Chapter 24
During a typical rumspringa, Bonnie would’ve been expected to sneak out the front door.
These weren’t typical circumstances.
Number one, she was twenty-five years old, too old for something so ridiculous.
Number two, her mother would be alone in the house.
Number three, Mom would worry if she woke up and found Bonnie gone. Maybe she shouldn’t go. Maybe this was a bad idea.
A Plain man needed a wife who could run a household and raise children.
Someone who could get up with a baby at midnight, change his diaper, feed him, and put him back to bed without waking a hardworking husband.
The image of a toddler trotting in front of a racing buggy assailed Bonnie.
How fast could she move to save that toddler?
Not fast enough.
Too late now.
It would be hurtful to say yes and then back out.
Elijah had gathered his courage and overcome his natural reticence to ask her on this ride.
If she bailed, he might never try again.
“Mamm.”
She fumbled for the switch on the propane lamp on the bedstand next to her mother’s bed.
Clouds partially obscured the moon’s light through the window in her mother’s bedroom.
Darkness cloaked the room.
The lamp clicked on.
“Mamm, are you awake?”
“I am now.”
Squinting, one hand shielding her eyes, Mom sat up.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“Nee.
I’m ...I’m going out.”
Mom leaned closer to peer at the battery-operated clock on her nightstand.
“It’s almost ten o’clock.”
“I know.”
“Where are you, I mean, why would you . . . ?”
Her lips formed an O.
Her eyes widened.
“Oh, oh, why are you telling me, maedel? Get out there and go.
It’s Elijah, isn’t it? Nee, don’t tell me.
We have to at least pretend—”
“Mamm, Mamm! I didn’t want you to worry.
I’m going now.”
“Go, go, git.”
Mom slid down under the patchwork quilt that had been on the bed shared by her parents for as long as Bonnie could remember.
She pulled it up to her chin.
“I’m fine and dandy.
No worries.
I’m tuckered out. I’m sleeping.”
Bonnie couldn’t contain a chuckle.
More of a hysterical giggle, truth be told.
“Sweet dreams.”
“Be careful.
Be gut.
Have fun.”
Mom’s voice followed Bonnie as she rolled into the hallway.
She grabbed her bonnet from a hook by the front door and let herself out.
A welcome evening breeze that swept away some of the June day’s earlier heat greeted her.
Knowing this was a bad idea and taming her longing for such a night as this were two different things.
She simply wanted what every Plain woman wanted.
Was that too much to ask?
“Well, Gott?”
No answer. “Fine.”
“Stop it already.”
Her voice quivered.
Talking aloud to herself.
Now she really had gone around the bend, over the culvert, and into the ditch.
“You’re being ridiculous.”
Flies buzzed around the porch bulb.
The momma cat, sprawled on the swing’s cushion, meowed, obviously annoyed at having her slumber interrupted.
A mockingbird sang.
The scent of the coral honeysuckle growing on the porch railing drifted over her.
Such a beautiful evening.
The anticipation heightened with each passing second.
This was it.
Bonnie rubbed her breastbone with her palm.
It ached. She hadn’t been hurt. Not yet. This might be the start of something, but no one knew how it would end.
Least of all her.
If only she could simply ease into it.
Let the joy of the moment wash over her.
Let it be the simple, time-honored ritual of a Plain boy taking a Plain girl for a ride.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
The clip-clop of a horse’s hooves sounded in the distance.
The creak of the buggy wheels got louder.
“Here we go.”
Stop it! Bonnie rolled down the ramp, suddenly filled with a sense of lightness and belonging.
Of being like every other girl in every Plain community across the country.
She’d waited a lot of years for this moment.
“Just enjoy it.
Live for today.”
She was allowed to speak to the four corners of her world, even shout it from the barn loft and whisper it to the horses in the corral.
“Just be.”
Elijah pulled into the yard.
He stopped the buggy a few feet from where she stood and immediately jumped down.
He strode around the buggy before she could manage to greet him.
“Shall I lift you into the buggy, or should I just take your arm to steady you?”
“Hallo to you too.”
His hands dropped.
He halted.
“Is it okay for me to ask?”
“Jah.
I’d rather you’d ask, then have you put your hands on me without permission.”
“Can you get up there by yourself?”
Unfortunately, no.
Not anymore.
“I could use a lift.”
With a surprising ease, Elijah put both hands on her waist and lifted her into the buggy.
“Danki.”
Bonnie worked to keep her voice even.
He wasn’t a big man—shorter, slighter than his brothers—but he was strong.
“Can you stick the rollator behind the seat?”
The porch light was weak, but the uncertainty on Elijah’s face was still apparent.
He picked up the rollator.
