“I’m guessing more happened than just a bad harvest,” Darren said.
“Oh yes,” Bertha said, sadly. “Much, much more.”
Chapter 43
“Do you feel like telling me the rest of the story?” Darren asked.
“I think I do.” Bertha glanced over at him. “If you are still sure you want to hear it.”
“I’m sure.”
Bertha leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, remembering.
“I often had to deal with people who tried to steal food from the children,” she said. “Can you imagine grown men that desperate?”
“I’ve seen worse—but not for food.”
“Worse?”
“I’ve never been an addict, but I’ve known people who were. There is little they won’t do to get a fix.”
“There is much evil in the world.”
“I agree,” Darren said. “So, someone tried to steal from you?”
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “He was large for a Haitian man and…terrifying. He broke into our compound.”
“Let me guess,” Darren said. “You were the only thing standing between him and the children’s food.”
“I’ve never been certain what he wanted,” Bertha said. “At first, I thought it was food. But when he started trying to break into the girl’s dormitory…”
“Were you frightened?”
“They were frightened!” Bertha said. “I was angry! Oh, how angry! I could hear the little ones crying from fear. The rage I felt was ungodly. It made me go against my own beliefs.”
“How?”
“I begged him to stop.” She started pleating her skirt again. “Time and time again, I told him to stop. He wouldn’t.”
“So, you had to make him stop?”
“I thought I did.”
“What did you do?”
The words she needed to say next felt like they were choking her.
“I killed the man. I did not mean to.”
Darren stared at her for an instant, then turned back to watch the road.
“How?”
Bertha had not noticed until now, but a light rain had begun. The only sound within the car was the back and forth swish of the windshield wipers as the tires rushed through rain-slicked miles. She was grateful for the dark as she told him the whole story.
“Did any authorities come?” Darren asked gently. “Or did you have to deal with the man’s body all by yourself?”
“Dr. Lawrence came immediately and took him to the hospital. It was there he was officially pronounced dead. The man’s sister claimed the body. We waited, but there were no repercussions. You have to understand. People were disappearing in Haiti for the smallest infractions during that time. Ganash was just one more.”
“Ganash?”
“The man’s name. I found out later that he was known for being mentally unstable. Most of the time, he lived quietly up in the mountains in a makeshift tent. His sister brought him food and left it near the path where she knew he would find it. I never found out what he thought he was doing or why he had been so determined to break into the compound. His sister told Dr. Lawrence that he had lost his mind after losing a child, a little girl who succumbed to one of the many diseases that plagued children in Haiti. She said he’d been goaded by a Vodou priest to think American missionaries had stolen his child from him.”
“So, you think he had come to find her?”
“Who knows?” Bertha shrugged. “Perhaps so. Or perhaps he had other terrible things on his mind that he intended to do. I will never know.”
“You’ve never gotten over that experience, have you?” Darren said.
“Once the adrenaline subsided, nothing Dr. Lawrence could say made my soul feel any less soiled.”
Darren changed lanes and merged with traffic into a different route. Bertha had no idea where they were. It almost felt like they were suspended in time.
“What did you do with the baseball bat?” he asked.
“I buried it as deep as I could manage to dig,” she said. “It had taken a man’s life. I could not bear to see it being used by children as a plaything ever again.”
“I’m sure you didn’t have many toys or athletic equipment for them,” he said. “That must have felt like a sacrifice.”
“Perhaps, but what else could I do?” Bertha said. “Afterward, I knelt beside my bed and begged God for forgiveness. I’ve been doing that practically every night since.”
“Did the other missionaries in Haiti at that time know what you had done?”
“Charlotte Lawrence did. The doctor’s wife who was my friend. I went to her the next day to tell her I did not think I was fit to continue at the children’s home.”
“How did she react?”
“Charlotte was so kind. She listened to all my words and sopped up my tears with a handkerchief. Then she fixed me a cup of tea with plenty of sugar and made me drink it. She gave me my heart back. Her loving sympathy made it possible for me to go back and begin to care for the children again.”
Bertha lapsed into silence once her words were all out. It was then that he surprised her by reaching over and covering her hand, which had grown cold during the telling of her story, with his large warm one.
“You protected those little girls,” he said. “There’s no telling what that man had in mind. You saved the children even though it meant sacrificing your peace of mind. I’m proud of you.”
He squeezed her hand once, then returned his to the steering wheel.
Bertha found herself feeling a little lighter. Perhaps this trip wouldn’t end up being as hard or as awkward as she had imagined after all.
“Thank you,” she said. “For listening.”
“It was an honor,” he said.
Anna stirred in the back seat. “Are we there yet?”
“Not yet,” Darren said. “What do you think, Bertha? Do you want to stop somewhere for the night or keep going?’
“How are you feeling?” Bertha asked.
“I’m good for at least a few more hours.”
“I think I would like to keep driving if you feel okay,” Bertha said. “Are you hungry?”
“Do we have any more sandwiches?”
