by Sarah Price
Without waiting for a response, Mary headed toward the house. Despite being older than Elizabeth, she moved at a pace that would have challenged a woman in her twenties. Elizabeth thrust her hands into the front pockets of her jacket and followed her, both curious and frightened as to what she might learn. Carl’s words echoed in her ears. If there was more to Mary Troyer than met the eye, Elizabeth suspected that she was about to learn exactly what it was.
Neither woman spoke as they walked toward the house. Mary carried the half-empty basket of damp laundry on her hip, Elizabeth feeling guilty that she had interrupted the woman’s chores. Yet, deep down, she knew that something was about to be shared, a secret among women, that might help her in healing.
Inside the door to the mudroom, Mary set the basket on the counter by the sink and slipped out of her black work coat. She hung it on the wall and hurried into the kitchen, calling out,“Would you like coffee or tea?”over her shoulder.
Elizabeth followed Mary into the kitchen. “Tea sounds lovely.”
Elizabeth followed Mary into the kitchen and, at Mary’s gesture, took a seat at the table. She watched Mary’s back as the woman moved around the kitchen, almost as if she were floating on a cloud. Her movements were fluid and silent, speaking of years of familiarity with maneuvering through the cabinets to find a tea kettle or cups. It dawned on Elizabeth that Mary had probably lived in this house since she was married as a young woman, almost fifty years ago.
“You’ve lived here a long time, haven’t you?”
Mary glanced over her shoulder.“A lifetime or two, ja.”
“Your fireplace is gorgeous.”Elizabeth said, truly meaning it. She had admired the combination of stone and woodwork on the mantel the other two evenings that she had shared supper with the family but had neglected to mention her admiration of the stonework.“I meant to tell you that the other day.”
“Danke,”Mary said.“John made it when we first were married. This was his family’s farm. But he built this section of the house himself.”She carried the two teacups over to the table, setting them down before hurrying back to the counter to grab the sugar bowl.“It’s called the grossdawdihaus. We lived here after we first married then, as our family grew, we moved next door to the larger section and John’s parents lived here until they passed. Now Elijah and his family live in the main section.”
Her words raised so many questions to Elizabeth. It sounded so strange to her that John and Mary moved back and forth between the two sides of the house. For her, life revolved around that small little house on the main street of Nottingham. She certainly couldn’t imagine living with William’s family, not just for the first few years of their marriage but for all of it!
Returning to the table with the kettle of boiling water, Mary finally sat down.“It’s so nice to be around the family,”she said.“Hard at times, I guess, especially when we were first married.”She looked up at Elizabeth and smiled.“His maemhad a particular way she ran the farm, you see. Not that I’m complaining, of course.”
Elizabeth smiled.“Of course.”
“I just wasn’t partial to how she ran things. Very…structured.”
Elizabeth couldn’t help but wonder where Mary was going with this conversation. She seemed to have a purpose. Rather than interrupt, Elizabeth remained silent and merely nodded her head in acknowledgement.
“Structure is good, mind you,”Mary quickly offered.“But I grew up in a family that was a little less organized than most.”She paused and poured the water into the teacups. The steam warmed the air and the smell of mint permeated the room.“You see my mother died shortly after I was born. My daed was left with seven kinner, one being an infant. He married almost straight away, just months after she left us.”
Elizabeth fought the urge to gasp. She could hardly imagine such a decision on the part of the father and how it impacted the children.
“I see you are surprised.”
Elizabeth flushed.“I’m sorry. It just sounds so…”She couldn’t complete the sentence, not wanting to sound judgmental.
“That’s the way Amish do it, I reckon. Especially back then and especially on a farm. His siblings were all married with their own kinner and farms. Besides,”she continued,“Maem went to a better place so there was no need to mourn. It was more pressing to find someone to raise his family.”
This surprised Elizabeth. No need to mourn?“But, the children…?”
Lifting her hand, Mary stopped her in mid-sentence.“It’s the way we are raised. We were young and we needed a new maem. Unfortunately, she was young and stepping into a ready-made family must have overwhelmed her.”
To say the least! Elizabeth wanted to add. She had her hands full with just the two children and a small house. She couldn’t imagine stepping into a family of seven and helping to manage a large farm.“What happened, if I might ask?”
Waving her hand dismissively, Mary chuckled.“It eventually worked itself out. Luckily I was just a toddler so she was all I ever knew as a maem. It was more difficult for my older siblings. But there were a few rough years there.”Her eyes misted over as she thought back to a memory, one that made her smile but in a distant way.“She eventually had four more kinner so the house was always filled with noise. It’s hard to manage eleven kinner. Maem struggled with that and, as a result, our family life wasn’t as structured and organized. Some might even say that we were…”She hesitated, searching for the right word.“Disorderly. My older bruders in particular. Two of them left Ohio during their rumschpringe and never came back.”
Elizabeth knew that was not something that would have sat well with the family. Certainly it reflected poorly on both Mary’s father and stepmother. She didn’t know what to say so she lowered her eyes and waited for Mary to continue.
“So when I married John and moved here, his maem felt that she had a lot to teach me, I reckon.”
