Plain Return (The Plain Fame Series Book 4) (23 page)

Still, her heart ached as she took a deep breath and watched the sky change from the dark of night to the orange-red of morning.
Protect him, God, and keep him safe,
she prayed, shutting her eyes and letting her head fall against the doorframe.
Bring him back to me if that is your will. Bring him back to me . . .

Glossary

Pennsylvania Dutch

Spanish

Chapter One

Amanda stood at the crest of the small hill at the back of the property, wiping the sweat from her brow. The sun had barely crested the horizon—the full impact of its powerful heat still hours away—but she still needed a moment’s break to catch her breath. Her dress, a simple floral pattern on cotton fabric that brushed against her knees, did not keep her cool enough, given the work that they were doing.

Up ahead, she saw her brother-in-law, Jonas, and their hired man, Harvey, working the team of Belgian mules as they plowed the fields in preparation for the planting of corn. As the mules pulled the plow, the earth parted behind the moldboard. It was like watching the ocean as it rose up in gentle waves, the only difference being that the footprint of the plow left behind neat rows of tilled soil, whereas the ocean continued to roll onto the sand and then back to the sea.

The ocean.

She wondered if Alejandro was in Miami or Los Angeles since she knew that he had not yet departed for Europe. Less than two weeks had passed since he had left her on her Amish parents’ farm in Lititz, Pennsylvania. Almost two long weeks in which she had done her best to remain unemotional and calm, knowing that her five-year-old adopted stepdaughter, Isadora, needed stability, not more drama, in her young life.

But on the inside, Amanda’s emotions churned, switching from heartbreak to humiliation, from angst to anger, a constant roller coaster of different depths of despair that she had never before experienced.

As much as she tried, Amanda could not erase from her memory the image of Alejandro leaving her on that morning. The coldness with which he had spoken to her, the dismissive way in which he had merely turned and walked away, conflicted with everything else that she had learned about the man she called her husband. Wrapping her mind around the fact that she had been deserted was impossible. Not her, she thought, and certainly not by
her
Alejandro. Where had everything gone wrong? she wondered.

“You all right, then?” a deep voice said from behind her.

Amanda shifted her attention from her inner sanctuary to the man who approached from the other side of the hill. She tried to smile as she turned to face Harvey, the Mennonite farmer hired by Alejandro to help with the farmwork. Without Harvey, Amanda knew that she never could have balanced working the dairy barn while helping her mother with her father after his stroke. Thankfully, her sister and her husband were now taking over the farm, although neither one of them seemed in a great hurry to sever the work relationship with their hired hand.

When he stood before her, his tall, willowy frame blocking the sun from shining in her face, Amanda wrapped her arms around her waist, as if that would help hold everything together. Amanda nodded her head in response to his inquiry. “
Ja
, I’m just fine,” she said.

He reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder, a gesture that caused Amanda to look away. “You don’t have to be out here, Amanda,” Harvey said. “We’ll do just fine the two of us. ’Sides, Izzie will be looking for you shortly.”

Again, she nodded her head. “I know” was her simple response.

“But you do what you have to,” Harvey said, a soft expression on his tanned face.

She managed to smile at him, a way of letting him know how much she appreciated his compassion.

Two weeks, she thought as she watched him walk back to Jonas, who was adjusting the harness on one of the mules.

It was hard for her to face the truth, that her husband had left her in Lititz and gone off to continue his own life, separated from her and their daughter, Isadora. After all that they had been through, she could not comprehend that their marriage might actually be over. So much had happened in the past year, from the accident in New York City to the onslaught of paparazzi in Lancaster County to the whirlwind romance that took her to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Miami.

And then they had gotten married.

She had known that marrying Alejandro would not be easy. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him. That had never been the question. But the clash of their lifestyles merging together had been the final cut to the ties that had bound them together.

The South American tour had been especially hard for Amanda. On a continent where she did not speak the language, both linguistically and culturally, their differences had begun to emerge. From the women with their sophisticated mannerisms and exotic beauty to the arrival of Alejandro’s friend, Enrique Lopez, Amanda had watched as Alejandro transformed into Viper, the womanizing international sensation who charmed everyone he met. His nights began to stretch into the morning hours, and with all of his interviews and obligations, she rarely saw him. Their time alone disintegrated until she found herself alone more than with him.

