Love in Unlikely Places

by Linda Byler

  “Now don’t you come home in a mood,” her mother warned. “Dena works at market on Saturday, remember?”

  “Market closes at three.”

  “Four. She doesn’t get home until six. And now she’s upstairs getting ready to go out.”

  Emma marched up the stairs, doing nothing to soften her footsteps, went to Dena’s room and banged on the door.

  “What?” Dena yelled.

  “Let me in.”

  “It’s not locked.”

  Emma let herself in to find Dena in front of a full-length mirror, adjusting the hem of her dress, which hung very close to the soles of her shoes. The color was a shrieking shade of orange, a verboten color.

  There was a pair of Converse sneakers, still in the box, thrown across her bed, along with the contents of a purse that could have carried a full-grown dog if the need arose.

  “Hi!” she said brightly. “I didn’t know you were home.”

  “Yeah well, I usually come home on Saturday. What is up with the messy house? Why couldn’t you wash dishes, at least? Mom cut her thumb, you know.”

  “So? She collected my money easily enough with that busted thumb, so she can do her own dishes.”

  Dena turned from left to right before pulling a black sweatshirt over her head, facing the mirror and smoothing the sides over her hips.

  “Where’s your apron?” Emma barked.

  “I’m not wearing one. We’re going bowling.”

  “What? Seriously, Dena, who do you think you are? Do you think Mam is going to let you out with that awful dress and no apron?”

  Dena whirled to face her, her hands on her hips.

  “You’re not my mother, or my fashion police. I’m sixteen now and I can do anything I want.”

  Emma picked up the shoes, raised an eyebrow.

  “Cool, aren’t they? The guys love girls in Converse sneakers.”

  “Dena . . . who made your dress?”

  “My friend Kaitlyn.”

  “Who is she?”

  “You don’t know her.”

  “Is she from around here?”

  “Course. Elmer King’s Kaitlyn. Look, I hafta hurry, okay? I’m not in the mood to be questioned, so bug off.”

  With an arrogant shake of her hips, she turned to spritz cologne, then leaned in to the mirror, holding the battery lamp above her head as she turned from left to right, checking the condition of her hair.

  Slowly Emma sat down on the bed, a weary sigh escaping her. She was dumbfounded. When had her little sister turned into this weird orange disaster she didn’t even recognize?

  “Dena,” she said quietly.

  “Hmm?”

  “Don’t you think it’s time to slow down? Surely Mam and Dat don’t want to see you leave the house in that dress, without an apron? And those shoes . . .”

  Dena tossed her head, then stuck her face close to Emma’s.

  “I told you to bug off. Leave me alone.”

  Emma left the room. With a heart already filled with disappointment, she felt a crushing sensation in her chest as she filled a bucket with soapy water to wipe the kitchen floor. She did dishes afterward, until every countertop was empty and gleaming, then tackled the huge basket of unfolded laundry, a grim slash where her normally cheerful mouth would have been.

  True to her word, Dena had left with no resistance from her parents, one with his nose in a book, the other drowsy from the Tylenol with codeine for her pain.

  It was almost eleven when she fell into bed, waking to find the steely gray light of another morning, another Sunday at home, with no prospects of anything ever changing.

  She read passages from her Bible, the story of the traveler who had been helped by the good Samaritan, and another chapter in John about the truth of the gospel. She found a sense of wellness, the always new spiritual truth written in the sacred text, so she was better prepared to meet the day and the undoubted challenges she would face.

  Her own disappointments rode her shoulders like a thick wet shawl, chafing and miserable, but she would place her trust in God and be content to live among those she loved, and be thankful, above everything.

  Her mother was bravely spreading slices of bacon on a jelly roll pan, wincing with each movement of her swollen thumb.

  “Here, Mam. You sit down. I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”

  Emma was all brisk efficiency, finishing breakfast, bringing a tray to Sally and Amanda, combing their hair before peeling it back into tight ponytails. They wrinkled their noses at everything except the pieces of fruit, small orange sections and grapes.

