by Senft, Adina
“Daed and Victor Stolzfus are in heaven, aren’t they, Mamm?” Elam tugged on her sleeve.
“They are. God took them to be with Him for eternity.”
“Will we see Daed when we die?”
“Well, we won’t have the bodies we have now; we’ll be made of spirit,” she said slowly. “But it says there will be no sorrow there, only joy, so I’m thinking that means we’ll be together with Daed again.”
“So he’s not really down there in the dark?”
The dark. The pieces fit together in her head as Elam looked up at her, his face white with apprehension. “No,” she said softly. “His body is going back to the ground that God made Adam from, but there is no dark where he is now. No dark, no monsters, nothing to fear…Only light and singing for joy at being with God.”
She fell silent, wondering if she’d said too much. But Elam wasn’t finished. He pressed even closer. “And Emma will have her papa, too?”
“Yes.”
“She should be glad, then, shouldn’t she?”
“I think she will be, in time. At the moment she’s missing her father, like we miss Daed still.”
“You should tell her she’ll be with him in heaven, Mamm. That would cheer her up.”
She touched Elam’s cheek, whose color was returning, and still with its baby roundness yet. “You can tell her, at the house. I think she’ll be glad if you remind her.”
And so he did. Matthew had responded to the more cheerful atmosphere of the house and gone with his friends out into the orchard to find windfalls. But Elam had waited until Emma was by herself near the window, and when she leaned down, he whispered in her ear. Amelia watched her hug the little boy, bent over him as though he were the only thing holding her up. Then she straightened, made sure he had another helping of gingerbread cake next to his Auntie Esther, and walked out of the house.
Amelia grabbed Carrie. “Come on. Emma needs us.”
Emma walked rapidly across the lane and along the well-worn path to the Daadi Haus. Amelia practically had to run to catch up, the heavy lining of her apron beating against her thighs as if to tell her to slow down, to act more becoming. Right behind her, Carrie said, “She wants to be alone. Shouldn’t we give her that?”
“That’s the last thing she wants.” Amelia remembered how it was. “She needs friends with her.”
“The big house is full of friends and relatives. She needs her family.”
“We’re her family, too.” Amelia pushed open the kitchen door and stepped into the warm quiet, holding the door until Carrie slipped through.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been here and found no one in the kitchen,” Carrie whispered. “Where is she?”
“I’m out here.” Emma’s voice was muted.
When Amelia rounded the corner into the living room, she found Emma standing by the window, gazing out at the same fields she’d been looking at her whole life. “Are you all right? We saw you leave, and we got worried.”
Emma turned and took their hands, gripping them so hard they shook. Then her face wavered and collapsed as she released their hands and flung her arms around their shoulders. They stood together, the two of them wrapping her in patient love while she cried.
Carrie slipped out to the downstairs bedroom and came back with a white cotton handkerchief. “Denki.” Emma blew her nose and mopped her eyes, then tucked it into her sleeve as she sank onto the narrow, uncomfortable sofa. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve been trying so hard to stay strong for Mamm, and all of a sudden…”
“It will get easier with time,” Amelia said softly.
Emma huffed out a breath that on any other occasion might have been a laugh. “I wasn’t even crying over Pap. I guess…I was just so grateful that it’s you two and I can be myself. I didn’t mean to let it all go.”
“You can’t be yourself over there?” Carrie asked. “But it’s all your friends and your family.”
“Do you know what it’s like to have a houseful of Stolzfuses?” Emma’s gaze was wry—almost like herself. “Every woman convinced she’s the only one who knows how to arrange things and everyone trying to do for Mamm, when all she wants is to sit by the window and remember the old days with her buddies. You know, when she was first married and they were all making mistakes together. When Pap was strong and handsome.” She sighed. “There aren’t so many of those ladies now. It seems like God calls one home every few months.”
