“I think I’m going to learn how to become a fine baker and move someplace far, far away from Stoney Ridge. Someplace exciting, like Indiana.” A laugh burst out of Maggie, and Bess couldn’t help but laugh right along with her. Maggie’s laughter was like that. Infectious.
Bess covered her friend’s chapped hands with her own. “You can’t move. I would miss you too much.”
“Well, if I were marrying someone like Amos Lapp, I wouldn’t move either. But you took the only eligible bachelor.”
“He’s not the only eligible bachelor. What about Tommy Glick?”
“Bad kisser. Cement lips.”
“Timothy Fisher?”
“Edith Stoltzfus has marked him off as her territory. She’s already got their future sons named: Paul first, then Jimmy, and so on. Not planning to have girls, she said. Too much trouble. She told the rest of us to stay away from Timothy or else.”
“Or else what?”
“Everyone’s too frightened of Edith to bother asking. Even timid Timothy.” She crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders as a gust of brisk wind blew through the yard. “No, you plucked the only ripe apple from the tree.”
Bess smiled. Maggie had never been shy about her opinions, though she wasn’t shy about anything. So often, Bess wished she had more of Maggie in her. Maggie was often criticized for poking her nose in everybody’s business, and while that was true, she always meant well. And her love of life was contagious. “There are other ripe apples, Maggie. You’re just being fussy.”
“Maybe, but I hear the boys in Indiana are much more handsome and manly than the boys in Pennsylvania.”
“Any chance Edith Stoltzfus told all of you that?”
“Why, in fact, it was Edith!” Maggie scowled and squeezed her fists. “I was nearly duped.”
“I don’t know what I’d do if you moved away.”
A smile returned to her face. “Not to worry. I don’t think Dottie Stroot is planning to have me do much else besides wash dishes for a long while. She says I talk too much.” She glanced in the direction of the house, then lowered her voice. “But that’s only part of my news. Here’s the other part: Billy Lapp’s father is running out of days.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Billy’s father had been ill with something—no one knew exactly what—for over a year now and was rarely seen at church. Rarely seen at all, now that Bess thought about it.
“I overheard my dad tell Jorie.”
Then it probably was true. Maggie was a skillful eavesdropper on her father’s conversations, and while Bess should have frowned on hearing news that the bishop didn’t intend anyone to hear, his daughter was a source of fascinating information. “You didn’t tell your father that Billy was here, did you?”
“Why does everyone have such little faith in me?” Maggie shook her head vehemently. “I didn’t say a word.”
That was a relief. If Caleb Zook knew Billy was here, he would probably try to talk to him, to reason with him, to draw him out. To convince him to return. And with the tetchy mood Billy seemed to be in, that would send him scurrying off to his hiding hole, rose or no rose.
Another gust of bitter wind swirled around them, lifting dried leaves, and Maggie stamped her feet to stay warm.
“Do you want to come inside and warm up?”
“Can’t. I just wanted to let you know about Billy’s father. I hoped you might be able to convince him to go visit his father.”
“I have no influence on Billy.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Maggie looked at her curiously, tilting her head. “He’s still hung up on you, Bess.”
Bess felt her face heat up. “That’s not true.”
“He couldn’t keep his eyes off you during breakfast this morning.”
“He was famished. Have you noticed how thin he is? If he was watching me, it was to hurry up and bring him a hot meal.”
“No, Bess. Not like that at all. ” Maggie’s voice had none of her usual swagger. It was all seriousness now, and Bess glanced up at her. “He was watching you like a man who can’t watch enough.”
Bess dipped her head to study her shoes. She didn’t want to hear that about Billy. But she did. “You shouldn’t say such a thing. I’m to marry Amos soon. Very soon.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean Billy can shut off his feelings like that.” Maggie snapped her fingers in the air to prove her point. “Bess, you’re not having second thoughts about marrying Amos, are you?” She took a step closer to Bess. “Billy Lapp might be my second cousin, but he’s hardly the right horse to bet on.”
