A Time to Love (8 page)

Matthew hoped it wasn't obvious that he found every excuse to be around Jenny.

It was logical, after all, that he picked her up for speechtherapy appointments when Annie had hers. There was no point in their going separately.

So they usually had a meal afterward before heading home. He told Jenny that he and Annie did this often as a treat for her doing well with her therapy. But now he and Jenny talked while Annie busied herself with coloring or chatted with her favorite waitress.

He was careful not to make any overtures to Jenny. After all, he had no idea if Jenny had any feelings for him anymore. She'd come here to heal, but who knew if she would stay?

But he watched her, and as she grew stronger and more confident, she went to the quilting circle with her grandmother and moved about the community with her and by herself. Time passed without her talking about returning to her world.

When the Sunday services were to be held at Phoebe's home, Matthew found himself looking forward to seeing what Jenny thought of it.

Joshua came to tell him he was worried about Daisy, Phoebe's horse, and as he passed through the kitchen, Matthew was concerned that he didn't see Jenny helping with the food.
Was sitting through the service too much for her?
He knew inactivity still caused her so much pain. Or had one of the women said something to hurt her feelings? He'd noticed most people responded to her well, but you never knew.

He found her shivering as she stood on the front porch.

Something was bothering her, but she wouldn't tell him. She brushed off his concern, flippantly telling him it was a long story.

The morning after the service, he found a way to hear her story. Phoebe called, needing him to drive Jenny to physical therapy.

Jenny was obviously waiting at the door for she came outside as he pulled up.

"I'm so sorry, Matthew. I had no idea my grandmother called you," she said as he helped her into the buggy. "I could have called a taxi."

"I am happy to take you," he told her as he joined her, then, with a jerk of the reins, got the buggy moving.

She settled in for the ride.

"Now," he said, turning to her. "We have time for that long story."

J
enny looked at Matthew, then out the window of the buggy. "It's nothing."

"I think it
is
something, Jenny. You seemed not yourself yesterday."

She shifted in her seat.

"Are you in pain?"

"I'm okay."

"Did sitting for so long yesterday trouble your hip?"

Grimacing with the memory, she nodded. "I knew I should have gotten up a couple of times, but I didn't."

"Why not? Didn't Phoebe tell you no one would mind?"

"She did." Jenny stared at her hands folded on her lap. "I didn't want to call attraction—" she stopped—"attention to myself."

"Call attention?"

Jenny touched her cheek. "It's still hard to be around people, looking like this."

He frowned at her, clearly not understanding. "Like what?"

"My scars, Matthew. You can't say you don't see them."

He touched her cheek. "I don't expect you to be perfect, Jenny. That's your world, not mine. I see a woman with a beautiful heart who loves children so much she risked her life for them, who had something terrible happen to her but is trying to find her way, who respects the customs and traditions of people who are not her own."

Her eyes filled with tears. "I'm bumbled—" her eyes widened—"humbled." She shook her head. "Just when I think speech therapy is doing some good."

"It is. You're just impatient."

Jenny smiled. "Grandmother says that, too."

She shifted again to ease her hip. "That's another reason I didn't want to leave the room. I'm used to going to church, a formal church," she told him. "Many of them, in fact, because my father looked for a spiritual home after he left the Amish.

"At all of them, I listened to someone trained in a seminary talk about God, about the Bible, about faith. Sometimes the service seemed a little distant. That wasn't true here when I visited during the summers. Or yesterday."

She paused, studying the passing landscape. "What I see here, what I feel here is that people in your world believe spirituality isn't distant. It's close and real. Religion seems born in the home, stays in the home. I mean, the services are even held in the home. And there's not one person in charge, one speaker set above others. It's farmers and carpenters, and well, just average folk speaking spontaneously about the message they find in the Bible."

She looked at him. "A message from the heart, to the heart."

"And what did you hear for your heart, Jenny?"

"I've heard a lot about God's will, about God's purpose for us since I've been here. When I was younger, I decided what I wanted for my wife—my life," she corrected herself, wishing her tongue would catch up with her thoughts. "I believed I knew what I was supposed to do with it. But after the accident, I started wondering if I'd been trying to tell God His job."

Matthew pulled the buggy into a parking spot near the therapist's office building. But instead of getting out, he turned to her.

