“Gesundheit!” her mudder said, looking up from her chair in the living room. She set her sewing down and followed Rose Anna into the kitchen.
“Danki.” She shed her jacket, hung it on a peg by the back door, and set her purse on the counter.
“You look flushed.”
Rose Anna smiled as her mudder touched the back of her hand to her forehead. “I’m allrecht, Mamm. I’m just probably getting a cold.”
“I think you have a fever.” Linda left the room and returned with a thermometer. She insisted on taking her temperature. “I thought so. It’s 101.”
“It can’t be. I was fine when I left this morning.”
“Why don’t you take some aspirin, and I’ll fix you some soup for lunch?”
“Danki, but I’m not hungry.”
“Some tea, then, and take a nap.”
She never napped during the day, but it was sounding like a gut idea.
“Colds are going around. It’s the time of year for them.”
Rose Anna remembered how some of the women had been absent from class earlier in the week. “I think I will lie down. Just for a little while.”
She lay on top of her bed and pulled a throw over herself when she shivered.
Her dreams were vivid and confusing.
She woke, her heart beating fast, her face covered with sweat. Her head hurt even more now, and her pillow felt like a stone. She punched at it trying to get more comfortable, and her journal slid out. Sitting up, she leaned over to put it on her nightstand and dropped it. Leaning over to pick it up was a bad idea. Her head throbbed. And when she went to place it on the nightstand, a piece of paper slid out. Once more she reached down and was sorry as the movement made her poor head hurt even more. Groaning, she lay back in bed and stared at the paper.
It was the list she’d made about how to get John.
She tucked it back into the journal and carefully placed it on the nightstand. Her throat was parched, but she was too tired to get up for water. She got comfortable again and felt herself drifting. She dreamed of walking through the fields beside her haus and a scarecrow popped up and shook his finger at her.
“You’re a trickster!” he accused. “You don’t deserve John!”
She ran from him.
“I’m not a trickster! I love him!” she cried and pushed her way through the cornstalks trying to escape him.
She ran and ran until she was at the horse farm calling for John.
He came out of the barn, but when he saw it was her he turned and walked away. He closed the barn doors behind him, and no matter how hard she beat against them he wouldn’t open them.
She sank to the ground, sobbing.
20
Rose Anna! Kind, wake up, it’s just a nightmare.”
She woke and blinked. “Mamm?”
“You were having a nightmare.” She touched Rose Anna’s forehead. “Still feverish. I’m going to get you some more aspirin.”
“And water?” she croaked.
“And water, of course.”
Rose Anna dozed until her mudder came back, sat on the side of the bed, and waited while she took aspirin with the glass of water she’d brought.
“Why don’t you get into a nightgown and try to get some more sleep. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”
She liked the idea but didn’t have the energy to climb off the bed. “Never had a cold feel this way,” she complained.
“I hope it’s not more than a cold. Abraham said the last time you took him to the clinic the doctor told him the flu is going around, too, with the change in seasons.”
“Your dat and I promised to go to Lavina’s for supper. Will you be allrecht for a few hours?”
She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was late afternoon already. “Ya, of course.”
“I’ll see if Abraham would like to go, too. Would you like some soup before we leave?”
“Nee, I’m not hungry.”
Her mudder patted her head and left her.
Rose Anna dozed and dreamed, dozed and dreamed one nightmarish episode after another with the same theme—her running from the scarecrow, John not wanting to talk to her. He holed up in the barn of the horse farm and refused to come out.
He’d gotten his dream, and she’d been locked out of his life.
When she woke next, dusk was falling and her throat ached. She drained the glass of water on the nightstand and decided to brave a trip downstairs. Looking in the mirror was a mistake. She looked awful. After she dragged a brush through her hair she went downstairs, drank two glasses of water from the tap, and decided her stomach might take a bowl of soup.
Mamm kept a pot of soup in the refrigerator this time of the year. She ladled out some and warmed it on the stove. The knock came on the back door just as she was sitting down to eat at the table.
“John!” She pushed her heavy fall of hair behind her shoulders and tried not to think how wrinkled her dress looked after sleeping in it.
“Rose Anna! Are you sick?”
She leaned against the door jamb. “Ya. So you shouldn’t come any closer. And not just because you could catch whatever this is.”
He leaned in and kissed her. “I wouldn’t mind catching germs from you. But you’re burning up.” He grasped her by the upper arms, moved her into the room, and closed the door. “Get inside, it’s chilly.”
She walked back to the table and slumped back into her chair. “I’m having soup. Do you want some?”
“Nee. Brad and I ate while we went over paperwork.”
She tried to swallow a mouthful of soup and found it difficult. The bad dreams she’d had most of the day swam around and around in her head making her miserable.
She let the spoon fall into the bowl and put her head in her hands.
“Lieb, if you feel that bad you should go to bed.”
“I know. I will.” Tears sprang into her eyes, and they weren’t all because she was so sick. “John, I can’t do this.”
“I know, I know,” he murmured. “Here, I’ll help you upstairs. Or maybe you should lie down on the sofa. Where are your parents?”
