Some of the specks of flying paint had landed on Luke’s shirt and face. He looked like he was coming down with the chicken pox. Luke glanced down at his cream-colored shirt and groaned. “Josiah Yoder, it’s a gute thing you’re my best friend, or you’d have a mouthful of dirt right now.”
Josiah just shook his head. A friend like Luke Bontrager truly made Josiah appreciate Dan Kanagy.
At least he was good for something.
Chapter Twelve
Josiah, Luke, and Dan had been sitting on the porch since eleven o’clock, listening for the van that would bring the Honeybee sisters home from Cashton. Luke was whittling a stick, Dan was reading Summer of the Monkeys, and Josiah wasn’t doing anything but worrying. Rose was going to be devastated, and he alone would be responsible.
More than once in the middle of the night, he’d considered jumping out of bed and coming to the farm to paint the barn himself. It was his love for Rose that compelled him to get up, and it was his love for Rose that ultimately kept him at home. This was what she would want, no matter how hard it was to bear.
He didn’t know if it would be harder for him or her.
At three minutes before noon, a white van pulled up the lane. Josiah didn’t know whether he was dreading the sight of that van or hoping for it. He wanted this to be over. He wanted the Honeybee sisters to be safe and the troublemaker to be caught so that Rose would never have to be afraid again.
Well, he supposed that wasn’t all he wanted.
He wanted to marry Rose more than anything in the world. Would Gotte think he was being greedy?
Lily, Poppy, then Rose emerged from the van, each with a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. Josiah’s heart did a double somersault. Lily and Poppy both smiled at their fiancés, but Rose positively beamed at Josiah, as if he were the most wunderbarr sight in the world. He wasn’t sure what to make of it, but it had to be a gute thing. She was happy to see him. At least for another minute or so.
Someone inside the van said good-bye, and Rose waved as the van turned around and drove back the way it had come.
Dan, Luke, and Josiah walked down the porch steps in unison. Even as happy as he was to see Rose, Josiah couldn’t smile. Not when he was about to shatter what little sense of security Rose had left.
“What a nice surprise,” Lily said. “Are you our welcoming committee?”
“Something like that,” mumbled Luke. He took Poppy’s bag and slung it over his shoulder.
Dan took Lily’s bag, and Josiah reached for Rose’s. Her eyes glowed with warmth as she handed it to him.
“How was the funeral?” Dan asked, glancing at Josiah. They had decided they should ease into the bad news slowly. Now Josiah was having second thoughts. Maybe they should just get it over with, like ripping a bandage from a wound. Or maybe they didn’t have to say anything. They could still sneak over tonight and paint before Rose was the wiser.
His mouth felt as dry as sawdust. No matter how painful, he knew he had to tell her. And he should use the bandage method before he talked himself out of going through with it.
“Rose,” Josiah said, before any of them said a word about the funeral.
It was better this way. It was better this way.
If he told himself enough times, he might start to believe it.
She looked at him with those trusting eyes. He’d worked hard to earn that trust. He couldn’t betray it now.
“Rose,” he said again. “There is something I need to show you. Will you come?”
They had decided that Josiah would show Rose the spray-painted barn first, and the others would come later. That way, if Rose fell apart, she wouldn’t feel like she had embarrassed herself in front of everyone. Josiah had told her that he didn’t mind if she cried, but he knew how unnecessarily ashamed she felt.
Bitsy had insisted he should be the one to tell Rose. Bitsy liked him, and she knew how much he loved Rose. His heart swelled. He wouldn’t disappoint either of them.
Rose glanced at her sisters doubtfully while trying to pretend she had no doubts. “Ach. Okay. Where are we going?”
Needing to touch her, to assure her of his faithfulness, he took her hand firmly in his. He didn’t even care if Bitsy was watching from the window. He needed Rose’s comforting touch probably more than she needed his. He glanced at her and suddenly felt overwhelmingly sad.
