She collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs and braced her elbows on the tabletop. She cradled her head in her hands and tried to catch her breath. She was used to things moving as fast in the English world, but not in the Amish. Yet here she was.
“It will be okay,” Mamm said. “Sometimes it isn’t okay in the way we want it to be, but it always ends up okay.”
Tillie raised her head. “You’re right, of course.” Mamm usually was.
A knock sounded at the door. Mamm looked to Tillie, who shrugged.
“Who could that be at this hour?” Mamm bustled out of the kitchen to the front door. No good came from late-night visitors, that much was certain.
“Oh my!” her mother cried.
The visitor replied. Tillie couldn’t understand the words, but she knew the voice.
She was on her feet in a heartbeat. She rushed out of the kitchen, through the dining room, and to the front door.
“What are you doing here?”
Mamm stepped back as Melvin Yoder crossed the threshold. He gave Tillie a sheepish smile, then his gaze dropped to her waistline. “I came to see my baby.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I came to see my baby. The words washed over Tillie in a cold wave. He hadn’t come for her. Only for Emmy. Or maybe she was reading too much into it.
“She’s asleep,” Tillie said. But she led the way to the room where the baby was resting in the cradle. Every unsaid thing that needed saying trailed behind them.
Not now, she told herself. It would all be spoken soon enough.
Melvin crossed the room and looked down at the baby. He sucked in a breath, and she immediately understood.
“She’s beautiful.”
“I know.”
He reached out a hand as if to touch her but stopped short. “I want to hold her, but I don’t want to wake her.”
“She pretty much sleeps all the time. She’s newborn, you know.”
“I know,” Melvin said.
“I didn’t mean for that to sound the way it came out. Just that she sleeps a lot. In a couple of weeks she’ll be more alert, looking at things around her and staying awake more instead of just sleeping all the time. Right now she’s just adjusting to the world.”
The world she isn’t going to get to stay in.
“I can hold her tomorrow?” Melvin asked.
“Of course.”
Melvin gave Emmy one last wistful look and backed away from the cradle. Together she and Melvin walked from the room. She gently closed the door as not to disturb Emmy before it was time to eat.
“She should sleep for another couple of hours,” she told Melvin. “If you’re still here maybe you can hold her then.”
“I plan on staying,” he said.
Tillie told her heart not to hope. He didn’t say how long he was staying and he didn’t say if he was staying to be Amish. Only that he was staying.
She wanted to ask, wanted to find out if his words meant what she wished they did, but she bit back the questions. She hadn’t seen him in almost two weeks.
Mamm stuck her head into the hallway. “Come to the kitchen,” she said. “I’ve got coffee and cranberry bread.”
Tillie nodded, though just the thought of cranberry bread brought Levi to mind. Him in the kitchen wearing a cook’s apron, covered in flour as he baked with her niece.
She looked back to Melvin, then he turned and made his way to the kitchen. She couldn’t imagine him doing anything so domesticated, so tame.
Nothing about Melvin had ever been tame.
His black hair was slicked back in a new style for him. He wore frayed English blue jeans, lace-up motorcycle boots, and a black leather jacket. More than anything, he looked dangerous. Or maybe that was because he held her fate in his hands. The worst part of all was that he knew it. The question was, what would he do about it?
He sat down at the kitchen table like he had done countless times before. Tillie sat across from him and opened the container that held the cranberry bread.
Mamm laid out a napkin for each of them and brought down three mugs.
Tillie knew that it meant her mamm was staying in the kitchen with them. So much for talking things through. It was the one thing Tillie knew had to be done, but she dreaded it all the same. Every time she and Melvin had tried to talk something out in these last few weeks, they just ended up in an argument. Christmas Eve was tomorrow; she didn’t want to argue with him now. Maybe they should postpone any serious talks until after the holiday. But could she stand having him close and not knowing his thoughts for three days?
Why not? She’d had no response in weeks. What was a few more days?
“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” Mamm said. “Well, I do. But I’m sure I’ll have to confess this all the same.” She was talking about welcoming Melvin into their home.
“Can I sleep in the barn? I had the driver drop me off here,” he said. “But I still have a cousin on the other side of Randolph. I can go see him tomorrow. He might let me stay there. But I don’t really have a place to stay tonight.”
Tillie knew he didn’t have the money for a hotel, even one of the cheap ones in town.
“I’ll have to talk to Abner. Maybe you can stay with David?”
Tillie wasn’t sure how David would feel about having such a rebel in his house, but David was always sweet and welcoming. If she were guessing right, she would say he wouldn’t bat an eye at having Melvin stay with him.
Melvin shook his head. “It’s late. I don’t want to disturb him. I’ve rattled everyone enough already.”
“It’ll be too cold in the barn. If you don’t want to bother David, you can stay on the couch here.”
“Thank you,” Melvin said.
“That way you’ll be close.”
Why did Mamm want him close?
“As soon as the bishop finds out you’re
