Rosemary Opens Her Heart: Home at Cedar Creek, Book Two

by Naomi King

“I…I’m still in love with Joe, Mamm. I miss him every day.”

  “I didn’t say those feelings for him would go away. But they’ll get easier to bear, with time—unless you keep dwelling on the past,” she added matter-of-factly. “You’ll shrivel up like a grape that rolled behind the fridge if you don’t mix with other folks…and other fellas.”

  Her mother angled the pillow against the walnut headboard. “You’re too young to be alone, Rosemary. Malinda and I worry about you, shutting yourself away at the Yutzy farm, cooking and cleaning and making pies. It keeps you busy, but there’s no future in it.”

  Was her mother jealous because she’d moved in with Titus instead of staying here with her and Malinda? Or did Mamm mean what she’d said about finding another husband so soon?

  “Sorry I bothered you,” Rosemary said. “I wanted some time here to settle my nerves. If you’ll look after Katie, I’ll be downstairs in a few.”

  Mamm sighed. Then she smiled at her granddaughter and opened her arms. “Mammi baked snickerdoodles yesterday, Katie. Shall we go down and have us some?”

  Katie dropped the doll and rushed into her grandmother’s embrace. As they went down the steps, her mother’s voice echoed in the stairwell, leading Katie’s as they sang “In der Stillen Einsamkeit” to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Mamm loved to sing in church, and she was tickled that her granddaughter had some musical ability and a clear voice.

  Rosemary picked up the muslin doll, which was dressed in a blue cape dress with a white apron and kapp, and crossed the hall to the pale yellow bedroom she and Joe had shared. Here, she often found comfort remembering the plans she’d discussed with her husband while they had gazed out the back window, where they could see part of the land they had bought.

  Rosemary sat in the old rocking chair where she had rocked Katie to sleep on many a night. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Since her husband’s death, she had come here to pray and to call up the special feeling she considered Joe’s presence. Being in this room calmed her when she’d had a trying week dealing with Titus’s refusal to change anything in his home, or his remarks about how Alma had fried her chicken more to his liking.

  Clutching Katie’s doll, Rosemary waited for that indescribable peace that had always surrounded her in this room…and then she waited a little longer. After several moments she opened her eyes, which stung with unshed tears. Why wasn’t it working? Why weren’t memories of Joe comforting her after she’d had such a hard time at the Lambright wedding? Hadn’t she remained true to him, as she’d promised when they exchanged their vows four years ago?

  Be true to yourself now. Follow your dreams and live your life to the fullest.

  Rosemary blinked. That hadn’t sounded like Joe at all, talking of dreams. Was her husband, in spirit, leading her toward the changes she needed to make to feel whole again—or were her own thoughts struggling to be heard in the chorus of advice everyone else was giving her?

  Rosemary had often wondered if Joe should have pursued his own ambitions sooner, rather than dutifully helping his father with a flock and a farm he’d had no real interest in. Her husband had delayed starting his remodeling business when Alma had been diagnosed with cancer, so it had taken them a year longer to pay for their property…a home he hadn’t lived to enjoy.

  The idea of following her dream disturbed Rosemary, though. The Ordnung taught that faith in God came first, followed by respect and love for one’s family. Paying attention to her own desires seemed selfish, especially when Titus, Beth Ann, and Katie needed her like a pie required a crust to hold it together. This sense of duty had been ingrained in her since she was Katie’s age. Yet hadn’t her mother been telling her to make a new life for herself, just as that voice in her head had?

  Rosemary stood up suddenly, leaving the chair to rock crazily behind her as she went to the window. Her property, with its overgrown grass and the underbrush along the fencerows, seemed foreign to her now. She no longer felt connected to the untamed acres that had become hers when Joe passed away. And worth a pretty penny, they were, because the parcel had enough flat, tillable land to become profitable someday. She felt Joe’s memory slipping away from her, too.

  For a moment, Rosemary couldn’t remember what he looked like. She tried to call up Joe’s voice in her mind, but couldn’t hear it. And that frightened her.

