“You played with Ezra yesterday,” Rachel said. “I don’t want you to wear out your welcome.”
“Then can I go play with Aunt Anna?”
Rachel hesitated and thought it over. “I think that would be okay. Just don’t expect her to play hide-and-seek or go for a long walk or anything.”
“I won’t,” Bobby said. “Can I take Candy Land with me?”
“She’d probably like that.”
The other thing on Rachel’s list today, which she was looking forward to, was looking at paint samples. Getting to dream about the new baby and the redecorating she wanted to do—without having an impatient six-year-old tugging at her—sounded like a marvelous idea.
When they arrived at the Sugar Haus, Bertha, Anna, and Lydia were all headed over to the new Amish schoolhouse.
“What’s going on?” Rachel said.
“Now that it’s August, and school will be starting soon, the women from church are getting together today to get the new building ready for the scholars,” Bertha said. “The desks are being delivered later and we need to make certain the floor is swept and mopped.”
“And the windows need to be washed and polished,” Lydia volunteered.
“I’m a duster!” Anna proudly held up her dust cloth. “I dust goot!”
“What were you planning to do today, Rachel?” Bertha asked.
“I had hoped to go to Keim Lumber and look at paint samples, but I can come help if you want me to.”
“Naomi and several others will be here,” Bertha said. “We’ll probably have more hands than we need.”
“Is Ezra coming?” Bobby asked.
Lydia smiled. “I believe so. Would you like to stay and help us?”
“Can I, Rachel?” he asked.
“Of course,” Rachel said. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
Bertha and Lydia exchanged glances. “Take your time,” Bertha said. “Take all day, if you need. Bobby will be fine. Go shop for baby things after you get your paint.”
“I’ll probably just help Joe work on getting the restaurant ready—but thanks.”
Rachel was walking back to her car when Bertha’s words about baby things jogged a memory.
In a corner of her aunts’ attic was a large cedar chest holding her own baby clothes that her mother had carefully stored away. The cedar chest had sustained some smoke damage from the fire that destroyed the original Sugar Haus, but the chest itself had not been burned. It would be a pleasant task to sort through it and see if anything was salvageable. With Bobby well entertained for the next few hours, she mounted the steps to the attic.
Two hours later, when she came back downstairs, Rachel had been through every piece of clothing and wanted to keep most of it. She had also had a good cry over never having known the mother who had lovingly wrapped every piece of baby clothing in tissue and laid dried lavender blossoms between each layer. She washed away her tears at the kitchen sink, but as she was drying her face, she heard the sound of a pickup truck stopping in front of the house. She pulled the curtain back to see who it was.
She might not have recognized the man had it not been for the German shepherd mix that jumped out of the cab and followed him up the path. Carl Bateman had changed since she’d seen him at the veterinarian clinic. Then, he’d been poorly dressed and slightly hunched, as though trying to protect himself from the world.
Today he walked with confidence, and his clothing was impeccable. He was also carrying a lovely floral gift bag.
And that dog was beautiful.
His truck was about ten years old but well-kept. Sunlight danced on the polished surface. If she hadn’t known the type of man he was, she would have been impressed.
But she did know who he was, and Rachel resented the fact that he was here. It felt…sacrilegious. How could he have the gall to set foot on the farm where her father had lived his happy childhood?
Now she realized that Carl might be the reason for the uneasy glance Bertha and Lydia had exchanged right before they encouraged her to take her time in coming back for Bobby.
Had they known Carl was coming today? With a frustrated sigh, she walked out onto the porch. She was so tired of thinking about this man. He nearly tripped when he saw her. It was apparent that he was not expecting her to be there.
“What do you want?” she asked.
She was on the porch. He was on the ground. It made it possible for her to look down on him. It was the first time she had ever looked straight into his face, and she noticed a scar beneath his left eye. Probably from a fight in prison.
Although it was obvious that he had tried to clean up and dress nicely for this visit or confrontation or whatever he was trying to accomplish—beneath the nice clothes, he was still a rough-looking man.
“I was hoping to meet Bertha,” he said.
“Why?”
“I wanted to thank her.”
“For what?”
He hesitated a moment and then he dug into his pocket. “I wanted to thank her for these.” He held up a small packet of letters.
“She told me all about them. Every year on the anniversary of my father’s murder.”
“Yes.” He seemed resigned to her anger. “Your father’s murder.”
“It takes a lot of nerve for you to come here.”
“Yes. It did take a lot of nerve.” He didn’t flinch. “It took every bit of nerve I had, but I wanted to finally thank her face-to-face.”
“I’ll give her the message.” Rachel turned to go inside.
“When is your baby due?” he asked.
She whirled and placed a protective hand on her stomach. At four-and-a-half months, she was showing some, but not all that much yet. “How did you know?”
“George told me. I’m happy you will have a child. He says you have a good husband and a good marriage. I’m glad. I worried about you…afterward.”
“You want me to believe that you actually cared about what you had done? Or felt remorse for it?” She felt herself starting to tremble.
“I’d give anything if I could go back and undo what I did.”
