The Revealing (29 page)

Everyone turned to look at Naomi, shocked by her boldness. Edith Fisher was a bear of a woman. A year ago Naomi wouldn’t have raised her glance to her, let alone her voice.

Tobe grinned at Naomi. “If that sounds suitable to you, Edith, then it’s a deal. As soon as we marry, we’ll move in and I’ll take over the chicken business. Jimmy can get back to his horses.”

Edith grazed her chicken-hating son with a look. “Fine.”

Jimmy Fisher beamed. He positively beamed.

Bethany could have floated away on a cloud of happiness. Everything was finally coming together for her!

But a few days later, Bethany found herself moaning to Geena Spencer about her Jimmy Fisher situation over coffee and gingersnap cookies at Eagle Hill. “Thanks to me, the horse has been returned. And thanks to me again, Jimmy can leave the chicken and egg business and resume horse breeding and training. There’s nothing stopping Jimmy from asking me to marry him.” She rested her chin on her palms. “Except that he can’t seem to get around to it.” She sighed. “I think he takes me for granted.”

“Most men have no idea what they want,” Geena said with the voice of authority. “They are much more simple than women think, but more confused as well.”

Bethany looked at her. “What else can I do?”

“You need to tell Jimmy Fisher the truth.”

“I have been! I’ve been telling him that I want to get married.”

“Not
that
truth. The truth that you are perfectly happy, that you have no wish to change your life from the way it was. Assure him you are more than satisfied with the way things were. There’s nothing that drives men as crazy as that, nothing that makes a woman more attractive to a man than
realizing she is content the way she is, not scheming and not conniving to drag him to the altar.”

“But that’s not exactly true,” Bethany said. “I’m not totally content the way I am. I
want
to drag him to the altar.”

Geena smiled. “You want Jimmy to think—to
know
—you are a prize he had hardly dared to hope for.” She reached over and squeezed Bethany’s hand. “Because you are. Don’t ever forget there are plenty of young bucks in the woods.”

“I wish Jimmy realized that.”

“Here’s a thought for you: Happiness is an inside job. You can’t wait for happiness and contentment to arrive. It’s up to you to find it.”

Bethany mulled that thought over between bites of a gingersnap cookie. “How’d you get so smart about men?”

Geena swallowed her cookie and shrugged. “It’s one of the perks of being a youth pastor. You get to observe hundreds of teenagers who are constantly doing a courting dance.”

Bethany jabbed her gently with her elbow. “And what about Allen Turner? From what I hear, he’s doing a courting dance of his own.”

Geena’s cheeks flamed and she hopped up to go. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Mammi Vera marched Luke and Sammy inside, clutching their shirt collars so the boys hung like union suits on a clothesline, a stormy look on her face. Mim wasn’t sure what had just happened, but it was bad. Even Luke looked contrite. She ducked into the pantry so she could eavesdrop while her grandmother told her mother what the boys had done.

“The Stoltzfuses have gotten a new refrigerator,” Mammi Vera told Rose. “The old one was put by the side of the road with a sign that said ‘Free.’ As I went to get the mail, I noticed the refrigerator and thought I’d take a look—after all, the one we have is on its last legs. So I opened the refrigerator, and there was
that
one. He fell straight out, stiff as cardboard. I nearly had a heart attack.”

Luke, she meant. Mim didn’t even need to hear her say it.

“Luke!” her mother said. “You know better than to get inside of a refrigerator. That was so dangerous! You could have suffocated if Mammi Vera hadn’t come along when she did.”

Luke was strangely silent.

“Oh, he knew exactly what he was doing,” Mammi Vera said. “He was waiting for some unsuspecting soul to come along and think there was a dead body in the refrigerator.”

“What?” her mother said. “Luke, what were you thinking?”

“It wasn’t my idea!” Luke said. “Jesse had it all figured out. He took the back off so there was an air vent.”

“But you were playing tricks on people?” Her mother sounded incredulous. “A horrible trick like that?”

In a small and puny voice, Luke confessed. “We didn’t figure that Mammi Vera would be the first person to come along. Jesse had it timed for when Mim came out to get the mail.”

More silence. Mim wondered what kind of punishment would have an impact on Luke.

“Upstairs,” her mother said. “You’re not to spend time after school with Jesse Stoltzfus for the rest of the week.”

Horrified silence followed. Then Luke and Sammy squealed like pigs stuck under a fence. “Unfair!”

“Go.” Her mother sounded hopping mad.

Mim waited a few more minutes after hearing the heavy
footfall of the disappointed boys on the stairs, until she could be sure the kitchen was empty and the coast was clear. Her heart sank when she heard the scrape of a kitchen chair along the floor and its creak as her grandmother sat down. “You were right to keep them away from Jesse Stoltzfus. He’s the root of the problem. He’s the one who starts it all. He has a powerful influence on those boys. Powerful. Luke especially. He admires Jesse far too much. Mim is absolutely right. Jesse Stoltzfus is abominable.”