Neither one of them had been prepared for the arrival of Isadora, his five-year-old daughter from a one-night stand with a Brazilian woman. Amanda had known about the daughter since Alejandro had told her about the child when they first met. But because he maintained no relationship with either the mother or the child, Alejandro never mentioned them again.

So when the Brazilian government worker arrived with the child, explaining that Isadora was headed to an orphanage if Alejandro and Amanda did not take her, the shock of suddenly becoming parents had overwhelmed both of them.

“Amanda?”

She looked up at the sound of her name carried on the morning breeze. Jonas was waving to her, beckoning her to help them.

Obediently, and grateful for the interruption to her racing thoughts, she hurried down the field and joined the two men.

Her brother-in-law stood by the larger of the two mules, examining a piece of leather. “Ach, it’s broken, I reckon.”

Amanda peered over his shoulder at the tie strap. The ring that held it to the trace carrier, the piece of leather that lay across the mule’s rump and kept the plow attached to the harness, had indeed torn off. “That’s not
gut
,” she said. “I don’t think I remember Daed having an extra one.”

Harvey took off his hat and wiped his brow with the back of his arm. “I can run over to the harness shop, fetch a new one.” His offer would save them time since, as a Mennonite, he drove a car. It would be much faster than Amanda or Jonas hitching up a horse to a buggy and riding over. “Amanda, you want to ride along?”

She was about to decline, but Jonas nodded his head. “You haven’t left the farm since Alejandro left. Might do you some good.”

Surprised that Jonas had mentioned Alejandro, she could not respond to turn down Harvey’s offer. It was the first time Jonas, or anyone besides her sister, Anna, had said anything about her husband.

The morning that he had left, her family quietly accepted Amanda’s explanation for Alejandro’s abrupt departure. She tried to tell them that he had meetings and she hadn’t wanted to leave yet, especially with Isadora’s progress adapting to her new life in the United States. Despite her puffy eyes and tearstained cheeks, they simply listened to her, nodded, and never asked another question about him.

Later that morning, in the privacy of the
grossdaadihaus
, where Amanda stayed with Isadora, Anna had inquired further. When Amanda burst into tears, sobbing into her hands that covered her face, she shared the entire story. She told her sister about the South American tour, the truth about Isadora’s appearance in their lives, about Alejandro’s rebuffing the child and leaving her in Amanda’s care, and about the final hours of their time together.

As any good sister would do, Anna listened and then embraced Amanda, holding her while she cried. Afterward, the rest of the family seemed to look at her with a sense of pity. But they never asked any questions. When it came to matters of the heart between husband and wife, they wouldn’t interfere or even probe for more information.

While grateful for their support, Amanda found the cautious way that they treated her, as if she were a fragile doll ready to break at any moment, hard to bear. Only one person ever asked about Alejandro’s absence and that was when Isadora asked where “Papa” had gone. When Amanda explained that Papa had gone away on business, Isadora hadn’t mentioned him again.

“Ready, Amanda?” Harvey asked, the broken tie strap and trace carrier in his hands.

She nodded and followed him as he walked across the field toward his car parked behind the barn.

The number of paparazzi that camped out by the entrance to the farm had declined since Alejandro’s leaving. With Amanda staying on the farm and no news to report, most of the photographers moved on to somewhere, and someone, else. A few remained, and when Harvey drove past them, they eagerly snapped photos of Amanda riding in the car with him. She ignored them, oblivious to their intrusive lenses and knowing that at least one of the photographs would make the tabloids and social media news.

“You’d think they’d give up,” Harvey said as he drove down the road.

Amanda shrugged. “They hardly bother me anymore.”

He nodded as if he understood.

Feeling as if she should fill the silence in the car, Amanda continued explaining. “Those few photographers are nothing like the paparazzi at the airports and arenas. The Englischers sure do have a propensity for enjoying gossip about their favorite celebrities, I reckon.”

