Matt exchanged glances with Lil, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. Dad should have computerized his books by now. Matt had finished his degree at Hesston and was the most liberal of the brothers. Not that it would have magically corrected all their financial woes, Lil imagined. But surely every problem had a solution. Even multiple solutions. Hank had just turned thirty. It was high time that Dad let her brothers help shoulder the farm burdens besides doing the manual labor and receiving a paycheck.
The men bent their heads over the books while she refilled their coffee cups. Then they spent an hour probing at the situation from different angles. Finally, Matt spoke up. “Dad’s right. Without a major change, we’ll be bankrupt before harvest. Our only hope is to modernize.”
All gazes fastened on Matt to see if he was joking, because their middle brother had a corny sense of humor. He liked to pull practical jokes on the others, and since he’d begun attending a different church, he’d started wearing T-shirts that bore messages like “Tractorologist” or “Farm fed and rural raised.” But this time, Matt appeared to be dead serious.
Stephen motioned at Lil for more pie, clearly wishing to escape.
Hank set down his John Deere mug. “He’s right.”
Dad took a long swig of coffee, then set down his cup so hard it clattered and spilled brown liquid onto the plastic, lilac-flowered tablecloth. Lil jumped up and returned with a green-checkered tea towel. She pushed it toward her dad, but he ignored her efforts. “Guess it won’t hurt to listen to your newfangled notions.”
With relief, Lil sank back on her chair, the cloth dropping to her lap. Her eyes stung, knowing how much that statement had cost her dad. She barely breathed, hoping Matt really did have an idea. He didn’t disappoint. He started talking about factory farming where more animals could be raised in tighter, modern pens. His ideas brought out some scoffs and raised some questions, yet most of it was taken to heart by the other men. Lil sat engrossed as they batted around possible scenarios and discussed what the church would allow and what might be forbidden. Suddenly, the room became quiet as a morgue.
Lil looked up. There stood Mom in her bathrobe, her disheveled head tilted to the side. “You having a party without me?”
Dad paled, quickly scooting back his chair and then easing Mom into it. With one meaningful look in Hank’s direction, the books were snatched and hidden beneath the table.
“Peach pie, Mom,” Lil said. “Would you like a piece?” She quickly wiped up the spill to protect her mom’s ribbed, terry-cloth sleeve.
“I think so,” Mom replied, oblivious to Lil’s ministrations. “For some reason, I can’t sleep tonight. Just restless, I guess.”
Lil exchanged a look with her dad. Were the pills already causing a change and bringing her out of her stupor? Mom had not gotten out of bed on her own for weeks.
The business discussion was dropped on the spot, and all the attention was riveted on Mom. Even with the dark circles under her eyes, she was a pretty woman. Lil’s sister, Michelle, looked like their mom, but Lil took after their dad. Mom’s long braid was draped over the front of her mint-green robe, and she’d taken the effort to put on her covering. “What are you boys talking about? Sure sounded lively out here.”
“Just farming,” Hank explained.
Mom’s expression fell in disappointment. “Oh?” She looked at the untouched wedge of pie before her. “I’m more worn out than I realized. Help me back to bed, Lil?”
Lil rushed forward. “Sure.”
“Give those grandbabies kisses,” Mom said flatly as she shuffled along the wood floor that, like her, had lost its luster, for Lil didn’t buff it like her mom had always done. Mom’s terry slippers had a piece of elastic hand sewn across the ankles. She used to do small things like that, paying attention to all the little details that make a family a home. Her appearance at the table now was not much in comparison, but it had been an unexpected effort.
It took Lil a while to get her mom settled.
“It was good to hear the boys talking about the farm,” Mom said. “Will’s finally allowing them a say?” she asked, hopefully.
“Yes, I believe he is.”
She sighed deeply. “There was a time when he used to talk to me about the farm. Now he just clams up.” Her voice took on a childlike hope. “Maybe if the boys do more, your dad won’t be so busy.”
Not if they lost the farm, Lil supposed, though she kept that opinion to herself.
“Get me one of those sleeping pills, will you?” Mom asked.