“Over at Lavina’s haus.”
“I’ll call them,” he said as he got out his cell phone. “I don’t think you should be alone.”
“John! Please, listen to me.” She swallowed, and her throat hurt. But she had to tell him. “I can’t marry you.”
He pulled out a chair, sat down, and reached out to touch her forehead. “You’re not making any sense. You’re out of your head. I’m calling your parents and taking you to the emergency room.”
She grasped his arm. “I’m not out of my head. Today when I was upstairs in my room, I came across this list in my journal, and it made me remember just what a manipulative person I am. I had a plan, John. A plan to make you fall in love with me and come back home.”
He stared at her. “Are you saying you don’t love me?”
She shook her head and it pounded. “Nee, but I tricked you. I deliberately set out to trick you into marrying me.”
He got to his feet. “Look, if you don’t want to marry me just say so. Don’t be making up some bizarre excuse.” He paced the room then turned to her. “Is it Peter? Did you decide to go back to Peter?”
Rose Anna felt her heart leap. He’d just given her the perfect excuse, one he’d believe. “Ya,” she said. “Ya, I just realized it recently. I’m so sorry.”
“I can’t believe this.” He took off his cap and ran his hand through his hair. “Here I thought my life was going in the right direction and this happens.”
Looking disgusted, he spun around and headed for the door, and just as he opened it, Linda walked in.
“John, gut-n-owed.”
He muttered something and strode out.
“Rose Anna? What’s going on?”
She picked up the bowl of soup she hadn’t been able to eat and put it in the sink. “We broke up.”
“Nee! Why?”
“
I don’t want to talk about it right now. Mamm, I think I’m going to throw up.”
Linda pushed her into a chair, grabbed a plastic bucket from under the sink, and put it into her hands. “Use this if you need to.” Turning, she wet a clean dish towel with cold water from the faucet and pressed it against her face.
“I just want to go back to bed.”
“Allrecht, then that’s where you’ll go.” She wrapped her arm around her waist, and they climbed the stairs. Then she helped Rose Anna take off her dress and pull on a nightgown.
Linda bustled around the room, filling the water glass and putting a box of tissue on the nightstand. “If you feel sick in the night use this,” she said, putting a plastic wastepaper basket beside the bed.
“I will.” Weak tears ran down her cheeks.
“Now don’t you cry or you’ll get your head all stuffed up,” Linda said as she pulled the quilt up to Rose Anna’s chin. “You still feel very warm. I’m going down to get the thermometer and fix you a cup of tea with honey. I’ll be right back.”
A cup of tea with honey would soothe her throat, but it schur wasn’t going to heal her heart. But she just nodded and watched her mudder leave the room.
Linda frowned after she took Rose Anna’s temperature. “It’s up a bit more,” she said. “If you’re not feeling better in the morning, I’m calling the doctor.”
Rose Anna managed to drink the tea and then fell into a restless sleep. Once she woke and thought she heard John’s voice. She told herself it was her imagination, a remnant of a bad dream.
She felt her mudder’s cool hand on her fevered brow, smiled when her dat bent down and kissed her head and his beard tickled her cheek.
“Don’t worry, she’ll be fine in the morning,” he said, his voice rumbling. “Let’s go to bed.”
“Rose Anna, you call me if you need me.”
“I will,” she murmured and closed her eyes. And tossed and turned all night.
***
John ripped off the “For Sale” sign he’d taped on the truck and tossed it into the back seat.
“Did you sell it?” Brad asked him
“I’m not selling it.”
Brad set the box of clothes he’d been carrying in the trunk of his car. “Why not?”
“There’s no point.”
“Wait,” Brad said when John started past him. “Didn’t you tell me you had to give it up to join the church?”
“Yes.”
“Have they changed the rules?”
“No. Look, I need to go check Midnight’s hoof.” He was in a foul mood, so it was best if he hid out in the barn until it passed. He figured going to the barn would stop a discussion he didn’t want to have.
He figured wrong.
Brad followed him inside, his steps slowing as John opened Midnight’s stall door. “So are you saying you’re not joining the church?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Don’t you have to join to marry Rose Anna?”
John bent to examine Midnight’s right front hoof and pretended he didn’t hear the question.
“I can wait.”
He looked up. “I can open the stall door and let you talk to Midnight if you’re so eager to have a discussion.”
“Now that’s just mean.” Brad folded his arms over his chest and waited. “Did you have a fight with Rose Anna?”
“Lawyers are just full of questions, aren’t they?”
Brad grinned and looked unoffended. “You bet. I make my living asking them.”
John grunted and used a pick to clean Midnight’s hoof, then worked on the other three.
“Come on, something’s obviously wrong. Maybe I can help.”
He lifted his head and stared at him. “I’ve known Rose Anna all my life, and I haven’t figured her out. I don’t think you can.”
“Well, I’m no expert on women, that’s for sure.” Brad hitched up his carefully ironed jeans and took a seat on a bale of hay—the one furthest from the stalls. “If I were, I’d have figured Tiffany out long before I put a diamond on her finger.” He stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. “The thing is, sometimes it helps to get another point of view. Tell me what happened. It’s obvious something did.”