Maybe she didn’t need his at all.
A blush tinted her cheeks as she looked down at her hand in his, but she didn’t pull away. He shouldn’t hold her hand. Rose was too kind to reject him, even if she didn’t want him to touch her. Oh sis yuscht. His heart felt as if it were breaking, and she hadn’t even said a word.
She furrowed her brow. “Are you all right?”
“Will you come with me?”
She seemed to sense that he needed the solace of her hand in his. Her sisters made no objection, and Bitsy was nowhere to be seen as they strolled around to the back of the barn.
“Rose,” he said softly as they got closer to the chicken coop. “Something terrible has happened.”
She squeezed his hand tighter. “Aunt Bitsy?”
“Nae. Nae. Bitsy is fine. She’s in the house making apple cake with caramel topping. Everyone is fine. It is something else.” He pulled her up short. “It is something that Luke and Dan and I can paint over, and you will never have to see it. A message that the troublemakers painted on the barn. If you would rather not know, we can go back to the house right now.”
He hoped against hope she would ask him to take her to the house.
She turned pale but didn’t even glance behind her. “I’d like to see it.”
His heart sank, and he pulled her closer and tucked her arm beneath his elbow as they walked. “I’m going to watch out for you, Rose. I don’t want you to worry.”
They walked the short distance around the barn. Josiah’s hand shook as he turned and pointed to the ugly words that would surely upset her.
Rose must be punished. Vengeance is mine.
She turned to stone beside him as she read the message. For a moment, her face was a mask of calm indifference. And then she began to tremble. Holding on to her arm, he could feel the tremor of her deepest fears. “It’s all my fault,” she whispered. “All because of me.”
“Nae, Rose. This is not your fault.”
Tears pooled in her eyes. “I have gone against Gotte, and hurt my family.” She put her hand to her mouth, as if to contain the sorrow that wanted to spill out. It didn’t work. She began to sob.
Rose’s pain felt like a stab to his heart. He should have known that, along with the terror, she would blame herself. Not caring about consequences, he gathered her into his arms and pressed his lips to her forehead. He didn’t know if she would pull away or welcome his embrace, but he couldn’t think of what else to do to stop both of them from falling into a dark place.
Instead of resisting his arms as he’d half expected her to, Rose buried her face against his chest and cried as if her heart were breaking. He tightened his hold around her, letting his warmth mingle with hers, hoping his touch would give her comfort but drawing more strength from her than she ever could from him. If he could keep her this close to him forever, he would.
They stood almost motionless while Rose cried and Josiah’s heart ached for her. “I’m getting your shirt wet,” she said, almost as if that upset her as much as the painted message on the barn.
He reluctantly took one arm from around her and pulled three tissues from his pocket. “I don’t mind the wet shirt.”
Still in the protective circle of his arms, she wiped her nose and let out a shuddering sigh. “I didn’t think I could humiliate myself any more than I already have.”
“You haven’t humiliated yourself. You’ve only proven you care deeply. If you weren’t so soft, you wouldn’t take things so hard. But your softness is your greatest strength. You use it to love and minister to people. I would never change that about you, not for all the dry shirts in
the world.”
“I’m scared,” she said, as if she were confessing her worst sin to him.
The ache in his chest was nearly unbearable. “I almost wish I would have painted it over yesterday.”
“Yesterday?”
“They painted it the night after you left for the funeral. Bitsy showed it to me. I wanted to paint over it before you came home.”
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “They’ve left messages before, haven’t they? That’s why our barn door used to be orange and now it’s pink.”
He frowned. “It’s hard to match paint color in the middle of the night.”
“Were those messages for me too?”
“Nae, but we wanted to protect your feelings. That’s why I nearly painted over this message too. You never would have known it was there.”
