Piece by Piece

by Laura Bradford

  “It is not so busy.”

  “You said there will be a new calf soon. Maybe today.”

  “Yah.”

  “That’s busy. And if you’ve only been out of school a little while”—Dani glanced at the dashboard clock—“your mom might be helping one of your siblings with homework or something before dinner.”

  “You said Mamm’s letters make you smile, yah?”

  She met his big blue eyes once again. “I did, because they do. All the time.”

  “Then I am sure a visit with you will make Mamm smile, too.” This time, instead of just motioning her toward the driveway, he pushed off the ground with his left foot, scootered to the other side of the road, and then glanced back at her over his suspender-clad shoulder. “Come.”

  Chapter 7

  She pulled to a stop behind Luke’s scooter and watched as the hatted towhead ran across the side lawn, up the porch steps, and through the front door of the basic two-story white farmhouse. Shifting the car into park, Dani made herself cut the engine even though her every instinct told her to turn around and head back to the highway.

  There had been a few seconds, as Luke was heading down the driveway, glancing back every few feet to make sure she was following, when she actually found herself calculating whether she could make a clean U-turn on the narrow road. When she was pretty sure she could, she inched forward, turned the steering wheel to the left, and then locked eyes with Luke—

  In that instant, she knew she couldn’t just leave. Not without being rude, anyway. And so she’d followed . . . She’d taken in the cows and the horses and the barn she’d passed . . . She’d stopped in the spot he’d pointed to just before he abandoned his scooter . . . And now she sat, looking up at the door, waiting for her first sighting of a woman she really didn’t know—a woman who’d offered her home as a place to heal.

  As if that could ever happen.

  Blinking back the tears she refused to shed at that moment, Dani swung her gaze back to the side yard and two more scooters—one large, one small—she hadn’t noticed until that moment. Beyond them, on a swath of hard-packed dirt, was a buggy parked next to a nondescript-looking black pickup truck.

  A long moo from the vicinity of the barn pulled her focus there, only to have it stolen back toward the house by the sound of hurried footsteps across the front porch.

  “See, Mamm?” Luke said, dividing his attention between pointing at Dani and looking back at the door from which he’d just come. “She is there, in the car.”

  Then, nudging his chin in the direction of the barn, he clambered down the steps, his words still directed toward the house. “I will go help Dat and Uncle Caleb with Molly now.”

  Dani followed him with her eyes as he made his way across the yard and past the passenger side window, his gait one of anticipation and—

  A slow creak, followed by the telltale bang of a screen door, yanked her gaze back toward the front porch and the woman now standing at the top of the steps looking in Dani’s direction. Clad in a dark green dress and white prayer kapp, the woman lifted her hand as a shield against the afternoon sun, slanted her head to the left, and then, on the heels of a soft squeal, hurried down the steps and straight for the car.

  Dani, in turn, simply stared at the approaching face as her mind’s eye mentally cataloged the differences between eight-year-old Lydia and present-day Lydia. So much was the same—the warm honey-blond hair just barely visible along the edges of the kapp, the high cheekbones that pushed still higher with a smile, the daintily defined chin, the emerald-green eyes that—

  “Danielle! You have come!”

  Pushing open the driver’s side door, Dani stepped onto the hard-packed dirt and braced herself for the warm and welcoming embrace that came next. “You-you look exactly as I remember, Lydia,” she managed past the sudden tightness in her throat. “Exactly.”

  Lydia’s answering laugh echoed around them as the woman gave Dani one last squeeze and then released her for a once-over of her own. “Yah. Just taller, and wider, and older. But you—let me see what far too long has done to you.”

  “Are you Mamm’s special friend?”

  Dani glanced down at the small, round face that stopped just shy of her hip and felt an instant wave of light-headedness. Lydia, in turn, rushed forward, grabbed hold of Dani’s arm, and gently guided her backward until she was flush against the car. “Danielle? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I-I . . .” The words drifted away as she lowered her gaze again to the little girl standing beside Lydia. Like her mother, the child Dani guessed to be about three, maybe four years old wore a white prayer kapp over hair that was even blonder. Her eyes weren’t green at all, though. Instead, they were a cornflower blue. Her pale green dress reached midway down her calves, revealing bare feet. “Who is—”

  A flood of emotion made it so she couldn’t finish the sentence Lydia rushed to answer. “This is Nettie.”

