The Amish Heiress

Chapter Sixteen - The Breaking

Chapter Sixteen

The BreakingRachel sat at the restaurant table with Augusta and Gerald, looking down at the filet mignon in front of her. Augusta leaned toward her.

“Rachel, dear, you’ve hardly eaten a bite. Believe me, it’s delicious.”

Rachel pushed her plate away. “I’m sorry, Mrs. St. Clair.”

“Augusta, dear. Call me Augusta.”

“I’m sorry...Augusta. I just don’t seem to have an appetite. I have so many things on my mind.”

Augusta picked up her purse. “I’m going to powder my nose. Why don’t you two get a little better acquainted?” She scooted her chair back, rose and walked away.

Gerald smiled as he took a sip of his wine. “I should think you would have many things on your mind, Rachel. After all, it’s pretty much been confirmed that you are a St. Clair and—”

“And I am the heir to all the money? Well, when the DNA test comes back positive I will be.”

Gerald let the remark pass. He gave Rachel another very appraising look and Rachel blushed. When he saw Rachel’s response, Gerald put his glass down with a repentant expression on his face. “I’m sorry, Rachel. Did I embarrass you?”

Rachel paused, but then decided it was best to be honest with this man. “Yes, you did. I have never had anyone look at me the way you do, so openly, and it makes me feel...well, almost ashamed.”

A strange look went across Gerald’s face, and then he smiled at Rachel. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not used to being with a girl who doesn’t like to be looked at that way. I’m only staring at you because you’re—well, you’re very beautiful.”

“And you weren’t expecting that, were you?”

“Since we’re being blunt, no, I wasn’t.”

Rachel smiled for the first time. “What were you expecting?”

“You won’t be mad if I tell you?”

Rachel looked down at her meal. She wanted Gerald to keep talking. He was so handsome and no one had called her beautiful in a long time. Except Daniel, of course. “Go ahead. I think I have a pretty good idea.”

Gerald took a sip of his wine and then smiled again. “When I heard you were an Amish girl, I had this picture in my mind of a large, shall we say, raw-boned girl, with calloused hands, laced-up boots covered with manure, and a hearty slap-on-the-back kind of attitude. You know, like what you would think a farmer is like—what my friends would call ‘horsey.’”

Rachel laughed. “And I don’t fit that picture?”

“You are as far away from that picture as the east is from the west.”

Rachel looked at Gerald, and as she did, she realized that her heart was beating rapidly in her chest. He was well-mannered, friendly, obviously intelligent, and very handsome. He had a perspective on the world that was entirely foreign, yet somehow enticing.

Just then Augusta returned to the table. A waiter holding another bottle of wine followed behind her. Augusta leaned over to Rachel. “Won’t you have a small glass of wine with us, Rachel? It’s a naïve domestic, but it’s surprisingly good.”

“I...I don’t know. My parents have never let me drink wine. Besides, I’m not twenty-one.”

“Oh, just one won’t hurt. After all, doesn’t the Bible say, ‘Thou dost cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen man’s heart?”

Rachel looked at Augusta with surprise. “You know the Bible?”

“Well, of course, dear. I’ve been an Episcopalian all my life. I find great comfort in the truths of the Bible.”

Rachel was confused. After what she had read in her grandmother’s journal, she had fully intended to despise these people. She blurted out a response. “If you think the Bible is so wonderful, why did you treat my grandmother the way you did when she came to New York?”

Augusta put down her fork and reached over and took Rachel’s hand. “Let me be perfectly frank with you, Rachel. When your grandmother came to New York, she was the fourth or fifth girl who had shown up at my mother-in-law’s house claiming to have a relationship with Robert St. Clair. It was terribly upsetting to Margaret, your grandfather’s mother. So when Rachel showed up with a baby, how was I to know that she really was married to Robert? She showed me no proof. Max was dead, so he couldn’t confirm that your grandmother really was a St. Clair. He was so disappointed with Robert that he never showed us any of the pictures Robert sent him. In fact, he hid them away and we never found them. As far as I could tell, I was protecting my mother-in-law from further heartbreak.”

Rachel wanted to pull away, but she held her hand still. “But you were so mean to her. She got put out on the street and she died. You can’t tell me that was just protecting my great-grandmother!”

Augusta glanced at Gerald who was looking down at his plate. “Yes, Rachel, you’re right.”

There was a pause. Augusta took a breath. “But here’s the reality. This is a different world than your bucolic farm life. Those of us with lots of money are constantly attracting grifters and phonies, investment bankers and attorneys. They’re like little parasites, everyone wanting to bite off a piece of what we have struggled to hold on to. They lie, cheat and steal to get what they want. It’s a sad fact, but in order to keep them away, you have to become like them. And when you do, it is very easy to turn out to be hard and grasping. I don’t like what I’ve become over the years, but I am a product of my environment. Knowing you, if I had to do it over again, I would probably treat your grandmother Rachel differently. But that was then and this is now. I’m very sorry about what happened to Robert’s wife, and I want to make it up to you. How can I do that?”

Rachel sat very still for a long moment, looking back and forth between Augusta and Gerald. Augusta’s request had taken her by surprise. Then the moment and the setting and the smiling faces of the two people across from her wore down her resistance. She took her hand away from Augusta and picked up the empty glass in front of her. “I think you might start with a glass of that wine, Augusta.”

