An Unexpected Match Read online

Chapter 19

  Rachel watched Amy unlock the door. How brave she was being! Whatever went on here had hurt and hurt badly.

  A brown and white beagle raced out as soon as the door opened. He ran to Amy and went crazy, jumping on her, making noises deep in his throat. Amy fell to her knees and hugged the animal who proceeded to lick away her tears.

  “Oh, Bagel, I’ve missed you!” She buried her face in his neck. “I’ll never leave you again, I promise. Don’t you worry. I’m taking you with me.”

  “We’re taking the dog with us?” Rob asked as Charlie returned from his trip inspecting the backyard.

  Rachel looked at Amy and her dog in their frenzied embrace. “Do you really need an answer?”

  “I hope her landlord knows.”

  “Bagel the beagle.” Win grinned. “Cute. I wonder who came up with that?”

  Amy rose with a final pat on Bagel’s head. “It’d be nice if I could say I was, oh, thirteen, and thought it was so cute. I was twenty-two and still thought it cute.”

  She looked at the dog who sat at her feet with an adoring look on his face. “At least he’s cute even if the name’s dumb. Aren’t you, baby?”

  Bagel went into another paroxysm of joy at Amy’s attention.

  Amy laughed. “I rescued him without telling my father and brought him home before he got back from work. Everyone was in love with the boy by the time Dad got here. Even Miss Evelyn who happened to be visiting loved him. It was too late to get rid of Bagel without having a bunch of weeping women.” She grinned her impish grin, then turned solemn. “Dad never forgave me for outwitting him.”

  Amy bent, took the dog’s face in her hands, and kissed his nose. “But the boy is worth every minute of the anger and abuse the man could dish out, aren’t you, baby?”

  Bagel kissed her back.

  Rachel watched Amy and Bagel and glanced at Rob who was absently scratching Charlie’s head. Maybe she should consider a dog. Not an outdoor dog like Pepper or Corny but an indoor one like these two. Maybe it’d help with the loneliness that sometimes plagued her, especially on the long winter evenings.

  Amy moved away from Bagel, and he saw Charlie for the first time. Bagel started barking like a mad thing and a ridge of hair rose on Charlie’s back.

  Then again maybe she was better off petless.

  “Stop it, Bagel! No barking,” Amy ordered to no result.

  Rob dropped to one knee and put his arm around Charlie’s back. Charlie looked at him, uncertain. “It’s okay, big man. He’s a friend.” He held out his hand to Bagel.

  Amy dropped down beside Bagel and laid a hand on his back. “Shush, baby,” she said quietly. “Shush. It’s just Charlie.” She held her hand out to the big dog.

  The animals’ original surprise and accompanying animosity defused, Bagel and Charlie began sniffing each other in the time-honored and ill-mannered method of dogs everywhere.

  “Catastrophe averted,” Amy said happily. “Let’s get to work. It shouldn’t take long.”

  Rachel followed Amy into the house. The entry hall held a closet which Amy opened. She sorted through the jackets and coats hanging there and pulled out three, a heavy down jacket, a gray wool pea coat, and a black fleece jacket.

  “Cold weather’s coming. I’m going to need these soon.” She put them on the chair by the front door.

  Off to the left Rachel glimpsed a neat living room full of furniture covered in a rather overwhelming brown plaid. A sculpted beige rug covered the floor, and sheer beige curtains hung at the windows. It wasn’t as Spartan as an Amish living room, but it was somehow depressing. Or maybe Amy’s comments about the place had caused her reaction. Either way she preferred her bare white walls and green shades.

  “Come on,” Amy said. “Let’s go upstairs. That’s where we’ll find my stuff.” She led the way and the others followed.

  Pictures of groups of people lined the walls of the stairwell.

  Rachel stopped and studied the groups of people crowded together in them. They looked very sober and stiff. “Are you in these?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  Win stopped and studied one picture. “Interesting looking group. A little old-timey with the long dresses and hair.”

  Amy snorted and kept climbing.

  A long hall had several doors opening off it. As they walked past the first two, Rachel saw bedrooms done in basic furniture: a wooden twin bed, a matching dresser, a straight back chair. Plain bedspreads covered the beds, one blue, the other green. A wooden cross hung above each bed.

