Taken for English (42 page)

“You would sell your house?”

“Or rent it out for income. If I’m not going to be living there, it shouldn’t sit empty.”

“I know you used to have a great deal of money in your
English
life. You have already sacrificed so much.”

“I have sacrificed nothing but greed and ambition,” she said.

“I want you to feel secure and cared for.”

“Rufus Beiler, we’re going to spend our lives together. Nothing makes me feel more secure than that.”

He kissed her again.

“God provides,” she whispered, her breath on his neck.

Ruth tugged on the library door. By now Elijah would be seated in a reading cubicle on the other side of the main aisle. The library was a narrow space between two shops on Main Street. The number of books on the shelves at any given time was limited by the space, but Ruth had always found the two part-time librarians accommodating and helpful in placing holds on other books in the wider library system. Anything Ruth had ever requested arrived within four days.

Elijah was wearing
English
jeans and a blue work shirt he had found in the thrift store a couple of blocks down. Ruth caught a glimpse of his back—his Amish hat gone as well—and calculated that an interest in biographies would keep her within his sight. All he had to do was glance up or quietly scoot back his chair.

Ruth glanced around, relieved that Alan had not arrived first, and ambled down the main aisle, running a finger along the shelves and glancing at titles.

A moment later, the front door creaked and Alan entered. Ruth flashed him a welcoming smile then pulled a biography of Thomas Jefferson off the shelf and began to flip through it as her peripheral vision tracked Alan’s movement toward her.

“Biographies, eh?”

Alan stood next to her now.

Ruth casually turned another page. “When I left Westcliffe, I had to get a GED before I could enroll at the university. I had a lot to catch up on when it came to American history.”

Alan took a book from the shelf. “Alexander Hamilton. Now he was an interesting character. Some people say the whole national debt traces back to his idea to borrow private money to pay for the Revolutionary War debt.”

Ruth chuckled softly. “I hope we’re not still paying for the Revolutionary War.”

“Your people don’t believe in wars, do they?”

“Well, we believe they happen. We don’t participate. It goes against our peacekeeping ways.”

“Do you like to read about science?” Alan pointed with a thumb to the other side of the aisle.

“Nursing is science.” Ruth closed the Jefferson book and slid it back into its place. “I suppose fire is a science category all its own.”

“It definitely is.” Alan pulled a book from the shelf. “No one ever seems to check this one out. I come to look at it, and it’s always here.”

Ruth looked over his shoulder at the photos of burning fires and shuddered. “Why don’t you check it out and read it more leisurely?”

“I can’t have it around the apartment. Bryan would never let me hear the end of how he got a better grade than I did when we studied origins of fire in school.”

“Considering that you haven’t been in Westcliffe all that long,” she said, “it seems like you have seen quite a few fires already.”

“I missed the last one.” Alan replaced the book on the shelf. “I was at the store stacking apples and peaches.”

“That’s right.”

“Bryan was there, though.”

She nodded. “We discovered the smoke together.”

“You know, it’s not that hard to lay a fuse so the fire won’t start right away.”

Through the stacks, Ruth saw Elijah stand. She caught his brown eyes and looked away.

“You must learn all that stuff in school,” she said to Alan.

“And Bryan was at the top of the class. He was a whiz with chemical reactions and retardants and all that jazz.”

Ruth took a random book off the shelf. “You know him better than I do.”

Alan touched her elbow then, and Ruth heard the step Elijah took. She looked up to meet Alan’s gaze.

“Sometimes insiders get involved with fires.” He leaned toward her. “Bryan could always calculate how much time would elapse before a certain kind of fire would explode. Exactly.”

The librarian stepped into the aisle, stared at them, and put a finger to her lips. Elijah was the only other patron in the building, but the librarian could not know that Ruth wanted him to hear every word.

Ruth lowered her voice. “You’re not saying Bryan had anything to do with the fires, are you?”

Alan’s eyes danced, which startled Ruth. Elijah moved on the other side of the shelf.

“I think I’ll stick to biographies.” Ruth again began to run her finger along the spines on the biography shelves.

Alan checked the time on his cell phone. “I have to go.”

Where?
Ruth wondered. But she did not ask.

