Charged Page 6

  Flustered, I stumble on loose stones on the shoulder of the road. In my haste, I’ve neglected to watch where I’m going. Arms out, I stagger off the road, trying to regain my footing. I succeed in keeping my face from planting in the dirt, but as I stray toward the rows of corn in Abram’s field, a bright blue flash blinds me.

  It’s a reflex. My lower arm snaps from the elbow and I fry the flasher, leaving behind six inches of scorched earth and a hunk of twisted metal. Only after I’ve done it do I think about the men and women watching me. Nathaniel’s jaw drops and his mother and father begin to pray. Bishop Yoder glances between my father and me and then rubs his eyes as if he can’t believe what he’s seen.

  Only my father seems to know what to do. He walks toward me in a panic. “Did it get ya?” he calls. “I never seen heat lightning do that before.” He looks up at the clear blue sky. “Are you all right?’

  “Yeah, fine,” I say. “Shaken though. Did you see how near it came to me?” I close the space between us, and my father pulls me into a hug.

  “Looked like it… connected with your hand,” Nathaniel says.

  “Looked like it came from your hand,” Bishop Yoder says.

  “Ridiculous,” I say. “Lightning is so fast. I bet it was a trick of the light.”

  Abram and his wife frown and whisper to each other as my father leads me toward the buggy. I could be mistaken, but I swear Ebbie Lapp mouths witch to her husband.

  “I’ll take her home.” My father says to the stunned faces. “She’s had quite a scare.” He pushes me into the buggy and closes the door. Before I can string two thoughts together, he snaps the reins and our horse heads for home. I stare at my hands. It’s been so long since I used my power, it feels foreign to me.

  “We have to go after him,” I mumble. “We have to catch up to Korwin.”

  “We will not,” he says.

  “Dad—”

  “He made his choice, Lydia. He could’ve stayed and waited. He could have begged for mercy and sworn to turn from vanity. Instead, he made a scene and stormed off. It looked to me like he wanted to go.”

  “No.” Tears slip down my cheeks.

  “This life isn’t for everyone.”

  I rest my head against the window, feeling tired and confused, like my whole life has been tossed to the wind. Like everything I’ve ever loved is as scorched and ruined as the earth around the flasher.

  8

  Korwin is gone. This is the first thing I think of when I wake and my last thought before falling asleep. In between these two thoughts, I go over what I’ve come to refer to as “The List,” which is an argument I have with myself that goes like this:

  You should have followed him.

  He didn’t want to be followed.

  But you loved him and people who love each other should stay together.

  If he loved you, he wouldn’t have made you sacrifice your family and religion to be with him.

  You might have convinced him to stay.

  He would have resented you if you succeeded.

  You should have followed him.

  He left you.

  You’ll never see him again.

  If you’d followed and he’d rejected you, there would be no coming back. You’d be shunned.

  He didn’t love you the way you loved him. If he had, he wouldn’t have chosen painting over you.

  Korwin is gone. It’s been three weeks, and I have thought of little else but him.

  “Are you going to the Sunday Singing tomorrow night?” Mary asks. She’s across the kitchen table from me, cutting corn off the cob for canning. The golden nuggets land in a mountain of kernels between us.

  “I don’t think so. I’ll probably go to bed early,” I say.

  “I think you should go. You should go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not dead.”

  “I feel dead.” The corn in my hands grows blurry as tears fill my eyes.

  She grimaces. “Well, it’s time to come alive again. Hiding in your house doesn’t give the Maker glory.”

  “Everyone knows what happened. It’s embarrassing.”

  “No one cares. They loved you before Korwin and they’ll love you after.”

  I discard my naked cob into the pile for the pigs. “Maybe next time.”

  “It’s not just about you, you know.”

  I pause, a new golden ear of corn in my hand. “It’s not? I think putting myself forth as ready to court again should be about me in some way.”

