The Search (37 page)

He glared at her. “How could she
not
be upset?”

She folded her arms against her chest. “You underestimate her, Jonah.”

“Oh? You think you know Bess so well after just a few months?” Now he was clearly livid. “Then where
is
she?”

That, Lainey couldn’t answer.

“In this pouring rain, why isn’t she home? Where is my daughter?” He grabbed a bridle and went to Frieda’s stall, quickly slipping the bit into the horse’s mouth and buckling the buckles. He led her by the reins out of the stall and toward the door. Just as he was about to leave the barn, he turned to Lainey and looked at her with anger in his eyes.

“If something happens to her, Lainey . . . if anything . . .” He shook his head as if to stop himself from saying more, then left.

The rain hit with a fury. It was cold and sharp and falling sideways in the fierce wind. Jonah barely noticed it. When he heard what Lainey had done, he felt such panic grip his chest that for a moment he couldn’t breathe. He was furious with Lainey. She had no right!

“Bess is
my
child!” he said aloud. The words tore out of him, from some deep place, some old, long-buried hurt. He had to find Bess and explain. But where could she possibly be? He felt as if the world had become very fragile. Very dangerous.

As he rode the horse past the Lapp farm, it occurred to him that Billy might have an idea where Bess might be. The two had spent hours together this summer and it had given Jonah cause for concern. Bess was too young to be thinking seriously about boys. Then, suddenly, a well of hope bubbled up. Maybe Bess went to Billy to find comfort.

He turned the horse around and galloped toward the Lapp farmhouse.

As soon as Billy saw the frantic look on Jonah’s face and heard that Bess had gone missing—that she was upset about something—he had a pretty good idea of where she would have gone.

“Give me an hour,” he told Jonah. “If I’m not back in an hour—no, give me an hour and a half—then you can go looking. But there’s no sense in both of us getting soaked to the skin. I think I know where she is.” He grabbed a slicker and went to the barn.

Jonah followed behind him. “Then tell me and I’ll go find her.”

“It’s too hard to find. Trust me, Jonah.” Billy saddled up his pony. “You go home in case she returns there.” He rode away before Jonah could object.

About a month ago, he and Bess had found an abandoned crow’s nest at Blue Lake Pond, high on a ledge but protected from the rain by the branches of a sheltering tree. He knew she was there, as sure as if he could see her. When he got to the lake, he tied the pony’s reins to a tree trunk. The wind was lashing through the trees, and the pony shifted its weight from foot to foot, uneasy, but the fury of the rain had eased up. Billy hiked up to the ledge, slipping a few times. There on the ledge, shivering and drenched, was Bess, hugging her knees to her chest. When he called her name, she looked up, startled, and put her fingers to her lips. She pointed to the nest. There was a black crow, staring down at both of them.

“I’ve been watching her land in that tree. She thinks she owns it, that it’s her tree. She takes off and lands again, watching me watching her. That’s what crows do. She’s living her crow life,” she said softly, eyes fixed on the bird.

Billy sat down next to her. “Your dad is steaming like a kettle. Said something has upset you.”

“I’m not upset.”

With a measured glance, he realized she was speaking the truth. She didn’t seem at all upset. Wet, cold, and shivering, but she was calm. She had a look on her face that seemed peaceful. Andy always said she looked like an angel, and right now, he was right.

She turned her face to the sky, like a flower, and smiled softly. “Billy, isn’t it a wonder? That the crow is here? God made nature so things can get fixed again.” She turned to him. “Blue Lake Pond will have birds and fish again.”

He’d been so relieved that Bess was where he thought she’d be, he hadn’t even given the appearance of the crow a second thought. “Why, you’re right.” He scanned the lake and heard a woodpecker somewhere, hard at work, hammering a tree. He smiled.

“God does it with people too. Makes it so that they can find their way back to him.” She rested her chin on her knees. “You know what I love about looking up at the sky? It helps me to remember that I am so incredibly small and God is so immense.” She lifted her face to the sky. “Behind those clouds is an ocean of stars, limitless in its infinity, so large, so large, that any of our problems, even the greatest of them, is a small thing.”