  She realized then that she was clutching Katie’s doll as though she were holding on to the last thread of her sanity. And when she looked at its round, featureless face, which reflected the Plain belief that nothing should imitate the image of God or his human creation, Rosemary swallowed hard. Just as the doll had no eyes or nose or mouth—no signs of a soul or a self—she felt that she, too, might have lost these basic elements of her identity.

  If I’m no longer Joe Yutzy’s wife, who am I? And if I can no longer follow the dreams I shared with my husband…how am I to spend the rest of my life?

  These were startling questions for a young mother of twenty-three. Rosemary’s heart began to throb painfully. She tossed the doll onto the bed, which was covered with the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt Mamm had made for her hope chest before she had met Joe. She couldn’t leave the room fast enough.

  Down the stairs she rushed, her footsteps clattering with the same loud discord she felt inside herself. “We’re heading home, Katie. Bring your cookies,” she snapped as she lifted her startled daughter from the old high chair. “I’ve got pies to bake. I’ll see you soon, Mamm.”

  “Jah, well, Katie and I, we were just— Are you all right, Rosemary?” her mother called after her. “You’re as pale as milk.”

  “I’m fine,” Rosemary fibbed as she let the screen door bang behind her. Malinda, barefoot, with garden soil clinging to her ankles, was coming toward the house, but Rosemary hurried on over to the buggy. She urged Gertie down the lane at a trot, waving to her befuddled sister.

  And why wouldn’t Malinda look confused and hurt? Rosemary knew exactly how that felt because she hadn’t been so upset—so afraid and overwhelmed—since the day Joe had died. What did she hope to accomplish by leaving her mother and sister so abruptly?

  Rosemary didn’t have any answers. Her heart pounded to the rhythm of Gertie’s hoofbeats—clip-clop! clip-clop!—as fear pulsed through her body.

  Then she caught the expression on Katie’s face: her daughter sat beside her, clutching a snickerdoodle in each hand and looking terrified. Her eyes were wide. Her chin quivered as though she wanted to cry but was afraid to.

  Rosemary pulled over to the shoulder, set the brake, and drew her toddler into her lap. Katie was her only living, breathing memento of Joe, for she saw him in the angle of their daughter’s brows and her long, lush lashes. “I’m sorry, baby girl,” she murmured against Katie’s silky hair. “Mama didn’t mean to scare you. Sometimes I miss your dat so much I don’t know what to do with myself.”

  “Dat?” Katie repeated in her high, childlike voice. She looked at Rosemary with a hopeful expression. “Play with Dat’s puppies now?”

  Rosemary gaped. What on earth was her daughter talking about? Joe had never owned a dog—

  Is she talking about Matt’s puppies? Is she confusing the words “Dat” and “Matt” because they rhyme?

  Or did Katie think Matt was her dat? Their daughter had barely been two and half when Joe had died, so she didn’t recall anything about her father. Maybe she had drawn that conclusion because Matt was a man, and he had crouched down to talk with her, just as Joe often had.

  Oh please, Lord…Will Katie want to spend time with Matt Lambright now? I’m not sure I can handle one more person believing I should like him.

  When Rosemary got back to the Yutzy farm, the sheep stood blathering near the barn, waiting for their day’s ration of grain. She carried Katie into the kitchen and sat her in the high chair with a handful of animal crackers and a few cubes of cheese. Down from the shelf came the can of lard and the bin of flour. Without a second thou
ght, Rosemary measured enough of each ingredient for ten double-crust pies and began to cut the lard into the flour. She sprinkled water over the dough, mixing until its texture felt right. Then she divided it into twenty balls, which she set aside beneath a damp towel so they wouldn’t dry out.

  As Rosemary opened jars of ruby-red cherry filling from Alma’s cellar shelves, she silently thanked her mother-in-law for putting up so much of it before she’d gotten sick. She also opened a few quarts of sliced peaches and thickened their syrup with tapioca, on the stove. Only a few quarts of gooseberries remained in the cellar, so she kept those back because Titus was especially fond of them.

  And what’s your favorite kind of pie?

