Her Restless Heart Part 15

Anna reached over to take Mary Katherine's hand. "Thanks for defending my cupcake hats."

"It's just like you to make a joke when something turns serious," Naomi said.

A strange expression flitted across Anna's face. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Naomi touched Leah's arm.

"So what's going to happen? Are we going to stop doing what we do? The new things, I mean?"

"No." Leah looked at each of them in turn. "I don't believe we're doing anything wrong, so I don't think we should change anything."

The cousins looked at each other.

"What if he doesn't like that?"

"Then he can take it to the elders."

The bell jangled on the front door. Naomi stood, but Leah shook her head. "I'll get it. I need to do something to work off this-this urge I have to say something not so nice about the bishop!"

Mary Katherine chose to walk to Jamie's apartment. She felt like her grandmother-upset and needing some way to work off her churning emotions.

And she felt some guilt. The bishop had never come to the shop until she'd had that talk with him after church. Her conscience prodded her. Maybe she could have been more polite to him. Allrecht, she should have been more polite to him. She just hadn't been able to resist behaving the same way to him that she had with another over-bearing authority figure- her father.

Now maybe she'd just made trouble for all of them. She kicked at a stone in her path and watched it skitter ahead of her.

She climbed the stairs to Jamie's apartment and knocked on her door. Then again. When she knocked for the third time, she began to wonder if Jamie wasn't home-if she'd forgotten that they were going to spend the evening together.

Just as she started to knock once more, the door opened.

Jamie stood there dressed in sweats, her hair uncombed, her eyes reddened from crying. "You came."

"I said I would. What's the matter? Aren't you feeling well? Have you got the flu?"

Jamie wiped at her eyes. "No. I'm just upset about something. Listen, give me a minute, and I'll change."

"We don't have to go for pizza!" Mary Katherine called after her.

But Jamie had already entered her bedroom and closed the door. When she came out, she was dressed in jeans and a sweater, her hair was combed, and evidence of crying had been mostly hidden with cosmetics.

"We don't have to go anywhere," Mary Katherine repeated. "We can stay here and talk."

"No, it'll be good for me to get out. Besides, I haven't eaten all day, and now I'm starving."

Mary Katherine told her about how Jacob wanted to join them and hoped to bring Ben along. "I told Jacob I had to ask you, and he said they'd sit at another table if we didn't want company."

"No, it's okay. Jacob really seems to like you. And Ben is cool to talk to. It doesn't hurt that he's cute, too."

"But you have a boyfriend."

Jamie's mouth tightened, and she frowned. "Not anymore."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No, let's go."

They walked to the restaurant, their breath huffing white in the cold air. When they arrived at the restaurant, they saw Jacob and Ben standing outside.

Jamie smiled at them. "So, you two handsome guys want to have pizza with us?"

Mary Katherine's eyes widened. She didn't know any Amish girls who would talk like that.

Ben rushed to hold the door open for them.

"Such a gentleman," Jamie said as she looked at him, and Ben reddened.

Jacob motioned for her and Mary Katherine to precede them into the restaurant.

"You're a gentleman, too," Mary Katherine teased as she walked past them.

"Ya, that's me," he said with a grin.

They were seated in a booth, a small one that made Mary Katherine uncomfortably aware of Jacob sitting beside her. She pulled her skirts close to her body, but when her hand accidentally touched his thigh covered in wool fabric there was a crackle of static electricity.

Trying not to look at him, she picked up her menu and studied it. To her mortification, she heard her stomach growl.

Jacob quirked an eyebrow at her.

"I didn't have lunch," she said. "I got back to the shop and we were busy."

"I'd have made you a sandwich instead of coffee cake if I'd known."

"It was good coffee cake."

"Danki. I actually enjoyed making it."

She put her elbow on the table and set her chin in her hand. "Maybe you should tell your sister. Maybe she did you a favor." She paused for a moment. "Like that professor did for me by asking me to do something I'd never done before. And now you're cooking, something you never really did much before."

Their eyes met. If there were other people around her, they faded away. She couldn't hear them, couldn't see them.

Then her stomach growled again. Jacob signaled for the server. "Let's get you some food before you fade away before my eyes."

"I'm not some insubstantial miss who's going to fade away."

"No," he said, turning to look at her. "You're perfect to me."

The moment the words slipped out, Jacob wished he could call them back.

"I wish somebody else felt I was perfect," she muttered.

"Yes, can I help you?" the server asked.

He wanted to send her away, but he'd called her over. Besides, Mary Katherine was hungry, and so was he.