“We should go back, Emma.” Carrie glanced out the kitchen window, though there was nothing to be seen but the poplars, the last of their gold-coin leaves sifting to the ground in the rain. “They’ll be missing you.”
“No one will miss me. Not for ten minutes. I just need to sit here and be quiet with you. I feel all verhuddelt.”
“Life is verhuddelt right now,” Amelia told her softly. “Put yourself in God’s hands, and He’ll make it come out right.”
Emma fidgeted. “My word, this couch is awful. The first thing I’m going to do is get a new one.”
Amelia had meant to offer her comfort, not provoke an abrupt change of subject. “The first thing after what?”
“After everyone goes home.”
“A couch?”
Emma wriggled and finally stood up, resuming her place by the window. She gripped her elbows as if she were cold. “Pap would never let us change a thing. He brought that couch home in the market wagon in nineteen fifty-something, and here it stayed all this time. Mamm never sits on it. Says it makes her back hurt.”
“Maybe you should—”
“Karen will have a fit.” Emma talked right over Carrie as if she hadn’t spoken. “She’s just like Pap—doesn’t want things to change, even when they’re for the better. Well, she can have the couch. Mamm and I are going to get something we like.”
Carrie glanced at Amelia with concern in her eyes. “Emma, please sit. Not on the couch, in your reading chair. It’s not good to make too many changes after…after something like this. Give it a few months and then see how you feel.”
“I’ll have a sore back, is how I’ll feel.”
This wasn’t right. Emma wouldn’t sit. Instead she paced back and forth, as if coming to join them and then changing her mind and walking away, her hands fisted against her apron. Something more than a couch was at stake here.
“Emma, what’s really going on? You never get het up about silly things like furniture. I don’t think I’ve heard you talk about a couch, ever.”
Emma turned on the ball of her foot and stalked the seven steps over to the bookcase. And back. When she looked up and met their concerned gazes, she exhaled on a long breath that carried something of relief, something of despair. “Is it wrong to be glad he’s gone?”
Chapter 8
Glad?
That was the last thing Amelia had expected her to say. For a moment she couldn’t think how to reply.
How can you be glad your father is dead? But no, that was Mamm’s voice she heard in her head. The voice of guilt, of expectation, of caring what everybody thought.
Was it really so bad, looking after him? She couldn’t say that either. Cleaning up the head of the household after he had messed himself really was that bad, no matter how much love lay between you. And deep down she couldn’t bear to know. At some point someone—Matthew? Mamm?—would have to do that for her. Maybe sooner than she thought. Who had done it for poor Lila Esch when the Mennonite nurse was not there?
Carrie said softly, “No one is here but us, Emma. Sit down and tell us everything.”
“I know it’s wrong to feel this way—I loved Pap.” Emma’s voice sounded hoarse—as if even her body were trying to prevent her from saying the words. “I know he sacrificed for us kids growing up, so it was my place to sacrifice for him when he needed me. But…”
“But?” Carrie prompted when the pause grew into a silence.
“But why is caring for my parents the only thing God has held out to me?” Emma wailed. “Why can’t I find a husband like Ka
ren or Katherine? Why do I have to be the senior single and watch the years go by from this window?” She hid her face in her hands. “I’m so ashamed, only thinking of myself. But I can’t help it.”
“You’re grieving him,” Amelia said slowly. Her heart hurt for Emma—and it wasn’t the first time any of them had thought those very questions and had never dared to say them out loud. “But you’re mourning yourself, too. And I don’t see anything so wrong with that.”
The rain ran down the gutter spout, as if the very world around them joined in.
“It’s selfish,” Emma whispered. “Remember JOY? Jesus first, others next, yourself last?”
“I know, but, Emma,” Carrie said, “we’re only human. We can strive for the best, but sometimes we don’t hit the mark. That’s where God’s grace and forgiveness step in. I don’t think He is going to blame you for having these thoughts. I know we aren’t.”
