Katie's Choice Read online

  The question was: Who would help her if she started to care for the blond-haired man from the big city?

  Ridiculous. She had control over her feelings. There was no need to be concerned. God was on her side. He would help her fight the feelings that Zane Carson sent zinging through her. Obviously it wasn’t God who was testing her, but the devil himself.

  “Of course.” She smiled as if his grin didn’t melt her heart with its charm. She swung her bag across her shoulder and preceded him to the door. He stood too close as she pulled it shut and locked it behind them. She felt every steady breath, heard every beat of his heart. “We have to lock the school against vandals,” she said, her voice squeaky.

  “Vandals? Are you serious?”

  “Jah, I’m afraid so. Most of Clover Ridge is happy to share the town with us, but there are a few who do not understand our ways. They think they can bully us into changin’.”

  He nodded. The wind ruffled through his hair, the sun burnishing the strands to near copper. “I understand. I grew up in a cooperative in Oregon, and a lot of people there didn’t like what we stood for.”

  “A cooperative?”

  “A commune. A hippie compound.”

  She frowned. “What is a hippie?”

  He laughed, but she could tell that he wasn’t laughing at her.

  “Hippies are a lot like the Amish, but with modern clothes and without the Bible.”

  “And this is where you were raised?”

  “For most of my childhood.” He tripped down the steps, and Katie Rose took a big gulp of Zane-free air.

  “What did you do with the rest of it?” she asked, following him down the stairs.

  “My parents died in a fire when I was ten. My uncle—my father’s brother—came to Oregon and took me back to Chicago.”

  “And you were close to your uncle?”

  “I’d never seen him before that day. He wasn’t the easiest guy to get to know.”

  “That is a sad tale, Zane Carson.” She held her voice steady as they started for home.

  He shrugged. “I learned a lot from the experience. How to adapt, how to survive. It’s carried me well though my life. Though it was quite a shock to go from commune living to inner city Chicago.”

  Katie Rose was careful not to let their shoulders touch as they walked side by side. “So it was like your own rumspringa.”

  He smiled. “I guess you could say that. Tell me about your ‘run around’ time.”

  “There is not much to tell.”

  “What did you do? What was the one thing that you longed for?”

  Even as she enjoyed her time in the world, her only heart’s desire had been what she would get when she joined the church fold: Samuel Beachy as her wedded husband. That was all she had ever wished for—even when she wore pigtails and a pinafore.

  Samuel was everything she had wanted and more. A godly man, the son of the bishop, he was from a good Amish family. He was handsome and charming, destined to be a fine member in the community until . . .

  “Movies,” she said. “I really enjoyed going to the movies. Eating popcorn and watching the pictures move in front of me like they were so close I could almost touch them.” She had enjoyed the movies, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from being Samuel Beachy’s wife. Even when she set out to experience the outside world, she knew she would return. There were kids who lost their raisin’ as they went out, drinking alcohol and going to parties. Most returned; some didn’t. Like her Samuel.

  If Zane Carson thought she was hiding something, he didn’t let on. Instead he just nodded. “Movies are the best. It’s the one thing I miss the most when I’m on assignment.”

  “Do you really write about wars, Zane Carson?”

  “I really do.”

  Katie Rose couldn’t help the shudder that rocked through her. So much destruction, so much heartache. “How do you do it? Watch those people suffer for no reason?”

  “It’s what I do.”

  That was no kind of answer.

  He pressed his lips together, then shook his head as if he didn’t have the words to answer. “I can’t change the world. And I don’t leave my emotions behind. I’ve cried at some of the things I’ve seen. But there’s something about being out there, something that makes me feel . . . alive.”

  “I don’t understand, Zane Carson.”

  He let out a sigh. “I don’t understand it myself. I just know that’s what I was born to do.”

  “Then why are you here, instead of where the war may be?”

  He waited so long Katie Rose wondered if he was planning to answer at all.

  “I was shot.”

  Her heart stuttered in her chest, and her stomach roiled. The mere mention that he’d been hurt and could have died sent tremors through her.

  “Are you okay?” He reached out to touch her cheek, but stopped, balling his hand into a fist before dropping it back to his side.

  “Jah,” she whispered. Then louder, “Nay. You were shot? You could have died.”

  He shrugged as if it was of no concern. “But I didn’t.”

  “And then you came back? To America?”

  “About six months ago.”

  “And after you leave here?” She asked the question, though for sure and for certain she didn’t want to know the answer.

  “I’ll go back to Chicago for a while, and then to Juarez, Mexico.”

  Even the Amish knew of the troubles on the US border with Mexico. Her breath caught in her throat. The mere thought of him being in harm’s way was enough to bring tears to her eyes. She turned away so he couldn’t see and said the only thing she could. “I will pray for you, Zane Carson.”

  “Thank you,” was all he said in return.

  “Zane Carson!”

  He looked up from where he walked the fence with John Paul, checking for any holes and weak spots that would allow the livestock to escape. So far they hadn’t found anything, but something was scaring the horses, keeping them on the run for hours on end. The poor beasts were coming into the barn each evening, lathered and exhausted.

