The Devoted

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  “Yes, but you can hear her squawk from here.” Frankly, David would not miss Nyna the Mynah’s noctural one-sided conversations. He took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead with one arm. “Let’s go canoeing at Blue Lake Pond.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Now. For one brief afternoon, all is well in Stoney Ridge.”

  She beamed, positively beamed. The joy on her face moved his heart, every time.

  “I’ll go get the girls.”

  “No, no. Just you and me. The girls are fine. Ruthie said she would watch them.” He walked up to her and helped her to her feet. “Just you. And me.” He leaned over to kiss her gently on her lips.

  “On a Saturday afternoon? When the tomatoes need picking and the laundry is waiting to be taken off the clothesline?”

  “Especially then.”

  She grinned and kissed him back. “I’ll meet you by the buggy in five minutes.”

  Not much later, they arrived at Blue Lake Pond and hitched Thistle to a post in the deep shade. David lifted the canoe off the top of the buggy. He and Birdy hoisted it onto their shoulders and lowered it into the water. It was an old canoe, one David had as a boy but hadn’t used since they came to Stoney Ridge. They paddled the canoe slowly around the pond, exploring lovely nooks and crannies along the shoreline, chatting about family news.

  “I was over at Katrina’s this morning,” Birdy said, “helping Molly give the baby a bath.”

  David knew how Birdy loved babies, how she longed for a baby of her own. “Does holding the baby help? Maybe, satisfy the desire for one of your own?”

  “It’s lovely to hold him, but it’s no substitute for having our own baby someday.” She dipped her hand in the water. “I dream of it every day.”

  Every day? It was a thought that rarely occurred to David, only when he considered Birdy. He could barely keep up with the six children he already had, and now two grandchildren.

  Every day? She dreamed of having a baby every single day. He had no idea.

  Lord, he silently prayed, I need to pray for my wife’s deepest desire to be fulfilled. Every day.

  They sat back in the warm sun and drank in the stillness of land and water and sky. The air was windless, the trees were absolutely motionless.

  “It’s so quiet,” Birdy said. “Even the birds are silent. It reminds me of that moment, in church, just before the Vorsinger trills the first note. It’s like we’re in an outdoor sanctuary, one that’s hushed with reverence.”

  Leave it to his Birdy to find a way to worship a majestic God in an old canoe on a second-rate pond. She viewed all of life in quiet wonder. Birdy taught David that he had been set down in a world of wonders: rivers and trails, birds and beavers. “A lot is going on,” Birdy often reminded him, “when you don’t think anything is.”

  He loved this woman. Sometimes, it seemed as if he’d been frozen for the last few years and was only now beginning to thaw. “Birdy, have you ever seen the ocean?”

  “No. Someday, perhaps.”

  Someday, definitely. He would love to watch her face as she dipped her toes into the sea for the first time, breathed in that salt-tinged, oxygen-rich air. She would love it.

  “So you’ve been?”

  “Yes. Years ago.” He looked over the side at the placid water, watching a water bug skate over the surface of the pond.

  “With Anna?”

  He looked back at her sharply. How did she know? “Yes.”

  “David, I like to hear about your memories with Anna. You rarely mention her name. I don’t want you to feel as if you can’t talk about her.”

  She had told him such things before, but he still felt uncomfortable sharing memories of his first wife with his second wife. It was one thing to have the children talk of Anna as their mother—something he encouraged—but for him to speak of her as his wife felt completely different. Uncomfortable. Memories of Anna were . . . private. If he shared them, he felt as if they might lose their effervescence, like opening a bottle of carbonated pop.

  “You get a certain look on your face when you’re thinking of her, as if you’re lost in another world.”

  He reached out for her hand. “Maybe I seem to be in another world, but I’m not lost.”

  She smiled.

  “At times it might not be easy for me to bring my past up, but you are always welcome to ask me anything.”

  “Anything?”

  He nodded. “Anything.”

  For a long moment, they gazed at each other, until a curious look came over Birdy’s face. “Can you swim?”

  “Yes, of course. Can’t you?”

