Gabriel's Bride (24 page)

They made their way back downstairs, this time the elevator was not so much of a surprise to Rachel. Gabriel stopped at the front counter and asked about close places to eat. The clerk said he could call them a cab, they could take a shuttle, or they could walk to the pancake restaurant just across the parking lot.

“Let’s walk,” Rachel said. The long car trip there and the looming trip back would be enough riding for her for the rest of the year.

They found the restaurant cheery and well-lit, with orange and brown booths lining one wall and tables dotting the way between them and the counter.

The hostess led them to a booth and left menus, but Rachel already knew what she wanted. A cheeseburger. She hadn’t had one in years, not since she went with her aunt to Tulsa for a special doctor’s appointment. That was just after she had moved to Oklahoma and was still adjusting to the new rules and
Ordnung
.

Yes, she’d have a cheeseburger. With French fried potatoes. And a big Coke.

She pushed the menu to the side, propped her chin in her hand, and stared out the window at the Interstate highway. Big transfer trucks zoomed past, their engines vrooming down the road at a dizzying speed. Rachel was glad to be sitting still. At least for a while.

In truth, she was a tiny bit thankful that they weren’t driving back to Clover Ridge tonight. She was sad that Bill Foster’s niece had been hurt and had already made a mental note to add her to her prayers tonight. But she was glad not to have to get into the van and race down the roads at speeds God had never intended.

Gabriel looked up from his menu, catching her eye. “You know what you want to eat?”

She nodded.

He closed his menu and soon the waitress began taking their orders.

“And ketchup,” Rachel added. “I’d like ketchup with the potatoes, please.”

“Sure thing, hon.” The waitress stuck her pencil through her ponytail and scooped up the menus. “I’ll be right back with your drinks.”

“
Danki
,” Gabriel said.

The waitress smiled and hurried away to refill someone’s coffee.

“When we get back to the room, I’ll call the phone out in front of my
elders’ haus
.
Dat
can get Zane Carson and have him go check on the goats. He and Matthew can do your evening milking.”

Rachel nodded. Gideon and Annie had too much on their hands right now with a new babe in the house. “Will Katie Rose stay with the children?”

“
Jah
.”

“Samuel will like that.” Even more than the goats, she worried about Gabriel’s youngest. He’d had so many changes these last few months that she wasn’t sure how he would take another upset. He loved Katie Rose like he would his own mother. Rachel breathed a sigh of relief that he’d be fine for the night.

She looked back to find Gabriel staring at her with that strange light in his eyes. She almost wished he’d go back to frowning. At least she knew what that expression meant.

For a moment they merely looked at each other. Then the waitress reappeared with their drinks, and the connection was broken. As they waited for their food, Gabriel made small talk. And after it arrived and they prayed, they both fell silent as they ate.

The silence between them was heavy and awkward, but Rachel had no idea how to dispel it. Gabriel was her husband, her life partner, and yet she realized that she could count on one hand the number of times she had been alone with him. Tonight, they would sleep merely feet apart with no one around.

She pushed thoughts of their future reality away, not wanting to think about that right now. She wanted to enjoy this treat, one she hadn’t had in so very long. She took another bite of the greasy cheeseburger, reveling in its taste. She had forgotten how good cheeseburgers were. Foods like this were the reason gluttony was a sin.

Enjoying her dinner was one thing, but gluttony was something else entirely, she thought. She added that sin to the list of things she needed to pray about that evening before bed.

Just as she finished her last bite of dinner, Gabriel coughed.

Rachel looked up to find him staring at her, his look guarded. Then he stiffened and rose to his feet.

Rachel turned in her seat, following his gaze to see what had captured his attention.

A young blonde-haired girl stood at the counter, drumming her fingers on the Formica as she impatiently waited.

“Do you know her?”

Gabriel eased back down in his seat and shook his head. “She looks like someone I know. But it’s not her.”

“Mary Elizabeth?”

He pressed his lips together and gave a short nod.

“Would you . . . would you like to tell me what happened?”

He shrugged, then fished some money from the hidden pocket in his trousers and laid it on the table for their bill. “She left.” He slid from the booth and stretched his legs as he stood.

Rachel stepped out in front of him, unsure if she should press the matter or let it be. “I know that.”

Leave it alone
, the cautious side of her advised. Yet she had a feeling Gabriel needed to talk about the problem to someone. But if she knew her husband at all, he wouldn’t turn that information loose without a little prying.

She peered into his face, hooking his gaze with hers. “You can tell me about it, you know.”

His face was a mask. “Won’t change it.”

“It might help you.”

He frowned. “
Nay
.”

Stubborn Amish men
. That was one thing she had not gotten used to since she had moved from Florida. Her family, at least, had discussed their feelings. Oh, not as much as the chatty
Englisch
, but if they had ever needed to talk to someone close to them, they had the option. Sweeping it all away like it was nothing wouldn’t help anyone involved.
Like she’d had to do when she lost them and her home in one fateful minute.

But the deepening scowl on Gabriel’s face said the matter was closed. And maybe it was . . . for now.