John finished with Midnight and left the stall. He put the pick up on a shelf and walked over to the barn sink to wash his hands.
“She broke up with me.” It felt like someone had driven the hoof pick into his heart just to say it. “I didn’t think I ever wanted to get married, but she changed my mind about that. And now she doesn’t want to marry me.”
“No way! She loves you. Anyone can see that.”
“See, I told you that you didn’t know her.” He turned and dried his hands on a bandanna, but he wouldn’t look at Brad. He didn’t need the man’s pity.
“What reason did she give you?”
“She said she was in love with another man, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.”
“And you believed that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” he snapped. “It’s the same guy she saw while I was away from the Amish community.”
Brad tilted his head and studied him. “But John, I’ve watched the two of you together, and I can see she loves you. I’m a pretty good judge of character. I make my living being good at this type of thing. I have to be able to know when a client’s lying, know what potential juror is a problem.”
“That doesn’t mean you know Rose Anna. You said yourself you didn’t know Tiffany.”
“Ouch. But I did figure her out in time to save myself from a lot of unhappiness.”
“Well, Rose Anna just saved me from it, so that’s done.”
“Is it? Do you want it to be? No, don’t answer. If you did you’d be happy and dancing around celebrating your freedom. Instead you’re acting like you’ve lost your best friend.”
“She was my best friend before I fell in love with her.” He sank down onto a bale of hay and stared at his hands. “I don’t see what I can do. I went back that night because I was worried about her. She was really sick. Her mother said she’s better but doesn’t want to see me.”
He rubbed the knot of tension in his neck.
“Okay, let’s take this step by step. You say she got you to change your mind about marriage. You act like she manipulated you. Well, friend, we all use manipulation every day of our lives. It’s like my mother always said: you get more flies with honey than vinegar. So what’s her motive, what is she trying to get?”
“Rose Anna loves to get her way. She’s usually charming about it but . . . she said she tricked me into asking her to marry me.” Funny, he had a flash of memory where they’d argued once about this very thing, and she’d denied she was after marriage like so many Amish maedels.
“But John, isn’t it what you wanted, too? So what’s wrong? We know she wasn’t after you getting the farm.”
John’s head came up. “How do we know that?”
“Because it should be obvious to even a dunderhead like you that she was in love with you before you got the farm. She seemed as surprised as you when you inherited it. I remember how she looked days after when I stopped at her house on my way home. She looked dazed.”
“True.” He thought about that. “Then what is going on?”
“Maybe it’s just a little guilt. Or cold feet? It’s a big step even if you want to do it and know it’s the right decision. And you did hit her with a lot at once. Returning to the church, the proposal, the farm, after, what, more than a year of your waffling around.”
“I didn’t waffle.”
Brad just looked at him. Then he stood and brushed off his jeans. “Maybe I can find out what’s going on with her. With my analytical skills and witness interrogation abilities, I bet I could pry it out of her . . .” he broke off as John snorted. “I beg your pardon.”
“Sorry, Mr. Big Shot Attorney, in a match-up of the two of you, I’m afraid Rose Anna could outthink and outmaneuver you.”
Brad n
arrowed his eyes. “You want to make a bet on that, Mr. Horse Whisperer?”
“Yeah.” He thought about it and grinned. “You find out what’s going on with her, and I’ll wash that fancy car of yours before you head home and make sure you have another of those hams Rose Anna baked you that you love.”
“The second part’s her doing.”
“Well, do you want it or not?”
“Sure.”
“And if you don’t win, you have to take a ride on Midnight.”
Brad paled. “That’s not just mean. That’s criminal.”
“Okay. On Patsy. She’s so old and tame a toddler could ride her.” He grinned. “Well? You up for it or are you going to chicken out? Chick, chick, chicken,” he jeered.
He shook his head. “Oh, that’s mature.”
“We’ll see how mature you are when you get up in the saddle on Patsy.”
“Go put the sign back up on the truck. You’re going to be selling it and getting the proverbial ball and chain on your ankle very soon, pal.”
John had heard a man once say, “From your lips to God’s ear.”
He hoped God was listening.
***
Rose Anna glanced at Brad as she buckled the seatbelt in his car. “You’re positive John won’t be at the farm?”
“I promise. He’s off at some horse auction with a friend.”
“I’m not sure how much help I can be to you. We don’t have very fancy things in our house.”
“Dad wasn’t into fancy. But I thought we could go through some of the things he brought here and see what I want to keep, what you and John can use, and what we should donate to charity.”
“Brad, whatever you want you should take and not worry about leaving for John. And I told you, there is no John and me. But I’m happy to help you pack and drop things off at a charity.”
“Fine.”
She saw John’s truck parked in the drive at the farm. The “For Sale” sign was gone.
“He went with a friend,” Brad assured her. “Come on, I’m not allowed to lie.”
“A lawyer who doesn’t lie?” She gave him a skeptical glance.
“Hey, you’re too sweet to make cracks like that.”
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