  “I’m an excellent swimmer. I had to be to keep up with those brothers of mine.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  She pointed to their bare feet. David looked down and realized the bottom of the canoe was filling up with water. They were sinking! And far from shore.

  She started to chuckle, then laugh out loud—deep down belly laughter. David watched her for a moment. He was not a man prone to levity. Often, he took life so seriously that others encouraged him to lighten up. But Birdy had a way of releasing joy in him. Holy joy. Her laughter was contagious and David couldn’t help but join in. Laughing, laughing, laughing. Laughing until his sides ached. He grabbed the paddles and turned the canoe around to paddle toward shore.

  “We should just give up and swim to shore,” she said between gulps of giggles, tears streaming down her face. “We’ll never make it.”

  “We’ll make it,” David said confidently, though he paddled faster and harder than he had thought was possible.

  Jesse grabbed his favorite clay pitcher to fill with water for C.P.’s dish and stopped short. A strange odor wafted up. He sniffed his pitcher, then ran a finger inside it. He rubbed his fingertips together. Gasoline. Someone had filled it with gasoline! He stormed out to find his two apprentices, sleeping in the sun. “Who did this?” he roared. “Which one of you filled my pitcher with gasoline?”

  The boys jumped up. Sammy looked puzzled, while Leroy looked sheepish. “I did it,” Leroy admitted. “It was Fern’s fault. She told me to mow the front lawn. The mower was out of gas, so I went to the tank, but I couldn’t find anything to catch the gas. So I found that thing and it was empty. I thought I’d use it. It was all Fern’s fault. Blame her.”

  Jesse was incredulous. “Can’t you see that it’s a water pitcher? My favorite water pitcher?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll wash it.” Leroy shrugged his shoulders. “Or you could get another one and we can use this one for gasoline.”

  Jesse couldn’t just go and get another one because this pitcher had once been his mother’s. But there was no way this ignorant boy could understand that. He couldn’t see that this water pitcher was important to Jesse because he couldn’t see longer than his nose. How was anyone ever going to be able to break through Leroy Glick’s thickheadedness?

  Normally, he took the boys along when he delivered a repaired buggy. They would follow him in Jesse’s buggy, partly so that they could observe customer satisfaction and also so that he could get a ride home. Today, he couldn’t handle being around them for one more moment. He harnessed his own horse, Sir Galahad, to the repaired buggy traces and told his useless apprentices that he would be gone for an hour or two. He gave them specific tasks to do, repeated them for clarification, doubting all the time that they would complete them.

  Jesse had to travel through town to get to the Sisters’ House, to deliver their buggy with its reflector bolted tightly on the back, and happened to notice the Sweet Tooth Bakery as he drove up Main Street. On the way home, he decided, he would stop in and treat himself to a cinnamon roll, maybe two, to improve his mood before returning to the simpleton apprentices. After leaving the buggy at the Sisters’ House, he rode Sir Galahad bareback, stopped at the bakery, and tied him to the hitching post. This was a good idea to salvage his mood.

  This was a bad idea to salvage his mood.

  In a hurry, Je
sse Stoltzfus exhaled, frustrated. The wait inside the bakery had nearly reached to the door when he had arrived. He had already waited ten minutes—watching the glass case as only four cinnamon rolls were left, then three, then two. Finally, he was at the counter, ready to order. The door opened with a gust of hot humid air. “Wann en Gaul eigschpannt is, mach mer die Lein fescht.” When a horse is hitched up, one should tie the line securely.

  He turned around slowly, curious as to whom the beguiling voice, low and musical, belonged. Guckich. Gorgeous. That’s the only word he could think of to describe this young woman. His mind spun as he realized he knew her, and from the look of horror that filled her face, she recognized him too. Jenny Yoder, a girl he had known in Ohio. Swallowing with effort, he suppressed an unmanly shudder.

  They went to school together for a few years, before she moved and he’d lost track of her and her older brother Chris. But he’d never forgotten her. She had been that annoying.

  “Why . . . Jesse Stoltzfus!” She managed a smile that almost appeared genuine. “What a coincidence . . . seeing you . . . here. In Stoney Ridge.”

