The Search (22 page)

Dear Jonah,

It has been over four weeks since you left. Mose has been working as hard as a pack of mules for you, but he did take time out to stake the tomato plants in the garden for me. And take us for a picnic down by Miller’s Pond. And he built a treehouse for the boys with leftover wood from the furniture-making business. He said you wouldn’t object. Would you?

Yours truly,

Sallie

P.S. The celery patch is nearly six inches tall!

It took Jonah a few days to get up his nerve to tell his mother about the blood test not being a match for Simon. He had dreaded this conversation. He waited until Bess had gone to the barn, and then he quietly told her. He sat sprawled in his chair, one arm hooked over the back.

“I know,” Bertha said. “They sent a letter with the results.” Out of her apron pocket she pulled a letter from the hospital.

Jonah closed his eyes. “How long have you known?”

Bertha looked up at the ceiling. “Let’s see. A week.”

Jonah rubbed his forehead. “I know what you’re thinking. And I’m not going to agree to it.”

“Bess is old enough to make the decision for herself.”

“She’s still a child.”

“Fifteen years old is no child. Why, when I was a girl—”

“I know, I know,” Jonah interrupted. He’d grown up hearing plenty of hardship stories that started with that sentence. “There’s a remote chance, anyway, that Bess would be a match. Why take the risk?”

Bertha slapped her palms on the table and glared at him. “Why not?”

Right then, Jonah realized that the simplest, easiest thing to do would be to have Bess take a blood test. That way, the results would show his mother what he already knew—that Bess could not possibly be a match. “Okay.” He surrendered his hands in the air. “If she agrees to it, Bess can have the test.”

He thought his mother would be ecstatic or, at the very least, satisfied. He was giving her what she wanted. Instead, her gaze shifted to the window. From the look on her face, it seemed as if she just had a sense of something dreadful coming to pass.

That night, Jonah asked Bess to sit out on the porch with him to watch the sunset. She knew he had something on his mind. It was a clear night. They watched the sun dip below the horizon and the sky turn a bruised blue. Then he told her about his mother wanting her to get the blood test. Bess sat on the porch steps, hugging her legs, with her chin leaning on top of her knees as she listened to him.

“I want you to pray about this tonight. I don’t want you feeling any pressure to have the test.”

Bess turned her head toward him. “You were willing to give Simon your marrow, weren’t you?”

Jonah nodded. His heart ached in a sweet way when he saw the earnest look on her face. “I was willing, but that doesn’t mean you have to. The blood test is pretty simple, just a prick in your arm. The marrow test is a much more complicated procedure. You’d have to have general anesthesia and stay in the hospital, and it will be a little painful. The chance of you being a match is highly unlikely. I can almost rule it out. It’s just that your grandmother . . . well, you know how she can be once she gets an idea in her head.”

Bess lifted her eyebrows. “Sie is so schtarrkeppich as an Esel.”
She is as stubborn as a mule.

This time Jonah had no trouble smiling. “It seems very important to Mammi that we at least rule it out.”

Bess shrugged. “I guess I can understand that. Simon is her brother.”

“But that doesn’t mean you have to do this, Bess. If you’d rather not, I would never make you do it, no matter what Mammi has to say about that.”

“But you were willing. To give Simon your bone marrow.”

“I was willing.”

“And Mammi was willing?”

Jonah nodded again. He knew his daughter’s tender heart. “Bess, I don’t know if he . . . deserves such mercy.” He told her the entire story, all that he knew, about Lainey and her mother and how Simon treated them. He was surprised to realize that Lainey had never mentioned Simon to Bess. He knew the two had grown close this summer. He could see Bess was shocked when she learned Simon was Lainey’s stepfather. She grew quiet for a long time. Jonah wondered why Lainey had never told her, but then he decided that she was probably protecting Bess. Knowing what he knew of Lainey, he thought she was trying not to influence Bess one way or the other.

They sat quietly for a long time, watching the stars fill the sky. Finally, Bess lifted her head and gave him a soulful look. “Simon may not deserve our mercy, but Lainey is always telling me God has a different perspective on mercy.”

Those words cut into him as real as a sharp knife. That old disquiet filled him again, gripping his chest like an actual pain. He had discovered something about himself this summer—something that shamed him deeply. He had believed in God all of his life, but did he truly believe God was sovereign over all? Did he believe that God’s ways were truly merciful?

