The Search (Lancaster County Secrets 3)

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Billy took a few deep breaths, trying to steady himself, and went up to the farmhouse. He was looking for Jonah, before he remembered Jonah was spending the night at the hospital with Bess. It looked like their company—Sallie and her boys and that Mose—were gone too. Probably at the hospital, Billy figured. Billy rubbed his face with his hands. His father would know what to do. He hated leaving Bertha like this, but he couldn’t move her on his own. Boomer was standing guard by her. He bolted down the drive and ran home to fetch his father.

  Billy knew word would trickle quickly through the community about the passing of Bertha Riehl. He had to act fast to get to the hospital in Lancaster as quickly as he could. His father tried to insist they get Caleb Zook to tell Jonah and Bess the news about Bertha. “That’s what bishops are for,” he told Billy. “They know best how to say these things.”

  Billy was tempted, but he knew, deep down, he needed to be the one to go. Part of being a man was not avoiding hard things. He changed clothes and his father drove him into town to catch the bus to Lancaster.

  “Maybe I should go with you,” he told Billy.

  “No, I need to do this myself.” Billy wasn’t sure how he was going to break the news to Jonah about Bertha’s passing. But he had to get to them before they returned to Rose Hill Farm and found a group of women gathered, preparing the house for the viewing.

  Just before he hopped on the bus, his father stopped him by placing a hand on his shoulder. Billy turned to him, and his father didn’t say anything, but there was something in his eyes—a look that said he was pleased with him. He couldn’t remember ever seeing that look from his father before.

  Not an hour later, Billy arrived at the hospital and found Jonah and Lainey and everyone else sitting in the waiting room.

  “Billy!” Lainey said when she spotted him. Then she grew solemn, sensing from the look on his face that something had happened. “What’s wrong?”

  Billy sat near them, struggling to speak. Lainey took hold of his hand to give him strength. “It’s Bertha,” Billy started, then tears filled his eyes. “She’s gone.” He had to stop and wipe his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “I found her in the roses.” He covered his face then, unable to continue.

  Jonah heard the words come out of Billy’s mouth, but he couldn’t understand them. It was as if everything had stopped. The sound of the nurses’ shoes as they hurried up the hallways, the clocks ticking, the elevator opening and shutting. He looked at Billy and felt pity for him. Poor Billy. He was suffering. And then he looked at Lainey, with tears running down her cheeks. Sallie started to tell Mose a list of things they needed to do for the funeral. It was like Jonah’s mind had shut down and he wasn’t able to process the meaning behind the sentence, “She’s gone.”

  His mother had passed? She was dead?

  Like a fog lifting, the full meaning behind those words started to sink in to him. Then the pain rushed at him, as real as an ocean wave, and he felt the tears come. Billy crouched down beside him and Jonah put his hand on Billy’s head. They sat there for a long while, until a nurse came and timidly interrupted to let them know Bess was ready to go now.

  Jonah nodded and wiped his face with his handkerchief. “I need to tell her.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Lainey offered.

  “I should go,” Sallie said as she rose to her feet.

  “No,” Lainey said, giving Sallie a firm look. “No. I’ll go.”

  Sallie looked confused, then hurt, but Mose put a gentle hand on her arm. Jonah didn’t have the presence of mind to do anything more.

  Before walking into Bess’s room, Jonah took a deep breath and prayed for God’s strength. Bess had grown so close to his mother this summer. More and more, she was acting like her too. She even cooked like his mother. He opened the door a crack and saw her waiting by the window, dressed and ready to go.

  “How are you feeling?” Lainey asked her.

  “Not too bad,” Bess said. “A little sore. They won’t let me see Simon, but they did tell me it went well for him.”

  Jonah nodded. “So I heard.”

  Bess picked up her bonnet and cape. “Let’s go home.”

  Jonah pulled up a chair for Lainey to sit in. “Bess, something has happened.”

  Bess looked curiously at her father. Then she gasped. “It’s Simon. He’s dead, isn’t he? All this effort, and he’s dead.”