  John Paul thought perhaps a coyote might be responsible.

  Zane shaded his eyes and watched as Abram approached. Saturday was upon them once again. All in all, the last week had been as good as the first. Four days of deep, untroubled sleep achieved without pills. Four days of hard, yet satisfying work. Of home-cooked meals and the best coffee he’d ever tasted. Four days since he had last seen Katie Rose.

  He didn’t know why he’d told her about being shot, other than she asked and it was the truth. But his words had caused her pain for some reason. Maybe she, too, felt the pull between them. So Zane did the only thing he could do. He avoided her. He stayed away on Wednesday when she came by to take Annie to town to get some new fabric for a dress. And again on Thursday when she stopped to check the outcome of Ruth’s latest doctor appointment.

  Thankfully, Ruth Fisher was a fighter. Her checkup went well. It wouldn’t be long before she’d be declared cancer free. Zane knew all the Fishers were counting down to that day.

  “Abram,” he called in return.

  “Get the horses readied, we need to go visitin’. Hitch ’em to the wagon. There’s work to be done.”

  Among his list of accomplishments this trip, Zane had learned to hitch the horses to the buggy with expert skill. He didn’t know why the skill pleased him so, but it did. Maybe because John Paul had tried his hand at being English and drove like a blind NASCAR racer while Zane had taken to the change like a baby to his mother’s milk.

  “Jah,” he said, lifting his hat from his head and wiping his forehead on his sleeve. He knew better than to protest about the interrupted chores. The first reason, there were always chores. They walked the fences continually sea
rching for weak spots, holes that could damage the horses and cattle, and tracks for wild animals like the coyote they suspected was running their stock.

  And secondly, he’d learned that it wasn’t a good idea to argue with Abram. He was the undisputed leader of the household. It was his way always—though Zane was certain Ruth and Annie could talk him into doing almost anything they wanted as long as they did so over a piece of pie.

  “Come on, John Paul, you come, too.”

  “Where are we goin’?” John Paul asked his father as they crossed the pasture toward him. Together, they all turned to walk toward the barn.

  “We need to go check on old Ezekiel Esh.”

  “He’s the deacon,” John Paul explained. “Very old.”

  “So I gathered.”

  Zane whistled for the horses. They trotted up, their coats glossy in the afternoon sun.

  He loved the beasts. They were magnificent, strong, and proud. Every time he got near them he thought it a shame that man had invented the automobile.

  Once the horses and wagon were ready to go, Abram loaded some tools and lumber into the back. John Paul jumped in, and they started off toward the Esh place.

  Half an hour later when they pulled into the dirt drive that led to the deacon’s house, Zane remembered passing it on the way to town.

  It was in need of work, a lot of work.

  “Ezekiel Esh doesn’t have kin around here to help. His last boy moved off to Missouri a year ago,” Abram explained. “His wife’s been gone for a while and his daughters moved a long time ago.”

  “He only had one son?”

  “He had three total, but one died when he was small, and the other died in a roofin’ accident awhile back.” Abram pulled the wagon to a stop in front of the barn. It was almost as dilapidated as the house.

  How sad that Esh was alone in this world, with barely anybody there to help him care for his house.

  A niggling thought tickled the back of his mind. At the rate he was going, life would turn out the same, and that’s exactly why he had decided to marry Monica. No man should be alone in life.

  And yet he was.

  Monica. He hadn’t thought about her in days. Hadn’t called or e-mailed her in even longer. Since last week. He was a bad fiancé. A fact he made a mental note to correct as soon as they returned home.

  “Why doesn’t he move close to members of his family?”

  John Paul laughed as he swung down from the wagon. “That just proves you haven’t met the man.”

  Abram climbed the porch steps and beat on the door. If Zane didn’t know better he’d think the elder Fisher to be angry. Abram pounded again, even louder. “Ezekiel Esh, we’ve come to fix your roof.”

  The old man opened the door, face to face with his neighbor. “What?” he bellowed.

  “We’ve come to fix your roof,” Abram repeated, his voice still as loud as ever.

  “Danki, danki,” the deacon yelled in return. Zane realized the man was remarkably hard of hearing.

  “Why doesn’t he get himself a hearing aid?” Zane asked John Paul.

  The young man shrugged. “He’s Amish.”

  Zane opened his mouth to ask what that had to do with anything when John Paul interrupted. “If the good Lord wants a man deaf, who is he to go against the Almighty’s wishes?”

  “The same thing could be said about your mom’s cancer.”

  “Jah, that it could. But she and Dat prayed about it, and the Lord told her to fight.”

  Zane was glad that He had. For if Ruth Fisher hadn’t decided to battle the cancer, then he never would have come to Oklahoma.

  All things for a reason, Katie Rose would have said. As easily as that, she entered his thoughts once again. He pushed her out of his mind and got down to work.

  The men had just unloaded the wagon when a buggy carrying Katie Rose pulled up.

  From his thoughts to reality.

