by Anya Monroe
It took leaving for the two of them to find their way back together.
He left shortly after and Marigold watched his car drive off in a cloud of smoke. Standing in the driveway, her eyes blurred with tears. She tucked the locket under her heavy dress and walked back to the yarn shed, wondering for the first time in her life if maybe her dad was right. Maybe in an effort to be herself, she’d forgotten who she was.
Chapter 18
Abel
The call woke him from his sleep. The alarm clock read four a.m., and the ringing from the landline blasted him up from the twin bed he slept on.
“What the hell?” Jordan threw a pillow at him. Abel reached for the phone, rubbing his eyes.
“Hello?”
“Abel, it’s your dad.” Marigold’s voice shook through the line. “He had a heart attack. He’s at the hospital in Lancaster. Can you come straight away?”
“Ja, ja of course. I’ll be there.” He paused, and then asked. “Is he…?”
“I don’t know.” She pulled in a breath, obviously in tears. “But I need you here. We all do.”
The bus and taxi ride was a blur, and when they pulled up to the front entrance, Abel handed the driver money and flew through the front doors.
The hospital had a small waiting room, and before he got to the reception desk Eli intercepted him. He could see the rest of the Miller family in the waiting room keeping vigil, along with Bishop Fisher.
“Brother,” Eli said, throwing his arms around his brother. “You’re here.”
“Is he okay?” Abel asked as they walked toward their mother and sisters. Sarah sat holding a sleeping Abe in her arms, and next to her Bekah sat with her head bowed in prayer. Next to her was a pensive Marigold. Her eyes were glassy but gleaming, any trace of tears already brushed away. She looked so different, a kapp on her head and a heavy Amish dress on her small frame, seeming to engulf her.
“Oh, Abel.” His mom reached for him. “We’ve been here about three hours, and they’ve given him, oh what was it?” She turned to Eli, looking for help with the terminology.
“It was clot-blocker medication. We are waiting to see how he responds. An ambulance came for him at the farm, after Mom woke to him falling out of bed. It’s been….”
“Awful.” Abel finished for him, his face ashen as he took in the severity of the situation.
Abel pulled his hand through his hair. He forgot his hat in his rush to leave, and he felt bare. The hospital so sterile, so bright white, and his family so dark, so serious standing in their small grouping.
Bishop Fisher spoke, his voice gravelly, “It is good you are here, son. Your family needs you. It is good to see you where you belong.”
“Of course,” answered Abel, swallowing hard.
“We should sit in prayer, steadfast as ever, for the healing of your father,” announced Bishop Fisher. Everyone nodded, and gathered in seats in the waiting room.
Abel sat with his hands folded out of respect, but his mind raced with the innuendo of the Bishop words, that he was needed here. The unknown future of his father’s fate spilled across his face, and as he wiped the tears from his eyes, he met Marigold’s eyes once again. It had been months, and she had changed, but his heart for her hadn’t.
He wished he could reach across the divide and pull her close. He needed comfort only she could offer. The room was quiet, and he tried to still his mind. He had to decide what mattered most in the end.
The doctor met them in the waiting room several hours later for an update. All morning the family sat in quiet meditation, praying for his deliverance.
“The medication worked and he’s awake now. He’ll need to stay and be monitored for a few days, but he’s recovering,” the doctor explained. Before he could utter another word, his mother spoke out, uncharacteristically bold.
“Oh thank you.” She began crying uncontrollably, and Abel watched as Marigold and Bekah wrapped their arms around his mother. It was a seamless motion, Marigold standing and coming to give comfort. She looked so Amish as she did it, with her head bowed, her movements slow and steady. The elfish ghost-girl he’d met months ago was gone. She’d been replaced with a model Amish woman.
And his father was alive. Recovering. His family could continue as before. The only thing Abel needed to figure out was, could he?
