Life got busier.
Harvest meant long, hot days for those living on farms. For years, Lavinia and her mudder had worked their schedules so that they could be at the shop in town but still have time to pick and can the kitchen garden in summer. Now Lavinia added in trips to the hospital to see Abe.
Twice she’d fallen asleep in the van as Liz drove her home and the woman had had to wake her up.
She and her mudder sometimes hired someone part-time during the summer and holiday months. The other day Lavinia had started to say it was time to get someone, but then they’d gotten busy and didn’t get to talk about it. She told herself that they needed to hire someone soon. It was getting busier as tourists enjoyed exploring the area and shopping. New arts and crafts arrived almost daily, and she and her mudder were constantly unpacking, pricing, and stocking the shelves. And her mudder was already working with her artists and craftspeople on plans for Christmas merchandise.
It was never too soon to plan for Christmas when you owned a shop.
Many of the tourists liked shopping ahead for the holidays while they were vacationing, and Amish and Englisch businesses in town were happy to tempt them to buy their goods.
“You look tired,” Abe told her when she settled in a chair beside his bed.
“Danki,” she said, and glared at him. “Just what a maedel wants to hear.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re looking tired, too,” she said after a moment. And, she thought, in some pain.
“I had physical therapy this morning. I didn’t think I was going to make it through the session,” he said, shifting in the bed. “It was pure torture. I thought it was supposed to be gentle and help get feeling back in my legs. She hurt me. And she’s coming back later this afternoon.” He looked hopefully at her. “Maybe you can sneak me out of here so she can’t torture me.”
“Schur,” she said. “It should be easy to hide a six-foot man in pajamas walking out of here.” Then she bit her lip as she realized what she’d said. “Did the doctor give you any idea when you can go home?” she rushed to ask.
“He thinks the end of the week.” Abe frowned. “But I’ll be in a wheelchair, and I’ll have a physical therapist come to work with me at the house for a couple of weeks.”
Joy burst through her. “Abe! End of the week? That’s wunderbaar!”
“Didn’t you hear me? In a wheelchair. And more therapy.”
Joy evaporated. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. He looked miserable. Please, God, help me say something to cheer him up, she prayed.
There was a knock on the doorjamb. She glanced over. The bishop stood in the doorway, his straw hat in his hand.
“Leroy! Gut to see you. Abe, look who’s here to see you.” She vacated her chair and gestured at it. “Please, sit.”
“Are you feeling up to a visit?” he asked Abe as he sat.
“Ya,” Abe said politely.
Lavinia bit her lip. In his current mood, she was schur Leroy was the last person Abe wanted to see—and the person he most needed to talk to. And he’d be forced to talk if she wasn’t in the room. She cast about for an excuse to leave them alone.
“Leroy, can I get you something to drink?”
“That would be wunderbaar.”
“Coffee? Or something cold?”
“What will you have, Abe?” Leroy asked, giving him a genial smile. He was in his forties, younger than the last bishop, but had a calm, wise air about him.
“Coffee would be great. But I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”
“It’s no trouble. I can get you both some coffee. Leroy, how do you take it?”
“Cream and two sugars, danki, Lavinia.”
As she picked up her purse and escaped from the room, she avoided looking at Abe. She knew him and knew he probably didn’t want to talk to the bishop right now. Well, sometimes medicine was hard to take. She had a feeling that Leroy was just what Abe needed today. He always had a positive message about faith and life, but it wasn’t always an easy one to hear.
She took her time getting the coffee, and on her way back with the cardboard cup container, she saw Faron and Waneta walking toward Abe’s room. She called out to them and they turned.
“Leroy is visiting Abe,” she explained. “I was just taking coffee in to them. I thought I’d give them a few minutes to talk, just the two of them. Abe’s not in a very gut mood today. He says he’s in pain from his physical therapy session, poor guy.”
Waneta put her hand on her mann’s arm. “Faron, let’s give them some time.”
“They’ve got peach pie in the cafeteria,” Lavinia told Faron when he hesitated.
“Guess we could wait there,” Faron said as he gave Waneta a considering look. “You know, so that the bishop can talk to Abe.”
Waneta gave him a look. “Ya, right. Have you forgotten you had a piece of cake for dessert at lunch?” She turned to Lavinia. “Man’s got such a sweet tooth.”
“My dat, too,” Lavinia told her. “Do you suppose it’s just Amish men, or do you think it’s all men?”
Waneta chuckled. “I think it’s all men. Kumm, Faron, let’s go have some coffee.”