Fifteen years ago, he would have said yes. But after the accident that killed Rebecca, a part of him had stopped counting on God the way he had before. As if God couldn’t entirely be trusted.

And so Jonah had run. He had run from God, the same way he had run from his memories. It was too difficult to remain in Stoney Ridge, driving by the accident site nearly every day where Rebecca had died, constantly reminded of what he had lost.

Lainey had just as many reasons to leave Stoney Ridge as he did, yet here she was. Back, facing the very things that haunted her. She was even willing to face Simon in the hospital. When she had come out of Simon’s ward into the hallway, the look on her face nearly sliced his heart in two. It was filled with sorrow, but not for herself.

It was filled with sorrow for Simon’s lost soul.

Billy hadn’t been planning to go to the gathering tonight. It was Bertha Riehl who pinned him to the wall to go and take Bess along too. That woman had a way of getting what she wanted. She didn’t ask directly, she just stared at you until your knees buckled and you caved in.

He wasn’t in much of a party mood, and hadn’t been, and probably never would be again, since Betsy Mast’s departure. He still couldn’t believe she had up and gone. He had had so many plans for their future together. As soon as he turned twenty-one, he was going to buy some land to farm. He knew just the kind of house he wanted to build for himself and Betsy: it would have a southern exposure, and a barn on a right angle, and a pond to fish and swim in. A pond that would be safe from polluters.

In his vision, his father and brothers would see what he had done—bought a parcel of fine land, married the most sought-after girl in the district, started a thriving business—and they would treat him with respect, not just as the baby of the family. Der Kaschde.
The runt of the litter
, his brothers called him.

But that dream was gone now. What irked him most was that he thought he knew Betsy. He thought she would want the same things. It still stunned him that she was gone. She had left her family, her church. She had left him for another man.

Bess had told him once that he had made up the idea of Betsy in his head. Maybe he didn’t really know her at all, she pointed out.

He glanced over at his cousin Maggie, talking a mile a minute, and Bess on the other side of her. Bess was in a cranky mood today. The day had started out fine. She had been helping him get some plants ready to sell to a customer this morning, and he told her his latest theories on Betsy’s departure. She grew quieter and quieter, like she was getting a headache, and didn’t say goodbye to him when her grandmother called her in for lunch. Girls could be like that, he was learning. Moody and unpredictable.

As soon as they reached the yard where the gathering was held, Billy jumped down, tied up the horse, and sauntered off to join his friends at a game of volleyball. He didn’t even notice where Maggie and Bess had gone until Andy Yoder pulled him aside.

“Who’s that?” Andy pointed across the yard to a tight knot of girls.

“Who?”

“The blond.”

“The skinny one? That’s Bess. Bertha Riehl’s granddaughter.”

Andy snorted a laugh. “Maybe you need eyeglasses. She ain’t so skinny now. Seems like she’s got a different shape up above.” He handed the volleyball to Billy and walked across the yard to meet Bess.

Billy watched Andy make his way to sit next to Bess. It occurred to him that Bess was going to be quite a nice-looking girl. It was a thought he’d never had.

After volleyball and dinner, then hymn singing, Billy was ready to go home. When he found Maggie, he told her to go get Bess and he would meet them at his buggy.

“She already left,” Maggie told him. “With Andy Yoder.”

Bess woke up in the morning with a firm resolution: last night was the final time she would cry herself to sleep over Billy. She could feel how swollen her eyes were and wondered if she could sneak out to the garden to snatch a cucumber without Mammi spotting her. She had heard girls talk about putting cucumbers on their eyes as a cure. She tiptoed down into the kitchen and was glad to find it empty. She was just about to open the side door when she spotted Mammi, picking beans and filling up her apron, talking to Billy in the garden. Bess couldn’t go out there now.

Maybe pickles would work. She grabbed a jar from the pantry and hurried back upstairs. She opened the pickle jar and lay down on the bed, placing a sliced pickle over each eye. Within seconds, her eyes were stinging from the vinegar. She jumped up and reached for a pitcher of water. What a terrible idea! Her eyes were bloodshot now and even more swollen-looking than before. A sharp scent of dill and vinegar hung in the air.

An hour later, she was in the barn spreading rose petals when Billy came in with a freshly filled basket. “Where do you want them?”

She kept her head low and pointed to an empty tray.

He carefully spread the petals out, single layer, on the screen. “So Andy Yoder took you home last night?”