  “Your father isn’t getting any younger. If he passes, are you going to run this farm on your own? Courting isn’t just about finding a husband, it’s about finding a man.”

  The kernels fall off the cob into the pile at the coaxing of my knife. Mary is right. In Hemlock Hollow, I have never once known of a woman to run a farm on her own. A widow with sons maybe, like Katie Kauffman, but even in those instances it usually isn’t long before she remarries or moves into a dowdy house with one of her married children. In Katie’s case, the community is helping her work her land until one of those things happens.

  I groan. This is not the English world where women are doctors and engineers. This is Hemlock Hollow, and here I’m expected to find a husband.

  “Okay,” I murmur. “I’ll go.”

  “Good,” she says. “Because Nathaniel and I are still courting and I need you there to keep me from thinking immoral thoughts.”

  The mention of Nathaniel’s name makes me grind my teeth. “Mary, has Nathaniel ever said anything about what happened with Korwin?”

  Her face falls, and she pauses her work. “The story he told about his leaving was… strange.”

  I raise an eyebrow. How much does she know? And what spin has Nathaniel’s loose lips put on the happenings of that dreadful day?

  “He said Korwin made a scene and left.”

  I frown but say nothing.

  “He said… there was lightning.” She squints at me.

  “Yes. Came close enough to raise the hair on my arms.”

  “He said it looked like… almost as if it came from your hand.”

  “Hogwash. You’ve seen lightning, Mary. It all happens at once and branches every which way. Obviously, it was the angle and a trick of the light.” I hold out my hand. “If I’d been struck in the hand, I’d have been burned.”

  For a moment, she works silently, shucking ear after ear of corn. Then she pauses again and wipes the cornsilk from her hands.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. “Do you have to go?”

  Without comment, she retrieves something from her pocket and sets it on the corner of the table. It’s a charred flasher, legs bent in on itself like a dead spider.

  “Where did you find that?” My voice is breathy and I freeze at the revelation.

  “On the burnt ground where the lightning struck. Nathaniel took me back there and it was lying in the burnt bits of grass.”

  “What do you think it is?” It’s not a lie for me to ask her what she thinks it is, but certainly my inflection is carefully crafted to make her believe I am not familiar with it.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I was wondering if you might.”

  I scowl. “Looks like something from the outside. Who was the last to come back through the wall?”

  “I don’t remember. I’ll have to ask Nathaniel,” she says flatly.

  Yes, ask Nathaniel, I think, because the boy has his nose in everyone else’s business. I pause my work to set the big pot on the wood stove to boil. I move the mason jars to the table, gesturing at Mary to make room.

  She picks up the flasher and puts it back in her pocket.

  “What are you going to do with that?”

  She shrugs. “Maybe show it to my grandchildren.” A smile turns her cheeks, and she winks at me.

  “Be careful Bishop Yoder doesn’t see it. He’ll say it’s a source of vanity,” I say bitterly.

  The smile fades and Mary grabs an unshucked ear of corn a
nd gets to work again, peeling back the leaves almost violently. “Nathaniel hated what he had to do, Lydia, but he felt like he was saving you.”

  “Saving me?”

  “You were in the picture they found. You might have been shunned if he hadn’t told about Korwin’s history. Nathaniel warned Korwin to stop again and again. He knew you and I had seen the paintings, and he didn’t tell that part. He protected us. He just couldn’t protect Korwin any longer.”

  “Oh?” My face feels hot.

  “He’s a good man.”

  I nod once and bite my tongue. Nathaniel could have done more. He could have told me Korwin was still painting. But all of it is water under the bridge now. No changing it.

  Slowly, I force a smile. “You and Nathaniel are still serious?”

  “Very,” she says, raising her eyebrows.

  “I know someone with extra celery in her garden if you plan to be published quickly.”

  We giggle weakly, but in the end the sadness of my offer hangs over the room like a cloud.

