Fraying at the Edge (8 page)

“Struggles?” Skylar lifted a brow. “If you want to talk about drugs, say so directly…as if I could get my hands on any around here.”

Looking at her in this moment, Lovina was convinced her daughter intended to make connecting with her impossible, and Lovina had no idea what to say to her.

“We weren't talking about drugs,” Isaac said, “but since you brought it up—”

“I really don't want to hear about my sins.”

“Then we won't touch on that topic.” Isaac went to the stove and got the percolator. “But a laws-of-nature chat might be in order.” He refilled her cup. “Not only am I a farmer, but I'm from a long line of farmers. Whether growing crops or tending cattle, we know the yield is a gift, but that gift is affected by whatever it comes in contact with. If crops grow in tainted soil, they can make a person sick rather than give nourishment. It's the same basic principle for livestock. If livestock eats something as harmless as onion grass, their milk or beef will taste strange, ruining the gift. Laws of nature are true whether we like them, agree with them, or are ignorant of them. Your life is a gift, and it's meant to yield good things to you and others. Drugs, whether a sin or not, will negatively affect your gift.”

“Laws of nature.” Skylar pinned Isaac with her stare as he sat back down. “Like the one that says if you don't care enough to look for or reach out to your child until she's twenty, she's not going to care by that point.”

Isaac abruptly stood up, and Lovina knew he was fighting with himself, trying to weigh his words rather than unleashing them to straighten out this girl's thinking. He went to the cabinet, got a glass, and filled it.

“Is that what you think?” Lovina's insides shook.

She'd asked herself time and again why she hadn't pushed to learn the truth sooner, why she hadn't acted on her mother's intuition. She hadn't dreamed Skylar would piece together enough to blame them so fully.

“What should I think?” Skylar asked.

Isaac downed the glass of water and refilled it. “You should think that mistakes have been made on all sides. But we're your parents, not the enemy.”

Skylar slunk back against her chair, looking disinterested in the whole conversation.

Lovina's heart ached for her child. Skylar was more than walled off and defiant. She was skilled at debating, and she wasn't interested in accepting where they were and moving forward but in assigning blame and pushing people away. Lovina was beginning to see why Susie bristled whenever Skylar entered the room. But whatever irked Susie about her new sister, she was keeping it to herself.

Isaac set a fresh glass of water in front of Lovina.

“Skylar…” Lovina took a swallow, trying to gain control as she prayed for the right words. She set the glass on the table. “You seem to understand the laws of nature well, and our hope is that you will apply that knowledge toward all sorts of things in your life, including the use of illegal drugs.” Lovina drew a breath. “We don't want to impose our Amish beliefs on you or use you as free labor. That was never our hope.”

“Then, do tell, what is it you want?”

The question stung. Was her only desire to figure them out and be on her way? “To get to know you,” Lovina said. “To assure you that wherever you go in life or whatever you do, we're here for you. To give you a chance to get to know us and your nine siblings.”

Skylar still had the same melancholy, apathetic look on her face. But she wasn't firing back a witticism or an insulting observation, which Lovina took as a small triumph. “How do you feel about our wishes?”

“I feel that if I refuse, I won't have a roof over my head by this time next week.”

Lovina opened her mouth to refute that, but Isaac shook his head. Skylar's eyes bore into Lovina, making her shudder. They had no idea who this young woman was.

T
he aroma of steamy hot water, perfumed soap, and expensive body lotion filled the bathroom as Ariana finished pinning her prayer
Kapp
in place. She felt as if bees had taken up residence in her chest. Nerves, she imagined. She eased open the door and tiptoed past Cameron's closed bedroom door, hoping not to disturb the snooty, difficult teen. The whole house had been completely quiet since Ariana awoke an hour ago. What time did the Englisch wake on a Saturday?

She glanced into the room where she was staying—Skylar's bedroom at Brandi's house—making sure it was in good order. Ariana had made the bed and straightened everything, but nothing looked as it should.

A driver's license manual with her name scrawled on it sat on a French provincial vanity with three huge mirrors and a marble top covered with silvery containers of makeup, creams, and colognes, along with a jewelry box. A canopy of red lace was attached to four bedposts, a thick satiny bedspread of golds and reds covered the mattress, and a mirror ball hung from the ceiling. Ariana hadn't even known what a mirror ball was until she arrived. So who decorated a young girl's room like this?

Feelings she detested settled over her. When had she become a judgmental biddy? Had it always been there? She grabbed the manual, closed the door, and went downstairs to the kitchen. Her stomach growled, and she looked in the pantry. It had lots of stuff—cold cereal, macaroni and cheese, Hamburger Helper, raw sugar, breakfast bars, protein drinks. She spotted an uncut loaf of french bread and grabbed it. The one thing she knew how to do was to turn limited ingredients into something wholesome and delicious. She pulled eggs, cheese, and bacon out of the fridge before moving to the spice rack.