  Her father thanked her for the breakfast, said it was like Mam’s. Emma looked at him appreciatively, her eyes smiling over her coffee cup.

  “I get plenty of practice, cooking for Anna.”

  “You must. I don’t remember you being able to make pancakes like that,” her father told her.

  “Oh, she taught me. She’d never use boxed pancake mix.”

  And then she told them about Anna being on her own for the weekend, and how unsettled she felt, but those were her wishes, so she honored them.

  “Will you stay on there until she passes,” her father asked.

  “What else would I do?” she asked.

  “I suppose.”

  Her mother cleared her throat. The silence hung awkwardly.

  “I know. You’d love to know if there are any marriage prospects.”

  “Oh no, no,” her mother said, quickly righting the cart that had already spilled its contents.

  “Come on, Mam. You know it’s true.”

  “So what about this Ben? Never heard from him again, have you?”

  “Ben? What Ben?”

  She laughed a little, and then found herself telling them everything. She launched into a vivid account of her camping trip with Elvin and Eva, the return to the Outer Banks and the subsequent revelation of Ben’s liberties with Kathy, the night with Matt.

  Her mother literally shivered.

  “Emma!”

  “But Mam . . .”

  “Emma!” she repeated.

  “See, this is why I don’t tell you anything. You’re going to think Matt is horrible and untrustworthy because he left the Amish. He left when he found out his parents had basically lied to him, not telling him he was adopted.”

  “Right there is my first warning flag,” her mother said forcefully, her eyes bright with passion. “No parent is perfect. That doesn’t mean you go English. It’s a bad sign. A bad start.”

  She spread her lips in a thin line of disapproval, that rock hard stance that left nothing to chance. Her father leaned back in his chair, saying “Why can’t you date a normal fellow?”

  “Then find me one, Dat. In all of Crawford County, this little settlement in the middle of nowhere with not one young man who would be mildly interested in an almost thirty-year-old.”

  He pursed his lips, then raked a hand through his hair.

  “I believe there would be plenty. However, they know their attentions would hardly be appreciated.”

  “Who? Just tell me who.” Emma growled.

  Her mother changed the subject, before her father came up with an answer.

  Like a small nervous bird, her mother hopped from one question to another, firing them off with quick precision.

  Who were the adoptive parents?

  On receiving this bit of information, both eyebrows were raised on her mother’s face, her father’s countenance changed from displeasure to surprise, and he gave a low whistle.

  “I know them,” he said. “I remember when they adopted him. They lived in our ‘nāva dale.’ Oh, it was quite the talk of the town for a while, this black-haired boy with so many curls.”

  “It is, indeed, a small world if you’re Amish,” her mother said, giving a low laugh.

  “We all live in one fish bowl,” Emma said sourly.

  “Not quite.”

  “So, are you dating?” This from her mother, who was loading her machine gun
for another round, ready to fire questions.

  “No. We are not. He is . . . I guess you would say, checking to see if he can make it. I mean, returning to the Amish. He’s thirty-five years old, mind you, so he has a few years under his belt.”

  “It won’t happen. How could it? It never works out.”

  Her mother’s pessimism left Emma with all the oxygen taken out of her lungs. For a moment, the dreary kitchen faded away and she actually thought she might faint.

  “He was raised Amish,” her father reminded her.

  “Doesn’t make a difference,” her mother answered, shaking her head with an air of dismissal.

  “Well, I’d say give it another year or two,” her father said, then left the table to go out and check on Benjamin and Lloyd, who were in charge of doing the feeding on the Sunday there were no church services, leaving Emma with her stern-lipped mother and absolutely no hope of ever finding approval, the word “English” branded into her conscience with a red-hot iron.

  CHAPTER 21

  EMMA FOUND THE DOOR TO ANNA’S HOUSE UNLOCKED, BUT THERE WAS NO welcoming call. She slowly opened the door, called a bit louder, but the only sound was the hum of the refrigerator, the metallic ticking of the old grandfather’s clock in the dining room.