Lil touched her mom’s forehead and unpinned her covering. “They aren’t sleeping pills.” Sometimes she gave her mom an over-the-counter painkiller. “And you already took your new pill.”
Mom suddenly clutched Lil’s arm. “What if I can’t sleep anymore? I can’t bear it if the days get any longer.” She tightened her grip. “I just can’t.”
CHAPTER 4
At the rooster’s untimely crowing and intrusion upon her wonderful dream, Lil awoke with an overwhelming desire for one particular chicken cooked with tender dumplings. Of course she shouldn’t have been dreaming about Fletch anyways, because it only made each passing day that he didn’t phone her more difficult to endure. Even though she knew he wouldn’t call, she charged her phone’s battery every night while she slept. Hopefully time would remove the sting of his rejection.
Wistfully, she dismissed him from her mind, dressed, and prepared breakfast for her dad. When she had placed the last hand-washed breakfast plate in the drying rack—for the farm kitchen didn’t have the latest appliances—she went to see how Mom had slept and if she couldn’t coax her out of bed and into making those cinnamon rolls she’d mentioned.
Lil padded into the dark room and frowned at the lump of empty bedcovers, for it was unusual for Mom to rise on her own. Once again, her thoughts turned hopeful that the new pills might be helping.
Light filtered beneath the bathroom door’s threshold. With a rap, Lil softly called, “Mom. You in there?”
There was no answer so she knocked again, calling a little louder, “Mom!” Still no reply. Lil twisted the knob and inched the door ajar, but it hit an obstacle that kept it from fully opening. Looking down, Lil gasped to see her mom’s bare leg. Diving through the narrow opening, she quickly took in the scene and dropped to her knees beside Mom’s rigid body.
“Mom!” She didn’t respond. Her eyes were rolled back, and her body was contracting in some sort of seizure. “Oh, no. Oh, no.” Trembling with fear, Lil scooped her mom’s head under one arm and used her free hand to grab her cell phone from her apron pocket. “Matt! Get Dad. Quick! Something’s wrong with Mom! We’re in their bathroom.”
Lil’s gaze fell on the empty painkiller bottle. Helpless to know what to do, she held her mom’s shuddering body. “Oh Mom, what did you do?”
By the time Dad arrived, Mom’s body had gone limp, and she’d either fallen asleep or fainted. Dad quickly scooped Mom up into his arms and ran for his truck. On her way out, Lil snatched the generic painkiller bottle, Mom’s covering from the nightstand, and her own purse from the mudroom.
Since they lived too far from the nearest emergency vehicle, they planned to drive Rose to the hospital themselves. Lil jumped in the cab of her dad’s truck, clutching her mom’s limp form and praying all the way to the Dublin Methodist Hospital. Matt had called ahead, and when they arrived, a gurney was waiting outside the emergency entrance. Hospital attendants promptly strapped Mom to the gurney and rushed her through a set of glass doors.
Dad went with Mom, and Lil was left with the admitting paperwork. Her hands trembled too violently to use the kiosk, even if she knew how, so she stepped up to a clerk. He motioned her into a chair where she clenched her hands on her lap to keep them from shaking. Still wearing her apron, she answered the questions as best she could, but the hospital clerk eyed her inquisitively. “Plain City?”
“Yes.” She gave her address.
“You Amish farmers?”
The farmer part should have been obvious, the way her dad had whisked through the room in his overalls without even removing his straw hat. The clerk’s probing glance and nosy questions made her feel like an oddity and served to ruffle her farm-girl feathers. Jutting her chin, she asked, “Is that a question on your admissions form?”
“No, just curious.”
“We’re Mennonites. We drive cars,” she snapped, knowing from past experiences that would probably be his next question.
The young man quirked a brow, and after that he stuck to the questions needed to fill out the admittance forms. “Wait over there. I’ll take this form back and have your dad sign it.”
“Thanks.”
She found an empty chair in the waiting room just as her brothers filed through the entrance. Several strangers in the room lifted their gazes to the newcomers. Lil motioned her siblings over and told them everything that had happened. After that, they all settled in to wait for word from Dad or the doctor.