Marigold
Mr. Miller was propped up on the couch, resting. He came home this morning after forty-eight hours at the hospital. With a covey of visitors dropping off heart-healthy casseroles and low-sodium chicken potpies, the house had been bustling all afternoon.
Marigold looked out the window over the kitchen sink as she filled the coffeepot with water. She saw Abel walk out of the barn office, a pile of papers in his hand. He’d been so busy the last few days, helping complete farm tasks for his dad while he was out of commission.
Turning away from the window, she set the pot on the stove and lit it. Abel walked through the back door, and she focused on the white enameled stove to avoid turning around and meeting his gaze.
“Marigold,” he said, breaking the silence. “You making coffee, ja?”
Turning, she retied her apron strings, still not wanting to look up. The Bishop had been constantly reminding her of where her eyes should be. Everything was different now that she was taking her baptism classes. The summer had been filled with grace, extended to her as a visitor. But now life here was different now, stricter, more real.
Everything seemed to be spiraling faster than she was prepared for. She’d lost her hold. Her fingers fumbled to tie the bow.
“You okay, Marigold?” Abel asked, moving closer. She held up her hand to him, not wanting to be so close. Her apron fell and she leaned to pick it up from the floor. Closing her eyes she tried to shake it off as a bevy of emotions closed in on her.
Recognizing she wasn’t well, Abel spoke more softly, “Marigold, do you want to talk? I know it’s been scary, having to call 911, and not knowing if my dad would make it out okay.” He stepped behind her and took her apron strings, tying it in place.
His fingers, even through the layers of clothing, felt strong. Strong enough to hold her. Still.
“Abel,” she whispered as his hands stayed in place, at the small of her back. She wanted to turn, to have him hold her in place. Steady her.
“It’s okay,” he said, his breath against her back. “You’re gonna be okay.”
She didn’t believe him. She wanted to say so, but Bekah walked in the kitchen, smelling the boiling coffee, probably.
“Oh, umm. Sorry.” She hesitated in the doorway. “You know there are lots of people in the living room, ja? Maybe it’s not the time for an, umm, reunion?”
“It’s not like that,” Abel said too quickly.
Bekah just smiled at him and made her way to the coffeepot. “Okay, brother. Whatever you say. Just don’t be messing with my girl here. Joshua and I have been spending lots of time with her, and she’s turned into a right good Amish woman.” Bekah took the creamer from the fridge and set it on a tray, adding a plate of cookies. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’m not,” Abel said defensively. “You think I want to mess anything up? What do you think I’ve been doing all morning, Bekah? I’m trying to get things in order for Dad.” He picked up his stack of papers from the table and waved them in her face.
“What’s going on?” Eli’s tone immediately reprimanding everyone as he stepped into the kitchen. “Mom and Dad are visiting with the neighbors, and we can all hear the ruckus in here.”
“There is no ruckus,’ Abel said rolling his eyes. “What there is,” he whispered through clenched teeth, “is an absolute disaster with payroll, some people haven’t been paid in over four weeks, and I don’t know why Dad hasn’t made the shipment for this past summer’s wool. It’s going to be ruined if it sits in the barn all winter. Why hasn’t he hired someone to take over my duties yet? What’s been going on here?”
“What’s been going on is you
leaving Dad to do things that are over his head,” Eli said, matching Abel’s hushed tone. “You had these grand ideas to grow the business, and then you leave him to fend for himself. He isn’t like you, brother. He did things the old way, and you left him. You did this to him.”
The kitchen was so still they could have heard a pin drop. It wasn’t fair to blame Abel for his father’s heart attack. Marigold covered her face, not wanting to see how Abel would react to such a judgment.
“That’s not true, Eli,” Bekah said. “Dad could have hired someone straight away instead of shouldering this himself in hopes Abel would return. He didn’t want to see the truth of Abel’s choices. Apologize, it’s not our way, brother, to place blame.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?” Abel asked, turning towards his sister. “If I hadn’t left, things wouldn’t have fallen apart.”
