The Revealing (21 page)

She cringed, feeling an odd foreboding.

Whoever that fourteenth cousin twice removed thought he was, he still needed to have his sheets changed and wastebasket emptied. The day came when Bethany was fed up waiting for him to show himself. She found a screwdriver and pins
and jimmied the lock open to the second-floor guestroom. She turned the knob and cautiously opened the door. She couldn’t believe it. She walked slowly into the room. From the unmade bed to the clothes that littered the floor, the room was in complete chaos. Candy wrappers, gum wrappers, old newspapers, soda cans, crumpled dinner napkins, tin foil, cookies, and crackers.

Clothing lay in a soiled heap in the corner. The bed was full of crumbs. The remains of a sandwich lay on the pillow, and an open bag of potato chips had been shoved under the blanket. Nothing had been washed or cleaned since the day the old sisters’ fourteenth cousin twice removed had arrived.

Well, she thought, as she stripped the bed, if she had any doubts about his connection to the sisters before today, the condition of this room squelched them. The fourteenth cousin twice removed fit right in with his elderly relatives.

Mim arrived at the schoolhouse early one morning and put her books in her desk. On top of her desk was her “What Pennsylvania Means to Me” essay that she had labored over, graded and returned: B- in big fat red ink.

She slunk into her seat, disappointed and frustrated, angry with Danny Riehl, who thought he was so smart. She opened her desk and was startled to find a red rose—the first of the season, lying on top of her neatly folded and freshly laundered apron-turned-rope that saved the cow in the ditch. There was a card attached:

A boy met a girl as sweet as caramel,

Of all the girls, he thought she was the pinnacle,

But she thought he was quite unbearable.

To win her hand, he would need help from . . . Mrs. Miracle.

Mim gasped! Then . . . cringed. Trust Jesse Stoltzfus to make this into a big, big deal. She
knew
he was going to torture her over the identity of Mrs. Miracle. She ripped up the note and scrunched up the rose and stomped to the garbage to throw them away. That Jesse Stoltzfus! He was a loathsome creature. When she turned around, Danny was peering at her with a curious look on his face. “Everything all right, Mim?”

“No! It’s not all right. My paper should be an A.” She cringed again. Did she really just say that?

He was very Teacher Danny now, sitting at his desk, peering down at her. “I gave you a B- because I believe you can do better.”

A few children came into the classroom and put their lunch boxes on the shelf that lined the back wall. Danny glanced at them and lowered his voice. “We can talk about your essay after school, if you like.”

She didn’t like. She felt just as mad at him as she did at Jesse Stoltzfus. Even madder. Her essay was excellent. Just excellent. He was being intentionally hard on her and she didn’t know why.

When Jesse came into the classroom, she purposefully ignored him, though she doubted he noticed. He was too busy crowing to Luke and Mose over the A+ on his stupid essay. When he passed by her desk, he whispered, “B minus?” turned, and wiggled his eyebrows at her. She snapped her head away from his goofy face.

Why couldn’t there be another girl in her grade? Or seventh grade. Sixth, even. She was surrounded by horrible, terrible, abominable boys.

On the way home from school that day, she stopped at a horse trough in the field of the nearly-falling-down barn and leaned over to look at her face in the water. “This face,” she said, “belongs to someone who can write well enough to have her own advice column in a newspaper, despite what Teacher Danny seems to think. And she has pluck. And this is me, Mim.” She stopped. Jesse was right. Mim was no name for someone who could write as well as she could. “Miriam.”

What a day. She had been given her first rose, was humiliated by Danny Riehl and mortified by Jesse Stoltzfus.
What
a day.

Rose, Paisley, and the baby returned to Eagle Hill that evening, barely twenty-four hours after the baby had been born. The house was quiet; Vera, Mim, and the boys had gone to bed, Bethany was out with Jimmy Fisher, and Rose was thankful for a quiet entry. There would be time tomorrow for everyone to ooh and aah over the baby.

Paisley went straight upstairs to bed. Rose hadn’t heard anyone come into the kitchen but suddenly looked up and found Naomi standing by the doorjamb, looking at the tiny baby sleeping in the Moses basket in the corner. In her arms was a small pink baby quilt she had just completed.

“I had a feeling the baby was a girl,” she said, a shy smile on her face.

