Home to Paradise

by Cameron, Barbara;

“I brought a basket of food. I just gave it to Brad.” She paused. “It’s so sad, John. He has one of those urns people keep ashes of their loved ones in sitting on the kitchen table. He said he was going to scatter them later. He looks so exhausted and so lonely.”

  John nodded. “I don’t think he’s slept since he came here, and he barely eats.”

  “Maybe you could go up and join him and get him to eat something. I brought baked ham, bread, one of Mamm’s pound cakes, and some cookies.”

  “I’ll go see what I can do.”

  “Well, I have to head off to quilting class.”

  “Have a gut time.”

  “I told Brad we’d love to have him come to supper before he leaves. He said he thinks he’s going home tomorrow. Maybe you can persuade him to come over with you tonight.”

  He glanced up toward the farmhouse. “Maybe. I’ll see what I can do.”

  She walked to her buggy, her steps lighter, and climbed inside it. Just as she lifted the reins, she saw Brad walk down the path from the house, carrying the urn in his arms.

  How sad to see that, she thought. Although the Amish buried their dead she understood why some of the Englisch cremated theirs. But it seemed so sad that all Brad had of his dat right now was an urn of ashes. She sighed. Well, the Bible said, “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

  John called to him and Brad stopped. Then they walked toward the creek together. She stood there watching until they were swallowed up by the trees.

  ***

  John met Brad on the walkway to the house.

  His heart sank when he saw Brad carrying the urn with his father’s ashes.

  “So you went to the funeral home this morning.”

  Brad nodded. “He wanted them scattered here on the farm.”

  John hesitated, and then he made himself speak. If he didn’t, he’d never get the chance again. “Would you like me to show you his favorite spot?”

  To his relief, Brad nodded.

  “There’s a small creek that winds through the property,” he told him, pointing ahead as they walked. “Your dad used to like to walk here and sit on a log and watch the water.”

  They approached the spot, and John felt tears sting his eyes. He blinked furiously at them.

  “It’s nice here.”

  “He’d sit here,” he said, indicating the log then wondering if he sounded stupid to be pointing out something so obvious. He kicked the little can near the log. “Neil liked to smoke a cigar once in a while, and I think this was his favorite place to do it and think.”

  Brad took a seat on the log. He looked so like his father at that moment that it made John miss Neil even more. “Maybe you want to be alone.”

  “No, sit. Thanks for showing this to me.”

  “We came out here and sat just like this and talked a few times.”

  “I’m glad he had friends here.” He stared at the water, and for a long time the only sound was the gurgling of the water. A dragonfly darted around and then landed nearby.

  Brad sighed then stood and opened the urn. He scattered ashes along the bank of the creek then turned to John. “Here, you do some, too.”

  Touched, John did as he asked then handed the urn back to Brad. They sat again.

  “I’d say a prayer, but right now I’m feeling pretty angry at God.”

  “I can say one if you want.”

  “Yeah, that’d be great.”

  John stood up and said a simple prayer. As he spoke, he felt Neil’s presence, felt some peace thanking God for having known the man.

  “That was good,” Brad said quietly when he finished. “This would be the kind of church and service Dad would like. I’ll still have the memorial back in Philadelphia for his friends there. But this feels like what would please Dad most.”

  John nodded. “I don’t blame you for being mad at God. I’ve been feeling angry at Him myself for taking Neil. But God and I haven’t gotten along for some time.”

  “Why? Did he take someone you loved, too?” They sat again.

  “In a way.” Feeling he should explain, he turned to Brad. “I envied you your dad. Mine was—is—a hard man. I never could do anything right for him.”

  He saw understanding in the other man’s eyes. “That’s gotta be rough. Dad never told me he was disappointed in me even when I messed up.”

  He rested his arms on his knees and stared out at the water again. “I didn’t like you when I met you. You probably picked up on that. I didn’t want to share my dad. I was an only kid, and I didn’t like it when he began talking about you and asked me to come meet you.” He gave a short laugh. “I liked you even less when he showed me the codicil.”

  “Codicil? What’s that?”

  “He told me he didn’t tell you. Said he wouldn’t until I was okay with it.” He paused. “I told him when I was at the hospital after I found out what you’d done for him. You know how you said you’d look after the farm while I looked for a buyer?”

  John’s heart sank. He nodded.

  “I won’t be looking for a buyer for the farm.”

  John’s spirits lifted. “You’re going to keep it? Neil would love that.”

  Brad shook his head, and his expression looked rueful—and maybe held a little regret? “No, my life’s in Philadelphia. And you know how I feel about horses. Dad understood. He really did. John, I think you’ll be glad you’re sitting down. I have something to tell you.”

  There was a rushing noise in his head. Like the creek was suddenly swollen like a river overwhelming its banks. Brad was talking, but he couldn’t understand the words.

  Neil had done what?

  “John?”

  “What?”

  Brad grinned. “Nothing could have told me better that you didn’t work for my dad with an eye to gain. Dad left you the farm because he knew you loved it the way he did. The way I never could. I told him I was okay with that the day he had the heart attack.”

