She’d never heard that tone in Jimmy’s voice. It didn’t have the teasing sound that was never far away. It was . . . it was the sound of a grown man. Something was terribly wrong. She flew up the hill so fast that her hair was flying every which way out from under her prayer cap and she was panting hard from all that running. She found Galen over by the barbecue, spreading the red hot coals with a stick so they’d cool down. “Come with me!” She grabbed Galen’s elbow, dragging him back down the hillside to meet Jimmy. Along the way, he kept asking what was wrong and all she could say was, “Jimmy needs you.”
By the time they reached Jimmy, Hank Lapp was nowhere in sight. “Galen,” Jimmy whispered. “I think the fellow Bethany is talking to down there is the horse trader who’s been scamming me.”
Mim strained her ears. “Why, that’s Jake Hertzler!”
“Also known as Jonah Hershberger,” Jimmy said. “Horse swindler. First-rate con-artist.”
“Why is Bethany crying?” Mim said.
“She’s saying goodbye to him.”
Jake had just grabbed something from Bethany’s hands and was shouting at her. “He’s not liking it.” Mim started to feel frightened.
Galen’s gaze went from Mim to Jimmy, then down to the end of the road. “Well, Jimmy, have you got a plan?”
“Always.” Jimmy turned to Mim. “You stay put. If anything happens, you run to Amos and get help.” Then he nodded his head to Galen. “Let’s go.”
Mim watched as the two men walked down to the end of the driveway, cucumber calm. Jimmy approached Bethany as Galen slid around to the driver’s side. Mim took a few steps down the hill, scared, worried about Bethany, but not wanting to miss what was being said. Where did Hank Lapp go, anyway?
Jimmy put his hands on Bethany’s shoulders and moved her away from the truck, then leaned against the window edge. “Well, well, Jonah Hershberger. We meet again.”
“Jonah?” Bethany said. “What are you talking about, Jimmy? Are you crazy?”
“Jonah Hershberger. The fellow who keeps selling me the same horse.”
“What?” Bethany said. “Jake is the horse trader?”
Jake pulled back from the open window. “Bethany,” he said, nearly growling, “for the last time, get in the truck.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Galen said from the other side of the truck.
Jake’s head whipped around, then back to Bethany.
“We’ve got a little business to discuss,” Galen said. “You owe my partner here a sizable amount of money. Plus a horse.”
With that, Jake flipped the ignition, revved the engine, and stepped on the gas. The truck sped off down the dark road and into the night.
But the trailer remained. Hank Lapp stood in front of the horse trailer. The trailer was slightly hitched up, the unplugged electrical cords dangled. “IS THAT WHAT YOU WANTED ME TO DO, BOY?”
Jimmy grinned. “It was, Hank. It was, indeed.”
23
Hank Lapp’s birthday party would become the talk of the town for days afterward. The story would become bigger and more dramatic with every telling—all but one piece of it. Jimmy Fisher would omit the part that Bethany was planning to run off with Jake. No one would know. He would tell no one.
But Rose figured it out that night.
While the party was going on, Rose had found Bethany’s goodbye letter on her nightstand as she came upstairs to look for a book to read. She read it through, twice, heart pounding. There was a second letter addressed to the sisters at the Sisters’ House.
Rose wished she could run through the privet and ask Galen his opinion, but she couldn’t. Mainly, because he was at the party, but even if he weren’t, there was a strain between them. She had come outside when he arrived to pick up the children and he hadn’t even come down from his buggy. He wore the pain she had given him in his eyes.
It hurt so much that she was the one to look away.
On a hunch, she had gone to Mim and the boys’ bedroom and found letters left on their pillows. Then she tiptoed into Vera’s room and grabbed the letter on the nightstand, grateful Vera hadn’t seen it yet. If Bethany did leave with Jake tonight, she didn’t want Mim or Vera or the boys to read her goodbye letters before going to bed. Morning would come soon enough. Such news could wait.
