The Revealing (39 page)

She lowered her glance.

“Anyone who could write such fine prose, posing as Mrs. Miracle, should be writing dynamic essays.”

Her jaw dropped open. He
knew
about
Mrs. Miracle
? Did everybody know? Did the whole town? “Jesse told you.”

“Jesse? No. It seemed, well, sort of obvious. I guess I recognized your choice of words.” His eyes were troubled as he peered at her. “Mim . . . Miriam . . . is there something between you and Jesse Stoltzfus?”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” Two red streaks started to crawl up his cheeks. “What about it?”

“What about what?”

“Do you have something going on with Jesse?”

She looked down at her feet. “You took Katrina Stoltzfus home in your buggy.”

“She asked me to. She wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go home. I was leaving early because . . . well, because it was a clear night and at nine, Venus would be low in the west and Jupiter would be about halfway down to the west and Mars could be seen coming up in the east.”

Oh.
“You act as if you don’t even see me. All year, that’s how you’ve acted.”

“I’ve always seen you.” His voice went from tenor to soprano in one crack and, visibly nervous, he poked his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “I wrote your name on the tree.”

Her chin jerked up. “You what?”

“I wrote DR + MS, very low down, near a root. I wrote it last year.”

“You never did!” She could feel her cheeks grow blotchy pink. Soon, she knew, they would deepen to an all-over heliotrope.

“Let’s go and see it,” he said. “As proof.”

And there it was, just as he had said.

Standing at the base of the tree, Mim and Danny looked at each other and looked away. A lot had been admitted.

Later that night, Mim tossed and turned as she lay in bed. Her sheets felt sticky. She tossed over, once, then twice, flipped her pillow to the cool side and shut her eyes. But she couldn’t sleep. And she couldn’t stop thinking of Jesse Stoltzfus.

In the middle of the night, Bethany woke to the sound of pebbles hitting her window. Groggily, she pulled herself out
of bed and looked down at the yard. Jimmy Fisher was there, sending beams from a flashlight up to her bedroom.

She changed from her nightgown into a dress, wishing she could ignore him and crawl back into bed. “I’m just not sure if I’m in love with Jimmy Fisher anymore,” she said aloud, pinning her dress together. Her voice echoed in her head. It was true. She might not love Jimmy. She might, but she might not. It had happened without her knowing, for the love she carried around for him had gone and she hadn’t noticed it disappearing. It was only now that she became aware that it was missing. In fact, she hadn’t thought about Jimmy for two full days.

He greeted her with arms stretched out to engulf her, his eyes eager and bright.

Why was he here, in the middle of the night? Bethany wanted to know. “You’d better have a good reason.”

“Because I missed you,” he said simply. “I wanted to see you again.” He slipped his arms around her. “I don’t want you to feel I’m rushing you or demanding you give me an answer, but I was hoping by now you would be ready to say yes.”

Her heart didn’t race anymore, she didn’t try to find the right phrase, the best approach. She wasn’t eyeing him nervously in case his expression might change. She pressed him away by the arms. “No, Jimmy. I don’t have an answer for you. But if you insist on one now, I’d have to say no.”

His face went blank. “But . . . but . . . but why? You’ve been dropping hints to get married for months now. You’ve talked of nothing else.”

She stepped back. “I know, but I think I got tired of waiting and I slipped out of love with you.”

A pair of creases appeared between his eyebrows. “It’s that Peter Stoltzfus character, isn’t it? He’s been buzzing around you like a fly around honey.”

“What? My feelings for you have nothing to do with Peter Stoltzfus.”

He reached out to take her hand and laid it over his palm and ran his other hand over it, as if smoothing a curled page. “Is it possible that you might in time love me again?” He sounded hesitant, unsure. His face was an open book; he looked miserable and hopeful all at once.

Her resolve melted at the desperate look in his eyes. “I suppose anything is possible.” Then she turned quickly away from him, feeling unexpectedly sad. She slipped back into the house and was startled to find Rose in the rocking chair, feeding a bottle to Sarah.

“A starlight tryst?” Rose asked with a smile.

“Not really. More like a starlight sayonara. I told Jimmy Fisher things were over between us.”

Rose looked up in surprise. “And are they?”

“I think so. He doesn’t seem to agree.” She sighed. “It seems as if our timing is always off. When he’s interested in me, I’m interested in someone else. When I’m finally interested in him, he’s distracted with his horse. Now I’m not interested in him anymore and he seems to think he’ll perish without me. I’m not sure we’ll ever both be on the same page at the same time. I just . . . I want someone who loves me, unreservedly. I don’t want to chase someone to the altar.” She took off her prayer cap and held the pins in her hands. “Do you think God concerns himself with love?”

“Of course. Of course he does. Look at the love story of Isaac and Rebekah in the Old Testament.”

“So . . . if it’s meant to be, it will happen?” She let the sentence hang there.

“In God’s timing. I’m confident of that.” Rose tucked Sarah into the Moses basket and covered her with the pink quilt that Naomi had made for her.