Lil’s heart throbbed with fear for her mom and family. Although she didn’t want to think about such things, this hospital visit would add additional financial strain to an already serious situation. She brushed away the negative thought and prayed for her mother to pull through and come out of her coma.
About an hour passed before Dad finally stepped into the waiting room, looking quite lost. At once, Lil jumped to her feet and waved. “Over here.”
When his gaze lit on her, he seemed relieved. With hat in hand and heavy steps, he crossed the room to his children.
“Is she okay?” Hank asked.
“Yes. She’s sleeping.” He explained how Mom had been treated using uncustomary words such as activated charcoal and gastrointestinal tract. “They started an IV.”
“Does she need to be admitted?”
“Yes. They want to keep her at the hospital and give sodium bicarbonate until her urine reaches a specified pH level.”
“But she will be all right?”
He gave a weary nod, and Lil heaved a huge sigh of relief, as did her brothers. To hear her dad use medical terms reminded her that he was an intelligent man, even though he usually didn’t use big words. Actually, she corrected herself, he usually didn’t talk much at all.
His worried brow caused Lil concern. “Can we see her?”
“Not yet.” Dad shook his head wearily. “I’m going to stay with her. The rest of you best go home and take care of the farm.”
Lil knew that the chores needed to be done, but she didn’t want to go. “Me, too?”
He studied her and shook his head. “You’ve been taking her to the doctor visits. You’d better stay with us.”
Fletcher moved his hands over the steering wheel of his blue Ford Focus. The car was a gift from a donor who supported his parents’ mission work and had been third-handed off to him. All his life, Fletch had survived on hand-me-downs. His missionary parents lived mainly on donations and a few odds-and-ends jobs—from working at the local discount stores to mixing pesticides for migrant workers—along with piecework his dad picked up when they took leave in the States. Frank Stauffer once hauled Amish people to Florida, returning with a load of citrus fruit to sell. The family had always been thankful to God for each job or donation.
Although Fletch’s family never owned many valuable possessions—unless you counted various trinkets given to them from the natives—their real wealth was in their experiences. Fletch had received a good education, both from personal experience and the classes he took at Ohio State University. His college tuition was being covered by one of his parents’ longest and most dedicated supporters, Marshall Lewis. Marshall was also Fletch’s mentor and second father figure. This kind, generous man had guided Fletch in his career choice when it seemed that his own father was too busy to be bothered with such details.
Fletch pulled up to his apartment complex’s mailboxes, shifted the Focus into PARK, and got out to check his mail. At present, his parents were in the Congo, trying to put their camp and ministry back together for the third time in a war-torn land. They were too occupied with the Bambuti, Congo Pygmies, to write. E-mail was sporadic. Phone service random.
Fletch flipped through the usual junk mail and a utility bill he would pass along to Vic, who still harbored a grudge over the accident between Britt’s car and Lillian’s brown rattletrap. Her ugly vehicle was a reminder of some of his experiences with embarrassing clunkers. Recalling bits and pieces of their conversation, he had to admire Lillian’s determination to acquire a prominent chef’s position and own a nice car like Britt’s. Given Lil’s Conservative Mennonite background, her goals had been surprising to him.
His own goals were not so surprising. His vocational direction evolved out of his natural love for animals.
Although he was a Christian, he didn’t feel driven to evangelize people, like his parents. In fact, he wanted to keep as far from the mission field as he could. His focus was on obtaining his degree, starting a veterinarian practice, and living a normal life. If anything, Fletch’s dream was to be ordinary because he’d always been different than most people.
Entering his apartment with a whistle for his pet, he dropped his mail in the trash and tossed the utility bill on a small table. The room was sparse, containing only the barest of necessities, and he easily spied his companion bounding toward him from across the room. Fletch scratched the dog behind one droopy ear. He’d gotten the dog at veterinarian school, where the students were encouraged to adopt abandoned animals from their hospital. Fletch didn’t regret his decision to adopt Buddy. The basset hound finished sniffing his leg and went to the front door.
