With Winter's First Frost

by Kelly Irvin

  “Can you get breakfast?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “I have to get to Hannah. And talk to Ruby and Martin.” Offices were closed today, but tomorrow she would pay a certain doctor a visit as well. This was not over. Not yet. “Among other people.”

  Understanding dawned in Rosalie’s face. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.” It would take courage to show the letter to Ruby and Martin. And humility. “I was sure the time with the babies would make her see. Make her feel.”

  “What I feel?” Rosalie hugged Laura. “What it’s like to be a fraa and a mudder?”

  “Jah.”

  “You did your best, Gott will do the rest.”

  He should get on with it then. Stifling that thought, Laura hugged her friend back. “We better get out there and make breakfast. Life goes on, one way or another.”

  She looked back. Not a hint that Tamara had graced this room. Would the rest of their lives be like that with her gone? Out of sight, out of mind?

  Her place here was marked and now it stood empty. The paths of many lives would be changed by her absence.

  Including Laura’s.

  Twenty minutes later she pulled up to the dawdy haus. Smoke spiraled from the chimney. Ice glistened on the windowpanes. The house looked so peaceful. Please Gott, not Hannah too.

  She climbed down and rushed up the steps.

  The door opened. Hannah, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, squinted against the glare of the sun bouncing from the snow. “What are you doing here? And so early. Is everything all right?”

  “You’re still here.”

  “I’m still under the bann. Where would I go?”

  Danki, Gott, for her gut sense, her faith. “Is Tamara here?”

  “She’s already gone.”

  Puffing from exertion mixed with relief, Laura drew a deep breath and paused on the porch. “You didn’t go with her.”

  Hannah shook her head. “Did you really think I would?”

  “It might seem like a way to escape your fate.”

  “The baby goes where I go. There’s no escaping that. Besides, I’ve had a lot of time to think.” Hannah’s hands went to her belly in a protective gesture. “My faith hasn’t changed. I would never leave my family.”

  Relief swept through Laura. She wouldn’t have to tell Seth and Carrie their daughter had left Jamesport for another way of life, taking with her their grandchild.

  “What’s going on here?” Martin marched across the expanse of snow that separated the corral from the houses. His nose was bright red with cold. “Why are you here, Laura? Again. Once I could ignore but—”

  “Tamara is gone.”

  He halted. His body swayed. His gaze drifted out to the barren pastures where he would plant corn and alfalfa in the spring. He sniffed, turned, and walked toward the house. “Ruby needs to know.” He tossed the words over his shoulder. They sounded as icy as a winter storm.

  “I’m going after her.”

  His shoulders hunched against the wind that whistled through the bare tree branches, he kept walking. His boots crunched in the snow. “She’s made her choice.”

  “We must still try.”

  “Nee.” He stomped up the stairs to the porch and disappeared into the house.

  “She’s not coming back.” Hannah rubbed her hands together and blew on them. “She told me she can’t wait to see the world. She can’t wait to fill her head up with all that medical stuff about muscles and bones and organs and diseases and how to treat them. She was so happy.”

  “I have to try.”

  “I know.”

  “I have to go now.”

  “I know.”

  Laura shivered. Life could go along perfectly fine and then suddenly hit bump after bump. It changed in a fraction of a second. She knew that, yet it always surprised her. “I’m glad you didn’t go.”

  “Me too.” Hannah’s wave was a tiny flutter. “See you soon.”

  “Talk to you soon.”

  “Wait.”

  Laura looked back. Hannah still stood in the doorway. A tentative, almost scared, look on her face. “I have to go, child. You know that.”

  “Just tell me one thing. Who left the cradle?”

  Maybe this piece of information would shore up her hope for her future. Maybe it would help her see that her life was not over. “Phillip.”

  A smile replaced the hesitation. “It’s nice. He did a gut job with the finish.”

  “It was sweet of him.”

  “Why would he do that for me?”

  “A question you’ll have to ask him one day.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “We never know what we can do until we have to do it.”