  “Jenny. Hello. And you’re right, it certainly is a coincidence. I wasn’t expecting to see you either.” Ever again.

  “Your hair.” She sounded amazed. “It’s still the color of carrots.”

  Jesse tried to come up with a tart retort but drew a blank. Frustrating! He turned his attention back to the counter clerk. “I’d like that last cinnamon roll.”

  Jenny Yoder gasped. “Oh no. I just got into town and I’ve been dreaming of Sweet Tooth Bakery cinnamon rolls for days. Weeks. Months!”

  The clerk froze as she reached into the counter for the last roll, then glanced up at Jesse with a question in her eyes. Are you going to be a gentleman? the look said.

  Nope. Too bad for Jenny Yoder, Jesse wanted to say. Come back tomorrow. “Yes, well . . . I . . .” He turned to look at Jenny. For an instant, her expression faltered and he was startled again by her appearance. That . . . loveliness.

  Then her lips formed a tight curve. “But don’t let that stop you.”

  Normally he wouldn’t. However, Jesse liked having the upper hand, especially when it came to Jenny Yoder. “It is most kind of you to concern yourself with me, Jenny, but I am, in fact, more interested in the low-fat bran muffin. That cinnamon roll could feed a family of four.” He was aware of the smugness of his tone. And the frown on Jenny’s face. Her expression told him she knew exactly what he was doing, which only increased his satisfaction.

  “You could share it,” the bakery clerk suggested. “I can cut it in half and you can share it.”

  “Nonsense,” Jesse said. “Let the portly girl have it.” That wasn’t kind and it wasn’t true. Jenny wasn’t at all portly. He pointed to a very dry-looking bran muffin in the case.

  “Excellent,” Jenny said, uninsulted, accepting the cinnamon roll from the clerk.

  Jesse took the bran muffin out of the bag and took a bite. It tasted like it looked. Horrible.

  Jenny was at the door, turned, and leveled her gaze at Jesse, unblinking. “By the way, your horse is gone.”

  He strode to the window and looked at the hitching post. Sir Galahad had left without him.

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you when I came into the store. You hadn’t fastened the reins in a tight enough knot.” She took a bite out of that sweet, gooey cinnamon roll, slathered in icing and laced with cinnamon, and her eyes swooned. “Appeditlich,” she said through a mouthful. Delicious. “Better than I even remembered.” She gave him a breezy, queen-like wave of her hand as she walked out the door.

  9

  As she crossed the road for the third time that day, Ruthie was embarrassed to realize she kept making up excuses to run over to the inn in hopes of bumping into Patrick Kelly. She had started across the road twice and turned back, until she finally found an ironclad excuse to head over. In her hand was a long list of new vocabulary words, including phrases that he could use in everyday conversation: Di grabba greisha “caw, caw, caw.” Ich vinsh so geahn ’s veah gaych di law. The crows scream “caw, caw, caw.” I earnestly wish it would be against the law.

  She smiled at the irony of the phrase, considering Patrick had the noisiest bird in Stoney Ridge as a pet.

  She found Rose taking laundry down off the clothesline on the far side of the house. “I thought I’d stop by to see if you needed any help with the cottage.”

  Rose finished folding a towel and dropped it into the large wicker basket by her bare feet. “With this particular guest, there probably won’t be much to do on a daily basis. He seems like a very self-sufficient young man.”

  Ruthie glanced over at the cottage. That was a very good description of Patrick. Utterly self-sufficient. Frustratingly so.

  “I would’ve thought it might bother someone to stay in the cottage after the stranger died, less than a week ago. But Patrick Kelly seems to be a very practical young man. It didn’t faze him.”

  Ruthie looked down at her toes. “Rose, I am sorry about that stranger. I just didn’t know what to do.”

  “Oh Ruthie, please don’t worry about that night.” She handed her a stack of towels. “You’re going to meet a lot of people in need in your life. You should feel confident that your instinct was a good one. He wasn’t a dangerous man. He was a man who needed help.” She reached out to pluck some clothespins off a pair of pant legs, folded them, and dropped them in the basket. “In a way, I’m glad the stranger passed away feeling safe and wasn’t left to wander the road during the night. It was just . . . his appointed time to die.” Rose bent down to pick up the basket, filled to the brim with folded, dry laundry with its lingering scent of sun and soap. “Would you mind taking those towels to the cottage?”