“I’ll join you as soon as I take Abe and Leroy theirs.”
She returned to Abe’s room, and he gave her a look of such gratitude she felt guilty. Then he frowned when she set the coffee down on the bedside table and backed away.
“Excuse me, I’ll be right back,” she said, and slipped out of the room before Abe could object. She paused at the doorway and was reminded of the story of Lot’s wife when she looked back and saw Abe’s beseeching look. She forced herself to walk away.
She joined Faron and Waneta in the cafeteria. They had a piece of pie and a cup of coffee waiting for her. “Danki, this is a nice treat.”
“Has the shop been busy?”
Lavinia nodded as she put a bite of pie in her mouth. “My schweschder’s been a great help to Mamm and me. She’s been canning a lot of the vegetables and fruit from our kitchen garden this summer since I’ve been visiting Abe.”
“I’ve been enjoying doing ours, even though the heat seems worse every summer,” Waneta said. “As usual, we have much more zucchini than we can use.”
“Don’t go sneaking it into a cake again like you did last summer,” Faron said as he washed down a bite of pie with a gulp of coffee.
“You mean like in the chocolate cake you had at lunch?”
He stared at her for a long moment and then he chuckled. “Well, you fooled me again.”
They lingered over the pie and coffee and talked. Well, she and Waneta talked. Faron was too busy with his pie. And when he thought his fraa wasn’t paying attention, he sneaked a bite or two from her plate. The smile that quirked the corner of Waneta’s mouth told Lavinia that she was well aware of the theft.
“Well, I suppose we should be going up to see Abe,” Faron said when he finally pushed his empty plate aside. “Seems we gave him and Leroy enough time to talk.”
Lavinia rose. She hoped the bishop had said something to Abe to help him feel a little more positive.
* * *
Abe knew he wasn’t in the best of moods because of his pain and not getting to talk to Lavinia, but his mudder had taught him to be polite. So he fixed a pleasant expression on his face and sipped his coffee and told himself to be polite if Leroy launched into a sermon about enduring hardship or some such.
“It’s hard to be laid up,” the older man said as he swirled a wooden stirrer in his cup.
Abe wanted to roll his eyes. People always said they understood when they’d never experienced the same thing, he wanted to say. But he didn’t know how to do that without being rude.
“I don’t imagine you remember when I was here in this hospital after a buggy accident years ago. Guess you’d have been too young.”
He sipped his coffee and frowned. “It was a terrible time. My fraa was killed in the accident. Our dochder was just three.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Danki. What made things really hard was that I was in the hospital for weeks and I couldn’t take care of my dochder. My eldres did, of course, but it was so hard not seeing her.”
He looked down at the cup in his hand for a long moment, and then his gaze shifted to meet Abe’s. “I know it must be hard not being able to take care of your cows. I know they’re more than a business to you. Your farm is home. You want to be there. All in gut time, Abe. All in gut time.”
“This was just the worst time for this to happen. What with milk prices.”
“It’s a concern, for schur.” He paused, looked thoughtful. “But remember, ‘I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’” He finished his coffee and tossed the cup into the wastepaper basket. “I stopped by and took a look for myself, and Wayne is doing a wunderbaar job in your absence and not letting your dat overdo helping.”
“I’m schur you’re right.”
“Remember, we Amish take care of our own.” He stood. “Maybe it would help if you thought of yourself less as Job and more as Joseph.” He glanced at the door as some people walked past. “Well, I’m going to be on my way so that Lavinia can visit with you.”
“Danki for coming,” Abe said. And meant it. Hearing that things were running as they should on the farm—and hearing it from someone other than his dat—reassured him and made him feel a little bit better. He held out his good hand and they shook hands.
“I enjoyed talking with you,” Leroy said.
“I enjoyed talking with you, too.”
“I’ll be praying you get to go home soon.”
Abe nodded. “Danki,” he said again.
Leroy nodded and left him.
Lavinia came in a few minutes later with his eldres. His mudder bent down to kiss him, smelling of cinnamon and sugar. She set a plastic container down on the bedside table. “Snickerdoodles,” she said as she took a seat.
His dat patted his shoulder and gave the container a longing look.
“Faron! Don’t even think about it!”
He chuckled before he sat beside her.
Waneta turned to Abe. “Man had cake for lunch and pie just now. Never gains an ounce.” She sighed as she smoothed her apron over her lap. “Well, Lavinia tells us you’ll be coming home soon.”
“That’s the plan. It just won’t be the way I’d hoped.”
“Give it time,” his dat said, then lapsed into silence.
