Return to Paradise

by Cameron, Barbara;

  “Nee. I was thinking how much I missed being here, being in church with everyone. I didn’t leave because I wanted to leave that part of my life.” His fingers clenched on the reins.

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “You didn’t look happy at the wedding. I’m sorry that I made it difficult for you.”

  She glanced at him so sharply it sent a wave of pain across her forehead. “You didn’t make it hard because you were there.”

  “I didn’t think I made it hard today. I meant it has to make you think about how we didn’t get married when you go to a wedding.”

  She sighed. “It does.”

  “Lavina—”

  Sirens blared behind them. David glanced over his shoulder then guided the buggy to the side of the road so a fire engine, then an ambulance could rush past. He checked for traffic and pulled back onto the road.

  “They’re turning down our road,” she murmured.

  “I see that.” He urged more speed from his horse, and soon they were turning down the road to their houses.

  Lavina’s hand flew to her lips. “David, they’re stopping at your house!”

  He parked behind the trucks and was out of the buggy the moment the wheels came to a stop. She climbed out and followed him inside.

  Paramedics were settling David’s dat onto a stretcher. His mudder stood to the side, wringing her hands.

  Lavina went to her and put her arms around the woman’s waist. “What happened?”

  “He’s having chest pain,” she said, looking worried. “I called the doctor and he said to call 9-1-1.”

  “It’s probably just heartburn,” his dat said, glaring at David. “No need to be making such a fuss.”

  “Good idea to get it checked out,” one of the paramedics told him as he wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm.

  “Had chili for supper,” Amos grumbled.

  “You’ve had my chili many times, even doused it with hot sauce and not had heartburn,” she told him. “I’ll get my jacket.”

  One paramedic told the other one what the blood pressure reading was and he noted it on a tablet. He looked up. “A bit high. Let’s get you to the hospital and let the doctor look you over.”

  “I’ll be right behind you,” David told his mudder. She nodded and hurried after the paramedics pushing the gurney to the waiting ambulance.

  David locked up the house and they hurried back to the buggy. “I’m taking you home, and then I’ll follow the ambulance to the hospital.”

  “Wait,” she said. “Take your truck to the hospital. It’ll be faster. I’ll put the horse and buggy up.”

  When he hesitated, she got into the driver’s side of the buggy. “Go.”

  “I don’t like you walking in the dark.”

  “It’s not quite dark yet. And it’s a short distance. Now go. Arguing with me is wasting time.”

  “Allrecht,” he said. He pulled out his keys and started for his truck.

  “I’ll say a prayer for your dat.”

  “Danki. And Lavina?”

  “Ya?”

  “I hope you feel better.”

  “Danki. Let me know how your dat is.”

  “I will.”

  Lavina made quick work of unhitching Nellie, giving her water and feed, then hurried home. She let herself into her house and wandered into the kitchen. After she shed her jacket and bonnet and set her purse on a counter she went straight to the cabinet where they kept a bottle of aspirin. She put the kettle on, made a cup of tea and carried it up to bed. It felt gut to tuck herself in early. It was a relief to relax, be alone, and not pretend that everything was allrecht like she’d had to do at the wedding and reception.

  Two hours later she heard her family come home. Her mudder came in to check on her. A little while later Rose Anna peeked in as well. Lavina moved over so Rose Anna could sit on her bed.

  “Headache better?” she asked as she sat.

  She nodded.

  “So how did it go with David? Did he talk you into going for a ride?”

  “Nee.” She told Rose Anna about what had happened to David’s dat. She glanced at the clock on her bedside table and wondered how he was doing.

  “I’ll say a prayer for him.”

  “Did you have a gut time talking with Isaac Miller after I left?”

  Rose Anna frowned as she unpinned her kapp. “He’s a nice man, but he’s no Sam.”