“Wait a minute.” Fletch snatched a package of frozen burgers out of the freezer and set it on the counter before he picked up Buddy’s leash and an empty grocery bag. The dog wagged his tail, anticipating their customary walk. Once around the block, and Fletch was home again, tossing burgers on the grill that came with the apartment’s eight-by-ten-foot walled-in patio. When he opened the slider to return inside the apartment, the basset’s nose sniffed the smoky scent that had entered the room.
As Fletch ate his dinner, his thoughts returned to Lillian. All week long, he had squelched the urge to drive back to Riccardo’s, but he didn’t even know which days she worked. He would look pathetic hanging out at Riccardo’s until their paths crossed again. But he was still entertaining the notion. Driving over there seemed the only way to reach her since her phone number was on the back of the take-out check that had floated under Britt’s car seat.
His shoulders slumped with regret that he hadn’t remembered to look for her phone number. At the time, he hadn’t realized his mind would become obsessed over her. Considering the differences in their faith, he should just forget about her. That was his original intention, but his thoughts riveted on the image of Lillian Landis and the idea of pursuing her.
Calling Riccardo’s could get her in trouble with her boss. Hadn’t she mentioned something about him having a temper? He let out a long sigh. Lord, could You just prompt Vic to send me to Riccardo’s again? Either that, or please help me forget her?
One thing he’d learned from the Bambuti: if you asked God for direction, He would send you a sign. The native group had signs and superstitions about everything. Only they didn’t seek Fletch’s God, they turned to nature for their answers, considering the forest their god. Fletch’s personal theology had naturally evolved from his own experiences; if God created nature, He could certainly use it to speak to mankind. Fletch believed that God cared about details. If Vic sent him back to Riccardo’s, Fletch would take that as a sign to pursue the object of his imagination.
Rose Landis clapped her hands to the sides of her head. “My ears are ringing. Sounds like a swarm of bees in the lilac bush. Only they are inside my head. I can’t stand it.”
“Just a hangover,” Lil’s dad joked, but nobody laughed. Lil didn’t understand why her dad would jokingly allude to drinking alcohol when the church forbid it, un
less it was his passive-aggressive reminder that the ringing was a direct result of ingesting too many pills.
“It will fade,” Lil consoled her mom for the third time. But in actuality, the physician that was assigned to Mom’s case hadn’t guaranteed that the ringing would ever go away. The causes and cures of tinnitus weren’t understood by the medical world. Lil could only hope Mom hadn’t ruined her inner ears with the overdose.
Mom clawed at her bedcovers. “I want to go home. When can I go?”
Dad patted her arm. “As soon as they release you.”
“Don’t treat me like a child, Will. Do you know, or don’t you? Why do you always try to keep things from me? You treat me as if I don’t have a brain in my head. Of course I may not if these bees keep buzzing around in there.”
He kept his voice calm. “Because you can’t cope with stress these days.”
Mom jerked the sheet up to her chin. “What do you know about anything?”
With a sigh, Lil snatched up her purse and retreated to the hallway. She wished she could call her friends and vent. But Katy was still on her honeymoon. Jake was on it with her. And Megan was on a summer mission trip. All her friends were busy, getting on with their lives. Frustrated, she dialed her sister, Michelle.
Her sister’s voice sounded breathless, probably from chasing after her three children, all under the age of six. “How’s Mom?”
“I think they’d release her now, but they’ve called for a psychoanalysis.”
“Oh no.” Michelle groaned. “What will Brother Troyer think? And the elders? Do you think they’ll make her get up in front of the church and ask for forgiveness for trying to commit”—her voice broke—“you know?”
Lil sympathized with her sister’s anguish. Suicide was almost nonexistent among the Mennonites because they believed that killing was a sin, and if a person committed sin without asking for forgiveness, he or she might not get to heaven. The few bereft families who did experience such a loss clung to the consolation that nobody could know for sure that the dying person hadn’t asked for forgiveness on their way to the other life. Suicide was something that happened in the outsider’s world, not in Lil’s congregation.
Plain City Bridesmaids Page 36