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TERRI DOWNES
It had been a while since the last barn raising, and Matthew had almost forgotten how much he enjoyed them. The social element was fun, but it was working together, building something, that felt so good, that uplifted his soul and left it singing.
It had been hot today, and he felt sticky with sweat and tired all the way through, in a way that hinted at some stiffness tomorrow. Not much, as Matthew had plenty of heavy lifting to do every day at the farm, and he would be in a poor state if a barn raising set him back too much.
Still, he would sleep very well tonight... and he needed something cold.
The table that had been used to serve lunch had been cleared earlier, but there were jugs of water and iced tea set up at one end, being poured out by the expansively beaming Mrs. Annie Simon, who seemed thrilled at her family's new barn. As Matthew approached the table, however, he heard a baby start crying somewhere in the house. Annie stepped away from the table with a worried expression and beckoned to another of the women to take over from her.
Matthew's insides gave a jump as he saw who now stood at the table; his mouth, already dry, felt as though it were full of sand.
“Water – ” his voice came out as a croak and he coughed hastily. “Um, water, please – ” no better.
Lovina smiled politely at him.
“You sound like you've been wandering in the desert,” she commented, placing an invitingly condensed glass of water before him.
Matthew drank half of it before he answered.
“Not quite that dire,” he said.
He did not tell her that he had, in fact, once spent time in a desert, and had felt the dry, searing heat envelop him as though he had just opened the world's largest oven door, and that he had slept under the stars, which had been far more beautiful than he had been able to appreciate at the time.
Such things were not to be spoken of between them.
“Tiring work,” Lovina added, nodding towards the almost-finished barn.
Matthew nodded. And then, unbidden, her words recalled a memory long buried. He grinned.
“Yes,” he said recklessly, “but it's the most best kind of tired.”
Lovina paused for a moment – then laughed, her face lighting with recognition. But then she looked over Matthew's shoulder, and her face fell. She frowned. Turning, Matthew followed her gaze, and saw his cousin.
Thomas was leaning back against a gatepost across the yard. His posture was languid and rakish, his smile almost a smirk, as he talked to the girl standing beside him. The girl who Matthew recognized now as Lovina's sister Tessa.
He watched the pair for a moment, wondering... he could not see anything obviously untoward. He turned back to Lovina, but she had already started busying herself with putting the dirty glasses in a tub to be washed, and he knew that the small moment they had shared, an echo of so many others, was over.
***
Whoompf.
Bright, copper-colored shapes flew up above Matthew's head as he landed backwards in the pile of leaves, his short legs kicking up over his head in delight.
He turned and saw that Lovina had vanished, but a rustling in another pile gave away her position. A small giggle floated up.
“Lovina?” he called, pretending he did not know where she was.
Another giggle. Matthew decided that he could not be too hard on her. She was only five; he, on the other hand, was six, old enough to know that you are not supposed to giggle when you hide from people.
He walked forward quietly, placing each foot down heel-first to muffle his steps. As he reached the giggling pile, he reached down, scooped up a handful of leaves, and then jumped in front of the pile, showering them over Lovina.
“Got you!” he yelled.
She pouted, and tried to fight off the leaves as they landed on her. Matthew thought she should leave them. The orange looked nice with her pink cheeks, yellow hair and blue dress. She looked like a rainbow. He offered her a hand to help her out of the pile.
“How do you find me so fast?” she demanded.
“You have to stop laughing,” explained Matthew as they walked on, Lovina occasionally darting forward to catch a leaf before it reached the ground.
It was fall, and the small beech wood that stretched along the land between their parents' farms had slowly been turning yellow and orange, brighter and brighter – until the leaves, grown heavy with color, began to fall to the ground below. Matthew and Lovina had both begged to be allowed to go play today, as the forest was exactly at that perfect moment when there was brightness both above and below, as though the forest were a golden hall in Heaven, and the leaves were still piled in big, crunchy drifts, before the rain came and washed them into mush.
Matthew had had a harder time getting permission than Lovina. She said his parents were “strict” - he was not sure what that meant, but he knew that he was not allowed to do as many things as the other children his age. Even when he had finished all his chores, he was not always allowed out, but had to sit quietly at home. Today, though, he had caught his mother in a good mood, and she had agreed.
“Are you tired?” he asked Lovina, aware that they had been playing for a while now.
“A bit,” she said, pausing to step again on an especially crunchy leaf. “But it's the most best kind of tired.”
He stopped himself from correcting her grammar, reminding himself again of her youth and ignorance.
“It is,” he agreed. And Lovina, he thought, might be the most best person he knew.
***
Dusk was beginning to fall, the sky deepening into a creamy purple, by the time Matthew and Thomas reached the lane that led to home. Matthew drew in a deep breath, feeling as though he could bask in the gentle coolness and falling quiet until they reached the farmhouse.