  “Anna?”

  The recliner was empty, the usual array of Vaseline, cough drops, pills, hand lotion, and reading material carefully set in order. The house did not smell of cooking odors, only a faint lilac scent.

  Her heart was pounding as she opened the door to the bedroom, and she was already crying when she found her beloved old friend curled in a fetal position. Slowly, she bent and placed a hand on her cold shoulder, smoothed back the silver white hair as tear drops fell on the waxen cheeks.

  “Goodbye, Anna.”

  As she wept quietly, she realized Anna had known the end was near, and wanted to be alone. She had her ways, and her faith. She would have faced death with the same bravado she faced everything else, bless her heart. Emma had no reason to believe anything but the fact that Anna had met her Savior, the One on the cross, the One whom she trusted with the same feisty life she had lived fully.

  There was a scattering of friends and acquaintances at her visitation, and her funeral. The obituary appeared in the daily paper, but very little could be written about her, with her extended family mostly in Russia or surrounding countries.

  Emma cleaned her house, set out cupcakes and small sandwiches, bowls of potato chips and pretzels with cheese. Her mother brought a casserole and a kettle of chicken corn soup, with a reluctant Dena in tow, pouting at the prospect of being at this crazy old lady’s house.

  The small house filled up with Anna’s friends, the cashier at the Rexall drugstore, the nurses from her family doctor, old friends who had gone out to eat with her, who had whooped and hollered and laughed at her offbeat sense of humor, gladly accepted her offer to pay for their dinner, and who were blessed to have known her.

  Dena offered them tea or coffee, with Emma bearing a tray of delicate tea cups. They were both dressed in the traditional funeral black, with the white head coverings, the strings tied neatly in front.

  They were examined through various bifocals, eager eyes that appeared birdlike behind rolls of flesh, their lips pursed in consideration of these Amish girls.

  “Now, which one was Anna’s care person?” the first one asked.

  “It was me,” Emma said softly.

  “You? Is this your sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Dena,” she informed them.

  “Let it be known, you did a wonderful job.”

  Up came a moist hand that clasped Emma’s forearm, followed by the sharp intake of breath that preceded a sob. Emma clutched the tray tightly, thinking of the porcelain teacups.

  “She was a character, you know.”

  Emma smiled and nodded. “She certainly was.”

  “Who is going to get her possessions?” the lady asked, dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her handkerchief.

  Every eye was turned in her direction, as bright as small flashlights, anxious to know if they would be the recipient of one valuable thing, of which there were hardly any.

  “I have no idea. She never spoke about such things, really.”

  “Does she have a will written up? You know, a legal document that will legally dispose of her worldly goods?”

  “Oh now, Malverda, stop digging for gold. She never mentioned a word about her monetary worth, so let it go. We’re here to celebrate her life, and it was a long good one.”

  Emma was stopped at the door by a frightening lawyer who loomed above her like some somber apparition of doomsday.

  “Miss Beiler, I gather?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tomorrow at two o’clock in the afternoon, I have a half hour set aside for the reading of Anastasia Gilbert’s will.”

  “Oh. Do I need to be there?”

  “I assumed you knew.”

  “No.”

  “I believe you and the gardener.”

  Confused, Anna looked up, way up, to meet eyes that were surprisingly kind.

  “Gardener? I don’t believe there was a gardener.”

  “Someone who cared for her grounds?”

  “Grounds? There is only the small area surrounding the house.”

  “You will find out tomorrow, then.”

  She and Dena worked side by side, washing dishes, mopping floors, setting the small house in order before they locked the doors and left the house.

  The hills and wooded ridges of Crawford County were covered in a thick mace of gray and black branches, the floor beneath them coated with the dead undergrowth and a thick carpet of leaves that would decompose into the soil till another growth, another fall would replace them. Starlings sat on telephone wires, squawking their voracious discontent before flapping busily into the distance.

