The Amish Bride of Ice Mountain (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Jude opened the door to the mansion to the unearthly sound of Bear howling. It was a mournful wolf’s cry, eerie and low, and it made Jude’s heart pound for some reason.

He met the butler in the hallway. “Bas, what’s wrong with Bear? Where’s Mary?”

The older man looked like he had to resist an urge to wring his hands. “She’s gone, sir.”

“What?” Jude had to raise his voice above the din.

Bas mouthed the words. “She’s gone.”

Jude took the stairs two at a time to their guest suite. He flung open the door to Mary’s room and took in the sight of Bear sitting in the middle of her bed, on his haunches, his nose pointed to the sky.

“Mary! Mary?” Jude went to his room, striding over the strewn yellow pages on the floor, then back to hers and opened her wardrobe. He saw with a sick feeling that her simple satchel was missing. He sat down on the bed and methodically began to try to quiet the dog, then gave up and went to the hall door. It opened in on him and he stepped back as Carol entered, carrying an envelope.

“Here, Jude. I had to help her. She begged . . .”

He snatched the envelope from her and ripped it open, reading as he paced.

Jude spun on his heel to face Carol. “Why? Why did she leave?”

“I didn’t say anything, if that’s what you’re implying. I’m happy enough with that big lug, Sam.” A faint coloring of her cheeks testified to the truth of her words. “And I thought she explained it in the letter—she said she did. She wouldn’t tell me much, only begged me to help her go and used some of her Bible talk again about women and jewels and their worth . . . I didn’t know what else to do.”

“How did she go? And she has no money! I’ve got to find her . . .” He started to leave the room when Carol caught his arm.

“Jude, I watched her plane take off for State College, Pennsylvania. She’s to take a taxi the rest of the way to her mountain. I made sure she had plenty of money. I’m—I’m sorry.”

He stared out the open door, into the darkness of the hall, and Bear’s cries expressed his own feelings perfectly . . . mournful and lost.

 

 

“Ma’am, are you all right?”

The stewardess’s voice penetrated the door of the plane’s bathroom and Mary paused in her retching to gasp a feeble
“jah.”

She wished the woman would go away and let her simply die, but Carol had told her something about “first class” and “getting more attention,” so Mary knew the lady was simply doing her job.

Carefully, she pushed the folding bathroom door open, then wandered down the aisle, sliding into her seat, praying the lady next to her wouldn’t start a conversation. Nothing would come out of her strangled throat now, much less friendly talk. Even her tears had frozen behind her eyelids. Thankfully, she had the window seat, so she leaned against the plane’s cold inside wall to stare at the twinkling Atlanta lights slowly fading out of sight—like her soul—fading—emotionless. The one she loved and hoped to become a good wife to was forever lost. She tried to cling to the belief that
Gott
had a perfect will for her life, and eventually His plan would be revealed. But for now, she would take her bruised heart home to Ice Mountain, knowing that she was nothing more than one man’s research and not his dream.

 

 

I can’t think about her . . . not now, maybe not ever. What did I expect? What did I really expect—that she was going to stop being
Amisch
or keep on with no community but me? Maybe it’s better this way. She’ll marry someone on the mountain . . .
He ignored the sick feeling the thought produced and turned as the door was opened.

Jude was surprised at the dead calm he felt when his father strode into their library. He’d been drinking; Jude could smell the alcohol from where he stood near the window. He faced his father—this strange, hurtful, alien man who was his own flesh and blood.

“Somebody should shoot that dog if it’s going to carry on because your little Amish skirt finally wised up . . . I suppose you’re howling too, though, aren’t you, son? Your mother said your wife’s left you.”

“I find that we all howl, now and then . . . when we don’t get what we want, what we expect . . . no matter how much we give.” Jude shrugged. “Like you, Dad, not getting me.”