  Thanks to her indiscretion, Hannah would learn this lesson over and over again.

  Laura followed Martin into the house. The fire had been allowed to sink low and the living room was cold. Ruby sat on the couch. Martin had joined her. They sat side by side, not touching, both staring at the glowing remains of logs that now generated little heat.

  Ruby bit her lower lip. Her eyes were red rimmed and her skin pale. Her gaze met Laura’s. “She’s really gone?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Laura eased into a rocking chair. Her throat ached with the effort to hold her own tears back. Crying might be considered a sign of weakness but often brought a catharsis unparalleled by any other activity. “But rest assured, I plan to talk to Dr. Reeves and find out where she is. This isn’t over.”

  “It is over. She’s chosen.” Martin cleared his throat and stood. “It’s time to get breakfast on the table.”

  Ruby didn’t move. Her gaze faltered and landed on her hands in her lap. She clasped them so tightly her knuckles were white. “That’s it, then. We’ll never see her again.”

  “Unless she recognizes her error and decides to return. We always take our lambs back into the fold.” His voice sounded gritty, like a man with a chest cold. He turned so his back was to Laura and placed one callused hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Now we all must live with it, Fraa.”

  Ruby stared up at her husband. A sob escaped. She put her hand to her mouth as if to corral the others that would surely follow and nodded. “I have a breakfast casserole in the oven.” Her voice trembled. “I better check on it.”

  Martin’s shoulders hunched. His hand lifted. “Go on then.”

  Ruby rose, but tears trickled down her cheek. “Will I be allowed to write to her?”

  “I reckon there’s no rule against it.” He brushed away her tears in a tender gesture that brought tears to Laura’s eyes. “But I don’t know that it’ll serve much purpose.”

  “She’s still our dochder.”

  Laura wanted to flee herself. This was a private grieving between a father and a mother whose child had gone astray. She edged toward the door. “She’s still my granddaughter. It can’t hurt to talk to her one more time. And to Dr. Reeves, who arranged all this.”

  “It can hurt. It creates hope where there is none.” His eyes were cold and empty. “It does hurt.”

  “There’s always hope.”

  “Leave it be.” He worked his jaw. “Stay for breakfast. If I know Ruby, she made enough casserole for ten.”

  “I have to go. Rosalie will need me, with Tamara . . .”

  “Then I reckon we’ll see you on Sunday.” He strode from the room so quickly it seemed as though his thoughts chased him.

  “Mudder.”

  Ruby’s soft entreaty tugged Laura from her spot by the door to her daughter’s side. She encircled her in a hug and they huddled on the sofa together. “There’s always hope, Dochder, always.”

  There was hope and then there was acceptance.

  “He’s my mann. He’s a gut mann.”

  “Jah, he is.”

  “He’s right. We should let it go.” Ruby rested her head on Laura’s shoulder. “If it were anyone else’s dochder, I would say she’s made her choice.”

  “I know.”<
br />
  She rubbed her eyes with a crumpled handkerchief. “Try one more time, Mudder.”

  Sometimes it was hard to know when to let go of hope and embrace acceptance. Especially when it came to mothers and daughters. “I will. I promise.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  GERMS FAR AND WIDE. LAURA NEVER USED TO WORRY about germs. Now it seemed any little cough from one of the children and she had the cold or the flu. Old age. She waded through Dr. Reeves’s waiting room, filled as usual to the rafters with croupy babies and feverish toddlers and children with green faces that suggested it might be good to have a vomit bag on hand. All those who’d been sick over the New Year’s Eve holiday were now in the doctor’s office. A wizened elderly man with a pained expression rubbed his head with both hands. A man in a package delivery uniform dozed in a seat two chairs down. Surprised that she didn’t recognize more of her English neighbors, Laura managed to make it to the receptionist’s window without stopping.

  “Do you have an appointment?” The woman on the other side of the window, dressed in pink uniform pants and a shirt covered with Winnie the Pooh bears, looked puzzled. “I don’t see your name.”

