Christmas at Rose Hill Farm (3 page)

Then why
was
he here?

The rose, of course, which gave her a small measure of comfort. The Billy Lapp she once knew would go to any lengths for a rose.

He turned his head to look out the window, and she noticed his long hair curling over his coat collar. She remembered the day she first laid eyes on him—she had noticed his hair, even then.

———

Mid-October 1969
, a bright sunny day. Bess was twelve years old and had come to Stoney Ridge for her grandfather's funeral. Her grandmother had insisted Bess stay on at Rose Hill Farm for a while afterward to help her adjust to widowhood. That came as a surprise to Bess and her father, because most everyone, including her grandfather, had to do the adjusting for Mammi. Jonah tried to encourage his mother to come to Ohio to live with them, said they could make her very comfortable and there was plenty of room for one more, but she wouldn't hear of it. Very set in her ways, Mammi was, and wouldn't budge from her burrow.

Bess's father had to return to Ohio for work, and he relented to allow Bess to stay at Rose Hill Farm for another week. One week turned into two and there was no talk about sending Bess home. Finally, on a brisk afternoon when a cheery fire glowed in the stove, Bess broached the subject with her grandmother. “Mammi, when do you think you'll be ready for me to head back to Ohio? Dad's been asking.”

“Well,” Mammi said, patting her chest, “I've been having some heart trouble.”

Bess eyed her grandmother suspiciously. She was as sound as a coin.

Mammi's spectacles were on her nose. “I didn't want to worry your father.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Doctor,” she scoffed. “What do I need with a doctor?” She waved that thought away with a flick of her big wrist. She didn't trust doctors. “They'd just end up giving me pills to shorten my life.”

Just as Bess opened her mouth to object, a knock interrupted her train of thought. She went to open the door and found
herself staring at the most beautiful boy she had ever seen in all her twelve years. His hair was curly and thick, and it looked as if he hadn't combed it in a hundred years.

“Who is it?” Mammi bellowed from across the room. She said she was deaf, but she heard everything.

The boy looked at Bess curiously, then peered over her head at her grandmother. “It's me, Bertha. Billy. Maggie tagged along.”

Mammi peered back. “Wann bischt du aaegelandt?”
What wind blew
you hither?

“Maggie said you wanted to see me.”

“You're late. I was expecting you this morning.” Mammi expected a lot. And she always claimed she knew when a person was coming. But then, she claimed she knew everything. “Well, come on in, Billy Lapp.”

The boy stepped around Bess and crossed the room to Mammi. Behind the beautiful boy was a small girl, about ten or eleven, who looked like a pixie, with snapping dark eyes hidden behind big glasses.

“Who are you?” the girl said.

Bess's mind went blank. She couldn't get a word from her head to her mouth.

“Is she all right?” Billy whispered, pointing to his head. He spoke to Mammi, not even glancing at Bess.

“She's fine. Billy Lapp and Maggie Zook, meet Bess. She's my granddaughter from Ohio.” Mammi looked at Bess. “Billy lives that way,” she pointed a big thumb in one direction, “and Maggie lives the other way. Bess needs some friends.”

Billy erased Mammi's comment in midair. She heard him mutter that he didn't have time to be friends with a girl, especially one who couldn't talk.

Fine. Too bad for him. She didn't want to be friends either.

Then he looked up. His eyes were blue, the clear color of a September sky, the bluest she had ever seen. He was staring
straight at her with a fierce gaze, and she felt like she was struck by lightning.

Maggie pushed her glasses up on her nose, peering at Bess. “How old are you?”

Bess was having trouble gathering her thoughts. She cleared her throat and tried to speak, but nothing came out. She was too overcome by the handsomeness of Billy Lapp.

Mammi answered for her. “She's twelve.”

“Where do you live?” Billy said, enunciating carefully. He still thought Bess was slow.

“Didn't you notice her at the funeral for Samuel, Billy?” Maggie said. “I did! She came all the way from Oleo!”