But Thomas was antsy, as usual, and kept humming and kicking at the path as they walked, raising clouds of dust. Matthew sighed inwardly. His cousin had been staying with him for several months now, and he had yet to acquire the sense of responsibility his father had hoped the change would bring to him. Uncle Jesse had grown up a farmer, and worried that his seventeen year old son's frustration and restlessness in the family's new furniture trade was not something that he could curb by keeping him in the workshop all day. He had sent Thomas to Matthew, to the farm he had inherited after his parents had moved into his married brother's Dawdi house. Uncle Jesse had believed that outdoor work would be the solution, although Matthew had not been so hopeful...
As the lane took them near to Lovina's family home, Matthew cleared his throat.
“I saw you talking to Tessa earlier,” he said, nodding at the house ahead as though in reference.
“Nice girl,” said Thomas, grinning.
“Yes, she is,” said Matthew guardedly. “As his her sister.”
“Lovina's a little old for me,” teased Thomas, who had seen his cousin gazing at the eldest Lapp sister at social gatherings.
“You know I don't mean Lovina,” said Matthew. “You were hanging around Verity the last two weeks, and it looked like you were interested in her.”
“Did it now?” said Thomas.
“And she was obviously interested in you,” said Matthew, risking the dangers of boosting Thomas' vanity in order to get to the point. “So what's she going to think if you transfer your affections to her sister?”
“Who says they've transferred?” laughed Thomas, taking a few longer strides which forced Matthew to hurry. He liked reminding Matthew of the four inch difference in their heights – a difference which Matthew, at twenty-two, was unlikely to recover.
“So you're not interested in Tessa?” pushed Matthew.
“Who says I have to pick one?” asked Thomas.
Matthew blinked. Then he felt his face grow warm. “Because otherwise you're just flirting with them.”
“Oh, come on,” said Thomas, still striding onward through the dusk. They had nearly drawn level with the Lapp home. “They know we're just having fun.”
“Just... having fun?” Matthew repeated incredulously.
“Yes, fun, remember that, Matthew?”
Thomas laughed, and then waved – the Lapps had already reached their home, and the girls were on the porch. Tessa and Verity waved back. Matthew thought that he could see Lovina looking at him, though it was hard to tell given the distance and the darkness. He raised a hand, and she returned the gesture, but there was no hint of that earlier smile in her shadowed face.
***
“Maybe we should get married.”
Lovina glanced up from the jacket in her lap. “Just cause I'm doing your mending doesn't mean I'm going to marry you, Matthew.”
Matthew pulled a face at her, and she rolled her eyes.
It was only fair that she should fix it the jacket, Lovina decided. It was her fault, she had asked him to climb one of the beech trees and fetch a handful of the young, spring leaves, because her brother Zach had told her you could eat them.
Matthew had panicked when he had noticed the tear. Apparently, his mother had told him that the next time he ripped something, he would not be allowed go out and play for a whole month. Lovina did not know why Matthew's mother was so worried, as Matthew was already much more careful than the other boys – definitely more careful than her little brothers Zach, Jonathan and Henry. But Lovina did not want Matthew to get stuck indoors for a month, so she had volunteered to mend his jacket with the little sewing set she had been given three months earlier, just after her eighth birthday.
“Not cause of that,” said Matthew, throwing a flower at her. He had been gathering them at the edge of the wood, near where Lovina was sitting. She secretly hoped he meant to give them to her, but did not want to ask.
“Why then?” she asked, holding the jacket to the light to see the stitching.
“Cause all the others are getting all worked up about it,” he said. “As soon as they grow up, it's all they think about. You heard about Sadie and Isaac.”
“It's not good to gossip.”
“It's not gossip, everyone knows. She threw a rock at him.”
“It was a pebble.”
“Still.” Matthew surveyed the bunch of flowers critically. “It's something they all worry about. If we decide now, we could forget about it til it comes up again.”
“Maybe...” Lovina shook out the jacket. “There you go.”
“Thank you,” said Matthew again, and handed her the flowers he'd picked.
“I didn't say yes,” joked Lovina, though she took the flowers anyway.
***
For Lovina, trying to catch all of her siblings in one place at one time was like trying to pick up water. They had their meals together, but the boys spent that time planning what they would be doing next on the farm, and Tessa and Verity talked... well, gossiped. Sometimes the boys ate before or after their sisters, fitting meals in around their work. Lovina knew that she should impress on them how important it was to spend time with their family, but she did not know how to go about it without seeming as though she was trying to make them feel guilty.
And now, when she had told all of them individually that she needed to speak to everyone in a group, they still could barely stop long enough to listen. Verity was already gone, having walked over to a friend's house as soon as she had done her chores, and Tessa was talking about her own plans for the day. And the boys looked like they were sleepwalking. They had been working too hard, again, and Lovina did not know how to get them to slow down.