She had everything she needed to make cinnamon french toast. Her family loved it. If Cameron had friends over again, maybe they'd enjoy a nice breakfast when they woke. So far things between Cameron and her were uncomfortable. How could they not be? Cameron whispered and snickered with her friends, and she constantly referred to Ariana as different movie characters.

Ariana walked to the stove. It was time to win over Cameron, and a good meal would help. But the stove had no dials to turn and no burners. She studied it. There was writing inside various painted squares on a flat panel. Clock. Clean. Start. Off. It had other things too, including a number grid like a touchscreen phone.

She pushed various spots on the panel, and blue digital symbols and numbers showed up where it had been blank moments earlier, but nothing else happened. She pushed more painted squares, hoping to find the right combination that would make this cold block of silver and black come to life. It was pretty, and it was the cleanest stove Ariana had ever seen. Unlike the lace canopy on her bed, surely the oven served a purpose. Fine. Forget the oven.

She would simply make french toast on the stovetop. But…how did she turn it on? She pressed different squares of words this time. The stove beeped. Actually more like howled, making long shrieks that she didn't know how to stop. More shrill beeps started coming from somewhere in the house. What had she done? She followed the beeps and discovered a book-sized electronic plastic thing on the wall that was screeching and blinking. How had pushing buttons on the oven made this thing go off? Heat burned her skin, a sure sign of once again feeling completely stupid. She pressed the red button with the outline of a home on it, and it beeped louder and faster. Perhaps she should run upstairs and get Brandi. No one could be sleeping through this anyway. As she started up the stairs, a phone rang, the noise echoing off the walls.

The back door swung open, and Brandi and Gabe hurried inside, followed by Cameron and her friend. Brandi had on shiny, skintight pants that came just below her knees, Gabe's sleeveless shirt was as tight as his wife's clothing, and Cameron had on something that hardly covered her underwear. What was wrong with these people?

Such thoughts made Ariana uncomfortable, but they came nonstop from morning to night. Would she get used to the sentiments or figure out how to stop them? A reprieve of thirty minutes would be greatly appreciated.

Gabe grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

Cameron stood in the doorway and studied Ariana. Now a week after they first met, she apparently still hadn't decided whether Ariana was friend or foe, animal or human, slow witted or intelligent.

“We went for a run.” Brandi's eyes were wide. “Are you all right, honey?”

Ariana nodded. “I'm fine. I…think I may have set off a couple of alarms.”

“Ya think?” Cameron glanced at her friend, looking smug, before she moved to the stove. After confidently pressing a couple of buttons, Cameron silenced the useless thing. But another alarm, a much louder one, was still shrieking throughout the house.

“You're sure you're okay?” Brandi again looked Ariana up and down.

She wasn't okay. She never would be again, but she nodded.

Gabe said a few words, answering questions for whoever was on the line. His eyes centered on Ariana. “Hold on, please.” He lowered the phone to his chest. “It's the security system people. They said the emergency button inside the house was pushed. Is everything okay?”

“I…I guess.” Ariana shrugged. “As far as I know. I was trying to turn on the stove, and…”

“The stove?” Gabe repeated.

“Dad,”—Cameron rolled her eyes—“tell the guy all our secret code stuff, convince him the house hasn't been invaded by body snatchers, and let him get back to the people who aren't trying to figure out how to use electricity.”

While Gabe wrapped up the call, Cameron went to the plastic box Ariana had been at a few minutes earlier and pressed some buttons, and silence reigned. Cameron pointed at it. “This is a control panel for the security system. Because Dad and Brandi feared the apocalypse would take place while you were here alone, they set it.”

Ariana looked Brandi in the eyes, and the realization of just how much they favored each other made the walls around Ariana's heart quake. Brandi's blond hair and green-blue eyes were a darker shade than Ariana's but very similar. Brandi had a willowy, hourglass figure, almost identical to Ariana's. She didn't want to be like this woman, to embrace her in any way, and yet the reality was staring back at her. “Until just now I didn't realize you weren't home.”

“Oh, honey, I'm sorry. You've hardly slept all week, so I thought—”

“I was in my room awake, studying the driver's manual while trying to stay quiet so I didn't wake you.”

Cameron went to the back door and closed it. “My guess is that while Dad was disarming the alarm so we could come in, it caused loud beeps inside, and you pressed some buttons trying to make it shut up. And, voilà, just like that we had a perfect storm of chaos.” Cameron motioned from her friend to Ariana, shaking her head. “Disney's Giselle lives, and I'm sharing a house with her.”

