A Time for Peace (6 page)

J
enny woke suddenly and wondered what had awakened her.

She was sitting up for the third night with her grandmother since she'd moved into the
dawdi haus.
Reaching out, she touched Phoebe's forehead to see if she had a fever. To her disappointment, it was back again with a vengeance.

Just as she started to rise from the rocking chair, her grandmother stirred and opened her eyes. Jenny opened her mouth to speak and then realized Phoebe was staring at the end of her bed. Glancing in that direction, Jenny didn't see anything.

"Jacob," Phoebe said and she smiled, then fell asleep again.

Jacob?
Jenny went cold.

Stumbling to her feet, she rushed into the kitchen of her home, straight into Matthew standing at the stove pouring himself a cup of coffee.

"Matthew! Oh, Matthew!"

He immediately set down the cup. "What is it? Is Phoebe —?"

She shook her head but she was shaking so hard her teeth chattered.

Matthew gathered her into his arms and held her. "Are you cold? What's the matter? You're not getting sick, too, are you?"

He held her away from him and put the back of his hand against her forehead the way she'd done with her grandmother. "You can't get sick."

She heard the fear in his voice and quickly shook her head. "No, it's not that, I'm fine. I'm not getting sick." But she was, she thought. She was sick at heart. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she clung to him.

He drew her closer and made that shushing sound he used to comfort. "I know it's upsetting to see your
grossmudder
so sick. But she's going to be all right. She's going to be all right."

"She's not," she wailed. "She's not."

Again, he held her away from her and studied her. "Why do you say that? Do we need to call an ambulance? What's wrong?"

"I don't know," she sobbed. "I'm just so scared."

"Jenny, tell me what's wrong. Now!" he said firmly.

She wiped the tears from her cheeks and took a deep breath. "She saw my grandfather tonight. She woke up and said his name."

"That doesn't mean she saw him. You remember you said she was a little disoriented that first night when she woke up here. She probably did the same thing, woke up and thought she was back in the time when he was alive. Older people get that way sometimes even when they're not sick. Is her fever up?"

She hesitated and then she shook her head. "Yes, but it wasn't like that. She was looking at the end of the bed. She acted like she could see him standing there."

Matthew ran a hand through his hair, disordering it. "
Lieb,
that doesn't mean that she saw him." He took her face in his hands and made her look at him. "It doesn't mean that she's about to die."

Tears rushed into her eyes. "You don't think so?" She could hear the desperate hope in her voice.

Shaking his head, he used his thumbs to wipe away her tears. "
Nee.
I don't. But, you need to trust God. If He wants Phoebe to be with Him, we'll have to let her go."

"Come sit here with me," he said and drew her down onto his lap. "We need to pray and then we'll go see how Phoebe is doing together,
allrecht?"

She nodded. They bent their heads and prayed and then she got up and he followed her.

"Let me see if she's awake first," she whispered.

When she walked in, she was surprised to see Phoebe not only awake but sitting up.

"How are you feeling?"

"I've been better," Phoebe said honestly.

Jenny picked up the thermometer and held it out. "I need to check your temp. You were really hot earlier but I didn't want to wake you."

"Don't know why you're not in bed," Phoebe grumbled. "I don't need taking care of."

"I know," Jenny told her tongue-in-cheek.

Phoebe glanced at her and started to say something but Jenny waved a hand at her and pointed to the thermometer.

"Matthew would like to say hello," she said quickly, trying to forestall her grandmother arguing with her that she didn't need caring for.

Jenny took the thermometer out and checked it. Phoebe had a fever but it was 102, not something outrageous.

"I'd love to see Matthew," Phoebe said and she leaned back against her pillows.

"Great. I'll get him."

Matthew had expected Phoebe to look ill but once he had a glimpse of her he saw why Jenny had been reacting so emotionally.

No one looked good when they were really ill but Phoebe seemed to have aged years since he'd seen her almost two days ago. Her skin was flushed with fever, her eyes glassy. Her cheeks were sunken in. She even seemed to have shrunk but maybe that was because she was lying in bed and looked smaller. A quilt was tucked around her shoulders, one that Matthew recognized as a special one Jenny had kept wrapped in a sheet on the top shelf of their closet since she returned from her last stay in the hospital.

But even though she was clearly feeling weak and sick, Phoebe's spirit was strong. She smiled when he sat in the rocking chair beside her and touched her shoulder.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I told Jenny, I've been better," she said. "But this too shall pass."

"Jenny was worried about your temperature but it's not as bad as she feared."

"Jenny worries too much." Phoebe smiled at her to show she meant no criticism.

When Phoebe's gaze returned to him, Matthew wondered if he was really seeing entreaty in them or if he were imagining it.

"Could you eat something?" he asked her.

"I'd rather you two went to bed than go to any trouble—"

"It's no trouble at all," Jenny insisted and rushed from the room.

"Thank you," Phoebe said. "I wanted to talk to you."

Matthew felt a trickle of alarm. "What is it?"

"You must get Jenny to go to bed. It's not good for her to sit up all night with me."

He patted her shoulder. "Now you know that no one can get Jenny to do something if she feels it's wrong. She loves you and wants to take care of you."

"She'll listen to you."

Matthew laughed. "I wish."