“It might be better in the back.”
“It collapses.
Then you can slip it behind our seat.”
“Ah. Okay.”
He lifted the rollator’s padded seat, then let it close.
He rubbed his nose.
His forehead wrinkled.
He pushed on the handles.
“Nee, put the seat up.
There’s a bar under the pouch.
Just reach in there, feel for it, and pull it up.”
He followed her instructions.
His frown faded and turned into a smile.
“Whew.
Easy if you know what you’re doing.”
“Unless you have someone who uses one, you have no reason to know.”
“Now I have someone.”
He sounded breathless.
His face reddened.
“I mean, I know someone, I know you—”
“I know what you mean.”
He stowed the rollator and trotted around the buggy.
A second later he was seated next to her.
Close, but not too close.
He snapped the reins.
The buggy jolted.
Bonnie clasped her hands in her lap.
She inhaled the dank evening air.
Carol had peppered her with advice while they boxed up their wares at the market and carted them back to the store.
“He’s so shy, you’ll have to do the talking.
Ask a lot of questions. Tell him about your day. Ask about his.”
This was Elijah.
He might be shy, but he’d worked up the nerve to ask her out.
Now Bonnie had to return the favor and try to make him feel comfortable.
“I reckon you’re glad to be home after being on the road for three weeks.”
He nodded vigorously. “I am.”
Two-word responses weren’t helpful.
“I’m surprised Slowpoke didn’t insist on coming with you.”
“He tried, but I said nee.
Sadie took pity on him.
She was sitting on his rug with him, feeding him leftover baked pork chop when I drove away.”
Sadie had been a girl on a mission at the farmers market.
She’d offered to share her doughnut with Bonnie if she’d come to their booth “for a visit.”
“She’s a sweetheart.
Should she still be up?”
“She’s a night wanderer.
Josie or Sherri probably already dragged her back to her bed.”
“Gut. Gut.”
Bonnie peered into darkness that held towering pines, birch, oaks, maple—stands of trees that had been on this road before she was born and likely would be there when she passed from this earth.
Nothing there to talk about.
She ran her hands over the burgundy upholstery that matched swathes of carpet.
“This is a nice buggy.”
Lame, so very lame.
“It was Jason’s way back when.
He gave it to me when he got married.”
Elijah’s voice warmed to the topic.
He pointed at the cupholders.
“Two cupholders.
And there’s space for lap blankets under the seat.
There’s a battery-operated fan. Should I turn it on?”
“I’m fine, but danki.”
“It has a battery-operated heater, too, for wintertime.”
He gestured at the dashboard.
“It even has a speedometer.”
He leaned forward and peered at it.
“We’re going twelve miles an hour.”
“Gut to know.”
The silence built for a few moments.
Now what? Bonnie racked her brain.
“Tell me what it was like out on the road.
Did you call an auction?”
Elijah ducked his head.
He snapped the reins.
Not a good topic.
“What did you do, then?”
“Kept track of inventory.
Moved sales items to the platform.
Listened to Daadi snore.
Thought about you.”
Bonnie almost missed those last three words.
Elijah’s voice had petered out until it was barely a hoarse whisper.
Taking a quick breath, she wrapped her fingers around her apron.
“Say that again.”
“Kept track—”
“Nee, that last part.”
He cleared his throat.
“I thought about you.”
Maybe she should’ve talked about the weather.
It was supposed to rain the next day.
Farmers could always use rain.
“What did you think?”
“I wondered if you would say jah.”
Elijah’s gaze met Bonnie’s, then bounced back to the gravel road illuminated by the buggy’s battery-operated headlights.
“I worried.”
“Worried. Why?”
“About what to say.”
He ducked his head.
“I’m no gut at this.
At talking.
I wish I was Toby or Declan.
Or even Jason. Anybody but me.”
“You’re doing fine.
I’m glad it’s you and not one of your brieder.
Or anyone else.”
The urge to squeeze his hand almost overcame Bonnie.
Not for any physical reason.
But because he was another human being who wanted desperately to be something he wasn’t.
“Don’t say that.
Don’t ever say that.”
Bonnie gave in to the impulse.
She squeezed his hand and let go.
“I like Elijah Miller, the quiet, thoughtful bruder.
The one who works with his hands.
The one who liked me enough to ask me to take a buggy ride with him. No one has ever done that before.”
“Nee? That can’t be right.”
Elijah pulled the buggy onto the shoulder of the road next to a wooden fence.
Beyond it was a field of tall grass.
He parked under an elm tree.
Flies buzzed.
The horse’s tail whipped. Two chickadees chattered from the tree’s lowest branch. “I’ve wanted to ask you forever.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know what I would say.”
