The Search (13 page)

“Rebecca and I met when we were both only sixteen. She lived in a neighboring district. I courted her for four years, driving my buggy two hours each way to see her on Saturday nights. Sometimes, I would barely arrive home in time to help my father milk the cows on Sunday morning.” He gazed into his coffee mug as the bakery lady refilled it. She poured herself a cup and slipped into a chair across from him, listening carefully.

As Jonah lifted the coffee mug to his lips, his mind floated to a different time. “As soon as her father gave us his blessing, we married. Rebecca came to live at Rose Hill Farm and a year after that, our Bess arrived.” He glanced up at the bakery lady, wondering if she was listening to him only out of politeness, but the look on her face suggested otherwise, as if she was anxious for him to continue. “Most men wanted a son, but I was glad the Lord gave us a daughter. I knew Bess would be good company for Rebecca.” He stopped then and looked out the window at the empty street. “You see, I thought there would be plenty of time for sons. But there wasn’t.”

“Life can be that way. Things have a way of not turning out the way we expect.” She said it so softly, he wondered if it was more his thought than her voice he’d heard.

Jonah caught her gaze and gently smiled. “No, you’re right about that.”

Then, in a voice that hurt him with its gentleness, she asked, “How did she die?”

His smile faded and he took his time answering. He’d never spoken aloud of Rebecca’s accident, not with his parents or Bess, nor Mose. Not even with Sallie. Yet on this morning, the morning he returned to Stoney Ridge, he found himself wanting to talk about Rebecca. “It was a warm April night, just a week or so after Bess had been born. Rebecca wanted to go visit her folks—they were moving to Indiana—and truth be told, my mother was making Rebecca go a little stir crazy. She was always afraid of my mother, was Rebecca.” He gave up a slight smile. “My mother can be a little . . . overbearing.”

The bakery lady nodded sympathetically, as if she understood perfectly.

“The baby was in Rebecca’s arms, sound asleep, and Rebecca had nodded off. The baby’s blanket had slipped to the floor. I reached down to pick it up. I took my eyes off the road for just a moment . . .” His voice drizzled off and he closed his eyes tight. “It was the last thing I remember.” He covered his face with his hand, but just for a moment. He came to himself with a start and glanced cautiously at the bakery lady. She didn’t say a word, but the look in her eyes, it nearly took his breath away. It wasn’t pity, nor was it sorrow. It was . . . empathy. As if she understood what a horrific moment that was for him, and how that moment had changed his life.

He hadn’t meant to reveal so much to an English stranger. It shocked him, the things that spilled out of him in the predawn of that day. Maybe he was just overly tired and overly worried about Bess and his mother, but talking to that bakery lady felt like a tonic. His heart felt lighter than it had in years.

But this lady had work to do and he had stayed long enough. He stood to leave. “I don’t even know your name,” he said at the door. “I’m Jonah Riehl.”

“I know,” she said, giving him a level look. “I know who you are.” She put out her hand to shake his.

He took her hand in his. It surprised him, how soft and small it was.

She took a deep breath. “My name is Lainey O’Toole.”

Jonah’s dark eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Lainey? Lainey O’Toole. I remember you. You were just a slip of a girl. Simon’s stepdaughter.”

She nodded.

“You disappeared. After your mother died.”

She nodded again.

“What happened to you?”

“I became a long-term houseguest of the state of Pennsylvania.”

He must have looked confused because she hastened to add, “Foster care system. Until I was eighteen.”

He leaned against the doorjamb. “What then?” Jonah asked. He was sincerely interested.

“I worked at a department store in customer service. That’s a fancy way of saying I listened to people complain. I didn’t want to do that forever and a day, so I saved my money to go to culinary school.”

“I remember you and my mother baking together in the kitchen at Rose Hill Farm.” Those eyes of hers, they were mesmerizing. Full of wonder and wisdom for a woman barely twenty-five, if he counted back correctly. “Are you back home now, for good?”

She didn’t answer right away. “I’m trying to do good while I’m here.” She gave him an enigmatic smile then. She had flour on her cheek, and without thinking, he almost brushed it away. It shocked him that he would even consider touching a woman like that. There were ten years between them, and a world of differences in every way that mattered.

Still, something about Lainey O’Toole stirred him. He remembered her as a small, worried-looking girl. Simon was a bad-tempered man, lazy and cynical. Even though he lived down the street and passed the house almost daily, Jonah kept a wide path from Simon, and his parents shunned him completely. Jonah saw Lainey’s mother only a few times, tossing food out for chickens that lived under the front porch. He remembered her as a faded-looking woman who had probably been pretty in her youth. Lainey used to slip up to the fence that lined the house, quiet as a cat, and just watch him and his father work in the fields or around the barn. It wasn’t long before his mother coaxed Lainey into the kitchen, teaching her how to bake. Just taking an interest in her, because no one else seemed to.

And here Lainey O’Toole was, a grown woman, standing in front of him.

“Jonah . . . ,” Lainey started. Just as she opened her mouth to say something, the sheriff drove by in his patrol car. She snapped her mouth shut.