“I don’t buy it,” she said. “Although it’s remarkable how skilled ex-cons can become at manipulating other people’s emotions. I’m sure you’re a master at it.” There was a porch column close by and she reached out to steady herself against it. “But you can’t manipulate me. I know exactly who you are, and I deeply resent the fact that you are trying to worm your way into my aunts’ lives. How dare you…”
“Rachel!” It was Bertha’s voice.
Rachel had been so intent on what she was saying that she had not seen Bertha hurrying over from the school with Anna and Bobby. Her son had a half-eaten sandwich in his hand. Evidently someone had brought lunch and shared it with him.
“Bobby, go get in your mother’s car,” Bertha said.
“Can I pet the doggie first?” Bobby squatted down and offered Shadow the rest of his sandwich, which the dog delicately took from his hand. “What’s his name?” he asked.
“Shadow,” Carl said.
“That’s a funny name. Why did you call him that?”
“Because I found him hiding in the shadows of a Dumpster. He was trying to find food. We’ve been friends ever since.”
“Go get in the car,” Rachel said. “Now.”
Bobby, hearing the steel in Rachel’s voice, did not hesitate any longer. They all stood frozen in place until Bobby closed the car door and they knew their voices would at least be muffled.
“You must be Carl. I am Bertha. You are welcome in my home. Lydia is still helping at the school, but she has some pastries waiting for us in the kitchen. I will make coffee and we will talk. Come. Your dog may stay on the porch. Rachel, you have said enough. Carl is my guest. I believe it would be best if you take Bobby home now.”
Carl gave a command and the dog positioned itself near the door, where it appeared to stand guard.
Tears stung Rachel’s eyes from frustration and emb
arrassment over Bertha’s rebuke. Carl gave an apologetic shrug of his shoulders and followed Bertha onto the porch. Rachel choked back her emotions and tried to present a calm face to Bobby as she climbed into the car.
Unfortunately, the floaty feeling was suddenly back. Her heart hurt so badly that her mind apparently wanted to shut down again.
“Is everything okay?” the little boy asked.
With a great effort, Rachel fought the feeling away. She took several deep breaths and tried to find a pleasant subject to talk about. It was important for Bobby not to think she was upset or mad. The little guy was just too sensitive to allow him to know how she was feeling.
“Did you enjoy seeing the new schoolhouse today?” she asked.
“Uh-huh. I wish I could go to school there with Ezra,” he said. “Can I?”
“Englisch children are not allowed.” Rachel started the car. “Only little Amish boys and girls.”
“I wish I were Amish.” Bobby crossed his arms and pushed out his lower lip. “Then I could go too.”
“But you wouldn’t be able to watch cartoons anymore if you were Amish.”
“I don’t care.”
Bobby’s petulance did not last long. By the time they got to the restaurant, he was chattering about what he wanted for lunch and a tree swing his daddy had promised to build—once the restaurant was finished.
Innocent. Trusting. Loving. As forgiving of the people around him as Anna.
“He said he was sorry.”
Rachel wished she could be like a child again. Even Jesus had talked about it and said people needed to change and become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.
But she could not. She just couldn’t. Her innocence and trust had been stripped away on her eleventh birthday as she watched her father bleed out on the floor of the bank—put there by the same man who was no doubt enjoying one of Lydia’s pastries right now.
“He said he was sorry.”
“Sorry” was an easy word to say if one had everything to gain and nothing to lose by saying it. That was something Anna would never understand. Just like Anna would never understand that there was true evil in the world and sometimes that evil pretended to be good.
No matter how much Rachel wished she could make everyone happy by dropping her suspicions and resentment—she just couldn’t.
Chapter 47
It certainly hadn’t been the reception he’d envisioned, once he saw that Rachel was there, but Carl was not surprised by the force of Bertha’s will when she asked her niece to leave. Any woman who could have deliberately chosen to forgive the man who had killed her brother had to have a will of steel.
Anna was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, smiling up at him. “Boo!” she said.
“You are supposed to act afraid,” Bertha whispered. “It’s Anna’s little joke.”
Carl tried to do a good imitation of acting startled, but he didn’t think he was very convincing because Anna seemed disappointed until he handed her the gift bag.
“I hope you like this,” he said.
Her eyes grew round when she reached in and drew the little ceramic bank out of the bag. “Ooh! Gray Cat!”
“I hope you like it.”
“What a lovely gift,” Bertha said. “Anna, perhaps you could go search for some pennies to put in it.”
“Danke!” Anna hugged the ceramic cat to her chest as she trundled off the porch and into the house. They followed her inside.
“That means ‘thank you,’ ” Bertha said as they entered the kitchen. She pulled the percolator from the back of the woodstove where it had been kept warm and poured two cups of coffee. Then she brought a cloth-covered plate from the counter and placed it on the kitchen table. She lifted the cloth away and revealed a platter of delicate-looking pastries.
That’s when Carl noticed that although Bertha appeared calm, her hands were shaking.
“Please sit.” She laid a cloth napkin in front of him. “Eat. There is creamer and sugar on the table.”
