A Love Undone (2 page)

Rosanna bit back her tears. Was it this hard for every mom whose child moved far away? She tried to focus on the bright side of today. “Despite the rain it will feel good to get out. Except for church the Sunday before last, I haven’t been off this farm in weeks.”

Jolene picked a pencil off the floor. “If you feel cooped up, you should’ve gone out with Van and me the other night like we asked.”

Rosanna clicked her tongue at the absurdity of that idea—her on a date with them. It was ridiculous, but the invite had tempted her and made her feel loved.

Van would make a wonderful son-in-law. He was thoughtful and kind, and he and Jolene were so good together. Rosanna had absolutely no doubt they’d make a strong family unit. Van was older than Jolene, and she had been in love with him since he’d moved here to work in his uncle’s blacksmith shop when she was fifteen. But Van hadn’t noticed her until two years ago. To hear him tell it, he wasn’t interested in finding somebody. A girlfriend came with too many responsibilities for his liking, especially since he was still a teen. Then one day he’d barreled out of his uncle’s blacksmith shop hurrying to grab lunch at the nearby bakery, and he saw Jolene trying to open the door to the bakery while balancing a basket of pastries. He said she’d owned his every thought since.

Rosanna had never seen a man as much in love as Van was, so she couldn’t begrudge him for taking Jolene to live elsewhere. Since
Jolene had never really been allowed to paint, maybe she’d give it a try and decide it wasn’t that important to her after all, and then she and Van would move back.

A mother could only hope.

The door banged open, and her husband walked in carrying a large package. His blue eyes held the same zest for life she’d fallen in love with more than twenty years ago.

She put her hands on her hips. “Benny Keim, what have you done this time?”

He grinned. “A surprise for Jolene. But first”—he held up the gold, shiny box—“cookies.”

“Benny.” Rosanna frowned. “Not before supper.”

He walked over to her. “But I need to distract them.” He raised his eyebrows up and down. What did he have up his sleeve?

“Fine.”

He kissed Rosanna’s forehead, and then he pointed at Jolene. “You stay put.”

Jolene grinned and pointed at the floor. “Won’t budge.” But she looked quizzically at her mom, and Rosanna shrugged, feeling a tingle of excitement.

Her husband set the box on top of the homework papers and opened it. “Only two cookies for each of you until after supper.”

Benny returned to Jolene and unbuttoned his coat, revealing a brown paper package about the size of a flat shoebox pressed against his chest. He held it out to her. “It’s not for anyone to see except you.”

Jolene kept her back to her siblings and opened it. Before Rosanna could see what it was, her daughter’s eyes filled with tears, and she engulfed her dad.
“Denki,”
she whispered.

Rosanna’s heart sang, but she hid all joy from her tone. “Well, let’s see what he’s done this time.”

Jolene released him and let Rosanna peer over the brown paper. Paintbrushes. While she was hoping her daughter wouldn’t like to paint and would talk Van into returning here to live, Rosanna’s husband was encouraging her to paint. “I can’t believe you.”

Benny put an arm around her shoulders. “She’s been obedient all these years, Rosie. We couldn’t have asked for a better daughter. Let her enjoy the gift.”

He was right, but it was so hard to let Jolene move that far away. He released Rosanna and touched the paintbrush with the longest bristles. “When I ordered them, the lady on the phone said they’re the very best.”

Jolene shook her head. “No, they aren’t.” She hugged him again, tears trickling down her cheeks. “
You’re
the best.”

Benny grinned, his face red from the fuss Jolene was making over him. “Well, we’d better go before Viola Mae’s husband passes out from panicking.”

Rosanna opened her special kitchen drawer, lifted the false bottom, and waited as Jolene put the contraband next to a few forbidden photos of the family. Jolene’s radiant smile warmed Rosanna’s heart. This time next month Jolene would be married and finally living under a bishop who would allow her to discover if she had a gift for creating artwork. That thought would bring Rosanna a lot of comfort when she desperately missed her daughter.

She put on her coat, and before long she and her husband were in the buggy, lumbering toward the next town. It’d be nice if she weren’t the only midwife in this area who could help deliver babies.
Maybe one of Rosanna’s other daughters would enjoy such fulfilling work. Torrents of rain fell from the sky, and she was grateful her husband drove her in foul weather and never complained that birthing babies was an interruption to their home life.

Memories of yesteryear filled Rosanna’s heart. When Jolene was little, they’d played dolls, snuggled while reading, attended church, and caught fireflies. By the time she was three, they began to welcome new babies, tend the garden, and end the day playing simple board games. As she grew, they sang while canning goods for winter, sewing clothes for the little ones, and washing mountains of diapers. Jolene’s childhood days had rolled in and out day after day.

As much as Rosanna tried, she had never learned how to grab hold of even one day and make it stand still. In what seemed like a blink of an eye, Jolene’s school days were behind her, and at fourteen she began to work for the local bakery. Not long after that she’d shared her greatest secret just with Rosanna—her dream of one day marrying Van, if only he’d notice her. He’d moved to their district at seventeen years old to apprentice under his uncle, and all the teen girls had their eyes on him. Especially Donna Glick, Jolene’s most ardent competitor since they were schoolgirls.

The rig wobbled hard, and she was pulled from her yesterdays, feeling sudden concern for today. The rains fell harder the farther they went. Could her husband see the lines on the road? She couldn’t.

Benny gripped the reins tightly. “We have to turn back.” The alarm on his face assured her there were worse things than letting a new mom deliver a child without a midwife.

She nodded.

But before he could turn the rig around, something hit one of
the wheels, and the rig jolted hard and then seemed to float several feet.

What was happening? Rosanna’s head spun, and nothing seemed to make sense. Why was Benny pulling back on the reins but the rig continued to move?