Her words lacked warmth. Elizabeth understood that, without even saying it, Mary suffered during those early years.“That must have been hard,”she finally said, an offer of compassion to help ease the pain of the memories.
“Daed took it hard, ja. Never complained but I suspect he blamed Maem.”
One thing that Elizabeth knew from her years of coming to Ohio was that the Amish family relied on their children to accept Christ through baptism into the Amish way of life. With the high birth rate among the Amish as well as the high percentage of children that took that vow, the Amish population had doubled in size in recent years. Unfortunately, the lack of available farmland meant that younger families either lived with their extended family or started new communities in other states. A child that refused baptism was certainly a disappointment to the parents as well as the church district.
Mary sighed.“I suspect John’s maem wasn’t too thrilled when we married, although she never said anything. It did create some stress in our early marriage.”
Elizabeth could hardly imagine what life would have been like if William’s family had not accepted her with open arms.
“And then came the accident.”
Elizabeth looked up, her eyes wide and she stared at Mary.“Accident?”What was it Carl had said? What seems like a crisis to one person is merely a whisper in the wind of life to the others.
Mary nodded her head, swallowing a sip of tea. “I had a stillborn. A son. This was after two miscarriages.”She shook her head as if trying to push away the pain of the memory.“I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders,”she explained softly.“I knew John wanted a big family. I knew his parents expected us to take over the farm. His maem fretted about the way I was raising the kinner. She didn’t complain directly to me, but I felt her criticism. Junior was 18 and running with his supper gang. Elijah was almost 16 and ready to start his rumschpringe. James was only four and too small to really help around the farm.”
James? Elizabeth hadn’t known they had a son named James. She leaned forward.
“When I had the stillborn,”she continued,�
�I felt poorly for a while.”She glanced at Elizabeth.“Not physically, if you know what I mean.”
It was a feeling Elizabeth knew all too well. Depression. The loss of motivation or desire to do anything other than just survive one day at a time. Waking up each morning and wondering how to get out of bed and, once doing so, wanting nothing more than to return to the comfort of warm blankets and soft sheets.“I do,”she said empathetically.
Mary took a deep breath.“I should have been watching him. Martha and Anna were at school so I really had no excuse.”
A lengthy pause caused Elizabeth to breathlessly ask the question that lingered on her tongue.“What happened?”Her heart pounded and she knew that, whatever Mary was going to share with her, had created a pain in the woman’s life that nothing could erase.
“They found him at the creek.”She spoke slowly, a distant, dazed look in her eyes. Although this happened years ago, the pain was still raw.“He must have run through the forest, looking for his daed. He probably slipped and fell into it.”
Elizabeth fought the tears that came to her eyes. The loss of a husband was painful enough. Even with her strenuous relationship with her children, she couldn’t imagine losing one of them, especially at such a young age. She didn’t know how Mary could remain so stoic as she retold the story.
“I hadn’t even noticed he was missing,”Mary whispered, looking down at the floor.“I think that was the hardest part of losing him.”
Emotionally, Elizabeth did not know how to respond. Which was worse, she wondered: the horror of losing a child or the horror of feeling the burden of guilt over his death? She imagined that they both weighed equally heavy on Mary’s shoulders.
Yet, it suddenly dawned on Elizabeth, Mary had managed to survive. She continued living, even through what must have been the darkest days of her life. For the past twenty-five years, she managed to find the strength to get out of bed each morning, gave birth to two more children, sons at that, and remained an active part of the community.
“I…I don’t know what to say,”Elizabeth whispered.“I don’t know how you did it.”
Mary gave a soft laugh.“Faith,”she responded.“Faith in God is the only way I made it through, Lizzy.”
Faith. It was what helped Elizabeth through the years, especially when she fell ill. Faith meant Elizabeth clutching her Bible and reading Scripture, attending church and singing hymns, praying to God and unleashing her deepest fears…fears that she admitted to Him and Him alone.
Reaching over, Mary laid her hand, weathered from years of hard work, both inside and outside of the house, over Elizabeth’s. There was a look of understanding on her face as she nodded her head.“And family,”she added softly.“Family can help you heal…if you let them.”
Feeling emotion well up into her throat, Elizabeth fought the urge to cry. However, the harder she tried to suppress the tears, the more she knew that she couldn’t.“They aren’t interested,”she whispered.
“Mayhaps not,”Mary said, a solemn tone to her voice.“But family is not always who you think it is.”She stood up and went to the counter to retrieve a tissue for Elizabeth.“Do you know who had the most compassion for me when James died?”She didn’t wait for Elizabeth to respond.“John’s parents. His family surrounded me with love and compassion that I never suspected was possible.”
Elizabeth didn’t understand the significance.
“My biggest critic, the very woman who looked down her nose at my family because of my older bruders’refusing the kneeling vow and my maem’suntidy house was the very woman who came forward and helped me heal.”There was a look of gratification in her expression.“I thought they would blame me.”Leaning forward, she lowered her voice.“They didn’t.”
Slowly, Elizabeth began to understand.