Mim sat down in the corner to wait. It would be a long wait. Once her grandmother settled into a chair, she didn’t budge. But Mim didn’t mind waiting, not so much. Her grandmother had just given her a near-compliment. First time, ever.

The recent rains softened the soil in the vegetable garden, and Rose planned to spend some time, as soon as Sarah slept, turning the soil around the strawberry plants, then adding straw as mulch to keep the bugs away. Come June and July, these berries would end up in jars of jam, glistening like rubies.

The steady beat of a hammer distracted her for a moment. Tobe had finished building the new henhouse and was now enlarging the yard for the chickens. He said they laid more eggs if they had more room outdoors to peck for insects and have dust baths and generally do what chickens loved best.

Rose turned her attention back to the garden. She was spreading straw down one row, then another, when she looked up and saw Galen, slipping through the privet.

Now.
Tell
him now.

“So you were right, after all,” he said, his eyes hidden by the brim of his hat. “About Tobe and Naomi staying in the church.”

She took a pitchful of straw out of the wheelbarrow and scattered it around a strawberry plant. “It’s wonderful news. Vera is lit up like a child on Christmas Day.” She set down the pitchfork. “Naomi said you gave them your blessing.”

He looked up and his Adam’s apple bobbed once. “Rose, I’m sorry about the other day. About our argument.”

“So am I.” She set down the pitchfork against the wheelbarrow and walked over to him, taking his hand in hers.
Now.
Tell him now.
“We can’t do this, Galen. There are too many things between us. We need to cancel our plans to wed.” Her voice was gentle, apologetic.

Galen was stunned—for a moment he was unable to speak. Just a few feet from the porch, he leaned his back against the railing very suddenly. “Did I do something?”

“No. It’s not that simple. We’re just at very different stages of life.”

“We’re only a few years apart.”

Her gaze fell to her lap. She put a pleat in her apron with her fingers, then smoothed it out with her palm. “You’re so young. It keeps coming back to me, no matter how much I try to put it from my mind.”

“Count the love between us, Rose, the happiness. Not the years.”

“I don’t mean age in a literal way. I mean . . . the way life has gone for us. The paths we’ve taken. They’ve been radically different. For heaven’s sake, I’m a grandmother now. We’re too vastly different ever to spend a lifetime together.”

He was gazing at her intensely but sadly. “No. No, that’s not what’s troubling you. This is because of Tobe.”

She sighed. “I suppose you’re right. But I’m right too. It seems as if this situation between Naomi and Tobe has shown us the kind of people we are.” The sound of a baby’s cry came from the kitchen and Rose pulled off her gloves to head inside, responding without thinking.

He straightened, muscle by muscle, and blew out a shaky breath. “If that’s what you want, Rose, then so be it.” He looked at her as if he wanted to say more, but he didn’t.

A hard, tight knot stuck in her throat. She wanted to tell him that this wasn’t what she wanted . . . it wasn’t at all what she
wanted
. . . but it was for the best. “I hope we can remain friends. Good friends, like we’ve been to each other.”

Galen looked away so that she wouldn’t see his eyes fill up with tears. But she saw all the same.

Jimmy Fisher appeared at Eagle Hill one fine May evening, pleased when Bethany opened the door to his knock. “I came to ask if you’d like to go for a walk.”

Bethany said thank you but no. She had plans for the evening.

What? He felt surprisingly put out by this. “Don’t tell me you’ve got plans with someone else?” he asked, only half teasing.

“Goodness no. I’m just helping Naomi work on wedding plans.”

Jimmy was at a loss for words. That seemed like something that could be easily rearranged. He waited a moment, assuming Bethany might offer to do just that. But she didn’t.

His usual smart joke or casual response deserted him.

Brooke Snyder was getting a little tired of cinnamon rolls. Why didn’t Jon Hoeffner invite her out on a real date? Maybe she’d gotten it wrong. Her man radar had always been a little off-kilter, like a crooked weathervane. It was possible that she’d misread him. He might not like her romantically at all.

But then again, he always seemed eager to see her. His face brightened and he was fascinated by what she did with her days—which wasn’t all
that
fascinating. She had bought a sketchbook and planned to draw some landscape settings around the area, but she hadn’t quite got around to it yet. What had happened to her objective to create a new life while she was staying at Eagle Hill? It seemed to have been pushed aside by her consuming preoccupation with Jon Hoeffner. She spent the morning planning what she would wear when she saw him at the bakery. She spent the afternoons fixing her hair to look just so.