Keeping Secrets (34 page)

S
HE CALLED LATE AT
night. Her voice was strong, laced with the force of her terror. Her hands fluttered furiously as she kept repeating, “I’m lost. I’m so lost. I have no idea where I am.”

Sadie panicked. Her forgotten robe fell open as she grasped Mark by the sleeves and pulled him away, whispering, “Mark! What if she’s going? What if her mind is going before she’s saved? We have to call Tom!”

Mark turned away from her as she grabbed the strings of her robe and tied them about her waist.

He snapped on the bedside lamp before sitting on the side of Meely’s bed. His hair was tousled, his clothes thrown on hurriedly, his shirttail hanging over his trousers, his feet bare.

“Mam,” he called softly. Then again, “Mam.”

He reached for her moving hands, held them firmly, then released them when Meely thrashed her head about.

“Mam.”

Suddenly she sat straight up and glared at him. “Don’t ‘Mam’ me. You’re as lost as I am.” That was all.

Mark watched her face. Sadie slipped out of the room and went to the kitchen. She found the slip of paper with Tom’s number on it beneath a magnet on the refrigerator. She dialed the number.

Tom arrived quickly, just as Sadie knew he would. He hugged her at the door and Sadie clung to him unashamedly. She led him inside. He clapped his hand on Mark’s shoulder, called him “My man,” then bent to look into Meely’s face.

“What’s up, honey?” he asked softly.

At the sound of his voice, Meely cried, softly at first, then with increasing force, until Sadie was afraid Meely’s thin body would not hold up beneath the powerful sobs that ravaged her.

Tom placed his huge hand on her shoulder to soothe her and began to pray.

Mark and Sadie, unaccustomed to anyone praying verbally except for the prayers read from the German prayer book during church, felt a bit uncomfortable. Sadie was glad for the shadows in the room as she lowered her head and Tom prayed on.

Tom put a hand on Meely’s head and prayed for the Lord to visit this woman now, to make known his presence. But she gave no notice that she heard Tom at all, or was beyond caring. Finally she turned her face away.

“Go away,” she told Tom.

“I ain’t goin’ anywhere, honey.”

And he didn’t. He stayed right there by her side and read to her from the Bible. He read verses of encouragement and hope until Meely slowly quieted.

When she looked up a short time later, they noticed a change in her. The storm had passed and left behind it a woman who was completely void of anything. Her eyes were quiet pools of emptiness in the light of the bedside lamp: no defiance, no despair, but no hope either. There was simply nothing.

Then she lowered her head and spoke to Tom.

“Tom, what would you do in my shoes?”

She asked the question so softly, so pitifully, that it broke Sadie’s heart.

“I’d ask Jesus to save my soul,” Tom answered quietly in his magical voice.

“He can’t anymore.”

“And why not?”

“You know why. I’m too wicked. I’ve been too bad. I’ve had three other men. I killed Atlee.”

“Now wait a minute. You what?”

“My first husband. The father of my children.”

“You killed him?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you do that?”

“Well, he drowned himself. But it was because I left him.”

“I see.”

Tom sat quietly for a long time until Meely began weeping violently again.

Then Tom said quietly, “Why don’t you look the other way?”

Meely stopped crying. “Which way?”

“Look to Jesus.”

“I can’t find him. Besides, he won’t forgive me.”

“You’d be surprised, Meely.”

Tom talked about salvation in minute detail. Every word was a caress, the love of God so evident with his “y’ knows?” and “my Mans.” He assured her that she had already taken the most important step: admitting her sinful past. Now she had to move on and ask for mercy.

“Just accept it.”

“I can’t. They excommunicated me. I’m given over to the devil.”

Tom raised his eyebrows, then looked to Mark, seeking his help.

Mark explained the Amish way of excommunication that occurs when a member is disobedient or breaks their vows to the church.

“It is actually a form of love, Mam,” Mark said, speaking softly. “It’s a reminder of your wrongdoing so that your spirit may be redeemed.”

Suddenly, Meely understood.

“Aah!” The cry was long and drawn out.

“Yes! Oh, how I do understand that, Mark! My guilt went with me everywhere I went. Especially when I lay in bed at night. My children’s faces. Atlee’s face. The fact that I had been disobedient. The shunning. The ban. It bothered me every day of my life. But…”

Here her eyes opened wide as she seemed to grasp a solid fact.