  She heard the words in her mind just as Beth Ann had asked Abby Lambright the same question…and Rosemary realized she didn’t have an answer. She made so many kinds of pies for other people—mostly for folks she didn’t know—yet she’d never considered her own preference. At other folks’ homes, she ate what was put in front of her without thinking about what she would rather have.

  Rosemary stopped rolling out her crusts, stunned by this revelation. She snatched the pan of peach syrup from the gas flame before she scorched it, lost in thought. Katie was playing with her animal crackers, singing the same tune she’d shared with her Mammi, but Rosemary really needed an answer, so she interrupted her.

  “Katie, what’s your favorite kind of pie?”

  Her toddler kicked her legs happily. “Peach! Katie wants peach pie!”

  Rosemary sighed. Even her three-year-old knew, without a doubt, what she liked in the way of pie.

  What was going so wrong? Why did her world seem to tilt in a different direction today? First she’d gotten upset at Matt’s message, then she’d fussed at her mother, and then she’d lost her connection to Joe. And now she had no answer for the simplest question. She had been so busy pleasing everyone else that she hadn’t considered what she truly wanted for her future—or even for tonight’s supper.

  What’s wrong with me, Lord? I think I might be losing my mind.

  But crying wouldn’t get her work done, would it? Rosemary rolled bottom crusts and fitted them into ten aluminum pie pans. She filled some of them with the ruby-colored cherry filling and arranged sliced peaches in the rest before pouring the thickened glaze over them. Finally, as she positioned the top crusts and crimped the edges, it came to her: she was afraid of losing everything she had ever known. If Titus and Beth Ann were so excited about Cedar Creek, if her mother insisted she should find another husband, and if she no longer felt Joe’s presence in the room they had shared—where did that leave her?

  The bang of the porch door brought her out of her woolgathering. Titus was washing up in the mudroom, and she’d been so preoccupied that she hadn’t even thought about what to cook for their noon meal. She was tucking the last of her pies into the second oven when he entered the kitchen and noticed the unset table.

  “I’m running late,” she explained as she hurried to the fridge. “I drove over to see Mamm and Malinda and lost of track of time. Sorry.”

  Titus hung his straw hat by the door. He sat down in his chair at the end of the long kitchen table. “Guess I’ll wait,” he remarked with a shrug. “Maybe Katie’ll share one of her animal crackers with me.”

  Rosemary had braced herself for a much sterner response to a late meal. She was amazed to see Titus trotting a cookie giraffe around the high chair tray to entertain Katie. She unwrapped a ham slice she’d taken from the deep freeze early that morning and dropped it into a cast-iron skillet. “How are the ewes and lambs looking today?”

  “Gut. I got a section fenced off behind the barn for those rams Matt’s bringing.” Titus bounced the giraffe in the other direction, dodging Katie’s attempts to grab it.

  Rosemary relaxed. In another skillet, she simmered diced onion in butter before she added slices of leftover baked potatoes. If Titus had built a pen for those rams, to get them accustomed to their new home before he turned them in with the ewes, he surely had every intention of staying here in Queen City.

  “So how’s your mother?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she replied over the sizzle of the ham and onions. “She was changing the bedsheets and my sister was planting the garden.”

  Titus scratched under his beard, as he often did when he was considering a new idea. “Seems to me we’d all be better off if your mamm and sister came to live here. It’s silly for them to keep up that big old house while the four of us are rattling around like dried peas in a shoebox at this place.”

  Rosemary stared at him. Where had this notion come from? “Mamm’s no more ready to leave her home than you are. It’s the house Dat built her when they got married.”

  “Jah, but maybe she’d like some company, same as I would. Maybe I should mosey over there to see what she’d say to hitching up,” he mused aloud. Then he laughed until his shoulders shook. “At our age, it’s not like we need all that newlywed romantic stuff.”

  Rosemary didn’t know whether to laugh with him—or at him. Bertha Keim was every bit as set in her ways as Titus Yutzy was, and she seemed quite content to live with Malinda even if they didn’t use some of the rooms in their farmhouse anymore.

  But Titus sounded settled and no more likely to leave his home than Mamm was to leave hers—which meant that once he traded rams with Matt, there wouldn’t be any more contact with folks in Cedar Creek. Everything would continue just the way it had been since Alma and Joe passed.