  The clouds hung thick and gray, without a breeze, the air heavy with the residue of the late morning frost. On days such as this, when the still air claimed its hold on winter, pushed back the hope of spring, Emma struggled to keep a deep sense of despair at bay. How was she to make sense of her world, with doors opening and closing so swiftly? When one occupation was rudely snatched out of her grasp, only to be led to another, which was taken away again so soon?

  She had closed the door and turned the key on being a teacher and was confronted with the prospect of being a nanny, a worthwhile and very lucrative position, one she was proud to hold. But that was slammed in her face by none other than the amorous Ben in all his untruthful sweet-talking. A paid caregiver was as worthy a title, and here again, the door was closed none too gently by her friend Anna’s death.

  Dena was driving, as usual, hanging on to the spirited horse with her strong young arms, applying the brakes now as they made their way down Fogel’s Hill.

  “Ease up on his speed,” Emma directed. “You know he stumbles easily.”

  “You wanna drive?” Dena asked, handing the reins to her.

  “No, of course not. Just slow him down. Didn’t Dad ever tell you it’s hard on a horse’s feet to run downhill with any amount of speed?”

  Dena shook her head.

  “Dad doesn’t talk to me the way he talks to you. He barely talks to me, ever.”

  From the backseat came the strident voice of their mother, squeezed in amid various boxes of leftover sandwiches and pastries.

  “Dena, going around with that air of indignation is why he won’t say much. You’re so sixteen going on eighty.”

  Emma burst out laughing, loving every minute of her mother’s unusual outburst.

  “About time, Mam,” she applauded, clapping her hands.

  Dena ignored both of them, concentrating on her driving skills as they reached the bottom of the ridge, steadily following the country road as it wound in and out of woodlots and barren fields that lay brown and dormant.

  “I hate February,” announced Dena.

  “Hate is a
strong word.”

  “I do hate it. There’s not enough snow to make the world look fresh and clean, not cold enough to go ice skating, and not warm enough to play volleyball, or baseball, or anything.”

  “March is just around the corner,” Mam said evenly, her voice barely tolerating the young daughter’s sense of discontent.

  The horse’s gait picked up as they turned right onto the road that wound its way past their farm. He knew he was arriving home where a good feeding of oats and corn with a nice block of timothy hay awaited him, so he tugged at the reins as his speed increased.

  “Dena,” came the expected warning from the back seat.

  “I have him under control,” she called back, but she loosened the reins to wrap them around the palms of her hands for better discipline of the energized driving horse.

  “Need help?” Emma offered.

  “I got it,” Dena replied, but her arms were stretched out, the pressure from the bit in the horse’s mouth inducing all her strength.

  They took the turn at the driveway with a sliding of steel wheels on gravel, causing a slight squeak of fear from the back seat.

  The house and barn appeared like a harbor, a haven for travelers, a place called home, nestled between wooded ridges like a colorful bosom of rest.

  What was there to worry about on a gray, frosty day in February when she rode in a buggy with her mother and sister? Doors would open and close in her life, yet there remained one true thing. God on His throne, home would always be tucked in these hills, and trust was the foundation of her wellbeing.

  She hired a driver to take her to the lawyer’s office, not wanting to drive through the bustling streets punctuated by red lights and cross traffic with a horse who sometimes bolted at an approaching truck.

  She was ushered into a luxurious office that smelled of fine leather and Scott’s Liquid Gold, that moisturizing furniture preservative that had its own distinctive odor. An aging gentleman rose to greet her, dressed in clean overalls and a Carhartt jacket, his bill cap held self-consciously in the opposite hand from the one he extended.

  “Good afternoon, young lady.” His voice was like a rusty pipe.

  “Hello. You must be the gardener?”

  “I am Clyde. Clyde Armstrong. I worked for the Washingers when Anna was married to Thomas, and then I worked for them when she married William Gilbert. Wonderful people.”