The Search (6 page)

A small price to pay? What about losing the only woman you’ve ever loved? What about trying to raise a child alone? What about the fact that his daughter never knew her mother?

He had worked so hard to honor Rebecca’s memory and raise Bess the way she would have wanted her raised. He created a new life for himself and Bess, and the Lord had blessed his efforts. When he finally decided to lease the fields and try his hand at furniture making, the business took off. So much so that he had taken on a partner, Mose Weaver. Mose was a lifelong bachelor, an older, quiet man who spoke with a lisp when he talked, which was seldom. Most knew Mose was silent as a tomb, a man of deep thoughts, none of them revealed. Some thought that was because he had no thoughts at all, but Jonah knew better. Mose lived with his parents, worked hard, and wanted for little. He was a fine business partner for Jonah. There was more than enough work for both of them.

Jonah had no complaints about his life. But with Bess gone this summer, and with the painful awareness that she was growing up, he knew that things were going to be changing soon. He never did like change.

And what would life look like after Bess was raised? Sallie was forever pointing that out, as if he didn’t wonder about it himself.

Jonah wiped the sweat off the back of his neck. Sallie had been making loud suggestions lately about getting married. He was fond of Sallie, but the thought of getting married made his throat tighten up. There had been a time, four or five years ago, when Jonah had tried to find a new mother for Bess, but his heart wasn’t in it. He wanted to love again the way he had loved Rebecca.

Sallie had different ideas about marriage. She had been a widow for less than a year and was already moving on with her life, eager to marry again. That was one thing he admired about her. She didn’t hold on to the past. Just last night, she had told him that she never expected a second marriage to be like the first. “There’s no feeling like that first love, when you’re young and carefree and life seems filled with possibilities,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that a real good friendship isn’t a fine start for a marriage.”

Sallie thought his ideas of marriage were unrealistic. And she should know—she’d been married twice before.

Her boys needed a father, she had told him frankly, and his Bess needed a mother. It made perfect sense, she said.

He picked up the rag and dipped it in the can of stain, ready to finish up that table for Mrs. Petersheim. Maybe Sallie was right.

The Sunday after Bess arrived in Stoney Ridge was an off-Sunday, so no church would be held. Earlier this morning, a chicken—whose pet name was Delilah—lost its head when Mammi had picked it out specially and wrung its neck off. It happened so fast that Bess felt woozy. Mammi was feeding her ladies by tossing cracked corn on the ground, making little clucking sounds at them. Suddenly, she reached down and picked up a chicken by the neck and spun it over her head, snapping its neck. Within seconds she had it on a tree stump. After plucking off the feathers and saving them in her pillow bag, Mammi dipped those chicken parts in buttermilk and bread crumbs, fried it, whipped up biscuits to mop up the gravy, added snap beans and sliced tomatoes from the garden. Bess was sure she’d never seen a chicken go from the yard to the table so quickly. It was record time.

Mammi asked her to set the table and get it all ready for Sunday dinner, so Bess took out three servings of utensils.

Without looking up from the fry pan, Mammi said, “Make it for four.”

“Why four?” Bess asked.

“You never know,” Mammi answered with an air of mystery. She tucked in a wisp of gray hair that escaped her cap. In English she added, “Mebbe I got extra-century perception like the sheriff.”

So Bess set the table for four. What was the point of asking?

Jonah loved this time of year. On the way to pick up Sallie and her boys for church on Sunday morning, he passed by a neighbor’s house and saw the straight rows of crops in the fields, tended lovingly. He loved summer best of all. The first fruits of summer gardens would be making an appearance for lunch after meeting: deep red beefsteak tomatoes, sliced thick; cucumber salad; a pyramid of pickled peaches; bowls of luscious, plump strawberries. Yes, this was a good time of year.

He was especially looking forward to meeting today. It had been nearly a week since Bess had left, and he was starting to talk to himself just like Sallie did, he was
that
hungry for company. He felt a familiar warm feeling spread over him as he pulled into Noah Miller’s yard: dozens of buggies were lined up, shoulder to shoulder, like pigs at a feeding trough.

After meeting, the men and boys ate first at the set-up tables, then cleared out of the way so the women could eat. A softball game had been started by the big boys and Jonah watched for a while. He noticed Sallie’s twins were sent off to the outfield to catch fly balls. They had been pestering the big boys until they were finally given a job to do and could be out of harm’s way.

Jonah walked over to join Mose, standing with a few other men under the shade of a large oak tree. Jonah half listened to the men’s grave analysis about the weather they’d been having. Too little rain, they worried, a drought in the making. But then, farmers always worried about the weather. He could hear the murmur of women’s voices—including Sallie’s laugh, for she was always laughing—through the open kitchen window, along with the clinking of plates and forks, the thumping of bowls and platters onto the tabletops to be taken home.

Young Levi Miller sidled up to him, kicking at the ground. Levi was an awkward boy, but he adored Bess, and for that, Jonah admired him. “Any word?” Levi asked in a low voice. He began to blush, a bright red trickling its way up from his collar to the middle of his ears. They were sizable ears. They stood straight out at the side of his head.

