She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I never prayed so much in my life for him to return.”
“If all it took was praying, John and I would be together,” Rose Anna told her.
“I’m sorry.” Lavina paused for a moment. “But then one day I found out that David’s dat was seriously ill with the cancer. His mudder asked me to find David and tell him and ask him to come home and help with the farm. So I found David and he returned home, and eventually he and dat gradually made up their differences. And David returned to the church and we got married.”
“And are living happily ever after,” Rose Anna said and did her best not to sound resentful. She didn’t envy her schweschder—she really didn’t. She loved a happy ever after. It was why she read the romance novels she kept hidden under her pillow.
Lavina smiled. “Well, mostly. We have our differences now and then. But we work them out because we love each other. But my point is that I didn’t hunt him down, but I did let him know that I loved him and wanted to have a life with him.”
“Sam left home not long after David did,” Mary Elizabeth said. “Even after their dat had been told he’d beaten the cancer, by then there was still such tension between Amos and Sam. You know that Sam was just as resistant to returning home and to our church as David.”
She took a deep breath and looked at Rose Anna. “All I’m trying to say is that like Lavina, I couldn’t stop loving Sam, so I let him know and didn’t give up on us. But I didn’t set out to hunt or entrap him.”
“Well, that’s all I’m saying I’m going to do,” Rose Anna said stubbornly.
“Allrecht,” Mary Elizabeth said, but she exchanged a doubtful look with Lavina.
Rose Anna was glad when they went upstairs a few minutes later. It gave her some quiet time to come up with a plan.
Her two schweschders might be acting like their relationships had just happened, but clearly that wasn’t working for her and John. She needed a plan, a way to get what she wanted.
Lavina and Mary Elizabeth didn’t just tease her for being the boppli of the family. They also teased her for getting what she wanted—whether it was to be treated to a fancy lunch as she’d gotten Mary Elizabeth to do not so long ago. And she was gut at finding a way to get out of chores she didn’t want to do as well.
She hoped they were right this time about her getting what she wanted.
***
John couldn’t believe it, but he found himself looking out for sneak snowball attacks for the next several days.
Talk about silly.
But he wasn’t letting Rose Anna catch him unawares like that again. He climbed into his truck and drove home. Despite telling his brother he was enjoying his time as a bachelor, tonight—just like many other nights—he was going home to a solitary supper of some version of ramen noodles and some time renovating his current living space.
The small caretaker’s cottage was a step down from the apartment he’d rented with Sam. The walls hadn’t been painted in years, there was only a sagging single bed in the one bedroom and an assortment of lawn furniture in the living room.
And he’d found evidence of mice in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink.
But it was cheap, and he didn’t need much. He had talked the owner into quite a price break by offering to do painting and repair.
The trouble was it meant adding more work onto a busy day making deliveries in his truck for one business and doing part-time construction jobs he picked up.
He knew some local Amish found jobs in tourism and such, but he preferred what he was doing for now.
When things were tough back home, his mamm had always said God would provide.
Sometimes John felt as if God had forgotten him.
He shook off the thought. No sense thinking about that now. And he sure didn’t want another dat—the important one—angry at him.
So he heated some leftovers Lavina had sent home with him the other day and tried not to think about how it must feel to be the settled husband he’d joked with David that he didn’t want to be.
He ate the meal on a metal tray and watched the small television set. Both had been thrift store finds.
And then he spent the next two hours repairing the kitchen cabinets. Finally, exhausted, he took a shower, and when the water ran cold after just a few minutes, he wondered if he’d be talking to the owner about replacing the water heater soon.
The bed, even lumpy as it was, felt good to his tired body.
As he began to drift off, he found himself wondering what Rose Anna was doing right now.
Was it his imagination that when she thought he wasn’t looking at her the last time he’d seen her that she’d looked . . . lonely?
No, that had to be his imagination. He’d heard through the Amish grapevine that she was seeing Peter.
There was an expression about making your bed and lying in it. Well, he’d done that. He’d left his community, left the woman he loved, and now here he was lying in this lumpy bed all by himself.
Suddenly he was wide awake.
***
Rose Anna caught her attention wandering several times during church service.
This had to stop, she told herself.
The plan to win John Stoltzfus kept intruding. The plan. She almost giggled with joy at the thought and just caught herself. Oh, she wouldn’t ever dare to call it that out loud. She’d written it in her journal and tucked it under a loose floorboard in her closet in her bedroom. She didn’t dare tuck the journal under her pillow. It wasn’t that her schweschders would go looking for it. Journals were sacred after all. No one snooped. But this plan was just too private, too daring, to risk anyone seeing it.
Her schweschders loved to tease her about being the boppli of the family, tease her about being immature, tease her about just about everything. They’d had quite a time laughing at her about pursuing John that day not so long ago.
Wasn’t there a saying about anything worth having was worth working for?
The woman sitting on the bench in front of her moved restlessly. Then she got up. Rose Anna had been absorbed in her thoughts and hadn’t noticed who had sat there.