Billy wasn’t really sure what she was talking about, but the day was dying and they were wet and cold. He knew Jonah was out of his mind with worry. He stood and gave her his hand. “Maybe you can save your philosophizing for home, by a warm fire, in dry clothes.”

Jonah had given Billy an hour, like he agreed, but now that hour was up and he was going to find his Bess. He was putting on a rainproof cloak and his black hat when he saw a pony heading up the drive with two figures on its back. He ran out the door and down the porch steps. He could see them now, Billy in front with Bess holding on to him from behind. A powerful wave of relief flooded over him, like the relief that follows the first rainstorm after a long summer drought—swift, complete, overwhelming.

The first thing Jonah did was to wrap Bess in a large towel and make her sit down by the fire.

“I’m sorry to worry you, Dad,” she told him, and she saw tears prickle his eyes.

He brought her a cup of hot tea and kept fussing over her as she tried to explain how she felt. She could see he was worried sick. Billy had warned her as he left to return home.

Bess knew she should have been shocked by what Lainey told her today, or at least terribly upset. But instead, she was filled with a strange sense of destiny, as if God had spared her for a reason. She told Jonah she felt blessed, having him for a father, and that only made his eyes water up again.

“It’s like the roses, Dad. I’m a branch that’s been grafted onto this good tree. Your tree. An Amish tree. And the great root of God sustains us.” That thought had come to her while she was sitting on the ledge, and she had rolled it over and over in her mind. She liked how it sounded.

Her father bowed his head. She wished she could make him understand that it was all right. That everything was going to be all right in the end, just like Mammi had said it would be.

She went to him and knelt down by his chair, putting a hand over his. “Please don’t blame Lainey, Dad. She was only telling me the truth.” There was something else that occurred to her on that ledge, something wondrous. A wide smile broke over her face. “Dad, do you realize that Lainey is my half sister?”

Lainey knocked tentatively on the door to Rose Hill Farm, unsure of what kind of reception she would get from Jonah. A few hours ago, he had seemed so angry with her, and—from his point of view—she couldn’t really blame him. Nor did she agree with him. But she had to know that Bess was home safely.

“Lainey,” Jonah said as he opened the door. He put a hand to his forehead. “I was going to come down tonight. Bess is here. She’s fine. She’s safe.”

Lainey exhaled with relief. “Good. I mean, I’m glad she’s home.” She turned to leave.

“You . . . were right. She wasn’t upset. Not upset at all.”

She turned and looked at him. “But you didn’t believe me.”

He looked uncomfortable, but he didn’t dispute her. “She’s upstairs, changing into dry clothes. Would you come in and wait for her?” His eyes were pleading.

“No. But tell her I stopped by.” She saw a hurt look cross his face, and straightaway she wished she had not sounded so curt. All that mattered right now was that Bess was home.

She started to leave, but Jonah touched her arm lightly to stop her. His voice dropped to a whisper. “She said that she felt as if God had a purpose in all of that. By protecting her.”

Lainey gave him a direct look. “She’s absolutely right.”

Jonah took a step closer to her. “Lainey. I’m sorry for doubting your judgment. Your judgment is far better than mine about these matters.”

“We can talk about it tomorrow.”

“I didn’t want to lose Bess.”

“You love your daughter.” Her voice was flat—without salience. “It’s normal to want to hold on tight to those we love.”

“Maybe there’s such a thing as holding on too tightly.” He looked away. “Tonight I wondered if God might be testing me, the way he tested Abraham with Isaac.” He folded his arms against his chest. “As if he wants me to figure out if I trust him completely or not.”

Lainey softened a little. “It’s the worst place to be, half trusting, half not.”

He rubbed his forehead. “That’s where I’ve been for the last fifteen years. Stuck right in that very place. The worst place to be. I haven’t really been living, I’ve just been tiptoeing around, trying to avert disaster.”

“It doesn’t work,” Lainey said, quiet but firm. “You just end up missing the life you have.” Through the window, she saw Bess come down the kitchen stairs and look around the room for her father. “Go. Talk to her.”

Jonah reached out his hands to her. “Come in with me. Let’s talk to her together.”

Lainey hesitated. Doubts about Jonah had been buzzing around her all afternoon. She shook her head. “No. I’d better get back.”