Portrait of a Sister

by Laura Bradford

  It was a good question. One she’d never really stopped to answer until that moment. But even now, with the passage of time, it wasn’t hard to figure out why her younger version had loved coming to this same pond. “With Hannah busy, I could talk.”

  “You mean about things you didn’t want her to hear?”

  “No.” She took one last look at the water and then made her way back to what was left of Hannah’s climbing tree. “For Hannah, the pond was a place to swim or throw rocks . . . The butterflies were to chase . . . The leaves in the fall were to be gathered into a pile and jumped into.”

  He patted the open piece of stump next to him. When she didn’t take it, he rested his chin on his palms to study her. “And what were those same things for you?”

  “Look at it.” She pointed to the far side of the pond. “Look at the way the sun makes those sparkles shimmer and dance across the top.”

  Katie skimmed the grass and trees to her right and to her left before finding and pointing to a butterfly darting from wildflower to wildflower just beyond the next reasonably sized tree. “And the butterflies? They are all so very different, yet beautiful. Sometimes, when I was little, if I sat perfectly still, one would land on my arm and I could see the pretty designs on its wings—swirls and dots and so many colors.”

  Bracing his hands on the stump behind him, Eric stretched his legs across the dirt and looked up at the sky. “That’s the way I was with songs when I was little. I liked the music, but when a new song came on the radio, I was always yelling at my friends to be quiet so I could hear the words. I guess that stuff was the start of our respective passions in life.”

  She turned her back on the butterfly to stare at Eric. “I’m not sure I understand what you are saying. What stuff? What passions?”

  “Your artwork, my songwriting. I liked song lyrics as a kid, and you saw your surroundings in a way few your age did—with the eye of a budding artist.”

  Intrigued, she looked around for a patch of leaves on which to sit, but when she found nothing suitable, she eased herself onto the stump beside him. “I’m listening . . .”

  “It makes sense, Katie. An artist needs to see in order to create pieces that speak.” He swept his hand toward the pond and then brought it back to his forehead to help filter the sunlight enough to see her face. “And that’s what you do. Or, rather . . . did. Before you stopped.”

  She cast her eyes down at the ground and tried to think of something to say, but she was at a loss.

  “So tell me, what was the one picture you did let yourself draw when you got back?”

  “It was the other night. While Sadie was sleeping. I kept thinking about her laughing and playing with the bubbles at Miss Lottie’s house. And”—she rose to her feet—“I needed to see her like that again even if it was just on paper.”

  “Makes sense.” He, too, stood, only instead of remaining by the stump, he found a flat rock and carried it down to the water’s edge. “But I know from all our talks in the park that you have lots of special memories with Sadie. Why don’t you draw those, too?”

  “I don’t know . . . It didn’t take my worry away.”

  “But seeing her happy had to be a boost, didn’t it?”

  “For a moment, maybe. But that is all.”

  Eric cocked back his hand and then flicked his wrist, the motion sending his carefully selected rock skipping across the surface of the pond. “So I officially sold my first song last week. To a fairly well-known singer.”

  “You sold a song?” At his slow nod, she clapped her hands just below her chin. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

  “Because it’s not exactly important compared to what you’re going through with Sadie right now, you know?”

  “But it’s your dream!” she protested.

  “It’s an accomplishment, Katie. Is it something that’s kinda cool? Sure. But I’m really the only one who’s even going to know.”

  She watched him search the area around his sneakers for another rock before sending it skipping across the water in almost exactly the same spots as the first. “I know . . . Hannah and Travis will know . . . Your father will know . . .”