  Ruthie could barely contain a smile. “I’d be happy to.” Extremely happy.

  She practically skipped her way to the cottage. She knocked on the door, but there was no answer. She tried the door and found it unlocked. She hesitated. She had gone into this cottage dozens of times when she filled in for Mim Schrock at the inn—delivering fresh towels, taking out the rubbish, changing sheets . . . so why was she nervous? What was wrong with her! She was just leaving a stack of towels for the inn’s guest. And a list of vocabulary words. Nothing more.

  She pushed the door open, a little skittish after talking about the stranger’s death. “Patrick?”

  No answer, other than a “Jesus wept!” squawk from Nyna the Mynah, sitting on a perch in her cage.

  Ruthie stepped into the cottage and set the towels on the table, along with the vocabulary list. The room smelled stuffy, so she unlocked the window over the kitchen sink and hoisted it up, letting in a spray of fresh air. The scents outside were the scents of summer, triggering a memory of walking hand in hand with her mother one morning. She stilled, lost in that moment, feeling a sharp pain of missing her.

  Losing a parent, suddenly and unexpectedly, was what she and Luke had in common. Maybe it was the bond that glued them together, the thing that made it hard to just dismiss him as a lost cause. She understood his emptiness.

  A huge part of Ruthie’s life felt unfinished, incomplete. There were so many questions she would have liked to ask her mother, ones only meant for a mother. She liked Birdy, loved her, but it wasn’t the same, and her sister Katrina was too busy for her.

  Nyna let out a squawk, jerking Ruthie back to the present. She peered around the rooms, unabashedly curious. It was spotless. The bed was made. Next to the bed was an open Bible, with underlines and notes all over the page. How strange! No Amish person in her church would dare write in a Bible, unless it was to record births and deaths. She didn’t touch anything, but she did look to see what Patrick had been reading that day and what was so important that he underlined it, twice.

  “A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” Proverbs 16:9. At least, Ruthie thought, he read from the King James Version. Then she squinted to see what note he had wri
tten in the margin, in surprisingly sloppy penmanship, as if he’d written it while riding a scooter down a gravel road.

  Let things come to me instead of rushing at them as I usually do.

  Curious! It was hard to imagine Patrick Kelly as someone who rushed at things. At anything. He moved slowly and cautiously.

  Though, in a way, maybe he did rush at things. Coming to Stoney Ridge, wanting to convert to be Amish, trying to learn Penn Dutch in less than thirty days, spending time with Jesse to learn how to handle a horse and buggy.

  So maybe he was someone who rushed at life instead of letting it come to him. Was that so bad? She admired that quality about him. She, on the other hand, sat and watched everything with a critical eye. A faultfinder, Luke said of her once, and she couldn’t deny it.

  Nyna the Mynah watched her every move, staring at her with an accusing look that spoke volumes. A look that might as well be saying, “Trespasser! How dare you!” Ruthie felt a twinge of guilt for poking around Patrick’s room. More than a twinge. She felt as if she had read his diary and that was just wrong. She felt ashamed of herself. She had never read her sisters’ diaries, not even Katrina’s, and that was the only diary that held any interest to her. She left the cottage quickly and walked down the driveway.

  “Ruthie!”

  She spun around to see Luke coming toward her, trotting out his charm as a matter of course. “Did you get my roses to apologize for the other night?”

  “For the other night? Or for the next morning, when I cleaned up your mess?”

  A hint of confusion ran through his eyes, and Ruthie realized he hadn’t given a second thought to cleaning up after himself. Then he quickly swung back into charismatic character. He straightened his back and gave her the smart bow of a butler. “I can only offer my humblest apologies.”

  “Save it, Luke.” She started for her house, leaving him to follow or not.

  He fell into step beside her, his stride long-legged. “Come on, Ruthie. I just got a little carried away. My good judgment left me.”