  “Tell her it’s about Tamara Eicher. I’m sure she’ll want to squeeze me in.” Shoving her way through the door into the exam rooms wouldn’t be too drastic a measure, considering the situation. A weeping Ruby and grim-faced Martin were beside themselves with grief over Tamara’s sudden, early departure. Martin’s scowl left no doubt he blamed Laura. After she read Tamara’s letter, Ruby’s gaze faltered as well. The words “How could you?” were written all over her wan face. Emmett’s contribution had been a somber recitation of Tamara’s monologue on why she had to go. And why he couldn’t make her stay.

  “I didn’t have time to make her love me.”

  The man looked stricken at the thought.

  While it was sad, the fact that Tamara didn’t love her family and her God enough to stay was more bothersome.

  A woman shouldn’t be baptized if she didn’t have the faith of her convictions. Simple as that.

  Not simple. Laura had to give it one more try. She’d done everything in her power to keep Tamara from straying. And now she would try to get her back. Once she found her.

  A few minutes later the nurse ushered her into the recesses behind the door and down a long hallway past exam rooms, some occupied by crying babies and mothers who looked at their wits’ end. Laura didn’t miss those days of waiting with a sick and crying child while toddlers attempted to explore the exam rooms from magazines to trash cans to biohazardous material containers.

  The nurse showed her into Dr. Reeves’s office. “She’ll be right with you.”

  Which in doctor time meant within the next hour or two.

  Laura spent fifteen minutes examining Dr. Reeves’s diplomas and certifications and planning the big speech. The doctor was an educated woman with many pieces of paper to prove her worthiness of being trusted with family medicine. Laura had trusted her with Tamara, a precious gift from God.

  “I’ve been expecting you.” Dr. Reeves hustled into the room on rubber-soled Crocs that squeaked on the tile. They were covered with purple flowers as was her uniform shirt. The pants were a solid purple. She looked like a lovely flower with her short, curly black hair and lilac eyes. “Have a seat, please.”

  With a deep breath Laura sank into the soft leather chair on the other side of a massive oak desk covered with files and framed photos. Something tinkled and the doctor glanced at her computer. “One second, please.” She typed for a minute with an amazing rapid-fire ferocity. The doctor’s phone dinged. She spent another minute typing with only her thumbs. “Okay, you have my undivided attention. I promise.” She glanced at her watch. “For about five minutes. Patients are waiting and you know how frustrating that is for them. They had appointments.”

  Guilty, but nevertheless Laura pushed forward. “It’s a simple question with a simple answer. Where’s Tamara?”

  “She’s safe and sound. I can also promise that.” The doctor leaned back in her swivel desk chair, hands clasped over her midsection. “She doesn’t want you to know where.”

  “What, is she afraid we’ll come and drag her home by her hair?” Despite her best intention to remain cordial, Laura snorted. The doctor played a role in Tamara’s flight, but she didn’t instigate it. “We don’t do that. I only want to give her one more chance to rethink this choice and to say good-bye. Did she tell you how she did it? How she left?”

  “No, but when she showed up at my house on New Year’s Day, I suspected.”

  “Did you tell her it was cowardly?”

  “What Tamara did was unbelievably hard. It took great courage.” Dr. Reeves frowned. Lines formed around her eyes and mouth, making her look older. “I suspect you know that and you respect it yourself.”

  “That doesn’t make it what’s best for her.”

  “Your granddaughter is one of the brightest, most intelligent women I’ve met in a long time.” Dr. Reeves sat forward. She gripped the edge of her desk with both hands. “If you think I enabled her on a whim, you’re mistaken. I look at her and see a woman with a great future ahead of her, given the opportunities and the education she needs to succeed. I can help her get that. I understand the cost to her and to her family. So does Tamara.”

  “I’d like to have this conversation with her, not you.”

  “I understand that. I have two daughters myself.” Dr. Reeves touched a pink butterfly-shaped frame that held a photo of two dark-headed, elfin-sized girls with their arms around each other. They grinned at the camera. Both were missing front teeth. “I look at them and I feel so blessed that they’ll never have to make those kinds of decisions. I hope they’re as brilliant as Tamara. And as brave.”