  The rooms looked remarkably like hers at home except for the cross and the bedspreads. Rachel’s bed had a lovely quilt done in calicos of soft blues, greens, purples, pinks, and yellows, more a quilt like those made for the tourists than for an Amish home. Rachel loved it because it reminded her of spring even in the middle of winter, and it kept her toasty even in the cold bedroom where her only heat was what her small kerosene space heater provided.

  They passed a bathroom, and at the end of the hall Rachel could see the master bedroom with its large bed, again covered with a plain spread, this one gray. A square gray rug covered the floor.

  Amy stood in front of a closed door.

  “Your room?” Rachel could feel Amy’s nervousness.

  “My room.” Amy reached out a hand that trembled slightly and pushed the door. Its hinges creaked as it slowly opened. Amy gasped.

  The room was empty. No bed. No dresser. No rug. Nothing. Only the cross hung where the bed must have stood.

  Amy walked in and turned in a circle. Bagel followed her and sat at her side. When she looked at Rachel and the men standing in the doorway, her eyes were tear-filled. “It’s like I never lived here. Like I never existed.”

  “Oh, Amy.” Rachel ached for her friend. She walked into the room and reached for her as she would one of her sisters if she were hurting.

  Amy took a step back, hand held out to keep Rachel away. “Don’t. I’ll fall apart and weep all over you.”

  Rachel nodded. She understood that fragile edge of control.

  Amy took a long shaky breath. “I thought Mom would keep my things safe. Or maybe Alice and Annie.” She blinked furiously. “I should have known better. He always overpowers them.”

  Rachel felt her own heart break a bit more for her friend. In the doorway Rob and Win shifted uneasily at such raw pain.

  “He thinks he beat me,” Amy said, her voice suddenly hard even as tears continued to fall. “He made sure that if I ever come back, it’ll be on my knees, begging him to take me in. First I’ll have to beg to get in the door and then beg to have a bed to sleep in. He’d have given away the room itself if it weren’t attached to the house.”

  Bagel leaned against her and looked up with sad eyes, like he knew what she was feeling and shared her sorrow.

  Rachel couldn’t resist. She rested a comforting hand on Amy’s back, letting her know she wasn’t alone.

  “This is embarrassing.” Amy drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I bring you all the way up here to get my stuff, and it’s not even here.”

  There was a knock on the front door and a voice called, “Hello?”

  “I’ll go,” Rob said and went down the stairs, Charlie’s nails snick-snicking after him on the wooden treads.

  Rachel looked out the window and saw a white van with Animal Control painted on its side in black lettering. She looked at Bagel, the only animal she’d seen on the premises.

  “Do you think he sold your things?” Win circled the room. “Maybe he just put them in the attic or the basement.”

  Amy brightened a bit. “Maybe. It’s not like him to just give things away. If he put them in the attic, he’d be happy because I’d still have to beg to get them back.”

  Glancing out the window again Rachel watched a man in a tan uniform walk to the van. In his hand he held a long stick that had a flexible loop at one end, the kind she’d seen vicious dogs led away with. Again she glanced at Bagel who sat loyally
at Amy’s side.

  Rob appeared in the doorway.

  “Who was it?” Win asked when Amy didn’t seem to notice his return.

  “Nothing important. I told him he should talk to Amy’s father, and he left.”

  When the van drove off, Rachel turned from the window and looked at Rob. He gave her a sad smile.

  “Let’s check the attic.” Amy said with a clap of her hands, her usual verve replacing her distress. “This way.”

  She went to a door at the far end of the hallway, pulling it open and flipping on the light. Bagel raced up the steps, Charlie at his heels, and Amy and Win followed.

  Rachel waited until Amy was out of earshot and then turned to Rob. “Animal control?”

  Rob nodded. “Here for a vicious dog named Bagel. Its owner asked that the animal be taken while the family was away so the children wouldn’t be traumatized.”

  She thought of Amy’s affection for the little dog. Most Amish families saw their animals as working stock, not pets, but they wouldn’t send a perfectly healthy dog to the pound where it might be destroyed. They certainly wouldn’t lie and call a docile pet vicious. “How sneaky and cruel.”

