Chapter 1.
I wish he wouldn’t come to town. Kate gazed out the window, across the dusty road to the only love she was sure she would ever know. Of course, it was sinful to covet something, or indeed someone who wasn’t hers, but in her heart he had been hers. It was he who had chosen to marry another.
“Look who’s across the road.” Rebecca, Kate’s employer, nodded in the direction of Benjamin. Rebecca would’ve known Kate had already noticed him, as she spent most Tuesdays gazing out the window in the hope of seeing him walk past.
“Now don’t go causing trouble. He means nothing to me, and he’s married.” Kate’s voice was necessarily stern as Rebecca delighted in teasing her about men and getting married.
“I may be old, but I know love when I see it.” Rebecca gave a chuckle and put her head down to continue sewing.
Rebecca used to be Amish and had been like a mother to Kate ever since Kate had left the Amish some years ago.
Kate could not deny she still missed Benjamin’s company even after all this time. He was kind and gentle and there was something about him that made Kate’s heart beat much faster at the very thought of him. Kate’s gaze was drawn back to him. Benjamin was speaking with an Englischer and it looked like they knew each other quite well.
Not much about him had changed since the day Kate had left the Amish; he looked exactly as she remembered him from back then in his straw hat, the billowy white shirt, and the black pants held up by the black suspenders. The only difference was in his face, which was now covered by a beard, which enhanced the strength of his jawline. She hadn’t seen his face up close lately, but studying it from afar, she was certain there would’ve been fine lines in his forehead and at the corners of his eyes.
“Would it hurt to say hello to him?” Rebecca asked.
“Benjamin is taken now, married to another. You shouldn’t talk of such things. It would be a sin if I thought such things.” Kate added, “It says in Exodus chapter twenty and verse seventeen, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.”
“Just asking.”
Kate sighed knowing that it was far too late and nothing could possibly be done about Benjamin being married. She would have to face the fact that Benjamin would never be her beloved. The only small comfort Kate took was in the thought that Lydia, his wife, must be a wonderful woman or Benjamin wouldn’t have chosen her. Kate and Lydia were around the same age, but had never been friends growing up. Kate put it down to their personalities being so different.
Although Kate had not formally left the Amish community, as she hadn’t had the baptism, she knew she wouldn’t return as she’d left it behind in her heart. She still kept to her Christian ways and still read the Scriptures every evening, as was the way of her familye.
“You seem to remember that scripture very well - by heart.” Rebecca suppressed a smile and stared at the pants she was sewing.
Kate looked across the large, wooden table at her employer. “I do. I’ve had to memorize it.” Rebecca’s face was now pinched into a frown and two deep lines furrowed between her eyebrows. Kate wondered if it would’ve been wiser if she hadn’t told Rebecca about her private pain. Rebecca’s right; I’ve had to remember that scripture, just to get by.
Kate tried unsuccessfully to occupy her mind with the work in front of her. Her duties weren’t hard, and mostly Kate enjoyed the repairs they took in and the custom dressmaking jobs such as wedding dresses. The beautiful, small, pearl beads that Kate was applying to the bodice of the wedding dress in front of her jolted her thoughts back to Benjamin.
I wonder if he knows I work in this little tailor’s shop. He’s never once called to see me. Why would he come to see me, though? It was my choice to leave, and besides, he has to abide by the rules - since I left, he’s not supposed to speak with me. Besides that, he’s a married man.
Kate looked through the tailor shop window to see that Benjamin had just finished his conversation with the Englischer and was walking away. With every step he took away from her, the pain in her heart grew. Her eyes fixed themselves upon his large steady frame until he disappeared from sight.
The ache in her heart was just as fierce as the day she’d heard that he was betrothed to another. However, that did nothing to dull the image of his warm smile that was etched deeply into her heart. She could still hear the comforting, mellow tones of his voice dancing in her ears.
Kate sighed heavily as she reminisced of the simple days of her youth when she played in the green fields with her sisters and baby bruder. The gentle sun smiled upon their skin as the gentle breeze caressed their cheeks. Every evening, the smell of their mother's cooking drew them in from their play.
Everyone had chores on the farm yet they never considered the chores as work because they were accompanied by family togetherness and laughter. After they finished their duties there was always time to play. Benjamin was often included in their games. Benjamin’s farm, next door, often had baby animals they would play with and help look after.
She remembered how Benjamin and his bruder, Jessie, came to dinner with her family, at least once a week. That was until he married Lydia.
Kate smiled as she recalled how she followed Benjamin around talking to him even though he was older than she, and he probably thought of her as just a mere child. Surely Benjamin would have felt the same attachment as I did, the pull toward him was so strong that he must have felt the same too.
Before long, her mind drifted to the summer day when the nineteen-year-old Benjamin told the then fourteen-year-old Kate that he would marry her when she grew up. That day had been the happiest day of her life. She couldn’t remember the exact words that he had spoken, but she had always remembered the intent. Even though she was young, she knew to take someone at their word.
Kate was devastated when Benjamin suddenly married Lydia just four short years later. Lydia was only a year older than Kate, and Kate always wondered why he had chosen Lydia over her. Sometimes Kate thought about it so much that it made her head ache, and even then she was still no closer to finding an answer that made sense.
Kate tried to return her attention to the sewing in front of her. How stupid she’d felt when she realized that he hadn’t really meant his careless words as a promise. Benjamin would never go back on his word; he must have seen me as a silly child; he was just having a joke.
The color rose in Kate’s cheeks as she recalled the pain and humiliation of Benjamin’s rejection. She had come to realize that he being nineteen and a grown mann had thought nothing of the comment of marriage to a fourteen-year-old child; it had been a remark in passing or a joke. Kate was the only one who had taken it as a solemn promise.
“You’ll get over it,” Rebecca said comfortingly, as if reading Kate’s mind. “Time heals all wounds.”
Kate raised an eyebrow in response to the comment. She knew it was something that she would not get over—not ever. It wasn’t like a cold that she could just recover from and slowly mend. There was no cure for what ailed her, no medicine, no half glass of medicinal wine and even time hadn’t healed her. To Kate, Benjamin was a part of her, a part of her very soul.
“I know that you still think about him a lot,” Rebecca said.
Kate bit her lip, kept her head down and tried to give her utmost attention to the small pearls she was sewing into an intricate pattern. Rebecca, and Kate’s friend Liz, were the only people Kate had ever told of the pain of losing the only man she would ever love. He was the only mann she wanted to have kinner with. She had always wanted a large familye with Benjamin as her husband.
All had been perfect in Kate’s world until that dreadful day she heard the terrible news of Benjamin’s impending marriage. Prior to that, Kate could not recall ever having a day with sadness or sorrow. Now, all her days seemed that way, as though there was a gray cloud over her head that followed her wherever she went.
Kate dare not tell anyone, other than her two closest friends, because it was wrong for her to desire the husband of another woman.
On the day Benjamin married Lydia, Kate swore she would leave the Amish as soon as she was able. Kate’s father made her wait another whole year for her rumspringa. That year she’d been forced to stay, knowing Benjamin was on the farm next door with his new wife, was the longest, most painful year of her life. Kate wanted to be happy for them, but she could not.
Kate was desperate to get away from the community before she would have to see Lydia and Benjamin blessed with a boppli. A year later, Kate’s father relented and Kate was finally allowed her rumspringa and she made her escape.
