by Amy Clipston
There was a listing for a cancer specialist. His heart stopped for a moment, then beat again when he saw a little note attached that said they’d recently moved to a different location. Ben scanned the small list remaining. A pediatrician and a urologist specializing in male patients.
Then he saw the listing for a Dr. Hannah Prato, psychologist. Maybe Amos hadn’t been joking about Rebecca seeing a “head doc.” Maybe the thoughts Rebecca thought were dark, not insightful. Grief often did strange things to people. Sometimes they couldn’t function anymore. Sometimes they even tried to hurt themselves.
Although . . . Amos hadn’t been expressing worry about his daughter. He’d been almost jovial. And Rebecca had responded lightly, teasing him in return.
“Do you need some help, young man?”
Ben turned and took off his black felt hat in deference to the Englisch woman beside him. Her appearance was so different from that of the Amish women he knew: her hair was short, light brown with streaks of blonde that he didn’t think came from being outside in the sun. She wore a very short dress that matched the bright red glasses perched on her nose. Instead of minding the way he stared at her, she gave him a direct and inquisitive smile as she waited for him to speak.
“No, I—uh—” He felt like a dolt standing there, unable to frame a reply. “I’m looking for a friend.”
“Perhaps she’s waiting outside.”
He hadn’t said she. He shook his head. “No, she wasn’t outside.”
Her eyes narrowed just a bit, as if she were sizing him up. “I see. Do you know which doctor she was seeing?”
Again he shook his head. “I don’t think it was any of them.”
The woman scanned the list. “No? Well, let’s see if we can figure this out.” She ran over the same list of specialists he had, and he shook his head at each one. “That leaves just Dr. Prato?”
He must have looked appalled, for she reached out and touched his arm. “It’s okay, you know. Sometimes we all need someone to talk to.”
“I don’t know anyone who sees a head doctor,” Ben told her. “Well, that’s not exactly true. A friend of mine was diagnosed as bipolar last year, and he’s been seeing one.”
A man entered the building just then. The woman waited until he’d gotten into the elevator and the doors closed. “Sometimes a person needs to talk to someone other than their people or their God. It’s okay, really. I’ve counseled Plain people.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Hannah Prato.”
Ben took her small, smooth hand in his larger, work-roughened hand, feeling like a big, clumsy bear. “The head doctor.”
She laughed. “Yes.”
“I’m Ben Weaver.” Was it his imagination, or did he see the faintest flicker of expression? “I think you know who I am,” he said slowly.
Her smile never faltered. “I do?”
Ben tilted his head to look at her and nodded.
“Well, you know, whoever saw your friend wouldn’t be able to tell you so,” she said. “Doctors must maintain patient confidentiality.”
“I know that. But I’m worried about her. She was supposed to meet me at the hardware store, and she didn’t come. I started thinking—”
Dr. Prato’s smile faded, and her eyes were sympathetic. “You’re concerned that it could be something far worse than you imagined. I understand.” She studied him. “This person you’re worried about—she’s very lucky to have a friend such as you. I can tell that you care about her very much. And what I can tell you is what I said before, that sometimes people see me because they need to talk to someone other than their people and their God. They need to say things and not feel judged. They need to feel that they can explore topics that are outside of the way they usually think.” She paused. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“Ye-es,” he said slowly.
“I thought you might.” She gave him a nod of approval. Shifting her big shoulder purse and the files she carried, she fished in her pocket and then held out a business card. “If you’d ever like to talk to me, just let me know. When Plain people feel they need to see a doctor, they should feel they can see whatever kind of doctor they need.”
“I’m glad my friend came to see you,” he told her.
“I didn’t say—”
“I know. And I’m glad I met you too.”
Frowning, she searched his face. “Thanks. But I’m not sure I’d mention our conversation to your friend. I’m not saying to lie; that would be wrong.”
“I agree. I wouldn’t want her to think I tried to find out her business, even if it was because I cared. But I doubt the subject will ever come up.”
The doctor’s face cleared. “Let’s hope not. Unless you ever find a good time to tell her, one when you know your looking for her will be understood and appreciated.”
He let out a gusty sigh. “I’m not appreciated by her,” he said, then his eyes widened at what he’d blurted out.
“Do you really think so?” she asked, and as she turned and walked away, he thought he heard her chuckle.
Tucking the card into his pocket, he began walking back to where he’d parked the buggy.
He was waiting there when Rebecca rushed up, carrying a bag from a popular sewing and craft shop. “Sorry I took so long. There was a line in the shop.”
“Ready to go?”
“Ya.” She walked to her side of the buggy and looked surprised when he quickly appeared at her elbow to help her into it.
He frowned. He was always polite. Then he thought, Maybe she’s nervous since we got so physically close the last time I helped her into the buggy. His face flaming, he rounded the buggy and got inside. With a jerk of the reins, he got the buggy moving. They traveled a few miles in silence, then Rebecca startled him by speaking.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Staring at me.” She turned to him. “Are you wondering if I’m going to do something crazy?”
“I—why would I wonder that?”
“Because my father said I was going to a ‘head doc.’”