  “No. Simon is fine.” In a twist of irony, Simon was fine and his mother was dead. Jonah pulled the curtain around her bed to give them privacy from the other patients. Then he leaned a hip against the bed frame, crossed his arms against his chest, and lifted his face to Bess. Gently, he told her that her grandmother had passed this morning while she was out tending the roses. He waited, expecting her to break down.

  Bess turned to face the window. She hugged her elbows as if she was holding herself together.

  Lainey walked up to Bess and put her hands on her shoulders. Softly she said, “It was your grandmother’s time. She’d done everything she needed to do. She brought Simon back to his family. She brought you and your dad back to Stoney Ridge.” Lainey turned Bess around to look at her. Bess was dry-eyed. “God’s timing is always perfect. You see that, don’t you? Her life was complete.” She spoke with conviction.

  Jonah remained silent as Lainey said those words. He was amazed by her, nearly in awe. But it distressed him to see Bess so quiet. It wasn’t like her. Two years ago, when their pet dog had been hit by a car, she had cried for two days straight. “Are you all right, Bess?”

  Bess nodded but didn’t say a word.

  “When you’re ready,” Jonah said, “Billy is waiting for us in the hallway.”

  “I’m ready now,” was all Bess said in a voice unfamiliar to him.

  It was afternoon by the time they returned to Rose Hill Farm. The hardest moment of all came as the taxi drove up the driveway. Knowing Mammi wasn’t there—and wouldn’t be there ever again—made Bess feel an unbearable pain in her chest, as real as if she had been stabbed.

  Everyone in the taxi was aware of Mammi’s absence. She saw the tight set of her father’s jaw. Billy kept his chin tucked to his chest, Lainey just went ahead and let the tears flow. Sallie was quiet, which was a great blessing. Even her boys seemed to know they needed to be calm and still, but it helped to have Mose sit between them in the back of the station wagon.

  Rose Hill Farm wasn’t empty. The news had spread quickly throughout Stoney Ridge. Friends and neighbors were in and around the farmhouse, cleaning it from top to bottom in preparation for the viewing and the funeral. The women fussed over Bess, but all she wanted was to go upstairs and lie down on her bed. She was stiff and exhausted after an uncomfortable night. Her hip felt sore and so did her heart—aching for her grandmother. It was the bitterest kind of heartache she had ever felt—an ache that burned and gnawed. She hoped that tears would come in solitude and help wash away the pain. It seemed a terrible thing that she couldn’t shed a tear for Mammi. She had loved her grandmother more than she had even realized. She knelt by her window and looked out over the rose fields, wondering where it was that her grandmother had lay down and died. But still no tears came, only the same horrible ache of grief.

  When she finally went downstairs, she learned that the undertaker had returned her grandmother’s body. The women had dressed Mammi in burial clothes and laid her out in the front room. One had stopped all of the clocks in the house at the early morning hour they assumed Bertha had died. They would be restarted after the burial.

  Bess walked slowly into the front room. Mammi didn’t look like Mammi, she thought as she stood next to her grandmother’s still body, lying on the dining room table. Jonah came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

  “She’s really gone,” Bess whispered. “You can tell. Whatever it was that made her Mammi is gone.”

  “Gone from us, but gone to God,” Jonah told her.

  At first, Boomer seemed to be in everyone’s way, all
the time. Bess knew he was looking for Mammi, and it nearly broke her heart. She knew what he was thinking: almost everyone else in Stoney Ridge seemed to be in and out of Rose Hill Farm, doing errands of kindness, but there was no sign of his mistress.

  Later that day, Boomer went missing. Bess called for him and put food and water out on the porch, hoping he would return. He seemed to have disappeared.

  It was a muggy, rainy day when Bertha Riehl was buried, three days after she passed. Jonah and Bess stood by Bertha’s graveside and viewed her for the last time in the large, plain pine coffin.

  Jonah stood looking down at his mother. Her face was relaxed and serene, but Bess was right—whatever it was that made her Bertha—her soul? her pneuma?—it was gone. Our bodies are just a shell, a house, for our eternal souls.

