17

Amos and Maggie had spent the morning wandering in and out of shops in Stoney Ridge, looking for a gift for Bess for Christmas.

“I don’t know why the thimble with roses won’t do,” Maggie said. “It’s beautiful. It’s stunning. It’s exquisite.”

“It just doesn’t seem quite right.”

Maggie stopped in front of a bench and flopped down. Amos sat down beside her, looking up the street to see what other options there might be: the fabric store, the Hay & Grain, the Acme grocery store.

“Doesn’t it tell you something, Amos, that you don’t even know what to get Bess?”

Amos’s lips compressed and a muscle ticked in his jaw, but he stared squarely at Maggie. “What are you getting at?”

Softly, Maggie said, “Amos, it might be that you have an idea of who Bess is, who you want her to be, without really knowing her.”

“No,” Amos said, peeved. Maggie thought she knew everything. “You’re wrong about that. I know her. I’ve known her for years. I know her very well. Very, very well.”

Maggie sighed. “I’ve tried to be kind, but I can’t hold back any longer. Amos, Bess just doesn’t feel the same way about you that you feel about her.”

He snapped a glance at her, then turned away again.

She seemed to be waiting for something. “You’ve got a strange way of not saying things, Amos. How’s a friend supposed to help when you keep closed up so?”

He heard something confrontational in Maggie’s voice. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to feel. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to know. “Bess made a promise to me,” he said in a raspy voice. “We made a promise to each other.”

“She can’t help her feelings for Billy any more than you can help your feelings for her.”

Amos stared at her, not moving a muscle.

Maggie pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Sometimes you can’t stop yourself from loving someone.” She lifted troubled eyes to him, then looked away. “As much as you try, you just can’t help yourself.”

A poignant silence fell.

“After Christmas, she said we could set a date. She hasn’t told me she wants to call off our wedding. Just postpone it.”

“You have to be the one to let her go, Amos. She won’t break things off with you, but not setting a date is her way of telling you. That’s just the way Bess is.” She took his hands and squeezed them, in a grip that surprised him. “I’m not saying this to hurt you. I wouldn’t be a good friend to you if I didn’t tell you the truth and I always tell the truth. Marriage is hard enough without being married to someone who would rather be with someone else.”

Hearing in her voice what he already knew brought a great, crushing feeling to Amos’s heart. For a moment they both concentrated on their joined hands. “Thank you, Maggie,” came his gruff words. “And I want to be just as good a friend to you.” He leaned toward her. “Stop lying to your father and take that teaching job.”

Her eyes went wide and her mouth opened to a silent O.

During the night, snow had started to fall. Bess woke early, wide awake, and decided to do the barn chores for her father. A Christmas Eve gift for him. She fed Frieda and the chickens in the henhouse, then went into the greenhouse to check on the mystery rose, half hoping it would be open, half dreading it would be open. When it did, Billy would identify the rose and then he would leave.

Two minutes later, she left a message on the answering machine at the shanty of Billy’s father’s farm. “The rose has bloomed!” And then she waited for him.

All during the morning hours, snow continued to fall. The snow lay on the land nearly six inches deep, with little sign of abating, though it was a gentle storm: no wind, fat downy snowflakes. After lunch, Bess waited for Billy in the greenhouse, wondering if she should go over to his farm. But then again, if his father was passing, it would seem terribly awkward to walk in and happily tell him that a flower had bloomed. She heard the door click open and eagerly spun around to face the door, smiling brightly. “It’s here! It’s bloomed!”

There stood Amos. Her eyes widened in surprise. He couldn’t have missed the droop of disappointment on her face as she realized he wasn’t whom she expected.

“Mind if I come in? It’s cold out here.”

“Oh, of course!”

Halfway down the brick path, he stopped. “Has there been a death message yet about Billy’s father?”

“Nothing yet.”

“I haven’t given your Christmas present to you yet, Bess,” he said, his voice soft. “Maggie helped me pick it out.” He fished in his coat pocket and pulled something out, then strode closer to her and opened his hand. On his palm lay a small silver thimble with a band of pink roses painted around the base.

