Christmas at Rose Hill Farm

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Something in the way she responded reminded him again of Bertha Riehl, a master at finagling her way out of a tight spot. What did Bess know about this rose that she wasn’t telling him?

  Avoiding his eyes, she straightened and bent over to examine the mystery rose. “I think the capsule is starting to expand. It looks different from yesterday.”

  “I’ll measure and see if there’s any significant difference.”

  Suddenly she turned and caught him studying her. Something odd happened in his chest. A brief catch, a tightening that caused him to drop his gaze to the workbench.

  “Billy, why don’t you just stay at Rose Hill Farm until it opens?”

  He bent down to take a file out of his backpack as if she hadn’t spoken. Where was that book on lost roses? He was sure he packed it.

  “You could stay in the guest room. It’s no bother.”

  “I’m going to check a few things, then get back to College Station as soon as I can this morning.” He settled back down on the wooden stool and opened the file.

  “If you’re worried about what Caleb Zook might say, I don’t think—”

  He hopped to his feet as if he’d been stung by a bee. “Don’t you get it?”

  “Get what?” Bess’s voice carried genuine confusion, but Billy paused for only a fraction of a second. Then he ceased to think at all. Suddenly, the frustration and anger he’d bottled up the last two days—the last few years—started to bubble over. “Look—I don’t belong in Stoney Ridge anymore. I don’t want to be here. I wouldn’t even have to be here at all if that stupid rosarian hadn’t slipped on ice and hurt his rear end.” By the look on her face, he could tell she was getting more upset by the minute at his high-handedness and the insulting tone of his voice. He knew he should have stopped, but he couldn’t help it. “So quit tryin’ to get me to stay.”

  Bess straightened her shoulders and stared back. “Why are you so angry?”

  “I’m not angry,” he said, hating how blunt he sounded. “Not with you.”

  Bess waited. Her eyes narrowed as if she could see through him. When she spoke again, her voice was stiff, as if belonging to someone else. “I don’t know what in the world’s the matter with you, but you act like a bear with a thorn in his paw.” Her voice became sharper. “You need to eat.” She turned and walked to the greenhouse door. “Before you leave, come up to the house and have breakfast with us.”

  He threw her a withering glance but said nothing.

  5

  Bess felt tears of mortification sting her eyes. As soon as the suggestion to stay at Rose Hill Farm tumbled from her mouth, she saw a hint of something hard slide across Billy’s face. The ease and comfortableness they had shared briefly in the greenhouse was gone; his sharp edge had returned.

  She had promised herself that she wouldn’t pressure him or overwhelm him with all the questions that were threatening to explode within her. Like the rosebud, he would reveal himself when he was good and ready. But he hadn’t been here thirty minutes today and look what she’d done. She swallowed back her tears as she hurried into the house.

  Inside the warm kitchen, Bess threw her coat over a chair and went to the window, hugging her elbows against herself. Her heel hit the floor with an exasperated klunk as she glared out the window at the greenhouse. “That man can make me so angry!”

  “I’ll gander a guess that you’re referring to Billy Lapp.”

  Bess hadn’t realized that Lainey was over by the stovetop, stirring something in a pot. Lainey set the wooden spoon on the stovetop and went to the window to stand beside her.

  “I just can not understand him. One minute, he seems like the old Billy. The next, he’s as prickly as a cactus.”

  “Your dad got the impression that Billy didn’t want to be here.”

  Bess snorted. “He’s made that very clear. If it weren’t for the fact that he can’t figure out the identity to the rose, he’d be long gone.”

  “Seems a little strange, doesn’t it? That you don’t have any recollection about that particular rose?”

  Bess might, just might, have a little recollection about it. Just a tiny one, nothing worth mentioning. Not yet, anyway. She squinted at the brightening sky, watching the clouds. “You knew Mammi. She had all kinds of roses tucked around the farm. She was full of surprises.”

  Lainey was silent for a long moment. “I remember something she used to say: Inside every hard person hides a softer one.” She patted Bess on the shoulder and went back to the stovetop.

  Bess pressed her brow against the cold glass of the windowpane, feeling her frustration slide away, replaced by a fresh resolve. It would be a difficult task to find anything soft inside of Billy, but she aimed to try.