  How differently he would have done things if he’d known his mother was slated for death this summer. How much time he had wasted. He felt moved with a deep grief for the years lost between them. And yet, on its heels came a quiet joy. Coming back to Stoney Ridge last week had been no accident. He and his mother, in the end, they made their peace. Just in time.

  He saw Billy lean close to Bess and whisper, “Are you okay?”

  Bess nodded without looking up. She was calmer than Jonah would have thought possible, considering. His mother would be proud of her.

  The lid of the coffin was nailed shut and lowered into the ground; the young men—Billy was one of them—picked up their shovels to heave dirt. When the first loud clump of dirt hit the coffin, Bess broke down with a loud sob. Jonah took a step toward her, but Billy had already handed his shovel to another boy and was at Bess’s side. He patted her on the back to comfort her, handed her his handkerchief, then as her weeping grew worse, he steered her by the shoulders to lead her to his buggy.

  On the drive back to Rose Hill Farm, Billy couldn’t find any good words to ease Bess’s sorrow. Several times he almost had the right thing. But always he stopped. He couldn’t bear it any longer. He turned the buggy down a side road and pulled the horse to a full stop. “Go ahead, Bess,” he said as he put his arms around her. “Cry it all out. I’m here. No one’s here to see. Have a good cry.”

  And so she clung to him and wept and wept until he thought that her body would never stop shaking with the sobs and the grief. He didn’t think a body could have so many tears to cry, but maybe girls were made with more tear ducts. It was good, though, to have her finally show some emotion. It worried him to see her tearless. It just didn’t seem like Bess.

  “It’s not that I’m crying for Mammi, Billy,” she said between sobs. “I know she’s in a better place. And she’s with Daadi now. I’m crying for me. What will I do without her?”

  Finally, the wave of sorrow subsided and Bess’s sobs turned to sniffles. When he thought she seemed all wrung out, with not another tear left to shed, he wiped her face with his sleeve and took her home.

  As soon as the house had emptied out that evening, Jonah went outside to get some fresh air. He checked that Frieda had water and alfalfa hay, then lingered in the barn for a while. He swept the floor of rose petals and knocked down a few spiderwebs. He just didn’t want to go inside. Sallie would be waiting for him and he couldn’t face her. He couldn’t deny that she had been a wonderful help these last few days. She seemed to know how to get things done in a matter-of-fact, efficient way.

  But all he could think about was how much he wanted to be with Lainey. To talk to her about his mother. About Bess. About Simon. About everything. She had participated in every part of the viewing and the funeral, was accepted by the community as nearly one of them—he noticed that folks weren’t switching to English anymore when she came in a room. And he would be forever grateful for the support she had provided to his Bess.

  But Lainey continued to avoid him. He couldn’t blame her at all, but he didn’t think he could abide much more of it.

  Jonah hung up the broom and slid the door open to find Sallie walking toward the barn in the dusk. “Shall we walk awhile?” she asked him.

  They headed down the drive to the road without saying a word to each other. The strange thing, he realized, was not that he wasn’t talking. It was that Sallie wasn’t talking. In fact, now that he thought about it, she hadn’t said much at all lately. She was as silent as a Sunday afternoon. Then, with a start, he realized why.

  She knew.

  “Sallie,” he started.

  She held up a hand to stop him from continuing. “Tomorrow, Mose and I and the boys, we’re heading back to Ohio. School starts soon for my boys and I don’t want any trouble with that terrible truant officer. And Mose is awfully worried about the business.”

  Jonah knew that wasn’t true. Mose didn’t worry about a thing. Sallie was only being kind.

  “Sallie,” he started again.

  She held up another hand. “I’m sorry, Jonah. I just don’t think things are going to work out for us. I need a man who . . .”

  Who wants to be married to you? Who wants to be a father to your boys? Or maybe, Jonah thought, cheeks burning, who isn’t in love with someone else?

  “. . . who isn’t quite as complicated.”

  Jonah stopped short. A laugh burst out of him, the first laugh in a very long time. It surprised him, that laugh. He felt as if a tremendous burden had lifted. “You’re right, Sallie. You deserve someone who isn’t as complicated as me.” He was complicated. He spent fifteen years grieving, then finally fell in love with someone new—a woman who wasn’t even Amish. Not yet, anyway.