She thought about what Galen would say if she were to tell him she found the letters Bethany had left, informing everyone she was leaving home. What would he say if she were to tell him she wanted to stop Bethany from making the biggest mistake of her life? She could practically hear Galen’s deep voice: “What good would it do to try and stop her if she wants to go? Bethany has her own life to lead, including making her own mistakes.” And then he would remind her, “God is faithful, even when we are not.”
Galen was right, of course. Just like he was right about Rose being unbending and stubborn. It was a hard truth, but it was the truth. In a way, it was prideful to be unwilling to ask for or receive help. It was prideful to think she could handle everything on her own. She blew out a puff of air. How she missed him. She missed her friend.
So Rose sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and her well-loved Bible and prayed like she had never prayed before. She prayed for a miracle to intervene in Bethany’s life. She prayed for something unexpected to occur. She prayed for Bethany’s well-being, and her future. She prayed for heaven’s protection over her beautiful, impulsive stepdaughter.
An hour later, when Galen’s buggy pulled into the driveway, Rose nearly flew outside. She let out a gasp of silent thanks when Bethany tumbled out of the buggy and hurried past her into the house. “We had a little excitement tonight,” Galen said. “I’ll let Mim and the boys tell you all about it.”
As he drove away, Mim and Luke and Sammy took turns talking over each other to tell Rose the news: Jimmy’s horse swindler was their very own Jake Hertzler! Rose listened carefully, asked a few questions, and pieced together the story until she had a pretty good idea what had happened. When she saw Bethany had come downstairs, Rose sent the children up to bed. Bethany stood with her back against the wall, pale and sad, hugging her elbows tight against her body the way she did when she was a little girl.
Rose handed her the letters. “Are you looking for these?”
Slowly, Bethany reached out and took the letters from her. Then she tore them into pieces and threw them in the garbage can under the sink. She balled her hands into fists, her voice shaking. “I’m such a fool.”
Rose crossed the room and looked into Bethany’s face, so young, so beautiful, so filled with incomprehensible misery. She reached out and gently unfurled her tight fists. “Only if you don’t become wiser through this.”
A few tears trickled out of the corners of Bethany’s eyes, and she wiped them away with her sleeve. “Rose, how could he have left like that?”
Rose shrugged. “Jake had everybody fooled. Myself included.”
“Not Jake.” She shook her head and the tears splattered. “Dad. How could he leave us like he did, just let his family go? I couldn’t do that! I tried and I couldn’t.” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to hold back the tears. But they came faster and faster, until she couldn’t stop their coming. “Tobe is the lucky one. He took the easy way out.”
“There is no easy way out of this.” Rose pulled her into her arms as she started to sob—deep heaving sobs, finally subsiding into a few shudders. “Go on, now. Get your cry out,” Rose said, rubbing her back in small circles. Sadness had a way of piling up inside a person until there was nothing for it but to let it all out. “Cry it all out.”
On Monday afternoon, after she finished readying the basement with fresh linens for the next guest who was due to arrive any minute, Rose called Allen Turner of the Securities and Exchange Commission. She told him that Jake Hertzler had turned up and left with the company books. They had been hidden on the farm all this time. All this time! “He’s been horse trading around the county, using another name: Jonah Hersh
berger,” Rose said. “He said he had a job opportunity in Somerset County, but I don’t know if that was true.”
Allen Turner was silent for a long moment. “He’s probably halfway to Canada or Mexico by now. But then again, he’s pretty bold. Could be he’s sticking around, like a bad penny. In the meantime, we’re still looking for your stepson.”
“Jake said Tobe had been staying with his mother, but I don’t know where she’s living. I don’t know anything about her except her maiden name: Mary Miller.”
“Mary Miller?” He groaned. “Could there be a more common name among the Amish?”