Bertha reached behind the driver’s seat and checked the cooler. “We do. There is a bag of oatmeal cookies we haven’t touched yet. Plus, some egg salad sandwiches and four bottles of lemonade still cold. Oh, and grapes.”
“Egg salad sounds good,” Darren said. “Let’s keep going. As one black sheep to another, perhaps it might be a good time to tell you about some of the things I’m not particularly proud of. You know—to kinda even things out between us.”
After handing him food and drink, Bertha prepared to listen. She was profoundly grateful that it was Darren who was taking them to Florida instead of Rachel, who could sometimes be quite critical.
It never failed to astonish her how God often sent just the right person at the right time. She was sure that after this trip, she and Joe’s brother were going to be good friends.
Chapter 44
Alex could not sleep. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, wishing he was a better person. It was too bad that a nice little kid like Calvin had gotten stuck with a screw-up like him for a guardian.
He’d thought he was doing the smart thing moving his younger cousin to a rural area with an ultra-low crime rate. He figured Calvin would be better off if they lived in a place like this while he tried to pull himself together, but things weren’t working out as he’d hoped. Mainly because so far, he couldn’t seem to get his act together.
The sessions he’d been advised to have with the precinct psychologist hadn’t helped much. She was a nice woman, but it was clear she had no idea the depth of anguish he was experiencing. Ultimately, the best she could do was recommend what amounted to time, distance, self-forgiveness, and medication.
The precinct captain, who was a bit of a jerk, gave him a short leave of absen
ce, time to pull himself together, he said. He seemed annoyed that Alex hadn’t shaken it off yet. The captain’s annoyance hit Alex the wrong way. Instead of taking a leave of absence—he quit.
He took the medication the psychologist suggested. The self-forgiveness thing? Forget about it. That wasn’t happening. Might never happen.
He still spent the biggest part of each day and night going through every detail, trying to figure out what he could have done differently, castigating himself for real and imagined mistakes. He was heart-sick and obsessed with what he had done, and his obsession wasn’t easing up.
Funny how the number six kept jumping out at him everywhere he looked. Phone numbers. Grocery store circulars. Road signs. It was no mystery to him why the numeral six permanently burned itself into his psyche.
One deranged man. Six hostages. Six gunshots exploding in his ear.
One. After. Another.
He could still hear them coming over the phone, his lifeline to the gunman.
He also heard them echoing through the city air. His own body wincing at the sound of each one.
Six families devastated. All of them on Alex’s watch.
Once upon a time, in an entirely different universe, he had enjoyed the reputation of being a good hostage negotiator. Once upon a time, he had felt confident in his abilities. Once upon a time, he would have made an excellent guardian for a ten-year-old boy.
It was too bad that Aunt Beatrice died less than a month after the hostage incident, forcing him to keep his word to her. He had taken on the care of a grief-stricken child when even the act of getting himself out of bed in the morning felt monumental.
Poor kid.
One of the hostages had been an elementary school-teacher with three small children at home. He watched her husband being interviewed the next day on the national news. The man looked stunned and helpless as he sat with their littlest girl, a two-year-old on his lap. The child had been sucking her thumb and hugging a stuffed blue rabbit. The image was burned into his brain.
Another one was a neo-natal nurse who had a paraplegic husband at home for whom she was caring—a veteran who had sustained injuries in Afghanistan.
And a sixty-four-year-old security guard, a former cop only two months from retirement, had been killed. He had big plans for his retirement, his wife told the news anchor. They had been saving up for years to buy an RV and visit all the places he had always wanted to go.
A sixteen-year-old girl had also been one of the six. She was so smart she was already a college freshman. Pre-med. She had wanted to be a doctor from the time she was five. Her mother was so distraught Alex feared she might try to harm herself.
There were two others with dreams also cut short and people who loved them.
How could he have misread the situation so completely?
The counselor told him it wasn’t his fault. She reminded him that the killer was much more unpredictable than anyone thought. She said he could not expect himself to be a mind reader.
The problem was, that’s precisely what he was supposed to be. A mind reader. That was his job—to read a killer’s mind and anticipate what he might do next. He didn’t have a crystal ball, but he had studied hundreds of cases of hostage situations. Had helped defuse dozens. He’d known the man was unstable and unpredictable. He’d known anything he might say was a calculated risk.
He should have sent in the swat team immediately. Caught the man off guard. Some of the hostages might have survived. But his calculations were off. The guy was even more deranged than he had thought. He could still hear the man’s laughter as the gunshots were fired.
Chapter 45
Seventeen hours after leaving Sugarcreek, with only five bathroom breaks, eight cups of coffee, and Lydia’s cooler empty, Darren, Bertha, and Anna pulled into Rosa’s driveway.
It was 4 a.m.
“We’re here.” Darren put the car in park, took his hands off the wheel, and wearily leaned his head back against the headrest.
It had somehow not occurred to Bertha that in driving straight through, they would wind up at Rosa’s at such an inconvenient hour.