“Oleo is yellow lard,” Billy said.

“Ohio,” Mammi corrected. “And it's not all that far, Maggie. No need to get historical.”

“Hysterical,” Billy said.

Maggie turned to Bess. “Don't you worry about not being able to talk. There's lots of ways to communicate. We can pass notes in school.”

Wait. What? School? Bess had no intention of starting school in Stoney Ridge. She'd been more than happy to miss school these last few weeks. She couldn't wait until she finished eighth grade next year and could say goodbye to school for the rest of her life. She kept a wall calendar at home in Ohio in which she marked a red
X
over each passing day.

“Bess can talk. She just don't say much, unlike some other girls her age.” Mammi lifted a sparse eyebrow in Maggie's direction.

“How long is she staying?” Maggie didn't realize she'd just been insulted by Mammi.

“She's staying on a bit longer to help me get through my time of sorrow,” Mammi said.

Maggie slipped closer to Bess. “I've read that mutes can learn
to talk with their fingers.” She wiggled her fingers in front of Bess to demonstrate.

“I'm not mute,” Bess whispered. “I'm just a little shy.”

Maggie's coffee brown eyes went wide. “Land sakes, why didn't you say so?”

Well, Maggie Zook, besides my being struck dumb by Billy's beautiful blue eyes, you haven't given me a spare inch to fit in a word. Bess had to rummage for her response, piecing it together one word at a time like beads on a string. Before she could get the sentence out, Maggie's attention had swung to the kitchen door.

Mammi's eleven-year-old rooster had figured out how to open the kitchen door by flying up to whack the loose handle with a wing, then sticking his clawed foot in the opening. Bess would've thought Mammi would singe that rooster's tail feathers and toss him out the door, but instead she scooped him up under her arm and petted him like a cat, without missing a beat of her conversation with Billy. “I asked you here because I want you to figure something out for me.” She peered at him with mortal seriousness.

“What?”

“I want you to learn how to graft roses.”

“What for?”

She worked a thoughtful finger over her chins. “I'm working on a plan, that's why. I need more roses and I need them fast.”

“What's the hurry?”

“I'm not going to live forever, you know.” She patted her heart again.

Hours spent shadowing her grandmother these last few weeks had instructed Bess about a good many of her mannerisms and curious way of thinking. She could tell exactly what Mammi was up to. Lamenting about her imminent death was Mammi's way of stirring action out of a reluctant body. Usually Bess's.

But Billy was a fumbling fifteen-year-old, oblivious to the
wiles of a clever woman and, being a boy, was slow to catch on. “Well, then, just go buy roses.”

Mammi's eyes closed to a pair of dangerous slits. Bess figured her grandmother might pick up a broom and swat him home for that. Even she knew the answer to that after being at Rose Hill Farm for three weeks now. Mammi thought modern roses that were sold in nurseries were cheap imitations of the real thing. She had roses from her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother and so on and so on that she wanted to protect for generations.

Mammi must have decided to pardon Billy for his appalling ignorance. “No need to buy anything. I have everything I need. Problem is, I don't know how to graft.”

“But I don't either,” Billy said.

“No, but you can learn.”

“But . . . how?” He appeared mystified.

“Go to the library,” Mammi said wearily. Her patience, never in great supply, was running thin. “Ask around. Experiment. Figure it out. Using your brain once in a great while wouldn't be such a cats-after-me.”

Maggie pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “Why is a cat after you?”

“She means catastrophe,” Billy said, annoyed. “And I use my brain all the time.”

And that's just what he did. Within a few years, Billy had learned how to grow roses from cuttings and graft so capably that the horse pastures of Rose Hill Farm were converted to thriving fields of roses. Mammi's heritage rose business was under way.

———

But that was then and this was now. Billy sat stiff on the buggy seat, eyes fastened to the road straight ahead. Bess noticed his
hands grip the buggy seat as if it were holding him together. At the last second, she decided to turn Frieda down a different road than the one that passed by his father's farm and she saw Billy's hands ease up their grip.