Somehow, that didn’t surprise Rose. Naomi was known for those kinds of presentiments. Rose wasn’t sure if she had a
unique gift or if she just listened to her intuition better than most. “The baby quilt is her first gift, Naomi.” She took the quilt from her and laid it on the table. One-inch squares of pink fabrics in varying shades were perfectly cut, sewn, and quilted with Naomi’s precise stitches. “What a treasure you’ve given her.”

But Naomi wasn’t even listening. She was transfixed by the baby. That intense look she had on her face—well, for the first time, Rose noticed how she and Galen resembled each other. Naomi’s hair was coffee-brown, like his was, her face was angular like his, though their eyes were a different color, and her features were far less classically attractive than her brother’s. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was. She had the beauty of happiness.

“Can I pick the baby up?” Naomi whispered softly, as if she were standing on hallowed ground.

“Of course,” Rose told her. “Her name is Sarah.”

She watched as Naomi lifted the tiny baby nervously, almost shyly, and held her to her chest. She said nothing, just walked around the downstairs in a big loop. She mumbled something soft, a prayer or a poem or a tuneless lullaby—Rose couldn’t make it out. Naomi’s hold on the baby was sure, her love obvious.

After Naomi left, Rose went into Paisley’s room with the baby. Seeing that Paisley’s eyes were open, Rose started to take the baby to her, but she turned away to face the wall. Rose took the baby to her own room to lie down for a while. She was afraid to trust Sarah with her mother yet.

She dozed lightly, wakened by the baby whimpering, and went downstairs to warm a bottle for her before Sarah started to cry. She sat in the rocker and held the baby against her,
reminded of those exhausting days with her own babies: of Mim and of Luke and Sammy. How had she survived them? She remembered feeling too tired to rise.

When the baby had taken all she would from the bottle, Rose wrapped her tightly in a swaddle, the way babies like best, and sat down to rock her to sleep. The moon was full, sending streaming beams of light into the living room.

Little Sarah fell sound asleep, tucked against her breast. She stroked the baby’s wispy tuft of dark hair. Was it her imagination or did the baby look more helpless and alone than any other child? As if she knew she was motherless and fatherless from the moment she had come on earth. “You could be worse off,” Rose whispered. “Your mother’s a fool not to want you, but maybe she was smart to wait until she got to people who would look after you.”

But it wasn’t really smarts, Rose feared—Paisley just didn’t care.

13

T
he full moon flooded Naomi’s bedroom with yellow light, as bright as day. She wasn’t asleep. She couldn’t sleep tonight. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the baby at Eagle Hill Farm. There was something about her that deeply touched her.

When she held the baby for the first time, she had gazed down into Sarah’s little face, and Sarah gazed back at her, her eyes large and shiny. Trusting.

A silent communication had passed between them in that moment, deep and heartfelt.

Naomi had breathed in deeply that sweet newborn smell. Sarah’s neck was so small and fragile looking. Her skin was soft and she smelled better than any human being Naomi had ever been near. Unexpected pleasure stole over her. She understood, suddenly, why everything that mothers went through—the long nights, the endless crying, the daily weariness—was worth the sacrifice to them.

Naomi’s thoughts drifted to her own mother, long gone, knowing that her mother must have held her in the same way. Her throat swelled and tears rushed to her eyes, but she kept
up the gentle motion she had watched Rose use with Sarah to rock her to sleep. Back and forth. Back and forth.

The baby’s eyes held innocence and a sort of uncanny wisdom. They continued to look at each other for a long stretch, then Sarah’s lids grew heavy and fluttered shut. Rose told Naomi to set the baby in her basket to sleep, but she couldn’t bring herself to let her go. She had ended up staying in that rocker for hours.

An owl hooted once, then twice. Naomi should try to sleep. She rolled onto her side to face the wall, away from the bright window. A faint sense that she had forgotten something needled the back of her mind. What was it? Something definitely was missing. Had she left something over at Eagle Hill?

And then it hit her. The thing that had disappeared? Her anxiety. Gone, like a wisp of steam from a teacup. Vanished into thin air.

Her stomach? Settled. Headache? None. Nerves? Steady. Heartbeat? Normal. Breathing? Calm and relaxed.

Astonished, she thought of Sarah, sleeping peacefully in her arms this evening.
She’d
done this, she realized. This tiny gift of a baby had stilled the roiling inside of her. This little person she scarcely knew and already loved.

“I’m going to help you, Sarah,” she whispered aloud, as if the baby were still in her arms and could understand her words. “Your mother brought you to us, for whatever reason, and it’s the right place for you. I’m going to help you. You’re safe here.”

Naomi released a deep sigh, and fell asleep.