Taken for English (28 page)

“You look wiped out. How about if I see if I can find a coffee machine or something?”

She nodded. Coffee might help clear her mind, though she doubted it would fix whatever had just broken between her and the Capps.

Rufus slapped his measuring tape up against the wall, made a pinpoint dot with his pencil, and turned the tape in the other direction to make another mark. His coworkers drew two-inch-wide lines before hanging a cabinet. If they did not, they could not find their own marks. Rufus needed far less assurance that he was doing the job right. This was the first day of a two-week project renovating administrative offices in a Cañon City hospital that seemed to Rufus to require little creativity. The crew would make its way down the hallway and then back up on the other side installing identical manufactured cabinetry into identical offices painted in identical color schemes.

Rufus began to hum, hoping the hymn tune would lead him into prayer for Annalise, for his family, for the decisions he needed to make. Whatever doubts he had about his choice to take this job even on a temporary basis, he would hang every cabinet as if it were one of his custom creations. The same care and precision that expressed his gratitude in his workshop at home would do so here in the hospital and in whatever building he was sent to next. Satisfied with the accuracy of his marks, even if no one else could discern them, Rufus pulled a box cutter out of the carpenter’s apron fastened around his waist and sliced through the cardboard box housing the assembly for this office, his second for the day. After inspecting the contents of the carton and satisfying himself that all the pieces were accounted for, Rufus picked up a power screwdriver and began with the hardware for the first cabinet.

His mind turned over the sign he had seen that morning across the street from the hospital in the paved-over front yard of an old house. The business within was a Realtor that claimed to specialize in commercial properties. It might be just what Rufus needed.

“Hey, Rufus!”

He looked up to welcome his assigned partner back into the room. Marcus had a habit of disappearing for curiously long periods of time, but Rufus had to admit that when he was present he was a valuable helper. He was cheerful, did not mind Rufus’s humming, and did what Rufus asked him to do without looking for shortcuts.

And Marcus always returned with large Styrofoam cups of steaming coffee.

“You’re going to like this one,” Marcus said. “Dark. Robust. Rich.”

“You found that kind of coffee in a hospital?” Rufus gratefully took hold of a cup and sipped before setting it down.

“You just have to know where to look.” Marcus took a generous draft. “Ah! Smooth, eh?”

“Yes, smooth. Now let’s do a smooth job of getting these cabinets up.”

“Smooth transition.” Marcus found a secure place to set his coffee down. “I heard another Amish dude came in through the ER a couple hours ago. Came all the way from Westcliffe in an ambulance.”

Rufus dropped the bracket dangling from his fingers.

R
ufus took the stairs two at a time until he was sure he was on the ground floor and then darted through the unfamiliar hospital hallways. Stripes in the flooring and signs overhead guided his path without providing visual reassurance that he would, in fact, reach the emergency department. This was his first day working at this location, and he had not yet made sense of the building’s layout. He trusted the signs until he came to a registration counter under a hanging sign announcing the ER.

“I understand you had an Amish man come in this afternoon.” Rufus managed a calm tone. “I’m concerned it might be a family member.”

“Your last name?” A clerk flipped over a pile of papers and looked up from behind her computer.

“Beiler.” He spelled it.

“And does the family member you’re looking for share your last name?”

“Yes.” Joel. Or
Daed
. Had there been an accident that he would have known about if he were home on his family’s farm?

The clerk clicked a few keys. “No, I don’t see anyone by that name.”

“Are you sure? Maybe the name was misspelled? How many Amish men would you have?”

“Sir, I cannot give you any patient information. All I can tell you is we have no one under the name you gave me.”

“Thank you.” Rufus wiped a hand across his forehead. When he turned away from the counter in relief, he saw Ruth huddled across the waiting room.

“Rufus!” Relief rattled her voice when she saw him. She wiped tears with the heels of both hands.

“What happened?” He sat beside her on the row of interlocking gray armless chairs and enfolded her.

“It’s Elijah,” she said.

Intent on understanding, Rufus listened to Ruth’s account.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “How did you get here?”

“I’m putting cabinets in offices on one of the upper floors.”

“I can’t believe you’re here on this day of all days.”

“Gottes wille
. Is Elijah going to be all right?”

“I think so. Of course I’m concerned, but why were the Capps so cold to me? It was as if they dismissed me. Why would they tell me to go home like that?”

“He still has your heart, doesn’t he?” Rufus leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“If they think I’m trying to lure their son away, I would assure them that I have gone out of my way not to do that.” Ruth ground a fist into her thigh. “That doesn’t mean I stopped caring about him. He’s a person, after all. Someone I’ve known well for many years.”

“Of course you care about him. When the Capps have the reassurance that Elijah is well, they will look at things differently.”

Ruth shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. It’s as if they are blaming me for something. I had nothing to do with what happened today. Annalise is the one who was there with Elijah, not me.”

“If you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to fear.”

“I’m not afraid. I’m hurt. And I want someone to tell me what is happening with Elijah!”

Rufus absorbed the contortions of his sister’s face and wished he knew the words that would smooth them. How thick her heart must be with the burden of loving a man who belonged to a people she called her own less and less.

