The Search (32 page)

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. The night of that accident, when you stayed by the buggy until the ambulance arrived. You kept saying not to give up . . .” He swallowed hard. “I remember. I remember hearing your voice and I held on to those words. They helped me stay alive.” His eyes became glassy with tears and he wiped them away with a laugh. “I can’t stop tearing up this summer. It’s like I’m shedding a lifetime of bottled tears.”

They locked eyes for a long moment, then she leaned toward him. She stroked his face softly. He caught her hand and held it to his lips. He kissed it with his head bent over it so that she couldn’t see his eyes.

A month had passed since Simon’s bone marrow transplant. Jonah and Lainey were seated in hard plastic chairs in an office as a nurse explained what to expect after Simon was discharged. His blood counts were returning to safe levels, the nurse said.

“Does that mean the bone marrow transplant worked?” Jonah asked.

“The transplanted marrow seems to be engrafting,” the nurse said. “We’re cautiously optimistic. But I have to warn you that recovery can be like a roller-coaster ride. The patient may be irritable and unpleasant with the caregiver. Helplessness is also a common feeling among bone marrow transplant patients, which can breed further feelings of anger or resentment.”

“Even more than usual?” Lainey asked.

“One day a patient may feel much better, only to awake the next day feeling as sick as ever.” She gave Lainey a bright smile. “So if his daily blood samples continue to show that he’s producing normal red blood cells, he can go home by the end of this week.”

“So soon?” Lainey asked in a dull, polite way.

“By the end of this week,” the nurse repeated cheerfully.

Jonah had a funny feeling the staff was eager to have Simon leave.

“In the first several weeks,” the nurse continued, “he’ll be weak and tired and will want to sleep and rest frequently. He’ll need to return to the hospital for frequent follow-up visits for medication, blood transfusions, and monitoring.”

“And then?” Jonah asked. “How long until he can take care of himself?”

“Recovery from a bone marrow transplant is lengthy and can take up to six months to resume normal activities, including returning to full-time work.”

Jonah and Lainey exchanged a look of shock. Six months!

“During the first three months after the transplant, he’ll be vulnerable to complications due to the fact that his white blood cell counts will be very low and incapable of providing normal protection against everyday viruses and bacteria. So he’ll have to avoid crowded public places such as movie theatres and grocery stores to avoid contact with potential infection.” The nurse clapped the file shut. “And he really shouldn’t have any friends visiting for a while.”

Jonah’s eyebrows shot up. “Well,
that
shouldn’t be a problem. Simon has no friends.”

That made the nurse burst out with a laugh. “Will wonders never cease?”

The first morning after Simon was released from the hospital and moved into Lainey’s house, he rang a bell at five in the morning to wake her to help him find the bathroom. At six, he rang it again for coffee. At seven, he complained that the eggs she had scrambled for him were cold.

Bess came by in the early afternoon to see if Lainey needed any help. Stoney Ridge was experiencing an Indian summer, and it was too hot to pick rose blooms. Jonah wanted to keep the rose petal harvest going, though he still hadn’t decided what to do about Rose Hill Farm or their home in Ohio, either. The roses were in their second bloom, and they had to work quickly in this heat to get those roses picked and dried. Lainey smiled to see the Band-Aids covering Bess’s hands.

Lainey made Simon lunch, went back to the kitchen to clean up, only to have Simon ring the bell again. “I don’t like crust on my sandwiches,” he complained to her. “I don’t like crunchy peanut butter, only smooth. I asked for a Coke, not milk. Do you think I’m a six-year-old?”

Lainey took his plate back to the kitchen and cut the crust off of his sandwich, then took it back to him with a Coke.

Bess sat in the front room and watched this ongoing interaction. The third time Simon rang the bell to complain, Bess stood abruptly and held a hand in the air to stop Lainey from taking his plate back to the kitchen. “So, you don’t like your lunch?” Bess’s voice was dangerously calm.

“Dang right I don’t like that lunch. Didn’t like breakfast, neither.” Simon turned to Lainey. “And I didn’t like the coffee. I told you I want it strong.”

Bess picked up the bell, walked to the door, opened it, threw the bell outside, and closed the door.

