The Amish Clockmaker (33 page)

The case was to be constructed primarily of Windsor cherry and would have inlays made from ten different species of hardwood and veneers, including Padauk, Sycamore, Kingwood, Avodire, Silver Gum, and more. He started there, with the wood, going into the back room and looking through his supply of small beech planks. He chose the most flawless one he could find and pulled it from the pile. It wasn't until he turned to go that it struck him how nice everything looked in here. He hadn't bothered to look before, but he saw now that Miriam had really tidied up the place. There was no dust, the stacks of papers were gone, and the wood shavings had been swept from the floor. He hadn't even noticed.

A short while later, he was sitting at the machinery area behind the table, carefully sliding the band saw through the perfect, unmarred piece of beech when he realized he wasn't alone.

Miriam had arrived and was now standing beside him.

Turning off the saw, he paused to look up at her questioningly. In response, she actually met his eyes for the first time in days and managed to give him a small if somewhat melancholy smile.

Something had changed. For the better. There was an apology in that smile, and he wondered what had caused her sudden change of heart. Was she finally starting to understand that he was right in insisting she give up those fancy
Englisch
things? Perhaps the Lord had managed to convict her where Clayton had not.

Whatever it was, her wordless apology extended to a covered plate he now saw she was holding in her hands. She hadn't spent the morning away from the shop in order to avoid him, he realized. She'd spent it in the kitchen, baking up something that smelled like heaven. Peeling back the tinfoil, Miriam revealed a batch of blueberry muffins drizzled with lemon icing—his favorite, as she well knew—and then she spoke.

“I guess you could call this an edible apology,” she told him, as if any explanation had been needed.

He took the plate from her with both hands and closed his eyes for just a
moment, the kindness of her gesture healing some broken chink deep inside him. When he opened his eyes again, he was about to tell her that he was sorry too, that he loved her and only wanted what was best for her, when he realized she was on the verge of tears.

“What?” he asked, setting the plate aside before rising to stand in front of her. “What's wrong?” Looking at her now, he realized there was something she needed to tell him.

Blinking away the wetness at her eyes, she shook her head and finally let it out. “I… they're gone. The things in the trunk. I took care of them. I just wanted you to know that.”

Clayton was stunned. The chore he had been both wanting and dreading to do was done. He was so relieved—and yet he also knew that
he
should have been the one to complete that task. Suddenly, he felt as though he'd failed her.

“On Sunday afternoon,” she continued, oblivious to his guilt, “when I was coming back from visiting with my parents, I slipped into the barn and went up to the hayloft to see if they were gone yet. I thought you would have removed them already, I really did. I didn't expect to see them there still.”

“You shouldn't have had to be the one to take care of that. It should have been me. You shouldn't have had to climb that ladder again, Miriam. I'm sorry.”

She laughed lightly and wiped another tear away. “You're too good to be true, Clayton. You really are.”

Again, words failed him.

“Look. I am the one who brought them here. I'm the one who had to get rid of them, not you.”

“Where… how did you… ” Clayton didn't know how to finish his question without making it sound as if he didn't trust her that the deed was truly done.

“Remember the covered basket I carried the day I moved in here, the day we were married?”

He nodded. She'd brought it on their final trip over, and it had still been in her arms when he showed her the bedroom they would share.

“I'd been hiding the trinkets in there—at least until I found a better place up in the hayloft.”

Her eyes welled with fresh tears, but she brushed them away in frustration. “So yesterday, when I knew I'd be going to Bird-in-Hand with my mother, I
went up to the hayloft with the basket and loaded them all back into it. My mother didn't think twice when I told her I needed to stop by the thrift store on our way into town to drop off some donations.”

“So now they are gone,” Clayton said.

“So now they are gone,” Miriam replied.

The two of them were quiet for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts.

“You did the right thing,” he said, hoping she felt the same way and that the awful tension between them would now be history.

Miriam didn't say anything to that, and suddenly Clayton was assailed with new doubts. If she didn't think so, then had they really made any progress here at all?

“Are you still angry with me?” Clayton asked, his tone just a little too gruff.

A fresh set of tears glimmered at the corners of her eyes, breaking his heart anew. He never, ever wanted to make her cry.

“I'm sorry, Miriam, I—”

She held up a hand to stop him.

“I was never really angry at
you
, Clayton. I was just… angry.”

He thought about that and finally gave her a nod. He understood. He forgave her.

“There's something else I want to tell you,” she added. “I… ” She paused, needing a moment or two to search for the right words to complete her sentence. But then she just shook her head as though they had been impossible to find.

“What? What do you want to tell me?” Clayton leaned forward, desperate to know that it wasn't that her heart still beat for someone else.

“Miriam?”

