The Keeper (21 page)

“You did,” Rome said. “You surely did.”

“But you haven’t done the thinking.”

“No. Not really.”

Fern crossed her arms against her thin chest. “It’s time, Roman. It’s past time.”

“You mean, put it up for sale?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” Rome said.

“If you’re not going to sell it, then you ought to go home and work the farm. You’ve been gone a long time. Long enough.”

“Six years.”

“Six years.” Fern shook her head in disbelief. For the briefest of moments, sadness flitted through her eyes. Then it was gone. It happened so fast that Rome thought he might have imagined it. “This isn’t what your father would have wanted you to do with his land. I think he’d rather see you sell it than let it fall to pieces.”

How dare she assume she would know what his father would think, would feel. How audacious! But he kept his face unreadable.

“Give it some serious thought, Roman,” Fern said, before spinning around and marching back to the house.

He wanted to shout out: Did she think he hadn’t given the farm serious thought over the last six years? Did she think he didn’t care about his family? But he stayed silent. Instead, he went to the bee wagon, hopped up on the seat, and slapped the mule’s reins to get it moving.

Sell his family’s farm?

Rome couldn’t imagine selling it. The farm was the last place he’d kissed his mother’s cheek, worked side by side with his father, played with his sisters. He was born and raised there. Sell the farm? Or return to it and leave his migratory life? An impossible decision.

12

J
ulia found it amusing that Fern took M.K.’s grand idea of a birthday for Menno and Sadie and turned it into a way to keep her little sister busy and out of trouble. Fern and M.K. cleaned the house together, made a grocery list together, shopped together, cooked together. Well, Fern did the cooking and M.K. did the dishwashing.

M.K. invited very specific people to come to the party and wouldn’t say who. Julia hoped Paul was on the list but didn’t want to ask. M.K. didn’t know when to say things and when not to, and the last thing Julia wanted was for Paul to hear from his brother Jimmy that Julia was pining for him. She was
not
pining. Well, maybe she was, but Paul didn’t need to know.

On the evening of the party, Gideon Smucker volunteered to arrive early to help barbecue chicken on the grill. Sadie looked annoyed with M.K. for inviting Gideon. Julia couldn’t understand why Sadie didn’t see how wonderful Gideon was. He clearly was sweet on Sadie, yet she was smitten with Roman Troyer . . . who hadn’t shown up yet. On the other hand, M.K. seemed to glow like a lightning bug around Gideon. Maybe that’s the way things always were. Maybe love was always mixed up.

When Paul arrived, Julia’s heart skipped a beat, then two beats. Paul had come! There was still hope.

From the window up above, Amos sat by the windowsill, a look of longing on his face as he watched Gideon at the grill, slathering tangy barbecue sauce on the chickens. “A fellow could starve to death waiting on his meal up here!”

“Then come down and join the party,” Fern called up to him. But Julia knew he wouldn’t leave his room tonight. He said he would get pecked to death by well-meaning neighbors, asking questions he couldn’t answer.

Uncle Hank emerged from the house, eating a cupcake. “Uncle Hank, be on your best behavior,” Julia warned, but she knew he was pretty much on the same kind of behavior regardless of the company he was in.

“Men are all alike. Grown-up children,” Fern muttered as she went past Julia with a bowl of strawberries. “There’s more in the kitchen to bring out.”

Julia went back inside and grabbed a bowl of potato salad from the kitchen. She crossed the yard to put the bowl on the picnic table with the rest of the food. Paul was standing by Gideon at the smoky grill. When he saw her, he made his way over to her.

“Is that German potato salad?” he asked her pleasantly, peering into the bowl. “Sure do love potato salad.” He scratched his neck and shyly added, “Jules, I was hoping we could have a talk—”

“I’m sure hoping we can get dinner started.” Roman Troyer appeared out of nowhere. “It looks like it’s going to rain soon.” He put a hand on Julia’s elbow and steered her over to the picnic table.

“What are you doing?” Julia hissed. “I thought you’d left town.”

His mouth curved faintly. “What, and miss all the fun?”

Julia searched in her mind for a snappy retort, but she was never good at those. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Menno and Annie slip into the barn. “Oh no. That isn’t good.”

Rome saw it too. “Who’s to say whether it’s good or not? Menno isn’t like us.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t mean that the way you’re thinking. He doesn’t worry about the future like you do, he doesn’t trouble himself about endless responsibilities like you do. He views the world as a place of wonder.”

“He can barely take care of himself.”

Rome took the bowl of potato salad from Julia and placed it on the table. “He’s seventeen and he’s got a crush on a girl. Why do you have to spoil this for him? Maybe you should try to be more like Menno. Maybe we all should.”

She stared at him, astounded. What did Roman Troyer know about her brother, her family? She planted her fists on her hips. “Why did you pull me away from Paul? He wanted to talk to me!”

“Not looking like that.” He pointed to his mouth. “You have something in your teeth.”

She bolted for the house and hurried into the bathroom. Sure enough, a parsley leaf was wedged between her two front teeth.

Over on the side yard, Sadie was watching M.K. play volleyball with her school friends when she noticed one of the girls, Alice Esh, look like she was about to cry. When the ball rolled toward Sadie, she tossed it to M.K. to continue playing and went over to Alice, steering her to a bench to sit down. Alice’s face was red and blotchy. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Alice said, taking deep breaths.

Sadie noticed that Alice’s skin was starting to look strange—like giant hives were forming, making her skin look pebbly and rough. “Were you stung by anything? Or bitten?”

