The Postcard (9 page)

Sighing, she got up from the rocking chair, her vision having cleared up somewhat, enough to find her way to the back door and call Annie inside for lunch.

Truly, she might not have gone to bed so early that evening—might’ve put off giving in to fitful sleep—had she known the needlelike affliction would grow nearly unbearable.

She sat up the next morning to watch the sun rise, the very dawn she had always greeted with joy. In an instant, the tormenting images returned, and she cried out in agony, renouncing them. “No! I
will not
see these things. I will
not
see!” She repeated it again and again, closing her eyes, shutting out the persistent mental pictures as she rocked back and forth.

How long she remained crumpled in her bed, she did not know. But when at last she opened her eyes and ceased her weeping, the earliest rays of morning had turned to a dark and dreary shade of charcoal.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up, groping her way across the room to the window. She and Jacob had stood and looked out together on this very spot, their last hours together. Yet no longer could she make out the rows of neatly tilled farmland beyond. So cloudy were the trees, the four-sided birdhouse, and even the neighbor’s silo that they might not have existed at all.

The darkness persisted as she attempted to dress, then brush and part her long hair. No longer could she see the golden brown hues of her tresses. Neither outline nor color was visible in the mirror. Only murky, shadowy images shifted and waved, taunting her.

She had to call on past memory to place her prayer veiling in the correct location. Fear and panic seized her as she let her fingers guide the
Kapp
. Jacob and Aaron were never coming back, no matter the amount of hoping. Her life as Jacob Yoder’s wife was a thing of the past.
This
was her life now. She’d had everything—
everything
right and gut and lovely—and all of it had been swept away in a blink of time. Why, she did not know, nor did she feel she could question the Almighty. Yet in the quiet moments—just before falling asleep—she had allowed herself to think grievous thoughts of anger and fear, sinful as they were.

Feeling her way along the wall, she stumbled back to the bed. This, the bed she and Jacob had shared as husband and wife. She dared not permit herself to recall the love exchanged here, nor the dreams spoken and unspoken. Denial was the only way she could endure the heartache of her life.

She made an attempt to smooth out the sheet and coverlet, to fluff the lone pillow. But the fiery pain in her head stabbed repeatedly, and in the depths of her troubled heart, she perceived that the light had truly gone from her eyes. Even as tears spilled down her cheeks, she resigned herself to the blindness, that self-imposed haven where no painful image could ever intrude.

“What’s done is done,” she whispered.

Part Two

Midway this way of life we’re bound upon,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
Where the right road was wholly
lost and gone. . . .

Dante

The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and
forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave
the guilty unpunished; he punishes
the children for the sin of the fathers
to the third and fourth generation.

Numbers 14:18
NIV

Six

Two years later

P
hilip Bradley checked into the first Amish B&B he could find off the main drag. Somewhat secluded and picturesque, Olde Mill Road was the kind of setting he’d wished for—made to order, actually.

The Lancaster tourist trade was like a neon sign, attracting modern-day folk who longed for a step back in time to the nostalgic, simple days—by way of shops offering handmade quilts and samplers, crafts and candles, as well as buggy rides and tours of Amish homesteads.

But it was the back roads
he
wanted, earthy places where honest-to-goodness Amish folk lived. Not the establishments that lured you with misnomers and myths of painted blue garden gates and appetizers consisting of “seven sweets and seven sours.” Above all, what Philip wanted was to get this assignment researched, written, and turned in. Bone-tired from the pace of recent travels, he thought ahead to his writing schedule and deadlines for the next month.

At twenty-seven, Philip was already weary of life, though he wouldn’t have admitted it. Even as a youngster he had tried not to call attention to himself—the private side of Philip Titus Bradley, that is. His public image was a different story, and though he had risen to the top tier of feature writers for
Family Life Magazine
, he clung hard to his privacy, guarding it judiciously.

Sitting on the four-poster canopy bed, Philip stared out the window at a cluster of evergreens. The open space to the left of the pines captured his attention. In the distance, he spied a white two-story barn, complete with silo. A gray stone farmhouse, surrounded by tall trees, stood nearby. He wondered if the place might be owned by Amish. His contact, Stephen Flory of the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society, had informed him that nearly all the farms in the Bird-in-Hand area were Amish-owned. The minute it was rumored that an English farm might be for sale, a young Amishman was sure to knock on the door, inquiring about the land and offering the highest bid.

Philip raked his hands through his thick dark hair, gazing at the streams of sunlight pouring through the opening in the tailored blue drapes, its gleaming patterns flickering against a floral wallpaper of blues and greens. The large desk had caught his eye upon entering the room, and now as he studied it, he fancied that if he were ever fortunate enough to own such a piece, it, too, would be made the focal point of its surroundings. Though such a colossal desk would be out of sync with the contemporary decor of his upper Manhattan apartment.

It was odd how the desk, centrally situated on the adjacent wall, seemed remarkably fashioned for the room. Lauren would
not
have agreed, however, and he chuckled at the notion. Thank goodness they’d parted ways long before this present assignment. Were they still dating, she would be totally disinterested in his Lancaster research. On second thought, she might have made some crass remark about the back-woodsy folk he planned to interview.