  I’m glad Mary convinced me to come to the Sunday Singing. She blows the pitchpipe and kicks off one of my favorite tunes: “My Roots and Wings.” My heart is light for the first time in almost a month. Even though the barn is sweltering in the August heat, even with it being dark outside and all the doors and windows open, my soul is buoyant with singing.

  The spot across the table from me is empty, as if no boy was presumptuous enough to take Korwin’s place. I appreciate the gesture. I haven’t even worn my for-gut dress today, as I am completely uninterested in attracting any sort of attention. But in the far corner, I notice Jeremiah looking at me and occasionally whispering to Jacob Bender when there is a break in singing. Are they talking about me? Is he saying I got what I deserved?

  I’ve never known Jeremiah to be cruel and his face is consistent with that assessment. He looks sorry for me and a little sad. And so, I become more and more curious about his eyes on me, and I meet his gaze more than once during the evening.

  When we finish the last song, unsurprisingly Mary pairs off with Nathaniel. The rest of the young men and women either climb into their own buggies, bikes, scooters, or accept prearranged rides from their suitors. I begin the walk home as today’s singing is in the Benders’ barn, just a little more than a mile from my place. I pause when Jeremiah’s horse, Abe, trots up beside me.

  “Ride home?” he asks.

  I scratch the side of my neck. “I can walk. Don’t put yourself out.”

  “Not a courting ride home, just a Good Samaritan ride home,” he says.

  I look behind me. Everyone is gone, swept up into their own lives, their own worlds. “Okay.” I walk behind the buggy and climb in next to him. Déjà vu strikes. This is how it all began. I rode with Jeremiah in this buggy, pulled by this horse, to go on rumspringa. That ride changed my life forever. Or had it? I was back where I began, wasn’t I?

  Jeremiah urges Abe into motion, and I’m lulled by the rhythmic clip-clop of our journey. “Would you talk to me about something?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “Have you missed me these last months?” The grin he gives me is part jest, part arrogance.

  “I could ask you the same,” I quip.

  “Yes,” he says. “I missed our friendship.” He pauses for a moment and takes a drink from a jar he has on the dashboard. He offers me some but I shake my head. “I stayed away out of respect for Korwin. It’s not appropriate for men and women to be friends here after a certain age.”

  “I know.”

  “Dumb rule, I think,” he says. “There’s been a lot of dumb rules lately.”

  I huff. “I agree. More than I care to speak about.”

  He smiles, the corner of his eye wrinkling as he glances in my direction.

  “Do you think, if there had never been a Korwin, that we would have ended up together?”

  With a deep sigh, I fold my hands in my lap and look away from him, toward the reactor in the distance. “Probably. That seemed to be the way things were going.”

  “Do you think, now that there’s been a Korwin, that we might ever end up together?”

  I swallow hard and choose my words carefully. “Before or after Korwin, I think the outcome might be the same. Successful marriages have been based on a lot less than a friendship like ours. I suspect we’d laugh a lot and things would be… comfortable.”

  He gives me a wide grin, eyes twinkling.

  “But… you must know… I could never love anyone the way I loved Korwin. I’m not sure I can explain to you the connection we have. It was like, being with him, I came alive. Every part of me.”

  “Are we talking about marital relations?” he asks, the corner of his mouth rising.

  I smack his shoulder. “No! We didn’t do anything like that. I just meant being in his presence. Being near him. It made my heart swell every time.”

  “And now it doesn’t swell.”

  I try to stop but tears well over my lower lids. “No,” I whimper. “I wanted him to be happy here. I wanted him to fit in, but he never seemed to. Do you think it was me? Maybe I could have helped him fit in a bit more. Maybe he didn’t love me the way I loved him.”

  Jeremiah pulls the reins and stops the buggy. I turn my tear-stained face in his direction, wondering what he’s doing. His eyes are wet as well, and he looks as sad as I’ve ever seen him.

  “There is no possible way that Korwin loved you less.”

  A slight sob is all the response I can give.

