The Search (17 page)

He lifted a frame and leaned it against the wall. “Sure you do. You’re a girl, aren’t you?”

Charming.
At least he had noticed that.

“You can’t
make
someone like you.” She knew that to be true. “There was a boy in Ohio who drove me cuckoo, he liked me so much. Kept trying to walk with me to school and hold my hand and talked about getting married someday. He hung around me like a summer cold. He even had our children’s names picked out. All ten of them!” She shuddered. “If he had just left me alone, maybe I would have taken notice of him.” Probably not, though. Everything about Levi Miller was annoying to her.

Billy lifted the last empty frame and set it against the wall. He swiveled around on his heels, his head cocked. “Okay, I’ll try it! I knew you’d have an idea of what to do. You’re a peach.” He smiled, exposing two rows of very white, straight teeth. Possibly one of his best features, Bess assessed. Either that or the cleft in his chin.

Bess turned away.
Don’t tell me I’m a peach
, she thought.
Tell me I’m . . . what? Beautiful? Hardly. The love of your life? That would be Betsy Mast. A loyal friend? Oh, that sounds like a pet dog.
So what did she want? Why was she so determined to keep on loving him, knowing that he loved another?

She had no answer.

In the middle of her musings, Billy surprised her with a loud and brotherly buss on her forehead. He grabbed his hat and waved goodbye as he left the barn for the day. She went to the open barn door and watched him walk down the drive, hat slightly tilted back on his head, whistling a tune as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Blackie—fatter than ever from hunting all those barn mice and birds and other things Bess didn’t want to think about—came out of his hiding place and wound himself around her legs. She bent down to pick him up, the traitor.

She wasn’t sure what she had said that gave Billy a better plan to woo Betsy, but she knew she wasn’t going to wash that kiss off of her forehead for a very long time.

Billy hurried through his chores that afternoon to get home, shower, and change, so he could hightail it over to the volleyball game at the Yoders’. He was grateful to Bess for giving him such good advice. Bess was turning out to be a valuable resource. He hadn’t really had a friend who was a girl before. Bess was easy for him to talk to, maybe because she was a good listener. When Bess told him the story about the fellow who overly liked her, it hit him like a two-by-four. That was just the way he’d been acting toward Betsy.

It made so much sense. Betsy was more than a year older than he was. The last time he had tried to talk to her about courting, she tilted her head and asked him how old he was.

“Eighteen,” he said. “Nearly nineteen.”

Betsy gave him a patronizing look. “You can’t even call yourself a man yet.”

“Years aren’t everything,” Billy said. “I’m taller and stronger than most grown men.”

Betsy had smiled and let him kiss her on the cheek, but he knew she never took him seriously. Of course not. He’d been acting immature, fawning and obsequious. Girls didn’t like that, Bess had told him. That came as a surprise, but most things about girls came as a surprise to him.

Starting tonight, he was going to ignore Betsy. Not talk to her. Not even look at her.

When Billy arrived at the Yoders’, he found his friends huddled together in a sad circle. “Who died?” he asked his best friend, Andy Yoder, who claimed to also be head over heels in love with Betsy. But Billy wasn’t at all concerned. Andy was always in love with somebody.

“Haven’t you heard? Betsy Mast ran off. We think she’s with an English fellow who works at the Hay & Grain. Guess they’ve been planning it for months now.” Andy looked as if his world had just imploded. “She’s just been using all of us as decoys, so her folks wouldn’t catch on.”

That night, Bess was sleeping deeply until a noise woke her. She opened her eyes and tried to listen carefully to the night sounds. She wasn’t entirely used to Rose Hill Farm yet, the way the walls creaked or the sounds of the night birds, different from Ohio birds. At first she thought the sound must have been Mammi’s snoring, but then she heard something else. Something thumped the roof by her window. She hoped it was a roof rat. Or maybe Blackie, finally coming out of that barn for a visit. Where was Boomer when she needed him? Probably snoring right along in rhythm with Mammi.

She tiptoed out of bed and looked out the window. Sometimes at night the leaves rustled branches at the window, but she didn’t see leaves or branches. A shape was down there and it scared her half to death. She was just about to scream when she heard the shape calling up to her.

It was Billy, below her window, waving to her. He cupped his hands around his mouth and whispered loudly, “Get dressed and come down! I need to talk to you!”

Bess’s heart sang. She never dressed faster in her life. She stuck herself twice as she pinned her dress together. She bunched up her hair into a sloppy bun and jammed her prayer cap over it, then quietly tiptoed down the stairs and slipped out the side door.

Billy was pacing the yard, arms crossed against his chest. When he saw her, he stopped and motioned to her to come. “Let’s go to the pond.”

He had left his horse and courting buggy on the road so that he wouldn’t waken Mammi and Jonah, he said, so they hurried down the drive and climbed in. Bess looked back once, but the large farmhouse looked silent. Billy slapped the horse’s reins and kept his eyes straight ahead. He didn’t say a word, but Bess didn’t care. Here she was on a perfect, moonlit summer night, being secretly courted by Billy Lapp. This was the most wonderful, splendid moment of her life. She wanted to remember every detail of the evening so she could relive it during dreary moments—math class came to mind—when she returned, inevitably, to Ohio. The night was dark, so she chanced a glance at Billy, admiring the determined way his jaw was sticking out, the stern set of his mouth, his two dark eyebrows furrowing together.