  The smoky scent of crisping bacon drifted down from the house. Billy was famished. He hadn’t eaten anything since last night and his stomach was flapping against his backbone. Maybe he should eat breakfast with the Riehls, then leave. That’s all. Just one meal. He owed Bess that much. He owed Bertha Riehl much more.

  The odd thing was that he loved being here. Rose Hill Farm had always been a buoy for him in an unsettled sea, but being here now churned up too many memories. Good ones, difficult ones. That inner conflict was why he snapped at Bess just now, fully knowing he was hurting her feelings but unable to stop himself. He felt ashamed of himself, even more so because he knew Bertha Riehl would be ashamed of him, and she was one person he had never wanted to disappoint.

  His thoughts traveled back to the first time he realized anyone who dared to get on the bad side of Bertha Riehl was as crazy as a rat in a drainpipe.

  ———

  August 1964, a hot, humid afternoon. Billy was ten years old and his brothers let him tag along to fish at Blue Lake Pond, a rare invitation. On the way home, they cut through Rose Hill Farm. During the summer, Bertha Riehl kept a roadside stand at the bottom of the driveway to sell produce from her vegetable garden. Sam helped himself to an apple and pointed to the honor jar. It was customary to leave an honor jar on the table, and folks—Amish and non-Amish—knew to put money in the jar if they took produce. Sam stuck his big paw in the honor jar and pulled out a grimy fistful of dollar bills, then Ben and Mose followed suit, as they always did. Billy was horrified. He tried to stop them, threatened to tell on them, but they only laughed.

  He shouldn’t have worried. Bertha Riehl saw the whole thing unfold.

  As the boys stuffed the crumpled dollars into their pockets, they heard an unmistakable cock of a double-barreled shotgun behind them. They froze, every hair on Billy’s head stood up, and the gun exploded. He thought for sure they were all dead, until a big black crow fell to the ground by their feet. Bertha walked over to the dead crow and picked it up by the tip of a wing to toss it over the fence. A burned-powder haze hung around her, halo-like.

  “Lots of pests around this time of year,” she said, pinning Billy’s brothers with a stare. “Always best to take care of them before they become a nuisance.”

  Ben, Sam, and Mose emptied their pockets of dollars and took off running. Billy stayed behind to pick up the money, hands shaking, and stuff it all back in the honor jar. Bertha gave him a curt nod. He couldn’t hear right for a week.

  It was the first time, but not the last, that Billy discovered his brothers were conscienceless. He tried to make up for them. He went out of his way to help others, to do more than was required, to even the scales that his brothers had fixed.

  ———

  His empty stomach rumbled, jolting him back to the present and reminding him that a good breakfast was waiting for him in the farmhouse. He grabbed his coat; the mystery rose could hold off until after breakfast.

  When he reached the farmhouse, Billy raised his hand to knock on the door. Lainey’s little girl—what was her name again?—came to the window, saw Billy through the glass, and ran off without opening the door. He knocked again and Bess appeared at the door.

  “No need to knock. Nobody ever knocks around here.�
� She pushed the door open and crossed the room to continue frying bacon.

  She was keeping her distance from him. Fine. That suited him just fine, but the smells in this kitchen were enough to cause his stomach to practically roll over and beg. Sweet cinnamon and sizzling bacon and percolating coffee.

  From the door, Billy scanned the familiar scene. The kitchen at Rose Hill Farm was as ordinary as field straw, like any Plain home, and spotlessly clean. There was a cast-iron stove, a table as big as a hay wagon, eight spindled chairs, worn gray linoleum on the floor. A large pantry, where Bess had gone to find something. Beyond the window, cardinals were swooping around a fancy white marten birdhouse on a tall pole, hunting for forgotten seed. Out on the dry grass, Billy spotted that black cat from the greenhouse hunched up, watching the cardinals, ready to pounce.

  His eyes traveled below the kitchen window to a tray of paper cups on a small table. In each cup was a narcissus bulb, paperwhites, soon to bloom. The sight stabbed him. Bertha Riehl used to give each of her neighbors a blooming narcissus bulb for Christmas. Seeing those cups, with their green stalks poking toward the sky, gave him a pain in his gut. He missed that wonderful, crotchety old woman.