His father stalked closer to him and missed a step, catching himself on the back of an ornate chair. “Not getting you, huh? I paid a king’s ransom for you, and if I can’t get what I want, then neither can you. At least I’ll have the satisfaction of that.”

“Why do you need satisfaction?” Jude asked, feeling disturbed to realize he was genuinely interested in the answer.
Why do I even care?

“Why do I need satisfaction?” His father laughed aloud, a hollow, eerie sound, as he spread his arms wide and staggered toward the desk. “I need satisfaction, you miserable wretch, because you took the only hope I had . . . took it all . . . and choked the life out of him.”

Jude tilted his head at the slurred words. “What? Choked who?”

His father continued to laugh, then drew a harsh breath. He grabbed something from the desktop and whirled, throwing it with sudden violence at Jude, who moved out of the way.

Jude saw the Ice Mine snow globe shatter against the wall and its water run down the ornate wallpaper
. Mary must have left it here . . .

He felt a sob rise in his own throat as he bent to stare down at the cracked glass, and then his father’s breath was close against his ear, the older man’s hands tight around his neck.

“Who? You dare to ask who?” His father shook him and Jude twisted from his grip to back away. “Your brother, you fool. Your twin. Born first. My firstborn son . . . Ted Lyons Junior . . . but your cord was wrapped around his neck and he was dead before he ever breathed air.”

Jude froze in horror, his grandfather’s strange conversation in the garden about the “other one”—his dad only wanting the other one of him—making sudden terrible sense.

His father sneered at him. “You should see your face, Professor Lyons. Quite a study . . . Your mother didn’t want you to know, to bear the burden, but I named you—Jude. Close enough to Judas for my taste, and I was right. You’ve betrayed me since your first breath.” He ground the broken glass beneath his foot.

“But why couldn’t you have been grateful for one son?” Jude’s voice was raised.

“One son? Don’t you, with all of your Amish superstition, know the truth about twins . . . my own mother told me. It’s only the first who’s gifted, who really matters . . . He was the ‘what could have been’ and you—are the what never was . . . All I wanted was a son, mine to follow me, and you come along with your Amish and your studies, and you’re too good for what I want . . . Well, now you know. So live with it . . . you murderer.”

Jude watched as the violence drained from the other man and his shoulders sagged as if in defeat, and he saw his father as a broken man—one never strong enough to face the pain of his loss. Instead, Ted Lyons had built layers of hardness to surround his heart, and in the end, he’d lost not only one son but both.

A thousand emotions roared through Jude’s mind, like the pounding of an oncoming train, and he thought of Mary’s smile. Then his sugar plummeted while the embroidered rug rose up fast to meet him as he fell.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Your head’s bleeding, sir.” Bas’s urgent voice brought Jude to his senses and he remembered what he’d been thinking of when he collapsed . . .

“They’ll shun her, Bas.”

“Shun? Who, sir?”

Jude staggered to his feet and in three gulps swallowed the orange juice Bas provided. He swiped his hand across his mouth. “The
Amisch
on Ice Mountain . . . Mary. She can’t leave her husband.” He handed the glass back with a nod of thanks.

“I’m not sure, sir . . . but we should attend to your head.”

“I’m all right.” He remembered the conversation with his father.
Murderer . . .
“Where’s my . . . father?”

Bas shook his head. “He went out, sir. I’m not sure where, but . . .”

“Jude! Jude, Bas, are you in there?” Jude’s mother raced into the room, half screaming, and Jude felt his head begin to pound.

“Mother, what is it?” He was tired and didn’t want to play drama games.

“It’s my father . . . I think he’s dead or not breathing. Oh, Bas, call for an ambulance!”

Jude straightened fully. “Grandfather? Where is he? His room?”

“Yes, oh yes . . .”

He brushed past her and raced down the hall to his grandfather’s suite on the first floor. The ominous discoloration of the old man’s face as he lay on his bed stopped Jude cold for a moment, but then he ran forward and put his head on the frail chest. He heard a faint heartbeat.