“You came here to heal,”Mary said slowly.“I think you have begun the process, Lizzy. Only by healing can you move forward. And you have found a place of peace with people who care about you, both of which are facilitating that process.”
It was true.
In just three short weeks, she had fallen in love with the cottage. She didn’t want to leave, not yet. After all, she was developing new friendships and new memories, ones that were aiding in the healing process, just like Mary had said.
And then there was Carl.
For the first time in a long time, Elizabeth had spent more time thinking about someone other than herself and William. For the past few days, she had thought about little else except Carl and their dinner.
When she walked in the mornings, she remembered how he had touched her hand. When she worked on her crocheting, she reflected on how, if she had let him, he would have kissed her. Despite her resilience in saying no, part of her realized that she had longed for that affection. The loss of William had been emotionally draining. But now, she longed for someone to help her become whole once again…to show her that her purpose was not finished yet. There was more to her life than she realized.
Of course, deep down, she knew that she wasn’t ready yet. Not for that level of commitment. But Carl had showed her that the possibility existed. It had been an eye-opening moment for her.
And now she understood what he meant when he had told her that one person’s crisis was merely a whisper in the wind of life to other people.
Sophia and Ryan had moved on. They were not living in the past but living for the future. Ryan had two children to focus on. Grief had run its course for her son. Wallowing in it simply was not an option.
As for Sophia’s difficulty in dealing with Elizabeth, she realized that it didn’t come from resentment over William’s death. After all, if Elizabeth hadn’t missed her annual doctor appointment, the cancer might have been caught earlier and, as a result, been less expensive to treat. If so, William might have been able to retire early and finally take that trip to Europe instead of working four extra years to pay the bills.
Elizabeth had always presumed that Sophia’s attitude stemmed from that. Instead, she now realized that her daughter’s irritation was over the fact that Elizabeth still grieved in a way that held back the rest of them.
CHAPTER 13
Late Friday afternoon, Elizabeth walked along the road. Even though the sky was gray and the air crisp, it was her second walk for the day. Her head swam in a cloud of murky thoughts. She needed the exercise to clear her mind and try to understand what she was feeling.
For the past two days, Mary’s story haunted her. It had all of the elements of a horrible movie: the sorrowful upbringing, the overly critical in-laws, the painful miscarriages, the grief-filled depression, and the shocking death of a child.
Yet, in the four weeks that she had been at the Troyers', Elizabeth had never suspected that anything was amiss.
Oh, she knew that the worst part of the story had happened years ago. That didn’t make it any easier, however. Elizabeth knew that pain and suffering of such an enormous magnitude could never truly dissipate. Not completely.
Elizabeth wondered how Mary had survived. The depression was bad enough. But to have lost a child. To have blamed herself for his death. Even though it had been years ago, Elizabeth’s heart broke for the sadness that must have fallen over the family during those years.
Yet, Mary masked it so well. Her family loved her. Her friends supported her. Her community respected her. They had provided a triangle of comfort that had clearly helped Mary to survive what must have been the tragedy of a lifetime.
It was what Elizabeth was missing in her life: family, friends, and community.
“Well, well, well,”a voice called out from behind her.
Startled, Elizabeth stopped walking and looked over her shoulder. A pick-up truck pulled up behind her, the passenger window rolled down and Carl leaned over, smiling at her.
“Late afternoon walk?”
“Was quiet on the farm.”
“Want a ride back?”
She hesitated. It wasn’t that much further to get to the Troyers, just a mi
le down the road.“I don’t want to put you out,”she said apologetically.
He reached over and opened the door for her.“Nah, not a problem. I was headed that way anyway.”
Reluctantly, she approached the truck.“You’re off early for a Friday,”she heard herself say, immediately regretting the intrusive comment.“I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”
He drove the truck in the direction of the Troyers.“I’m having dinner with my family tonight.”He paused and looked at her.“My father’s sister and her family.”
“Oh? They live nearby?”
He nodded, returning his eyes to the road as they rounded a bend.“You could say that. Not too far from my house, anyway.”
The five mailboxes came into view and Elizabeth gestured.“You can let me off there. I don’t want to make you late.”
He put on his blinker and slowed down the truck.“Now, what kind of gentleman do you think I am, Just Elizabeth Fielding?”he teased.“I’d no sooner dump a lady off at the mailboxes as I would cuss in church!”
She laughed at his colorful description.
He pulled the truck up to the parking area outside of Mary’s house and, to Elizabeth’s surprise, turned off the car. She glanced at him, wondering why he was stopping. But, without prying, she merely thanked him and opened the door to get out.
When he did the same, she questioned him with her eyes. It dawned on her that he must have driven over to pick up Ethan.
“Carl!”Elijah called out as he walked through the barn door and lifted his hand in greeting.“Come to help with the evening milking before supper, then?”
“Oh I think you have plenty of hands to help with that,”Carl retorted, stepping forward to shake Elijah’s hand.
“Maem said you were coming to supper tonight,”Elijah said.“Katie and I will be joining with the younger kinner.”
Elizabeth frowned, wondering if she had misheard Elijah.“I thought you were going to your aunt’s house for dinner.”