Rebecca's Return (24 page)

He told himself he would just stop and step to the ground. If the surrey door did not open once he was on the ground, he would climb back in and leave. That was his resolution and as far as he would go.

Opening the buggy door, his right foot found the step and the other the ground. Turning around slowly, he faced the other buggy and saw its door open, revealing the smiling face of young Ann Stuzman.

Her bright blue eyes, her soft arms, they took his breath away. This was not the Sunday Ann, all wrapped up in her shawl and her Sunday dress.

“I thought you wouldn’t come over,” she told him with a twinkle in those blue eyes. “Dad has to check on something.”

“I almost didn’t,” he heard himself saying, his heart pounding in his mouth. There seemed no way to stop his words. “I thought you might be here.”

“Oh, you did?” She was smiling again now, her eyes going toward the co-op door. He thought she must be watching for her father, perhaps uncomfortable if he caught her with him
. She is eighteen,
he told himself,
so why should her father object?

“What did you come into town for?”

“Dad wanted some oats. I have them in the back,” he said.

“You come in often?” she asked.

He felt weak from her gaze, not at all like Susie made him feel.
But then Susie isn’t Ann,
he told himself. Finally finding his voice, he replied, “Once in a while, when Dad needs something and can’t come in himself.” And then a wild thought streaked like lightning through his mind.
Ask her home on Sunday night. I’m not seeing Susie then.

He gulped hard, trying to straighten out his insides and make sense of this. Never had he ever thought of doing anything like this, at least not while he was still seeing Susie.

“Dad’s checking on seed prices for the spring,” she said.

She didn’t realize that even that short comment spoke volumes about the differences between their families, but Luke did. Reuben would never look into prices until just before he bought. Her words removed any idea of asking to take her home Sunday.

“Well, I have to be going,” he said abruptly, forcing himself to look away from her blue eyes and reaching for his buggy door. He was sure he saw regret in her eyes.

“Oh,” was all she said.

He wanted to shout the words,
Can I see you Sunday night?
But he didn’t, his tongue dry from the tip to the base. Climbing back into his buggy, he nodded in her direction, his smile stiff on his lips, and got the old driving horse headed out of town.

You, Luke Byler, are a total dumm kopp,
he told himself, as he neared the fields at the edge of town. He had never felt so stupid.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

M
ay we have the strength to bear
Gottes villa,
” Isaac said, when John had been taken from his room.

“You shouldn’t say that. Not in front of Rebecca,” Miriam chided him gently. “We don’t really know what the doctors will find.”

“It’ll be bad,” Isaac said with a sigh, seemingly no longer having the strength to hide his fears. “It was a bad accident.”

“But we don’t know that,” Miriam insisted, gently brushing his arm with her fingers.

Rebecca was surprised at their talking so freely in front of her, but they now apparently considered her part of the family.

Rebecca wondered,
What would Isaac and Miriam really say if they knew about last night and how John had spoken to me? Would they stick up for their son? Would they support him if they knew how the anger had burned in his eyes?

“We should sit in the waiting room,” Isaac announced, deciding for them all. He glanced toward Miriam and said, “You know where it is—because you were here last night.”

“It’ll be more comfortable there,” Miriam agreed, stepping toward the door.

As Miriam led the way down the hall, Rebecca felt the white walls narrowing again.

Mattie sensed her daughter’s uneasiness and whispered softly, “It’ll be okay.”

Rebecca hoped her mother was right, but at the moment it certainly didn’t feel so. “He’s not dying?” she asked, wanting to know. Her concern for John’s condition gripped her and made her whisper quietly to her mother, so no one else would hear.

The words must have come out louder than she intended because Isaac paused at the door of the waiting room, holding it for Miriam and then for Mattie and Rebecca.

“I don’t think so,” he said, as she passed him. The full length of his beard, even longer than her father’s, felt comforting as she glanced at his face. He had John’s eyes, the same shade of brown, and the same gentleness.

“You don’t think so?” she asked him, to cover up her thoughts.

“No,” he said, “I’m afraid
Da Hah
might have another trial in store for us. Death is a great sorrow.” He shook his head. “He would have given us grace for that and will give for whatever else we must bear.”

“You must not speak so,” Miriam turned back to say, already seated in the waiting room chair.

“It’s on my mind. She’s family,” Isaac said simply, still holding the door.

“It’s your fear talking,” Miriam insisted. “The doctor will tell us soon, I’m sure.”

Isaac let go of the door, as if he was letting go of a great weight. Rebecca felt compassion watching Isaac walk toward Miriam, wishing she could comfort him.

“John just told us he asked you to marry him,” Miriam said softly, leaning slightly out in front of Mattie so Rebecca could hear. The statement was startling, but relieving at the same time. “He only told us last night,” Miriam added, in the same wistful tone.

Rebecca nodded her head, the tears pressing again, one slipping out and rolling down her cheek.

“Others have troubles too,” Miriam continued, to which Mattie nodded in agreement. “Yours are just a little harder—perhaps at the start.”

Maybe John will come out of his coma today. Maybe the doctor’s report will be favorable.
She thought of the doctor’s report as having a great power in and of itself, as if the doctor could say what he wanted it to say.
Then we can talk about our problem on Sunday like we planned.
She felt some relief at that thought.
Maybe John will even be a better person for this experience.