Bethany wished she had those kinds of certainties.

“Don’t give up on Jimmy Fisher quite yet. He’s making great strides in maturity. Think of where he was a year ago, when his chief delight in life was to set firecrackers off in Amos Lapp’s winter wheat to shoo the geese away.”

Bethany shrugged. “I hope you’re right.” She turned to head up the stairs.

“Bethany . . . sometime . . . I’d like to go with you to visit your mother.”

Bethany leaned against the doorjamb. “Are you sure, Rose? It’s not an easy visit.”

Rose nodded. “I’m sure. I’d like to meet the woman who gave life to you and Tobe. I’d like to thank her.”

Bethany smiled at her stepmother, and Rose smiled back.

There was a pain in Jimmy Fisher’s heart, although hearts were not supposed to hurt. Every day hearts went about their steady beat and no one gave them a second thought, until one day you felt a pain there. Standing next to Lodestar in the middle of the barn, brushing down his coat and mane like he did every afternoon, Jimmy pondered these deep thoughts.

His heart used to sing at the thought of seeing Bethany. She was his Number One. She was his darling. Now, his heart had sunk to his shoes. Peter Stoltzfus was aiming to take his place in Bethany’s heart.

Jimmy felt weak, as if his legs didn’t want to move. He had never felt weak like this in all his life. He unhooked Lodestar from the ties and led him to his stall. In just a few weeks, the horse was making great gains. His ribs didn’t protrude as they had, his eyes were bright and lively, stubbles of hair were starting to grow in the bald spots on his rump. Best of all, he held his head high and pointed his ears forward.

The vet had told Jimmy there was no reason he couldn’t be a stud. “You have to remember,” Galen reminded Jimmy, “that you have no paperwork, no proof of pedigree, no evidence of Lodestar’s lineage, no stud registration.”

Jimmy, a born optimist, felt certain that Lodestar’s future offspring would test his mettle. “We’re back on track, Lodestar,” he told the horse as he latched his stall in four places, just in case he did get the notion to escape.

He stopped. Against all possibilities, Lodestar had been found. Against another impossibility, Jimmy was soon to retire from the chicken business. And Bethany had said there was a possibility that she might fall in love with him again. Jimmy
loved
possibilities.

He was going to win Bethany back. Oh yes he was.

23

R
ose was taking fresh towels down to the guest flat when she noticed Galen and Luke in the empty pigpen, holding the reins to a horse that was pulling a plow to turn the sod. She stopped and watched. Galen was patiently teaching Luke how to plow in a straight line. If the horse veered off, Galen showed Luke how to bring it back into alignment with the other row. Their backs were to her, they didn’t see her standing there.

Tears stung her eyes. Despite how busy Galen was preparing his own farm for his sister’s wedding, despite how she had hurt him, he hadn’t changed. He still made time to help her.

She was struck by how deeply attached she felt to Galen. It was a different love than the heady, exciting feelings she’d had when she fell in love with Dean, and she would have thought younger love was the stronger force. But the feelings she had for Galen were like the deep roots of a sturdy willow tree, whose depth she was only beginning to sense.

She suddenly realized she wanted to grow old with him.

“Talk to him,” Naomi said.

“What?” Rose startled in alarm. She hadn’t realized that Naomi had come up behind her. Sarah was nestled in her arms.

“You’re wondering whether you made a mistake with Galen. Talk to him. It can’t do any harm. Talk to him, Rose.”

She looked at Naomi, whose clear eyes seemed to see everything and know what was going on in every heart. “Do you always know what people are thinking?”

Naomi laughed. “No. I just try to be a good listener.”

“Anyone can be a good listener,” Rose said. “That’s easy. It’s hard to be a wise listener.”

After the pigpen had been plowed under and Luke had shown her, proudly, the blisters on his hands that needed tending to, Rose put on a fresh apron and prayer cap and walked through the privet to find Galen. She found him in the barn. He had a gelding’s right rear hoof up on his thigh and was scraping caked dirt out of it with a hoof pick. He straightened up as soon as he saw her.

For a moment, she could say nothing at all, only look at him. Her throat tightened, thick with the things she wanted to say to him.

“It’s cold today, you’ll catch a chill,” he said, when he noticed that she was barefoot.

She shrugged, head down, trying to hide the tears that were streaming down her cheeks.

“Why, now, what’s the matter?” he asked, concerned.

He put down the hoof pick and walked over to her. He cautiously put his arm around her, as if that might not still be proper—Rose not only accepted it, she moved closer.

“Is something wrong, Rose? Is Vera all right? The baby?”

“Everybody’s fine. It’s me.”

His eyes were filled with worry. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Everything. I need to ask you something.” She stepped back to face him and clasped his hands, tight. “Would you like to marry me?”

There was quiet—complete quiet. And on and on it went, not a word, not a sound. Rose waited, then went on undisturbed, her voice steady. “I’m in love with you, and I can’t imagine life without you.”

A slow smile, homey and unhurried and sweet, like syrup over hot flapjacks, spread across his face.