  “There is a reason I never courted you before we went on rumspringa. A reason I never kissed you. Something it has taken me this long to admit to myself.”

  “What?”

  “I think of you as a friend, Lydia. I always have. Since we could walk, people here have treated us like a matched set. They’ve whispered and assumed we would court and be married. I always thought it would happen and that God would magically turn the protective and companionable feeling I had for you into something more. I tried to foster it. Held your hand. Stared into your eyes. Tried to say and do the right things. I even convinced myself I was waiting for you to become more wifely. But I never felt the attraction that I saw between you and Korwin. The night I saw you kiss…I didn’t wish to be kissing you, I wished to be kissed like that.”

  “Oh Jeremiah.”

  “I didn’t put it all together until now. Even at the end, I thought he had taken something from me. I realize now, we never had that. No matter how much we wanted it. No matter how easy it would have made things.”

  “I know. I understand.” A whisper of relief fills the cab, and I filter through my thoughts for some other way to explain it but come up short.

  “So, now that you know my feelings, Lydia, I want to give you a choice.”

  “What kind of choice?”

  “If you want to live out your days with me, in a marriage based on friendship, I would like to court you. There is no one else in Hemlock Hollow I am interested in, and we will be, as you say, comfortable.”

  Frozen with shock, I remain silent, his offer twisting through my brain, both a source of despair and relief. Despair that I will never love again the way I loved Korwin, a loss that I will grieve until the day I die. Relief that if I say yes I would not have to pretend with anyone else. Jeremiah has put it all on the table, in full and honest truth. I chew my lip, wondering what to say and how to say it.

  “Before you answer, there is something I have to tell you,” Jeremiah says. “Something that could change your mind about wanting to be here at all.”

  I turn toward him, wondering if I heard him right. “Be here at all?”

  “Jacob Bender overheard Abram confessing to his father. He wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  My back stiffens. What does this have to do with me?

  “He said that Abram confessed to starting the fire in his barn.”

  “What? No. Jeremiah, what is this evil you speak of?”<
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  “Abram never liked Korwin because he thought you belonged to me. He only volunteered to take him in, not out of a desire to help Korwin, but to make it hard on him. He wanted him to quit Hemlock Hollow from the beginning. Jacob says he worked him harder than all the other boys combined, and Korwin never complained.”

  I shake my head, but all at once I know it’s true. This is what Korwin was trying tell me the day he left. You belong here. Obviously, I don’t, and they will make damn sure I never will. “The horse was ready for him,” I mumble.

  “What?”

  “The day Korwin left, the Lapps’ horse was saddled and ready to go. They expected him to leave, or else they expected to kick him out.” I frown. “Why didn’t I see it before?” But then maybe I had seen it. The space between them at service. The delayed baptism.

  Jeremiah grabs my hand. “None of us saw it for what it was, Lydia. Jacob says that Abram started to get worried that Korwin would actually succeed here. After my grandfather was elected, Abram found the paintings. He had to act, but he had the option of handling it in his own home.”

  I nod. “He could have punished Korwin privately; he wasn’t baptized yet, after all. Even if he had been, a real father would try to handle it himself first, before getting the Ordnung involved.” My stomach twists at the epiphany.

  “Exactly. Instead, he calls the bishop. Poor Nathaniel thought it was such a strange thing to do that he told about seeing the paintings. He thought it was about him, that he would be shunned or you would be. But the entire focus was on Korwin. It was always about Korwin.”

  “I thought it was just the new bishop’s way,” I mumble. “I was so afraid that I’d be shunned, I didn’t see the situation for what it was!”

  Jeremiah shakes his head. “Abram orchestrated the entire thing to pressure Korwin to leave, and if my grandfather knew anything about it, he looked the other way.”

  “It’s too awful. Oh, Jeremiah, why would they do this? How could they do this?”

  “Hemlock Hollow doesn’t like outsiders, Lydia. When was the last time someone moved here from the English world?”

  “My father was an Englisher.”