The Search (29 page)

Jonah felt shamed. He hadn’t even given a passing thought to Simon.
Forgive me, Lord
, he prayed quickly.

“It’s actually easier for him to receive the marrow than it was for Bess to give it,” the doctor said. “A needle is inserted into the cavity of the rear hip bone where a large quantity of bone marrow is located.”

The doctor became quite animated with such a rapt audience. “We harvested about one to two quarts of marrow and blood. Bone marrow is actually a spongey material, found inside the bones. While this may sound like a lot, it really represents only about 2 percent of a person’s bone marrow, which the body replaces in four weeks.”

Billy looked as white as a sheet. Bertha told him to go sit down and put his head between his knees so he wouldn’t faint.

“Men don’t faint,” he said in a weak and pale voice, but he let her help him to a chair. “They might pass out, but they don’t faint.”

“Whatever handle you want to call it by, you look like you’re just about to do it,” Bertha told him.

“Everything’s getting ready for Simon now, and I’m going to head in and take care of that.” The doctor clapped his hands together. “Hopefully, the donation will ‘take’ and make its way into the central shaft of larger bones to restore stem cell function.”

Billy groaned, then stood abruptly and hurried down the hall, in need of a men’s room.

Bertha watched him weave down the hall and shook her head. “That poor boy’s going off his feed again.”

Early the next morning, Billy went over to Rose Hill Farm to finish chores as fast as he could. Billy had told Bertha he would take her to the hospital to meet everyone for Bess’s release this afternoon. For the last two days, he had felt an odd anxiety and he hadn’t been sleeping well, as if something wasn’t quite right and he didn’t know what.

He was walking up the tree-lined drive when he heard Boomer barking up a fury in the rose fields. He glanced at the house and was surprised there was no buttery glow from a lantern light in the kitchen. Usually, he could see Bertha at the stove and smell something delicious frying. Even though he had just eaten a full breakfast at home, his stomach would begin to rumble in happy anticipation. Not today, though. The farmhouse looked dark and cold.

He jogged over to see what Boomer’s ruckus was about, then slowed as he approached him. A chill ran down his spine when he saw the frantic, wild-eyed look in the dog’s eyes.

Then he discovered what Boomer was troubled about. Bertha Riehl was lying on her side, as if she had laid down to take a nap among her roses. Billy rushed to her and rolled her on her back. Her eyes were closed, her lips were blue, her face was white, and he could see she wasn’t breathing. She’d been gone for a while. She had been out spraying Coca-Cola on her roses when she passed. She looked utterly at peace. He held her hand for a while, tears streaming down his face, unsure of what to do next. Boomer rested his big woolly head on Billy’s shoulder.

Billy took a few deep breaths, trying to steady himself, and went up to the farmhouse. He was looking for Jonah, before he remembered Jonah was spending the night at the hospital with Bess. It looked like their company—Sallie and her boys and that Mose—were gone too. Probably at the hospital, Billy figured. Billy rubbed his face with his hands. His father would know what to do. He hated leaving Bertha like this, but he couldn’t move her on his own. Boomer was standing guard by her. He bolted down the drive and ran home to fetch his father.

Billy knew word would trickle quickly through the community about the passing of Bertha Riehl. He had to act fast to get to the hospital in Lancaster as quickly as he could. His father tried to insist they get Caleb Zook to tell Jonah and Bess the news about Bertha. “That’s what bishops are for,” he told Billy. “They know best how to say these things.”

Billy was tempted, but he knew, deep down, he needed to be the one to go. Part of being a man was not avoiding hard things. He changed clothes and his father drove him into town to catch the bus to Lancaster.

“Maybe I should go with you,” he told Billy.

“No, I need to do this myself.” Billy wasn’t sure how he was going to break the news to Jonah about Bertha’s passing. But he had to get to them before they returned to Rose Hill Farm and found a group of women gathered, preparing the house for the viewing.

Just before he hopped on the bus, his father stopped him by placing a hand on his shoulder. Billy turned to him, and his father didn’t say anything, but there was something in his eyes—a look that said he was pleased with him. He couldn’t remember ever seeing that look from his father before.

Not an hour later, Billy arrived at the hospital and found Jonah and Lainey and everyone else sitting in the waiting room.

“Billy!” Lainey said when she spotted him. Then she grew solemn, sensing from the look on his face that something had happened. “What’s wrong?”

Billy sat near them, struggling to speak. Lainey took hold of his hand to give him strength. “It’s Bertha,” Billy started, then tears filled his eyes. “She’s gone.” He had to stop and wipe his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “I found her in the roses.” He covered his face then, unable to continue.

Jonah heard the words come out of Billy’s mouth, but he couldn’t understand them. It was as if everything had stopped. The sound of the nurses’ shoes as they hurried up the hallways, the clocks ticking, the elevator opening and shutting. He looked at Billy and felt pity for him. Poor Billy. He was suffering. And then he looked at Lainey, with tears running down her cheeks. Sallie started to tell Mose a list of things they needed to do for the funeral. It was like Jonah’s mind had shut down and he wasn’t able to process the meaning behind the sentence, “She’s gone.”