Their carriage struck a yellow sign with the symbol for a river, and the rig floated right past it. “We’re in the river!” Her husband’s scream pierced her heart.

The rig tipped, and water rushed inside. Benny’s strong hands pulled her out.

The world became a blur of muddy snapshots. Branches of trees overhead. Debris floating downstream with her. Gray raindrops hiding the sky.

Two weeks later

Jolene stood at the kitchen sink, her hands in sudsy water as she stared out the open window. Rays of golden light spread across green fields with patches of brown, dying grass. The dark silhouette of almost-barren trees reminded her of ink art from one of her books. The weather was tranquil, just another beautiful fall evening before sunset.

The serenity of it contradicted their reality. The heavy rains were long gone, leaving two deaths in their wake. Viola Mae had given birth to a healthy son at four in the morning, delivered into the hands of a shaky mother-in-law. Mom and baby were fine. But it had taken a rescue team four days to find the bodies of Jolene’s parents.

Then the Amish community had put two caskets in the ground. Since that day a week ago, whether awake or asleep, Jolene continually saw Amish men holding on to ropes as they stood on each side of the grave, lowering two pine caskets into the ground.

Jolene’s vision blurred, but she was used to her eyes brimming with tears these days. The world felt huge and gray, as if she could become lost in the vastness of its fog, and yet the air itself seemed to press in on all sides trying to squeeze the breath right out of her.

Warm hands rested on Jolene’s shoulders. “Jo.” Van’s lips were near her ear. She tried to answer him, but the more days that passed,
the harder it was to respond to the world around her. She’d been strong for her siblings at first to help guide them through the process, but now her strength seemed gone.

Was the bishop right? Would her parents expect her to accept the decision her uncles had come to?

Van squeezed her shoulders reassuringly. “We need to talk before the others return.”

It couldn’t be time for that already. She looked at the clock. How were the hours slipping by into nothingness? At her request Van had sent home all her Amish relatives, friends, and church leaders earlier today. She, Van, and her siblings needed to talk among themselves before tonight’s meeting.

Tonight
. The thought of it stole her breath—if she was actually breathing. Nothing felt real. Absolutely nothing.

“Kumm.”
He eased her away from the sink, and she watched as dirty water and melting soapsuds fell from her hands and plopped on the floor. “Leave it.” He guided her toward the kitchen table.

Her siblings were there, each in a chair. Had he called them to gather, or had they been sitting at the table while she’d been at the sink
not
washing dishes? Their eyes were fixed on her. Jolene’s heart thudded. She’d dreaded this chat to try to separate their emotions from the honesty of their needs so she could understand what was best for them in the long run.

Jolene sat looking at her five siblings—Josiah, Michael, Naomi, Ray, and Hope. Van moved next to her, ready to speak for her or to her as needed.

Twelve-year-old Naomi cleared her throat. “What will happen to us?”

Jolene intertwined her fingers, noticing how wet her hands were. It seemed odd how grief magnified little details while blocking out the big things. She was keenly aware of the damp smudges her hands were making on the table right now, but she couldn’t recall what they’d eaten for dinner … or if she’d thought to provide drinks.

Ray climbed into her lap. Since he was eight years old now, Mama had said he was too big to sit in Jolene’s lap anymore, but at the moment he felt as tiny and frail as a kitten. Was that feeling God’s way of letting her know how Ray felt? Hope moved to the side of Jolene’s chair, and Jolene shifted Ray to one leg and put Hope on the other.

They were orphans now, and by the looks on her brothers’ and sisters’ faces, they were well aware of what that meant. After a few years would Hope remember their parents? Would Ray have more than scattered memories of them?

Jolene licked her lips. “Your uncles have offered a plan.” It wasn’t one she liked, but what could she do about it? Her siblings would be separated, living with different uncles. Their uncles had large and growing families, and they felt they could take only one child each—with the exception of Uncle Pete. He had all sons so far, and he and his wife were willing to take both Naomi and Hope back to Indiana with them. But the fog engulfing Jolene wasn’t thick enough to keep her from seeing how awful that plan was.

Van drew a deep breath. “It won’t be possible to stay together, but if we can, we’ll give you say-so concerning which uncle you’d like to live with.”

Her siblings gasped, and all except sixteen-year-old Josiah burst into tears.

Jolene’s face flushed as her feelings of helplessness changed to anger. What was Van thinking to blurt that out? After much discussion among themselves, her uncles and the church leaders thought it was the only solution to “the situation,” but Jolene had not agreed to the plan. When did a family, its hearth and home and loyalties, become no more than a
situation
?

A vision of the pine coffins being lowered into the ground circled to the forefront of her thoughts again, and she knew the answer—when the ones who had created the family died.

Josiah rapped on the table, and Jolene looked at him. “This is the plan—to divide up what’s left of us like a litter of puppies?” He studied Jolene, his tender heart evident in his eyes, but he seemed confused by her willingness to consider what her uncles and the church leaders wanted.

She lowered her eyes, looking at the smudges of water on the table. “It’s a plan made by good people who love us.”

Van slid his hand over Jolene’s. “It’s okay if you’re not ready to accept your uncles’ offer yet, but it isn’t as if there are a lot of choices, Josiah. At your age I doubt you can begin to understand what it takes to feed, house, and raise a family like this.”

Did Van hear himself?

Jolene pulled her hand from his. “Do not talk about us as if we’re cattle that need to be rebranded and sold at auction.”

Van nodded. “Sorry. I don’t mean it that way. You know I don’t.”

Fourteen-year-old Michael glanced at Josiah before turning to Jolene. “Why can’t we live here with you and Van?”

Was she really supposed to marry next week? She couldn’t find
one familiar thought or feeling. How could anyone marry in such a state? “This house is a rental and not one Van and I could afford.”