Secret, The (21 page)
T
he parking area at Eli’s was filled with cars and Amish carriages alike. Suddenly wary, Grace smoothed her skirt and sat for a few seconds after they arrived, not budging.
Adam glanced at her kindly. “No matter what, Gracie, don’t let the rumors sting you.” He leaned forward, one hand holding both the driving lines connected to Sassy. “Mamma has a mind of her own—and what she’s done, well, it’s not what we’d do . . . not Dat, either.” He looked away, glancing across the road to the east, then back. “So don’t let the gossip hurt you is all I’m sayin’.” He smiled, which gave her courage.
In the store, she signed in and set to work right away, holding her breath when Nancy and Sylvia Fisher—two Amish girls from her church district—looked her way. She responded in kind when Ruthie Weaver waved and smiled across the store at her.
Remember what Adam said,
she reminded herself. His words had the power to both sting and cheer her. He hadn’t bothered to listen to her heart yesterday when they’d talked, but she wouldn’t hold that against him, and she certainly didn’t want to borrow trouble. They had more than enough of that already.
Grace was thankful Ruthie did not show her face that afternoon in the small room set aside for coffee breaks. She pressed the button on the water cooler, waiting while the paper cup filled. She then moved to the doorway to look out at the expanse of the store while she drank her water, its coldness seeping down inside her. She slipped away from the room while the other breaking employees talked a blue streak.
Strolling the back aisle of the store, she looked over the selection of herbs she’d recently inventoried. She knew which ones were reported to elevate the mood and was picking up a bottle of valerian root and a box of passion flower herb, thinking of her despairing sister, when Nancy Fisher slowly approached her.
Ach no . . .
Grace groaned inwardly.
Adah turned her teacup around slowly, disturbed by the bewildering news Marian Riehl had shared. “It’s beyond me, what you’re sayin’,” she told her neighbor.
“Jah, ’tis hard to believe.” Marian stirred more sugar into her tea. “I’d like to think there’s no truth in it, but . . .”
“Martin Puckett, you say?” Adah frowned, stunned. “Seems like an honorable man . . . and a driver lots of folk hire.”
“We’ve called him, too.”
Adah stared at her. “You say he took Lettie to the train station in the wee hours?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“And he sat right with her, waiting for her train for how long?”
“Hours, was what was said. And the man’s been gone ever since, too.”
Adah shook her head. “Puh! Doesn’t sound right to me.”
The sun broke through the clouds and shone through the kitchen window, glinting off the edge of the gas range. Marian turned and looked outside, so dramatic was the change in the room’s light. “But Lettie
was
known to—”
“No, now, you listen here,” Adah said. “Lettie’s married to Judah and has been for a good, long time.
Married
, I say.”
“Then why on earth would she leave him?” Marian’s words hung in the air.
Why, indeed?
Adah pursed her lips.
Their time of tea and cookies was cut short when Jakob wandered in, looking bright-eyed from his afternoon nap. Adah was so relieved she let out an immense sigh, which Marian must have noticed, because she quickly pushed back her chair and excused herself for home.
“Frankly, I hate to even whisper what I heard,” Nancy Fisher was saying.
“Well then, you best not,” Grace replied, the bottle of valerian root still gripped in her hand.
Nancy’s round face drooped, her frown creasing her brow. “All I’m askin’ is, can any of this be true?” She continued recounting the rumors.
Martin Puckett held my mother’s hand at the train station?
“Oh, this is ever so awkward,” Nancy said.
Grace could hold back her frustration no longer. “Awkward for you, Nancy? I have no idea where you heard any of this nonsense, but if I were you, I’d be careful ’bout repeating things that are false.”
“Well, is your mamma at home or not?” Nancy paused.
“Priscilla Stahl says she’s left. And Martin Puckett’s nowhere to be found!”
Adam’s fiancée’s talking like that about her future mother-in-law?
Without a further word, Grace headed for the front door. She needed some air, lest she become as dizzy as Mammi Adah had been earlier this week. The last thing she wanted was to be carried back to the coffee break room and stretched out on the small sofa, being fussed over.