She lifted her head to study his face. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because as much as I knew it would upset you, I also knew you would want to see it. You don’t want to be afraid, but you don’t want to be treated like a child. It’s impossible to fulfill your two greatest desires at the same time, so I chose the one I thought would make you the happiest. Now I’m not so sure.”
It was as if someone lit a candle behind her eyes. “You think I am brave enough to handle the truth.”
“Of course. But I hate it when you’re frightened.”
To his surprise, her mouth widened into a breathtaking smile. “You don’t think of me like a child, do you?”
He could barely focus on her question. Her smile knocked him flat. “Nae.”
“You don’t pity me or think I’m a project.”
He curled one side of his mouth. “How many times have I told you?”
“But you’ve never shown me before.”
Pressing his lips together, he shuddered to think how close he had come to painting the barn. He would have ruined everything. Would she trust him with more? “Bitsy said that now we might know who is making the trouble on the farm. Do you know what she meant by that?”
It was as if all the anxiety and fear came flooding back. Only this time, she didn’t want him close to her. She pulled away from his embrace and turned her back on him. “I did something I shouldn’t have when I was a little girl, seven years old. We had to move away from Wallsby because of it.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
She ran her hand along the rough wood of the chicken coop and glanced at him. The light in her eyes had gone completely out. “A lot of people were mad at me.”
Josiah wracked his brain for anything a seven-year-old might do to make a whole community mad at her. He couldn’t think of a thing. “You know that I would never be mad at you,” he said softly.
“Don’t say ‘never.’ It is a very long time.”
She trusted him, but she didn’t trust him enough. The pain of it felt like something hot against his skin. “I . . . you don’t have to tell me anything,” he said, choking on every word.
She gazed at him, and he could see something shift in her expression. Though he’d tried to mask it, she saw his hurt. She would never do anything to cause another person pain even at great expense to herself. “I was in the haymow with my friend Mary Beth.”
“Rose,” he said. “What do you want?”
“What?”
“Do you want my tube of paint or don’t you?”
She frowned. “That makes no sense.”
“While it’s true I’ll feel bad if you don’t tell me your story, my feelings don’t matter as much as yours do. This is your story, not mine.” He went to her, reached out, and smoothed one of her kapp strings between his fingers. “What do you want?”
“If I don’t tell you, you’ll think I don’t trust you.”
“Do you?”
She hesitated. “I’m afraid.”
His gut clenched. “What are you afraid of?”
“That I’ll be a disappointment.”
He wanted to shout from the rooftops that she would never be a disappointment. But she didn’t like “never.” And she didn’t like shouting, and she was afraid of heights. Rooftops were out.
“You’ll never know the strength of my friendship until you test it.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist, fell silent, and stared at the barn. He ached for her to trust him, but he wouldn’t force her and he certainly didn’t want the story because she felt sorry for him. Like her, he didn’t want to be pitied. But he longed to be loved. “Cum,” he said. “Let’s go back to the house. Bitsy will want to hear about your trip, and I promised her I’d fix your wobbly folding chair.”
To his amazement, she reached out and took his hand. He thought his heart might forget how to beat. Gazing at him doubtfully, she bit her bottom lip. “Mary Beth and I were playing in the haymow with her dat’s harness. He came up the ladder and shoved me off the haymow. He had been drinking, and I broke my arm.”
Josiah winced. “You broke your arm?”
“I don’t think I ever recovered from that. Aunt Bitsy called the police. She’d lived among the Englischers for so long, it was a natural thing to do. She was furious. She really is quite terrifying when she’s mad.”
“I don’t wonder that she is,” Josiah said.
“I testified against him, and they sent him to jail.”
Josiah rested his shoulder against the side of the barn. “It’s not the Amish thing to do. The elders want to deal with those matters inside the church.”
“Jah. The community didn’t shun us, but they might as well have. The boys pulled my hair. Poppy got in a lot of fights. The girls wouldn’t talk to any of us, even at gmay. We had to leave after that.”
“I’m sorry.”