  Dropping his elbow back down to his side, he maneuvered the uneven ground between them until he was standing no more than two feet away. “Here’s the thing with what I do, Katie. I write what I think is a good song. If I’m lucky—as I was in this case—a singer buys it and combines it with their talent. If all goes well, maybe it’ll become a song that you’ll hear people singing on the street or in a car or on a beach somewhere. And I’ll get a kick out of that, don’t get me wrong. But I’m smart enough to know that it’ll be the song people know, not me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “People hear music and they either like it or they don’t. If they like it, they’ll listen to it again and again, even learn the lyrics so they can sing along. But they won’t remember the name of the person who wrote it, if they even bother to find out that information in the first place.”

  Resting her hands on her hips, she shook her head at him. “Don’t say that!”

  “I’m not saying it to sound like a martyr or to be whiney or whatever, because I’m not. I’m just telling it like it is so you don’t put more on this whole thing than it really deserves, you know? Dreams are great, they give you something to walk toward. I just don’t want to discount the squirrels anymore.”

  “Did you just say squirrels?”

  His smile was followed, in short order, by the dimples she loved. “Don’t look at me like I just grew a second head, Katie. Before you, I saw the park as an easy way to get from point A to point B most days. The people I passed, the paths I took, and the squirrels that scurried across my path were essentially background noise.”

  “The paths are noisy?”

  “No. It’s an expression. The people, the paths, the squirrels were all there, but I didn’t see them. I was always focused on the end goal—to get to this meeting or that restaurant or that friend’s apartment. But with you it was different. Suddenly it wasn’t about getting somewhere, it was about being.”

  “But that is what you said to me, remember?” She plucked a leaf off a low-lying branch and slowly spun it between her fingers. “You said just be.”

  “Funny thing is, before your visit, that was just something I said, you know? It sounded good, maybe even a little deep.” He backed himself up against a nearby maple tree and tucked his hands back inside his front pockets. “But now, because of you, so much is different, better.”

  “It is nice, what you say. It really is. But I don’t know how someone like me”—she scrunched her nose—“can change something for someone like you.”

  Crossing his arms in front of his chest, he met and held her gaze with his own. “Remember those people in the park I referred to as background noise a few minutes ago? I actually see them most days now. And all those offshoot paths I’d never bothered to check out because I didn’t have the time? I’ve made a point of trying a new one every week or so.”

  “Where do they lead?”

  “Usually to the same exact place as the next closest path. But definitely still worth checking out.”

  “That is good, yah?”

  “Absolutely. And that brings us to the squirrels . . . They’re actually fun to watch if you take the time. And let me tell you, when one of them doesn’t want to give up an acorn to the next guy, they sure can move faaaast—”

  A strange sound from the direction of the path made her turn in time to see a familiar horse rounding the bend. Before she could even begin to recognize the animal, the buggy it was pulling came into view with Abram at the reins.

  “Abram?” she rasped, stepping forward. “What are you . . . ?”

  The rest of her question faded away as the reality of the last six days returned to the forefront of her thoughts. “Oh no, oh no, oh no . . .” She ran toward the path with Eric close on her heels, her mind’s eye noting everything fr
om Abram’s widened eyes to the way his hands looked unusually white around the reins. “Abram? Abram, what’s wrong? Is it Sadie? Has-has something happened to her?”

  “I stopped at your Dat’s farm to check on you again and while I was there, talking to Hannah, Mary called down to say that Sadie is waking up. When Hannah said you went for a walk, I said that I would find you. Come, Katie, come, I will get you there quickly.”

  Katie ran around the front of Abram’s horse to the opposite side of the buggy, reaching up for his hand as she stopped. But as he helped her up and onto the seat, she looked back to find Eric still standing in the same spot. “Please, Eric, come, quick! There is room for you if we all squeeze close. But we must hurry! I want to be there when Sadie opens her eyes!”

  He waved her offer away before returning Abram’s nod of acknowledgment. “No. Go. Be with Sadie. I can find my way back.”

  Chapter 31

  She’d watched Hannah take the stairs two and three at a time throughout most of their childhood, but until that moment, Katie had always been the one lagging behind, taking it slow—making sure not to fall, get hurt, or be too loud. Knowing Sadie was starting to come to just beyond the top step, though, changed everything. In fact, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t entirely sure Abram’s buggy had come to a complete stop before she was off the seat and running for the front door.