They placed their order, and then he looked back at her. She was tracing the circle of condensation on the wooden table left by her gla.s.s of water and frowning.

"What was that about wishing somebody thought you were perfect?" he asked her quietly.

She was distracted as Jamie and Ben got up.

Jacob glanced up at them.

"We want to go look at the bakery case," Jamie told them.

Mary Katherine looked relieved to see them leave. "The bishop stopped by the shop after you dropped me off," she said quietly.

"The bishop visited the shop?"

She nodded.

"Well, I never thought about him doing that. Was he buying a gift like I did?"

She gave a derisive laugh. "Hardly. He came to tell us that he didn't like what we were doing. I think he was especially displeased by what I do."

"You?"

"Some of our things are too modern. Not Plain enough. We're supposed to be representing the Amish with traditional crafts, he said."

"Really?" He sat back, trying to absorb what she said.

"I love what Grandmother has encouraged us to do. Naomi and Anna and me, I mean. I'd hate to think that it's causing a problem for her."

"What do you mean? Is he threatening to go to the church elders about it?"

She shook her head. "He didn't say that today. But I'm afraid that's the next step."

Shaking her head again, she sighed and leaned back in the booth. "I wonder what Daniel's bishop in Florida is like?"

The minute Jamie walked into her apartment with Mary Katherine, Jamie kicked off her shoes and walked over to collapse on the sofa.

"I'm going to put the leftover pizza in the refrigerator," Mary Katherine told her. "Unless you want another piece?"

"No," Jamie said with a moan. She put her arm over her face. "I feel sick. I think I ate too much."

"You're not the only one," Mary Katherine told her. "Maybe I should wrap the pieces in aluminum foil and put them in the freezer."

"Good idea."

When Mary Katherine returned to the living room, Jamie wasn't lying on the sofa anymore. The bathroom door was closed, and when she heard the toilet flush, she knew where her friend was.

Then the door opened, and Jamie appeared, leaning dramatically against the jamb. "I feel so sick. I can't seem to keep anything down lately. Why I thought I'd get away with pizza- especially stuffing myself with it-is beyond me."

"Is it the flu? It's going around."

Jamie's face contorted. "I don't think so. I'm-I'm scared to death I'm pregnant."

She said it with such bitterness and despair, Mary Katherine was shocked. A boppli-baby-was eagerly looked forward to by the Amish. Well, they weren't perfect, she reflected; occasionally there were couples who antic.i.p.ated their vows, who married and had an early baby.

"Think? You haven't gone to the doctor?"

"I can't afford it," Jamie said, returning to the sofa to flop onto it and cover her face with the afghan.

"Then you should at least take a pregnancy test from the drugstore."

Jamie pulled the afghan down, revealing her face. "How do you know about this?"

"I'm Amish. Not ignorant," Mary Katherine told her briskly. She stood and pulled her purse strap onto her shoulder. "Then that's the first thing you need to know. The drugstore is probably still open. We'll go get a pregnancy kit."

"I think I'm going to throw up again." Jumping up, Jamie bolted for the bathroom and slammed the door.

This wasn't looking good, thought Mary Katherine. She walked over to the door and knocked on it. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

"I don't want to leave if you're not okay."

The toilet flushed, and water ran in the sink. Jamie opened the door. She was wetting a washcloth. "All better now."

"I'll go by myself. You don't seem to be in any shape to go."

"Thank you," Jamie told her.

She looked wan, but her voice was heartfelt.

Mary Katherine started for the door. "Is there anything else you need?"

"Chocolate," Jamie said in a m.u.f.fled voice as she wiped her face with the washcloth. "A couple of pounds of chocolate."

"Chocolate never cured anything," Mary Katherine told her, but she couldn't help smiling a little.

"It never hurt, either."

Mary Katherine was holding two pregnancy kits-wondering which was better-when she felt someone watching her. She turned and someone-a man-darted behind a display of cereal.

Shrugging, she turned back to her study of the kits. One promised that fewer mistakes were made with it and that it could detect a pregnancy earlier than any other tests on the market. She checked the price. It was two dollars more, but she figured it was worth the price.

Satisfied, she walked to the checkout and was digging in her purse for money when she realized that everything had gone silent. Glancing up, she saw that the clerk and two staff members were standing there, staring at her.

She felt a moment's twinge, then dismissed it. They didn't know her, and she didn't know them. And most importantly, she wasn't wearing her Plain clothes. They probably thought she was Englisch, so no one in her community would ever know that she'd bought a pregnancy kit.

She quickly handed over the money, got her change, and held out her hand for the package safely hidden now in a plastic bag.