Page 55 of The Hidden One

“Where you headed?”

Jonas Bowman pulled up alongside me and slowed his horse to keep pace. He held the leather lines in both hands and leaned forward slightly so that he could see my face. He was smiling. Happy to see me, I realized, and I wondered what it was like to feel something so honest and simple.

I hadn’t seen him in a while. I didn’t play baseball anymore. He was eighteen now and spent most of his time working at the cabinet shop with his datt. I missed him, but it was a small misery compared to everything else. I missed a lot of things, but then that was what life had become for fourteen-year-old me.

“Nowhere,” I told him.

“Why didn’t you stay for the singing?”

A “singing” was where Amish teens got together, usually after worship, sang the “fast” tunes, and socialized. The girls sat on one side of the table, the boys on the other, and they took turns announcing the songs.

“I’ve had enough singing for one day,” I told him.

We didn’t speak for a minute or two, but the buggy kept pace. I didn’t make eye contact, but I managed a couple of covert glances. He seemed older. More self-assured. His voice was deeper, too. All of it unsettled me in a way I didn’t like or understand.

“Haven’t seen you around much,” he said.

“I’ve been busy.” It was a lie. I was no busier now than those innocent days when we used to meet at old man Delaney’s field and play our hearts out on that baseball diamond.

“Do you want a ride home?” he asked. “I can drive you.”

“No.” It wasn’t true. I wanted to get into that buggy. I wanted to sit next to him and talk about something that wasn’t important, but seemed like it. I wanted to laugh the way we used to. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t do any of those things, and my own foolishness exasperated me because I couldn’t seem to be nice to the one person I actually liked.

Abruptly, he sped ahead a few feet and turned the horse, causing me to stop. I set my hand on the horse’s neck and looked at Jonas over my shoulder to see him climbing down from the buggy.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Getting you to stop and talk to me,” he drawled.

I rolled my eyes, looked away. “Maybe I don’t have anything to say.”

“Now there’s a tall tale. Used to be you’d talk my ear off.”

The sun beat down. I could feel a trickle of sweat between my shoulder blades. His eyes were shaded by the brim of his hat, but they were dark and watchful. Wondering what was wrong with me?

After a moment, he motioned toward the clouds roiling above the treetops to the west. “You’re going to get rained on.”

I didn’t bother looking. I didn’t care one way or another if I got rained on. I didn’t even care if I got struck by lightning.

His brows pulled together, like a kid trying to figure out an arithmetic problem. “We’re going to play baseball tomorrow afternoon at the diamond out to old man Delaney’s. You want to come?”

My heart quickened at the prospect. It seemed like years since I’d played. Oh, how I missed those days.…

“I can’t,” I told him.

“Why not?”

A dozen phony reasons scrolled through my brain. “I’ve got to help Mamm.”

Puzzlement played at his expression as he reached beneath his hat and scratched his head. He was so much taller than me that I had to look up to meet his gaze. His eyes were dark, so different from my own. Looking at him used to be easy. Now, his gaze was harder. Not unkind, but somehow more discerning. When he looked at me, it was with the eyes of a man, not the boy he’d been. What did he see when he looked at me?

“You used to be a pretty good hitter,” he said easily.

I steeled myself against the rush of pleasure. I had been a good hitter. Fast, too. Why couldn’t I just say yes and go?

“You still got the baseball I gave you?” he asked.

“I threw it in the trash.” That was a lie, too, but I let it stand.