How the Light Gets In

by Jolina Petersheim

  Ruth glimpsed light in her peripheral vision. She turned and saw Mabel walking toward her. She carried a lamp, and a woolen shawl draped her shoulders. Her black hair was down. It was thinner at the part and the temples from the decades it’d been pulled back in a bun.

  Mabel asked in her soft voice, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Ruth replied, and, for the first time in a long time, she realized she was.

  “You didn’t eat much supper.”

  “No.” Ruth looked at the ground. Her feet were becoming numb.

  “Are you and Elam . . . ?” The question hung between them like breath.

  Ruth lifted her head. She wasn’t sure how to convey such news to her mother-in-law; wasn’t sure if Mabel would be happy or sad, or if she would feel as Ruth did, a mixture of both. “Nothing’s been said, no promises made. But Elam and I care about each other very much.”

  Mabel inhaled. “Oh, Ruth,” she said. “This is such good news.” She held Ruth against her, and though she meant every word, both women who stood under that watchful yellow moon had tears of bittersweet remembrance in their eyes.

  Ruth went running in the morning. Nothing in her wanted to run, but she knew the endorphins would serve her later when she was trying to care for the girls despite having gotten so little sleep. To her surprise, Laurie came out of her house when Ruth ran past it.

  Ruth slowed her steps.

  “Morning.” Laurie smiled. “Mind if I come along?”

  Ruth did mind, in fact. She needed to clear her head before talking to Elam, but she couldn’t very well tell this to his sister. “Not at all,” she said. “Should I walk?”

  Waving dismissively, Laurie said, “Nah, running’s fine.” She tugged on the waist of her cape dress. “I bounce back quicker if I stay active during pregnancy.” She gave Ruth a sidelong glance. “What’s your secret? Looks like you haven’t gained an ounce since Vi.”

  Ruth smiled tightly. “Grief’s a good diet plan.”

  “Oh,” Laurie said. “Of course.”

  Ruth regretted her curt reply. It wasn’t Laurie’s fault she wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. Trying to soften this, Ruth explained, “My dad died three months before Chandler, and I didn’t have much of an appetite for months before then.” Ruth paused. “He had cancer.”

  Laurie tucked some hair under her kapp and began to jog. “My mamm died of cancer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ruth replied. “Elam told me you were young.”

  Laurie glanced over, eyebrows raised. “He told you about that?”

  She nodded.

  Laurie was quiet for a while, or at least it was a while according to Laurie. Then she said, “I’m glad to see you and my brother getting along.”

  Ruth’s body stiffened, tightening the tendons connected to her left collarbone. She reached up and massaged them, knowing they would ache later if she didn’t. She didn’t say anything, and their breathing became ragged. Ruth was running harder than she’d run in years, and to her surprise, Laurie kept up—her stride long and loose even as Ruth was straining to do everything she could to maintain the pace. She wanted to quit, and she sensed Laurie wanted to quit too. Both women kept pushing themselves. “Elam seems like the strong and silent type,” Laurie rasped, “but that’s really just a cover. He’s got a heart larger than anyone’s.”

  Ruth stared straight ahead, breathing hard through her nose. She sensed this was a warning. She was the one who’d just lost her father and husband. She was the one who could barely close her eyes without imaging Chandler’s last horrific moments after the deadly bombs fell. She often wondered how quickly he had died and if his last thoughts were of his daughters or of her. And then Ruth understood that this was exactly why Laurie felt compelled to offer such caution. She feared Ruth cared for Elam because he was her solace in this time of distress. It made Ruth wonder if this was indeed the case. But should grief discount love, if love is what this was? Ruth wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure if her attraction to Elam was valid, or only the repercussion of finding security in his presence, where otherwise, there was none. But wasn’t this partly why she’d also ended up with Chandler? Weren’t security and love intertwined?

  Winded, Ruth stopped running. Laurie continued a few yards more before she stopped and looked back, running a hand over her stomach. Ruth looked at her too. She rested her hands on her waist and forced herself not to gulp for air. “I won’t hurt your brother.”