Ben didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know much about them.”
“Then ask. If I don’t want to answer, I won’t.”
“Allrecht. Why did you go to one? Is something wrong with your head?”
“I met Dr. Prato in the hospital, when I had pneumonia. She helped me through the grief process.”
“Then why see her today?”
She looked at him and hesitated. Shrugging, she looked out at the passing scenery. “I just wanted to talk with her.” She smiled at him. “I’m glad I did. She thinks I’m doing really well.”
“Ya?” He looked at her. There was a lightness to her mood that had been absent earlier that morning.
She nodded. “She says that grief’s different for everyone, and there’s no set time for people to come to terms with it.”
Ben remembered how his mother had said something similar. “Sounds wise.”
“And since Lizzie was my twin, there was more of a bond than I might have had with another sister.”
“The two of you were always together,” he recalled. “I hardly ever saw you apart.” But he’d only been interested in her, not Lizzie.
She looked at him again. “You know, I thought about my mamm and daed and how they’ve never been impatient with me, never chided me about grieving for Lizzie for so long. It occurred to me that you hadn’t either. I’ve never thanked you for it.”
“You look surprised.”
“I am.” She stared straight ahead again. “Well, you don’t make it easy to talk to you, you know.”
“I—don’t?”
Shaking her head, she turned to him again. “I mean, we’ve talked a lot about important things, like Lizzie dying. But then . . .”
When she closed her eyes and bent her head, he touched her hand. Her eyes flew open in surprise.
“Talk to me.”
She lifted her shoulders, let them fall. “
We’ve been friends for such a long time.” She stopped, hesitated. “But something’s felt different the last few days.” Her eyes widened at what she’d said. It had never been in her to be so . . . bold.
He let that sink in. Maybe it was time to do some real talking. Ben pulled the buggy to the side of the road and turned to face her. “I don’t always have the right words like some men.” Now it was his turn to hesitate.
“I know. But when I was trying to say something to Dr. Prato earlier and I was searching for the right word, she said for me to just say what was on my mind.”
He looked away, not sure what to say. While he’d waited until he felt she was over the death of her sister, while he worried that she blamed him for not being able to save Lizzie, he hadn’t planned on what he’d say, what he’d do.
Looking back at her, he nodded. “Good advice.” He hesitated, wary of blurting out his feelings and being rejected. “Five years ago I had started thinking about whether we could be more than friends,” he said carefully. “Then Lizzie died.”
“And everything changed,” she whispered. “But why didn’t you say something before this?”
“When? How? I felt it would be selfish of me. And you weren’t ready.”
“No,” she said, sighing. “I wasn’t. Still might not be. Oh, Ben. So many years you wasted. You waited when you should have been looking at someone who could be there for you.”
He touched her hand. “I wanted to be there for you, Rebecca.”
“This is a lot to think about,” she told him, pressing the tips of her fingers to her temples. “When I was talking to Dr. Prato, she kept asking me questions about you.”
“About me? Why? She doesn’t know me.”
Rebecca smiled. “I was telling her how patient Mamm and Daed had been with me about grieving for Lizzie. And my sisters and brothers, of course, especially Marian. Then I said you had been, too, and suddenly Dr. Prato was asking all these questions about you, asking me why I thought you were hanging around so much. She said that was a lot of effort on your part, even for mei mamm’s meals. Told me maybe I needed to take another look at you and think about things.”
Ben let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Well, I guess I’m glad your father asked me to drive you to your appointment today.”
“Me too.”
A car drove by, and a passenger looked out to gawk at them. Ben glanced at the darkening sky and picked up the reins to urge Ike back onto the road and toward home.
“So where does this leave us?” he asked as silence stretched between them.
Rebecca turned to him and took a deep breath. She didn’t think he was going to like her answer, but she needed to say it.
CHAPTER 6
Rebecca made tiny stitches in the section of quilt before her. Outside it was cold, and snow was predicted for later in the day. But inside the Miller home there was a roaring fire in the fireplace, and it was time for talking and sewing. They drank cup after cup of tea and coffee and ate cookies while discussing everything from speculation about who was dating whom to when spring would arrive.
Quilting was such good therapy, Rebecca thought, feeling content. There was something so reassuring about sitting around talking with friends and family, sewing patterns that had been passed down for generations, here in a home that had been in her family for more than a hundred years.
She looked around the circle at her friends and family. Marian was helping her and Mamm to host the quilting frolic. The three of them had worked hard at redding-up the house and putting chairs in place. Little Annie wasn’t happy about having to go to school today instead of being here, but one day she’d be old enough to sit with the womenfolk in the circle.
The Petersheim sisters were here today—well, they’d been Petersheims before three of them had gotten married this past fall. Rebecca couldn’t help thinking that they all glowed with happiness. New fraa Edna, expert seamstress, had laid out the design of the quilt they were working on today. Mary Carol had brought thumbprint cookies filled with the jam made from mouthwatering strawberries she’d grown in her garden and Kathleen had preserved.
