A Rose Revealed (9 page)

“Over the roar of the water for Dad and Rhoda. Over the noise of the fire for Sophie and Ammon and over the roar of the rotor blades for you.”

“For me?”

“It’s funny. I hadn’t realized how the voices giving orders and issuing instructions meshed so firmly with the other memories until right now.” I looked at him. “Isn’t the mind a funny thing? I heard those voices at the time, but I didn’t consciously remember them until now. Not that I remember specific things said. It’s just the people calling.”

“How do you know about me?”

“I suppose at some emergency scenes, I’ve been the one shouting to be heard. Usually things are relatively quiet, and we talk in normal tones of voice. The last thing we want to do is upset the victims or their family and friends. But some scenes are so chaotic that you have to yell.”

“How did I get into your dream?” Jake demanded as he laid a hand on my wrist.

“What?” I blinked at him.

“How did I get into your dream?”

“I think I dreamed of the three accidents where I wasn’t part of the responding team but rather personally involved somehow. Of course I wasn’t as involved in any of them as I was in my father and Rhoda’s, but I was there with you and there with Sophie and Ammon.”

“You were there with me?” His voice was fierce.

I nodded. “Sure. Sitting there in the rain in the street. I thought help would never come!” Then I froze. My mind caught up with my mouth, and I realized I’d said things I hadn’t intended to, revealed things I wanted to keep secret. I stared at his shadowed eyes.

He stared right back.

“You said you never wanted to meet me,” I said defensively. “That’s what you told Kristie when she found me. You didn’t ever want to meet me. Then we met anyway last summer when your mother fell. I knew how you felt, so I never said who I was.”

“So,” he said quietly, “Rose at the table with me is Rose from in the street.”

I nodded. “Same one.” I looked at his shuttered face. “Say you’re not angry. Please.” It mattered a lot that he wasn’t angry.

“And you never bothered telling me.”

I shook my head. “It’s like I said. I knew how you felt. Some pride thing about being at your very worst or something.”

“Well, I was that.”

Did I hear humor in his voice? Was that possible? I wished the light shone on him instead of on me. I wished I could see his face. But deep inside somewhere, I was glad to have this little fact out in the open. If he was going to be furious or see it as deception, at least we could confront it and deal with it.

“It was the night that Ben threw the ring away—or rather pretended to,” I said.

“The night of the great performance?” Jake seemed more intrigued than angry.

I nodded. “We’d just had that terrible row. He went raging out, threw the ring, got into his car, and stormed off. Next thing I knew, I heard screeching tires, saw sparks as your bike slid along the road, and I heard you scream.” I shuddered. “I ran to the intersection, and there you were with the bike on your back. I ran back home and called 911.”

“Then you sat in the road with me.”

I nodded. “For about twenty minutes until help arrived.”

“I have this vague recollection of someone who never shut up, sort of like a fly buzzing and buzzing and never leaving me alone.”

“That was me, I guess.” I looked back into the past. “I was talking to try and keep you from going any deeper into shock.” I shivered again. “I thought you died, you know. I even put up one of those white crosses in your memory, though I didn’t know who you were.”

“Yeah, I knew that.”

“You did?”

He nodded. “Kristie told me when she found you.”

I suddenly felt very angry. “You mean you knew I had done that for you and you were still too stubborn to meet me? You had the gall to deny me the comfort of seeing you were okay after all I’d done for you?” I stood and glared at him.

“Well, you had the nerve to work your way into a friendship with me in spite of my wishes,” he countered defensively.

“I had nothing to do with meeting you!” I was seething at his colossal ego. “Your mother fell down the steps and I happened to be on call that night. It was a God thing!”

“But you were her home health nurse too!”

“Well, I didn’t assign me the case!”

We glared at each other in the soft light of the lamp.

“Did you know,” I finally said, my voice crisp and edgy, “that I began classes to become an EMT because I felt so helpless that night? I felt another person had died because of me, and I vowed it would never happen again.”

“Another person?” Jake asked.

Suddenly my anger evaporated, and I collapsed into my chair.

“What do you mean, another person?” He wheeled around the table to me.