He felt a little guilty that she was asking him to convince Jenny to rest when he'd wanted her to do that the first night Phoebe came to stay with them. Jenny had been right to refuse to listen to him. If she felt her grandmother needed her care, if she felt she needed to watch over her to feel reassured that Phoebe wouldn't call out in vain or slip away without her loved ones close by, then he couldn't be upset that she wasn't a dutiful
fraa.
Instead, she was a dutiful granddaughter and child of God.

"Just get better quickly and she'll have to listen to you."

A fit of coughing overtook her and she raised up and grabbed some tissues from a box on the bedside table and covered her mouth. Color faded from her cheeks as she struggled for breath once the coughing stopped. Matthew helped her to sit and propped up the pillows behind her, then helped her ease back against them.

"That sounded horrible," he told her frankly. "Phoebe, do you think we should go back to the doctor? No," he said quickly when she started to object. "Don't insist you're fine. You have pneumonia and you have heart problems. We need to be very careful with you. You see, we love you very much, Phoebe. We don't want to lose you."

Tears came to her eyes. "And I don't want to lose you. I promise you that if I feel worse I'll tell you or Jenny. But I want to get better here at home."

Home. He was so glad to hear her call this part of his home hers.

"I know you sent Jenny away so we could talk," he said. "Don't pretend you didn't. But when she returns, you'll eat the soup, won't you?"

She sighed. "
Ya."

"
Gut,"
he said. "You know, from the first time that I met you when my
eldre
bought this place next to yours I felt like you were a
grossmudder
to me, not a neighbor. I love you, Phoebe."

She smiled. "And from the time you moved next door as a charming little boy, I've loved you, too, Matthew," she said in a low, raspy voice caused by her illness. "And now you've grown into a wonderful
mann
for my granddaughter."

Jenny walked in just then and her eyebrows rose as she saw the two of them talking low and seriously.

"Don't be jealous,
lieb,"
he told Jenny when he saw her. "Phoebe and I love each other but you're still my number one."

"Good thing," she said sweetly, putting the tray with the soup on her grandmother's lap. She grinned at him. "Otherwise you'd be wearing this soup."

But even though she joked and he'd kept his words light, they exchanged a silent message over Phoebe's head as she bent to raise a spoonful of soup.

He nodded slightly and smiled and she let out a relieved breath, obviously understanding that he was trying to let her know Phoebe was doing okay, that she shouldn't be alarmed.

"
Gut nacht,"
he said and he hugged Jenny and kissed her. Reaching down, he squeezed Phoebe's shoulder and tried not to frown when he realized how frail she felt, like a little bird.

He so wanted her to get well quickly—not just because Jenny worried but because he felt unsettled about Phoebe's condition. Perhaps if he hadn't had Amelia, his first wife, die young, he'd be more optimistic. While Phoebe didn't have cancer as Amelia had, in someone who was older the pneumonia and heart condition were worrisome.

God's will be done, he told himself. He went to make up his bed on the living room sofa again and before he closed his eyes, he prayed—for the highest good, not selfishly for himself because he didn't want to let Phoebe go but for whatever was best for her.

Jenny opened the front door a week later, so exhausted from caring for Phoebe that she felt she was moving in a daze.

Fannie Mae, Naomi, and Lydia stood there, smiling and holding plastic storage containers of something that smelled delicious. Well, it smelled delicious but Jenny thought she might just be too tired to eat whatever was inside.

"May we come in?" Lydia asked.

Jenny hesitated but she was too polite to refuse. "If you've come to see Phoebe, I'm afraid she's asleep."

"We didn't come to visit Phoebe," Fannie Mae said. "We know you'll tell us when she's ready for visitors."

She took the coats and shawls the others wore and went to hang them up.

Casting up a fervent prayer she wouldn't fall asleep in the middle of a visit, Jenny gestured for them to follow her into the kitchen. "Would you like some coffee? Hannah baked some cookies and sent them over."

Naomi, a young woman who was a co-owner of Stitches in Time, a quilt and craft store that Hannah taught at, made a shooing motion. "We didn't come to visit with you, either, dear one. We're here to be of some help."

That was when Jenny noticed that Naomi didn't carry a container of food but instead, wielded a plastic bucket filled with cleaning supplies.

Lydia patted Jenny's shoulder. "You look ready to fall over."

"I've been so tired lately," Jenny admitted.

Fannie Mae glanced at Lydia, then Naomi. "Maybe you're . . ."she trailed off as she glanced at Lydia, then Naomi.

"Maybe I'm what?"

"You know, maybe you're . . ."

Jenny knew she was tired and her brain felt dull but she just didn't get it.

"Maybe you're pregnant?"

Pain lanced through her heart. Having just had her period, Jenny knew for certain that she wasn't. "No," she said firmly and she shook her head.

"Taking care of someone who's sick is very tiring," Naomi said. "I remember what it was like to be up day and night taking care of Isaac, my brother, last year."

Lydia nodded. "If you'll tell us what you need done we'll be happy to do it or you can just leave it up to us what to do."

"I—" Jenny spread her hands in a helpless gesture. "I don't know what to say."

"Say you're going to go take a nap," Naomi suggested. "We'll be quiet as mice."

"But what if Phoebe wakes up?"