“Yet here we are. Talking.”
“About what a dumkoph I am.”
“Nee, talking about the fact that you were thinking about me.”
Bonnie worried her bonnet’s ribbons.
How much should a girl say on the first buggy ride? Carol and Ryan had talked for two hours.
Then they kissed.
Really, there was no rush.
None whatsoever. Even so, Elijah had admitted something quite personal. Maybe Bonnie should too. “Fact is, I was thinking about you too.”
“You were?”
“Don’t sound so amazed.”
“I didn’t think you even remembered who I was until I came into the store that first time.
Then I figured I was just another vendor.
I’ve always liked you, but you never really gave me a sign you liked me.
Except maybe a little bit that day at the frolic.
With the big eppies.”
“I remember you being kind when I was in grade school.
So does Sophia.
She said you pushed her wheelchair out to the ball field when she finally came back to school after the accident.
We both agreed.
You’re worth waiting for.”
Elijah turned in the seat.
It was too dark to see his blue eyes under his hat’s brim. “Really?”
The amazement in his voice broke Bonnie’s heart.
He truly didn’t know what a good man he was.
“Don’t answer that.
I’ll try to be worth it.”
“You don’t have to try.
You just are.”
“You’re so nice.
And so kind.”
His hand crept toward hers.
Bonnie met him halfway.
His fingers were warm.
“And so pretty.
I don’t understand why some other man hasn’t snapped you up.”
“You see the world through the eyes of a nice, kind man.”
Bonnie concentrated on the feel of his calloused fingers on hers.
Strong fingers.
Rough skin.
Tender heart.
“Most men are practical. They want a fraa who can rototill the soil for a garden, who can do laundry, put up meat and vegetables, and nurse a baby all at once.”
“You’ll have help.
Family.
Your mann.”
Elijah tugged her closer.
Bonnie went willingly.
He let go of her hand and put his arm around her shoulders.
“You wash dishes.
You bake eppies. You sew. You make stuffies that bring joy to kinner. You keep the store’s books. You run a store. That’s a lot. More than a lot of folks who don’t have SMA do. Tell me about the disease. I don’t know anything.”
He sounded winded.
Like he’d just used up his entire store of words for the year.
All for her.
Bonnie obliged.
“Do you know about the founder effect?”
“Jah.
That’s why we have more special kinner like Sadie.”
“That’s why we have more cases of rare diseases like spina bifida, dwarfism, maple syrup urine disease, and spinal muscular atrophy.
SMA causes muscle weakness and atrophy—when the muscles shrink up.”
She told him about learning to walk as a toddler, then losing that ability and not understanding why.
“I was just a little thing.
I could see my cousins walking, then running, skipping, hopping, jumping, but not me.”
She explained about the surgery to straighten her spine and fuse it so it would stay that way.
About the shots in her spine every four months and the pills that slowed the progression but couldn’t stop it forever.
She lifted her skirt enough to show him her braces.
“They help me lift my feet so I don’t stumble so much.”
“I reckon you can reach the Velcro piece so you can put the shoe on, but how do you get your socks on if you can’t bend over?”
“Gut question.
I’m so thankful for whoever it was who invented this handy-dandy sock aid.
You stick the sock over it and then hang on to the strings while you stick your foot in and pull the sock on.
It’s genius.”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
“Exactly.”
Elijah rubbed his fingers across her arm.
“I lay in bed at night in our motel room staring at the ceiling, listening to Daadi snore, thinking about doing this.”
“Me too,”
she whispered.
“Only I was alone in my bedroom with Mamm down the hall, sleeping peacefully.”
Then his lips brushed hers in the most fragile of kisses, so fleeting she might have imagined it.
“Is that okay?”
“Jah.”
Bonnie kissed him back.
Now she knew what Carol and Sophia meant.
No one else in the whole world had ever done something so wonderful.
Just Elijah and her.
“It’s okay.”
Elijah sat back.
He heaved a huge sigh.
Like a runner who’d leaped over a mile-high obstacle.
“Why the sigh?”
“I want to remember this moment forever.”
Bonnie leaned her head against his chest.
She stared up at the star-studded sky.
Danki, Gott, danki.
Mom would say that God’s timing was perfect, that everything happened according to God’s plan.
This felt like the beginning of something wonderful.
“Danki, Gott,”
she whispered.
“Let it work out, sei so gut.”
“What?”
Elijah lifted her chin and stared into her face.
“Nothing.
I’ve developed the habit of talking to myself.”
“They say it’s not a problem if you don’t answer.”
Bonnie squirmed.
“Then I guess it’s a problem.”
“Ah. I see.”
Elijah chuckled.
His arm tightened around her.
“Don’t worry.