Instead of reaching for a pastry, he carefully laid the small bundle of letters on the table. They were stained and worn. It was obvious that they had been read and handled many times.
“The letters,” Bertha said.
“They saved my life.”
“I’m glad. The first one was very hard to write.”
“I can imagine,” he said.
“Can you?”
“Maybe not. I’ve never had a brother.”
“I was several years older than Frank. He was more like my own child than my brother. We did not fuss at each other like siblings. Instead, I helped raise him.”
“As you helped raise his daughter.”
“Yes.” He saw her weave slightly as she stood at the stove and realized what a toll this meeting was taking on her.
He rose to his feet and pulled out a chair. “Please,” he said, “sit down. I’m afraid this is too hard for you. I can leave if you’d like.”
“No, it is not too hard,” Bertha disagreed. “It is just that I have rehearsed what I wanted to say to you so many times in my mind, and now that you are here everything seems…unreal. I am tired and my mind isn’t working as well as I would like. I’m afraid I won’t get my words right.”
“I feel much the same way.”
Bertha reached out and caressed the small stack of letters, apparently deep in thought. It was as though she were reliving in her mind the sacrifice it had taken to write each one.
“I’ve had so many conversations with you in my head over the years,” Carl said. “At first, I didn’t allow myself to believe that you had forgiven me. I thought it was just a gesture or something you did to feel good about yourself. I never expected to get a second letter or a third. As the years went on and the letters mounted up, I began to allow myself to believe that you meant what you wrote.”
“I have learned a great deal over the years,” Bertha said. “One thing I learned is that forgiveness doesn’t come in an instant. There were times when I would hear our little Rachel crying in her sleep or, worse, screaming from yet another nightmare about a ‘bad man’…”
Carl winced. This was not easy to listen to, but then, he had not expected this meeting to be easy.
“There were times when I, an Amish woman raised to believe in total nonviolence, wished I could hurt you for what you had done to our family.”
Carl nodded, accepting the truth of her words.
“Instead,” he said, “you wrote me letters about your farm animals and guests and how your vegetable garden was doing…always ending with the words that you forgave me.”
Bertha nodded. “And after a while I discovered that it was true. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if in those first years I was being obedient to God’s teaching or if I simply grew weary of carrying around the burden of hate. Sometimes hate feels so heavy that it is just easier to lay it down and walk away. Like I said, I have found forgiveness to be an ongoing journey of faith. It does not come all at once.”
“I am grateful you chose to make that journey.”
“I’m not sure I had a choice. Had I carried that load of hatred, I doubt I would be alive today to see Rachel’s child born.”
“I brought you a gift,” Carl said. “It feels like such a small thing to do, but you gave me so much over the years. I wanted to have something nice to give you when we met. George said it would be okay.”
Bertha cocked her head to one side and smiled. “Like Anna, I am not opposed to gifts.”
He took the small package out of his pocket and handed it to her. He had paid the clerk extra to wrap it in silver wrapping paper with a tiny red ribbon.
“It’s very pretty.” She turned it this way and that, admiring it. “I wonder what it could be?”
She carefully unwrapped his gift and then opened the velvet box. When she saw the gold pocket watch lying there, she grinned. “Exactly what I needed! My old one is not keeping good time anymore. We were late to church
last Sunday because of it.”
She admired the small object in her hand. “It is already set to keep time.”
“I had the jeweler do that,” he said. “I hoped you would like it.”
It had cost him a month’s wages.
“I like it very much,” Bertha said. “And to my great surprise, I like you. I was prepared to forgive you, but I did not expect to like you. Now, you truly must eat some of Lydia’s pastries or she will be upset. And while you eat, you must tell me about that good dog who did not try to follow you inside the house. How are you liking your new job at the clinic? Do you have any living relatives? How are things going with your parole officer? Do you like living inside a church? Your life has been so different than mine, and I have so many questions.”
Thinking about it later, Carl realized how odd it was for an elderly Amish woman and a seasoned ex-con to find so much to discuss, but it appeared they had both been in each other’s thoughts so often that they had many questions. Their conversation lasted much longer than either of them had expected.
Carl wanted to know more about Anna. He wanted to know about the fire and how they had lost their first B & B. The conversation went from the kitchen table to the porch swing, where he introduced Shadow to Bertha and showed off some of his tricks.
“This is a good skill you learned in prison,” she said.
“It was the only good thing, but yes, I’m grateful for the training I got…and for George’s friendship. It made all the difference.”
“What man meant for evil, God turned into good,” she said. “I’ve seen that happen so many times. You must come again to visit. I did not know if I would ever be able to say this—but now I can with a whole heart—you are welcome in our home, Carl Bateman.”
Chapter 48
“Aren’t you going to church?” Joe asked.
“I don’t think so,” Rachel answered. “I went to the doctor yesterday afternoon with some mild cramps. She said it might be wise to take it easy for a day or two until they stopped.”
“Why didn’t you tell me last night?” He stood beside the bed with concern written on his face.
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