No one answered, and their silence made it clear what they thought. Yes, leaving had left Mr. Miller in a bind he wasn’t prepared to free himself from. It had been more weight than he knew how to bear. The brothers locked eyes with one another, and Marigold couldn’t help wondering if the assessment was entirely true.
At what point did it become okay to demand another person live a life you want for them more than what they want for themselves? When there is a heart attack, a death. A life? Marigold didn’t have the answers, but she knew it wasn’t right to take all the weight from Mr. Miller and drop it on Abel either.
“I’m going to serve the coffee,” Bekah announced, finally. She left the kitchen with her tray and Eli followed her out.
After a beat of silence, Abel spoke, “I should go sort this paperwork out.” He left through the back door, the stack of paper in hand.
The words of her father reverberated in head, you don’t have to be the same to be family. But here in the Miller house that wasn’t true. Here you had to be exactly the same, exactly right. Otherwise there wasn’t a place for you. There wasn’t a space for Abel unless he became something he wasn’t.
And where did that leave her? What if over time she changed, what if she grew in ways she couldn’t account for as an eighteen year old? Where would that leave here then?
Marigold smoothed her apron and walked out the door after him. But not toward Abel, toward the yarn shed, because none of what was running through her mind was about him, not really. It was about her. The girl she was.
She needed to do something with her hands as she sorted out the mess in her mind. Needles always helped.
Abel
The next day Abel finished organizing the office and contacted the company to come pick up the wool delivery. After speaking with the driver, Abel had a better sense of where the miscommunication had occurred with his father and them. As he carried some invoices to the mailbox, he watched Marigold sneak back into the yarn shop, a few cardboard boxes in hand.
Not wanting to blur the lines, or the reason for his choices, he went back to the barn and used his father’s business line to make a phone call he never expected to ever make.
Lily answered his call and voiced her surprise as Abel explained the last few days. When he hung up the phone he knew he needed to act fast before he changed his mind.
That evening he sat down with his parents in the living room after the house had gone to bed. Speaking with his father relieved the anxiety in his chest. He couldn’t let him have another heart attack while he ignored the facts. His family needed him, Jamestown was not what he expected, and in the ways that mattered it was too easy.
He had tried to compartmentalize his life, but matters of the heart didn’t work that way. Separating what mattered from what mattered more didn’t work. Everything was connected, him and Jamestown, his parents and Marigold, her sister and his sister, and Joshua and newborn Abe. It was a large mass, continuing to grow, and it was joined in ways he hadn’t expected, but also in ways he couldn’t ignore.
He left early the next morning before anyone woke, and made his way back to his dorm. He didn’t care that when he walked into his dorm room and flicked on the lights, it wasn’t even eight a.m.
“What the fuck?” Jordan yelled, throwing his arms over his eyes. The girl curled next to him whined and pressed a pillow to her face. Abel didn’t care.
He threw his bag on his twin bed, not realizing another naked girl slept under his own sheets.
“Are you kidding me?” Abel’s voice was incredulous, with good reason. The girl in his bed was so passed out, she didn’t even stir as Abel folded the quilt covering her. A quilt his mother had made.
Abel pulled out his duffel bags and began tossing his clothes in. Socks, underwear, bathroom toiletries, and shoes. He opened another bag and loaded his bookshelf in it. He didn’t have much, two bags and a backpack. He packed in fifteen minutes. Not even long enough for Jordan to fully wake up and realize what was happening.
He kicked open his door and stepped into the hall loaded down with his stuff. Making his way across campus, he did what needed to be done, even though it wasn’t what he’d expected.
The registrar’s office was just beginning to wake, but the office manager listened politely then found Abel the form he requested, not understanding the weight of the paper she gave him.
He filled out the change of address form, pressing the ballpoint pen to the paper, his hand shaking as he did. Not wanting to live with regret, he made his choice. He handed back the paper and said good-bye. A chapter was closed, once and for all.
There was no going back.