“Forget it,” I stared into my tea mug. “I didn’t mean to say it.”

“Forget it, my eye.” He took me by the chin and forced me to look at him. There was no anger in his face now, just concern. “Tell me what you meant, Rose.”

I shook my head. “You’ll hate me.”

“Never.” His voice was soft velvet. His hand flattened against my cheek. “Tell me, Tiger.”

I shook my head. “You resent me already for not telling you who I am. I couldn’t bear it if you hated me too.”

He skewered me with his black eyes. “You saved my life. I could never hate you.”

“That’s easy to say now.” I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let me.

“Talk, Tiger. I won’t let you alone until you tell me.”

“Please,” I whispered. “No.”

“Yes.”

My shoulders slumped, and I shut my eyes. “I killed my father and sister.” I died a little as I breathed that terrible truth. “I killed them.”

There was a charged silence. I felt the hot flush of guilt and shame and knew that he hated me now, just as my mother did. I turned my face to hide from his gaze, and his fingers, still resting lightly on my cheek, slid into my hair.

“No,” he said, his fingers tightening in my hair and forcing me to face him. “Whatever happened, you did not kill anyone.”

I looked at him through tears. “I did.”

“Rose, I know you. You’re the woman who sat with me in the road in the rain, the woman who saved my life by her kindness. You did not kill anyone.”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said in agony. “I really didn’t.”

“Tell me, Tiger. Tell me what happened.”

We sat knee to knee and I told him of that long ago sweet summer day. We had gone on a picnic, Mom, Dad, three-year-old Rhoda, and I. It had rained for a week, and the sunshine was so golden and warm. All we wanted was to revel in its return. We went to the Brandywine Creek, swollen and wild from the rains.

“Rhoda and I were fascinated by the wild water,” I said.

“Don’t you go near that water,”Mom said
.

“I won’t,” I assured her
.

“Keep an eye on Rhoda while Dad and I get the food from the car.”

“Here, Rhoda. Come with me.” I held out my hand for her. She came running and we played with our dolls for a bit, me with my Barbie in her pink evening gown and Rhoda with her baby doll in its blue nightie
.

“But the water drew Rhoda. I became distracted with Barbie, taking off her gown as the wrong thing to wear for a picnic and dressing her in a pair of shorts and a top. I wasn’t even aware Rhoda wasn’t beside me until I heard a scream from my mother.”

I stopped and swallowed. I could still feel the terror of that moment and the indelible stain of the guilt that had splashed across my soul.

“Rhoda had fallen in and all that we could see of her was her bright yellow sunsuit as she was carried away in the turbulent brown creek. My father raced to the water and dived in to try and save her.” I took a deep breath. “He never even surfaced.”

We were silent as I relived that sorrow-filled day and Jake tried to assimilate the terrible repercussions of my neglect. I clasped and unclasped my hands in my distress.

“You were how old?” he finally asked.

“Ten.”

“Oh, Rosie.” His voice was full of sorrow, and I realized with a start that the sorrow was for me, not for Rhoda and Dad. It was for me. It was the second time he had carried my sorrow with me.

“I killed them,” I said again, just to make certain he understood.

“Not at all,” he said. “Not at all. It was an accident.” He took my hands in his, calming their movements by running his thumbs across the backs of them.

I shook my head. “It was my fault. Mom told me so.”

“What?” He sat back and looked appalled.

“I was supposed to be watching her.”

Jake took a deep breath. “Rose, you’re an intelligent woman. You can’t tell me that you accept the blame for what resulted from your parents’ ill-advised decision to have a picnic on the banks of a raging creek.”

I struggled to explain. “In one sense I know it wasn’t my fault. Things happen. But when they happen to you, how do you not accept the blame?” By the end of the sentence my voice was a mere thread of sound.

He ran a hand over my bowed head. “I know what you mean,” he said quietly.

It took a minute for his words to register. “You do?”

“Guilt,” he said. “There’s more than enough for all.”

I looked at him in question.

“You feel guilty about a situation that was not in any way your fault.”

I decided not to argue the point. I wanted to hear what he had to say.