  Bess emerged out of the pantry with a canister of flour and set it on the counter before she returned to flip bacon on the stovetop. From behind, Billy noticed Bess’s blue dress—blue as a bachelor’s button—and the strings of her prayer cap fluttering on her back as she added flour, milk, and egg into a bowl and stirred vigorously. Studying the apron pinned around the shallows of her spine, Billy felt like a teenager again, awkward, a little uncertain. He remained by the door.

  “Come in, Billy, and make yourself comfortable,” Bess urged softly.

  The little girl slipped back in from around the living room corner and buried her nose in Bess’s leg in a sudden fit of shyness. One eye stared at Billy.

  “Christy, you remember meeting Billy, don’t you, honey?”

  Christy! That was her name. Billy was amused by her shyness. She hid her face in Bess’s apron.

  “She’s just getting used to you,” Bess said, over her shoulder. “She’ll warm up to you in a minute or two.” She reached a hand down to help Christy up on a chair near the stove. “Christy wanted pancakes that looked like snowmen, so that’s what we’re working on.”

  It occurred to Billy that Bess would be some mother. Always kind voiced. Always concerned about the children. Always making them feel important. His father had never made Billy feel important, only in the way.

  “Dad’s out in the barn. Lainey’s upstairs with Lizzie. We’ll be eating in a moment. Coffee’s hot.”

  She pointed a spatula toward a blue speckled coffeepot, and Billy crossed the room to get a cup and fill it with coffee. The door swung open with a blast of cold air and in walked Jonah. The faint smell of the barn lingered on him—hay and horses—even above the aroma of boiling coffee. He smiled when he saw Billy. “Getting any closer to figuring out the rose’s identity?”

  “I won’t know for sure until the bloom opens, but I’m narrowing it down. I’m pretty sure it’s rare, if not a found.” He glanced at Bess as she emerged from the pantry again, this time holding a jar of purple-looking jam. He was besieged by a startling thought.

  That this was their kitchen and Bess was . . . his.

  An awkward silence filled the room. “What?” Bess said. “Why are you staring at me? Do I have flour on my nose?”

  “I’d better wash up before breakfast.” Billy lurched for the soap at the sink, feeling his face heat. What’s the matter with you, Lapp? It’s not like you haven’t seen a woman before. Find somethin’ else to think about.

  He lingered at the washbasin, then turned to see Lainey Riehl walk into the kitchen with a toddler on her hip—the one he’d met yesterday. What was this one’s name? He hadn’t spent time with children lately, if ever. He didn’t notice them much.

  “Come to me, Lizzie.” Jonah reached out to take the little girl from her and set her in the high chair.

  Lizzie! That was her name.

  “Well, Billy Lapp,” Lainey said with a smile. “Glad to see you’ve finally decided to join us. We need to put some meat on those bones of yours.” It was a comment a mother might have said, and it went straight to Billy’s heart.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Billy scrubbed his hands hard, refusing to turn and let anyone see he was blushing.

  When they were seated, after a silent prayer, Lainey passed Billy a familiar white tureen; it had been Bertha Riehl’s and she served her famous rabbit stew in it. He lifted the cover and found one of his favorites: baked oatmeal, thick with diced apples and cinnamon.

  He openly stared at the wealth of food on his plate: three fried eggs, bacon, crispy hash browns, toast with boysenberry jam. His hands rested beside his plate while he fought the compulsion to gobble like an animal. When had he last eaten a home-cooked meal like this one? The foods he’d grown accustomed to over the last few years had as little smell as taste. As he took a scoop of baked oatmeal and dished it on his plate, Jonah asked him about the propagated roses in the greenhouse.

  “How do you propagate the slips? I remember you used to dip the slips in a rooting hormone.”

  “A rooting hormone? No, not anymore. I’ve had better luck using willow water. Some professor figured out that willows have a root-promoting substance called rhizocaline. Water saturated with rhizocaline is far more effective than a store-bought rooting hormone.”

  “You don’t say. I’ll have to try it. Thank you, Billy. You’re quite a resource for us.”