  Katie Rose Fisher hopped down from the buggy, then pulled a cloth-covered basket from behind the seat. She looked as fresh as ever in a royal-blue dress that only made her eyes look greener. The black of her apron and cape made a handsome contrast over the dress. Despite the dark colors, she reminded him of a daisy, crisp and full of sunshine. Her hair was the same as always, parted down the middle and pulled back from her face into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Zane wondered how long her hair was. He’d never seen it down, but the urge to move close to her, pull it from its confines, and see just how long it was ricocheted through him.

  He adjusted his suspenders to give his hands something to do. He’d let out the black elastic to keep them from hiking his pants up and make them ever shorter, but now all that happened was they slipped from his shoulders with clockwork regularity.

  “Guder mariye, dochder,” Abram called. “What brings you here this fine morn?”

  She smiled prettily for her father, but her eyes never once moved toward Zane. It was as if he didn’t exist. “Mary Elizabeth and I just came to check on the deacon. Have him some bread here.”

  “And some pickles?” Esh called. It seemed his hearing improved greatly when there was food involved.

  “And some pickles.” Mary Elizabeth laughed as she pulled the cardboard box from behind her seat. “Guder mariye to you, Zane Carson.” She smiled a greeting to go along with her words.

  He nodded in return, noticing that only then did Katie Rose’s gaze flit in his direction.

  He watched the women walk toward the house, Katie Rose nodding toward her host before she stepped over the threshold.

  John Paul clapped him on the shoulder. “Time to work, city boy. You know how to roof a house?”

  Zane watched Katie Rose disappear inside, then turned back to the younger man. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “I think he likes you,” Mary Elizabeth said.

  The blush rose in Katie Rose’s cheeks. She hid her face in the refrigerator under the pretense of cleaning it out, hoping that Mary Elizabeth wouldn’t notice. “You’re just being plain silly,” she said.

  “He was watchin’ you the whole time we were outside.”

  “That doesn’t prove a thing. Now make some lemonade. The men will be mighty thirsty when they are done.”

  “What?” Ezekiel yelled from his perch at the table.

  “I said the men will need some lemonade when they’re done.” Katie Rose dearly loved the old man. He and her grandfather had been close friends back before Grossdaadi had gone on to see the Lord. Katie Rose felt an even greater responsibility to see after the old deacon than even the Ordnung demanded. Every Saturday she and Mary Elizabeth brought over the extra bread they had baked that week, along with other foods, and cleaning supplies.

  “What about the Englischer?” The man had the uncanny knack of hearing the very thing a body didn’t want him to hear.

  Mary Elizabeth opened her mouth to say something, but Katie Rose shot her a quelling look. The young girl closed her mouth with a secretive smile.

  “It’s good for him to come and help, jah?” It wasn’t a lie, but even so, Katie Rose felt a smidgen guilty. No sense getting the church elder riled up over Mary Elizabeth’s foolish girlhood dreams, though. Even if he had been looking at her, Katie Rose knew it wouldn’t be like that. He was of the world, an outsider. She had seen the town’s women come into the general store with their man-made fingernails and cosmetic-painted faces. Beauty in the outside world and in the community held two different definitions, and she knew she could not compete with all that man had devised to make a woman more desirable.

  Good thing such matters weren’t important to her. She squelched down any opposition to this philosophy and poured the lemonade into four plastic cups. She had been duly surprised to see her dat, her bruder, and their Englisch guest already at the Esh house.
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  It surely wasn’t gut the joy she felt at seeing him once again. She hadn’t seen him since that Tuesday when he had visited the school. She knew she had no cause to be disappointed by his absence. She had still missed him all the same, his questions about their way of life, his different take on things. Yet he seemed to understand the importance of their rules and the life they led. Maybe it was all those years growing up in . . . what did he call it again? A cooperative? She supposed that the church district could be called a cooperative. That was what they did. They all worked together for the common good of the community. Everyone pulled together for something greater than themselves.

  She wanted to ask him more questions about his growing-up years, what he meant by “without God.” How could an entire community be without God? That just didn’t seem possible.

  But she knew that getting to know Zane Carson would not give her a true understanding of why Samuel had left. Why the lifestyle they grew up in could no longer satisfy him.

  “He seems to be a gut bu.”

  Boy wasn’t quite the word that came to Katie Rose’s mind when she thought of their Englisch visitor, but she supposed to Ezekiel Esh, most people seemed young.

  Katie Rose nodded since it seemed a response was demanded of her. “He seems to be a hard worker.”

  “More than the average Englischer, jah?”

  What was the old man hinting at?

  “I suppose.”

  “And not hard on the eyes a’tall.” Mary Elizabeth said the words as lightheartedly as if she were talking about sewing fabric.

  Katie Rose frowned at her niece. There was no need going ’round adding fuel to fires that weren’t going to burn.

  “He has a lady friend back in Chicago,” the deacon said.

  Katie Rose tried not to whip around, but she did anyway, making herself dizzy-headed in the process.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I reckon Abram told me . . . or maybe it was Annie or young Gabe.”

  Or John Paul, Katie Rose thought. Her brother had been appointed as Zane Carson’s companion of sorts. She suspected that her father was trying to keep both men on a short leash, tethering them together to keep them from getting into trouble. The wisdom of the decision had not yet been seen.