And now his thoughts shifted to Bess. “I’d better go. Thank you, Lainey O’Toole.” He held her eyes as he put his straw hat back on his head, then tipped his head to her and hurried down to the sheriff’s office.

Jonah Riehl had a crooked gait. The good leg did most of the work while the weaker one shuffled to keep up, twisting stiffly from the hip. Lainey knew, from Bertha, that was a lasting result of the accident. Her heart swelled with compassion for the man as she watched him walk down the street, leaning on his cane.

She had nearly told Jonah about Bess. That first Sunday afternoon, when Bertha told her she knew Bess wasn’t Jonah’s daughter, she had made Lainey promise not to tell him or to tell Bess, either. “I’m the one who needs to do the telling,” Bertha insisted. “And I will. When the time is right.”

Lainey had agreed, reluctantly. Now she regretted that promise. She hadn’t expected to be spending so much time with Bess, nor did she ever dream she would meet Jonah face-to-face.

It took her awhile to recognize him this morning, yet once she did, she saw him as he was fifteen years ago, with laughing eyes and a quick wit. When she was just a girl, he used to tease her like a big brother. Never mean-spirited, though. She remembered how kind he was . . . so very kind. He was still kind. And he still had that wavy dark hair, snapping brown eyes, and good-looking face, slightly disfigured by a broken nose. She remembered the day it was broken. He was pitching in a softball game and got hit in the face by a ball. She’d watched from afar and thought she’d never seen a nose bleed so much.

As she saw Jonah head into the sheriff’s office, she leaned against the doorjamb and crossed her arms. This summer was turning into something she had never expected. Everything—all of her carefully designed plans—was turning upside down. Would things right themselves again? The oven buzzer went off and she went to check on the bread. Or maybe, she thought as she pulled the loaves from the oven, maybe things had been upside down and were turning right side up.

She set the loaves on cooling racks and pulled off her oven mitts. Either way, she had trusted God with all of this years ago, when she was only ten. And she wasn’t going to stop trusting him now. She would see it through.

While Bess was making her bed, she heard a car turn onto the driveway of Rose Hill Farm. She looked out the window and felt her stomach twist into a knot. It was the sheriff. With her father.

She ran downstairs to tell Mammi but found her already on the front porch, ready to greet her son. Like she had been expecting him all along. Bess went outside and stood behind Mammi as the sheriff’s car came to a stop and her father opened the door. He climbed out, pulled his suitcase from the backseat, and turned to the sheriff to shake his hand.

“My work here is done,” the sheriff said, leaning out the car window. “Stay out of trouble, Miz Riehl.” He pointed to Bess. “You too.” He made a motion with his hand, two fingers splayed, pointing from his eyes, as if to say “I’m watching you.”

After he drove off, Jonah took a few strides to the kitchen porch.

“Jonah,” Mammi said calmly.

“So, Mom,” Jonah said, just as calmly. “Care to tell me what’s been going on?”

Then an awkward silence fell, until Billy appeared out of nowhere. “If they’re not going to tell you, I will. Bess had a notion to take the sheriff’s car out for a few spins,” he said. “Three times, from what I hear.”

Bess popped out from behind Mammi and glared at Billy. What had she
ever
seen in him?

“Billy,” Mammi said firmly. “Time to move the bees out to the fields. Take Bess with you.” She turned to Bess. “Get your bonnet. You’ll need it.”

Bess went into the kitchen and grabbed her big black bonnet from the wall peg. As she passed by her father, he held his arm out wide to her. “Don’t I even get a hello?”

She leaned into him and felt a wave of relief that he was here. She hadn’t realized how much she missed him. He wasn’t nearly as upset about the police car borrowing as she had expected him to be. But then, her father wasn’t quick tempered. She had never seen him angry, not once. Still, she would know if he was upset with her. This morning he looked relaxed, even a little pleased to be here in Stoney Ridge. She hadn’t expected
that.

“Maybe when you’re done with moving your grandmother’s bees,” Jonah said with one dark brow raised, “we can talk about your algebra grade.”

She dropped her head. She hadn’t expected
that
either.

In the barn, before getting anywhere close to the beehives, Billy rolled down his sleeves, then tucked his pants into his boots. He took out a roll of mosquito netting and covered his hat and face with it. “Better cover up good, Bess,” he said, but she didn’t appreciate his advice. Billy lifted the mosquito netting to help her wrap it, but she turned away from him. “Bess, don’t be childish. You have to protect yourself.” He turned her by the shoulders to face him. As he wrapped the netting around her bonnet, she kept her eyes on the ground. “What are you so peeved about, anyway? I was only telling the truth.”

She locked eyes with him. “Well, you were wrong. It was Mammi who wanted me to borrow that sheriff’s car. I tried talking her out of it . . . but you know my grandmother.”

Billy tucked the netting into the back of her apron. “No kidding? That’s too bad.” He sounded genuinely disappointed. “A couple of fellows were asking me all about you. They think you must act all quiet and shy, but underneath . . . they say . . . sie is voll Schpank.”
She is daring.