She picked it up. “It’s beautiful.”

“It is that. But . . . it isn’t the gift you really need from me.” He swallowed. “Christmas being a time of giving, I thought it might be appropriate to . . . give you what I know you want most from me, Bess. Your freedom.” He sounded not bitter, but resigned.

Bess was speechless. “Amos—”

He lifted a palm to cut her short. “Don’t say a word. Maggie was the one who set me straight. Why would anyone want to be married to someone who would rather be married to someone else? Marriage is hard enough, she said.” He gave a half laugh. “Not that she would know. But I do think she’s right.” He took her hands in his. “I’ll always hold a soft spot for you in my heart, but I know I need to release you from your promise.” He lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed them, but didn’t release them. “Would you tell me one thing? Did you ever love me at all? Even a little?”

His dark brown eyes, filled with unspoken misery, locked with hers. The tears splashed over her lashes and ran in silver streaks down her cheeks. “Oh yes, Amos. I did. I do. I just . . .”

“You just love him more.” His eyes were soft with understanding. He squeezed her hands one more time and released them.

There were no more words. Bess felt a lump gathering in her throat. She swallowed, but the emotion couldn’t be gulped away.

Amos glanced at the door. “Well . . .” The word hung in the cold air like the ting of a bell in a winter woods.

“Yes, well . . .” She spread her palms nervously, then clutched them together.

“I’m not exactly sure what one says at a time like this.”

“Neither am I,” Bess admitted.

Amos looked down into her eyes. “I’ve always wanted only your happiness.”

It struck Bess that Amos was one of the kindest persons she’d ever known. He was a gentleman all the way through, was Amos. She took his hand and placed the thimble in its palm, then curled his fingers over it. “It’s actually a little small on my finger. But I think it might fit Maggie’s perfectly.”

He fell silent for several long, long seconds. “I’d better go. The Zooks invited my mother and me for Christmas Eve supper.” His eyes found hers at last, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. But in the end he only nodded formally and reached out for the door handle. “See you around, Bess.”

When the door closed behind him, Bess sighed and sank back against it, closing her eyes, savoring the sweetness of the moment between them. In an instant, the door that led to a life with Amos had closed, and though she had never been entirely convinced that she wanted to pass through it, she felt a final spark of doubt. Had she been mistaken in not marrying Amos? But she knew the answer.

She kept an eye on the driveway all afternoon, waiting for Billy, but he never came. By day’s end, she went back down to the greenhouse one last time to put the rose back in its corner for the night. The air was knife-cold; the hazy winter sun hung low in the sky. The strong, sweet fragrance of the blooming rose filled the greenhouse. For a long moment, she stood in front of the rose, thinking how delighted her grandmother would be to know this rose had survived another generation. She heard a squeaky noise, spun around. And there he was.

“He’s passed,” Billy said, standing in the open doorway. “My father died a little while ago. I waited until Caleb Zook came over. He’s there now, calling the undertaker.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He closed the door behind him and walked down the brick path toward Bess, stopping a few feet in front of her. “We made our peace, he and I.” His voice had a quiet sincerity she hadn’t heard in years. “All night long, he slipped in and out of consciousness. But when he was alert, we talked. We actually talked a lot. He told me . . .” His voice cracked and his eyes grew glassy. “My father told me he was proud of me.” With the back of his hand, he wiped away tears. “It’s strange. My father is dead and I don’t feel the way I thought I always would on this day—sad and empty. I feel . . . grateful. I was with him when he died and it was . . .” Billy swallowed, trying to keep his emotions tamped down. “It was something I’ll never forget, as long as I live. He let go of his bitterness and disappointment and his face grew so . . . peaceful. It’s hard to describe, but I don’t think I’ll ever be afraid of dying after today.” He put his hands in his pockets. “Someone told me there’s a verse in the Bible that says ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.’ I never thought of my father as a saint, but I suppose from God’s point of view, he was. We all are. And death, strangely enough, is a precious thing.”