Anna, who had spent the hours sleeping, staring out the window, and doling out sandwiches, felt great. She popped up from the backseat.
“Can I find seashells now?”
“Not now, Anna,” Bertha said. “Let’s just rest and wait for Cousin Rosa to wake up.”
“I don’t want to,” Anna whined. “I want to go to the beach!”
Darren turned to look at Bertha in the semi-darkness of very early morning. “I don’t suppose your cousin would be awake yet?”
“I don’t see any lights on,” Bertha said. “Rosa always liked to sleep late when we were kids, and I told her we were going to stop and get a hotel about half-way. I don’t think she’s expecting us for a while. I didn’t even think about that when we were driving.”
“I want to find seashells.” Anna’s voice began to rise. She had been so complacent all the way here that Bertha was surprised at the passion in her sister’s voice. “I want to go to the beach! I want to go now.”
It was the most animated and passionate Bertha had heard Anna sound for months, maybe years. Too bad it was happening when she and Darren were completely drained.
“We can’t go now,” Bertha said. “Try to be patient, Anna.”
Darren started the engine again and backed the car out of the driveway.
“What are you doing?” Bertha asked.
“Taking Anna to the beach,” he said. “The beach will be packed later in the day. Anna has waited a long time. By the time we get there, the sun will be almost up and she’ll probably have the beach to herself. Morning is a better time to go shell hunting anyway. It isn’t far.”
“But you have to be exhausted.”
“I’ll nap while you take her shell hunting.”
Bertha found herself liking Joe’s brother even more. What a compassionate and thoughtful young man he was!
It wasn’t far. Darren found a place to park, she pulled Anna’s seashell collecting bag from beneath the seat where it had fallen. Both Anna and Bertha took their shoes off and left them in the car, and in the quiet of the early morning, they went to collect seashells while Darren crawled into the back seat and napped.
The sun had not yet risen, but the sunrise was imminent and the sky was starting to lighten as they walked toward the sound of waves.
“We might have to wait a little bit before we can see the shells well enough to find any,” Bertha told Anna.
“I don’t care.” Anna gave a sigh of contentment.
At the place where the water touched the sand, just before it got wet, Anna plopped herself down and began to cry softly.
“What’s wrong?” Bertha sat down and put her arm around her. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m here!” Anna said.
The pathos in her voice nearly crushed Bertha because she finally understood. Anna had gotten to enjoy the beach only once, back when she was a little girl, and their parents made their first and only visit to Pinecraft. Everyone had thought that her fascination with seashells was adorable, but no one had ever realized that her need to count and collect them had held so much nostalgia for her.
Apparently, the memory of being here was more important to her than any of them had ever known. It wasn’t just about seashells. It was the sound of water, the scent of the ocean, the view of seagulls flying overhead. It was the feel of sand beneath her feet. Had Bertha known, she would have turned heaven and earth to make sure that Anna got to travel to the beach every year of her life.
She thought back on how reluctant she had been about coming here, how annoyed she had been, and she felt ashamed. When was she ever going to get things right? Was God never going to be finished teaching her?
Silently, she gave thanks that He had created a situation where even against her will, she was doing the right thing for her little sister. She would have happily endured an even longer trip had she
known how important this was to her.
“Look!” Anna said, pointing.
Bertha looked.
The sun was beginning to show a few beams of gold and pink as it peeked over the horizon of the ocean.
“Oh, so pretty!” Anna said. “I remember!”
Anna had always talked slowly. It sometimes took a long time for her to say her words. It was easy to grow impatient. It was also easy to dismiss her words because they usually had to deal with wonder over such mundane things as a new litter of kittens, or a pretty flower, or a cricket chirping on the porch.
Bertha wondered if Anna had ever tried to tell them how badly she wanted to come back here, and no one had taken the time to hear.
She wordlessly reached for Anna’s hand and held it as Anna marveled over yet another seemingly mundane thing—the brilliant, spectacular, breathtaking gift that God made every morning. A gift that so few people ever bothered to notice.
“So pretty.” Anna sighed.
And that was how Bertha and Anna spent their first morning in Florida. Two elderly, barefoot Amish women, sitting in the sand, holding hands while they watched the sun come up.
Chapter 46
It was eight o’clock on a Saturday morning. Alex was still asleep, but Calvin had been up since six.
The cartoon tapes had become boring and he was hungry. Calvin wanted to eat a bowl of cereal, but they were out of milk. He hated cereal without milk.
Saturday mornings shouldn’t be like this. When Grandma was alive, Saturday mornings were nice. She would make them pancakes and sausage, and they would take their plates into the living room and watch cartoons together.
Cartoons weren’t boring when Grandma was alive. Calvin didn’t know why that was, except having Grandma watch them with him made them seem a lot more fun, probably because they laughed at them together.
He pulled some Cheerios out of the box and ate a handful, but without milk and sugar, they were dry and tasteless.
Bertha's Resolve: Love's Journey in Sugarcreek, Book 4 Page 17