The Letters (24 page)

They spun around and saw Delia’s son standing at the barn door.

From her window, Delia watched Will escort the attractive young veterinarian to her car after the little boy was rescued from the tree. The two stood by the car, lingering. If Delia wasn’t mistaken, she had noticed a spark or two between Will and the vet as they discussed the eagles. Of course, get Will on the topic of birds and he lit up like a Christmas tree. But wouldn’t that be something—to have him find a girlfriend here, on an Amish farm? She smiled and dismissed the thought. Will always had a girl or two buzzing around him. Never anything serious, except for that one Amish girl, Sadie something-or-other, who had broken his heart. Delia only knew that because Will wouldn’t discuss Sadie—he was pretty talkative about the other girls who had come and gone. Mostly gone. She hoped he would get serious about a girl someday. She was counting on grandchildren.

Earlier today, Will had finished a midterm exam and driven all afternoon to get here. For the first time, she saw not her son, full of boyish charm and mischief, but a competent and determined man.

Will told her he was going to stay with her until she was ready to return to civilization. “Even though you say you don’t need my help, I want to hang around until you’re back to your old self.” He said the next part so firmly that she wondered if he was as confident about her recovery as he sounded. “You’re going to get well, and I want to be there to help you do it. Is that such a terrible thing for a son to want to do? Help his mother, who’s spent her whole life helping him?”

“No,” she had said quietly. “Of course not, but I don’t want you sacrificing the final stretch of your education just because of me. You’re so close to the end. You need to finish and move on.”

They agreed to a bargain. He would stay with her until she received the results about her lumpectomy. If the margins were clear, nothing in her lymph nodes, he would return to school. If they weren’t, well, then they would decide together about next steps. She glanced at her watch. As soon as Will said goodbye to this lady vet, they should get into town so she could try to use her cell phone to call the doctor’s office before it closed for the day. She finally felt ready to hear the results. It helped to have Will by her side.

She saw Rose herd those two boys up to the house. Rose moved lightly and quickly, Delia noticed, whether in the yard or in the kitchen. Often, she sang.

How she envied Rose. Just a week or two ago, if someone were to tell her that she would find herself envying an Amish widow, she would have laughed at the thought. Charles didn’t speak much about his upbringing, but the truth of it was that she didn’t ask about it. She wasn’t interested. She didn’t even ask Will many details about his spring on an Amish farm. If anything, it had embarrassed her to think her husband had been raised Plain, that he had looked like one of those little boys with black hats on. But there was something to this life, to these people. Maybe that’s why Will had been so enamored with them. There was peace here.

Rose was a peaceable person. Delia repeated the word a few times.
I like that word peaceable,
she thought to herself.
It’s what I would like to be.
She would try to be more like Rose.

Husband or no, the world keeps on turning, Rose had said. Add cancer to that list, Delia thought. Cancer or no, husband or no, the world keeps on turning.

During the rescue, for a few minutes or even longer, Delia had forgotten she had cancer. Forgotten that her husband had
betrayed her. Maybe that’s how emotional healing took place. Not all at once, but five minutes here and there. Hopefully, another minute each day. Perhaps by this time next year, she would hardly think about Charles.

As she pondered that, the strangest thing happened. A large news van with a satellite dish on top pulled into the driveway.

Will waved a hasty goodbye to the lady vet and came to the basement door. “That’s another reason I thought it would be best if I come. The newspeople are still on this story about the disappearance of the doctor’s wife. I saw a TV interview this morning with a scarlet-red-haired lady named Lois—she said you were tucked away at a charming new Amish inn in Stoney Ridge. She said you needed your peace and quiet, so everyone should leave you alone.” He looked over at the news van. “So, of course, they came.”

Vera sat at the kitchen window and watched Bethany hurry off to visit with that neighbor girl, Galen’s sister. What was her name? Vera couldn’t recall. She dismissed that hanging question and turned her attention back to her darling granddaughter. Even as a child, Bethany always did tend to flit through the house like a bird, too full of energy to sit still. Just like Dean had.

Vera adored Bethany, always had. She smiled, or at least she tried to smile. Her thoughts drifted to Rose, cruelly setting the washstand mirror near her bed this morning. Vera had turned and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The image of the droopy side of her face mocked her and she burst into tears. Rose quickly took away the mirror—but it didn’t lift the sadness weighing on Vera’s heart.

She couldn’t believe what Bethany—dear, dear Bethany—did next. She realized how upset Vera was. She rubbed Vera’s back and said it was the most precious smile in all the world, crooked or not. That’s what the sweet child said about her, right in front of those children and in front of that mean-spirited daughter-in-law.

The most precious smile in all the world.

Vera sat up straighter and sighed. “Nothing has worked out like I thought it would.” One little comment in a letter—inviting Dean to come live with her after she learned that his house had been foreclosed—and things had started to happen, things Vera couldn’t see the end of.