“Wait, just wait,” she called out, halting the boys on their way out of the door.
“We have to – ” started Zach, as Jonathan rubbed his eyes blearily and Henry yawned.
“I know, just wait a moment – Tessa, hold on just a – ”
“Sadie's expecting me, we're supposed to quilt – ”
“I know,” said Lovina, a little too loudly. Her siblings all looked at her then. None of them really looked the same as each other, with slightly varied hair colors, skin tones, and statures, but they all had their mother's bright hazel eyes. Their one link.
“You know it's the anniversary soon,” she said, while she still had their attention. Their expressions immediately clouded over. “I was thinking we could do something, you know, like we used to. What do you think?”
There was a brief silence. “Sure,” said Henry, glancing down. The others nodded.
“All right,” said Lovina, heartened, “what should we do?”
They had used to picnic by the river, to remember the anniversary of their parents' deaths, but for the last two years everyone had decided that they were too busy to give up a whole afternoon.
“Whatever you want,” said Zach, shrugging. The others were already turning to leave.
“But I – ”
“We have to go.”
“So do I,” said Tessa, and she was out of the door before Lovina could get a word out.
Walking to the window, Lovina saw the tall, rangy figure of Thomas Zehr standing at her gate, waiting for her sister. As Tessa reached him, he bent down toward her, as though he were whispering something in her ear. Tessa laughed.
Lovina closed her eyes.
Lord, I don't know what to do. I was not old enough to become a mother to all of them, but they still needed one. I don't know how to reign in my sisters. I don't know how to stop my brothers working themselves to death, trying to live up to our father's name. I don't know how I could ever marry, and leave them, but I don't know how I can keep doing this without a partner to help me.
I don't know anything.
***
“Well, look at you!”
Matthew grinned at Lovina and stepped close to her, straightening up and judging the difference between his and Lovina's height with his hand.
“You're as tall as me!”
Lovina smiled at him. She had not seen him all Summer, as he had gone to stay with his aunt's family. He had a lot of family, but none of them ever came here, though she was not sure why. He was leaner and browner than he had been in the spring, and his nut-colored hair had been lightened in the sun, but he did not appear to have grown much. Still, he looked older. Lovina felt almost shy as she met his eyes.
“Maybe I'll overtake you,” she said, falling into step with him as they began their old walk through the thick green shade under the beeches. “And you'll stay the same.”
“Girls get taller quicker, everyone knows that,” protested Matthew. “I'll have time to catch up, I'm not even twelve yet.”
“Better hurry,” laughed Lovina, standing on her toes to gain a couple more inches.
“Oh, I'm in no hurry to grow up.” Matthew walked ahead a little.
Lovina felt there was an undercurrent to his words, but she could not place it.
“No?”
“No,” repeated Matthew, his face set. Then he saw her looking at him and smiled. “Doesn't seem like a lot of fun, does it?”
“I don't know...” Lovina thought of her home, of how loving and warm it was, with her mother running everything with her capable hands and heart. “I'm looking forward to it.”
“Not too soon though,” said Matthew. He looked up at the canopy above them, grown thick and dense over so very many years.
***
Lovina could not believe what she was hearing. She looked at her sisters, both watching her with their eyebrows slightly raised, expressions that said clearly they were expecting her to make a scene. To pretend to be Mamme, whom she could never be. Lovina swallowed.
“Isn't this a little sudden?” she asked, trying to keep her voice quiet. Trying to remain reasonable.
Verity rolled her eyes, and Lovina felt a spark of temper which she quickly tamped down.
“We've been thinking about it for a while. We just decided. Why wait?”
“But why go away at all?” asked Lovina.
She had never even thought of going away for rumspringa when she was their age. Moving away from home, living somewhere else... not like others. She pushed the memory down.
But then, she had had her parents as her center. She had always known that she wanted to be in her home, and then to start her own home, building something that would last. She had had her mother to look up to. Verity and Tessa only had their failure of a big sister.
“How will you pay for everything?” she asked, trying to stick to simple points.
“We'll get jobs,” said Tessa, as this were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Where?” asked Lovina. “And how?”
“Thomas said he knows – ” started Tessa, before Verity elbowed her in the side.
But Lovina already felt something choking her.
“Thomas?” she said. “Thomas Zehr?” Neither of her sisters would meet her eyes across the kitchen table. “He's going on this – this trip as well, is he?” Lovina heard her voice becoming shrill.
“He was going on his own trip,” corrected Verity in a sulky tone, “and said he could help us. He was being nice.”
“Oh, very nice,” said Lovina, pushing herself away from the table and heading out of the back door. She half-expected one of her sisters to call her back, but neither of them did.
She wandered across the pasture, half-blinded by the setting sun, until she reached the edge of the beech wood. Its deep, dark interior, shot through with golden flecks as the sun made its way between the branches, looked indescribably inviting.