Aha . . .
that's
what was making him act so particularly tetchy. She cast a glance at him, wondering how much of his abrupt disappearance had to do with his no-account older brothers. Billy was the youngest, dubbed Der Ruschde, the runt, and that was when they were feeling kindly.

Billy had a different way of thinking than the rest of his family. Mammi used to grumble those brothers of his were casing the joint whenever they showed up at Rose Hill Farm. She said Billy was the only one who had any spark of their mother, and she thought well of Billy's mother. Bess knew her grandmother's ulterior motive in hiring Billy was to get him away from those brothers before they ruined him. Bertha Riehl never did anything without an ulterior motive.

Billy tipped his head toward her. “Did you stop taking care of my bees?”

Just as Bess's heart was softening a little, Billy went and ruined it. “No! Of course not.” She was incensed. What did he think—that just because he had left the farm, it had fallen into disrepair? Were his expectations that low?
You just wait
, Billy Lapp
, she felt like saying.
Just wait until you
see what my father and I have done with Rose
Hill Farm. It's never looked better.

Then her heart caught a beat. Rose Hill Farm had never looked better because there was going to be a wedding there. Her wedding. Hers and Amos's. In just a few days.

She turned onto Stone Leaf Road and past the hand-painted sign Mammi had made decades ago:
Roses for Sale
, No Sunday Sales.
Up the long drive lined with cherry trees, now bare of leaves, along the fields of roses, now just sticks of canes. Billy was gazing at the rose fields.

“Jonah's expanded the fields,” he said quietly, more to himself than to her.

“We've gone in a lot of different directions. I'm sure Dad will want to tell you all about it.”

“I remember when your grandmother converted those pastures into rose fields.” He closed his eyes, lost in a memory. “How does a bundle of prickly sticks explode into fragrant roses?”

She looked sharply at him. That sounded like something the old Billy Lapp would say. Comments like those were what made her feel dangerously drawn to him. He had taught her to find splendor and majesty in her grandmother's old-fashioned roses.

The wood-frame house at Rose Hill Farm was two stories high, absolutely unadorned, like all the other Amish farmhouses they'd passed on their way from town. As the buggy reached the top of the rise of the driveway, Lainey stepped out of the kitchen door, tucking a strand of hair into the bun at the back of her head. Four-year-old Christy was wrapped around her leg. Lainey raised one hand in greeting and stopped, halfway up in the air, as shock flittered over her. Then, joy lit her face.

“Billy Lapp!” she called, coming down two wooden steps and traversing carefully over patches of snow that covered dry grass. “Why am I not surprised to discover you are a rose rustler?”

Billy hopped out of the buggy and walked toward her. “Hello, Lainey. You're looking well.”

Lainey patted her enormous belly and Bess blushed. Lainey hadn't been raised Plain and didn't understand that she should pretend her pregnancy wasn't obvious to all. “I'm feeling like a beached whale.” She ruffled the hair of her daughter. “I don't think you've met Christy. She was born after you . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Billy's eyes scanned the outbuildings: the large barn, the henhouse, the greenhouse. “I'd like to see that rose.”

“Have you eaten?” Lainey said. “You look as thin as a rail. Come inside and have some supper.”

His face tightened, Bess thought, a gesture so minute it barely registered. The wary look came back to his eyes and his voice came reluctantly. “Can't,” he answered, almost too abrupt. “I need to catch the midday bus so I can make my connection in Lancaster.” Hands on hips, he studied the rose fields a long moment. At length he sighed, tugged down his hat brim, and said, “Well, let's get this over with.”

And Bess's spirits sank.

F
rom behind him, Billy Lapp heard the kitchen door open and the sound of a man's familiar gait on the porch steps. It was strange—Billy knew Jonah's walk, recognized the sound of his limp, without even seeing him. It all came rushing back to him. Bertha Riehl's mentoring, grafting roses in the greenhouse, Bess working beside him. The smell of this farm—the unique scent of rose fields, faint but present to him, even in December. He thought he had forgotten everything—put it all behind him. How many memories were locked up in a person's head? Just waiting for the right trigger to unleash them.