  Sallie smiled at him then, a genuine smile. All was well. As they headed back to Rose Hill Farm, she started to tell him about something cute one of her boys had said today. And she didn’t stop talking all the way up the drive. Jonah found that he didn’t mind a bit.

  11

  ______

  At Billy and Maggie’s urging, Bess went to the youth gathering on Saturday evening, a few days after Mammi had been buried. She wasn’t in much of a mood for socializing—though her spirits had risen temporarily after Sallie left for Ohio and she learned that the wedding was off for good. Her father had seemed anxious to have her go out tonight. He said it would do her good to get out of the house. She couldn’t deny that she always enjoyed watching Billy play volleyball. He was such a good athlete. He had been so kind and attentive to her this last week. It made the upheaval of the last week more bearable. She still struggled with the reality of Mammi’s passing, and she missed her dearly. She kept repeating to herself Lainey’s reminder: her grandmother’s life was complete. This was God’s time to call Mammi home.

  Bess sat on a rock in the shade by herself, content to be left alone, half paying attention to the game until it came to an abrupt halt. Billy held the ball in his hands, as if frozen. His eyes were glued on a buggy that had just pulled into the yard. Bess’s gaze shifted from Billy to the buggy. A clump of girls had arrived and spilled out of the buggy, one by one. The last girl climbed out, scanned the yard, then flashed a dazzling smile when her eyes rested on Billy. It was an awful, heart-stopping moment for Bess as she recognized Betsy Mast, looking fresh and lovely in a pink dress.

  Billy dropped the ball and made his way over to Betsy. His back was to Bess and she couldn’t imagine what he was saying to her, but she could see Betsy’s face clearly. Betsy’s eyes sparkled as she laughed and joked with him. Bess’s heart sank.

  Everyone at the youth gathering learned about Betsy’s return in record time, though what they heard bore little relation to the facts. Maggie said that the English boy had refused to marry Betsy and dumped her back at her parents’ farm. Andy heard that Betsy tired of the English life and wanted to return to her Amish roots. Someone else said that Betsy heard Billy Lapp had made clear his feelings for Bess at her grandmother’s funeral—and hightailed it back to stake her claim on him.

  Bess spent the rest of the evening doing her very best to appear at ease, but she kept one eye on Billy and Betsy. At first, she noticed that Betsy was her usual
flirtatious self, tilting her head, looking up at Billy from the corner of her eyes, playfully striking him in mock punishment for something he said. As the sun went down, they stood off by themselves. Betsy became serious, speaking to him insistently while he seemed to protest innocence. They both looked at Bess, and she guessed they were talking about her.

  Was that good? she wondered. Probably not.

  Betsy could see that Billy’s mind was on other things. They were in his buggy after the youth gathering, parked by the shoreline of Blue Lake Pond. Andy had offered to take Maggie and Bess home, and he was grateful for it. Billy needed time to talk to Betsy alone. His mind was darting in a hundred different directions, like a moth to a flame. Betsy shifted a little closer to him on the buggy seat as she tried to explain again why she had left suddenly and why she had returned.

  “What about that English fellow?” he asked her. He’d asked her twice before, but she kept changing the subject, turning it around to accuse him of flirting with Bess.

  “You’re not going to listen to rumors, are you?” She sidled a little closer to him. “He just gave me a ride to see a friend.” She put a hand on his forearm. “I needed to see the other side, Billy. Just to see, before bending at the knee. You understand, don’t you?”

  She batted her long eyelashes at him, and he knew he couldn’t stay mad for long. She really was a beautiful girl. He saw her familiar features as if for the first time, and he was enchanted again by her sparkling green eyes, her dainty nose, and the determined set of her jaw. Her mouth, he realized, did not quite fit the rest of her face: those lips were too full. It was a mouth made for kissing, and the thought that he might never kiss it again filled him with despair.

  Maybe he could understand why she left, after all. Everybody had doubts. Wasn’t it better to work that all through before getting baptized? That was what the ministers had told him before he was baptized. Better to not take the vow than to take it and break it. “So are you planning, then, to join the church this fall?”