Marigold
She stood in the yarn shop that was really a shed. A place filled with glorious colors, representing a rainbow she glimpsed when she’d first come. Now all she saw was a burden, a small box that closed in too tightly around her.
A box she thought she needed in order to be free, but what she really needed was to come to terms with the fact that it’s okay to not know everything about herself. It’s okay to continue to change and grow. A month ago she thought she’d turned into a new sort of butterfly, one with wings wider than she’d imagined, but as she took one of her weavings off the wall where it had stayed since she’d finished it with deftly moving fingers, she knew people weren’t like butterflies.
One set of wings would never be enough for her, or for anyone, really. Life was in the changing, the evolution. The dying of dreams and fitful fluttering of new ones. She thought she’d spent her summer learning to fly, but now she realized she’d just been resting in a cocoon. In a sheltered, safe space where her body could recover from the beating she’d given herself.
The beating for not being fully realized by the tender age of eighteen.
“Marigold?” Mrs. Miller pushed open the door and stepped inside the shop. Looking around at the cardboard boxes and packing tape in Marigold’s hand, the truth dawned on her. “You’re leaving.”
“Ja.” Marigold’s eyes flooded with tears. “I’m so sorry.”
Mrs. Miller came close and wrapped her arms around Marigold, holding her tight. “It’s okay,” she said. “Shhh, no apologies.” She took Marigold’s face in her hands and spoke directly to her heart. “The tears are okay, don’t wipe them away. They wash away what was, to make space for what will be.”
Marigold had always thought the same thing about crying, that it was nothing to be ashamed of. Mrs. Miller and she were so alike, saw so much the same way.
“It’s okay to no longer be the girl you were.”
“You don’t think I’m a failure?”
“It’s not giving up, it’s accepting yourself for who you are.”
Marigold nodded, awed by this woman’s grace and understanding. Mrs. Miller was giving her permission to be herself, and right now she needed that reassurance that it was okay to change. That it was okay to be a girl unsure but certain.
Certain that being unsure was okay. Certain that this place was not her forever home. Certain that Lily had been right. She resisted everyone in her family because she was scared of the truth. Truth, that as it turns out,
was maybe not all that scary to begin with. The truth being that she was unsure of what she wanted from life.
Scarier things could happen than admitting that. Like taking kneeling vows to a god she didn’t really believe in, forsaking her parents and herself because she didn’t want to admit that this wasn’t what she wanted forever. Her parents had made her angry, for sure and certain, but still they held a space for her. They were willing to try, to make a way for their differences.
“What will you do?” Mrs. Miller asked, taking a weaving from a hook on the wall.
“I want to keep making these.” Marigold had accumulated fifteen pieces over the fall. Once canning season had ended all she’d done was move her fingers, pulling yarn in and out, up and down. In the slow evenings around the fire with the Millers, she created pieces that had no real purpose here.
She counted herself lucky that Mrs. Miller enjoyed dying yarn without an end goal in mind, because other Amish women wouldn’t put up with her frivolous artistic pursuits for so long. Marigold knew it would only be a matter of time before she was asked to put this hobby aside for a more productive use of her time.
Marigold didn’t want it to come to that. She didn’t want to force the people who’d been so good to her to be put in that position. She would act first.
“They’re so beautiful, Marigold. I will do anything I can to help you.”
She pressed packing tape over the box, tears stinging her eyes again.
“Why have you always been so good to me?” Marigold asked. “I always thought it was because you wanted me to Amish so Abel would stay.”
Mrs. Miller sighed, “No, it was never about that.” When Marigold cocked her head with a question mark, Mrs. Miller laughed softly. “Okay, maybe it was that for a minute. But then I fell in love. With you. With the way you spun Ruthie on your hips and brought Bekah back around, the way you managed to get Jakey to eat Brussels sprouts. You made us smile, you made the loss of Abel so much easier to bear. Maybe you were never meant to be here forever, but I do know you were meant to be here when you were.”