Harvey chuckled under his breath. “Like the Amish grapevine?”

She smiled. “
Ja
, I reckon so.”

Even though the Amish community shunned all worldliness, allowing only what the bishops of each church district permitted, they were human beings who spread stories as often as the non-Amish people. Amanda remembered when she had returned to Lancaster to help her mother when her father first fell ill. Women in the community had known about her leaving with the famous singer known as Viper in the media. The younger ones might have stared at her in awe, while the older ones scowled and scorned her. On more than one occasion, the bishop had arrived with a tabloid in his hand, angry that so much attention was focused on their community.

“Just worse, I imagine,” Harvey added.

“Much worse.”

Harvey cleared his throat and glanced at her. “Ever think about calling him, Amanda?”

She shook her head. Harvey knew better than to ask that question. Only once had she gone against the unspoken rule from her upbringing about a woman reaching out to a man. That had been when Alejandro first left her after the accident. He had accompanied her back to the farm, and they had spent a week together: she was curious about his world, and he was eager to disappear into hers. When the paparazzi discovered he was there, he left. The only problem had been that the cameras didn’t.

When the bishop wanted her to leave the community, perhaps to return to Ohio to stay with family, Amanda resisted. She didn’t want to be shuffled from community to community. So she had approached the media that lingered by the driveway and spoke to them, hoping against hope that Alejandro would get the message.

He had.

And he had come for her.

She leaned her head against the headrest and watched as they passed farm after farm. With everything turning green at last, she couldn’t help but take comfort in the fact that at least she was not in Los Angeles, surrounded by tall buildings and busy highways. She’d probably be spending her days alone or, at best, sitting in the studio as Alejandro recorded new songs. She thought about her friend, Celinda, a young singer who she had met last autumn. Amanda wondered if, had she gone to California with Alejandro, they would have caught up for lunch or shopping like they had one day so long ago. Of course, according to the tabloids, and confirmed by Alejandro, Celinda, too, was in the midst of a separation from her longtime love, Justin Bell.

Amanda couldn’t help but wonder how Celinda had coped with the devastating discovery of his indiscretions.

At the harness store, Harvey got out of the car and hurried around to open the door for her. She hadn’t realized they’d pulled into the parking lot.

“I’m so sorry,” she said as she started to get out of the car. He held out his hand for her and she accepted it, looking up at him and managing to thank him with a soft smile.

She knew that it was a fortunate day when Alejandro had arranged for him to work on their farm. He had become like a brother to her and an uncle to Isadora. Without Harvey, Amanda knew that the farm would have fallen into disarray before Jonas arrived. Now that Jonas was fully entrenched in the community after moving there from Ohio, the two men managed the farm without need for much assistance. Still, when the four walls of the kitchen felt like they were closing in on her, Amanda often escaped to the outside to lend a hand.

“You all right?” he asked.

She nodded her head and looked away. The sting of holding back tears forced her to blink several times. She would not cry, she told herself. Do not cry.

“I’ll go in. Why don’t you just take a seat on that bench yonder?” He pointed toward the shade of a large overgrown tree.

With misty eyes, she nodded her head and obediently walked to where he had pointed. Sitting on the bench, which was long overdue for a fresh coat of paint, Amanda stared into the distance, watching a car pulling out of the parking lot. But her mind was elsewhere, across the continent, lying in the arms of her husband. She smiled, her first genuine smile in weeks, as she shut her eyes and remembered the feel of his touch on her bare skin.

It was a memory that she was beginning to fear would fade over time.

When Alejandro awoke, the sun had not yet risen. He had an appointment with the recording company first thing in the morning and then needed to work with the choreographer and dancers on some new routines for the European tour. With only one week until his departure, he felt as though he were on autopilot, simply moving through the day and responding to the reminders from both his smartphone and his manager, Geoffrey.

Shuffling from the kitchen to the bedroom of his condominium, he stretched his arms over his head, feeling the tightness in his neck and shoulders. The stress of the upcoming tour combined with the added strain of his separation from Amanda weighed heavily upon him. While he almost dreaded the former, being busy kept him from thinking too much about the latter.