“Maybe things will be different now, after you’ve had a little time to grieve and adjust.” Amelia didn’t have any answers. But that didn’t mean they weren’t out there. God, after all, knew what He was about, even if to them His plan looked as obvious as a dirt road in heavy fog.
“I don’t think you’re glad your dad is gone,” Carrie said. “I think you’re relieved. And that seems to me to be pretty normal.”
Emma nodded, her gaze on the plank floor of the living room, polished to a shine by her own hands. “Relieved.” She looked up. “That’s the very word. I feel as if a weight has been rolled off me, like I’m a balloon bobbing in the air just waiting for a tree to catch me.”
Amelia grinned. “Maybe that tree will be wearing pants.”
To her huge relief, Emma attempted a smile. “Or maybe it will be holding a—” She stopped, changed her mind about the next word. “A new couch.” She stood. “We should get back. You’re right—Mamm will be wondering where I am.”
She hugged each of them in turn—that was twice in one day from a woman who wasn’t usually given to displays of affection. As they walked back to the big house, Amelia rubbed her left hand. It was a habit now, though it never did any good. What had Emma been going to say before she’d stopped herself ? What besides a husband did she think was going to catch her and make her life change?
Ah, well. When she was ready to tell them, she would. That was one of the things Amelia loved about their friendship. They had no secrets from each other.
Amelia found her horse, Daisy, in the Stolzfus field, snorting and jostling for the choicest grass with everyone else’s animals, and walked her over to the buggy. Amelia wanted to stay with Emma for the evening and help Victor’s daughters clear up, but at the same time she was nervous about driving at night with hands she couldn’t depend on and the boys along. After Enoch’s death it had taken everything she had to drive at all. Even now she walked everywhere she could—except today, when everybody had gone out to the cemetery in the rain. Some days you just had to pull up your socks, wipe away the pictures in your mind, and do what had to be done.
She was backing the horse between the rails when a voice spoke behind her.
“May I give you a hand?” Eli Fischer’s experienced hands tightened straps and fastened buckles, and before she could protest, he had the job done.
“Denki,” she said at last. “It’s very kind of you. But I thought you had a wedding to go to?”
“I got a ride back in a van, which shaved a day off the trip.” The shoulders of his waterproof jacket were slick with rain, and a steady drip came down off his hat over his left eye, but in spite of it his eyes twinkled and he looked as if he were perfectly content to be harnessing her horse in a downpour. “You would not believe the number of people in that house. It was another Lapp wedding—one of my cousins on my mother’s side, which means Mary and Daniel Lapp were there, though they left early so they could come back for the funeral. I gave the bride my good wishes and a set of yard tools, and I made sure Mary saw it so she could write and tell my grandmother, and after that I was a free man.”
He was the most provoking person, making her laugh when the occasion was so serious. Good thing they were out in the field, with no one closer than forty feet but one of Emma’s brothers and his teenage boys.
“Well, I appreciate the help. It’s hard to harness a horse with one hand.” She waggled her left, since the fingers wouldn’t respond properly. “At least it’s good to hold the umbrella yet.”
“What does the doctor say, if you don’t mind me asking?”
She should mind. She hardly knew him, despite his disconcerting habit of appearing when least expected. But somehow the look in his eyes was sympathetic rather than nosy, as though he were honestly concerned. “He says it’s multiple sclerosis.” Those brown eyes widened, and she went on hastily, “I’m getting a second opinion. When I’m at the shop tomorrow, I’ll start making calls.”
“It’s good that you have a phone there, if you need to use it for such things.”
She nodded. “I never expected to use it for more than answering customers’ questions and taking orders, though.”
“Will this affect your decision not to sell?”
Amelia felt as though someone had pulled the collar of her coat open in the back and let the cold rain pour in. Was that what he was interested in, then? Was he just trying to butter her up by helping?
She took the reins from his hands with a little more authority than he was probably used to. “No.” The single syllable was as final as the stiffness in her face. “Thank you for your help.”