  Laurie smiled sadly. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep. We’re only human,” she said. “We can’t love someone without also bringing them pain.”

  Ruth saw Elam walking by the lake when she returned from her run. He didn’t look her way as she passed, but she sensed he knew she was there. That he had, perhaps, positioned himself so she could approach him if she wanted but wouldn’t feel cornered if she didn’t. She honestly wasn’t sure what she wanted either. Laurie’s thinly veiled warning had alarmed her, causing her to second-guess a decision she hadn’t known she had made.

  Ruth rubbed her left shoulder as she walked toward him. Elam’s back was to her, but she could tell from the hard lines of his body that he could hear her drawing near.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  He turned, smiled. “Saw you and Laurie running. Could she keep up?”

  “Keep up?” Ruth made a deprecating sound. “She gave me a side stitch.”

  Elam laughed, his eyes polished by the early light. He was a handsome man, she thought. Not handsome in the sense you noticed right away, like she had with Chandler, but handsome in a way that grew on you, part by part. Ruth stepped closer. She reached out and took Elam’s hand. She was still wearing her wedding band—gold and emerald, because the gemstone was so affordable in Colombia, and Chandler had thought the green would remind her of home.

  She could take it off now. She was ready for a new season, ready to move on.

  Elam looked down at their conjoined fingers and ran a thumb across the top of her hand. “I thought about you last night,” he murmured. “I could barely sleep.”

  “I know,” Ruth said. “I couldn’t either.”

  He glanced up at her face. “Does this mean you feel the way I do?”

  Ruth’s smile widened. A breeze cooled her neck. All her worries, insecurities, and questions had quieted in his presence, and she just felt peace. “Yes, Elam. I do.”

  Elam leaned down and hugged her then, sweat and all, and the lake reflected their embrace before the blue heron rose, splintering their union as its wings lifted into the sky.

  CHAPTER 10

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  Elam awoke and looked at the four walls of his one-room cabin, which had served as his home since Ruth agreed to be his bride. Laurie had offered to let him stay at her house until the wedding, but Elam wasn’t the type who enjoyed inconveniencing other people, though he doubted there were many types who did. He would rather sleep on the cold, hard ground than send his little nephews and nieces out of their beds. Besides, sharing a bathroom with an eight-member family was all the incentive he needed to haul water from the channel and heat it over the hearth, taking care of his needs the same as his ancestors had done.

  Folding his arms behind his head, Elam smiled up at the exposed rafters of his cabin. He couldn’t remember such contentment. For so long, he had longed for a family, and now that family was here. Though Sofie and Vivienne weren’t his own, the love he felt for them wasn’t anything less than what he would feel for his own flesh and blood.

  Elam heard a knock on the door of the cabin. He rose from the old army cot beside the piano and buttoned his shirt. Ruth, his fiancée—how that foreign word still danced on his clumsy tongue!—stood on the porch. Light-colored ringlets had sprung up in the moisture induced by her run. He could’ve stood on that threshold until dusk and just looked at her.

  He supposed, from what he heard, that years of familiarity would solve such mystery and attraction. But he wondered if these unions were betw
een couples who had gotten married when they were young, and not old enough, like him, to know finding someone to love you wholly was one of the greatest mysteries of all.

  Ruth said, “Good morning,” and rose on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.

  Stepping back, he rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m not shaved.”

  She grinned. “I don’t mind. I like you with a bit of scruff.”

  “Want to come in?”

  “Is that allowed?”

  “Don’t think the rules of courtship are the same for adults.”

  He pulled the door open wider as he spoke. She took a seat on the piano bench, as if it seemed the least intimate perch in the room. “I came to talk to you about something.”

  “What?” Elam paused, his heart beating hard. “Are you having . . . second thoughts?”

  “No.” Ruth gripped the piano bench. “I was just thinking that you might not know what you’re getting yourself into, becoming an instant father to two little girls.”

  He smiled. “I have enough nephews and nieces to know what I’m getting into.”