“Hey, dude!” Marcus dropped into a chair on the other side of Rufus. “The boss is looking for you.”

Annie stared at her open back door. While she had taken to leaving it unlocked, it was not her habit to leave it standing wide open.

By the time she got back into town after the morning’s drama, she had to go straight to the shop without stopping at home. In the back room, she had done her best to wash up in the old sink and brush dirt off her dress. With a sigh, she realized she had lost yet another prayer
kapp
. It could be in the meadow, snagged on a bush and billowed by wind, or it could be in the rig she had returned to town in, smashed against a floor mat. It made no difference. She would not get it back. Annie resisted the urge to inspect her face and hair in the mirror and settled for pinning her straggly braids back into place by touch alone.

By the end of the afternoon, she was ready for a hot bath and a hot meal.

And word from Ruth about Elijah’s condition. Making a series of phone calls from the shop, it had taken Annie most of two hours to track down Elijah’s parents and then find Tom to see if he would taxi. Mrs. Weichert, working on the month-end books, looked up periodically with concern. Annie was careful to say only that Elijah had an accident and had been taken to the hospital. For as long as possible, she hoped to leave Leah’s name out of the rumors that were sure to fly around town. The truth would come out about Leah’s part in the accident, but for now, just for today, Annie did not want to raise questions she could not answer.

And now her back door was standing wide open.

Annie entered her home and laid her purse on the counter inside the back door.

“Annalise?” A faint voice came from the front of the house.

“Who’s there?” Still unsettled, Annie decided she would not take a makeshift kitchen weapon to greet someone who knew her name.

“It’s me.”

Annie progressed into the dining room. “Leah?”

The kitten shot past just then, brushing Annie’s skirt on his way to the kitchen. Annie took a moment to light the small oil lamp on the dining room table. Leah came into focus scrunched into the far chair in the adjoining living room.

“Are you all right, Leah?”

The response came slowly, with deliberation. “I guess if I were, I would not have done that to Elijah.”

Annie closed her eyes and offered a prayer of thanks before proceeding to sit in the other chair. “You did a great job getting help, Leah. Ruth got there even before the ambulance, and Elijah was so glad to see her.”

“Is he paralyzed?”

“No,” Annie answered quickly and then thought she should qualify her response. “I don’t think so. They took him to a hospital just to be sure.”

“Everybody is going to find out.” Leah’s face was suddenly slick with tears. “His family will want the church to pay his medical expenses, and everybody will know that I was the one doing something stupid, not Elijah.”

Annie had no answer. What Leah said might well be true.

“My mother is right. I mess things up all the time. I can’t control myself.”

Annie pulled a tissue from a box on the end table between the chairs and handed it to Leah.

“But I’m not going to hurt Aaron. If I can just get to Pennsylvania, I can change. He makes me believe in myself. No one else does that for me.”

“I want to help you, too.” Annie pointed across the room. “Have you looked on the other side of that screen?”

Leah shook her head. “I’ve just been sitting here all day. I put away the groceries Ruth bought because they needed to be in the refrigerator, but I didn’t want you to think I was touching all your things.”

“I would like to show you what is over there. Would you like to see?”

“It’s a nice screen. Useful but pretty in a plain way.”

“I’ll turn on a couple of lamps so you can see better.” Annie turned the switch on the propane lamp rising out of the end table. “Come over here.”

Annie took Leah’s hand and led her the few steps across the room. “The other lamp is over here, behind the screen. Why don’t you turn it on?”

Leah gently moved the end of the screen and stepped into the bedroom-like space Annie had created.

“I told you before that you were welcome to stay with me,” Annie said, “and I meant it. I’ve made up the couch like a bed. Your bed.”

Leah’s eyes widened. “How did you know I would come?”

“I prayed that you would, and I felt a peace about making up the bed. That’s a kind of knowing, isn’t it?”

Leah exhaled heavily. “But after today you should change your mind.”

“I don’t think so. God answered my prayer. You’re here.”

“I don’t know why you want me here.”

“For the same reason I wanted you to come down from the gravel. I want you to be safe.”

“I can’t sleep there.” Leah stepped back. “I’ve been wearing the same dress for three weeks. I don’t deserve it. I’m filthy.”

“You’re lovely,” Annie said quickly. “As for the rest, I have plenty of hot water and a purple dress that should suit you well.”

“An Amish dress?”

“Yes.”

“Is that all you have now?”

“Yes. I gave away my
English
clothes months ago.” Annie raised a tender hand to Leah’s head. “Look, you’ve still got your prayer
kapp.”

“Of course. I ran away from my parents, not from God.”

Annie chuckled. “You wouldn’t believe how many prayer
kapps
I have lost trying to run toward God.”

“I don’t want to be some kind of prisoner.” Leah stepped out of Annie’s reach. “I could do that at my parents’ house.”

“I’m not trying to be a jailer. I’m trying to be a friend.”

“I don’t have any friends here.”

“You have me.”

“You can’t ask me a lot of questions about where I go or what I’m doing all day. I’m not going to tell you.”