  “I’m here! I’m here!” she called as she crested the last step and turned left toward Mary’s room, her heart seemingly vacillating between rapid, staccato beats and no beats at all.

  More than anything, she wanted to believe Sadie was truly waking. But the other part of her—the part that had been sitting by her little sister’s side nearly nonstop for six days—was afraid it was nothing more than the periodic semiconscious state that enabled medicine and liquid nutrition to be ingested.

  Stopping just outside the open doorway, she made herself breathe—in, out, in, out. “Please, Sadie,” she whispered. “Please . . .”

  Hannah popped her head through the doorway, grabbed Katie by the forearm, and pulled her inside. “She’s awake, Katie!”

  She looked past her twin to the little girl stretched across the bed no different than she’d been when Katie left. Her heart sank. “No, Hannah, she does this. She opens her eyes but she doesn’t really look at anything. It’s enough for me to get her medicine and a few sips of her special drink into her, though, so it’s better than nothing.”

  Steady footsteps just over her shoulder pulled her attention off Sadie and fixed it, instead, on the top of the staircase from which she’d just come. Abram stepped into full view, his gaze seeking and holding Katie’s long enough to offer a nod of encouragement and a smile that belied the emotion she saw in everything from the way he swallowed, to the way he clutched and unclutched the top post. “It is a shame to waste such speed now, Katie.”

  “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to jump from the buggy like that,” Katie said, glancing back at Sadie in her bed. “I thought she was really waking up. But I just need to give her that special drink the doctor wants her to have.”

  Squaring her shoulders, she stepped into the room, made her way past Hannah, Travis, and finally Mary, and claimed her spot beside the narrow bed. With a practiced hand, she felt Sadie’s forehead, cheeks, and—

  A gasp from the general direction of Mary’s bed made her look up long enough to follow the teenager’s pointed finger right back to a now wide-eyed Sadie. Grabbing the edge of the bed for support, Katie leaned into the little girl’s sight line.

  “Ka . . . tie!”

  She heard her answering intake of air, even felt the sway of the bed as Abram lunged forward to keep her from falling off the open side, but really, all that mattered at that moment was the clear-eyed little girl smiling—smiling!—back up at her with the kind of love Katie felt all the way down to her toes. “I’m here, sweet girl, just like I promised.”

  “We’re here, too, Sadie!” Hannah said, moving in beside Katie and gesturing toward Travis and Mary.

  Sadie turned her head just long enough to smile at the other faces in the room before they scattered to share the news, and then brought her undivided attention back on Katie. “I feel better!”

  “I am so very, very glad to hear that, Sadie.” And she was. In fact, there was no amount of lip nibbling, cheek biting, or rhythmic breathing that could hold back the tears of joy now running down her cheeks.

  Sadie, in turn, yawned and rolled onto her side, her pale white hand instantly moving in to pillow her soft cheek. “I love you, Katie. Abram, too.”

  Abram . . .

  Katie watched Sadie’s eyes drift closed and then turned to find Abram smiling at the two of them with so much love in his eyes it literally took her breath away. Like the chair that had provided her weary body shelter during the nearly weeklong string of sleepless nights, her faith and Abram’s quiet yet steadfast support over the past six days had given her what she needed most—strength. And hope. “She-she’s going to be okay, Abram,” she whispered in a voice choked with so many different emotions it was a wonder she could talk at all.

  “Yah.”

  “Thank you, Abram. Thank you for understanding my need to stay by Sadie’s side, and for coming to get me when she began to wake. I-I don’t know what I would have done without your support these past six—”

  Something resembling pain faltered his smile a split second before he waved off the rest of her sentence. “Sadie is well again. That is all that matters.”