Alice shook her head. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me!” She was turning redder and redder but not perspiring, though it was a warm evening.

“M.K.!” Sadie yelled. “Go get some rags from the barn and drench them in cool water. Dummel!”
Hurry!

M.K. ran off on her toothpick legs and returned with wet rags. Sadie draped them over Alice’s hot neck and arms and legs.

“Go get more,” she ordered M.K.

A crowd started to gather, but Sadie was so focused on cooling Alice down that she didn’t notice. Sadie knew she had to remain calm, for Alice’s sake, and tried to let that calmness flow out of her hands. Little by little, with numerous trips to the water pump by M.K., Alice started to breathe normally. Her skin lost that fire-engine-red color and returned to a healthy pink.

“What was wrong with her?” M.K. said.

“Heat rash, I think,” Sadie said. “She was getting overheated.”

“You saved my life,” Alice whispered solemnly to Sadie.

“I don’t think so,” Sadie said, helping Alice stand up.

“You did, Sadie,” said Gideon, who had been watching the entire episode. Someone shouted to him that the chickens were on fire, so he ran back to the grill.

Fern had been watching too. As the crowd dispersed, Fern walked up to Sadie and took hold of her hands. She looked at the palms. “Sadie girl, we have finally found what you were born for. I don’t know how I missed it before. You are a healer.”

Sadie peered at her hands. “I am?” she asked, amazed.

“You are,” Fern said confidently.

When the time came for birthday cake, Julia noticed Menno carry over a piece of cake to Annie. It bothered her, seeing her brother act so smitten with a girl. But everything bothered her tonight. The wistful look on her dad’s face as he watched the festivities from his window. Rome and his assumptions that he knew what was best for everyone was particularly annoying tonight, but that was nothing new. Rome always annoyed her.

But what topped the list of annoyances tonight was seeing Paul hover near Lizzie. Lizzie was her friend. How could things have gone so terribly wrong? Why couldn’t life remain simple? She wanted to be where people stayed in place, where only good things happened, where fathers didn’t have heart problems, where boyfriends didn’t cancel weddings, and where she would feel as if her future was safe.

Suddenly, Rome appeared at the bottom porch step. He extended his hand to draw Julia to her feet. “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”

“We already talked. I don’t want to talk anymore.”

“Too late. Let’s go.” He pulled her to a standing position. “I want to tell you what I learned at the hospital.”

The bumpy path they were walking along abruptly ended at a rusted barbed wire fence bordering an overgrown pasture. Rome stopped and turned to her. “There was a doctor who overheard me trying to get some information out of the hospital administrator. Later, that doctor found me walking in the lobby and said he would help me. He’s a Mennonite and seemed to understand the situation. He got me on the phone with the transplant coordinator over at Hershey Medical. That’s where the heart transplants are done. The coordinator said that if Amos is willing, his doctor has already qualified him to be placed on the national transplant list. There’s no guarantee as to when a heart will turn up—the priority list is based on need, not how long a person has been on the list. They said the list turns over quickly because patients die. But he also said that hearts come in a lot—mostly from motorcycle accidents, and mostly right after holidays like the fourth of July. They call them donorcycles.”

The gist of Rome’s message was positive, but the word “transplant” hung in the air between them. There was an awful finality about it; a transplant might be treatment, but it had a ring of desperation to it, a sense of last resort.

“But if a heart is a match for Amos—the right blood type and size, and he said that the donor has to be within twenty pounds of Amos’s weight—then the transplant could save his life. Amos is the right age for a transplant—he’s young and fit and doesn’t have any other health problems.” Rome stopped. “Julia—you
have
to talk your father into getting on that list. He’ll listen to you.”

Julia looked up and was surprised she hadn’t noticed how the sky had become clotted with clouds that were gray as pewter. When had that happened? One moment, the sky was clear. The next, it was filled with clouds. So like life. She thought she felt a raindrop, then another. More raindrops. Rome didn’t seem to notice.

“If money’s the problem, well, maybe I could find a way to help with that. I’m not saying it isn’t expensive, but even the coordinator said that money shouldn’t be the reason a person doesn’t go on the list.”

She was touched by Rome’s concern for her father. Truly touched. “I appreciate what you did, Rome. And that you’re trying to help. I really do.”

“Just tell me that you’ll talk to him. Soon.”

“All right. I’ll give it another try. Tomorrow. I promise.”

He looked so pleased that she couldn’t help but smile. And then he smiled, and their eyes held for a beat too long. His eyes traveled down to her mouth, as if he might kiss her. She could see him thinking about it, then he shifted his glance away.

Suddenly, he looped an arm around her shoulders as if drawing her in for a hug. She was so surprised she was speechless.

“That,” he whispered in her ear, “is going to drive Paul Fisher right over the edge.” He kept his arm tightly around her so she couldn’t pull away. “Don’t look now but he’s standing about one hundred yards away from us. I can’t be positive, but I think there’s a scowl on his face.”

She looked. Paul stood silhouetted against a tree, his legs braced, arms tensed at his side. He dropped his head, turned, and walked away.

Julia felt a shock run through her. Even though she knew Rome was teasing, she felt a funny quiver down her spine. She was oddly disappointed —for a brief moment, she had wanted him to kiss her. The realization was startlingly powerful. Her attraction to him irritated her, and she pulled herself out of Rome’s grasp. “What do you think you’re doing?”