  Closing the gap between them, Nettie reached up, wrapped her soft hand around three of Dani’s fingers, and gave a little tug. “Molly is going to have a baby soon. Dat says if it is God’s will I can play with that baby.”

  Dani felt Lydia’s grip on her arm release, even heard what sounded like a soft if not slightly strangled gasp in the process, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the child now hopping from foot to foot with unrestrained joy. “And there are new bunnies, too. Two of them! Their eyes are like this”—Nettie squinted her eyes into slits—“right now, but soon Mamm says they will open big like Hopper’s.”

  “Hopper’s?”

  “Their mamm!” Nettie let go of Dani’s hand just long enough to point at her dress. “Mamm made my dress. She has one that matches, but she does not wear hers today. Hers is there. See?” She moved her finger to indicate the clothesline and the matching dress flapping in the soft breeze between a pair of black pants on one side and a soft blue Nettie-sized dress on the other. “Hers is getting dry. One day I will be big enough to hang dresses, too.”

  Then, rising up on her tippy-toes, the child released Dani’s hand again and took off in a run toward the barn. “I must check the bunnies.”

  The soft patter of feet against dirt gave way to an all too familiar roar in Dani’s ears—a roar she broke with her own rasped and broken voice. “She’s . . . three, right?”

  “Yah. But she will be four next month.”

  She knew she should say something or, at the very least, smile and nod, but all she could do was stare at the barn door through which Lydia’s daughter had disappeared.

  Three years old ...

  Pressing her fingers to her lips, she tried to catch her breath, to remind herself that lots of little girls were three years old, but the light-headedness was back. “Lydia . . . I . . . I’m sorry . . . I-I don’t think I . . . I don’t think I can do this. I-I don’t think I can be here . . . It’s too soon. Too—”

  And just like that, the tears she’d managed to keep contained behind closed doors made their way down her cheeks and onto her lips.

  “Oh, Danielle.” Lydia pulled her close once again, gently guiding Dani’s face to her shoulder as she did. “Please stay. It is not good to be alone with such sadness. It does not get better that way.”

  Lydia’s words pushed her back a step. “Better?” she rasped. “There will be no better—ever. Don’t you get that?”

  “Today, it may seem that way. Tomorrow, too. And for many tomorrows after that, I am afraid. But one day it will get better.”

  “When I die, maybe. When I finally get to be with them again.” She knew her voice was growing shrill, but it was that or start screaming in a place where such an outburst fit even less than she did. “Because that is the only way this loneliness, this pain, will go away.”

  Lydia’s swallow was audible in the otherwise still air. “I did not say your pain will go away. Because it won’t. It will live inside you forever. But I also know that it won’t take up your whole heart as it does now. One day, when you are read
y, there will be room for joy, too.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I know you don’t. And that is okay. I will know it for you when I can. Until you are ready to know it for yourself.”

  She broke eye contact long enough to note the wet spot her tears had left on her friend’s shoulder. “Lydia, I don’t belong here, in your home, with”—she swept a limp hand toward the barn—“your children.”

  “You do not have to stay in the house if you do not wish to. You can stay in the grossdawdy house, instead.” Lydia pointed toward the farmhouse. “You cannot see it from here, but it is there, just around the corner, and it has been empty since Elijah’s dat and mamm passed in the fall. You will have your own bedroom, your own small kitchen, and places to sit outside when you want to be by yourself. I will even put a chair under my favorite tree for you.”

  “Lydia, I can’t. You really don’t know me well enough to—”

  “You are my friend, Danielle. You have been for a very long time.”

  “In letters, sure. After seeing each other a few times over the course of a single week almost three decades ago . . .”

  “You are my friend in here,” Lydia said, touching her heart. “That is enough for me, and it is enough for Elijah.”