She said goodbye, hung up the phone, and walked over to Galen’s. She found him in front of his barn, tossing a softball back and forth with Sammy, back and forth. He looked up at her and smiled when he saw her. There was something about the smile that touched her; as if he had been hoping she would come by.
“Is something wrong, Rose? Is Vera all right?”
“Vera’s fine. It’s me—I’d like to ask you something.”
“Sammy,” he said. “Go take that hay out to the horses in the far pasture. Scatter it around this time. Don’t just leave it in a clump.”
Sammy threw the ball back to Galen, but it went sailing over his head. He hollered out an apology as he ran to the wheelbarrow filled with hay and started to push it down the dirt path to the pasture. Galen picked up the ball and walked to Rose. “If he could just remember to plant his feet when he aims at something, he might stand a chance as an outfielder.”
“Could I see this horse that Jimmy paid for a few times over?”
“Of course. He’s in the barn in a double stall.”
She followed behind Galen. The barn held a mixture of sweet and pungent smells, summer hay and the sour tang of manure, the ripening sunlight pouring through the open door. She took in a deep breath, feeling almost dizzy.
Galen continued down the aisle and stopped at a stall. He turned and gave a puzzled look at Rose, still by the door.
She walked to the stall and peered in at the stallion. She gasped when she saw its flaxen mane. “That might be the most beautiful horse I’ve ever seen.”
“That he is. He’s a fine stud. Jimmy actually knew what he was talking about.”
“Jimmy said you’re going to stable him here.”
“For now. We have to break his Houdini habit. Keeping him in such a big stall will help.”
She chanced a glance at him. “Did you really call Jimmy Fisher your partner?”
Galen groaned. He moved a pitchfork out of the way and opened the top half of the Dutch door of the stall. “He’s crowing about it all over town, I suppose.”
“He is. Seems pretty pleased about it.”
Lodestar stuck his head over the stall door. Galen reached out to stroke the horse’s nose.
Rose looked at Galen’s hands—beautiful, capable hands. Scarred, strong, deft. Hands that had the power to control a hot-blooded horse but the gentleness to caress its velvet nose. Hands she trusted.
“Would it be such an impossible thing for an independent fellow like you? Having a partner?”
His gaze met hers over the horse’s head.
“Makes a lot of sense, you know. The Bible teaches us that ‘two are better off than one, because together they can work more effectively. If one of them falls down, the other can help him up. Two people can resist an attack that would defeat one person alone. A rope made of three cords is hard to break.’”
He had yet to take his eyes off her. He didn’t seem to be breathing. “Are we still talking about horses?”
She stroked the horse’s blond forelock. “Why haven’t you ever married?”
“I’ve never met anyone I wanted to marry. Not until you came along.”
Her throat was hot and tight, full of the things she wanted to say. “Galen, I’m carrying a very big burden. I feel such deep shame over all that happened with Dean and his company. I need to pay people back for the money he lost. I can’t ask you to share that burden. That’s why I’ve kept you at a distance. That’s why I keep pushing you away. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s pride. Stubbornness. I need to learn to ask for help. Help is a gift.”
There was quiet—complete quiet.
And on and on the silence went, not a word out of Galen, not a sound. He stared at her for what seemed like an endless amount of time. A stain of color spread across his sharp cheekbones. “I would move heaven and earth for you.”
“I know. I know you would.” She laid the back of her hand against his cheek. “The problem, you see, is I’ve also been too stubborn to realize how much I care for you.”
Galen’s gaze traveled gently over her face, in that loving way he had of looking at her, and stopped at her lips. And then he dropped the pitchfork and it clattered to the concrete floor in the quiet of the barn. He reached around Lodestar’s big head and grabbed Rose up in his arms. He swirled her around and around in a big circle and set her down again, then bent over and cupped her face in his hands. He leaned closer and brushed his mouth across hers, almost reverently. He started to pull away, but she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him until he reached down to kiss her.