  It didn’t seem possible that life could take such a sudden turn. This was more than he could have ever dreamed possible.

  Rose Anna had told him that God had a plan for him that was bigger than he could ever envision for himself.

  Brad was talking, but the words were coming in a blur. He stood. “Let’s go back to the house and we’ll talk some more. The log’s kind of hard to sit on for a long time.”

  He grinned and held out a hand to steady John when he stood and found he had no knee caps.

  They went back to the farmhouse. Brad put coffee on, and they sat down with the paperwork.

  There, in black and white, in this “codicil” thing he saw that yes indeed Neil had said he wanted the farm to go to John.

  He shook his head. “It’s not right. This is part of your inheritance.”

  “Dad left me a lot. His practice was really successful. He set up a trust for me years ago, too. I don’t need or want the farm, John. I want to do what my father asked. This is what he asked me to do.”

  He got up and poured them coffee. “It’ll be good to know someone carries on the work he loved. I’ll do it at the law practice, you’ll do it here on the farm. Listen, if it makes you feel any better, you can do what we call ‘pay it forward.’ ”

  “ ‘Pay it forward’?”

  “Do something for someone else.”

  “Someone came to talk to Neil not long ago about offering riding lessons to underprivileged kids. He said he’d get back to him if we could figure out a way to do it. I’ve been working a couple jobs, so it wasn’t possible before.” He stopped and thought about it. “That might be a good thing. Pass along Neil’s love of horses.”

  “I agree.” He stood and went to look in the refrigerator. “First time I’ve felt hungry since I got here. I think I’ll make a sandwich out of that ham Rose Anna brought. I’d invite you to join me, but I think you should go share your news with her, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Yeah,” he repeated, and he stood on legs that still didn’t feel steady.<
br />
  He crossed the room and had his hand on the doorknob, and then he turned back and wrapped his arms around Brad. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “My father did it.” Brad’s words were muffled against his shoulder.

  John released him. “He wouldn’t have if you’d minded. I think he raised a son as generous as he was.”

  “Get out of here,” he said, ducking his head.

  But John saw that his eyes were damp. “I’ll be back in a little while to finish my chores.”

  Brad transferred the ham to the counter, found a sharp knife in a drawer, and began slicing it. “I won’t dock your pay.”

  John had trouble keeping the speed at the limit as he drove to Rose Anna’s haus.

  And then he slammed on the brakes, pulled the truck to the side of the road, and thought. When he pulled back onto the road a few minutes later, he took a slightly different direction.

  The bishop’s fraa answered the door and greeted him as if he hadn’t been away from church for as long as he had. Her mann—a different bishop than the one who had spoken to his dat—was just as friendly and delighted to sign John up for the classes needed to join the church.

  When John climbed back into the truck, he took a deep breath and drove to Rose Anna’s.

  “Hi, John,” Linda said when she opened the door.

  “Is Rose Anna home?”

  “She’s due home any minute. Come on in and have some coffee.”

  He followed her into the kitchen and took a seat at the table where he’d joined the family for so many years and wondered if he could keep his gut news to himself until Rose Anna got home.

  “Something going on?” she asked when she served him a cup of coffee.

  He realized he’d been tapping his fingers on the table. “Nee. Just thinking.”

  “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “Danki. He was a gut friend. A really gut friend.”

  The back door opened and Rose Anna walked in. “John! I saw your truck. Is everything allrecht?”

  “I’m going upstairs to the sewing room,” Linda announced.

  “More than allrecht,” John said. “Can we go out on the porch and talk?”

  “Schur.” She set her purse and tote bag on a counter and preceded him outside.

  “Please, sit,” he said, gesturing at a rocking chair. He took the seat next to her and grasped her hand. “You’ll need to sit.”

  ***

  Rose Anna stared at John. “You’re joining the church?”

  “I am. I want us to get married.”

  She found herself struggling to breathe. “You—you want us to get married. In November?”

  “Ya. I stopped on the way here and talked to the bishop.” He grinned.

  “You’re not joking?”

  “Nee, I’d never do that.” He sat in the chair beside her.

  She took a breath, then another. “Of course I’ll marry you.” She studied him. Something was going on. There was a strange energy about him . . . a suppressed excitement.

  Neil’s death had been such a shock, had such a profound effect on him. She knew grief had a strange effect on people sometimes. Didn’t they say there were seven stages? Was he wanting to connect to another human he knew cared about him? What stage was that?

  “What’s wrong?” He was staring at her.

  “It’s just so sudden. I mean, you’ve told me you love me. But I didn’t think you felt ready to get married.” Yet you’ve been working on him, her conscience reminded her.

  “And church. I asked you to come this week, and you were reluctant.”

  “I was.”

  Baffled, she shook her head as if trying to clear her muddled brain. “So what changed?”

  “Something big. Something . . . God.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t quite, either. But after I tell you what happened, you get to say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

  “I never do that.”

  He laughed. “You won’t be able to help yourself.”

  “John!”

  “Brad and I scattered Neil’s ashes today. Down by the creek where he liked to sit.”

  She put her hand over his on the arm of the rocking chair. “I’m so sorry. It must have been a sad time for you.”