  Rosemary turned the ham slice, inhaling its salty-sweet aroma. It occurred to her then that no one else had forced her to feel so agitated today: she had worried all morning that everything in her world was changing, fearing Titus would pull up stakes and move back to Cedar Creek. That obviously wasn’t going to happen if her father-in-law was thinking he’d propose to her mother. And that wedding wasn’t going to happen, either, if she knew her mamm.

  Smiling, Rosemary flipped the simmering, nicely browned potatoes. What a relief to realize that it was only her imagination that had run off. Titus didn’t know it, but he had brought her wandering thoughts right back where they belonged.

  Nothing serious would change, after all. She could go on about her day now.

  As she transferred the crisp potatoes onto a serving platter, Titus’s chair scraped against the floor. “You know,” he said quietly, “you’re probably right about your mamm not wanting to come here. And now that I think about it, I’m not so sure I could tolerate a woman who ran the house her way, different from how Alma did. And when you add in your sister, that would make three grown women and two girls under my roof.”

  “Jah, that’s the way I see it, too.” Rosemary carried their food to the table, relieved that Joe’s dat had come to his senses. She went to the cabinet to fetch their dinner plates.

  “I’m going to call Matt Lambright…tell him to hang on to those rams,” Titus continued in a faraway voice. “I’ll ask him to keep an eye out for any property going up for sale in Cedar Creek, too. What with Joe gone, I’d be better off moving closer to Ezra—taking my flock there, where Matt and I could help each other with the lambing and the shearing and such. Now, there’s a fella who knows the sheep business!”

  The old Melmac dishes slipped from Rosemary’s hands and clattered noisily on the plank floor. As she leaned against the stove to pull herself together, her heart raced. Did Titus really mean what he had just said?

  Chapter 8

  Matt polished off his plateful of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and glazed carrots and then accepted the warm pan of raspberry cobbler from his dat. He and the rest of his family had spent Friday morning cleaning up after Zanna and Jonny’s wedding, and now the newlyweds were on their way to see some cousins near Bowling Green, Missouri. It was the first of their weekends collecting wedding gifts from kin, and they planned to visit in three different households before they returned late on Sunday.

  “Gut to get the greenhouse all put back to rights and the p
ew benches on their way to Ezra’s place for preaching this Sunday,” Matt remarked as he spooned out a huge helping of the cobbler. “Two hundred guests can make quite a mess!”

  “Jah, but it was a gut sort of mess,” his mother remarked from across the table. “I’m pleased so many folks were willing to come.”

  “Zanna’s happier than I’ve ever seen her, and she’s got a gut start on her family and her life with Jonny,” his father remarked. Sam wasn’t a man who carried on about other people’s happiness, so he was in a fine mood today even with all the physical work of taking down tables and hefting benches into the pew wagon. “I think I’ll keep the mercantile closed this afternoon to catch up on some bookkeeping and inventory work. How about you girls? What are your plans today?”

  Gail and Phoebe were scraping the dirty dinner plates while the cobbler made its way around the table. “Lois Yutzy wants us to bake rolls and sheet cakes for an English reception she’s catering tomorrow,” Phoebe replied. She looked at their grandmother, sitting next to Abby near the other end from their father. “Or do you need help at your greenhouse? I saw a lot of our guests taking home potted hyacinths and tulips when they saw how pretty they looked.”

  “Jah, Treva’s Greenhouse did right well selling flowers yesterday, considering the shop was closed.” Their grandmother chuckled. “If I wanted to branch out, I could rent out that big space for other folks’ weddings, too—not that I’d want to face cleaning up that sort of mess every time, let alone doing all those dishes.”

  Phoebe smiled as though she were keeping a secret. “Maybe we can call Zanna’s wedding gut practice and remember what all worked well and what we’d do differently next time,” she hinted. “And it’s probably a gut idea to plant a big section of celery in the garden this spring…if you know what I’m saying.”

  “You and Owen are getting hitched?” Gail blurted, and then she grabbed her sister’s hands. “So he asked you yesterday? Like you thought he might?”