  Lavina knew what she meant. There hadn’t been any man she’d been interested in after David left—even after so much time passed and she’d come to realize he wasn’t coming back. It was the same for Mary Elizabeth and Rose Anna. They hadn’t moved on and found anyone else, either.

  “Well, I’m going to bed. Gut nacht.” She bent and hugged Lavina. “Sweet dreams.”

  She reached over and turned off the battery-operated lamp and lay back. But sleep was a long time coming, and when it did, it was filled with confusing dreams. She dreamed of walking down the aisle with a man whose face she couldn’t see until they reached the minister and when she turned to look at him he wasn’t David but a stranger she’d never met.

  She woke with tears on her cheeks.

  ***

  David drove as fast as the speed limit allowed. He wasn’t going to risk his life—or, more importantly, someone else’s—speeding. As he followed the distant lights of the ambulance, he prayed that his dat’s chest pain was, indeed, the heartburn he claimed it was and not a heart attack.

  He knew chemotherapy weakened a person’s body and had other dangerous side effects such as heart attacks. He and his mudder had sat in the kitchen late that night when he’d come home and found her weeping. She’d talked about her fears in a halting voice, and he’d come to understand the consequences of treatment that some described as poisoning the bad cells and risking the good ones.

  As he drove he asked himself if pushing his dat to rise above his inertia, his bouts of tiredness and depression, might have brought on this new problem.

  The ambulance turned into the emergency entrance. David found a parking place and ran inside. He spent ten nerve-wracking minutes in the waiting room until he was allowed back to the cubicle where his mudder sat by herself.

  “David! I’m so glad you’re here!” she cried when he stepped into the room.

  “Where’s Daed?”

  “They’ve taken him for some tests.” Her knuckles were white as she clutched her purse.

  He pulled a plastic chair up to sit beside her. “Daed’s tough. I’m sure he’s allrecht.”

  But twenty minutes passed and he didn’t return to the room. David checked with a nurse and found that his dat was nearly finished with testing and would be returned shortly. He passed on the news to his mudder and went to get her some coffee.

  When he returned with the coffee he could hear his dat’s voice before he got halfway down the hallway. He stepped inside the room, and his dat looked up with a triumphant expression.

  “It’s just as I said,” he told David. “Heartburn. They’ve given me some medicine, and I can go home as soon as the doctor discharges me.”

  “Thank Gott,” his mudder said fervently. “Let’s get you dressed then.” She picked up the plastic bag his clothes had been stored in and handed it to him.

  “Whole lot of fussing for nothing,” he snapped at her. “You should have listened to me. Now we have another bill to pay.”

  “I did what I thought was best,” she said, her lips trembling. “What if it’d been your heart? Now stop yelling at me.”

  She swayed and if David hadn’t grabbed her arm, she would have slumped to the floor. He guided her into a chair. “Mamm! What’s wrong?”

  “Just dizzy for a minute,” she told him. “Got up too quickly, that’s all.”

  But she looked ashen. He turned to his dat. “Press the call button for the nurse.”

  “I’ll be allrecht in a minute.”

  But when she stood she swayed again. David grabbed her arm. “What’s w
rong?”

  “Just a little lightheaded,” she said.

  “Stay put.” He looked up as a nurse came in the room. “Can you take a look at my mother? She nearly passed out just now.”

  “What seems to be the problem?” the nurse asked her.

  “I must have stood up too quickly.” She shrugged. “I feel better now.”

  “Do you have high blood pressure?”

  She nodded.

  David raised his eyebrows. This was the first he’d heard she had high blood pressure. He watched as the woman wrapped a blood pressure cuff on his mudder’s arm and frowned as she noted the numbers.

  She turned to David. “Make sure she doesn’t get up. I’m going to get the doctor in here.”

  “Now look what a fuss you’ve made about this,” she told David. “So it’s up a bit. There was no need to call a nurse in here. I can just take my pill when I get home.”