When she looked up, he found he could not read what her eyes were communicating. She gestured toward the plate of blueberry muffins. Then she placed a hand on Clayton's chest, raised up on tiptoe, and gently kissed him on the cheek. A tiny peck. The slightest brush of her lips against his skin.

For several minutes after she turned from him to walk back to the other room, Clayton could only stare at the blueberry muffins, the table, the beech wood, and his empty hands as he replayed that kiss over and over in his mind.

The rest of the day, the two of them were quiet with each other but no longer contentious, as if they just needed to think and heal a little longer before they could get back to who they had been before.

Late that afternoon, about an hour prior to closing, Clayton went into the back room of the shop to find Miriam with her head bent over the desk, writing on lavender-colored stationery. He cleared his throat to let her know he was there, and she startled, quickly placing both hands over the page.

“Yes?” she said, obviously trying not to look as flustered as she felt.

In an instant his stomach lurched. Were there to be more secrets between them already?

“What's that you're working on?” he asked in a voice filled not with rancor but disappointment. He might as well learn the truth now and get it over with.

She looked down at her hands and the words they covered. “Just some paperwork.”

He exhaled slowly. “If it's just paperwork, then why are you hiding it?”

Miriam hesitated for a long moment, and then her shoulders seemed to droop in surrender. “It's only a letter, Clayton.”

A letter? His pulse surged. To whom? Someone on the outside?

Miriam looked up at Clayton, and she must have seen his thoughts reflected in his features. “It's not what you think. I'm writing it… to you.”

“Me?” he replied, at a complete loss as to why she would do that. Unless she was considering leaving him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

His next words were slow in coming and stitched together with fear. “What must you put in a letter that you cannot tell me straight out?”

For a second or two she just stared at him. Then understanding filled her eyes. “Do you really not trust me at all anymore?”

“What does the letter say?” he challenged, barely able to squeeze the words from his throat.

“Look. It's just… Sometimes when I want to tell somebody something complicated, it's easier to write it down before I utter the words aloud. So I decided to put it on paper first. I'm not even sure if I'm going to give it to you or not. I just need to spell things out this way, for my own sake. Haven't you ever done that?”

Clayton peered deeply into his wife's eyes and prayed she was telling him the truth. She seemed completely sincere, though after having learned she
was capable of keeping secrets—or at least one very big secret—from him, he was having trouble believing her now. He considered insisting that she let him read the letter for himself just so he could know for sure. But after all that had passed between them in recent days, he feared doing so would endanger the new peace they had managed to find.

“No, actually, I haven't,” he replied softly.

She folded the sheets of stationery in half and rose slowly from the desk, slipping the letter into her bag. She took a step toward him and looked him fully in the face, holding his gaze tight on hers before she spoke.

“Don't give up on me now, Clayton. Not now. Please? I need you to trust me.”

I am trying to trust you
. He was afraid to say the words out loud.

“Please?” she said, her eyes pleading. “Please, Clayton?”

When he still said nothing, she reached toward him and placed a hand on his cheek, her fingers just inches from the old wound on his brow. Then, before he had moment to prepare himself for it, Miriam rose up on tiptoe, leaned forward, and pressed her lips to his in an exquisite kiss that was as soft and gentle as it was demanding.

Time seemed to withdraw to some faraway place as he kissed her in return, and in that frozen moment Clayton was aware only of the warmth of her mouth, the tenderness of her touch, and the beating of his own heart.

“Don't give up on me,” she whispered as she broke away from him. Then she turned and walked from the room, leaving him stunned and speechless and still.

That evening after supper Miriam seemed pensive. The kiss between them continued to linger on Clayton's lips, as it surely must have on hers. She was kind and attentive to him, but she would not make eye contact. He sensed her growing apprehension and found that it was fueling his own unease. They were like two strangers meeting for the first time, polite but cautious toward each other. His mother was quick to pick up on the tension. Throughout the evening, as the three of them went about their normal routine of relaxation and reading and devotions and prayer,
Mamm
kept looking from him to Miriam and back again, an expression of concerned curiosity on her face.

As he brushed his teeth before retiring to the bedroom, Clayton realized
he already knew what was weighing on Miriam. After the intensely physical moment they had shared that afternoon, she no doubt feared he had expectations for that night.

But he didn't. He knew she wasn't ready to give herself completely to him yet. Their kiss had been wonderful—and it had awakened every nerve ending in his body—but it was a far step from there to the shared intimacy he wanted for the two of them. There was also the matter of the encounter they'd had just last week, when Miriam confided that she was embarrassed for him to see her in her current condition. He'd been thinking a great deal about that conversation, because he was certain that no matter how many times he might try to convince her otherwise, she was never going to believe him when he said she was beautiful.