Now she saw that it was Jenny Bontrager. Jenny rose and slipped from the room, moving with a limp so slight only those who knew her detected it. Rose Anna knew that every so often sitting on the hard bench for three hours was too much for Jenny, and she’d leave the room to walk around and ease her back. As she walked past Rose Anna, Jenny gave her a smile that seemed strained at the edges.
So Rose Anna found herself getting up and following Jenny out of the room.
“Are you allrecht?” she asked her when she caught up with her near the front door.
Jenny turned, and Rose Anna saw how pale she looked. Her face was pale, her gray eyes shadowed as though she hadn’t been sleeping well. Rose Anna knew Jenny was in her forties, but today she moved as if she was older, not her bright, energetic self.
“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Benches and my back have never been close friends. When I woke up this morning, it was aching. I should have taken something for the pain before I left the house.”
“Do you want me to get Matthew?”
“No, the service is almost over.”
“I can ask Mamm if she has any aspirin or ibuprofen.”
“I can wait. Moving around helps. I thought I’d get my bonnet and coat and walk around the porch a bit.”
“I’ll join you. If you don’t mind the company.”
“I’d love it.”
They walked into the front room, got their things, then stepped outside.
“How are the quilting classes going at the shelter?” Jenny asked.
“Very well. We’d love to have you join us again someday soon.”
“I could come next week. I’m not the quilter you and your schweschders are, but I enjoy helping where I can.”
“The women enjoy having visitors since they can’t get out much.” The memory of what had
happened in the last class came to her. She hesitated.
“What is it?”
“I—well, there’s this new resident. She reminded me of you when you first came here to Paradise. After you were hurt in the car bombing overseas.”
“She was injured?”
“Well, I can’t see any physical injuries . . .” Rose Anna trailed off, frowning. “Kate said she has something called PTSD.”
Jenny nodded. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I see.”
“Sitting next to the window scared her. I found her huddled under the table, shaking and crying. Kate got under there with her and talked to her.”
Then she pressed her fingers against her lips and shook her head. “Oh, if you come to the class, you won’t say anything to the woman? I wouldn’t want her to be embarrassed.”
“No, I won’t. Promise.” Jenny paced the porch, and her steps seemed to get easier. “You know, if Kate talked to her she’ll know what to do to get her the help she needs.”
“Ya, when Mamm and I talked about it she said Kate’s been here so long we forget she was in the military before she became a police officer. And her mann was in the military, too.”
She glanced at Jenny. “I can’t imagine going into a war zone voluntarily.”
“It took me a long time to adjust when I came here,” Jenny said. “I felt guilty being back home and safe when I knew the children were still there living with fear and hunger and their parents and siblings were being killed around them.”
Rose Anna didn’t know what to say. It was so far outside her experience, this talk of war and of innocent kinner being hurt.
They sat, silent for a long moment, hearing the sounds of a hymn being sung inside the house.
“May I ask you something?” Rose Anna broke the silence between them. “Not about war. About, well, about . . . well, about men.”
Jenny laughed. “I’m not much of an expert on them.”
“But you’ve been married a long time.”
“True. But I’m not sure that even makes me an expert on one man.” She paused. “I might have been married to him for even longer if things had worked out years before,” Jenny mused, looking thoughtful.
“Really?”
She nodded. “You know my daed decided not to join the church and left the community. But he let me visit my grossmudder every summer. I fell in love with the boy next door, but I went back home and went to college, and the years passed. It just didn’t work out for us at the time.”
She sat in one of the rocking chairs and stared out at the fields surrounding the house. “And then I got hurt. While I was lying in the hospital, my grossmudder sent me a quilt with a note. It said to come home and heal. I did, and there was Matthew, and I was attracted to him all over again. I thought at first that it wasn’t fair, he was married. But he was a widower. I think I fell in love with his kinner before I fell in love with him again.”
Rose Anna sighed. The story touched her romantic heart. Then she realized Jenny was watching her with a faint smile on her lips. “Is there a reason you’re asking about men?”
“I’m trying to understand them.”
Jenny laughed. “One in particular is my guess.”
She grinned. “Ya.”
“So what is it that’s troubling you?”
It was tough to know what to ask. She felt she could trust Jenny, but she didn’t want to say too much.
“I just . . . how do you know if someone’s the mann God set aside for you?”
“I haven’t thought about that for a long time.” She smiled and fell silent. “When I first knew Matthew I was convinced he was the one for me. Things didn’t work out. We went our separate ways—I went off to college. Matthew stayed here, married, had kinner. We didn’t see each other for years.”
She shifted in her chair. “Then I got hurt and came here to recuperate. I could barely walk, was suffering from depression, and didn’t know where I was going with my life. And there was Matthew still next door. This time with three adorable children. And he was a widower. This time things worked out, as you know.”
Rose Anna absorbed what she’d said. “So what you’re saying is it came down to timing.”