"And what did God say when you told him His job?"

Jenny couldn't help smiling wryly at Matthew. "Well, I haven't heard directly. But I'll be working on listening better. I mean, I'm God's creation, so He's created me for something. Does that make any sense?"

Matthew nodded. "It makes a lot of sense."

She checked her watch and sighed. "I should go in."

"You make it sound like you're going to your doom, Jenny."

"I had this idea that physical therapy meant lovely massages and heating pads and gentle, caring manipulation of your hurting body." She laughed. "Well, they're caring, but as for the rest? Sometimes, after the therapy's over, I feel like I've been put on a medieval torture rack."

Ever the gentleman, Matthew walked up to the office with her. "But they're helping you. It seems that you move with less pain than when you first came."

She nodded. "You're right."

"I'll be back for you in an hour."

Nodding, she watched him return to the buggy.

"Hi, Jenny," the receptionist said with a smile when she signed in. "Listen, I'm sorry, but we're running about ten minutes late today."

"No problem." Jenny sat down and flipped through a magazine.

A woman pushed a wheelchair out a few minutes later. The little boy in it looked to be about five years old. He wore braces on both legs.

"Great session," the therapist said as she walked out with them. "Good job, Jason." They exchanged a high five, and Jason gave her a gap-toothed grin.

The mother pulled out her checkbook to pay. "We'll see you Friday."

The therapist turned to Jenny. "Ready?"

She nodded and followed the woman.

"We'll be using Room 4 today."

As she stood, Jenny couldn't help looking back. The boy looked so familiar. And yet, how could he? He wasn't Amish, and she hadn't been out much since she'd been here.

"What is it?" the therapist asked, noticing Jenny's attention.

"I—I don't know. He looks like someone I know."

And then she realized that if his hair was slightly darker, he might have been the twin of a little boy she'd met in Romania. She closed her eyes, remembering.

"Jenny?"

She opened her eyes and shook her head. "I'm all right."

Walking into the room, she took off her coat and laid it in a chair. Propping her cane there, she moved carefully over to the treatment table.

"You turned awfully pale. Did you move wrong?"

Climbing up on the treatment table, she tried to smile at the therapist. "No, I'm fine."

The receptionist knocked and poked her head in. "I'm sorry to interrupt, Sue, but Jason's mother has a quick question about his exercises. Could you answer it before you start your session with Jenny?"

Sue looked at Jenny.

"It's fine, go ahead." Jenny was grateful for the moment alone to think.

She first met Andrei when she went to Romania. He lived in an orphanage there with too many children cared for by too few adults, who were losing hope of keeping the orphanage open. Every day there were more orphans and less money.

Andrei was three and had big brown eyes that followed her around the room as she met the children and interviewed the staff. When she approached his crib at last, he held up his arms and grinned at her. There was no way she couldn't pick up the little charmer.

"Andrei is one of the lucky ones," her translator told her, tickling the child under the chin. "They have finally located his grandmother. She will travel here to take him home next month."

"But the others," she said, her voice growing sad as she looked around the nursery. "You will show the people back in your country what is happening here, please? Help us help the children."

The door opened, and Sue walked in. "There now. Sorry that I kept you waiting."

"No problem." Jenny was grateful to the woman for interrupting her thoughts.

"You're looking sad. Did Jason remind you of someone?"

"How did you know?"

"It's not hard to make the connection," Sue said. "I remember this commercial I saw once. You know, where they show children from those terribly poor countries and ask you to send in money to help feed them? Well, there was a little boy, maybe four or five, in the commercial, and he looked so much like my little nephew."

She started flexing Jenny's right leg. "Here, give me some resistance."

Jenny did as she asked, and they worked through the set, then turned their attention to the left leg.

"When are you scheduled to go back to work?"

"I'm on indefinite leave."

Matthew asked me when I would fly away,
thought Jenny.

"I still have trouble with my speech," Jenny told her slowly and carefully. "If I can't get my body and my speech better I may not be able to do the work I did."

Sue patted her on the shoulder. "I'm sure it will work out. If it's meant to be."

Sort of like saying,
If it's God's will,
thought Jenny, sitting up with Sue's help.