People think I’m weird because I talk to Slowpoke like he understands.”
“Because he does.”
“Of course he does.”
He sounded so relaxed, so different from the anxious Elijah who came into her shop in hopes of selling his wares in April.
“Can I ask you a question?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“I know this is just one buggy ride, but you did just kiss me, so I was wondering . . .”
How could she ask this question without seeming full of herself? As if she knew what God’s plan was? As if this was a sure thing? “Have you really, really thought about what it would be like to have a special friend who has a disease that takes away her mobility? A fraa who can’t care for boplin on her own? Who might need a wheelchair one day? Who can’t mow the yard or plant a garden on her own?”
Elijah was quiet for a long time.
A pair of blue jays joined in the chatter with the chickadees.
The horse tossed his head, flicked his tail at buzzing flies, and snorted.
“Everybody has limitations.
The vows say in sickness and in health, don’t they? I reckon some things have to be taken on faith. One day at a time until Gott lets you see the bigger picture of His plan.”
Add wise and faithful to Elijah’s list of attributes.
Naive too.
“My dat would’ve liked you.”
“I remember your dat.
He used to come to the auctions when I was a kid.
He was nice to me.”
“He used to sit me on his lap in the evenings and tell me stories in front of the fireplace.”
Bonnie tucked her arms around her middle.
As if they could substitute for her father’s arms.
“He always told me not to worry, that Gott had chosen Mamm and him to be my eldre.
I was a gift from Gott to them.
I know we’re not supposed to feel special, but he always made me feel that way.”
“You must miss him something awful.”
“I do.”
“My dat doesn’t mean to, but he always makes me feel less than the rest of my brieder.”
Elijah’s words revealed no bitterness.
“Less than Toby or Jason or Declan and on down the line.
If I have kinner—”
“When you have kinner.”
“When I have kinner, I will make sure that each one knows he is who Gott wants him to be.
He’s made in Gott’s image and when Gott made him, He said it is gut.
Scripture says He will know a bopli’s name before he’s born.
He’ll know the number of hairs on his head.
Gott doesn’t think we’re less-than.”
“If I have kinner—”
“When you have kinner.”
“When I have kinner there’s a gut chance they could have SMA.
How can a mamm with SMA take care of a bopli with the same disease?”
“You’ll know exactly what to do, and you’ll have help.
Don’t sound so sad.”
Elijah removed his arm from around her shoulders.
Instead he took her hands in his and rubbed them as if to warm them.
“I think you need a joke to cheer you up.
I asked Declan and Toby if I should tell you a joke.
They said I should stick to being who I am.”
“I reckon they’re at least partly right.”
An electric current ran through Bonnie.
Elijah’s touch warmed not just her hands but her heart.
“On the other hand, if you want to tell a joke, you should.
Declan Miller doesn’t corner the market on being funny any more than Toby Miller has an exclusive right to being the best Miller auctioneer.”
Head bent, Elijah stopped rubbing.
He said nothing.
His face was hidden by his hat and the dark.
“Elijah? I didn’t mean anything—”
“What do turkeys and teddy bears have in common?”
“I don’t know.
What do turkeys and teddy bears have in common?”
“They both have stuffing.”
“That’s bad.”
Yet Bonnie laughed.
Joke tellers relied on people to laugh simply because a joke was so very bad.
“Really bad.”
“Hey! Everyone laughed when Declan told it at the supper table.”
Elijah’s deep laugh rivaled the one Bonnie’s father used to have.
It was a rare commodity, one Bonnie wanted to hear more often.
“I thought maybe you’d know because you stuff teddy bears all the time.”
“Jah, but I don’t think I’ve ever stuffed a turkey.
My mamm does it.”
Occasionally.
Mostly, they’d always gone to one of the onkels’ house because a family of three didn’t need a full-size turkey.
Besides, giving thanks should be shared.
“My aenti Frannie makes a good stuffing.
She says it’s the sage. I think it’s the turkey broth she uses. It’s very moist.”
“But you’ve stuffed many animals, making many kinner happy.
That’s a gut thing.”
“You have a way of finding the silver lining.”
“Scripture says God can bring gut from all things.”
“I keep telling myself that.
We’re going to Strasburg on Monday.”
She should tell him why.
It was one thing for a man to imagine a life with a woman who had SMA, another to live it.
“I’ll be gone for at least two days.
I’m getting tests done to see if there’s been progression.”
“Maybe when you get back we can try this again.”
“I’d like that,”
she whispered, “but let’s see how it goes.”
“Nee.”
Elijah raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“We’ll see each other in a few days.”
Bonnie shivered.
“Gott willing.”
Sei so gut, Gott, be willing.