“Do you suppose… Could it be…? Now I’m sorry. Can I still be saved?”

“No doubt about it, honey. You messed up badly. But Jesus is still your only hope of salvation. He’s the light that will get you safely to the other side.”

Still she wavered. Still she doubted.

Tom prayed again, then began humming the first bars of “Amazing Grace.” He asked Mark and Sadie to join him, which they did gladly, though sometimes they stumbled over the words.

Meely fell asleep, then, and Tom stood up, shaking his head.

“We’re gonna have to pray our way through this,” he said. “Stay with me.”

The cancer soon began invading Meely’s nerve endings and tissue, causing excruciating pain. The morphine did little against the constant waves of torment, so the Hospice nurses adjusted the dosage.

The medication caused Meely to slide in and out of consciousness. Sometimes she spoke lucidly; other times she was completely bewildered.

During one particularly good afternoon, she asked Mark to sing the
Lob Song
, an old song in the German hymnbook that was sung at every Amish service. It was a song from her childhood, her past, even the years of overwhelming responsibility as a mother.

Sadie joined him, self-consciously at first, but their voices gathered strength as they sang. It proved to be a healing balm, a salve of love, that opened the way for Tom to minister to Meely.

When Tom spoke this time, she couldn’t speak. She just nodded. Soon warm tears ran down her cheeks as she kept nodding, understanding, taking it all in.

Tom’s words were like a warm summer rain that fell from kind skies, nurturing tiny, hard seeds in a cold, dry earth. The seeds cracked, broke, and new life crept upward. Finally, in the spring, the plant burst through the soil into the marvelous sunlight.

Tom’s words finally produced light in her eyes.

“I do accept Jesus Christ.”

She spoke quietly, the words illuminated by a first light of grace, and the angels sang.

Mark’s face reflected the light in his mother’s. Sadie had never seen such soft, broken, mellow light emanating from his eyes. It was almost holy. None of the old brashness was there.

Meely was quiet after that, and Tom respected her silence. He simply sat by her bedside, his hand on hers.

Sadie couldn’t help but think how Amish it was. So quiet, with little fanfare. It was still Meely’s way after all these years. Tom recognized this, and later called it right.

They left her then, and went to the kitchen, talking in low tones.

They often sang for her now. Sometimes in German, other times in English, they sang any hymn they could remember.

One day when Sadie thought Meely was asleep, she chuckled quietly. Sadie thought nothing of it, thinking Meely may have been laughing in her sleep.

“Remember ‘
Schlofc, buppli, Schlofc
’ (‘Sleep baby sleep’)”? Meely asked Sadie.

“Yes.”

“I sang that little song at least a thousand times.”

She opened her eyes, and in a pathetic, reedy whisper, she began:

Schlofc, buppli, Schlofc,

Da doddy hüt die schofe,

Die mommy melked die rote kie

Kommt net hame bis mya frie

Schlofc, buppli, Schlofc.

Meely sighed. A tear trembled on her eyelid.

“Poor little Timothy. I sang that to him all the time.” She turned to Sadie with an earnest look in her eyes. “If you ever see Timothy, promise me you’ll tell him how I wish I’d been nicer to him. Please?”

Sadie nodded solemnly.

Meely lingered longer than anyone anticipated. The shroud of approaching death cast a dark pall over each day. Sadie’s sense of homesickness grew.

One day Tom unexpectedly offered to stay with Meely and sent Mark and Sadie out for the afternoon.

“Pack a lunch. Go somewhere and have a picnic.”

So they did. They packed ham sandwiches, fruit, and some of the chocolate cake Tom’s wife, Malinda, had sent along over. They put ice in an old, plastic, two-quart jug and filled it with iced tea. Then they started out as the sun was climbing to noontime.

It was a warm spring day. Butterflies flapped and fluttered, hovering over wildflowers in the overgrown garden. Birds dipped and trilled their endless songs.

Mark was attentive, helping her over the broken board fence, holding her hand, teasing her, slipping a lean, brown arm around her waist. For a few hours they would forget. For a few hours they would remember they were young and in love with a bright future.