Bess rubbed her shoulders with her arms and glanced up at the farmhouse. “I need to get inside to help Lainey with dinner.”
“Bess . . .” Maggie’s voice had a warning note. “Amos is a wonderful catch. One of a kind. You would be crazy to have doubts about him.”
“I don’t have any doubts about how wonderful Amos is.” And that was no lie. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Bess hurried to the house and up the porch steps, then turned to wave. Maggie stood where she was, watching Bess with a worried look on her face.
Later that night, in her room on the second floor, Bess prepared for bed with an odd feeling, like she’d swallowed a goose egg. The lamp in her hand flickered, hissed, and spat, low on oil. She blew it out and climbed into bed to consider her unsettled thoughts.
Amos, she thought. What a simple, dear man.
Billy. She frowned. Anything but simple and certainly not dear.
If only their personalities could in some way be stuffed into a paper bag and shaken up—Amos could use some of Billy’s gall and Billy some of Amos’s quiet self-control. After Amos’s courtly manner, she found Billy abrupt, gruff, easily offended. How long could a man go without smiling? Without laughing?
Billy was so extremely aggravating.
And so handsome it hurt.
Had she only imagined that moment of connection between them in the greenhouse, right before Amos arrived? No, she hadn’t. Billy had been aware of it too; she wasn’t making it up. For one brief, revealing flash, she had seen it clearly in his eyes. Something had sizzled between them while they’d stared at each other.
It was awful. It was awesome.
She shook her head to rid it of longing. Had she not spent the last few years trying to unbind herself from yearning for a man who didn’t truly love her?
The next instant she thought of Amos’s wonderful eyes, the warmth of his devotion to her, the comfort of his faith. Amos was a man who knew how to love a woman. One woman. He was ready to be committed to her.
Why wasn’t that enough for her? Why did she yearn for a man who didn’t know the first thing about love?
Should she tell Billy all she knew about this rose? Tell him. Don’t tell him. She needed to find the key that would bring Billy back to Stoney Ridge. This rose, she thought, might be it. But maybe nothing would make him stay.
Sighing, she rolled over and tried to find sleep, but when it came it was fitful and strange, filled with crimson roses and empty greenhouses.
As Billy rode the bus back to College Station, his mind rolled through the day past, the day to come, the years behind, the years ahead. He cringed, thinking of that unguarded moment he’d had with Bess in the greenhouse at Rose Hill Farm. Even now, hours later, he could feel the heat climb his neck. How ridiculous he must have looked to her, allowing his attraction to show. It was up to him to hold her at arm’s length.
Then . . . in walked Amos Lapp, of all people. His cousin, his friend, a man to whom he owed a great deal.
His very life.
He rubbed the scar on his left wrist and thought back to that awful, horrible Christmas when he felt so hopeless, so lost. He hadn’t been able to sleep for over a week, didn’t have enough money for more than one meal a day, and felt unbearably lonely. On Christmas afternoon, his lowest moment, he picked up his pocketknife, fingered it for a long time, felt the edge of the blade, and impulsively drew it agains
t his wrist. Watching the blood spill from his vein, he suddenly felt a panic, a desperate feeling. What have I done? Oh, God, help me!
He lunged for the door of his small rented room in a boardinghouse to shout for help and, miraculously, there stood Amos Lapp, his arms full of gifts and groceries. Quickly and wordlessly, Amos assessed the situation, made a tourniquet for Billy’s wrist, bundled him off to the emergency room, stayed with him until he was stitched up—turned out, he hadn’t hit a vein at all—went with him to the psychiatric facility where he was admitted for a twenty-four-hour observation. Amos sat upright in a chair throughout the night and read aloud from the book of Psalms. Soothed by his cousin’s deep voice, by the strong meds given to him by the nurse, Billy fell into a deep and healing sleep. When he finally woke up, two days later, Amos was gone. He had left a note for Billy with his phone number on it and two words: Come home.