Bess didn’t know what to say so she didn’t say anything. The deaths she had experienced—her grandmother’s, Simon’s—they didn’t feel precious to her. They felt awful.

He took off his hat and spun it around in a circle. “He told me to find my brothers and bring them back to the fold.”

“Ohhhhhhhh.” Bess drew out the word for emphasis. That was a huge and complicated deathbed request.

“He also told me I was a fool to let you go.”

Bess swallowed. “He was right.”

Billy crossed the distance between them in four long strides. Then his hands were on her shoulders and his eyes became suddenly fierce and she felt her pulse leap. “Are you going to marry Amos?”

She shook her head. “No . . . no, I’m not. We spoke about it this very afternoon. We called off the engagement.”

His eyes searched hers. “Was Amos all right about that?”

“More than all right. He was the one who told me the wedding was off. I think he knew . . .”

“Knew what?”

Bess took in a sharp breath. “I think he knew that as hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop loving you.”

Suddenly he scooped her into his arms, kissing her with passion, stirring to life every feeling she had and a few she never knew existed. Too soon, he lifted his head, holding her face in his hands, searching her eyes with a harrowed look. “I love you,” he said hoarsely. He pulled her against him, enfolding her so tightly in his arms it seemed he’d never let her go.

She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. How was it possible to feel such happiness? They kissed again, less hurried now.

“So you got my message.”

He kissed her eyes, her forehead, her cheeks. “What message?”

“The rose! It’s bloomed.”

Abruptly, Billy released her; in a few short strides, he was in front of the workbench, standing in awe at the open rose bloom. Bess followed behind him, pressing close to him. He examined the rose closely—sniffing it, peering into it, counting its petals and stamens. He looked in an old botanical print book and compared the drawings to the rose in front of him.

“Well? Is it the rose?” Everything inside her was on tiptoes.

“It’ll have to be verified . . . but it has all the characteristics of a German rootstock dating prior to the Perle von Weissenstein.” He closed his eyes reverently. “Imagine that. The oldest known rose of German rootstock. Right in front of us.”

“Think of the stories it could tell. The long trip over the ocean on the Charming Nancy. All those rose lovers who kept it alive over three centuries.”

His hand found hers and curled around it as they soaked up the rose’s revelation. “So George was right. It’s a wonderful Christmas.”

“Who’s George?”

Billy put his arm around Bess’s shoulder and pulled her close to him. “It’s a long, long story. I’ll tell you later. For now, Merry Christmas, Bess.”

“And to you, Billy.” They stood a moment, arm in arm, admiring the bloom. “What should we call the rose?”

“It will be given an official Latin name that no one can pronounce or ever remember. Part of me would like to call it the Bertha Riehl. It has the same kind of impact on others that Bertha used to have—tricky and stubborn, spikey with thorns, interrupts your life, turns it upside down.”

“And thank heaven for that, Billy Lapp,” Bess said, in a brash tone that surprised even her. He was right. She was getting more and more like her grandmother.

“Another reason we should call it Bertha Riehl. Just like her—exactly like her—this rose has to get the last word in.”

“How so?”

Billy grinned. “It leaves a lingering fragrance.”

That it did. Its sweet scent had infiltrated the greenhouse. “But she wouldn’t want a rose named after her. Too prideful, she would say.”

“Then we should call it what she called it. The Charming Nancy. After all, it’s our turn to take care of the rose.”

The rose. This elusive, mysterious rose. With a practiced eye, Bess gathered every detail about the rose, confident that the same thoughts were being catalogued in Billy’s mind: class of Gallicas; a large, dramatic bloom of pink-mauve color, packed with petals; deeply fragrant. What couldn’t be described was why it was the most important rose in the world. This rose had brought Billy Lapp home.

She felt his gaze and lifted her eyes to him. Our turn, he had said. It was their turn in the long line of rose lovers who had protected and nurtured this rose. To ensure the rose’s ongoing survival for their children, to pass its tending on to their children’s children, was what he meant.

Bess had not known a heart could smile.