When Dean had told her they would accept her offer to move in, she thought it would mean no more worry. No more loneliness. Rose and Bethany and that feisty one could tend to her like daughters should tend to mothers and grandmothers.

But Rose and Bethany didn’t tend to her like she thought they would. Rose didn’t neglect her in any way that Vera could put her finger on, and the children were good to her, minding her when she asked, but there were many times when she felt left out of the life of her own household. Rose was completely absorbed with the constant demands of those children—and Vera didn’t particularly like children. They were noisy and messy. Sweet Bethany immediately started working at that farmers’ market. All day, nearly every day. She was sure that Rose was behind that. Rose worked those children too hard. Bethany, mostly.

When Bethany told her that she wouldn’t be working at her job any longer, Vera was thrilled. When she expressed delight that Bethany would have time to tend to her, Rose said no. She said Bethany needed to find a job outside the house.
Insulting!

It was a worry that Vera’s tiniest suggestions were never appreciated. And then she had these awful strokes, and it seemed all she ever did was worry.

Rose would tell her there was nothing to worry about and then mangle Scripture in that way she had, quoting an English Bible when the Amish only used the Luther Bible: “‘Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.’”

Each day had trouble enough of its own. You didn’t have to be a preacher to know that was true. But a thing may be as true as death and taxes and still be hard to put into practice.

But for today, Rose would remind her, they had enough. And enough was as good as a feast.

Enough. Enough to keep food on our table and a roof over our heads.

Wasn’t that what Rose was trying to do with this notion of turning the farm into a . . . what was it? What did you call a place where you rented out rooms? Oh . . . it didn’t matter.

What worried her most was that Rose was disgracing the family and didn’t seem the least bit ashamed about it. And she just completely ignored all of those horrible reporters who wanted to know more about the doctor’s wife. She’d like a minute or two with those reporters and tell them what she had to say on the subject: that doctor’s wife should just scoot on home, that’s what Vera thought.

No one in Stoney Ridge had ever run a—what was it? . . . a boardinghouse?—from their home. She’d heard of such liberal Amish a few towns over, but never in Stoney Ridge. Vera shook her head. Dean’s memory deserved far more. He would never have allowed his family home to become a . . . way station for travelers.

Vera struggled to find the word that Rose now used for this farm—the very farm where Vera had lived since she was born. Where her parents had been born. Bed and Bath? Bed and Butter? It was hard for her to remember so many things at once. It never was before. She stared at her right hand. Useless thing.
Come, now. Move. Open just a little.
Just the fingers, could she make a fist? What good was she without her hands? She couldn’t roll out pie dough or make noodles. She couldn’t pin hair. Sew, knit, garden—those were all lost to her. Such simple, everyday activities and things. How many hundreds of pies had she baked? How she’d loved to brush Bethany’s long hair and pin it in a tight bun.

Vera stared at her right hand again. She noticed the half-done quilt tucked in a basket in the corner of the kitchen, where it had sat since she took sick. With that right hand, hadn’t she knotted comfort quilts for sick folks and prisoners and orphans?

Rose had left the
Budget
out for her to read, turned to scribe letters from friends in Ohio and Indiana. Trying to determine what the newspaper said had nearly driven Vera crazy. The letters were all jumbled up for her. She’d read stories to Dean as a child. Now she would have to be like a child and have others read to her. Terrible!

Vera did appreciate what Rose did for her. She did. She had messed her bed this morning and Rose didn’t say a word. She had brought her the mirror to distract her and quietly changed the sheets. Vera overreacted to the mirror because she was embarrassed about messing the bed. She knew that about herself.

She also knew that Rose was trying hard to find ways to keep the family together and solvent. But Vera couldn’t let
emotions cancel out her common sense. She refused to go soft over this terrible idea of turning their home into a Bed and . . . Brothel? No, no, that didn’t sound right.

Besides, no one knew Rose like Vera knew her. They didn’t hear the roof-raising argument Rose had with Dean on the evening before he died. Poor, dear Dean. Vera came from a generation of women reticent to argue with men. Vera always felt Rose was hardest on Bethany and the other one—the boy, that one who looked just like Dean. The one who ran away. Tobe! That was his name. He ran to get away from Rose, Vera was convinced of that. Why else would the boy have run?

Speaking aloud to the empty kitchen, she declared, “Why won’t God heal me? Haven’t I been serving him right along? Why me?” She no longer had anything to offer. And even worse, Rose wasted time to have to tend to her as an invalid. Vera had to ring a bell and stop everything if she needed anything at all. It was a terrible thing to have to be such a burden to others. A terrible, terrible thing.

Vera picked up the bell with her left hand and rang it as loud as she could.