  David glanced at his dat. The man hadn’t said a word since the nurse had come in and taken his fraa’s blood pressure. He finished getting dressed and slid off the gurney.

  “Waneta, kumm, sit here,” he said gruffly, patting the gurney. He reached for her arm, and she let him guide her to sit on it.

  The same doctor who’d seen Amos walked in. “So, I hear I have another patient?”

  David and his dat stood outside while the doctor examined Waneta.

  “You gonna drink that?” Amos gestured to the cup in David’s hand.

  He handed him the coffee he’d meant for his mudder. “Probably cold by now. I’ll get you some after we find out how Mamm is.”

  “This’ll do.” Amos drank the coffee.

  “I didn’t know she had a problem with high blood pressure.”

  “Happens sometimes when you get older.”

  David started to turn, to snap that he shouldn’t take it lightly, but he saw the worried expression on his face. “You being sick has been hard on her,” he said quietly.

  “You blaming me for getting sick?”

  He took the cup his dat was crushing in his hands. “Nee. I’m just saying she’s worried about you more than you know.”

  “Well, you don’t know how she worried over you and your bruders when you left,” Amos snapped.

  He winced inwardly, and to keep himself from responding he walked to a nearby wastepaper basket and dumped the cup.

  “We can’t let her hear us arguing.”

  To his surprise, his dat nodded.

  The doctor came out. “Her pressure’s high. I’m giving her something, and we want to keep her here a little while until it goes down.”

  “Can we go in now?”

  “Sure.”

  “Daed?”

  Amos turned.

  “You want me to take you home and then I’ll come back and sit with Mamm?”

  “Nee.”

  “Fine. Then I’m staying.”

  So they both went in, both sat with her, until the doctor was satisfied with the blood pressure readings.

  Finally, with both of his parents clutching discharge papers in their hands, David went to get his truck and pulled it up at the emergency entrance.

  Amos looked at the vehicle skeptically as David rounded the hood and opened the passenger door. “You came in this?”

  “It was faster than the buggy.” David held out a hand to his mudder. Now it was she who looked skeptically at the truck.

  “I don’t know if I can climb up in there.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “I’ll help,” Amos told her.

  With a hand from each of them Waneta made it up into the front seat of the truck. But when David turned to Amos, his dat shook his head. “I can make it myself.”

  So David watched, ready to give him a boost if needed, then, when help wasn’t necessary, closed the door and got back into the driver’s seat. He fastened his seat belt and once they were safely belted in, he pulled out of the parking lot and headed home.

  He’d thought he was nervous when he took his test to get a driver’s license . . . when he drove the buggy for the first time after his dat handed him the reins. But it was nothing compared to having the man sitting in his truck observing him driving it.

  He focused on watching the speed limit and getting them home safely and spared only a quick glance over at him when they passed under a streetlight. His dat’s expression was grim.

  His mudder, tuned as always to the moods of her family, patted David’s arm. “You can really see the road from up here, can’t you?”

  Compared to the view from a buggy or the van they occasionally took that was driven by an Englischer, David guessed that was true.

  “How long have you had it?” she asked brightly.

  “Just a couple of months. It took me that long to save for it. It’s used. I couldn’t afford a new one.”

  He heard a noise—a snort?—from his dat but ignored it. No way was he going to get into an argument in front of his mudder.

  “Is it fun to drive?” she asked him.

  “It’s allrecht. It makes it easier to get to my job. And the boss gets me to deliver for him sometimes so . . .” He shrugged.

  Finally, he pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine. “We’re home.”

  His mudder sighed.

  He glanced at her. “Feels pretty gut to be home, huh?”

  “Feels really gut,” she agreed.

  “Come on, Waneta,” Amos said, sliding from the truck and holding out a hand to help her. “Cold out here. I’m a little hungry.”

  “No more chili for you tonight,” she told him sternly.

  “I was thinking about some hot coffee and a piece of that custard pie you baked today.”