That was his dat…a man of few words, but the words he did say always made Abe think. And it struck him that hearing words similar to the bishop’s meant he was supposed to learn something. His schoolteacher Phoebe had always said there was no such thing as coincidence—such things were messages from God.
He became aware that Lavinia lingered near the door. A nurse came in and offered to get her a chair, but she shook her head and said she didn’t need one. After the nurse left, he watched as Lavinia wandered from door to window and back again as his mudder chattered.
Abe wasn’t schur if Lavinia was trying to give him time with his eldres or if he had created some distance by being moody with her earlier. She gave him an uncertain smile when she saw he was looking in her direction. He carried on a conversation with his eldres, but he couldn’t help glancing in Lavinia’s direction over and over. His mudder must have noticed, because she turned to his dat and told him they needed to go.
“We just got here,” he protested.
She elbowed him and jerked her head toward Lavinia. “Let’s go so the young people can visit.”
“Oh,” he said, and as he stood and leaned on his cane, his faded blue eyes twinkled as he grinned at Abe. “I remember being a young man.”
“You don’t remember your reading glasses when they’re on your head,” Waneta said, but she gave him an indulgent smile when his hand reached for his head with a grin.
Abe’s mudder gave him another kiss on the cheek and he got another pat on the shoulder from his dat and then they were walking out of the room. He felt his spirits dip lower as he watched his dat’s awkward stride. They were getting older, and his dat had the MS, and here they had to be coming out to the hospital to see him. Worry about him.
He frowned. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.
“Maybe I should leave, too,” said Lavinia.
He felt a moment of panic. “If you have to go,” he said, trying not to show his feelings.
“I don’t have to, but I don’t think you’re in the mood for visitors.”
“I wasn’t in the mood for a sermon from Leroy.”
She approached the chair beside his bed and sat on its edge. “Is that what he did? Gave you a sermon?”
“Not exactly.” He shrugged and pulled his blanket higher. “Why do they have to keep this place so cold?” He shook his head at the way he sounded so irritable. But he couldn’t help it.
He frowned when Lavinia tucked the blanket up around his shoulder.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“I don’t mind. Are your feet warm enough? Mine get cold so easy.”
“How would I know? I can’t feel them.”
He watched, appalled, as she burst into tears and fled the room.
“Lavinia!”
But she disappeared from view, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Frustrated, he grabbed the plastic cup on the bedside table and threw it.
A nurse passing by the room stopped, picked up the cup, and walked into the room. “Do you need some help?”
Miserable, he shook his head. “I just got mad at something. I’m sorry. That was childish.”
“I need to go wipe up the water before someone slips in it,” she said in a neutral tone. She grabbed some tissues from a box on the table and walked off to take care of it.
“I’m sorry!” he called after her, and she waved her hand as if it didn’t matter.
Minutes passed and Lavinia didn’t return. He finally decided she wasn’t coming back—and he didn’t deserve for her to do so.
And then he saw her purse lying on the chair. She couldn’t go home without it, could she? She’d need money to pay a driver. And women couldn’t be without their purses. His mudder never went anywhere without hers. Hope struggled with despair. What if she found a way to leave without coming back and before he could apologize?
And then, just when he began to give up hope, she walked in with something in her hands.
“I talked to one of the nurses at the nursing station,” she said as she held out a pair of bright red socks. “I can put them on your feet if you want.”
“That would be really nice,” he said, putting as much warmth and politeness into his voice as he could. “I’m sorry I took out my frustration on you.”
“It’s allrecht.” She lifted the blanket from his feet and began to put a sock on one foot.
“Nee, it’s not. I’ll try not to do it again.”
“Gut.”
“You’re tickling me,” he said as he tried to pull himself up in bed.
“I didn’t mean to,” she told him. Then she looked up and met his gaze. “Abe, you can feel me putting your sock on this foot?”
He nodded slowly, his eyes widening as he took in what that meant.
She ran from the room, and when she came back, she brought a nurse.
“So, you have some ticklish socks, do you?” the nurse asked, and bent over his foot. She pulled off the sock and ran her hand over his toes.
“I can feel that,” he cried, and then yelped in pain. “That didn’t tickle.”
“Wasn’t meant to,” she said, but she was smiling. “I’m going to go call your doctor.”
Abe watched Lavinia finish putting the socks on his feet and then tuck the blanket over them. She walked over and picked up her purse, then sat down, looking unsteady.
“It tickled,” she whispered.
“Ya,” he said. And he smiled at her and sank back against his pillow. “It tickled.”