But Billy couldn’t. He planned to never go home again.
The psychiatrist at the hospital discovered that Billy knew a great deal about flora and fauna. He thought Billy needed a fresh start, a new beginning, and was able to secure a job for him in the greenhouses at Penn State. Billy worked hard at his new job, and knew more about roses than any other employee. After identifying a string of rare roses, he became known as a rose rustler. Then, as the rose rustler. Billy might not have been happy, but he wasn’t unhappy.
And Amos never told a soul about what Billy had done in that small, dingy rented room and he knew he never would. That’s the kind of man Amos was—a good man.
Billy had to make himself look away when Amos and Bess left the greenhouse. He felt jealousy billow when he noted the possessive way Amos had hold of Bess’s arm, as if branding her as his. He’d best get used to it, he scolded himself. Once they wedded, were living and loving in their own home at Windmill Farm . . .
He shook his head. It was a punishing thought.
He took off his hat and rested it on his lap. It was the only possession that mattered to him. He circled the brim of his hat with his finger, remembering his grandfather, his mother’s father, to whom the hat had once belonged. Billy had adored his grandfather Zook. He shadowed him around his farm as a child. He leaned his head against the bus seat and closed his eyes, traveling back in his mind to another winter. Against his will, an ugly memory surfaced.
———
May 1963. Billy was nine years old. He had found his brothers behind the barn, laughing and guffawing, circled around a metal bucket. Inside was a caught woodchuck. The brothers were taking turns stabbing it with their pocketknives. Billy was sickened by their cruelty and ran to his grandfather’s farm. He found him out in the fields and flung himself into his arms, sobbing, accidentally knocking his hat to the ground—that very hat. His grandfather returned with him to the farm and told their mother what Billy’s brothers had done. When their father heard about it, he whipped them. His brothers were seething, but silently so. In the middle of that night, they woke Billy and locked him in the woodshed with the dead woodchuck, hanging from a noose in the rafters, threatening far worse if he ever told on them again. Ever since, Billy had suffered from claustrophobia in small, dark places.
All three older brothers vied to be the first, the best, in their father’s eyes—and their father was a hard man, a tough guy, who wanted to make men out of his boys. The little interest he showed in his sons was to bait them to compete with each other. Billy was the caboose of the family, much younger than the other boys, his mother’s favorite, and most like a Zook in looks and personality. Whenever Billy tried to gain his father’s approval—waking early to milk the cows for him, mastering a new skill—his father would only shrug as if he had expected it all along or point out how it could have been done better. Billy’s resolve would only strengthen: Next time, it whispered. Next time he will notice.
His mother tried to explain away his father’s indifference. She said he had a difficult childhood and had faced a string of disappointments in his life. After she died, his father grew even more distant and cold, as if the only warmth in his life had been snuffed out by her death. Billy had thrown himself into working alongside his father, trying to rekindle his interest in the farm, in life. Being obedient, he thought, unlike his attention-seeking, unruly brothers, would be the way to connect to his father.
For a few years in a row, his father had divided up the farm into sections for each son rather than have the boys work together. It was his way of pitting them against each other. His brothers preferred the no-till farming method, popular at the time and less work for them. Rather than plow the fields, they used chemicals to reduce weeds and fortify the soil. Billy farmed his section the old-fashioned way—tilling the soil, adding natural fertilizer deep into the earth, rotating crops, letting sections go fallow to renew their minerals.
Late in August of 1973, the summer before Billy left, he harvested a wheat field, sent the wheat through the separator, and discovered that his mule-plowed field had ended up with twice the amount of grain as his brothers did. Twice! “I knew it,” he said. “I knew no-till was the wrong way to go.” He turned to his father, pleased at the profitability his methods could provide to the struggling farm. Then he stilled, shocked by the cold, hard expression on his father’s face.
His finger was in Billy’s face now. “You think you’re better than me, boy? You think you’re somebody special?”