Slowly, he turned in a half circle to face Jonah Riehl, startled by the look of delight on his face.

“Billy Lapp.”

He swallowed. “Hello, Jonah.”

“How good to see you.” Jonah reached out his hands and grasped Billy's hand, pumping it enthusiastically. “What brings you to Rose Hill Farm? Are you back in Stoney Ridge? Back to stay?”

“I'm from . . . I'm the . . .” Billy cleared his throat.

Lainey helped him out. “Penn State sent him. He's the rose rustler. Here to look at the rose.”

Jonah nodded. “Ah, the rose Bess happened upon.”

Bess smiled again, and Billy saw the color in her cheeks deepen, causing a sudden shakiness inside him. “I'd . . . uh . . . better get a look at it.”

“Then,” Jonah said, “let's go.”

Billy followed behind Jonah and Bess, hoisting his heavy backpack over his shoulder. He knew that Jonah was carrying on more than his share of the conversation, aware of how uncomfortable Billy was—and he was—and kindly trying to spare him. He talked about Lainey, and their two little girls, and a little about church news, but not too much. He skirted carefully around topics, as if he knew some things might make Billy skittish.

Billy was only half listening. He had his eyes on Bess's figure as he trailed behind her on the way to the greenhouse. He still hadn't recovered from the sight of her waiting for him at the bus stop. He could feel his heart still racing though he took pains so that she wouldn't notice. Yet there she was, just the way he remembered her. Hair as pale and shiny as corn silk. Eyes so blue they seemed like a tropical ocean. He didn't know what to do or what to say, as directionless as if suddenly lost.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Rose Hill Farm was supposed to be a pleasant memory pasted in a mental photo album, not a reminder of all Billy had lost.

He was curious about Bess, but she volunteered nothing and he wasn't about to ask. He had been sure she would have married and moved to her husband's farm by now, maybe had a child or two. He never would have come had he known she was still living at Rose Hill Farm. He would have insisted that Penn State send someone else, though there really
was
no someone else. He was the go-to guy for all things roses.

They walked along a path that led to the greenhouse, positioned a distance from the barn, out in an open area on a small
rise to maximize sunlight exposure. As he saw the modest glass greenhouse, so familiar to him, so dear, Billy felt a hitch. Many hours of his youth had been spent in that post-and-rafter building, long and happy hours. His eyes swept the exterior of the greenhouse, looking for any maintenance concerns: dry rot in wood around the glass panels, impact from snow load, any cracked glass. It looked surprisingly well maintained—the way Bertha Riehl would have kept it.

As he followed Bess into the greenhouse, he gasped, stunned by the sight. Roses! Everywhere, roses . . . blooms of every shade and tint that nature had ever produced. And it was a pleasant temperature, almost warm. “A few years ago, we winterized it,” Jonah explained, striding toward the center of the greenhouse.

“You winterized it?” Billy parroted. When he had worked at Rose Hill Farm, the greenhouse was cold during the winter. He was able to overwinter perennials when winter hit, avoiding frost damage, by moving everything into the center of the greenhouse, but there was no heat or lights to extend the growing season. “How are you heating it? Not through kerosene, I hope. Plants are sensitive to the gas it gives off.”

Bess pointed to a row of large black horse water tubs, each covered tightly with a metal garbage can lid, also black, tucked against the south wall. “We painted them black. The black of the tub attracts the sun's heat and the water holds it, giving off heat during the night.”

Billy was impressed. He felt a smile stretch his cheeks and had to work the corners of his mouth back to a line. “It really keeps the entire greenhouse warm?”

She nodded. “But we found that two tubs worked better than one. The greenhouse stays fairly warm throughout the night.”