  “What is it with fathers?” Rob muttered more to himself than Rachel.

  Rachel, who had followed through on googling Rob’s “notorious” father, hurt for him. “Too bad you don’t know my father. He’s the kind of man a father should be.”

  He looked at her with a light in his eyes that made her warm all over. “Maybe someday. Who knows?”

  “Who knows” she whispered. And wouldn’t that be a day.

  She and Rob climbed to the attic where they found Bagel lying on a dog bed in the corner of the room. His chin rested on a scruffy looking teddy bear that had seen better days.

  “He took the dog’s bed and toy away because he was angry at me!” Amy knelt beside the dog and stroked his head. His tail slapped the bed. “All Bagel ever did was like me more than him.”

  And who could blame him? Rachel thought and immediately felt guilty. She didn’t even know the man and she was judging him.

  “Is this your stuff?” Win called from the far end of the attic which stretched the length of the house.

  Amy hurried over and gave a happy bounce. “My bed, my bureau, all my stuff! Yes!”

  “Tell us what to take, and let’s get it onto the truck before your father comes home.” Win rubbed his hand over the headboard. “I don’t feel like meeting him today.” He paused and then added, “Or any day.”

  Amy gave a shaky laugh. “That makes two of us, but not to worry. He won’t be home until tomorrow evening. This is Meeting Weekend. He’s busy listening to Miss Evelyn and Mr. Jerry harangue him, and he’s liking it!” Her voice was equal parts disbelief and outrage.

  Rob and Win clomped down the stairs with the headboard and footboard of Amy’s bed. When they came back, they took the matching bureau. Rachel and Amy manhandled the mattress and box springs.

  “Clothes?” Rachel asked as she stood panting by the pickup.

  “I don’t want most of them. They’re embarrassing they’re so ugly. Just look at the pictures in the stairwell.”

  When she went inside and studied the photos, Rachel saw Plain in the women’s clothes though there were no head coverings. “Is your family some Plain sect I’m not familiar with?” In every Plain sect she knew of, the women wore head coverings.

  Amy came to stand beside her. “I wish. That wouldn’t be nearly as weird. They’re part of this house church gone off the tracks. When I was a little kid, the group was fine. The people were strict but nice and normal. Jesus was the center of everything. Then Miss Evelyn and Mr. Jerry joined the group, and that was the beginning of going sour. They said God called them to the group to be its leaders and Scripture says you have to obey your leaders. Miss Evelyn said she was a prophetess sent to us by God.”

  “They just walked in and took over?” Rob asked. “No selection process of those worthy to lead like Scripture says?”

  “I wonder about religion.” Win stopped on the stairs behind the girls and studied the pictures. “It seems to make people go nuts.”

  “I guess religion can do that.” Rob pointed to the pictures. “That’s religion. Rules. Faith is different. Faith is believing, and it should be filled with grace, not rules, though things should be done decently and in order.”

  “If you say so.” But Win’s doubt was obvious.

  Amy ran a finger over an image of herself in a group of about thirty people, adults and children. She wore a baggy dress and a frown and had her hair pulled back and falling long down her back. “You were supposed to wear your hair long until you married. Then you wore it up. That’s Alice and Annie.” She pointed to the girls on either side of her, both with hair hanging to their waists. “And that’s Mama and that’s my father.”

  Rachel thought Mama looked about as sad as a person could look, and Amy’s father looked as stern and unbendable as the strictest bishop. She thought of Mom and Datt and knew she was blessed.

  “When I look at these pictures,” Amy said, “I have to keep reminding myself not to throw Jesus out with the bathwater.”

  “I thought that was Moses,” Win said, and laughed at his joke. Amy just looked at him.

  “You know—the bulrushes and all.”

  “I know. And you know exactly what I meant.”

  Win shrugged. “I just didn’t expect you and Jesus.”

  “We’re tight.” Amy wrapped her fingers together to show how tight.

  “Where’s the picture taken?” Rob asked. “Looks like tents in the background.”