Jonah smiled. “Nothing yet. But I’m sure she’s having a good summer.”

Levi was crestfallen. “All summer? Bess is going to be there all summer?”

Jonah felt the same way.

Mose placed his large and gentle hand on Levi’s shoulder and steered him to the softball game. He helped Levi find a spot in line to have a turn at the bat, then he jogged to the outfield to help Sallie’s boys field balls.

Without a car, Lainey O’Toole had no option but to walk the entire way to Bertha Riehl’s farmhouse. In her arms was a pink box—a lattice-topped gooseberry pie she had made last night at the bakery. She knew the way to Rose Hill Farm as if she’d been there yesterday. As she turned onto Stoneleaf Road, she slowed her pace and turned down the dirt lane that led to the cottage where she had lived with her mother and her stepfather. The cottage was set back from the road. When she saw it, her heart slowed and pounded. It had been fifteen years since she laid eyes on it. She squared her shoulders and approached the cottage. Her throat felt tight and a weight settled on her chest. She looked up at the worn clapboards, without a speck of paint, the rusted gutters, broken windows covered with nailed boards. It was even shabbier close up than it looked from the road. Like nobody cared.

She stopped for a moment and took her time looking. When she was little, she had tried to imagine it was pretty, but now she saw that it had always been just a poor man’s house, with crooked shutters and a sagging front porch. The porch roof had a vicious slant to it, as if a strong burst of wind might carry it away. An old grape arbor, overgrown like everything else, sat at the end of a broken flagstone path. A crow shrieked in the distance and a few more answered back by telling it off. A mother deer and her baby were grazing under a tree and lifted their heads at the same time, startled to see someone in the yard. They froze, their stiff forelegs splayed out to the sides like stilts. They inspected Lainey with their black-tipped ears, worried she might be a threat. Then finally, deeming her harmless, they looked away and resumed grazing. Otherwise, the place looked lifeless.

She walked up on the front porch and tested the door handle. It wasn’t locked, but she didn’t go in. It was hard to even imagine walking through the door, so she stepped back and peered in the windows. There was nothing to see there, just an old, forgotten cottage, yet she had the strangest feeling about it. Like she was home.

She stepped off the porch onto the walkway and nearly tripped on a fallen-over For Sale sign. She tried to set it upright, then made her way through the weeds, back to the road that led to the Riehls’ farmhouse.

Lainey smiled when she saw the old hand-painted sign hanging on Rose Hill Farm’s mailbox: “Roses for Sale. No Sunday Sales.” She’d forgotten all about that sign. It had always seemed odd to folks that a woman like Bertha Riehl—as tough as old boots—grew delicate roses to sell. Samuel Riehl was the tenderhearted one, most folks presumed. But Lainey knew better. Bertha Riehl might be tough on the outside, but she was as soft as a marshmallow on the inside.

She walked slowly past the leafed-out cherry trees that lined the long drive, mesmerized by the sight of endless rosebushes in full bloom. Those roses were the most glorious sight she had ever seen in her life. She felt sure that the path to the Pearly Gates of Heaven couldn’t be any more inviting than the one leading up to Rose Hill Farm.

Lainey saw Bertha first. She was shaking out a wet dishrag to dry on the kitchen porch railing. Lainey stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and looked up at the big woman, wearing a shapeless plum-colored dress with a black apron stretched around her vast girth. “I’ve never seen such beauty, this side of heaven. It’s like . . . God is showing off a little.” She looked out toward the barn. “You’ve added so many roses. Doesn’t your husband object to your converting his pastures to roses?”

“Samuel passed three years ago come October the tenth,” Bertha said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I couldn’t keep up the farm, but I could do one thing.”

Lainey smiled. “Grow roses.”

“That’s right. And now I’m selling jam made from my mother’s rugosas over there.” She pointed to shrubs of pink, multiflowered roses.

“I remember those rugosas,” Lainey said. “I remember your jam.”

Bertha nodded. “I keep adding more and more stock. Filling the pastures with roses. I got a hired boy who has a knack for grafting roses, so he started grafting those rugosas onto heartier root stock.” She nodded in the direction of a small greenhouse next to the barn. “Folks come from all over to buy my rosebushes and now they’re after my jam and tea.”

Lainey nodded. “Mrs. Stroot is hoping I’ll talk you into selling some at The Sweet Tooth. She wants me to find out what you’d say to a barter arrangement.”

“Such as?” Bertha lifted an eyebrow. She was interested, Lainey could see.

“Maybe you could have your pick of things from the bakery—like a credit—in exchange for letting her sell the jam and tea.”

Bertha sized that up for a long moment. “Tell Dottie Stroot I’ll think it over.”

Lainey felt pleased. She had expected a flat-out no.

Bertha eyed the pink bakery box in Lainey’s hands. “What’s in there?”

“Gooseberry pie. Your favorite, if I remember right.”

“You do.” Bertha turned to go back to the house and Lainey took that as an invitation to follow.