“If the temperature drops below zero for a long stretch,” Jonah added, “I'll put bales of hay around the exterior. And we'll bring our most fragile plants into the barn.” He crossed
his arms over his chest. “Last winter, we had seven days below zero, so we added plastic jugs filled with water—painted black like those horse water tubs—let them soak up the sun during the day and set them throughout the greenhouse to balance the temperature.”

“And it kept the greenhouse heated?”

“Well, not toasty, but not freezing. Water's the best for passive solar.”

Billy gestured with a wing-like motion. “What about lighting?”

“That's been a little trickier,” Jonah said. “Like you said, we didn't want kerosene or propane in here. A fellow in Lancaster just started a solar company and asked if he could use our greenhouse as a test site.” He walked to the far end of the greenhouse, where the workbench was nestled in against the wall, and pointed to a row of solar panels on the far end of the rise, facing south. “I could never have afforded those panels had this fellow not volunteered them; they're pretty costly. They have a few glitches. Not a perfect system, but they seem to work more often than not.”

Billy peered out the back end of the greenhouse to see the solar panels. Four of them stood side by side, above snow level, and at an angle to shed snow and rain. Amazing. Just amazing.

Two years ago, he had proposed a recommendation to the Extension office to consider solar panels for the greenhouses. America's developing space program had catapulted the science behind solar photovoltaic cells into viable use for homes and businesses, and he'd figured out that the panels could pay for themselves within a few years. His proposal was shot down, but that was when energy prices had dropped again and it was assumed they'd stay low. A few weeks ago, Jill told him the proposal might get a second look and could he please hurry and update it? He did, knowing it was a desperate reaction by the
Extension office to combat high energy bills and the continually rising cost of gas triggered from the nation's oil embargo in 1973.

Billy was astounded by the progressive thinking on this simple Amish rose farm. He swiveled on his heel to face Jonah. “Caleb Zook had no objection with you working with a non-Amish?”

“No,” Jonah said, a look on his face as if such a thought had never occurred to him. “It solved a problem of lighting, helped us extend our growing season, and didn't cost a thing. And we're not really working with this English businessman. He comes out and fixes broken pieces, makes adjustments, asks me questions. To his way of thinking, we're doing him a favor. The commercial nurseries are too large for his type of panels—he's trying to build up the home business. Or small farms, like ours.” He ran a hand down the arch of his aching back, wincing slightly. “If the costs ever come down, I suspect more and more of our people will be using solar energy.”

“Jonah, I'm very impressed.”

Jonah's cheeks, above his beard, stained pink with embarrassment. “Sun, water, they're God's gifts. He's provided the means for man to live a sustainable life.”

“You harnessed their power.”

“It's worked well this fall because we've had a dry spell, nice and clear. But I didn't expect it to last.” Hands on his hips, Jonah glanced around with a worried look. “Sunday's snowfall was practicing for winter's arrival.”

Billy walked up and down the aisle in awe, studying varieties he hadn't seen in years. He knew them all: The shell pink Ma Perkins, named for a popular radio soap opera in 1952. Behind it was a fragrant deep pink hybrid perpetual named Helen Keller. The story behind this rose floated into his mind: The rose had been introduced in 1895 on Helen Keller's fifteenth birthday. She couldn't see a flower or hear its name, but she could smell, and she always held roses dear to her heart. Next to the Helen
Keller, Billy spotted a trio of roses and glanced at Jonah. “The Peace roses?” Pax Amanda, Pax Apollo, and Pax Iola.

Billy had always appreciated the story behind those roses. A South Dakota breeder had hybridized the trio of roses in 1938, in between the two world wars, with an absence of prickles on the plants' stems. The breeder wanted everyone to know that thorns were no more necessary on roses than war was among humans.

Jonah smiled, watching him. “Probably our bestselling roses, at least in Stoney Ridge.”

The beauty of these roses, the care Jonah and Bess took with them, felt like balm to Billy's soul. It was more nourishing than food for his sense of well-being and happiness, both of which had left him years ago. He felt the tension drain from him, though he held his shoulders stiff. He realized that Jonah was studying him, waiting for something from him. “Did you force blooms to sell plants through the winter?”