  “It was, but I was glad Brad included me. And I felt Neil was there with us. It was very peaceful.” He paused, and his hand gripped hers. “Until he told me about his dat’s codicil.”

  “Codicil? What is that?”

  He laughed, and then he was leaping out of his chair, picking her up and swinging her around and around until she was dizzy.

  “John!” she cried. “Put me down!”

  “What’s going on?” Jacob asked as he climbed the steps to the porch.

  He set her down and faced her dat. “I just asked your dochder to marry me.”

  Her dat looked at her for confirmation.

  “It’s true, Daed.”

  Jacob held out his hand and shook John’s.

  He turned to Rose Anna. “Does your mudder know?”

  She shook her head. “He just asked me.”

  Jacob walked over to the front door, opened it, and bellowed her name inside. A few moments later she appeared. “Jacob? What is it? Are you hurt?” She stepped outside looking worried.

  “Rose Anna and John are getting married.”

  “Mein Gott!” she cried and rushed over to hug Rose Anna and John. “This is wunderbaar news! John, have you told your parents?”

  “Nee. Not yet.”

  “They’ll be thrilled.”

  “I have more news. I was just about to tell Rose Anna.”

  “There’s more?” Linda asked.

  “I didn’t feel I had anything to offer Rose Anna before,” he said. “No way of providing for her.”

  “I don’t want to hear such talk!” she told him. She stamped her foot for emphasis. “You have everything to offer, and I don’t need someone providing for me. I just want you to be happy doing work you love. And you’ve been so happy since you started working at the horse farm.”

  “And I’m about to be even happier.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We’ll let you young people talk,” Linda said, tugging her mann’s hand and jerking her head at the front door in a signal he was ignoring.

  “Nee, stay. This is such gut news I can’t keep it inside any longer.” He took her hands in his. “Brad told me his dat left me the farm.”

  “Nee!” She stared at him, shocked. Then she wondered if he was so grief-stricken that his mind had been affected.

  “You told me I should talk to him about buying it, but Rose Anna, I don’t have to do that. Neil left it to me. He signed a change to his will and left it to me.”

  “He didn’t leave it to his sohn?” Linda asked him. “How does Brad feel about that?”

  “He said Neil discussed it with him, and he doesn’t want it. Said he doesn’t like horses, and his home, his work as a lawyer, is in Philadelphia.”

  “Are you sure this is legal?”

  John turned to her dat. “Brad showed me the paper. He’s a lawyer just like Neil was. He said he’ll help me with any paperwork to change the ownership of the property.”

  He looked at Rose Anna. “Are you ready to say ‘I told you so’ now?”

  Grinning, he turned to her parents. “When I said there was no way I could find the money to buy Neil’s farm, she said I didn’t know what God had planned for me and that I had to have faith in Him. She was so right.”

  She smiled, and then she began crying. God was so amazing.

  As they stood there staring at each other, she was barely aware that her parents had tiptoed away and they were alone on the porch. She couldn’t believe how utterly happy she felt.

  “I need to get back to work. Brad told me to come tell you about the farm, but I wasn’t finished with my work. I have more to do with the horses.”

  “Go,” she said,
releasing his hands.

  “He’s going back home tomorrow, so I’m going to stay and see if he needs anything.”

  “Please tell him thank you for me. If you can persuade him to come for supper, I can thank him in person.”

  “I will. But I expect he’ll want to go through his dat’s papers, maybe start packing up some of Neil’s things he wants to keep.”

  They exchanged a quick kiss after glancing toward the road and making schur no one was passing by. And then she watched him run down the porch steps and climb into his truck.

  She remembered how that truck had been passed down from one Stoltzfus bruder to another. Now she guessed it would go to someone outside the family.

  Family. She wondered when John would tell his family. Amish couples didn’t always tell their families until just a short time before the ceremony. It was just late August, months before they could get married after the harvest.

  She wasn’t worried about their reaction. They’d be overjoyed that their sohn would be returning to the church, to the community.

  John and his dat still hadn’t reconciled their differences. But she was schur they’d find a bridge over them.

  Hugging her newfound happiness to her, she fairly danced inside her haus.

  19

  Rose Anna was in the kitchen garden on the side of the haus when she saw a car pull into the drive. Was that Brad’s? she wondered. It looked like the car he’d parked in the farm’s drive.

  She wondered what BMW stood for. It schur looked shiny and expensive.

  Wiping her hands on her apron, she walked to it. “Brad, hello!” Before she could frame a thank-you for what he’d done for John, he held out a tote bag she’d sent over with food.

  “Apparently my father never remembered to return your plastic containers,” he told her.

  She laughed. “That was no problem. We have plenty. He always said he liked my cookies, and believe me, I’m not the best baker.”

  “Tasted pretty good to me.”

  “Have you come to eat lunch with us?”

  “No, sorry. I’m heading back home. I’ll be back in a week or two, get some personal things out of the farmhouse, help John with the paperwork transferring the property to him.”

  Tears sprang into her eyes. “Brad, we will never be able to thank you enough for what you’ve done.”