All of a sudden, Bess’s dreamy hopes evaporated, like steam rising from a tea cup. She felt something was wrong, but then she was always feeling that and it never was. “Billy, is something bothering you?”

He took in a deep breath. “She’s gone, Bess. She ran off with an English fellow who worked at the Hay & Grain.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

“Who?”

“For crying out loud, Bess! Who do you think? Betsy!” He jerked the horse’s reins to sharply turn right onto the path that led to Blue Lake Pond. He pulled back on the reins and stopped the horse at the end of the level space, then hopped down and tied the reins to a tree. He sauntered down to the water’s edge, looking bereft.

Bess stayed in the buggy, watching him, half furious, half delighted. A part of her was disappointed that Billy used her as a listening post for his troubles. The part that felt delighted Betsy was gone made her feel shamed. What kind of person took delight in another person’s downfall? She knew that wasn’t right and she breathed a quick apology to the Lord for her sinful thoughts. But from the start she knew what kind of girl Betsy was, that she never did care about Billy or see how special he was. Betsy Mast wasn’t good enough for Billy Lapp. Then she caught herself. That, too, was a sinful thought, and she had to apologize again to the Lord.

Goodness. Love was a tricky business.

She could see that Billy was suffering, and she tried not to be too glad for it. She sighed and hopped down from the buggy to join him.

“This is the worst summer on record,” he said mournfully. “My lake is ruined. My love life is ruined.” The words gushed out of him, heartfelt. He pressed a fist to his breast. “I love her so, it’s like a constant pain, right here in my chest.” He glanced at Bess. “You probably don’t understand that kind of love.”

Oh, I understand it all right
, Bess thought. Love that burns so hot and fast it makes you act crazier than popping corn on a skillet.

He was sitting at the water’s edge with his elbows leaning on his knees. “It’s your fault, you know.”

Her jaw dropped open.

“It is. If you had only given me the idea of ignoring her before today, maybe she would have taken me more seriously.” Billy looked up at the moon. “I should have told her how much I loved her. How I was planning on marrying her. I shouldn’t have waited.”

Bess rolled her eyes. One minute he’s ignoring Betsy. The next minute he’s professing undying love.

“It’s just that . . . I’ve never felt like that about anyone before. And I’m sure she was in love with me. I’m just sure of it.”

Bess plopped down on the shore next to him. “Lainey said she’s seen Betsy zooming around town in that English fellow’s sports car all summer.”

Billy froze. “That’s not true.”

“Lainey wouldn’t lie about that,” she said softly. “And you must know she was spending time in other boys’ courting buggies.” She looked away. “Even I knew that, and I’ve only been here a little over a month.”

“That is a lie!” Billy shouted.

“No, it is not. You know it’s the truth. I’ve seen Betsy in Andy’s buggy and Jake’s buggy and—”

Billy scrambled to a stand. “Aw, you don’t know what you’re talking about! She told me to my face that she was pining only for me!”

Bess rose to her feet and brushed off her dress. “Billy . . . you must have had some inkling—”

“Why am I even trying to talk to you about this? You’re nothing but a child! What would you know about love?” He spun around and marched to the buggy.

Bess opened her mouth, snapped it shut. How
dare
he call her a child! She stomped up to the buggy. “Betsy Mast was never sweet on you! You got caught up like all the others with her . . . her curves and big lips and wavy hair. There was nothing in the attic.” She tapped on her forehead. “Kissing don’t last. Brains beats kissing every time.”

Billy stared at her, as if he was trying to absorb what she had said. Finally, she threw up her hands in the air, turned, and marched up to the road to walk back to Rose Hill Farm.

She was halfway down the dark road and thought she heard a rustling noise in the berry bushes along the road. She stopped, slowly turned, looked back. The movement behind her also stopped. Each time she paused, it happened. Was Billy really going to let her walk all of the way home by herself? She was determined not to look behind her to see if he was coming, but now she was sure she heard a loud scruffling noise. Why, it was as loud as a bear, she started to think, though she had never actually come face-to-face with a bear. Bears liked berry bushes, she knew that for a fact. Yes, it definitely sounded like something was following her. A spooky owl hooted, wind cracked in the trees, and something else made a slithery noise that she hoped wasn’t a snake, because she was afraid of snakes.

Just when she was about to run for her life, she heard the gentle clip-clop of Billy’s horse pull up the road.

When he was beside her, he called out in his soft, manly voice, “Bess, hop in.”

She continued walking quickly up the road, stubborn but pleased he had come for her.

Billy slowed the horse to a stop and jumped out, putting his hand on her shoulder to turn her to face him. “Bess. Don’t be like that. I’m sorry I called you a child. I’m just . . . upset.”

He looked so heartbroken and sad that her madness dissolved. He guided her back to the buggy and helped her up. They rode home silently, and he let her off at the edge of the drive so she could sneak back in the house.

Morning came too early. Bess couldn’t stop yawning throughout Jonah’s prayer before breakfast. Mammi handed her a cup of coffee without any milk in it. When Bess looked into the cup, puzzled, Mammi said in her matter-of-fact way, “Awful hard to sleep with a full moon blasting through the window. Goings-on outside look as bright as daylight.”

Bess froze. Her eyes darted between Jonah, who was spooning strawberries onto his hot waffle, and her grandmother, quietly sipping her coffee with a look on her face of pure innocence. There was no end to what Mammi knew.

7

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