Love Redeemed (42 page)

“No time. Go to the phone shack. Call for an ambulance. Go. Hurry.”

Her mind flung itself about, doing mental jumping jacks and back-flips as she tried to recall what Bethel had taught her about first aid. Every teacher needed to know about first aid. Teachers should be prepared for all things. The scholars were entrusted to them.

Phoebe whirled and raced back to the house. She took the steps in one giant leap, skidded across the porch, and slammed open the door.

Seconds later she was on her knees, applying pressure to Mudder's chest with the palms of her hands. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight…She counted aloud, to one hundred, and then leaned her head close to her mother's open mouth. Nothing.

Nothing.

She heard no breaths. Bethel said to keep going. Not to worry about trying to breathe life into the scholar. Leave it to the people who knew
how. The paramedics who would come with the ambulance. She didn't know how.

Rescue breathing, Bethel had called it. She wanted to rescue her mother.

Push. Push.

She started over. She kept going and going and going. Her shoulders ached and her own heart seemed to be a train careening off the track. “Come on, come on, come on. Please, Mudder, please.”

Stirring in the nearby playpen told her Sarah had awakened.
Not now. Please not now.

The little girl began to fuss. Phoebe allowed herself one second to look up. Sarah's face, puffy with sleep, peeked over the edge of the playpen. “Mudder, Mudder, Mudder!” she called, and then began to cry in earnest.

Phoebe wanted to do the same. “It's okay, Sarah, Mudder is fine. Hush now, hush now.”

She began to pray, the words flowing from her mouth in a steady, unceasing stream. “Gott, please. Thy will be done, but if it's Your will, please give her body strength. Be her strength. Make her heart beat for her. Take me. Don't take her. Take me. I'll gladly go for her. Hannah needs her. Daed needs her. Sarah and Elam need her. They'll do fine without me. They'll go on without me, but they need Mudder. Take me. Take me.”

Sarah stopped crying. She stuck a fist in her mouth and sat down with a plop.

Mudder moaned.

Phoebe stopped, her hands poised in midair.

“Mudder?”

A faint moan came in response. Mudder breathed.

Phoebe stared down at the face that she knew as well as her own. She touched her forehead to her mudder's. “Please don't go. Please don't go. Please don't go. I need you. I'm not ready.”

“Jah, you are,” Mudder whispered. “You
are
ready.”

Chapter 41

M
ichael's horse picked its way along the bank of the creek, its hooves moving without hesitation, finding the nooks and crannies, stepping almost daintily. Michael let him find his way, focusing instead on searching for the blue of Hannah's dress in the drab browns and grays of the winter landscape. The trees were barren, allowing him to see through naked branches into the far reaches of the tree stands that hugged the creek. Nothing. Dusk began to settle around him as the sun floated on the horizon, preparing to slip away. He shivered, the cold wind biting at his chapped skin. He couldn't believe this was happening again.

It's not happening again.

Hannah was old enough to know better. She had chosen to be willful. It was one thing to punish him and Phoebe with her absence. Quite another to punish Katie Christner, who'd been through so much already. He'd been shocked at her appearance during the deer butchering frolic. Always rather round and plump, she now looked gaunt. The smooth skin of her face bore lines around the mouth and eyes. She'd moved as if her joints hurt. She moved like an old woman.

He'd done that to her.

Yet today, as last week, she'd greeted him with kind words of welcome. Nodding, looking intent as he explained what happened. Silas had been there to put an arm around her when she faltered over the
fact that Hannah had apparently run away. Katie's face had taken on a stoic expression he'd seen before. At Stockton Lake. At the funeral. She'd nodded and accepted Silas's order that she stay and wait for Hannah should the wayward child decide to return.

He had to bring Hannah home to Katie. This couldn't happen again. He wouldn't let it. Ignoring the still agonizing memories of the hours he'd spent stumbling around in the woods of Stockton Lake Park, he tugged at the reins and forced the horse away from the creek and into the woods.

