“I understand.” Katie batted her eyes, as though she was fighting back tears. “I don’t like that I made you question me though.”
The Wagler’s farm came into view over the turn in the path. Had they gone the other way, they would have ended up at Joseph’s house. Katie looked at Peter’s house, where he currently did not live, and stopped. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“I’m going to run on ahead,” Thomas shouted from the end of the path. “Don’t worry, Sissy, I see where we are going and I know the rule. I’ll wave at you from the porch.”
Rebekah waved him off. “Save me a seat next to you, okay?”
“Okay, Sissy!”
Rebekah sighed and looked at the Wagler’s farm. They lost their son to Rumspringa. Now, it appears that they’ve lost their adopted son to Katie’s Rumspringa.
“Katie,” Rebekah shifted uncomfortably. “May I be honest?”
“Of course.” Her eyes were downcast and she looked meeker than she’d ever looked before in her two decades of knowing her. Normally spiffy and spry, Katie now looked incredibly sorry.
“I don’t think I’m the one you should be telling this to.”
Katie looked up at Rebekah. “You weren’t the first one I came to with this, Rebekah.”
Knots fell in Rebekah’s gut.
Joseph.
“No, not Joseph.” Katie’s eyes twinkled. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Thank you, Katie. For saying that.” Is that Katie giving me her blessing?
“It was Peter.” Katie twisted her toe in the dirt. “I’ve been going to see him every day since we’ve been back.”
Rebekah was taken aback. “You have?”
“Of course.”
“Is he coming to be baptized today?”
She shrugged. “He never said.”
Rebekah started walking toward the Wagler home. “Well, let’s go see if he’s there!”
“I’m not going.”
Rebekah stopped walking. She turned back. “What?”
“I’m not going.” Katie scanned the horizon. A buggy pulled up along the back road. Rebekah watched as she hid herself behind a tree. “I was so jealous, Rebekah. I thought he’d moved on with Patty and her son, sweet little Noah. I have to get my head on straight. I have been in almost constant prayer. She’s his cousin and yours too. I have felt foolish before, but never like that. Never that foolish.”
“If you were afraid he moved on, doesn’t that tell you that you love him and you should come?”
“I don’t know if he’s coming. What if he sees me there, then rushes in and gets baptized, then...? I don’t know. Maybe he regrets it later.” Katie stepped back out on the trail. The buggy was just Rebekah’s Ma and Pa and brothers. Not Peter. “He has to make this decision for himself. I am taking myself out of the...what do you call it, you were good in math.”
“Equation?”
“That. Yes.”
“Church is starting, Katie,” Rebekah started out of the woods and toward the Wagler’s. “I wish you’d reconsider and come.”
A smile of sorts flickered across Katie’s face. “I’m with you. I’m home and gladly so.” She shifted her weight. “There’s something else, Rebekah.”
Rebekah dipped her head and studied Katie. “Yes?”
“I did something especially horrible to you while we were in New York City.”
Icy bits of fear shinnied down her backbone. “You did?”
Katie studied the ground and kicked at a toadstool. “If I hadn’t gone there, you wouldn’t have had to endure the worst apple pie in New York City.”
Rebekah puffed out a laugh with such force her covering strings flew forward and whipped back, hitting her in the nose. “It was terrible, wasn’t it?”
“I know you know what the ingredient was that left the crust bitter. I told Nellie Bly so.”
Rebekah beamed. To have been spoken of highly, by Katie, made her heart fill with a new warmth that hadn’t been there before. “I did name the ingredient, though I had to think on it for a while, and I believe it just got knocked in by accident.”
“Was it orange peel?”
“It burned too much to be orange peel,” Rebekah started. “Good guess though, it certainly had the bitterness of orange peel.”
Katie nodded.
“But I believe it was watercress.”
Katie flung her arms. “Yes, of course it was watercress!”
The girls shared a laugh, a comfortable one. A familial, loving one.
“Come with me, Katie.” Rebekah tried to keep the begging note from entering her voice. But above all else, she simply didn’t want to let this warm feeling with Katie go.
“I wish I could, Rebekah.” The smile faded from Katie’s face. “But not today. Just not this service.”
***
True to his word, Thomas Stoll, and his cat, saved Rebekah a seat in the Wagler’s barn. Peter’s absence, of course, was noted by everyone in attendance. They’d been there, watching and singing as he was instructed in the ways of the Amish for the past year. They’d seen his growth, and even grown with him. They grew to love him, and he them and their ways. So they thought. The mark of pain was evident on everyone’s face in the Wagler’s barn and it embarrassed Rebekah considerably.
With Joseph across the aisle from her in the men’s section, she felt naked. Exposed. With no one to hide behind and nowhere to bury her face to hide from the world. She must have looked scared because Thomas slid his cat into her lap. He didn’t speak, that would have not been fitting behavior for a Stoll child, and they all knew better. He didn’t have to. The simple silent gesture spoke volumes.
Then, the hymn they were singing from the Ausbund came to a natural end. Now would be when Peter was called up to join the Church. And the faith. And the community. And the Wagler’s, as their son. Just as Simon Wagler, Joseph’s foster father, pushed himself to his feet, someone coughed behind Rebekah. She turned and squinted into the sun.
“Peter!”
She couldn’t help herself. Her brother was there! The collective breath the church had been holding exhaled and for an instant, everything felt all right.