  “If she was truly brave, she’d say good-bye to me face-to-face.”

  Dr. Reeves sighed and shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “I’m an old woman. I may never see her again.”

  “She said you’d play the old woman card.”

  “She knew I’d come looking for her.”

  “She said if you couldn’t be discouraged—which she knew you couldn’t—I was to tell you to give it your best shot.”

  “I thought I had.”

  “She also said her stubbornness comes from you.” Dr. Reeves scribbled something on a yellow stickie note and held it out. Laura took it. An address. “She’s staying at a boardinghouse in Trenton that rents to students. She’ll work there in exchange for a reduction in room and board. The place converts to a B and B in the summer, which means they’ll still need her services for tending to the tourists. She’s also starting this week as a filing clerk at a medical practice owned by a friend of mine. She has a lot on her plate.”

  “When will she go to class? When will she study?”

  “She’ll learn to juggle like every poor medical student does. I think you’ll find she’s blessed to do this kind of work instead of waitressing or tending bar like so many students do. She has years of this ahead of her. These experiences knock the wheat from the chaff. Many students don’t make it. I think she’ll be one of those who will.”

  Or maybe she would come home. Only God knew. “If she had to do this, I’m thankful it’s with the help of someone who can make the path a little bit easier.” Laura managed to sound appreciative despite the desire to breathe fire on the other woman. “She’s not out there in the Englisch world simply waiting for someone to take advantage of her.”

  “It’s a hard world, no doubt, and it’s not only Plain girls who tempt the ugly evildoers out there.” Dr. Reeves stood. “English girls—and boys—are often victims as well. They may have more exposure to the world’s ways, but they’re still young and naive and away from home for the first time. I will do my best to stay in touch with Tamara and guide her. I’ve made a commitment to mentor her. You never know, she may come back to Jamesport one day and take over my practice.”

  As nice as that sounded in th
eory, it might also be agonizing to have her so close and yet no longer a part of the community. By that time Laura surely would have left this world. God’s will be done. She stood. “Thank you for the information.”

  “Tell Tamara I said hi. Tell her not to be late for her classes next week. It sets a bad precedent. They may not take roll, but professors notice.” She glanced at her watch and headed for the door. “Can you see yourself out? I have two strep throats and a possible case of pneumonia waiting for me.”

  “Go.” For a fleeting second Tamara’s image superimposed itself over Dr. Reeves. Younger, more vibrant, more energetic. This would be her future. Unless Laura could convince her otherwise.

  Should she or was she meddling in God’s plan? How could this be God’s plan?

  Gott, my pea-sized brain doesn’t understand. I’m not smart enough to divine Your plans for this girl or for myself. Forgive me if I’m muddying the waters. I pray Thy will be done. And for the peace to accept whatever comes.

  After I speak my piece.

  Fifteen minutes later she was on the road out of Jamesport in Dineen Talbert’s rust-encrusted blue minivan.

  Dineen agreed to make one stop at Michael’s before they headed to Trenton. Laura had another errand to run on this second day of the year. “I’ll wait here.” Dineen settled back in her seat with the paperback romance novel she favored. They always had men’s bare, chiseled chests on them and women in extravagant, low-cut gowns. Laura averted her eyes whenever she could. “I’m at a good part.”

  How she defined good part, Laura could imagine but tried not to. She marched up to the door and knocked. To her surprise and relief, Zechariah opened it. He looked bleary eyed, as if he’d just rolled from bed. His shirt was wrinkled. He squinted against the midday sun and smiled. “You’re here. It’s not bird count day, is it?”

  “Nee, but I need you for something.”

  He stepped through the door and closed it behind him. He stretched and stood taller. “How can I help?”

  “Two things. I need the book we discussed. And I need you to come to Trenton with me to convince Tamara to come home.”

  “Why? What’s she doing in Trenton?”