Return to Paradise. Barbara Cameron
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her voice and bit her lip. What good did it do to say these things now? But emotions—pain and anger and feelings of rejection—were welling up, boiling over. She didn’t know she felt so strongly. She’d been taught to believe in extending forgiveness to those who wronged her all her life, and the one time she’d been given the opportunity to practice what she believed she failed miserably.
“I hurt you. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t need to look at him to know he meant it. She heard the regret in his voice.
“Why didn’t you ask me to go with you?” she asked quietly.
When he didn’t respond she summoned the courage to look at him. She’d never spoken to him like this. But she wanted answers.
“What could I offer you?” he said finally. “I had practically no money. No property. No job.” He sighed. “No future.”
She stared at him. “You had yourself. You had your two hands and a strong back to make your future with me by your side.” She paused. “You had your heart that I thought held love for me. What more could I want?”
Turning, she stared out the window, not seeing the landscape outside. “I would have gone with you.”
“Like Ruth in the Bible?”
“Ya.”
“I didn’t want you to give up your family.”
Confused, she turned back to him. “What?”
“They would have shunned you if you’d left the community.”
“You said you hadn’t decided to become Englisch.”
“I haven’t.”
“So you haven’t decided to leave the church?”
“I hadn’t joined the church so there was nothing to leave. You know that.”
“What I don’t know is why you asked to talk to me today.”
She watched him sit there staring ahead. Then he took a deep breath and turned to her. “I’m coming back to do what I can to help Mamm since Daed’s sick. But I’m coming back for more than that, Lavina. I came back for you. Will you give me another chance?”
***
Lavina wasn’t the most talkative person, but he could tell he’d shocked her speechless.
When silence stretched between them he felt a sickening lurch in his stomach. What had he been thinking? He should have waited, let her get used to seeing him for a while before he asked her to give him another chance.
Then an awful thought struck him: what if she was seeing someone? For all he knew she was engaged to be married. It was that time of year when Amish couples were getting married. Sometimes there were several weddings each week during the fall months . . .
Maybe he’d returned too late. Maybe too much time had passed, and she was too angry with him for abandoning him. Maybe—
“You want another chance,” she said slowly. “After all this time, you came back and you want another chance.”
“Ya,” he said, carefully watching her expression. He couldn’t read it.
“You want me to trust you after you betrayed my trust.”
“Ya,” he said.
“After what I just said to you?”
“Lavina—”
She held up her hand. “Nee, I can’t think of such a thing. Not so suddenly. You’ve been out of my life for a year and suddenly you’re not only back, but you’re wanting us to go back to what we used to be.”
A tear trickled down her cheek, and she angrily swiped at it with her hand. “I don’t know if I can go back to that, David. I don’t know if I should—if we should.”
“We were gut together,” he told her, reaching for her hand. “You know that.”
She sighed and nodded. “Ya, we were. But that was then. This is now. We’re different people now.”
“I haven’t changed,” he said earnestly. “I haven’t.”
“But I have.” She lifted her chin. “I learned to live without you. I learned I had to think about life without you. I had to learn to survive without you in my future.”
David felt a wave of panic wash over him. He’d told himself that she could turn him down, but he’d forced that thought from his mind. He hadn’t been able to think it could happen. She’d been part of his life for so many years. The Amish usually lived in the same community all their lives—generation after generation. They went to schul together, attended church together. Participated in work frolics and community activities. Their lives were so entwined. They became friends and married the boy or girl they’d known all their lives.
But she was saying he’d ruined things by abruptly leaving and not contacting her for a year. He’d been the biggest fool ever thinking it would be easy to just come back, apologize, and everything would be allrecht.
And he still didn’t have anything to offer her. Despite what she said, he felt any woman would want to know he could provide for her.
He pulled the hand he’d offered back, picked up the reins and jerked them. Nellie stepped back onto the road and began pulling the buggy down the road.
“David—”
He held up his hand. “Nee, I understand.”
“Do you? If I let you that close again and you left, I don’t think I could survive. Nee, David, you ask too much.”
She’d just broken his heart again so he knew what she meant. She probably didn’t know how he’d felt when he walked away from her—when he’d felt forced to leave his home, his community, everything he knew and cared about a year ago. He’d been so angry with his dat he hadn’t even been aware of how he’d felt when he woke up the day after and it really hit him what he’d walked away from. He’d lost the church and community he’d grown up in, but most importantly, it had hit him that he might never see Lavina again.
But he hadn’t gone back. He’d told himself he had nothing for her. He still didn’t, but he’d taken one look at her and knew he had to find some way to make things work. Maybe his father would realize that he was just so sick he had to retire and take it easy. Maybe . . .
Maybe he just needed to accept that he’d come back for two reasons—for his dat and for Lavina—and it appeared now that it wouldn’t be for Lavina. If he was honest, neither of them wanted him. He’d known his dat didn’t before he stepped back into his old home. He’d feared Lavina wouldn’t, either. But he’d had to take a chance on it.
How he wished she’d give him a chance.
He pulled up in front of Lavina’s house, and before he could get out she’d slipped from the buggy and was running toward the front door.
“Lavina!”
But she kept going. She raced up the steps to the porch and threw open the front door.
David stood there, debating going after her. Then he shook his head. She probably wouldn’t even answer the door if he knocked.
His shoulders slumped, he walked back to the buggy and got into his seat. “Take us home, Nellie,” he said. “Take us home.”
She began plodding toward the house down the road.
Usually he liked the relaxed travel a buggy provided. His mother had always said the Englisch rushed about so in their automobiles, and that they should slow down and learn to “smell the roses.”
Tonight he found himself wanting to hurry Nellie and get home quickly so he could lose himself in the oblivion of sleep. He’d had two bad days in a row—the first returning