The rest of the morning passed quickly.
Esther, her youngest, came by with items from the co-op.
Mary Ann had pulled three baskets full of produce from their garden—cabbage, chives, onions, and spinach. Esther had her boys carry into the kitchen what they received in return: milk, eggs, and mangoes. Mangoes!
“Can’t say we’ve received much fruit, other than apples in the fall.”
“Paul Byler, you remember him . . .” Esther tucked her blonde curls into her kapp as she spoke. Ever since she was a small girl, those curls had fought being corralled. Now Esther was the same height as Emma.
“Sure. He has that furniture shop out in back of his house.”
“Right. An Englischer stopped by to pick up his order of four rocking chairs yesterday. He was so pleased with the work, he paid in cash and left four crates of mangoes. No idea how he came by the crates of fruit. He did tell Paul that he enjoyed trading, and he was a trucker by profession, so maybe he’d been down south.”
“We’re happy to have them. They’ll work nicely in the sandwich spread I’m making.” Emma reached down and caught Daniel and David in a hug. The twins had recently turned eight, and they stood for the affections from their mammi, but just barely.
“So where’s the boy?”
“Boy?” Emma smiled as she played ignorant.
“You know who I mean, Mamm. Do you really think it’s wise to let him stay?”
“My, but news travels fast.”
“Danny called the bishop, and Verna was in visiting when the call came through.”
Emma nodded as if that made sense. “Danny likes the idea of Joseph staying, and so does your mammi. Joseph seems harmless enough. Right now, he’s cleaning out stalls if you’d like to go meet him.”
“Nein.” Esther patted her stomach. She was six months along with the next boppli. “Stall smells make me feel a little sick.”
When they left, Emma spent the next hour giving the bathrooms a good scouring. They were fortunate to have two—one upstairs and one down. She had to remind herself to be grateful as she scrubbed the floors, tubs, and toilets. Her mother had grown up with outhouses. Danny had once mentioned some Amish communities still used them. Was it Wisconsin or Kentucky? It seemed Danny had been to visit districts in over a dozen states. Sometimes the places merged together in her mind, but she loved hearing his stories.
Satisfied with the smell of bleach and the shine of her bathroom faucets, she stored her cleaning supplies beneath the sink and headed to the kitchen. She was halfway through making the sandwich spread—mangoes, onions, green tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots—when she realized Mamm wasn’t in her corner rocking chair. She wasn’t in the sitting room either. Drying her hands on a dish towel, she looked out the window, and that was when she saw her.
Her heart stopped beating.
Mary Ann was lying between the row of okra and the calico aster plants. Motionless.
Emma must have screamed as she ran down the back porch steps because Joseph appeared at the corner of the barn. One glance and he began to dash toward them. He made it to Mary Ann’s side at nearly the same moment Emma did.
“Mamm. What happened? Are you—”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine! Let me help you stand.”
With Joseph on one side and Emma on the other, they lifted her from the ground. When had she become so thin? Emma probably could have carried her by herself, except her hands were trembling so badly she would surely have dropped her.
A small groan escaped Mary Ann’s lips when she tried to put weight on her right ankle.
“Put your arm around my shoulder, Mamm.”
“Danki.”
Joseph’s brow was furrowed when he looked at Emma.
The bump on her forehead was beginning to swell, and it was obvious she’d sprained or broken her ankle.
“Help me take her inside.”
Mary Ann felt well enough to make a joke about being more trouble than a newborn donkey. Had they ever had a newborn donkey? Emma couldn’t remember, but if her mamm was joking, perhaps the injuries weren’t too severe.
Emma prayed as they helped her into her rocker. Don’t take her now. That was her prayer, and she would have readily admitted it to anyone who asked. Yes, she realized how selfish her petition was, but she’d had too much grief in her life in the last year. The thought of losing one more person, one more piece of her world, caused tears to splash down her cheeks.
“I’m fine, Emma. I fell is all. Then I couldn’t get back up.”
“How long were you there?”
Mary Ann had begun to shake, so Emma hurried to the mudroom and pulled her shawl off a hook. “Joseph, fetch her a glass of water, then please bring me the quilt on the back of the couch.”
Mary Ann pulled the shawl around her shoulders and patted Emma’s hand. “Less than an hour—”
“An hour?” Her heart triple-skipped. What if it had happened in the rain or the cold or the dead of night? The last was a ridiculous worry. Mary Ann didn’t putter about after dark.
“Lying on the ground gave me time to study the soil and see how the garden is blossoming. It’s coming in gut, Emma. Our garden, it’s a real blessing.”
Emma’s tears started falling again. Not because of what had happened or fear for Mary Ann’s injury, but simply because she’d glimpsed the future—Mamm putting aside this life to follow Dat and Ben. Given a choice, Emma knew she would want to pass from this life to the next in the place she loved most, their garden.
“Should I go for Danny? Or your doctor?” Joseph shuffled from one foot to the other.
She’d almost forgotten Joseph was there, waiting, holding the log cabin quilt and wanting to help.
Emma swiped at the tears on her cheeks.
“Ya.” Emma accepted the quilt and placed it gently across Mary Ann’s lap. “Go next door and ask Danny to call a driver.”
“I don’t need—”
“Let’s allow Doc to decide what you need, Mamm.” It could have been the tremor in her voice, or possibly the fear that flooded her eyes, but Mary Ann agreed without any further argument.
Joseph was back by the time Emma had brewed Mary Ann a cup of lemon tea.
“Danny said he’d have someone here soon.”
“Danki.” Emma reached for his hand as he moved back toward the mudroom. “You were a big help, Joseph. Gotte sent you here at exactly the right time.”
He said nothing, but his cheeks flushed a deep red. As he walked back outside, she thought he stood a little straighter.
“He’s a gut boy.” Mamm had opened her Bible and was thumbing through the Old Testament until her hand rested on the book of Isaiah.
“How do you feel?”
“Fine. My foot, it’s old, Emma. Like the rest of me.” She cupped her hand around Emma’s cheek. “Don’t worry, dear. Today isn’t the day the Lord will call me home.”
Emma pulled out a chair and sank into it.
“My heart stopped when I saw you, saw only your foot sticking out from the garden row. I was terrified that, that—”
“Don’t fear death, dear.” Mamm’s eyes filled with something Emma didn’t understand—memories or kindness or maybe hope. “It will be a glorious day when I see Ben and Dat and my own parents again. So many of my friends have passed already. It will be a wunderbaar day when I see our Lord.”
Emma’s tears started in earnest then. She knew that what Mary Ann was saying was right, but she couldn’t imagine enduring it.
“Gotte will give you strength, and He won’t leave you alone. You have that promise.” Mary Ann tapped the worn pages of her Bible. “You have it right here.”
The sound of car tires crunching over gravel drifted through the open kitchen window. How had Danny managed to find someone so quickly? He must have run all the way to the phone shack.
They helped Mary Ann into the car, moving her carefully since her ankle had swollen to twice its normal size. Emma slid in beside her, reminded Joseph he could find lunch fixings in the refrigerator, and thanked Danny. She could tell he wanted to say something. Maybe he wanted to comfort her. But the driver, a sweet neighbor named Marcie, was already pulling away.