Miriam’s voice cut into her thoughts, “We waited so many years after Bethany was born. I thought
Da Hah
had left me barren, like a cursed woman from the time of Moses, and then John came. What a sweet little one he was. Isaac was never the same again. A father of a son, he now was. A little boy to sit on the church bench with him.”

“I guess having only two…it might make it different,” Mattie said.

“Perhaps.” A smile played on Miriam’s face. “Isaac won’t tell you, but he loves the boy even more than I do. Of course all fathers do, but having just one son makes a difference, I suppose.”

“They’re all special,” Mattie said. “They come quickly sometimes, but they are all gifts from
Da Hah.
”

“You shouldn’t tell all the family secrets,” Isaac said, in his best Sunday sermon voice, having been acting as if he wasn’t listening.

“One can tell them to family,” Miriam told him. “But perhaps I shouldn’t be carrying on like this. Prattling on about my own things.”

“It’s good to talk in times like this,” Mattie assured her.

“Yes, it is,” Miriam agreed.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-ONE

S
eated in the waiting room, Rebecca still felt as though she was confined within narrow walls. She thought of each room in the hospital as containing yet another story of sadness and gloom. And in their own particular story, it was as if they all were waiting for someone in authority to reveal their future to them.

Rebecca yearned to leave this place, to ride home in the buggy, to be doing the chores with Matthew, to smell the hay in the barn, to see the feed dished out for the cows. She wished she were feeling the weight of the milkers on her arms instead of the pressure of these four walls. She wanted to breathe air untainted by the smell of medicine and antiseptic. She wanted to feel the comfort of her own room, to climb under the covers of the bed and pull the old quilt tight under her chin, never letting go. She wanted to wake up from this nightmare, to see stars from her window. She wanted to feel the nip of cold air, yet unwarmed by the rising heat from the kitchen register.

Her mother seemed lost in her own thoughts. Miriam looked like she might be dropping off to sleep. Isaac, his face firm, his eyes on the hospital wall, was saying nothing.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the waiting room door. A uniformed Adams County sheriff’s officer walked in with an elderly woman.
Someone else who has experienced tragedy,
she figured, glancing away and returning to her troubled thoughts.

Isaac was rising from his seat. But why? She glanced up at his face to see him moving toward the uniformed officer with what she was certain was a smile and then a cheerful greeting.

“I didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Isaac said, his voice gentle.

Gentleness in a man seemed to touch her deeply right now.
This must be an officer who was at the crash site last night. Surely that is how Isaac knows her. She is now, no doubt, coming in with another injured person or one of their family members.

“I didn’t either,” the officer said. “Mother insisted.” She turned back and said to the older woman, “This is Mr. Miller, and this is my mother, Isabelle, the one who called in your son’s accident.”

Isabelle, needing no further introduction, extended her hand. “Mr. Miller, I’m so sorry about your son.”

Isaac nodded, carefully taking her hand in his rough calloused one. “We are glad you’ve come. This is my wife, Miriam, and over here,” Isaac half turned and said, “is John’s girlfriend, Rebecca, and her mother, Mattie.”

Isabelle smiled, her eyes going around the room, then said to Isaac, “I told Beatrice I just had to come and see the young man. You know…after such an experience. It was awful, Mr. Miller, as you can imagine.”

“Yes.” Isaac nodded again.

“I just about didn’t call it in—when I heard the noise—but the Lord kept after me, I suppose.”

“I’m sure He did,” Isaac assured her.

“I stayed with him till the ambulance came.” Isabelle’s face softened thinking about it. “He was such a fine man…lying there so still. I thanked the Lord for him.”

“You shouldn’t be saying all this,” Beatrice interrupted. “They have enough to think about already.”

“No, that’s fine,” Miriam spoke up before Isaac could say anything. “Won’t you have a seat? We’re waiting for John’s tests to finish. The doctor said he’d tell us as soon as he knew anything.”

“Is he hurt badly?” Isabelle asked, taking the chair beside Isaac. “Beatrice couldn’t tell me much, and I, of course, just had to see for myself.”

“She’s just that way,” Beatrice said, in an apologetic tone.

“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Miriam said quickly. “We ought to be concerned about each other.”

“Especially when it happens in your front yard,” Isaac added.

“See?” Isabelle glared at Beatrice. “They’re nice people. That’s how nice people should be. My own children want to put me in a nursing home,” she added.

“Mom, that’s a family problem,” Beatrice said firmly. “You came to visit the injured boy, remember?”

“That’s right,” Isabelle agreed, not looking too chastened by her daughter’s rebuke. “I do speak out of order sometimes.”

Miriam didn’t let the nursing home subject pass by without comment. “You live in Unity, right? Just down the road from the top of Wheat Ridge?”

Isabelle said, “Yes.”

“I just thought,” Miriam continued, “perhaps Isaac could give you the number at Miller’s Furniture. They’re only there during business hours. Maybe that wouldn’t be good for all things, but during the day at least. If you’d call when and if you really need something, one of us could perhaps run down and help. Just a thought.” Miriam smiled. “It might be of help—when you’re by yourself sometimes.”