“Grandfather, oh, Grandfather. Don’t do this, please, not now. Don’t leave me now.” Jude swiped at the tears that filled his eyes as his grandfather drew a shuddering breath and suddenly opened his eyes.

“Jude . . . I feel strange.”

“Yes, I know . . . an ambulance is coming.”

“I heard Ted’s voice screaming . . . was he screaming at you again?”

“No, no, everything’s fine.”

Another staggered breath. “Jude, you must know, you had a twin when you were born.”

“I know. I understand. Don’t try to talk. Save your strength.” Jude held the thick-veined hand nearest him tightly.

“You know? Ah, then Ted told you . . . Lydia wouldn’t . . .” A choking cough emanated from the shrunken chest and Jude bit back a sob.

“It’s all right . . . it’s all right.”
All right . . . all right.

“Don’t believe . . . don’t . . . believe.”

Jude felt the sudden slackening of the hand in his. “Don’t believe what, grandfather?”

“Don’t believe . . . her . . . Mary . . . Oh, the globe’s broken, Amelia! It’s broken . . .”

His grandfather’s body surged upward for a brief second as he cried out the words, and then he slumped back against the pillows and Jude knew that he was gone.
How did he know about the snow globe?
He laid his head on the old man and cried, for everything that he once thought was real and true and good . . .

He drew away only when the ambulance attendants entered the room. He moved aside to make room for the useless stretcher, putting an arm around his mother as she sobbed, but his own tears were dry now.

 

 

“You sure you wanna get out here? It’s pitch black . . .” The taxicab driver peered out the window in doubt.

It
was
dark, but Mary knew it must be sometime close to morning, and she knew the mountain blindfolded. “I will be fine.”

She carefully counted out money for him plus a tip as Carol had instructed, then put the rest of the bills in her satchel. She would have to mail Carol back the money when she’d earned it, even though the other woman had told her to “forget it.”

She got out of the car, aware that the driver still wasn’t moving, and she hurried past the beams of the headlights, finding the edge of the path up the mountain and stepping without hesitation into the inky darkness.

A few moments later, she heard the car drive away and breathed a sigh of relief. Then she stumbled over a root and fell facedown into the chill earth of the path.

She lay for a brief time, stunned, then turned her face into the familiar comforting smell of the dirt and began to sob—hoarse, choking sobs that wrung her heart and then her stomach.
Why,
Gott
? Why did you let me go with him? Because I was willful, because I wanted it? And it seems all for nothing . . . But You have a plan; You must have a plan. I will not believe anything less.

Then she crawled to her feet and continued on, walking in darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Are you ever going to get off that couch, old man?”

Jude caught the pillow Sam lobbed at him as he lay down. Following his grandfather’s funeral, he’d taken up residence in Sam’s efficiency with a depressed Bear, quit the university, and knew he was wallowing. He’d also decided that if Mary was shunned, she could always technically repent of marrying an
Englischer
or tell them they’d never consummated . . . His eyes burned at the thought.

“Do you want me to move out?” he asked Sam, his voice indicating he couldn’t care less.

“I want you to get up. It’s been weeks now, and I’m worried about you. You’ve got to—” He broke off at a knock on the door and returned to the couch with a brown paper-wrapped box. “Here, it’s for you.”

Jude grunted at the dropped weight and peered at the postmark. “It’s from my mother, no doubt. I’ll open it later.”

“Open it now.”

Jude glared at his friend and tore the wrappers off, tossing them on the floor. But then he sat up straighter as he read the brief note from his mother.

He opened the box and stared inside at the three books as Mary’s delicate scent wafted to him. He closed his eyes briefly against the swamping rush of pain.

“Well, what is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing, but you’ve got better color than I’ve seen on your face in a while.”

“They’re some books Mary left behind . . . her Bible, her mother’s cookbook, and
Wuthering Heights
.”