  And then he was gone, the fading sound of his footsteps enveloping her in an all too familiar sadness.

  * * *

  She was waiting alongside the covered bridge on Route 15 when Abram slowed his buggy to a stop beneath the large maple tree that shielded the oft-dry creek bed from the view of passing cars. With three easy motions, he jumped down from his seat, tethered Tucker to the trunk of the tree, and pulled his drawing pad off his seat, the anticipation she would have expected to see noticeably absent.

  “I was hoping I’d find you here,” Katie called out as she stepped out from the side of the bridge to meet him. “And . . . here you are.”

  The sparkle her unexpected presence ignited in his eyes was just as real as it was short-lived. “Katie? Is everything okay? Did something happen with Sadie?”

  “No. No. Sadie is fine. She even ate all of her own scrapple and some of mine this morning. Miss Lottie says that is a sure sign she is feeling better.”

  “That is good to hear.” He peeked over his shoulder at the road. “I don’t see your Dat’s buggy . . .”

  Dropping her hands to the sides of her lavender dress, she shrugged. “That is because I walked.”

  “Alone?” he asked, looking around again.

  “Yah.”

  “But Miller’s Pond is”—he pointed in the direction from which they’d both come—“that way.”

  She made a face as she met and held his gaze. “I know that, Abram. I’m here to see you.”

  “Me?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  He studied her for a second before stepping around toward the large rock she’d suspected he used. When he reached it, he lowered himself to its relatively flat surface and repositioned his flat-brimmed hat to lessen the glare of the noonday sun. “I guess I am. Surprised, that is.”

  “About what?” she asked, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

  “That you found me here, for starters.”

  “It’s lunchtime. And you said this is where you like to come to plan out the next piece of furniture you will make.”

  “You remember that?”

  “Of course.” She held her breath as a butterfly fluttered to a stop on the sleeve of her dress, and then redirected her focus back to Abram as it flew off. “And the other reason you’re surprised I’m here?”

  “Because of the Englisher at your Dat’s farm.”

  “You mean Eric?”

  Pain propelled his attention off her fa
ce and down toward the pad of paper in his hand. “Yah.”

  “Eric left this morning. Travis and Hannah leave tomorrow.”

  “I imagine that makes you sad?” he asked, glancing back at her.

  “I’ll miss our talks, but that is where he belongs.”

  “Will you follow?” he asked. “When Sadie is stronger?”

  She drew back, startled by the question. “Follow Eric to New York? No, of course not. This is my home.”

  “But I saw your face when you were together. He made you happy at a time I could not.”

  She tried to make sense of what he was saying, but just as she started to ask for clarification, the memory of Abram and Tucker rounding the corner near Miller’s Pond the previous day brought everything into focus. “I was happy for Eric yesterday. But I was not happy. Sadie was still sick.”

  He shifted the pad in his left hand to the rock. “After that first night, you did not leave Sadie’s side when I stopped by. But yesterday, you went to the pond. With the Englisher.”

  “Annie was napping and Mary sat with Sadie.” But even as she said it, she knew her answer sounded hollow. Abram was smart, observant, and thoughtful—all qualities that had led them to this place.

  Harnessing every ounce of courage she could muster into a single inhale, Katie closed the gap between them, sweeping her hand toward the vacant section of rock to the left of the pad. “May I?”

  At his nod, she sat down, pulled the pad onto her lap, and flipped back the cover, the detailed drawing of a corner cabinet sucking the air from her lungs. “Oh, Abram, this is . . . this is beautiful.”

  “I sold it last week. At the furniture store in Goodville. The person who bought it has asked me to build a chest with the same edging as this.” He pointed toward the cabinet, his finger brushing across the piece’s top and side edges. “And this morning? I got an order from the person’s neighbor, who wants me to make a new table for their kitchen.”

  Her answering squeal echoed through the air. “That’s wonderful! Before long, you will have that furniture shop you spoke of!”