A thin tear trickled down her cheek. “His whole family hated us. They said I’d stolen their fater from them, that Gotte would punish us for what I had done. The night before we moved out, someone dropped a note on our porch. It said, ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ That’s why Aunt Bitsy thinks she knows who it is. It is a very familiar phrase.”
Josiah couldn’t stand that look in her eyes, as if everything in the world were bleak and dark and cold. In two long strides, he was beside her with his arms around her. “Rose, you have nothing to be ashamed of. The thought of someone hurting you makes me sick. Funny, isn’t it, how the elders asked me to testify on behalf of Levi Junior, but they wanted you to stay quiet on behalf of the man who hurt you.”
“You testified to help Levi Junior. My testimony only hurt La Wayne Zook.”
He raised his eyebrows in a question. “I’m not so sure. If someone hurt Alvin and Aaron, I would have called the police too.”
A soft moan escaped her lips. “You would?”
“Even though it’s not our way. Even though Gotte is the final judge. Maybe it is weakness in both of us, but I can’t blame you for it.”
She sighed as if she had been holding her breath for a long time. “Denki,” she said, “for not being disappointed.”
“I could never be disappointed in you.”
Her lips twitched upward. “Never is a very long time.”
He glanced at the black letters on the barn. “We need to find La Wayne Zook and have a talk with him.”
Rose seemed to wilt in a matter of seconds. “He’s dead.”
“When did he die?”
Rose drew her brows together. “He died just about the time mischief started happening on our farm.”
Dread filled Josiah’s chest like an overflowing bathtub. He had a very strong feeling that whoever was making mischief blamed Rose for La Wayne’s death. But he could never tell Rose that. She’d wither under the weight of it all. He clenched his jaw to keep a growl from escaping. Never was a long time. He had to tell her. “I think they want revenge.”
She closed her eyes as if the truth were too painful to look at. “Of course they do. Someone is mad about La Wayne Zook, and I am responsible.” Her voice and her fragile composure cracked like ice on a lak
e. “Ach, I wish I hadn’t testified. I’ve hurt so many people.”
She backed away when he tried to gather her in his arms, so he kept his distance and watched in wretched silence while she cried herself out. After a few minutes, she let him put his arm around her shoulders and lead her into the house.
He’d never felt so determined or so powerless.
He would find the person who hated Rose and somehow make him stop terrorizing the Honeybee sisters. In the meantime, he would protect Rose and this farm as best he could.
But he felt powerless to give Rose new eyes, to help her see what she would not see. To show her the way to let go of years of buried guilt for things she had not done. Only Gotte could do that.
Would Gotte show him the way?
Chapter Thirteen
Rose’s eyes stung like they always did after she cried. She pressed the cool towel against her face and breathed in its fresh scent. Lavender. Aunt Bitsy used lavender laundry soap because the scent was supposed to be calming. It was said to help you sleep if you sprinkled it on your sheets.
Rose stared at the bare wall in the washroom. She didn’t know if she would ever be able to sleep again. Someone wanted to do her harm, and she couldn’t say with certainty that she didn’t deserve it. She clamped her teeth together and shoved the towel over her mouth. She would not cry again tonight. Crying in bed left her pillow wet, and it was hard to go to sleep with a stuffy nose. She’d cried enough. She wasn’t a child anymore.
At least Josiah didn’t think so.
She felt as if a warm blanket had been thrown over her shoulders. Josiah really did care about what she wanted. He hadn’t just been pretending. With an almost-smile on her lips, she wiped her hands and set the towel near the sink.
He meant what he said. She was his friend, not his project.
Her heart fluttered like a garden of butterflies when she thought of his strong arms around her. It was there, even under the shadow of that horrible message, that she had felt safe. Josiah made her forget about guilt and shame and broken arms and dead parents. He didn’t like it when she cried, and he was happy when she laughed, but he didn’t try to talk her out of her feelings.
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