“What on earth?” Jakob asked Adah while she carried the teacups and saucers to the sink. “Marian looked mighty befuddled.”
“Well, I guess some folk have little to do but flap their tongues.” She would not repeat what Marian had said she’d heard from Sadie Zook, whose Englischer cousin, Pete Bern-hardt, had supposedly witnessed the distasteful scene.
Why was Lettie at the train station? Where’d she go, for pity’s
sake?
“Ain’t becoming of Marian a’tall,” he said, indicating he’d overheard at least part of their neighbor’s accusation.
Adah nodded. The gossip their neighbor had relayed was downright malicious. The way Adah saw it, it was wise of her to come over and get things straight from the horse’s mouth, so such talk could be brought to a standstill. Except that Jakob had interrupted them before she’d had a chance to set Marian straight.
Lettie is quite respectable,
she thought defiantly
. At least now
she is!
Even these many years past, Adah remembered all too clearly how Lettie’s behavior as a youth had felt like a smack in the face—
her
face. How many times had she caught her daughter in the haymow with that one fellow? Sure, they’d merely sat out there talking and reading poetry to each other, of all strange things. But they couldn’t seem to stay apart for more than a day or so, and he’d be right back with his books. Word had it Samuel Graber was already on his way out of the church even then. He’d ended up renouncing Amish ways soon after, when his family had pulled up roots and left for another state. Even so, while they were courting, Lettie had never smiled so much in her life.
Oh, but Adah was delighted when the whole lot of them moved away. The thought of Lettie’s first beau made her blood pressure rise. Adah was better off not contemplating the no-good boy. She reached for the dish towel, the cloth loose in her hand as she stared out the window to the west, spotting Judah out there carrying one of his baby lambs. A right good man, tending his sheep with such care. She’d never regretted Lettie’s marrying him. Jakob, too, had observed all those years ago how conscientious and steady Judah Byler was.
Still is.
The fact that he said very little didn’t bother them much—not compared to Samuel, who was yakking nearly all the time.
Thinking again of the outlandish rumors, Adah felt disgusted at the grapevine’s speed and influence.
I’ll march right over to Mar
ian’s tomorrow, after Preaching,
she decided. Someone had to put out the brush fire before it got to the ministers’ ears.
But as she washed her delicate teacup, Adah couldn’t help worrying that Lettie’s reckless youth had caught up with her at last.
The pretty boardinghouse was set back from the road in a small hollow. Lettie made herself read in her comfortable room, looking up to take in the view of towering maple trees that grew in a haphazard zigzag behind the three-story house. The sky was the color of the sea.
She set the book aside and went to sit at the small writing desk and picked up the pen, feeling its smoothness between her fingers. With everything in her, she wished she could simply call Judah and let him know she was all right.
Still weary from her travels, Lettie was glad she wasn’t in the habit of making such journeys. What a long trip she’d taken, arriving in the middle of the night in Alliance, Ohio. And she’d sat and waited a good while for the driver the innkeepers had arranged at her request. It was another nearly hour-long car ride before she’d observed yesterday morning’s sunrise in the picturesque town of Kidron, where she had made a reservation at this charming inn.
She tore out a single page from her writing tablet and pressed her pen to the page.
My dear family
, she wrote.
Would they believe she truly thought of them as dear and always had? It pained her to consider what they must be feeling and thinking now. They all would know of her disappearance, even her parents. She especially hated what it might do to them, frail as her father was. Even Mamm wasn’t so strong now.
And Judah?
A large fist seemed to grip her heart. She could not write what she ought, no more than she had been able to say it to his face. Oh, she’d tried, but she hadn’t the grit . . . nor, in the end, had he. Had it been better to spare him?
To think they’d bickered the night before her leaving. And what would it possibly accomplish now for Judah to read her explanation on a page? Wasn’t the damage done?
She hadn’t been able to open her heart to him, because any sharing felt like tossing words at a windmill. And, early on, given her despair over losing Samuel, she’d felt it best for Judah to be kept in the dark about her deep love for her first beau . . . and his for her. But being so detached from her own husband over the years had caused permanent harm to their marriage.