They walked in silence back across the parking lot. He held the glass hotel doors open for her, but didn’t remind her to hang on when they climbed into the elevator. Rachel managed to keep her dinner in place even though her stomach rose and fell with the motorized cart. The doors swooshed open, and Gabriel led her down the hallway and back to their room for the evening.

“This seems strange,” she said, trailing her fingers across the plastic furniture.

Gabriel looked up from untying his boots. “What does?”

“I feel like I should do something. I mean if I were at home, I’d be getting Samuel ready for bed. The older
buwe
would be finishing up their homework. Supper dishes would need to be washed and . . .”

“The house won’t fall down without you there to tend it.”

“I know that. But I feel . . . lazy.”

He set his boots off to one side, then stood and stretched. “I’ve heard that
Englisch
women like to take hour-long baths.”

Rachel’s eyes grew wide. “Where did you hear something like that?”

He smiled. “Gideon’s Annie.”

“Oh.” Well, that made sense. Sort of. Being raised
Englisch
, Annie was probably used to talking about such things with all sorts of people, stranger and friend alike. But Rachel was not
Englisch
and even her Beachy upbringing hadn’t prepared her for talking about such matters with her in-name-only husband.

“I thought I’d call the phone shanty and see if everything’s been taken care of. You could uh . . .” He motioned toward the bathroom, not finishing the sentence as if the intimacy was too much for him as well.

“Uh . . .
jah
. I think I will.”

Lounging in the tub for a full hour, Rachel soon learned, was not in her makeup. Despite the closed door and the electric fan that hummed when she turned on the bathroom light, she could still hear Gabriel shuffling around the room. She wasn’t able to make out any words, but his deep voice resonated, telling her that he had managed to get in touch with someone about their overnight stay in Oklahoma City.

But after a half an hour, she’d had all the laziness she could stand. She dried off, dressed back in her same clothes and ran her fingers through her hair. She wiped the steam from the mirror and peered at herself in the glass.

The steam had made her fuzzy curls a riotous mess. Should she pull her hair back into its pins? She didn’t have a brush or a ponytail holder to pull her hair off her face like when she was at home. She didn’t want to sleep in all those sharp bobby pins, yet she wasn’t sure she should face her husband with her hair looking like a crazy rat’s nest all over her head.

If only she had a kerchief like she used to wear in Florida. That would solve all her problems. But she didn’t have a kerchief or anything to use in its place.

She stuck her tongue out at her reflection. She was being a silly ninny. Just because she had gone and fallen in love with her husband, she was making things harder on herself than they needed to be.

What she needed to remember was that her husband wasn’t in love with her.

Her stomach fell at the thought, but it was the truth. He didn’t love her. He didn’t feel the tension in the air concerning their sleeping situation, what she did or didn’t have to wear to sleep in, or what her hair looked like flipping in all different directions.

She took off the apron and hung it in the small closet space next to the bathroom. She rubbed a hand over her stomach, smoothed her fingers through her hair, then took a deep breath before stepping out of the bathroom and in full view of her husband who sat propped against the pillows on the far bed, galluses hanging off his shoulders, his blue shirt untucked.

She peered at him. “Do you really think the bishop will be okay with us watching the television?”

He sat up as she entered the room. “That is not what I said. I said, the bishop didn’t have to know.”

She bit her lip. “Oh. I suppose a deacon should keep to the
Ordnung
regardless of the circumstance.”

“There’s a Bible in the nightstand if you’d rather read. But it’s in
Englisch
, so it seems wrong to me somehow.”

She walked primly to the closest bed and perched on the corner like she did that sort of thing all the time—sat on a bed, in a hotel room, with her husband. “I just thought it might be fun to—”

Gabriel rose and started pushing buttons on the television. They wouldn’t have to worry about what the bishop said, they couldn’t figure out how to work the
Englisch
contraption anyway.

“There.” Gabriel took a step back as the screen flickered and went from black to a crisp picture of a couple sharing an intense kiss. “Whoa.” He blocked her view and pushed another button, all the while not letting her see what was playing out in front of her.

She turned her head. “I’m not sure this is a
gut
idea.”

“
Guck datt hie
.” He stood back and allowed her to see.

Rachel read the words written across the screen in large white letters.
Little House on the Prairie.
“Like the books?”

Gabriel shrugged, then padded back to his bed. “We will see in a few minutes.”

Rachel scooted back a little farther onto her own bed and pulled one of the pillows in front of her. It was so amazing to her that someone had thought to take the beloved stories by Laura Ingalls Wilder and make them into a moving story. Surely the bishop couldn’t protest about that? What was the problem with television anyway?

The image of the half-naked couple kissing on the screen for everyone to see flashed through her mind. Oh, yeah.
That.

What a shame that a few had ruined the joy for them all.

It was after nine when the shows ended. The sky outside their room was just turning dark.

Gabriel rose from the bed and stretched. “I’m going to take a shower. Do you want me to find something else for you to watch?”

Wide-eyed she shook her head. “I think I’ll read the Bible now.”

He chuckled. “Feeling the need to repent?”

The look on her face was borderline horror. “Do you think the bishop will be that upset if he finds out?”