  “They take a picture every year at Meeting Weekend. They rent a private campground and have church all weekend. And I mean all weekend. No breaks. No free time. Church.” She shuddered. “It was excruciating.”

  “You wore dresses camping?” Win said.

  “Only harlots and whores wear pants.” She looked at him. “Didn’t you know that?”

  “Then this should be a very interesting evening.” He wiggled his eyebrows and glanced at her legs in their jeans.

  Amy held up her index finger and shook it at him. “Unh-unh, wise guy. Remember, I didn’t throw Jesus out.”

  Rob shot his brother a quelling look. “Easy, Win. I think we’d better get back to work. Personal things, Amy? Jewelry? Photos?”

  “I took the photos I wanted when I left and I wasn’t allowed to have jewelry. But I had a hope chest. It should be around here somewhere.”

  “As in I’m-gonna-get-married hope chest?” Win asked.

  “It’s loaded with the linens and dishes and pots and pans I was supposedly saving for the happy union with someone my father selected for me with the approval of Miss Evelyn and Mr. Jerry.”

  “He was going to pick your husband?” Rachel thought of Aaron and their courtship and engagement. Certainly they’d sought their parents’ approval, but they chose each other first.

  “Oh, yeah. Everything was his right as father. Children obey your parents and all that. That’s why I had to get out before it was too late. First, I’m not a child anymore. I want to make my own choices. And, second, he’d settled on a guy Mr. Jerry suggested and planned to announce our engagement this weekend at camp. Miss Evelyn was going to bless us so everybody knew this was of God. Who cared what I thought?”

  “Do I hear a touch of bitterness there?” Win asked.

  “Oh, yeah, and more than a touch. ‘He will be strong,’ my father used to say, threaten really, because I needed someone who could force me to his will rather than my own sinful selfish desires. In other words, someone who will squash my tendency to think. After all, a man always knows best.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Win with a smile.

  Amy scowled at him, then turned to Rachel. “Come on, there are some boxes of mine in the attic.”

  An hour later when they climbed back in the truck, Charlie took his seat in the middle of the front seat and Bagel settled in Amy’s lap in
the back.

  “Sweet boy, you are free!” Amy fondled his ears. “Free!”

  Rob turned the key and the engine throbbed to life.

  Amy gave one final look at the gray house. “He often told us that if we ever defied him, we would never be forgiven. If we left, we could never come back.”

  “Isn’t that what the Amish call shunning?” Win asked.

  Rachel couldn’t resist explaining. “Shunning is supposed to make the shunned person see his or her wrong and repent. It’s a last resort and done with sorrow.”

  She thought of the people she knew who’d been shunned. Usually it didn’t go that far when someone was confronted with a sin. They acknowledged their sin to the Gmay and everything was fine. When it went as far as shunning, the person often was too set in his wrong ways to return.

  “With my father, it was strictly punishment,” Amy said. “And humiliation.”

  “Law with no grace.” Rob backed out of the drive.

  “Exactly.” Amy looked at the house with sad eyes. “I miss my mom. She’s totally under my father’s domination, but she loves us kids. I know I hurt her by leaving, and it makes me feel bad, but I had no choice. I couldn’t let them eat me whole. I couldn’t let them make me marry some guy I don’t even know!”

  “You never even met him?” Rachel couldn’t imagine such a thing.

  Amy shook her head. “He’s from another house church that’s as weird as ours.”

  “An arranged marriage.” Win smirked. “I thought they only happened in romance novels.”

  “You read romance novels?” Amy looked scandalized.

  “Mom does. And she tells me all about them.”

  “Another reason to get your own place,” Rob said as he drove through town.

  Win shrugged. “Small price for home cooked meals.”

  “I worry about my sisters,” Amy said. “Will they be strong enough to leave or will they marry some guy Miss Evelyn and Mr. Jerry pick because they don’t think they have a choice?”

  “I’m sorry, Amy.” Rachel gave her friend a hug. “Maybe someday you can help them escape if they want it.”

  “Maybe.” Amy hugged Rachel back, holding on tightly, Bagel squished between them. “You guys have no idea what your acceptance of me means. That first night of class when I suggested coffee, I was scared to death.”