Simon did not make any further comments through the rest of lunch. He didn’t thank Lainey for it, but he didn’t complain about it, either.

For the next few hours, Bess helped Lainey roll out pie crusts in the kitchen, and they talked quietly to each other as they worked, while Simon rested. Finally, sounding hurt that he was being left out of the conversation, Simon called to them to ask what kind of pies they were baking. Bess had just taken a pie out of the oven and stood at the door, holding it in her hands with hot mitts. “Apple and pumpkin.”

Lainey pulled out a rack for Bess to set the pies on and asked Simon what his favorite pie was.

He scowled at her. “I only like two kinds of pie: hot and cold.”

Bess and Lainey laughed at that, genuinely laughed, and Simon’s mournful, hound-dog face brightened a bit.

Not much later, Lainey and Bess were cleaning up the mess they’d made in the kitchen when an ear-busting woof came from the front of the cottage. Bess dropped the wet dishrag and hurried to open the front door.

“Don’t open that door!” Simon hollered from his bed. “We’re getting bombed!”

“That’s no bomb! That’s Boomer!” Bess said, clapping her hands in delight. She threw open the door and in charged Boomer, looking a little thinner and smelling pretty bad. He jumped up on Bess, then Lainey, then put his dirty front paws on Simon’s bed.

“Get that mutt out of here,” Simon yelled. “He smells like he was on the wrong end of a fight with a polecat!”

“This is Mammi’s dog, Simon,” Bess said. “His name is Boomer. He’s been out mourning for Mammi. But now he’s back. We’ll give him a bath and he’ll be as good as new.”

“Fat chance of that,” Simon muttered.

“If you wouldn’t mind keeping Simon company for a few minutes,” Lainey told Bess after they gave Boomer a bath, “I’ve got some laundry hanging that I need to take down.” She picked up an empty laundry basket and went to the backyard. Having a house of one’s own took getting used to, Lainey had quickly realized. There was always some little thing to be done. It wasn’t a big house, but there were plenty of chores.

She took her time taking the dry clothes off the line. Hanging laundry was something she found she enjoyed doing. Pinning clothes up and letting the sun permeate them with its warmth was so much better than sitting in a dark Laundromat guarding a machine. Bess had told her once that working is a form of prayer. At first, Lainey had trouble understanding that. But now, she could see it. She thought it meant the kind of work that came from caring for others.

When Lainey came back inside, she found Bess helping Simon drink from a glass of water. It was touching to see Bess, this child who had grown up with another life and another father, reaching out to this man. When Bess tossed that bell out the front door, it was like Lainey was watching some other girl entirely. Bess was so confident and clear about how to handle Simon. She handled him better than Lainey ever did. In fact, it just occurred to Lainey, she handled him the way Bertha used to. Bertha never stood for any of Simon’s bluster.

Lainey tiptoed to the bedroom to fold the clothes. When she came back out, she found Simon had drifted off, and Bess was curled up in a corner of the couch, sound asleep. Boomer was on the foot of Simon’s bed, snoring.

Later that week, Bess stood on the porch at Rose Hill Farm and waved goodbye to Andy Yoder after he had dropped off a bushel of ripe apples from his family’s orchard. Before turning onto the road, Andy looked back and yanked off his straw hat. He stood on the wagon seat, holding the horse’s reins in one hand, waving his hat in a big arc with the other.

The thing about Andy Yoder, Bess was finding, was that you just couldn’t put him off. He was cheerful and funny and full of life, and totally convinced that she loved him. Which of course she didn’t. It wasn’t that she was immune to Andy’s charms; it felt nice to be admired. He told her today that he thought she looked like an angel: smooth skin with large, bright eyes and a mouth shaped like a bow. He stared at her mouth when he said it, and it made her stomach do a flip-flop. Andy was like that: chock-full of sweet words and lingering gazes and always willing to share every thought.

But as fun as Andy was, Bess knew her heart belonged to Billy. Each day, they worked in the rose fields or in the greenhouse and talked about all kinds of things. Conversation was so easy between them, even their good-natured arguments. Sometimes, when he was in a professorial mood, she couldn’t understand half of what he said. Her thoughts often wandered to imagining that this would be their life: the two of them living side by side, day by day, for always.