"Now, let's go work with the machines," Sue said briskly.

So much for the warm and fuzzy,
thought Jenny, smiling wryly.
Back to the torture.

"I'm here to pick up Jenny Miller," Matthew told the receptionist.

"Oh, sorry, we're running a little late," she told him. "She'll be out in a few minutes."

"Thank you. Please tell her I'll wait outside."

A car full of tourists had parked near his buggy. Two children sat in the car playing with some sort of little box. A man and a woman stood beside his buggy, taking photos.

"Oh, look, there's the man who owns the buggy!" the woman said loudly. She started toward Matthew, snapping pictures.

Matthew held up his hand.

"Tiffany, maybe you should stop," the man called to her.

"Oh, I just want a few photos," she told him, continuing to take pictures. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Yes, ma'am, I
do
mind," he told her. "I would prefer that you not take pictures."

She gaped at him. "I thought that was just something they said. You know, to make you more mysterious, live up to the whole image."

"Image?" Matthew stared at her, confused.

"What, is it like the Indians? You know, how they used to think if someone took a picture that the camera would steal their soul?" The woman snapped her gum as she let her camera drop on a strap around her neck.

"Matthew?"

Glancing back, he saw Jenny walking toward him. "There you are."

Instinctively, he turned his body to shield her from the woman with the camera as he did when he was out with Hannah and the children. Then he remembered that she was used to being photographed. Phoebe had told him it was her job.

He held out his hand to Jenny to help her down the walk.

The woman raised her camera and then paused and stared at Jenny. "Gee, how come you're not wearing your costume?"

"Costume?"

"You know, the Amish dress and hat thing."

Jenny was too polite to roll her eyes. But she wanted to. "I'm not Amish."

"Oh." But the woman aimed the camera at her anyway.

"Ma'am, please don't do that," Jenny said firmly. "You're invading our privacy."

The woman bristled. "Well, you don't have to get snippy about it."

"I'm not," Jenny told her evenly. "I'm simply making a request." She climbed into the buggy.

"Say, you look familiar." The woman peered at Jenny.

"Yes, I'm told that a lot."

Matthew tipped the brim of his hat at the visitors and joined Jenny. As they pulled away, he couldn't help looking back. "She listened to you."

"You just have to use the right tone."

He sighed. "It happens a lot during tourist season. I don't know why they want to take so many pictures. What is it the
Englisch
find so fascinating about us?"

"I vant to be alone," she said loftily in a bad German accent.

"I apologize, I—"

She laughed and shook her head. "No, it's a quote, something Greta Garbo said."

"I don't know Greta Garbo."

"She was a famous movie star many years ago. She retired at the peak of her career, but people pestered her. So that's what she said. The trouble is, I think the more she wanted to be left alone the more people wanted to approach her."

She tilted her head and studied him. "You know, the fact that Plain People want to be left alone has made others even more curious."

Matthew nodded. "Now we're a tourist attraction."

His tone was so dry she didn't know whether he was being serious or joking. Then he glanced at her and she saw the twinkle in his eyes.

"You know, when I first visited my grandmother it seemed strange to me that she had no photos."

"And what did she say?"

"That not all Amish dislike having their photos taken, but many feel that posing for a picture is an act of pride and it's considered unacceptable."

"Amelia let me take a picture of her," Matthew told her quietly.

"She did?"

"I told her I would never forget her face. But Annie was so small and would never have a memory of her mother. It seemed right to do it. I'll show it to Annie when she's older— the other children, too, if they wish."

Jenny reached over spontaneously to touch his hand, and he turned it over to clasp hers.

"You know how hard it is to lose a mother," he said quietly.

She nodded. "It helped to come here to visit my grandmother after Mom died."

"Perhaps losing your mother and then your father made you more sensitive to the children you film. Many of them are orphans, are they not?" He withdrew his hand and signaled Pilot, his horse, to pull out onto the road.

He's so perceptive,
she thought.
So thoughtful.
And never tries to get something from her, the way Englisch men might.

Funny,
she thought. She hadn't been here very long, but already she was thinking of men from her world as Englisch.

"Are you hungry?"

"Are you sure you have time? I don't want to take you away from your work."

He spared her a glance. "I would like to share a meal with you, Jenny."