Lauren Hale had been the biggest mistake of his adult life. She had completely fooled him, displaying her true colors at long last. To put it bluntly, she was an elitist, her intolerant eyes fixed on fame and fortune.

Nor had Philip measured up to Lauren’s expectations. She had had a rude awakening; discovered, much to her amazement, that beneath his polished journalistic veneer, there was a heart—beating and warm. And no amount of wishful thinking or manipulation could alter that aspect of his character. So thankfully, he had won. He had let her have her way that final night, let her break up with him, though he’d planned to do it himself had he not been so completely exhausted from the recent European trip.

Philip observed the antique bow-top bed. King size.
Handmade canopy
, he thought, noting the delicate off-white pattern. Thanks to his vivacious niece, he knew about stitchery and such.

Young Kari had pleaded with him to let her accompany him on this trip. She’d giggled with delight when he called to say he was flying to Lancaster County. “That’s Dutch country, isn’t it?” she exclaimed. “And aren’t there horses and buggies and people dressed up old-fashioned?”

“They’re Amish,” he told her.

“
Please
, take Mom and me with you, Uncle Phil. We’ll stay out of your hair, I promise.”

Regrettably, he had to refuse, though it pained him to do so. He made an attempt to explain his deadline. “You wouldn’t have any fun, kiddo. I’ll be busy the whole time.”

“Won’t you at least
think
about it and call us back?” She was eager for some fun and adventure, though she needed to stay close to home, follow through with her homeschooling—the sixth-grade correspondence course her parents had recently purchased. Public school just wasn’t what it used to be when
he
was growing up in New York City. He had tried to get his sister and brother-in-law to see the light and allow him to assist them financially to get Kari into one of the posh private schools, but to no avail. They had joined a rather evangelical church and gotten religion, or the equivalent thereof, thus their desire to protect and groom Kari in the ways of God. Which wasn’t so bad, he’d decided at the outset. After all, it hadn’t been very long ago that he himself had knelt at the altar of repentance and given his boyish heart to the Lord, though too many dismal miles and even more skirmishes with life had since altered his spiritual course.

Before hanging up the phone, he’d promised his niece another trip instead. “Some other time, maybe when I go to London, I’ll take you and your mother with me . . . when I’m not so tired.”

“Tired of living and scared of dying?” She was a spunky one. “Okay, Uncle Phil, I’ll take whatever I can get . . . if that’s a promise. About London, I mean.”

In no way did he wish to think ahead to the overseas assignments. Not then and not now.

He knew if he gave in to the abrasive feeling behind his eyes and the overall lassitude of the moment, he might not awaken in time to conduct any research or write a single sentence. Which now, as he considered the idea, seemed an exceptionally grand way to dispose of three days.

It was the notion, however, that he might miss out on the candlelight supper included in the night’s lodging that caused him to rouse himself and forego the possibility of a snooze. Mrs. Zook, the hospitable owner’s wife, had promised pork chops fried in real butter. Bad for the arteries but tasty on the tongue. The woman, who’d insisted that he call her Susanna, had welcomed him with such enthusiasm that he wondered at first if he were the only guest staying the night.

He discovered, soon enough, that the historic dwelling was solidly booked through October. “Most of the smaller rooms, that is,” Susanna Zook had told him. Such was the Zooks’ Orchard Guest House. A popular B&B indeed.

In dire need of a shower, he pushed himself off the comfortable bed, noting the handmade Amish quilt. He carried his laptop across the room to the handsome desk. The rolltop portion had already been pulled back, as though a welcome sign were attached. He was glad for the desk’s spacious accommodations and would use every inch of space it could afford.

After setting up the computer, he turned his attention to unpacking. He would stay three days, depending on how solid his research connections were, though he’d called ahead to the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society, setting up a specific appointment with Stephen Flory, a research aid, who, in turn, had promised a private interview with a “talkative Amish farmer.” In addition to that, the owners of the B&B certainly seemed like a good possibility. They appeared to be retired farmers, though he couldn’t be positive. There was something intriguing about their gracious manner, their kindly servant mentality. Only hardworking farmers displayed such character traits, or so his grandpap had told him years before. Grandfather Bradley had informed him about farm folk back when Philip was a boy, visiting his daddy’s parents in southern Vermont. What a spread they had just outside Arlington, not far from Norman Rockwell’s former home.

On first sight of Grandpap’s place, his seven-year-old heart had actually skipped a beat or two. He immediately envied anyone who lived under a sky that blue and wide. And what enormous trees! Not a single towering building to block the sunlight, no blustery canyons created by skyscrapers that swayed in the wind. His heart felt free on Grandpap Bradley’s land.

Philip’s grandfather had built the hideaway in New England as a summer cottage, on the steep bluffs overlooking the Battenkill River. The five-room house possessed all the knotty-pine appeal a city boy might imagine, though prior to that first summer, Philip had had no knowledge of vacation spots of this sort. Especially summer places where lofty trees swept the expanse of sky instead of finger-thin structures— ninety or more stories high—and vegetable gardens were planted firmly in rich mahogany soil instead of imported box gardens on top of drafty penthouse roofs.