She got into the buggy and would have flapped the wet reins over Daisy’s back without even saying good-bye, except that he slid open the door and leaned in.
“Amelia. What did I say? Did I offend you?”
She tried to find words that would offend less than the ones she’d just heard. “I suppose it’s a sensible conclusion to come to—that I’d be more likely to sell if I were sick.” He made a sound that could have been distress, but she didn’t allow him to speak. “I’m not convinced it is MS, though, and until I am, the shop is not for sale.”
“Amelia, I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Didn’t you?” The black brim of her bonnet framed him tightly in her field of vision, blocking out the fields on either side. His brows wrinkled in the middle, and his gaze never left her face. That annoying trickle of water off the brim of his hat made her want to reach over and turn it so it leaked onto the back of his jacket. But that was a gesture that would be misinterpreted by him and anyone watching, and besides, she was offended, sin or not. “It sounded so.”
“About the shop—I respected the answer you gave me when I asked, and if you change your mind, you’ll tell me. I simply meant that—I wondered if—That is, I was afraid it would make things harder for you, this trouble. That’s all.”
Amelia felt the hot blood of shame seep into her cheeks, her forehead, her neck. She’d been too quick to judge—done the very thing she disliked most in her own mother and had vowed never to do with the boys. Only proud people got offended. And here, at the first opportunity and right after he’d helped her when no one else had thought of it, not even her own brothers, who were over there in the barn with the Stolzfus men…
She reeled in her galloping thoughts and forced herself to relax her grip on the lines. Poor Daisy was backing and stepping, with no idea what Amelia wanted her to do. “Easy, girl,” she crooned. “It’s all right.” She forced herself to turn and look Eli Fischer in the face.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I took offense when I shouldn’t have. I should have known your intentions were not—that you—I mean—” Now it was her turn to stumble and stammer. “I—I need to find the boys and take them home before it gets any darker.”
“Of course.” He closed the buggy door and stepped clear. “I’m glad to see you looking so well anyway. And I hope the second opinion is better.”
She flashed him a half smile and shook the reins, wheeling Daisy around and heading h
er over to the yard, where Ruth had the boys corralled on the porch.
He thought she looked well.
Goodness. It had been a long time since a man had said such a thing to her.
Just you never mind thinking thoughts about Eli Fischer. You’re in no position to be looking into his eyes and imagining nonsense. You can’t lead a man on and then disappoint him. Because if this second opinion you’re after agrees with the first one, there will be no one after Enoch. No one.
She paled at the thought, thankful as they drove home that Matthew and Elam were more interested in the horse than in the unruly thoughts of their mother.
On Monday, Amelia arrived at the shop determined to start fresh and new and have it out with Aaron King. She found the place empty but for David out in the storage yard, organizing the lumber into neat stacks as tall as he was. Aaron wasn’t lounging on the step waiting for her, and he certainly wasn’t with David or doing some other useful thing while he waited for her to unlock the doors.
At ten minutes past nine, he finally ambled into the office, where she was laying out the jobs for the day.
She looked rather pointedly at the clock on the diner across the street and two over, which displayed the time in a circle of pink neon, night or day. Oblivious, Aaron kept going, heading into the back. Amelia stood and intercepted him.
“Aaron, I’d like to have a talk.”
He smiled and parked a hip on her desk. “Sure, Amelia. What up?”
Had he forgotten how to speak good Deitch? Instead of switching to English, she went on in their own tongue. “Is there a reason you’re late this morning?”
Surprised, he leaned to look out the window at the diner’s clock. “Am I late? It’s only ten after.”
“We open at nine, as you know very well.”
“But it’s only ten minutes.” He sat there, long drink of water that he was, mystified.
“It may only be ten minutes, but in those minutes you could have had a job laid out. If a customer came, what would he think of a shop that’s empty and silent, with no work being done?”