  “You’re right.” Ruth slapped her thighs and moved as if to stand. Instead, she remained seated. She looked up at Elam. “Will I have to wear a kapp?”

  Elam laughed. “Only if you want to.”

  “But—” she pulled on the thumb holes of her fleece—“I won’t have to join the church?”

  “I love my community,” Elam said. “I love being near my sister, but you might want to move somewhere that would be a fresh start for us. And I’m okay with that.”

  Her voice rose as she asked, “You are?”

  “Absolutely. Being Mennonite doesn’t matter all that much to me. What matters to me is that we live our lives for God.”

  Ruth stared at her hands. “And how do we do that?”

  “By loving him and loving those he puts in our lives.”

  “You make it sound so simple.”

  Elam looked at her in confusion. “Is it not?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know.”

  Elam walked away from the threshold. “Here,” he said. “That’s the most uncomfortable spot in the room.” He removed a pile of books from a rocker with a hand-caned seat. Ruth stood from the piano bench, but she didn’t sit. Instead, she remained standing in front of him. Elam stared down at her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Do you know how much God loves you?”

  Ruth glanced up at him, then away. Tears shone in her eyes. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

  “He wants every part of you, Ruth. There’s nothing in you that isn’t beautiful to him.”

  Ruth’s shoulders hardened. “You only say that because you haven’t seen my ugly side.”

  “Even in your anger, your pain, he loves you. Even then he finds you worthy of love.”

  The tears moved down her face as her shoulders melted beneath his hands. She looked up at him. “Why do you say such things?”

  “I’m not just saying it, Ruth. I know it. Because, like him, I only see you through love.”

  Ruth had grown accustomed to living without a husband long before she became a widow. Nevertheless, there was something oddly disconcerting about seeing her fiancé standing by the door with his bag, conjuring forth the anxiety that had always accompanied Chandler’s trips. The driver who was taking Elam to the Madison airport would be here any minute. Ruth then remembered, and understood, what made her heart pound as she tried to work up the nerve to tell Elam good-bye. The last time she told Chandler good-bye was the last time she saw him alive. She knew it wasn’t wise to compare the unions, and yet she wasn’t naive enough to believe that she wouldn’t carry the scars from one marriage into the next.

  “Hurry back,” she said and rose on tiptoe to give Elam a kiss.

  He glanced over her shoulder, toward the kitchen, where Mabel was doing dishes with a little girl on a chair standing on either side. And then he leaned down and kissed Ruth harder. They pulled apart, thirty and thirty-nine years old and yet as flushed and self-conscious as teenagers. “I will,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I wish I didn’t have to leave you and the girls.”

  Ruth laughed. “It’s a three-day cranberry convention, not a cross-country trip.”

  The van pulled up in the drive. Seeing it, for the first time Ruth wondered about the complications of being married to someone who didn’t own a car. But, she reminded herself, Elam wasn’t going to force his beliefs on her; therefore, she could drive them around. Right?

  Elam waved as the van pulled away. Ruth stood, staring out the window for a long time, praying that, this time, the man she cared for would return.

  Zeus started barking after nightfall, when they had just sat down for supper. This wouldn’t have been unusual if he weren’t in the house. But he paced back and forth in front of the windows, and Ruth feared he was going to damage the front door by continually scratching at the wood in his effort to get out. Finally, she opened it and watched as the darkness swallowed his lumbering body whole. Ruth returned to the table. The girls were watching her with wide, concerned eyes, and she realized they looked scared for the first time in months.

  “It’s fine.” She smiled. “He’s probably chasing off some deer.”

  But Zeus didn’t stop barking, even after the dishes were washed and put away and Ruth was upstairs, getting Sofie and Vi ready for bed. Sofie’s impossibly large eyes connected with Ruth’s. “You don’t think something’s gonna hurt Zeus, do you?” Sofie was too young to take life so seriously, and yet what six-year-old had been through what she had?

  “No, no, honey,” Ruth reassured. “I’ll go check on him right after this. Promise.”