“I feel guilty because of what I’ve done not only to myself but to the people I love.”

This statement I would argue. “What do you mean by that?”

“If I hadn’t been such an ornery reprobate, such a rebel, I wouldn’t have made such a mess of my life and become such a burden to my family.”

“Were you truly that bad?” I managed a weak smile.

“I was truly that bad.”

“And what makes you think you’re a burden?” It was my turn to pat his hand. “Do you honestly think your family would prefer you dead?”

“No. I know better than that. But I also have eyes and ears, and I know I require too much of their time, money, and energy for my care, and I also know I’ve brought them perilously close to breaking the
Ordnung
—which would break their hearts.”

We sat back in our seats, no longer touching physically but connecting on some inner plane of understood pain.

“So we live with guilt, you and I,” he said. “You can’t forgive yourself—”

I nodded. “Mm. That’s certainly the truth.”

“—and I can’t believe God would ever forgive me.”

It took a minute to process the end of his sentence because I was so caught up in the miracle of someone understanding me. When I finally grasped what he’d said, I protested. “What do you mean, God wouldn’t forgive you?” I was indignant on His behalf. “You haven’t done anything worse than millions of other people.”

“How do you know that, Tiger?” he asked, surprised that I had so quickly risen to his defense.

“Well, you haven’t, have you?”

“Probably not. But all that proves is that they aren’t worthy of His forgiveness either.”

“Of course they’re not. No one’s worthy. He just gives it.”

“If you earn it.”

“No.” I shook my head. “That’s where God’s grace comes in. His forgiveness is free in Christ whether you deserve it or not.”

“That’s not what I heard as an Amishman. It’s more the law. Follow the
Ordnung
, and maybe when you die, you’ll be good enough for heaven. I blew my chances when I became a rebel. Just ask Father. He’s a good Amishman. He’ll tell you.” There was a bitterness in his voice that I didn’t like.

“But he’s wrong!”

“That’s what my brother Andy says, but why should I believe Andy instead of Father?”

“Your brother Andy? I don’t know him.”

“He left the community several years ago over the issue of law and grace.”

“Really?” I felt a surge of hope for Jake. If Andy could understand grace, why couldn’t his brother?

Jake nodded. “He says he believes in salvation by grace rather than works.”

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast,”
I quoted.

Jake looked at me and shrugged.

“Jake, if I didn’t believe that truth, I’d have gone crazy long ago. But God forgave me for not keeping a better eye on Rhoda. He promised He would and He did, even though I didn’t deserve it. That’s grace.”

“So you believe God forgave you, but you can’t forgive yourself?”

I nodded.

“And I forgave myself because I knew I didn’t do anything to hurt anyone on purpose, but I can’t believe God can forgive me, not just for the accident but for all the living before it and the bitterness after.”

We sat in silence in the gentle glow of the kerosene lamp, contemplating the irony of our opinions until I jumped.

“You’re chilly,” said Jake.

“No.” I got out of my chair. “My beeper just went off. I’ve got to go!”

“What? After the night you’ve had? Let them send someone else.”

“Can’t,” I said. “I have to go regardless of the kind of night I’ve had.” I dashed for the steps to run upstairs to change my clothes and grab my coat and car keys. “Besides, contrary to all expectations, the night has turned out to be pretty wonderful after all.”

Chapter 5

T
he call was for the Stoltzfus farm right down the road. I was certain something had happened to Trevor, and my heart was breaking before I even got to the house.

I couldn’t imagine the terror and heartbreak of having a baby die. If I wept all these years over Dad and Rhoda, how did a mother deal with the death of a child she had carried within her own body for nine months, had fed at her breast and cradled against her heart?

I grimaced. That undoubtedly explained my mother.

But the call wasn’t Becky and her baby. It was Old Nate himself. And he didn’t need us by the time we arrived.

His body lay crumpled at the bottom of the stairs that led from the living room to the upstairs. Whether a fall down those stairs had caused his death or some sort of attack had caused both his fall and his death or there was some other not readily apparent cause, my partner Harry Mast and I didn’t try to determine. That was for the coroner.