Return to Grace. Karen Harper

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СКАЧАТЬ photo of Jack and his ex while she was looking for candlesticks today. It had been shoved, facedown, under some candles and matchbooks in an end table drawer.

      As she ran cold water over her burn, she pictured their faces in the photo again, though it was the last thing she wanted in her head right now. They’d both looked so young and happy. Lillian Freeman was a pretty blonde, big-busted but not fat. Hopefully, Jack preferred Ray-Lynn’s real red hair to that bleached blond, but sometimes men couldn’t see through that and a blonde was a blonde. In the pic, they were sitting on a fence somewhere, grinning like all get-out, him in his marine uniform, her flaunting great legs in shorts and her breasts in a skimpy top.

      “Smells like meat loaf!” Jack said when he came back in. “You okay, honey?” he asked when he saw her holding her finger under running water.

      “Just a little burn.”

      He came over and hugged her from behind. “I’m starved, but willing to kiss it—kiss you—to make it better.”

      “And who said the way to a man’s heart is only through his stomach?” She turned in his arms to face him as he pressed her against the sink and kissed her again. They both ignored the running water, though they could have used a bit of a cold shower right now, she thought as she kissed him back hard again and slid her hands, burn or not, in the back pockets of his pants.

      She was surprised when he broke their embrace, leaning past her closer to the window over the sink. He cracked the curtains and squinted out into the November night. Her head cleared. She heard something outside, too.

      “Bad timing,” he said. “Headlights from someone pulling in. Hope it’s not the G-man, but someone might be in trouble. Don’t recognize the car.”

      “If they come to the back door,” she said, straightening her blouse and smoothing her hair, “it must be someone who knows you.”

      To her dismay, he strapped his gun belt back on as someone knocked hard on the back door. He motioned for Ray-Lynn to step out of the kitchen, and she did, hovering in the hall where she could see the back door in the hall mirror.

      As Jack opened the door and a blast of cold air rolled in, Ray-Lynn gasped and pressed both hands over her mouth to stifle a shriek. Though she’d never met the woman, she recognized her image in the mirror the minute Jack opened the door. “Lily?” he asked, sounding shocked, but excited, as well. “Lily!”

      “Jackman!” his former wife cried. “I’ve come home! I’ve missed you so much, baby, but I was scared to call ahead in case you said not to come!”

      Lillian Freeman—if that was still her name after four years away—threw her arms around Jack’s neck as he took a step back in surprise, then hugged her as she burst into tears. Ray-Lynn fled into the living room, grabbed her jacket and purse and cried, too, all the way to her car.

      She fumbled with the key in the ignition and backed down the driveway before remembering to turn her headlights on. Jack ran out and shouted something to her, but she spun her wheels and roared off into the dark night.

      4

      HANNAH WAKENED TO THE MUTED THUD-THUD of Mamm’s hand-operated pressing machine that put the creases in the stiff, white prayer kapps she made in the old sunroom at the rear of the house, a familiar sound that always carried up the back wall. She opened her eyes, then closed them again. It was bad enough to have to look at the wrapped gauze and taped bandage on her left wrist and the array of pills on the bedside table but worse to feel she was in a time warp. Except for moving her twin bed to the guest room and storing some wedding supplies here, Naomi hadn’t changed much of their shared back-corner bedroom after Hannah had left.

      From the top of the familiar maple dresser, Hannah’s bonneted childhood doll seemed to stare at her for all the things she’d done wrong, despite being eyeless and faceless. Strange to have the feeling she was being watched in this private, second-story bedroom in the middle of open fields.

      Despite her pain pills, she hadn’t slept well because she’d heard some sort of unfamiliar flapping, like bird wings, from time to time. Maybe it was a loose shingle on the roof in the brisk wind that had now calmed a bit. If Seth was working up on the roof today, she hoped he’d be careful. Amish men didn’t use safety harnesses, for whatever happened was God’s will, one thing she’d learned to question during her days in the world. After all, sometimes people’s injuries were their own stupid fault.

      But one huge change in this spot of her happy childhood and rumspringa years were the signs of Naomi’s coming wedding adorning the room: a treadle sewing machine with a nearly completed, sky-blue wedding dress, bolts of burgundy material for her four attendants’ dresses, boxes of favors and inscribed napkins stacked in the corner by the closet. The talk at supper last night had been all about the Esh-Troyer marriage. Well, of course, Hannah could see why. It wasn’t just to avoid talking about the mess she’d made of her life. Amish weddings were planned and prepared quickly after the announcement in church of the betrothal. With so many invited, lots of people pitched in, preparing to feed nearly four hundred guests at a wedding feast with a traditional, home-cooked meal.

      In the emotion of her reunion with Naomi yesterday—Hannah knew her younger sister had looked up to her just as she had to her older, now-married sisters, Ida and Ruth—she had promised not only to attend the wedding but to help with it. Nothing like facing the entire Amish community she’d let down. At least she had until a week from today to prepare herself for that.

      Hannah groaned, sat up carefully and gasped to see a small, round face staring up at her over the side of the bed. So that’s why she felt she was being watched. It was a darling little Amish doll—a living one, with a pert mouth and wide, azure eyes.

      “Where Naomi?” the child asked in their German dialect. Then Hannah knew who it was. Not the niece whose birth she’d missed while she was gone, but Seth and Lena’s little daughter, Marlena, now around two and a half years old.

      “I’m Hannah,” she told the child, and her voice broke. Like an idiot, she blinked back tears. The little girl resembled Seth more than Lena. “I—I can help you find Naomi.”

      “Daadi go up,” Marlena said, pointing at the ceiling or, more likely, the roof since Seth was reroofing the house, though she hadn’t heard one hammer or nail when it must be midmorning. “Mamm go up, too,” Marlena added.

      “Oh, there you are!” Naomi cried, rushing into the room and scooping up the child. “She was playing in the hall when I went to use the bathroom.”

      “Naomi,” Hannah said as she swung her feet carefully to the floor, “you do not have to move out of your room for me, especially not with all you have going on here.”

      “It was our room for years and still is!” Naomi insisted. “And now it can be yours, because after next Thursday, we’ll be living with Josh’s folks for a while. I’m fine in Ida and Ruth’s old room.”

      “Daadi go up,” Marlena said again, pointing. “Up to the sky.” The child squirmed to be put down, toddled to the back window facing the barn and craned her neck to peer skyward.

      “I’ll have to tell Seth you’re up, and he can pound away on the new shingles now,” Naomi said. “He didn’t want to wake you, so he’s helping Daad stack firewood. As for this little one, she thinks her daadi goes up on the roof looking for her mamm, who is in heaven.”

      “Oh, СКАЧАТЬ