The next day, Mim found a note tucked inside of her desk when she arrived at school. “Super Moon. Tonight. 8 PM. Same place. DR”
She bit on her lip to keep from smiling. She would not look at Danny Riehl. She would not, would not, would not.
She looked.
She saw his eyes flit her way for a second and her stomach did a little flip-flop. After finding such a note, how could a girl ever concentrate on her schoolwork?
That evening, she met Danny on the hill behind the schoolhouse right at eight o’clock sharp. Danny wasn’t even peering through the telescope. “You really don’t need a telescope to see the night sky—just a dark night and your eyes.” His head was tilted back, looking with awe at the full moon, the color of rich cream, so beautiful and round and low on the horizon. “It’s called a perigee moon. Perigee means that it’s at its closest point to the earth. An apogee moon is when it is farthest away.”
Perigee. Apogee. Two new words for Mim to collect.
“The perigee moon occurs once a year. The orbit of the moon brings it about sixteen thousand miles closer to the earth. NASA said this super moon appears 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than other full moons.” He pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “I read those facts in a magazine for future astronauts.”
Mim had always been fond of the moon. To her it was a more interesting thing to observe than the sun, which did the same thing every day. The moon changed, it moved around the sky; it waxed and waned. She had read that the moon moved the seas, but she hadn’t been able to get her head around that. How could a moon move an ocean?
On a night when the moon rose, shining so brightly, like tonight, it seemed so close that she could almost climb a tree and step right on it. Even on nights when the moon was just a little white thumbnail, she tended to lose her worries when she gazed at it. Sometimes, she would sit by her window and imagine sitting on that hook, peering around the universe, untroubled about all that was happening on the little blue and green earth. She wondered how Danny would react if she shared those thoughts with him. Would he laugh at her? He might be shocked. He might expect her to stick to facts. So she said, “Is this what they call a blue moon?”
“No. That happens when a full moon appears twice in one month. A blue moon only occurs about once every three years.” He stepped toward the telescope, peered into it, and twisted some dials. “The size of the moon is about the same size as the continent of Africa. Some people think it’s flat, but it has valleys and craters and basins and mountains on it.”
She would have to remember to tell Sammy these moon facts.
They took turns looking at the moon through the telescope, then stood side by side, heads craned back, to study the moon without any device. It was . . . glorious. Resplendent. Majestic.
Mim froze. Her heart sang with happiness. Goose bumps danced all over her arms. Her toes wanted to tap.
She cut a sideways glance at Danny at the same moment that he looked at her. They smiled, then they both looked away.
Later tonight, she thought she might have to write again to Lonesome and tell her that “Yes, true love can definitely make everything better.”
Rose’s plan this morning was to walk to her favorite spot and watch the sun rise. Her plans changed when she saw how hard the rain was coming down. She steeped a cup of tea, à la Delia Stoltz’s style, and took the mug outside to sit in the new porch swing. Chase followed along and curled up by her feet. The scent of summer was in the air, a whisper of promise. She loved this time of year, when the earth seemed to be warming up from within. She took a deep breath. A handful of memories were tied to the scent of the rain, damp grass, and mist. Good memories. The kind that filled you with peace and happiness and satisfaction.
She could think of Dean now without the crushing burden of grief. Remember the good times and smile, grateful for the life they’d shared. She was thankful for the incredible gift of her children. She’d loved her husband, faults and all, and his death had badly shaken her world and her sense of self.
Lately, the only thing she’d been able to count on was that things change. But they had made it through the worst. Vera was under a doctor’s care and her condition was stable. Bethany had turned an important corner into adulthood. Mim and the boys had their ups and downs, but they were adjusting. And she always had a hope that Tobe would return.
And then there was yesterday’s news: at Galen’s urging, she had gone to the bishop to let him know she was trying to pay back investors. She surprised the bishop so, his face flushed red above his gray beard. “Rose, Rose,” he said in his kind voice. “Why would you think you were all alone in this? That was a burden God never meant for you.”
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