward the curb. Benuel’s head was turned away, no doubt watching the birds peck away at bugs in the short tufts of grass a few feet away.

With a grunt of frustration, she stuffed the bloodied handkerchief back into her apron pocket and dusted down her skirt. She hadn’t been back in Pinecraft a full hour and already was involved in a situation with Fredrik. She had plans for the money she had on her, like paying for somewhere to live. If Fredrik blamed Benuel for the crash, repairing the scooter could leave her totally dependent on her father, and she could not allow that to happen.

“You’ll need someone to come get you.” She pointed at the crumpled machine on the ground. “It looks like that Englischer contraption of yours is ruined.” Fredrik had always been a risk taker, never considering the cost to himself or those around him. She knew Benuel was equally to blame for the accident, but it would be just like Fredrik to blame someone else for his share of the mishap.

Fredrik’s brows furrowed as he shoved his hand though his disheveled hair. He dropped his arm with a grimace. “That Englischer contraption, as you call it, was an expensive scooter. I saved for a year. Bought it less than an hour ago.”

Lizbeth swallowed hard. She ran her hands down her arms, her nerves sending tremors through her body, no doubt her reaction to their near miss.

She twisted back toward the scooter. She knew all about men’s “big boy” toys, thanks to her Amish daed, who prized all things with wheels and gears. This man was cut from similar cloth, but he lacked her father’s love of familye and commitment to this small community. No doubt he had once again set aside his Amish beliefs to fulfill some foolhardy need for speed.

“I was on my way to the insurance company,” he grunted. He turned his broad back on her.

She watched him glance down the empty road shimmering with watery mirages.

He spoke to the sultry air around him. “I thought...what can happen? The insurance office is only a few blocks down the road. What a bensel I am.”

“It’s not insured then?” She stepped back, waited for his reply while gulping down a knot the size of her fist.

He turned back to her, his brow furrowed. “Nee, not insured.”

* * *

Fredrik Lapp didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at his own stupidity, not that he wasn’t used to making rash decisions that managed to put him in a bad light. He should have made a call from the bike shop, gotten the scooter insured before he left the showroom. But no, he didn’t want to be late for work and disappoint Mose Fischer, his boss, who firmly believed in punctuality. And look what a mess I’m in now.

With a glance, he calculated the damage to the scooter. The front tire looked flat, the frame slightly bent, the fender folded back where it had hit the metal street pole. No telling what kind of scratches dug into the underside of the machine when it hit the ground.

He groaned aloud, but not from pain. The fancy front light he’d been so excited about, and special ordered, now hung suspended in the air by a single black wire. He’d be out hundreds of dollars for restoration and the scooter’s odometer didn’t read a mile.

He looked over at the ginger-haired boy with freckles across his button nose and instantly felt contrite, regretting his immature, self-centered thoughts. The boy looked to be young, maybe five or six. Fredrik’s heart flip-flopped, the rhythm of the beat kicking up as he realized he might have killed the kinner with his carelessness. But the boy had been at fault, too. He should have been holding his mother’s hand.

The boy’s mother, a tall willowy woman dressed in mourning black, stood next to the child, her protective arm around her son’s thin shoulders. She’s protecting him from me. He silently asked Gott for forgiveness. He could have taken a life.

The woman’s arched brow told him she didn’t believe she and her son had caused the accident, even though she hadn’t uttered a single word of accusation toward him. She didn’t have to. He knew he’d also made an error in judgment and driven too fast.

Instead of enjoying the exhilaration of speed, he should have been watching the traffic more closely, paying attention to what he was doing. This was no golf cart or three-wheeled bike. He had no experience on a scooter. No idea how to control the metal machine.

Perhaps this was Gott’s punishment for him buying such a fancy scooter in the first place. The idea of fast, dependable transportation had made all the sense in the world while looking at the showroom’s catalog a year ago. “I’m sorry. I don’t know your name,” he said, glancing at the widow.

“Mullet. Lizbeth Mullet. And this is Benuel.” She nodded briskly, her thin fingers nervously rubbing the side of her son’s neck.

Her crooked kapp had bobbed on her blond head when she nodded. There were laugh lines etched in her cheeks, but no smile appeared today. He realized she looked slightly familiar, like someone he should know, but he couldn’t place her. A lot of snowbirds and Plain people visited the tourist town of Pinecraft, even during the summer months, but she could easily be someone he’d been introduced to at church or met at work.

He glanced over at the fidgeting, serious-faced child and then back to the woman. Sweat curled the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.

Not sure what to do, he extended his hand to her. “My name’s Fredrik Lapp. I hope I didn’t scare you too much.” At first he thought she would ignore his gesture, but then her hand was placed in his. It was soft and looked fragile, even though she wasn’t a diminutive woman and stood nearly as tall as him. He felt the power of her grasp, the hidden strength in her, but she was trembling and he was to blame.

An arrow of pain shot through his shoulder and he winced. As she held his gaze, one perfectly arched brow lifted. She inspected his face with probing eyes the color of his mamm’s blue-violet periwinkles. A pretty woman, he realized. Someone who would fit fine on his list of women to step out with—if he seriously decided to look for a fraa.

Her frown deepened. “Are you certain-sure you’re fine?” she asked. “You’ve gone all washed out. Perhaps you should go to the hospital, be checked by an Englisch doctor. I’ve heard a person can have brain damage and not know it until it’s too late.”

“Nee, it wasn’t my head that hit,” he said with a laugh and rubbed his shoulder like a child might. “The scooter’s front bumper took the impact. I just got the wind knocked out of me when I landed.”

“Even so, shouldn’t the police be called? It was an accident, and they’ll want you to make a report, or do whatever is required.”

Fredrik considered her words. He probably should, even though calling would probably cost him a traffic ticket. “Ya, you’re right. I’ll call them now.” He gestured toward a café’s front door and motioned her forward. “Come in with me. It’s too hot to be standing on the sidewalk. I don’t know about you, but a glass of sweet tea sure sounds gut to me.”