Mark did not mention his mother’s account of her will, and neither did Sadie. It seemed too unreal, like a mirage. The delusional words of a dying woman. Better not approach the subject with any real amount of hope.

The lawyer had come and done all the necessary work to fulfill Meely’s dying wishes. Mark was the sole heir. If any of his siblings were found, they would be given their share.

It was quite a large sum of money, making the 20,000-dollar reward for rescuing the wild horses seem paltry. The sale of the farm would make the sum even larger.

They came to a creek of sorts. It was really only a trickle winding through a ditch and snaking along the prairie grasses and sagebrush. A few old willow trees grew along its banks, their roots reaching down into the water as if to sustain life by the small trickle the creek offered. The grass was thick and lush, however, especially beneath the dancing willow leaves, the long green fronds whispering as they moved gently in the breeze.

Mark threw himself on his back, his hands behind his head, his knees bent in a V-shape. He sighed contentedly and closed his eyes.

Sadie sat beside him, her arms wrapped around her knees. She watched the rise and fall of his broad chest beneath the blue denim of his shirt. He was so unbelievably handsome, the way his dark hair fell over his eyes. And that perfect mouth. Was it enough to base her love on that face?

She knew it wasn’t, but she knew just as clearly that this was where God wanted her, beside this man and all his baggage. Yes, his past would return again and again to torment him. He would always battle between darkness and light. Even so, she knew she was right where she was supposed to be, directly in the center of God’s will.

So she sat quietly as Mark feigned sleep. She pulled a few grasses, fingered that tender yellow part that rises from the earth, and thought of home.

She smiled to herself as she thought of Dorothy’s last phone call. She had ranted on in the most erratic manner about Erma Keim, claiming she was in love with Lothario Bean, poor man. He was a good Catholic husband to his beautiful wife, and here was that red-haired giraffe after him with no shame.

Sadie had laughed out loud and told Dorothy it was just Erma’s way. She was extremely outgoing, exuberant, and a bit overboard, but she was certainly not a man-chaser.

Dorothy huffed indignantly.

“Sadie, you can try and be the peacemaker all you want. But I know when I see a girl settin’ her hat for someone. She’s out of line. And you should see how Lothario acts about her fruit pies. It’s unreal! He goes on and on about that Dutch apple she makes. You know, the one with the crumb topping? With streusel? Now if that ain’t out-and-out flirting, I don’t know what is. She even straightens her apron when my Jim walks through that kitchen door, so she does.”

“It’s just her way,” Sadie repeated.

“Well, them fruit pies? She’s gonna make ’em for all the men now. To take home. They’re not
that
good. If you ask me, she’s a bit stingy on the sugar. Now my blueberry pies, on the other hand, can’t be beat.”

Sadie assured Dorothy that her pies were the best, but she liked the idea of Erma pleasing those ranch hands with her apple pies. Erma needed a little praise and affirmation.

“Dorothy, you know as well as I do that an old maid like her needs love and attention, too. We all do.”

“That’s exactly right, Sadie. I ain’t dumb. That’s why she’s after all them men, even Richard Caldwell. Why, when those two get together, I have to take my hearing aids out, so I do. The other day they was havin’ a slice o’ pie in my kitchen, mind you, both of ’em roaring like hyenas. That old Erma was a-slappin’ her knee when she laughed. The boss, he eats it all up, same as her apple pie. Now that pie, Sadie, could do with at least another cup of sugar.”

Suddenly Mark turned his head to look at her, his intense gaze interrupting her thoughts.

“Sadie.”

She couldn’t answer. There was a tone of endearment in the way he said her name that drove away her power to speak at all. Her limbs turned to water when he sat up, his gaze never wavering.

“Sadie.”

He said her name again, a caress this time. She could not answer.

“Will you marry me?”

The words were spoken softly, then hung in the air between them, veiled in cascades of white roses and lilies of the valley. She heard lovely music from somewhere deep within, the sound of love starting in her mind and seeping into her heart and soul.

“Oh, Mark!”

The wonder of his question flowed through her being, through her hands. They fluttered to his as he sought them, laced her fingers together with his. She breathed the scent of the flowers into her answer.

“Oh, Mark! Yes! Yes, I will marry you!”

He crushed her to him, his lips finding her willing ones. Breathless now, they broke apart. Tears came to Mark’s eyes.