Where would she go? This wasn't a situation involving a lost four-year-old in unfamiliar surroundings. This was a girl nearly in her teens who'd lived in this countryside for more than a year. Hannah had run away to nurse her wounds, to cry in private, maybe even to punish them. To be alone with her outrage and her guilt.

Where would she go? An instant later, he knew. She would go where she didn't feel alone. She would go to offer her remorse and to seek forgiveness from the one person who could never give it. She'd want to punish herself some more with that very thought. She was a child picking at a scab so it couldn't heal.

Michael made his way up the steep slope from the creek to the open pasture that separated Silas Christner's property from Onkel Peter's homestead. In between lay a chunk of land the community had joined together to purchase, each family giving what they could, each knowing eventually they would partake of this place, when their time came. He urged the horse forward, anxious now to arrive at his destination, hoping he was right.

It took almost fifteen minutes, but he made his way up over the rise and cantered through the open gate of a fence that had been erected and painted white by the men of the community. Inside that fence was one short row of headstones amid a pasture of neatly cut grass. They hadn't been in New Hope long enough to need more. By God's grace they hadn't needed more.

Dusk made long shadows of the trees that shaded these resting places. Michael struggled to make out the shapes hidden in the
darkness of those shadows. Was that her, huddled on the ground by the last headstone?

Her face stained with tears, Hannah looked up. “It's you? Go away! Go away!”

Michael dismounted and tied the reins to the fence, taking his time. All the while, Hannah took turns glaring at him and scrubbing her face with the back of her hands. He strode toward her, finally halting on the other side of that small mound of dirt that hadn't yet begun to settle in. Soon it would be covered by snow and then in the spring, plants would start to grow.

“Your mudder is worried about you.”

“Mudder?” She frowned as if it just now occurred to her that her actions might cause another pain. She really was too young to see the world through the eyes of another instead of focusing inward on her own hurt. “I didn't mean to worry her. I was just so mad.”

“At me.”

“Jah. You. And at Phoebe.” She scowled. “Both of you. You were selfish. It was your fault.”

“You have a right to be mad.” Michael squatted across from her. “At us, but you need to stop being mad at yourself.”

“I'm not mad at myself.”

“Jah, you are.”

“I'm supposed to forgive you.”

“You are, and you're also to forgive yourself. That's what God expects. The Bible says so.”

“How can I do that?” She pointed her finger at Lydia's grave. “How can I? Lydia died.”

“I know. I think about it every night and every day.” He plucked a few weeds that had begun to sprout in the dirt. “You know God's already forgiven you. Not only has He forgiven you, He's taken your puny little sin and smashed it under His foot and tossed it in the ocean. It's gone.”

“How do you know?”

“It's in the Holy Scripture.”

“You read it?”

“A friend gave me an English Bible. She said reading it would help me understand God's will for me.”

“Did it?”

“It made me understand that God's grace covers me and you and Phoebe and everyone else in this world.”

Hannah wiped her dirty hands on her apron. She raised her face to the setting sun. “I'm tired.” Her voice was so slight he leaned forward to hear her words. “So tired.”

“Me too. Let me give you a ride home.”

“Not that kind of tired. I'm tired of feeling this way.” Her nose ran. She sniffed, but it didn't help so she swiped at her face with her sleeve again. “Is it ever going to be better?”

“They tell me it will.”

“I don't think you should get to feel better.”

“I know that's how you feel, but you only make yourself feel bad by hanging on to this anger. It hurts you more than it hurts me. Let it go for your own sake, not for mine.” Michael struggled for the words. He let his knees sink into the dirt, shaking hands on his thighs. He wanted to give Hannah her peace back. She deserved it. Despite what she thought, she'd done no wrong. She didn't deserve this. “God is giving us another chance to do things the right way, to be better people than we were before.”

“You and Phoebe?” She sighed, a long, sad sound. “How do I know you won't mess up again?”

“You don't. We're not perfect. None of us is.” He tried a smile. Hannah didn't smile back. “Not even you, and God doesn't expect you to be. He only expects you to try to learn from your mistakes. That's what I'm doing. That's what Phoebe's doing.”