And Leah. Rebecca smiled as she watched Leah struggle with making tiny stitches and then laughingly give up and retreat to a corner to write in the notebook she carried as a constant companion. Leah wasn’t talented in the typical skills of an Amish woman—she’d nearly set the kich on fire more than once when she tried to cook. But Aaron, Leah’s new mann, insisted that she was the only fraa for him. Those who loved saw with different eyes than others, Rebecca thought.
Amanda Graber was chatting with Leah. Amanda reminded Rebecca of Lizzie with her exuberance. But Amanda bustled around taking care of others, not worrying them with her risk taking.
Sisters Lydia King and Miriam Fisher worked well together cutting pieces of fabric for the quilt. Rebecca watched them and reflected on how they both had married men they’d known years before. Circumstances had separated the couples, but God’s will had drawn them together again for great happiness.
As she sewed, Rebecca thought about her conversation with Ben on the drive home from her appointment with Dr. Prato. Now she knew how he felt about her. Had felt about her for years. But after she’d admitted she had feelings for him as well, she’d told him that she needed a little more time.
“I know it’s a lot to ask, considering how long you’ve been waiting. But this is the first time I’ve had a chance to really think about it. The part of me that dreamed about the future, about how I felt about you, has been in cold storage,” Rebecca told Ben.
When he glanced over, she took a deep breath and smiled at him.
“Okay. I understand.” Ben had returned her smile, and the mood had been lighter, happier on the drive home.
She pricked her finger and quickly glanced about to see if anyone had noticed her daydreaming.
How could she have missed seeing how Ben felt about her? Even as lost in grief as she’d been at first, she should have known that his frequent appearance at the Miller kitchen table wasn’t due only to her mother’s cooking.
Sometimes she’d wondered if Ben hung around so much because he felt guilty. He hadn’t been able to save Lizzie when she fell through the ice. No one had, not the other boys who’d tried to help, not the paramedics who’d arrived so quickly and tried to make her breathe. Not the doctors at the hospital.
She still had to ask him what he’d meant when he said if she was going to blame anyone for Lizzie’s death, she should blame him. Even if she had trouble accepting Lizzie’s death as God’s will, it was time to stop reliving what she couldn’t change. It was time for Ben to stop blaming himself, too, if he was doing that.
The door opened, and her father came in, stamping his feet on the mat. He took off his black felt hat and shook the snow from it before hanging it and his coat on a peg. Mamm rose and walked to the stove to pour him a cup of coffee. They spoke quietly for a moment and then he looked over and caught Rebecca’s eye. With a tilt of the head, he silently asked to speak to her.
She got up and followed him into the hallway, wondering what was going on. When she stopped before him and he wouldn’t meet her eyes, her breath caught. Visions of tools running amuck, saws biting into flesh, blood spurting from arteries flashed before her eyes.
“Ben? Did something happen to Ben?”
“Whoa, nothing’s happened to Ben,” he said quickly.
He glanced over at Naomi. “Rebecca, your mother told me I need to apologize to you.”
“Apologize? For what?”
“For telling Ben that you needed to go to your ‘head doc,’” he said. “It’s a family matter, and I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I’m not ashamed of seeing Dr. Prato.”
“No, I know you’re not. And your mother and I will always be indebted to her for helping you so much.”
She looked up at him, at this man who had been such a rock for her, and she nodded. “I knew you were just teasing
. I know you don’t think I’m crazy.”
He hugged her. “Of course you’re not. You’re the most levelheaded young woman I know.”
Rebecca hugged him back. “I don’t know about that. But I love you, and I’m not upset.”
“Well, I guess I’d better be getting back to work. Now that we’ve talked.”
“Amos? Is everything all right?” Naomi came to stand next to him.
“It’s fine,” Rebecca assured her. “Daed apologized like he said you wanted him to.”
“I didn’t mean you had to do it right now, while we’re having the quilting!”
Amos shrugged. “Best to apologize as soon as you know you’ve done wrong,” he said. “Besides, I think I was doing a little . . . interfering.”
“Interfering?”
Amos cleared his throat. “I—uh, well, I think I was trying to find out how Ben felt about Rebecca. If it bothered him that she was seeing Dr. Prato, he wasn’t the kind of mann that I wanted around our daughter.”
“Amos!” Naomi stared at him, shocked. “I don’t think we should interfere—”
“Ya.” He looked at Rebecca. “Sorry.”
These things were supposed to take place in privacy. Some couples only told their parents of their engagement after they’d arranged for the banns to be read in church.
But Rebecca could tell they were concerned, and she wanted to reassure them. “Ben just told me how he felt on the way home after I saw Dr. Prato,” she told them carefully.
“What about you? How do you feel?” her mother wanted to know.
“What, is Rebecca sick again?” Marian asked as she stepped into the hallway. She peered at her sister. “You didn’t say you weren’t feeling well.”
Rebecca threw up her hands. “Enough!” she said, laughing. “This has gotten completely out of hand.”
Standing on tiptoe, she kissed her father’s cheek, then her mother’s and her sister’s. “I love you all, and I’m going back to the quilting. Everyone must be wondering what kind of hosts we are!”
When she returned to the living room, Rebecca found needles poised in midair and everyone looking curiously at her.