LITMIR.BIZ

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“It’s just how it is.”

      April couldn’t detect from his tone what Joseph really meant. At these moments, when some barrier came up, it always seemed Joseph became particularly difficult to read. Just when she needed clarity, he’d speak in riddles.

      “Okay . . .” April said, trying to process Joseph’s words. “But what about rumspringers?”

      Joseph smiled and seemed to loosen up a bit.

      “Rumspringa,” he corrected her.

      “Yeah, that. Rumspringa.”

      “It doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

      “How do you know what I think it means?”

      “I live in the world,” Joseph said.

      “Well, yeah, but like in a different world . . .”

      “No,” Joseph said, turning to April. “Same world. Just a different way of living in it.”

      They sat quietly for a moment.

      “Does your family approve of your idea, the fancy furniture business thing?”

      “They don’t understand it,” he replied. “And those that do, don’t like it. It’s not what we do.”

      “Do they want you to do something else?”

      “Well, no. There’s not as much farmland in Pennsylvania as there used to be. Even my brothers had to look for plots in Iowa and Wisconsin. A lot of people do nowadays. And anyway, my family doesn’t have money to buy anything right now. They need me to find something else.”

      “So they don’t like the furniture idea but they’ll support it.”

      “If it lets me get settled and get married, they won’t object.”

      “Get married . . . to an Amish girl, you mean?”

      “Of course,” Joseph said.

      * * *

      The next day, during the short break after lunchtime, April pulled off her apron, tossed it onto a hook, and, without thinking, began to walk toward the Amish diner, toward Joseph. It was their unofficial meeting time. Then she stopped in her tracks. What am I doing? she thought. He’s just going to disappear one day. He’s just slumming it with me.

      April noticed Carmen looking at her from behind the counter. It was obvious that Carmen could tell exactly what she was thinking, and it only deepened April’s irritation. Determined not to give Carmen the pleasure of being right, April turned around and continued toward the Amish diner with renewed resolve—but she didn’t stop there. As she passed the diner, April made a special effort not to look for Joseph. No. Let him see her walk by, ignoring him.

      So what if Joseph wasn’t serious about her? Was she serious about him? This farmer boy was looking to get married, literally the last thing on earth April wanted to do now. And yeah, seven babies? No, thanks. April wasn’t about to play farmer’s wife. She laughed to herself at the thought of walking around, demurely wearing a prairie dress and singing hymns.

      As April walked out into the open air, into the warm spring day, she flung off her flannel shirt, tied it around her waist, and stretched in her tank top, enjoying the sun warming her bare arms and neck. If Joseph were around, she’d probably keep the flannel on, so as not to scandalize his Amish sensibilities too much.

      Forget him, she thought. And walked through the streets, careful to avoid the spots she associated with Joseph.

      April had plenty of other things to worry about it. Joseph, after all, wasn’t an actual problem—he was, in fact, the distraction from her problems. Joseph was the easy part of her life. That, at least, was the hope.

      In the meantime, the hard parts of April’s life seemed to be getting harder by the day. She still owed money all over town. At war with at least two ex-boyfriends, she was constantly watching her back for dangerous interactions. There were entire neighborhoods in Philly that April wouldn’t set foot in, for fear of running into potentially hazardous encounters, people who triggered her, people who, if she even saw them, much less talked to them, would lead her down a road that would quickly land her in jail.

      The reason she was penniless when she’d first arrived that day at Carmen’s bakery was that she’d just quit a job in Fishtown, in North Philly, for fear of running into her (most recent) abusive ex. And because of that fear, she’d lost a shot at work. There were just too many traps set for her around town.

      And jobs didn’t come easy. She couldn’t seem to hold down work. Inevitably her boss would reveal himself—it was almost always some man—to be a jerk, or worse. Eventually April would tell him so and she’d be out of a job. Now that she was working at the bakery, she had some cash flow but, if history were any guide, it would be temporary.

      And what kind of support system did she really have? If Joseph suffered from too much family, April had the opposite problem: barely any. April’s father died when she was twelve. Her mother was a broken-down alcoholic, who spent her days inserting coins into slot machines in Atlantic City. Her mother lived with an abusive boyfriend who, more than once, had aggressively tried to kiss April. The final straw had come when her mother had found Rose’s checkbook and forged a check to herself from it. Neither sister trusted their mother and they avoided contact with her. The sudden recent disappearance of her sister was not only a painful and unsettling development, but also a major blow to April’s social world. She simply didn’t have much else.

      Well, she had Carmen now. And, it seemed, things were going well on that front. But she was just waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for Carmen to lose patience with her, get angry at her, ask her to leave the bakery. She was doing everything in her power to make it work, but she knew the patterns of her life; somehow everything got fouled up in the end. She would survive, yes, but she would lose everything in the process.

      And then there was Joseph. He was supposed to be the easy part of her day. But the more she told herself that, the more it seemed like a line. Was he really a part of her life? What did he even know about her? And if he ever were to know, would he talk to her anymore? April’s constant thoughts about Joseph were beginning to become yet another problem. It seemed that the only way out of thinking about Joseph was to spend more time with him. But that, of course, just sounded like another trap.

      The situation with Rose was so bad that April could barely even get her mind around it anymore. She’d been checking in with Sergeant Connors every few days. Then it became every week. Then even less frequently. She couldn’t take the constant bad news, the blank looks of the cops. She hated lying to them by withholding everything she knew about Ricky, and she feared that these lies would catch up with her.

      Ricky had never contacted her after she’d barged into his shop that day. She contemplated going back—but had put it off. At first, it was a calculated move. She wanted to see how he’d respond to her note. Then, after his silence, she realized she’d lost her confidence. She began to suspect that a second visit would be, at best, unproductive. And at worse, dangerous. So she’d waited. And when nothing happened, when there was no news of any kind, she began to panic, to lose sleep.

      Then something clicked in her. Her panic was replaced by something even more powerful: denial. Admitting that this was happening had simply become too dangerous. Of all the bad things that had beset April in her life, the disappearance of literally the only person she trusted and loved was something she lacked the language to describe. It was something beyond fear or anxiety or even extreme sadness. It was something that, if she looked at it honestly, would force her to question her own existence, her identity. What happened to a person when the one constant in their life, the thing that sustained them, was suddenly gone, vanished, as if it never existed? What happened, April believed, was that you also ceased to exist. For the sake of her sanity, out of some primal instinct for basic survival, she simply couldn’t think about it. Not anymore.

      She found her brain telling her, She’ll probably call any minute, she’ll show up, she’s fine. It was

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