“Well, you’ve got the brooding Heathcliff down to a science, why not read the Bible and let me borrow the cookbook? I’m going to Carol’s parents’ tonight to cook her dinner.”

“Great,” Jude said in an absent voice; then he set the books carefully on the floor and pulled a cover up to his chin, closing his eyes. “I’m taking a nap.”

“Nap?” Sam cried. “It’s nine-thirty in the morning.”

“All the better,” Jude mumbled, already losing himself in the veiled comfort of sleep as the weight of Bear’s body on his legs soothed him for the moment.

 

 

Mary sat on the backless bench in Ben Kauffman’s barn, waiting for church services to begin. She sat beside Rachel Miller, near the other widows. There was no direct place for a woman who’d left her husband, but she’d thankfully found acceptance and community among her people.

Her thoughts drifted back to the morning she’d first climbed the mountain after leaving Jude and had gone to knock on her father’s door.

Joseph had opened the heavy wood and stared at her in disbelief as she’d collapsed with weariness into his arms. She knew she must have appeared quite a sight—a million miles from where she was supposed to be, her head bleeding from where she’d scraped it in the darkness, and her clothes torn and dirty.

“Mary?” Joseph had picked her up in his strong arms and carried her to her bed.

She’d lain, feverish and weak, for three days while her
fater
and
bruders
did everything they knew to comfort her.

And then Bishop Umble had arrived at her bedside.

“Can you tell me what happened, child?”

“I-I grew homesick, Bishop. Beyond what I could bear. I had to return.”

The old man had studied her with warm and wise eyes. “I see . . . homesick. It can be a terrible thing, this homesickness. Even in the Bible, Paul sent Epaphroditus back to his home because of longing. We do not begrudge your homesickness for your community. But should you ever want to tell me . . . more, I am here to listen and advise. We look forward to seeing you back at worship services when you are ready, child.”

Her
fater
had cried and blown his nose in his hankie. “So you’ll not shun her, Bishop? I am grateful. I think now that maybe I acted in haste in the hurrying of the marriage.”

Mary had blinked back tears as Bishop Umble patted her
dat
’s shoulder. “Now, Abner, we cannot undo the past but must learn from it, and look forward to
Gott
’s future plans.”

He’d nodded to Mary as he’d left the room and she’d felt great gratitude for the bishop’s mercy, even if his eyes said that he knew more than she was willing to speak.

Mary blinked, brought back to the present, as Rachel handed her a Bible. “Here, child. Take this. I noticed you were without and I have several at home.”

Mary stared down at the Book, remembering suddenly that she’d left hers at Jude’s house. She whispered her thanks to Rachel, then closed her eyes and began to pray that he might find her Bible and read it someday.

 

 

Jude rolled over on the couch, ignoring a groan from Bear at his movement. He stretched his hand down to the floor and caught up Mary’s heavy Bible. He scrabbled for his glasses on the end table, then propped himself up on one elbow to glance through the words. Written in High German, which he’d had to learn for his now-defunct
Amisch
studies career, the Bible seemed alien and strange to him even though he knew it was at the heart of what Mary believed. He sighed and was about to close it when he noticed the penciled writing in the front cover.

He peered closer at the double-sided flap and saw that Mary had handwritten notes and dates all over the white space—half in
Englisch
, half in Pennsylvania Dutch. He set his mind to translating and reviewing the quotes and thoughts she must have written during her private study or service. One in particular drew his eye and gave him pause.

Gott
is the only One Who can put a man back together again, and only if the man (or woman) will really embrace the pain of his life and be willing to become an authentic person.

He read the lines again, then felt his scruffy face and stared around the tiny room
. My father would never embrace the pain of his life . . . and I’m being exactly like him by lying here!

He sat up straight and pushed away the cover, ignoring Bear’s grunt of annoyance. He laid the Bible on the table, got up, and went to shower for the first time in days.