That became an illuminating moment for Billy. He realized that one person, even a son, couldn’t make up for the string of disappointments a man faced in his lifetime.
———
Billy inhaled deeply, as if he could still smell the earthy, hummus dirt from that buried memory. Loneliness was a thing he usually accepted with stoicism, but lately it weighed him down, causing a heavy ache in his heart that he couldn’t control.
8
Amos Lapp had spent the afternoon searching for the perfect Christmas gift for Bess. He’d walked up and down Main Street, in and out of stores, hoping the right gift would jump out at him. He spent over an hour in a bookstore before it occurred to him that Bess didn’t read much. He was the one who liked to read.
It bothered him that buying a gift for Bess was such a challenge for him. He didn’t know why—he just could never seem to decide on the right gift. She wasn’t hard to please; he knew she would be grateful for any gift he gave her. But he wanted to give her one she would always remember. After all, this would be their first Christmas together.
He walked past the Sweet Tooth Bakery and peered in the windows, wondering if he should get something to tide him over until dinner. The trays in the glass counter were almost empty. A chocolate-frosted yuletide cake stood on the top shelf next to a row of Christmas cookies shaped like trees and decorated with bright green icing. On the bottom shelf sat a lone strawberry-pink birthday cake. Dottie Stroot, hands floury, came out from the back and spotted him. She pointed to the pink birthday cake and mouthed, “Half off! My new girl can’t spell,” but he had no interest in toting around a pink birthday cake. He shook his head and hurried down the street to the hardware store to buy a new wrench.
As he turned the corner from Main Street, he collided with Maggie Zook and nearly knocked her over. She scowled at him and stamped her foot.
“Honest to Pete! Why don’t you look where you’re going, Amos Lapp?”
“But I didn’t see—”
“That’s the problem with the world today! Everybody is in such a hurry!”
That remark struck Amos as rather amusing because Maggie Zook had always reminded him of a hummingbird that darted about, never staying in one place too long. “Sheesh, it was just an accident, Maggie.”
Before his eyes, Maggie’s eyes widened and her face grew red. Her eyes filled with tears and all he could think to say was, “Oh no. No, no. Please don’t cry. I’m sorry. It was entirely my fault. My mind is in a muddle. You’re right. I should’ve looked.”
Amos didn’t have experience with crying women; his mother wasn�
�t the crying type and he had no sisters. He rummaged through his pockets for a handkerchief and handed it to Maggie, hoping she would pull herself together and he could get back to his shopping. But as she took the handkerchief, she let out a big sob and he knew his plans had just been sidelined. Oh, boy. He looked up and down the street, hoping no one he knew was around to witness Maggie’s meltdown. He led her to a bench and sat down beside her, wondering how long this would take.
Her scarf had fallen back and lay in soft folds about her collar. She looked up at him, all eyes, wide and pleading, very pathetic. “I’m sorry, Amos. It’s not your fault. I started a job at the Sweet Tooth Bakery just yesterday. Everything was going so well . . . at least, I thought it was.
“Then, this morning”—she carried on with her story as if he had asked about it—“Dottie Stroot complained that I was spending too much time talking to customers and not enough time actually working.”
“Was it true?”
Her brown eyes flashed at him. “I was only making people feel wanted and welcomed. You know Dottie Stroot! She barks at customers if they take too long to make a decision. She scares people away.”
“So you didn’t heed her advice.”
“I pointed out to her that being nice to people was part of the job, if that’s what you mean by taking her advice.” She rolled her eyes. “I know that I have a tendency to speak before I think, Amos, but I truly believe Dottie Stroot has a bias against the Amish.”
“But you didn’t get to work?”
“Customers are the work!” She frowned. “That Dottie Stroot is very full of herself. Very hard to please.”
Now things were making sense to Amos. “Any chance you misspelled a name on a birthday cake?” It wasn’t a question.
Christmas at Rose Hill Farm Page 10
