The Christmas Quilt. Patricia Davids

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Chapter Two

      Rebecca was still the loveliest woman Gideon had ever laid eyes on, and she had lied to him.

       Seeing her in person, it was as if a single day had passed—not ten years. Feelings he thought long dead and buried rushed to life, leaving him shaken. Coming here had been a bad idea.

       He stood near the back of the tent where he could keep an eye on Rebecca and the auction proceedings as he pondered the stunning information she’d revealed. The noise of the crowd, the chanting voice of the auctioneer, the shouts of his helpers as they spotted raised hands in the audience, all faded into a rumbling background for Gideon’s whirling mind.

       She obviously had no idea who he was, and he needed to keep it that way. His missing voice was a blessing in disguise. If she knew who he was, she wouldn’t have spoken to him at all.

       Because he had been baptized prior to leaving the faith he had been placed under the Meidung, the ban, making contact with his Amish family and friends impossible unless he publicly repented and asked for the church’s forgiveness. Bidding for Rebecca’s quilt at this auction would be his roundabout way of giving aid she could accept.

       By leaving the faith after making his vows he had cut himself off completely from everything he’d known. There were no visits from his family. No letters or phone calls telling him how they missed him. There had been many lonely nights during his first years in the non-Amish world when he’d almost gone back.

       Only having the eighth-grade education the Amish allowed made it tough finding a job. It had been tougher still getting a driver’s license and a social security card, worldly things the Amish rejected. If it hadn’t been for his dream of learning to fly, he might have gone back.

       If Rebecca had been waiting for him, he would have gone back.

       He hadn’t planned to speak to her today. His only intention had been to come, buy her quilt to help her raise money for her surgery and then leave town. He had the best of intentions—right up to the moment she sat down in front of him.

       So close he could have reached out and touched her. So close and yet so far.

       His hands ached with the need to feel her fingers entwined with his, the way they used to be when they had walked barefoot down a shady summer lane after the youth singings or a softball game. Life had been so simple then. It was so much more complicated now.

       Why, after all this time, did she still have such a profound effect on him? Even from this distance he felt the pull of her presence the same way he felt the pull of the earth when he was flying above it.

       He closed his eyes and shook his head. This was ridiculous. He wasn’t some green farm boy enchanted by a pretty face. He was a sensible, grown man long past teenage infatuations. It had to be a combination of the flu and nostalgia brought on by being surrounded by people who shared the heritage he’d grown up with.

       Everywhere he looked he saw Amish men with their beards and black felt hats. The women, wearing long dresses in muted solid colors with their white bonnets reminded him of his mother and his sisters.

       Shy, solemn and subdued when among the English, the Amish were gentle, loving people, happy to quietly raise their families and continue in a life that seemed centuries out of touch with the modern world.

       Would he even recognize his little brothers and sisters if they were here? Joseph, his baby brother, had been six when Gideon left. He’d be a teenager now and ready to begin his rumspringa. He would be free to explore worldly ways in order to understand what he was giving up before he took the vows of the faithful.

       Did Joseph long for the outside world that had taken his older brother? If so, Gideon prayed he would go before his baptism. That way he could be free to visit his parents and see his old friends without being shunned. Gideon wondered about them often, thought of driving out to see them, but having left under such a cloud, he believed a clean break was the best way. Was it? How could he ever be sure?

       Gideon adjusted his aviator sunglasses and glanced around. He doubted anyone he knew would recognize him. He wore a knit cap pulled low on his forehead. His hair was shaggy and a bit unkempt, unlike the uniformly neat haircuts of the Amish men around him.

       His eyes were sunken and red from his illness and the long road trip. Two days’ worth of beard stubble shadowed his cheeks. Glances in his rearview mirror on the way down showed a man who looked like death warmed over. No, no one was likely to recognize him. That was a good thing.

       He was an English stranger, not the Amish youth who once asked Rebecca Beachy for her hand in marriage. Confusion swirled through his mind when he thought again of how she had deceived him.

       He’d known her since their school days. They’d grown up on neighboring farms. They had courted for two full years and he proposed to her a week before her twenty-first birthday. Yet she’d just told him she learned she was going blind when she was twenty. Why hadn’t she told him back then?

       She broke his heart when she said she’d been mistaken about her feelings for him. Was that the truth or had it been a lie? Her sudden change of heart hadn’t made sense back then any more than it did now.

       Did she think he couldn’t handle the truth? Or had she known he would eventually leave the Amish and tried to protect herself from that heartache? Maybe she’d wanted to spare him a lifetime spent with a blind wife.

       Shouldn’t that have been his choice to make?

       His fingers curled into fists. Had he known the truth he would have stood by her.

       Wouldn’t he? Gideon bit the corner of his lip. Would knowing her condition have changed him from a dissatisfied youth itching to leave the restrictive Amish life into one who welcomed the challenge God placed before him?

       He knew Rebecca wouldn’t leave the faith. They’d had plenty of discussions about it in the months they were together. She knew of his discontent. When she broke off their courtship, he left home in a fit of sullen temper and cut himself off from everything and everyone he’d known. Because of her.

       No, that wasn’t fair. He left because he wanted something only the outside world could offer. He wanted to fly. He’d wanted her more, but without her his choice had been clear.

       Would he have married Rebecca knowing she wouldn’t be able to see his face or the faces of their children? He wanted to believe he would have, but he was far from sure.

       He watched as several Amish women stopped to speak to her and the woman she sat with. One of them held a baby in her arms while a fussy toddler clung to her skirt. They were the same women he’d seen with her on television. The young mother handed her baby to Rebecca and picked up her older child, a little girl with dark hair and eyes.