The girl laughed, opening her eyes wide and blinking, probably mimicking the character.

“Cameron!” Brandi pointed at her. “You be nice.”

“I'm only teasing.” Cameron shrugged and pulled a wide red band of some type off her wrist. “It's a whole new world for you, isn't it, Princess Jasmine?”

“That's enough, Cameron.” Gabe spoke softly as he put the phone back in its cradle.

“What?” Cameron's eyes were wide. “You don't think I'm being nice either? She and Toto aren't in Kansas anymore. Is anyone in this house surprised by that?”

“I am.” Ariana's words were more of a growl than anything else, and she grabbed the eggs and cheese and all but threw them back into the refrigerator. She wasn't cooking anything for anyone. “I'm totally surprised by it. Shocked. Miserable. But it's just funny to you, isn't it?”

“I didn't mean—”

“Ya, you did, Cameron. You like poking fun and comparing me to movie characters because I can't call you on exactly what your rudeness implies. I had siblings, good ones, even a twin. But like that”—she snapped her fingers—“no more. Now I have
you.
” She fluttered one hand toward a window. “And Nicholas's two stepsons. And none of you are actually related!” Ariana opened the pantry and tossed the french bread onto a shelf. “Tell you what. You learn Gabe isn't your dad at all, and trade him for someone as difficult as Nicholas. You give up your comfortable life and put yourself, by yourself, in, I don't know, maybe the Middle East, where the culture is totally disrespectful of you and all you've been taught to believe. Then we'll talk about how nice you've been, okay?”

Cameron stood there, eyes narrowed and locked on Ariana as if she was about to unload on her.

What is wrong with me?
How could she stand in her birth mother's kitchen and yell at Cameron, or anyone, really? Nevertheless, Ariana snatched the driver's manual off the countertop and shook it in Cameron's face, daring her to speak up. “Today I have to give up my Amish clothes. Is that funny too? I'm being forced to wear Englisch ones because the irony of Nicholas being disgusted by Amish rules while he burdens me with his decrees somehow goes over his head. And I have to change my hairstyle. And when that's done, I get the fun of trying to pass some Englisch test to get a driver's license. None of which I ever planned or wanted to do, but, you know, that's okay as long as my life is fodder for you and your friends. Do you know why I'm agreeing to those things, Cameron? Has it dawned on you that this isn't just about the joy of learning I'm not Amish?”

Cameron looked at Gabe and then Brandi. “I…I never thought about it.”

“Because if I fail to please Nicholas, an Amish midwife who is probably the age of your grandmother will go to jail. So, ya, I'm here, and everything about me is hilariously out of sync with this world, only nothing about it is funny.” Ariana turned and hurried up the stairs, no longer hungry or caring if she and Cameron ever got along.

She closed the door behind her, leaned against it, and fought for air.
God, what are You doing to me?
Life seemed so unfair. Skylar had magically inherited wonderful parents and nine siblings.
She
was Abram's twin, not Ariana.

Ariana had lost everything and gained nothing.

Nothing.

The only thing that had been hers that still remained hers was Rudy, and she missed him so much. He wouldn't have a lot of advice for how to cope with going from the Amish world to the Englisch one as Quill might, but Rudy was the one she longed to talk to. Thankfully her new status as the only daughter of Brandi and Nicholas hadn't changed Rudy's love for her. He was spending this time with his parents in Indiana to save money so they could start a life together after she returned to Summer Grove. All she had to do was survive, be obedient to her biological parents, and return home.

Well, she also needed to avoid Cameron as much as possible.

“God,” she whispered as tears fell, “when I do finally return home, will Mamm, Daed, my sisters, and my brothers still consider me family?” Or would everything change after a year of pondering her non-Brenneman status and the natural shrinking of the hole her absence had made?

Ariana shuddered.

She needed to talk to someone about all this craziness that weighted down her shoulders like the yoke of a workhorse. Who could she talk to? Brandi? Nicholas?

Quill.

The idea of calling Quill annoyed her. Angered her actually.

“Ariana.” Brandi tapped on the door.

Ariana wiped the tears off her face. “Just a minute, please.” She stood upright, willing the tears to stop as she drew a deep breath and moved away from the door. “Come in.” Ariana went to the window seat and sat looking out at the neighborhood.

The door eased open, and Brandi stood in the threshold. “Hi.” She stepped inside and closed the door. “You okay?”

Ariana opened the learner's manual, giving herself something to look at other than Brandi. “I'm sorry for losing my temper. I don't know what came over me.”