“It was Bess's idea to keep up income during the winter months.” Jonah glanced fondly at his daughter. “She's been expanding the rose business beyond my mother's jam and soaps. To remedies.” Jonah offered up a shy smile. “She's got my mother's touch.”

Jonah's love for his family was evident. Billy swallowed back a deep envy that rose from his center. Why was everyone else able to find love and happiness, but not him? He tried to tamp down that ugly feeling of self-pity and looked around for the reason he was at Rose Hill Farm: the mystery rose.

Jonah saw Billy's eyes sweep the greenhouse. “Down there, in the corner. We didn't even want to move it.”

There, tucked into the far left corner of the greenhouse, was a rosebush in a large clay pot. It was fully leafed out with one tight capsule of a flower bud. He walked up to it and crouched down to inspect it, noting the characteristics of the plant, trying
to recognize if it was an obvious species or class. He examined the branching pattern, the veining and number of leaves, and their unique edging. He looked closely at the lone flower bud, enclosed by sepals—a cluster of leaflike structures. That one small bud wouldn't open for another week or two, longer if the weather stayed cold. “Mind if I lift it up on the workbench?”

“It's up to you,” Jonah said. “We felt concerned about causing it any stress. I think it's gotten just the right amount of sunlight and moisture in that corner after we winterized the greenhouse.”

“And you just noticed it?”

“I came across it over a week ago,” Bess said. “My cat pulled my coat to the ground, and when I bent down to get it, I noticed the rose, tucked way under the workbench.”

Billy lifted it carefully to the workbench. It was surprisingly heavy, which made him think the root ball was impacted and should be transplanted. He smelled the leaves, trying to place its scent among breeds.

“What do you think?” Jonah asked.

“I'm not sure. You have no memory of it at all? It doesn't look familiar to either of you?”

Jonah shook his head. “Bess might know a little more. She remembers my mother calling it a very precious rose.”

Billy's eyes sought Bess's, but she avoided his questioning glance. She lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “But Mammi thought all her roses were precious.”

“Does it look familiar to you?” Jonah said.

“Most of the characteristics of a rose are manifest in the flower,” Billy said. “Once that bud opens, it'll be easier to recognize.” He glanced at Jonah, then back at the rose. “I should take the rose back with me to the university to examine it there and compare findings in the database.”

“Ah.” Jonah digested that for a moment before adding, “If that's what you need to do.”

Inner conflict started to churn inside of Billy. This rose didn't fall under any obvious class that he could recognize. He wanted to get it to the greenhouses in College Station. He wanted to cut slips and propagate it. He wanted to dissect the one flower bud and examine it. He wondered if this might be an extinct rose—something every rosarian would give his right eye to find. An extinct “found” could be likened to a discovered comet; overnight, Billy would become a renowned, respected rosarian. His heart started to pound. He was nearly in a state of disbelief at his good fortune.

But none of that was in Jonah's best interests. Billy swallowed. These people—they used to be
his
people—they were trusting, naive. He could easily take advantage of Jonah; it would be so easy. But he just couldn't. Finally, “I can't. It wouldn't be right.”

“Why not?”

“If anyone sees this rose before it's identified, before a genealogy is mapped out, before its parentage is traced, he could take a slip to reproduce it, propagate it on the sly, and sell it for mass production at a nursery. You'd be cheated out of a fortune.”

“But you could do the same thing,” Bess said. “I've seen you take slips and propagate cuttings. I've seen you graft dozens of roses.”

“Those were roses that were known. Nothing unusual. Nothing like this.”

“My mother's old-fashioneds are unusual,” Jonah said.

“True, but there's still a difference. Heirloom roses or heritage roses are varieties that have been in existence for at least half a century.”

Jonah reached a hand out to gently touch a leaf. “So you think this rose could be older than that?”