Alan gave a look of courteous amusement. “I hope I’ll run into you again.” He sauntered toward the door.

Elijah came around the stacks. “Satisfied?”

Ruth pulled the fire science book off the shelf again and ran a finger down the table of contents page. “He’s been filling in the gaps.”

“He wasn’t trying to hide it.”

She looked up and met Elijah’s eyes. “It’s a dare.”

“I need to ask you some questions, Leah.” Jerusha sat in an armchair with a notepad in her lap on Friday afternoon. “We can ask Annie to leave the room if you like.”

“She can stay.”

Leah looked pale to Annie. Two days of wondering about the contents of the letter had taken their toll. But at least Leah had cleaned up and was on time.

“Have you ever felt like hurting yourself or someone else?” Jerusha asked.

“Sometimes I feel like I just want to blow something up.” Leah pressed her palms together. “But anyone would feel that way if they were going through what I’m going through.”

“So you might want to hurt some
thing
, but not yourself or another person.”

“Right.”

Jerusha watched Leah. “If you felt like hurting yourself, would you tell someone?”

Leah glanced at Annie. “I guess I could tell Annalise. But I don’t want to hurt myself. I just want to go to Pennsylvania. And I want to know what’s in that letter she got.”

“I understand. We’ll get to that soon.” Jerusha picked up the pen that lay on her notepad. “Why don’t you tell me in your own words why you think you’re here today.”

“If I didn’t come, Annalise would not let me see the letter.”

Annie groaned inwardly and crossed and uncrossed her ankles beneath the hem of her dress.

“Is that the only reason you agreed to come?” Jerusha asked.

Leah tapped her foot steadily for about thirty seconds. “I guess not. I’ve been behaving strangely, I suppose.”

“And why do you think that is?”

Annie calmly raised one hand to pull on a prayer
kapp
string, a habit she had developed at moments when she wanted to pray silently. The letter lay in her lap.

“My parents won’t listen to me,” Leah said, “and I’m anxious that I’ll never get my life back.”

“Your Pennsylvania life?” Jerusha wrote a quick notation.

Leah nodded.

“I understand Annie got a letter from someone in Pennsylvania you care deeply about.”

Leah kept nodding.

“Perhaps we should talk about what would happen if the letter says something you don’t want to hear.”

Annie held her breath. This was exactly the reason she wanted Jerusha present when she broke the seal on the envelope.

“Why don’t we just find out what it says?” Leah eyed the envelope in Annie’s lap. “If it’s good news, we don’t even have to finish this conversation.”

“I only want to help you be prepared either way.”

Leah’s eye flashed. “You’ve made up your mind it’s bad news. You don’t know that.”

Jerusha held her calming pose. “No, I don’t have any idea what the letter will say. I would want to help you whether or not there was a letter.”

“But there
is
a letter.” Leah moved her eyes from Jerusha to Annie and back again. “If I answer your questions, do you promise me we’ll open the letter?”

W
hy don’t you read it to us?” Annie handed the letter to Jerusha after nearly ninety minutes of conversation between Leah and the counselor.

“Is that all right with you, Leah?” Jerusha asked.

The girl nodded.

Annie was relieved that Leah was surprisingly calm now that the moment had arrived. After resisting Jerusha for much of the session, either actively or passively, Leah had made some remarkable and transparent insights about herself. Annie had no doubt that Jerusha would suggest that Leah see her again, but for now, Leah seemed as settled as Annie had ever seen her.

Jerusha pulled at the flap of the envelope, and it gave way easily. Annie knew it would. More than once she had—fleetingly—considered opening that flap for a preview of the letter. But she had given her word to Leah.

“That’s his paper!” Leah jumped to her feet. “It’s really from him.”

The unfolding papers crackled in Jerusha’s hands, and she reached for her reading glasses on an end table.

Jerusha paused, and she and Annie both looked at Leah, who sank back into her chair, smearing tears across her face.

“Are you all right?” Jerusha asked.

Leah gasped a sudden intake of air. “No one believed me because of all my mistakes. But I was telling the truth.”

“Do you need some water?” Annie offered her bottle.

Leah shook her head. “Just keep reading, please.”

Jerusha looked back at the pages in her hands.