Jenny smiled slowly and nodded. “That’s the perfect way to put it. God’s timing.”
They went back inside, and Rose Anna thought about what Jenny had said.
Timing. Just how much time was she supposed to give John? It felt like she’d been waiting for him for forever.
4
Thanks for the ride,” Rose Anna told Kate as she got into her car. “Mamm needed the buggy today.”
“It’s no problem,” Kate said cheerfully as she pulled out onto the road and headed toward town. “I wanted to talk to you about Brooke.”
“Is she okay? I haven’t seen her for weeks. Is she ever coming back to the quilting class?”
“Yes and yes.” Kate glanced at her then back at the road. “I’ve stopped by to talk to her a couple of times, and a friend from a counseling center did as well. When she does come back we should put her at a table in the back of the room, away from the windows. Pearl said she has an additional table she can set up in the room.”
She paused. “The thing we have to do is help her feel comfortable when she comes back. She’s embarrassed she had an anxiety attack so bad she climbed under the table that day.”
“I’ve never experienced what she has, but anyone can have an anxiety attack. I remember someone I knew had one years ago. She was afraid of going to the hospital for an operation.”
“I wouldn’t wish one on my worst enemy.”
Rose Anna remembered her conversation with Jenny on Sunday and told Kate that she might stop by for a class sometime soon.
“That would be nice. They enjoyed her last time she came. It can get to be isolating at the shelter. They can’t come and go as they’d like since so many of them are hiding from their husbands or boyfriends until we can put the abusers in jail.”
She shivered. “I can’t imagine living like that.” Then she looked at Kate. “I’m not saying we don’t have abusers in my community. That would be lying. You and I know it’s not an Englisch problem.” She thought about how Lavina had told her Amos, John’s dat, had talked to his fraa when she visited their house one day. A man didn’t need to raise his fists to hurt a woman. Cruel words were almost as bad. Thank God Amos had changed, had learned before it was too late.
Now if he would only repair the rift between himself and John, his youngest sohn.
She sighed.
“You okay?”
Rose Anna nodded. “I’m fine. I was just thinking about something.”
“I’ve been told I listen well.”
She tilted her head and studied Kate. “I know you do.” She bit her lip.
“It’s an open-ended offer. Any time you want to talk about anything just let me know.”
“You’re a good person, Kate Kraft.”
“You, too.” She pulled into the driveway of the shelter and turned off the ignition. “If you’re not ready to talk about whatever made you sigh so sadly, let’s go have some fun quilting.”
Relieved, Rose Anna nodded. Funny how someone so different from her had become such a good friend, one who understood her so well. “Let’s go.”
They went inside, climbed the stairs to the quilting classroom, and found it full of women who were already sewing and chatting happily.
And sitting at the table at the very back of the room, away from the windows, sat Brooke staring very seriously at a quilting block in front of her.
“Go help her,” Kate suggested.
“But wouldn’t you be better?” Rose Anna asked. “I—”
“Go. She needs to start feeling normal. Show her how to quilt. We know what happens when women come to this class and start sewing.”
So Rose Anna walked over to Brooke. She smiled. “Hi. I’m glad you came back to class. Would you like some help with that block? It’s one of my favorites
.”
“I could use all the help I can get. I don’t have any experience sewing. Well, other than sewing up a gash in my leg one day when the medics had bigger injuries to take care of.”
She grinned self-deprecatingly. “Guess I should thank that home economics class they forced me to take in high school. I’ll show you my stitches someday.”
Rose Anna stared at her as she slid into the seat next to Brooke. “You really did your own stitches? I was the biggest baby you ever saw when I had to have stitches at the emergency room. I can’t imagine putting a needle in my skin. Or going without that shot they gave me before they did the stitches.”
She glanced at Kate helping a student at the front of the room. “You and Kate have lived such different lives than me. Mine has been so . . . boring compared to yours.”
“I’ll take boring,” Brooke said fervently. “Boring sounds pretty good to me right now.”
Rose Anna nodded. “Let me show you how to piece this block. Sewing is very soothing once you get the method. I think you’ll like it. The class has been very popular here at the shelter. Especially since Leah started a shop in town to sell what the women create.”
Brooke watched her pin the block. “I doubt I’m going to get good enough to sell anything.”
She glanced around and frowned at the windows. Rose Anna saw her hands shake. “I hope I won’t have to stay here long. Home became a prison before I had to leave it. I don’t want to feel I have to stay here a minute longer than I have to. I don’t want this place to become another prison.”
Rose Anna’s fingers faltered on the straight pins she was using to hold two pieces of material together. Home had become a prison? How sad. And sadder still to have to be here at the shelter. Pearl made it as safe and pleasant, homelike, as she could, but it still was a hiding place no matter how homey she’d made it.
Home should be a place to feel safe and happy and loved. She knew she’d been lucky to have a good home with her family all her life. She wondered if she had ever told her parents how much she appreciated what they’d given her.
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