Turning to the grave, Hannah ran her fingers through the dirt and let them close around a loose clod. It crumbled in her hand. “I'm so sorry. Lydia, I'm so sorry.” She hung her head and sobbed. “Do you hear me? I'm sorry.”

Her words of anguish ripped the still-tender skin from Michael's own wounds. He brushed his own hands through the dirt, cool and
damp under his fingers, and closed his eyes, trying to absorb her pain. It soaked everything around him. The air, the trees, the dirt. The entire earth.

“I'm sorry too,” he whispered. “So sorry.”

Silence descended. He let the peace of this place soak through him. He inhaled the cool air. The tension seeped away. God, in His goodness, would take care of them. He had a plan. Michael only had to wait.

Hannah crawled around the grave on her hands and knees, her skirt tangling around her. She halted on her haunches a foot or so from Michael. “Pray,” she begged. “Pray for me and you and Phoebe. Please.”

He nodded and he prayed. Silently at first, then aloud. “Forgive us, Lord, for falling short. For disappointing You. Help us to do better. Help us to forgive each other. Thy will be done. Show us what to do next. Amen.”

“Amen.”

They stared at each other. Michael needed to get her home so that Katie could breathe again. And Phoebe. He rose. “Your mudder is waiting for you.”

“And Daed will be angry with—”

The shriek of a siren drowned out her high voice. An ambulance roared past them on the road Michael had just traveled, dirt billowing behind it.

“An ambulance?” Hannah scrambled to her feet. “An ambulance going to my house?”

“There are other farms in that direction.” Michael rose as well. His skin prickled up and down his arms. “Could be one of several others.”

But it wasn't. Somehow Michael knew that.

Chapter 42

T
hankful the horrible shrieking of the siren had finally been silenced, Phoebe scrambled from the ambulance, Sarah on her hip this time, instead of on the stretcher. Phoebe tried to cling to Mudder's limp hand, but the paramedics moved too quickly, ripping them apart. The sound of Elam's boots scraping on the floor of the ambulance said her brother followed, but she didn't look back. She couldn't take her gaze from the faces of the paramedics. She wanted to read something there. Hope. Assurance. Peace. But their faces told her nothing as they popped the stretcher up on its metal legs and wheeled it into the New Hope Medical Center emergency room. They rushed past rows of chairs, mostly empty, toward double doors that led to those same small rooms created with curtains where Sarah had been taken when she suffered the bee sting. A nurse, overly plump and pink in her matching pants and smock, stepped in front of them. “Stay here, folks. This is far as you go.”

“She's our mudder—our mother.”

“We'll take good care of her.” The nurse patted Phoebe's shoulder, her expression kind but firm. “Take a seat and we'll be right with you.”

Take a seat. The curious rush of energy that had propelled her through the ministrations that had kept her mudder alive and breathing continued to pour through her wave after wave, pounding at her temples and the base of her throat. Her arms and legs hummed with it.
She opened her mouth, but the nurse did an about-face, her sneakers squeaking on the shiny tile floor, and disappeared through the swinging double doors.

“But…”

She stood at the doors, not moving, waiting. Elam cleared his throat. “Maybe we should…”

She didn't hear the rest of his sentence. The pounding in her ears swallowed it up. Sarah began to fuss. “Take her.” She handed the girl over to her bruder. “You can sit.”

“You don't want to sit?”

She shook her head.

“I want to stay with you.”

At the tremor in her little bruder's voice, cracking with the sound of being caught between child and man, she turned. “It's all right, Elam. She'll be fine.”

He hunched skinny shoulders. “She didn't look fine. Her face looked kind of…purple.”

“Her heart needs help.”

“How did you know what to do?”

“Bethel showed Deborah and me when we were getting ready to teach.” Phoebe flinched inwardly at the memory of how lighthearted she'd been about those instructions, not even taking note of how difficult it was for Bethel to crouch on the floor, her crutches at her side, using Molly as the patient. “She said we needed to know about first aid if we were going to be responsible for the scholars.”