  “Coffee and pie it is.” She stepped out of the truck and turned back to David. “Coming, sohn?”

  “In a minute, Mamm. In a minute.”

  “Don’t be long. It’s cold out here.”

  He nodded and watched them climb the stairs and go into the house, then, exhausted from the tension of the evening, he leaned forward and rested his forehead on the steering wheel.

  People said life could take an unexpected turn. He’d always thought he knew what they meant. But after the last few hours, watching both of his parents suffer a health scare, he realized he hadn’t known what people meant at all.

  15

  Lavina walked into the quilting classroom and smiled at Kate. “Good morning!”

  Kate looked up and returned her smile. She sat at a front table sewing on one of the quilts with camouflage printed material she was making for soldiers.

  Lavina set her tote bag and purse down on the table next to a big box. “What’s this? Material for the class?”

  “Nope. Something for you. Well, for you to give to Mary Elizabeth.”

  Curious, Lavina lifted the lid and saw the quilt that had been stolen.

  “You found it!” she exclaimed, and she beamed at Kate. Then her smile faded. “You didn’t arrest the person who took it?”

  Kate shook her head. “Let’s just say the person returned it. There’s a note in the box.”

  She picked up the sheet of paper. It was a short note apologizing for the theft. “You made him—her?—write it?”

  “I strongly suggested he’d want to do it since you weren’t pressing charges. He was happy to do it.” Kate’s tone was matter-of-fact, but she couldn’t hold back a grin.

  “I wonder if that idea came from you being a police officer or a mom?”

  She laughed. “Probably both.”

  Lavina tucked the note back in the box and replaced the lid. “This is wonderful. Mary Elizabeth will be so happy. I’ll take the quilt by Leah’s on my way home so the customer who ordered it still gets it in plenty of time to give it for Christmas.”

  Relieved, she sat. No more extra hours sewing the new one on top of their already busy schedule. And it felt gut that the person had apologized.

  “Malcolm said to say thank you for the food you sent home from the wedding.
”

  “I’m glad he enjoyed it. But you know I didn’t do anything but plate up food others cooked.”

  “It’s the thought that counts.”

  Lavina drew the quilt she was sewing from her tote and threaded a needle.

  “I thought about you after I left. How we talked about it still being hard to attend a wedding.”

  She stared at Kate, dismayed. “I hope it didn’t show—”

  Kate touched her hand. “No, you did a good job of looking like you were having a good time. I hope that you were able to more after I left.”

  “Actually, I went home early with a headache. But I’m kind of glad I left when I did.” She told her what had happened when David gave her a ride and they saw the emergency vehicles at his house.

  “Amos is fine. David left a message on our phone answering machine that his father kept telling everyone it was heartburn but no one would listen.”

  “Can’t be too careful,” Kate said as she made a knot and clipped the thread. “Always best to get it checked out. First responders would rather people called and it ended up being something like heartburn than risk it being a heart attack.”

  Lavina didn’t tell her how Waneta had gotten sick in the emergency room and had to stay for a while because she didn’t feel she should share such.

  “So, speaking of Christmas, what are you making for gifts?”

  Women started filing in. They smiled and greeted them as they got their project boxes and took their seats.

  “I knit sweaters for Rose Anna and my parents, but I don’t have anything yet for Mary Elizabeth,” she told Kate. “I was thinking we could come up with a couple of simple things the women could sew for gifts since they don’t have much money.”

  “That sounds like a good idea.”

  “A friend of mine makes little patchwork hearts filled with potpourri that she sells at the store she and her husband own. Something like that. Maybe a simple fabric ornament for a tree or an embroidered saying we could get some inexpensive frames for. What do you think?”

  “I think that’s a great idea.”

  “Maybe you could come up with some suggestions.”

  “Sure. I’ll look around in Leah’s shop, maybe pick up some supplies.”

  “I don’t want you to spend your own money. I have some donations from friends and coworkers I can give you.”