  “But—”

  “It was Elijah’s idea to let you use the grossdawdy house. And I will see to it that the children do not bother you.”

  She let her gaze drift to the house, the barn, and the fields in the distance, and then allowed herself the long, slow inhale that came with the calm that surrounded it all. “Oh, Lydia, I don’t know what to say.”

  “I know such a place must be very different from what you know and from where you live.”

  “It’s like night and day,” Dani said, her voice hushed. “Here, the only sounds beyond our voices are birds and chickens and”—she paused as a long moo rang out—“cows. At home there are birds, sure. But there are also delivery trucks, and garbage trucks, and horns honking, and the kids’ friends playing outside, and . . .”

  She looked again at the quiet fields, and the laundry flapping in the breeze, and, finally, back to Lydia. “Are you sure? I mean, really, really sure it would be okay for me to stay for a few days?”

  Lydia’s eyes flashed bright just before she gathered Dani’s hands inside her own. “The only thing that would be more okay would be for you to stay many days. But I will not push. Yet.” Then, releasing her hold, Lydia motioned toward the house. “Come. Let me show you where you will stay.”

  * * *

  Dani heard the door click closed and slowly sank onto the wooden chair closest to the small sitting room window. Outside, just beyond a simple row of hedges, she could see the well-worn path Lydia had mentioned in her quick yet efficient tour of her late in-laws’ home. The path, she’d said, led to the chicken coop and the rooster who would likely wake Dani at sunrise each morning. Beyond that, growing in long rows across a nearly football-sized field, was Elijah’s barley crop.

  She took it all in for a few long moments and then pulled her focus back inside the room. Besides the chair in which she was sitting, there was a second, cushioned chair and a rolling wooden cabinet that held a small propane tank capable of running the lamp affixed to the top. The light, Lydia had explained, could be wheeled from the sitting room into the kitchen and, finally, into the bedroom—basically anywhere Dani might need light once the sun slipped below the horizon.

  The kitchen, like everything else in the house, was basic yet sufficient with a propane-powered refrigerator and stove, a small table with bench seating, and just enough counter space to make a meal and prepare a plate.

  Rising to her feet, she wandered into the bedroom. Here, like everywhere else, furnishings were sparse: a full-sized bed topped with a quilt made by Lydia; hooks for hanging clothes; and a four-drawer upright dresser with a washbasin and pitcher. She crossed to the window and the view it offered of the driveway and barn as her thoughts moved to the suitcase she knew she should unpack before Lydia returned with the insisted-upon dinner plate Dani had tried valiantly to duck.

  It was probably silly to unpack what amounted to roughly a week’s worth of clothes for what would likely be a single overnight stay, but, if nothing else, the act of putting things into drawers might be the perfect way to quiet the growing case of nerves that made it so even the simplest decisions—like whether to sit or stand, or keep the shades open—were just too overwhelming to entertain, let alone actually make.

  With much effort, she hoisted her bag onto the bed, unzipped it open, and stared down at the pairs of underwear and socks haphazardly tucked alongside a single pair of jeans, a pair of dress slacks, a satin blouse, a long-sleeved paisley top, a short-sleeved solid-colored shirt, and a pajama set that still had the price tag affixed to the fabric. The jeans and the top made sense, but the dress slacks and satin blouse? On a farm? What on earth had she been thinking?

  A soft knock at the door was followed by a slow, steady creak and Lydia’s hushed voice. “Danielle? It is me—Lydia.”

  “I’m back here. In the bedroom.”

  “May I come in?”

  “Of course.” She turned toward the open doorway between the bedroom and the kitchen and tried to find the smile she knew the Amish woman deserved. But even without a mirror, she knew it was lacking.

  “You are unpacking! That is good,” Lydia said.

  “It would be if I’d actually thought about where I was going when I packed.” Dani pulled out the blouse and gave it a quick wave. “But when I was throwing everything into my bag this morning, I was just grabbing and shoving with no rhyme or reason. I just needed to get out—get away.”

  She sank onto the bed, the blouse clutched to her chest. “That sounds horrible, doesn’t it?”