  Sofie nestled beneath the quilt. Vi—in snowman footie pajamas that matched her sister’s—stood in her crib, her blonde pigtails sprouting like dandelion fuzz above her slightly protruding ears. She sucked her thumb, cheeks working, as she looked toward the window. Such protective love flooded Ruth, her chest physically hurt like it had when she needed to cry and couldn’t. As strange and as premature as it was, Elam’s presence in her children’s lives offered stability in a way Ruth—despite all her striving—could not. She believed this was why they were so unsettled while listening to Zeus bark. The oversize galoot offered them protection as well. Ruth tucked the girls in with the faded pink blankets she had wrapped them in since infancy, brushed their bangs back from their foreheads, and sang “Edelweiss” the same as she had been singing for years. Ruth then crept from the room, leaving the door ajar.

  She needed to fulfill her promise to Sofie.

  Early-winter clouds had rolled in, muting the moon, even though it had been so bright two evenings before, Ruth could’ve read the lines on the palm of her hand. She shivered as she walked through old snow toward the barn, where Zeus was barking. In Elam’s absence, Laurie’s husband, Tim, was going to tend the farm. Even after three months, Ruth had trouble navigating the many outbuildings during daytime, to say nothing about the natural discombobulation that came with the dark. Ruth wasn’t surprised when she found Zeus standing outside the chicken coop.

  He had never disturbed the birds before, but maybe he also felt strange in Elam’s absence and believed he could get away with more while the master was gone.

  “Zeus! Come here!”

  He ignored her.

  The white scruff on the back of Zeus’s neck stood up. All four legs were firmly planted on the gravel-strewn ground outside the coop. Zeus didn’t deign to turn his head in her direction. He just continued to bark, over and over: deep, guttural sounds that reverberated around the barnyard. For the first time, she was intimidated by her own pet and understood that Great Pyrenees were working dogs and not just the easygoing throw rug Zeus often was with her children.

  Ruth stepped closer, wishing she had brought the oil lamp that was sitting on the kitchen table. In another lifetime, she would’ve had her phone.

  “What is it, boy?” Some instinct of her own told her not to touch hi
m. Zeus turned his head and whined, and then he scraped at the coop door like he’d scraped at the door in the house.

  She opened it and smelled chicken dung and feathers. The birds were oddly still, despite the ruckus Zeus was making outside. Then she heard it, a muffled squawk. But it wasn’t a squawk as much as it was the sound of something struggling for breath, dying. Ruth pushed the door open wider, wishing the clouds would move so the moonlight would allow her to see inside.

  She could perceive the hunkered red-and-white shapes of the chickens, all perched on the boards that ran the length of the coop, and then Ruth heard a sharp hissing sound that sure wasn’t coming from a chicken. She backed up and slammed the door, her heart concussing in her ears. Zeus was salivating, whining, barking . . . coming unglued. Ruth knew something was in the coop with the chickens, but she couldn’t make out what.

  Ruth walked into the barnyard, but Zeus stayed by the coop. She looked up at the farmhouse. Everything was dark. Mabel was sleeping. Before she left, Ruth had put on a sweater, but she hadn’t put on a coat. So she started to run—partly to warm up and partly because she didn’t want her fiancé coming home to a slew of dead chickens. A light shone in Laurie’s kitchen. Encouraged, Ruth walked up to the door and knocked. The light moved closer, and Laurie opened the door. She wore a floor-length flannel gown that strained against her eight-months-pregnant belly. Her eyes and lips stood out against a green mud mask.

  She asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Ruth fought to keep a straight face. “I think something’s eating the chickens.”

  “Really?” Laurie looked over her shoulder toward the stairs. “Tim’s just gone up to bed.” She ushered Ruth inside and disappeared into another room with the lamp. When she came back, a .22 rifle was balanced over one arm. She passed the oil lamp to Ruth. “Let’s go,” she said.

  Ruth decided if Laurie wasn’t going to mention the mud mask, neither would she.

  Zeus was still barking when they approached the coop.