*****

Jenny Hershberger sat in the silent house with Jonathan. The room was dark except for the low light from a fire that had burned down to coals in the hearth. Before it went out, Jonathan stirred himself to put a few more logs on. Then he stood by the fireplace, leaning against the large stones that framed the opening. The day had been overcast and chilly, strange weather for early summer in Paradise. But for Jenny, the chill was in her heart.

“Where could she be, Jonathan?”

Jonathan rubbed the side of his head where the scar ran along his hairline. It was an unconscious habit he brought with him when he had returned to the farm four years before.

“Daniel told us, Jenny. She’s with them, and only trouble will come of it.”

Jenny’s heart was wrapped in a strange foreboding, tangible and oppressive. Around nine o’clock they heard a car coming up the driveway. The light from the headlamps cast strange shadows from the porch posts onto the walls of the room, like dark figures writhing in torment. Jenny heard a car door close and then the car drove around the circular driveway out front and retreated back down the lane. Soft footsteps came up the steps and across the porch. Jenny heard the screen door creak as it swung open. The latch clicked, and then Rachel was standing in the doorway. Jenny’s eyes met Rachel’s and her heart sank. There was defiance there, and by the set of her face, Jenny instinctively knew Rachel had made a decision.

“Rachel, where have you been? It’s so late and we were worried.”

“Mama, if Daniel came by, I think you know where I’ve been.”

Rachel’s words had a strange slur and her hands twisted nervously in front of her.

Jonathan stepped close to Rachel. He smelled something. “You’ve been drinking!”

“I had a glass of wine with my dinner, and a very good dinner it was. The St. Clairs took me to the nicest place I’ve ever been and...and I liked it.”

Jenny got to her feet.

“The St. Clairs? Rachel, they are not good people. Augusta did terrible things to your grossmutter.”

Rachel pulled off her shawl and turned to hang it on the peg by the door. “You know, Mama, there are always two sides to every story. Augusta told me all about what happened. She was very sorry for what she did. She told me she was only protecting her mother-in-law.”

Jonathan took Rachel by the shoulder and spun her around. “She was only protecting her money, you little fool. Going off with those people and drinking! You are not twenty-one. While you live in my house, you will not go with Englischers or—”

Rachel jerked her shoulder out of Jonathan’s grasp. “Your house? Again, Papa, it’s your house? Well, I have lived here longer than you. This is more my house than yours. Or is it Richard Sandbridge’s house? You don’t even know and neither do I.”

The sound of the slap was like a cracking whip. Jonathan’s hand rose again, but Jenny leaped forward and grabbed her husband’s arm. “Jonathan! No!”

Jonathan turned to Jenny. She felt the rigid arm relax and then it fell to his side. He looked at her helplessly.

Rachel stood holding her hand to her face. The red mark across her cheek flamed in the flickering light and tears coursed down her face. Her words came like rifle bullets. “In the years to come, Papa, you will remember that it was you who closed the door.”

Then she went down the hall to her room. The sound of the door slamming broke the night.

*****

The sun was trying to force its way into overcast sky when Jenny arose. She wrapped her shawl tightly around her shoulders against the unseasonable chill and looked down at her sleeping husband. The scar where he had been injured in the terrible explosion so many years ago was very visible along his hairline. Jenny reached down and softly stroked the hair into place.

Oh, Jonathan. You’ve changed so much. Somewhere along this road you lost the part of you that loves life. It is so hard for you, and it is not anything you did. I wish I could do something, but only du leiber Gott can heal your wounded heart.

Jenny sighed and left the room. She looked at the crack under Rachel’s door to see if her daughter was up, but there was no light and no sound coming from the room. She went upstairs to her study.

Ever since she had come back to Paradise, this room had been her refuge. She went to the pale birch desk that sat under the long window, the desk her papa had made for her. Her hand caressed the smooth wood, sanded so beautifully that it felt soft to the touch. Jenny pulled out her chair and sat down. She pushed the piles of papers and notes aside and laid her head on the table.

“Oh, Papa! How I wish you were here. I would wrap myself in your arms and listen to your wonderful voice telling me that everything would be all right. I need you, Papa.”

Jenny remembered another sunrise, long ago, when she had been despairing of ever living again. That dawn had come creeping into her room like a mischievous child, softly kissing her awake with the delicate touch of a rose-colored morning. Jenny remembered opening her eyes that long-ago morning and seeing the pale colors blushing in the fresh sky. She had risen and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, just like she had this morning, and slipped outside.

The day was fresh and clean and warm, and the grass felt cool and damp against my bare feet. The plum trees were just sending forth their tiny, pink buds. A single wren twittered its call and stillness lay on the land.

Jenny rubbed the smooth surface of the desk. She could almost feel her papa’s love emanating from the wood, the love that had sustained her and kept her all her life until the day...

Jenny didn’t want to think about that other day, so she pushed her thoughts back to that morning, so long ago in Apple Creek. She remembered her papa coming out on the porch of their little house.

You were dressed for work and you were so handsome. The circle of your arms was like a fortress and a strong tower. I felt life coming back into me. It was as though I had been raised from the dead! Your words comforted me so.

Jenny put her head down on the desk and began to weep.

“Oh, Lord, where are You? I’m losing Rachel, and I’ve never really gotten Jonathan back. I am so alone. Why won’t You help me?

And then a still, small voice that she had not heard for a long time spoke into her troubled spirit.

I never said there would not be hard times. I only said I would never leave you or forsake you.