  Lydia inched her way into the room. “I do not think that sounds horrible.”

  “You don’t think it sounds horrible that I couldn’t wait to get out of the last place I saw my family alive?”

  “Perhaps, if that was true, yah. But it is not. You must breathe, that is all.”

  She stared at her childhood friend. “Lydia, I’m here because I had to get away—from the kids’ rooms, from the bed I slept in with Jeff, from my mom’s picture on my desk, from the people who know me only as Jeff’s wife and the kids’ mom. From all of it.”

  “You brought something from him, yah?”

  Following the path forged by Lydia’s pointed finger, she looked into her bag. There, beneath her folded jeans and pajamas, she spotted a familiar dark blue jacket. She reached in, pulled it out, and held it to her face, inhaling deeply as she did.

  Oh, Jeff . . .

  “I-I don’t even remember packing this,” she whispered around the soft fabric. “I just opened some drawers and threw stuff in my bag.”

  Lydia lowered herself onto the bed beside Dani. “Sometimes the heart knows things the head does not.”

  “I can still smell him in the fabric . . .”

  “Yah.”

  She breathed in Jeff’s lingering scent and then, pressing the jacket to her chest, she peeked inside the bag once again. Sure enough, in the side pocket usually set aside for the socks she’d tossed into the main compartment, she spotted her mother’s small book and the drawing from Maggie’s room—the one of them making cookies together . . .

  “This book was in my mother’s suitcase,” she said, running her fingers along the pale pink cover and its embossed flowers. “I gave it to her as a gift a few years ago. I didn’t know she took it along when she traveled. And this—my Maggie made this.” Dani swapped the book for the drawing, her throat tight. “It was taped to the wall in her room.”

  “Perhaps you can tape it to the wall here, in your room. That way you can see it whenever you want to see it.”

  Reaching still farther into the compartment, Dani pulled out the wooden pencil case with Spencer’s name spelled out across the top in tiny pictures. “This was my son’s. I made this for him to t
ake to kindergarten. So he would be able to see Jeff and his sisters and his friends whenever he felt homesick.”

  “That will look lovely there, don’t you think?” Lydia asked, pointing to the empty spot on the dresser beside the washbasin and pitcher. “That way you can see it when you open your eyes in the morning, and before you must close them at night.”

  Dani reached into the compartment again, felt around, and then slowly pulled her empty hand back out. “I-I don’t have anything of Ava’s,” she whispered. “How could I not have grabbed something of—Wait! Wait! Yes I do!”

  Pushing off the bed, she practically ran to the kitchen only to return, seconds later, with her phone. “I took a picture of the happy-face flowers she planted for me.”

  “Happy-face flowers?” Lydia echoed.

  “Yes, they’re right—” She stopped, looked at the picture, and then back at her friend. “You can’t look at pictures, can you?”

  Lydia’s answering laugh filled the space between them. “Amish can look at pictures. We just do not want ours to be taken.”

  Dani reclaimed her spot beside her friend and quickly pulled up the image of the tulips she’d taken the previous day. “Ava planted them like that. Like a happy face. She made them that way for me.” Turning the phone for Lydia to see, she felt her lips begin to tremble. “When I . . . When I looked out my bedroom window, yesterday, I-I saw the face straightaway. It was just there. Looking back up at me. The second I saw it, I knew it was from Ava, and it made me smile and cry all at the same time. I felt her loss, of course, but it was like”—she drew the phone close to herself—“she was still here for a few minutes. Like my sweet, always happy, bright, creative, kind little angel was there.”

  “I am glad you knew to look,” Lydia said, drawing Dani close in a side arm hug.

  “I-I didn’t. I mean I should have known; she told me she’d done it. But I didn’t. Not really. Not the way I should have—not enough to know to look for them.” Dani dropped her gaze to the picture and smiled despite the pain in her truth. “I only saw it at all because I was desperate for a little fresh air. And when I opened the blinds, there it was, looking up at me. For a second, I could actually see her standing next to her surprise, grinning up at me, so proud of herself for what she’d done.”