His mother had passed? She was dead?

Like a fog lifting, the full meaning behind those words started to sink in to him. Then the pain rushed at him, as real as an ocean wave, and he felt the tears come. Billy crouched down beside him and Jonah put his hand on Billy’s head. They sat there for a long while, until a nurse came and timidly interrupted to let them know Bess was ready to go now.

Jonah nodded and wiped his face with his handkerchief. “I need to tell her.”

“I’ll go with you,” Lainey offered.

“
I
should go,” Sallie said as she rose to her feet.

“No,” Lainey said, giving Sallie a firm look. “No. I’ll go.”

Sallie looked confused, then hurt, but Mose put a gentle hand on her arm. Jonah didn’t have the presence of mind to do anything more.

Before walking into Bess’s room, Jonah took a deep breath and prayed for God’s strength. Bess had grown so close to his mother this summer. More and more, she was acting like her too. She even cooked like his mother. He opened the door a crack and saw her waiting by the window, dressed and ready to go.

“How are you feeling?” Lainey asked her.

“Not too bad,” Bess said. “A little sore. They won’t let me see Simon, but they did tell me it went well for him.”

Jonah nodded. “So I heard.”

Bess picked up her bonnet and cape. “Let’s go home.”

Jonah pulled up a chair for Lainey to sit in. “Bess, something has happened.”

Bess looked curiously at her father. Then she gasped. “It’s Simon. He’s dead, isn’t he? All this effort, and he’s dead.”

“No. Simon is fine.” In a twist of irony, Simon
was
fine and his mother was dead. Jonah pulled the curtain around her bed to give them privacy from the other patients. Then he leaned a hip against the bed frame, crossed his arms against his chest, and lifted his face to Bess. Gently, he told her that her grandmother had passed this morning while she was out tending the roses. He waited, expecting her to break down.

Bess turned to face the window. She hugged her elbows as if she was holding herself together.

Lainey walked up to Bess and put her hands on her shoulders. Softly she said, “It was your grandmother’s time. She’d done everything she needed to do. She brought Simon back to his family. She brought you and your dad back to Stoney Ridge.” Lainey turned Bess around to look at her. Bess was dry-eyed. “God’s timing is always perfect. You see that, don’t you? Her life was complete.” She spoke with conviction.

Jonah remained silent as Lainey said those words. He was amazed by her, nearly in awe. But it distressed him to see Bess so quiet. It wasn’t like her. Two years ago, when their pet dog had been hit by a car, she had cried for two days straight. “Are you all right, Bess?”

Bess nodded but didn’t say a word.

“When you’re ready,” Jonah said, “Billy is waiting for us in the hallway.”

“I’m ready now,” was all Bess said in a voice unfamiliar to him.

It was afternoon by the time they returned to Rose Hill Farm. The hardest moment of all came as the taxi drove up the driveway. Knowing Mammi wasn’t there—and wouldn’t be there ever again—made Bess feel an unbearable pain in her chest, as real as if she had been stabbed.

Everyone in the taxi was aware of Mammi’s absence. She saw the tight set of her father’s jaw. Billy kept his chin tucked to his chest, Lainey just went ahead and let the tears flow. Sallie was quiet, which was a great blessing. Even her boys seemed to know they needed to be calm and still, but it helped to have Mose sit between them in the back of the station wagon.

Rose Hill Farm wasn’t empty. The news had spread quickly throughout Stoney Ridge. Friends and neighbors were in and around the farmhouse, cleaning it from top to bottom in preparation for the viewing and the funeral. The women fussed over Bess, but all she wanted was to go upstairs and lie down on her bed. She was stiff and exhausted after an uncomfortable night. Her hip felt sore and so did her heart—aching for her grandmother. It was the bitterest kind of heartache she had ever felt—an ache that burned and gnawed. She hoped that tears would come in solitude and help wash away the pain. It seemed a terrible thing that she couldn’t shed a tear for Mammi. She had loved her grandmother more than she had even realized. She knelt by her window and looked out over the rose fields, wondering where it was that her grandmother had lay down and died. But still no tears came, only the same horrible ache of grief.

When she finally went downstairs, she learned that the undertaker had returned her grandmother’s body. The women had dressed Mammi in burial clothes and laid her out in the front room. One had stopped all of the clocks in the house at the early morning hour they assumed Bertha had died. They would be restarted after the burial.

Bess walked slowly into the front room. Mammi didn’t look like Mammi, she thought as she stood next to her grandmother’s still body, lying on the dining room table. Jonah came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

“She’s really gone,” Bess whispered. “You can tell. Whatever it was that made her Mammi is gone.”

“Gone from us, but gone to God,” Jonah told her.