Home to Paradise. Barbara Cameron
cabinets. Finally, exhausted, he took a shower, and when the water ran cold after just a few minutes, he wondered if he’d be talking to the owner about replacing the water heater soon.
The bed, even lumpy as it was, felt good to his tired body.
As he began to drift off, he found himself wondering what Rose Anna was doing right now.
Was it his imagination that when she thought he wasn’t looking at her the last time he’d seen her that she’d looked . . . lonely?
No, that had to be his imagination. He’d heard through the Amish grapevine that she was seeing Peter.
There was an expression about making your bed and lying in it. Well, he’d done that. He’d left his community, left the woman he loved, and now here he was lying in this lumpy bed all by himself.
Suddenly he was wide awake.
***
Rose Anna caught her attention wandering several times during church service.
This had to stop, she told herself.
The plan to win John Stoltzfus kept intruding. The plan. She almost giggled with joy at the thought and just caught herself. Oh, she wouldn’t ever dare to call it that out loud. She’d written it in her journal and tucked it under a loose floorboard in her closet in her bedroom. She didn’t dare tuck the journal under her pillow. It wasn’t that her schweschders would go looking for it. Journals were sacred after all. No one snooped. But this plan was just too private, too daring, to risk anyone seeing it.
Her schweschders loved to tease her about being the boppli of the family, tease her about being immature, tease her about just about everything. They’d had quite a time laughing at her about pursuing John that day not so long ago.
Wasn’t there a saying about anything worth having was worth working for?
The woman sitting on the bench in front of her moved restlessly. Then she got up. Rose Anna had been absorbed in her thoughts and hadn’t noticed who had sat there.
Now she saw that it was Jenny Bontrager. Jenny rose and slipped from the room, moving with a limp so slight only those who knew her detected it. Rose Anna knew that every so often sitting on the hard bench for three hours was too much for Jenny, and she’d leave the room to walk around and ease her back. As she walked past Rose Anna, Jenny gave her a smile that seemed strained at the edges.
So Rose Anna found herself getting up and following Jenny out of the room.
“Are you allrecht?” she asked her when she caught up with her near the front door.
Jenny turned, and Rose Anna saw how pale she looked. Her face was pale, her gray eyes shadowed as though she hadn’t been sleeping well. Rose Anna knew Jenny was in her forties, but today she moved as if she was older, not her bright, energetic self.
“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Benches and my back have never been close friends. When I woke up this morning, it was aching. I should have taken something for the pain before I left the house.”
“Do you want me to get Matthew?”
“No, the service is almost over.”
“I can ask Mamm if she has any aspirin or ibuprofen.”
“I can wait. Moving around helps. I thought I’d get my bonnet and coat and walk around the porch a bit.”
“I’ll join you. If you don’t mind the company.”
“I’d love it.”
They walked into the front room, got their things, then stepped outside.
“How are the quilting classes going at the shelter?” Jenny asked.
“Very well. We’d love to have you join us again someday soon.”
“I could come next week. I’m not the quilter you and your schweschders are, but I enjoy helping where I can.”
“The women enjoy having visitors since they can’t get out much.” The memory of what had happened in the last class came to her. She hesitated.
“What is it?”
“I—well, there’s this new resident. She reminded me of you when you first came here to Paradise. After you were hurt in the car bombing overseas.”
“She was injured?”
“Well, I can’t see any physical injuries . . .” Rose Anna trailed off, frowning. “Kate said she has something called PTSD.”
Jenny nodded. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I see.”
“Sitting next to the window scared her. I found her huddled under the table, shaking and crying. Kate got under there with her and talked to her.”
Then she pressed her fingers against her lips and shook her head. “Oh, if you come to the class, you won’t say anything to the woman? I wouldn’t want her to be embarrassed.”
“No, I won’t. Promise.” Jenny paced the porch, and her steps seemed to get easier. “You know, if Kate talked to her she’ll know what to do to get her the help she needs.”
“Ya, when Mamm and I talked about it she said Kate’s been here so long we forget she was in the military before she became a police officer. And her mann was in the military, too.”
She glanced at Jenny. “I can’t imagine going into a war zone voluntarily.”
“It took me a long time to adjust when I came here,” Jenny said. “I felt guilty being back home and safe when I knew the children were still there living with fear and hunger and their parents and siblings were being killed around them.”
Rose Anna didn’t know what to say. It was so far outside her experience, this talk of war and of innocent kinner being hurt.
They sat, silent for a long moment, hearing the sounds of a hymn being sung inside the house.
“May I ask you something?” Rose Anna broke the silence between them. “Not about war. About, well, about . . . well, about men.”
Jenny laughed. “I’m not much of an expert on them.”
“But you’ve been married a long time.”
“True. But I’m not sure that even makes me an expert on one man.” She paused. “I might have been married to him for even longer if things had worked out years before,” Jenny mused, looking thoughtful.
“Really?”
She nodded. “You know my daed decided not to join the church and left the community. But he let me visit my grossmudder every summer. I fell in love with the boy next door, but I went back home and went to college, and the years passed. It just didn’t work out for us at the time.”
She sat in one of the rocking chairs and stared out at the fields surrounding the house. “And then I got hurt. While I was lying in the hospital, my grossmudder sent me a quilt with a note. It said to come home and heal. I did, and there was Matthew, and I was attracted to him all over again. I thought at first that it wasn’t fair, he was married. But he was a widower. I think I fell in love with his kinner before I fell in love with him again.”
Rose Anna sighed. The story touched her romantic heart. Then she realized Jenny was watching her with a faint smile on her lips. “Is there a reason you’re asking about men?”
“I’m trying to understand them.”
Jenny laughed. “One in particular is my guess.”
She grinned. “Ya.”
“So what is it that’s troubling you?”
It was tough to know what to ask. She felt she could trust Jenny, but she didn’t want to say too much.
“I just . . . how do you know if someone’s the mann God set aside for you?”