  Bess kept her eyes on her plate, but quietly added, “Mammi used to say there wasn’t anything Billy Lapp didn’t know, and if he didn’t, he’d find the answer to it.”

  Embarrassed by the praise, pleased by it too, Billy concentrated on cutting his bacon. Bess had often said things like that, giving him more credit than he deserved. Calling him intelligent, inventive, resourceful. Things his father had never said to him, things that made him feel good about himself.

  He looked across the table and caught Bess’s eyes—eyes as blue as a summer day. How like her to try to make him feel comfortable at a moment like this, despite how rude he’d been to her in the greenhouse. He was shamed. “I wish Bertha were still here to ask about the rose. I’m confident she would have the answer to its identity.”

  Jonah nodded. “I don’t think a day goes by when I don’t wish she was still with us. But we mustn’t question the Lord’s will in taking her.”

  “Why not?” And three forks stopped in midair. Billy knew immediately he should have held his tongue. “I just . . . I wish the Lord would have considered taking someone else instead.”

  Jonah exchanged a look with Lainey, and Billy wondered what they were saying to each other. But before he could ponder that, the door banged open, letting an icy blast of air swoop in, and suddenly a young woman appeared in the kitchen with a stack of cake pans in her hands. “Sorry to interrupt! Jorie said you needed to borrow her round cake pans for the wedding, so I brought them over and—” Her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened in shock. “Well, I’ll be double ding donged d . . . oh, sorry, Lainey, I know you told me to watch my language around Christy. But this is quite a shock to the system!” She set the pans on the counter, put her hands on her hips, and shook her head. “Just when I think I’ll never be surprised again! Billy Lapp, as I live and breathe. Whatever next? And just why am I always the last to learn anything?”

  Billy rose to his feet and couldn’t hold back a grin. Somehow, Maggie Zook always behaved as if the best day of her life had just gotten under way. She looked the same—snapping brown eyes beneath her glasses, dark hair, petite and fine-boned, her face as happy and hopeful as he remembered. “Hello, cousin.” She had been like a little sister to him; impossible, adorable girl.

  Bess jumped from her chair to set a place for Maggie.

  Maggie noticed. “I can’t stay, Bess. Jorie told me to drop off cake pans and come right back
. She was adamant. For some reason, she’s under the impression that I am easily distracted.”

  Bess didn’t pay her any mind. “Sit. Sit and join us. Anyone who can put a smile on Billy Lapp’s face deserves a good breakfast.”

  “Maybe just a minute or two.” Maggie couldn’t stop grinning. “It sure is good to see you, cousin. It sure is. I didn’t think I’d ever lay eyes on you again. You just vanished, like a ghost.” She snapped her fingers to emphasize Billy’s abrupt disappearance. “I can’t wait to tell my dad you’re here. He’ll want to come straight over to welcome you back to the fold.”

  Billy stiffened.

  “Uh, Maggie,” Jonah said in a diplomatic voice, “I think we should let Billy decide whom he wants to see. And when.”

  Maggie wasn’t listening. She had reached for a big spoon to dish out the baked oatmeal. One spoonful, then another.

  Same Maggie, Billy thought. Never still, always in motion. She might not be thought of as a beauty like Bess, but sharp? So sharp, you’d think she slept in the knife drawer. He got a kick out of watching her fill her plate. She’d always had an appetite that rivaled two growing boys. Bess, by contrast, pecked like a sparrow, hardly ate a thing. Even now, she pushed her food around on her plate.

  Maggie swallowed down a large piece of bacon. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of very troubling news this morning,” she said in a confidential tone. “Very, very troubling.” Her gaze swept around the table, waiting to make her announcement until all eyes were on her. “The schoolteacher is leaving at Christmas. Midterm. Something about her sciatica kicking up. Personally, I think it has more to do with those frightful Glick triplets, the ones with the bright red hair and round faces covered with freckles. You know the ones. They rolled marbles down the aisle in church last month and the new minister with the watermelon belly slipped on them and fell on his backside.” She grinned and quickly sent an apologetic look in Lainey’s direction. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t laugh, it isn’t being a good example, but it was funny.”