But Lovina could not bring herself to enter it. If she and Matthew were still close – well, she would have gone to him now, that was certain.
She sank down into the grass, burying her fingers in the tufts of green.
Lord. If they have to leave – if I have to let them go – I understand. But why must it break my heart?
If I am meant to be alone –
The thoughts stopped Lovina in her tracks for a moment and she had to take a deep breath before she continued her prayer.
– Then let me rejoice in it, Lord. Let me be as one of the apostles who found their family in the church, who did not need children, or siblings, or marriage. Please, Lord, if I am not to have these things, let me not want them any more.
Lovina sat quietly, waiting. Waiting to stop wanting. Waiting for her heart to let go of the dreams she kept coming back to. But nothing happened.
***
“How is he?”
Lovina shook her head. “They've given him orders to rest, but that's still no guarantee that it won't happen again, or that it won't get worse.”
Matthew bit his lip. Lovina's father had been complaining of shortness of breath and dizzy spells for a while now, and a week ago he had passed out in the fields. It seemed strange to see Lovina looking like this, so pale and exhausted, with the appearance of someone far older than her thirteen years.
“How are your brothers and sisters?” he asked. “I guess Tessa and Verity must be taking this hard.”
Lovina's sisters had always been a little too sensitive. High-strung, Lovina's mother called it. He had grown to know them well over the years, through his friendship with Lovina, and he felt strangely guilty at the fact that he could do nothing to protect them from what they were going through. Not that he did not want to protect Lovina as well, but she had been oddly withdrawn over the past week. She had been busy, of course, helping her mother run things. But Matthew had not been able to speak to her before the walk they were taking today.
And now that they were in their special place, under the beech trees – even though the branches were barren, forming cracks against the hard winter sky, the place was still a comfort – he did not feel as though he could burden her with his own problems.
As though she could tell what he was thinking, Lovina turned to him.
“What about you?” she asked. “How have you been since I saw you last, how's your family?”
Matthew opened his mouth to tell her.
Then closed it.
“Fine,” he said. “Same as normal.”
Well, that was the truth.
“Good,” said Lovina, “that's... that's good...” her voice caught, and her face crumpled.
Matthew stood awkwardly as Lovina turned away to cry. He knew that she would be embarrassed about him seeing her like this, but he could hardly pretend that it was not happening.
“I'm fine,” mumbled Lovina, burying her face in her handkerchief.
“I can tell,” said Matthew, which at least made her laugh.
“I'm sorry,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “I just – there's just so much, suddenly. My brothers and sisters, and my parents, they're all relying on me, and I don't know if I can handle everything.”
“You can,” said Matthew.
Lovina gave him a half, somewhat watered-down smile.
“And if you ever can't,” he continued, “if it's ever too much, if something happens that your parents can't help you with, you just come and find me. I'll be there.”
Lovina looked at him for a long moment. “Promise?” she said.
***
Matthew had decided, before beginning this conversation, that he was going to keep his temper. Amazingly, he had managed to do so. What he had not counted on, however, was Thomas being unable to keep his.
“Why can't you leave me alone?” the younger man demanded, eyes narrow and hard. “What's it got to do with you?”
“It's inappropriate,” said Matthew, his tone even. “You've been flirting with both of them, openly, and – ”
“And all the old folks will talk, I know, how terrible. You're worried people are going to think you were a bad influence on me?”
Matthew counted to ten inside his head before speaking. He looked at the clock on the wall of the living room so that he would not be tempted to rush.
“Won't you think of the girls, then?” he asked. “Tessa and Verity might end up with damaged reputations if you keep on as you are.”
“It's not my fault if people gossip,” said Thomas, his cheeks staining red. “We haven't done anything wrong, Matthew. I've never touched either of them.”
“But how have you been looking at them, Thomas?” Matthew asked quietly. “Where do your thoughts about them lead you?”
Thomas broke eye contact, scowling at his feet.
“You really think I'm worried about other people's opinions?” said Matthew. “God's opinion is the only one that matters.” Thomas remained silent, so Matthew tried another push. “You know that I'm the last person who could judge you – ”
But at this, Thomas' head shot up. “Yes,” he said, “You are the last person who could judge me. In fact, I thought you all of all people would understand, but you're just as self-righteous as the rest of them.”
He pushed himself out of his chair and headed for the door.
Matthew stood and followed him to the porch, more to see where he was going than to try and start the conversation over. There would be chance for that later, when Thomas had calmed down. But as he watched Thomas heading with angry steps out into the fields, his attention was suddenly drawn by a figure standing nearer to him. At the gate – just outside the gate, looking at the house as though wondering whether to approach.
“Lovina?”
Matthew walked across the yard to her as she made her way to him, so that they met at the center. It was early evening, and the air was cool and fresh after a shower of rain a few hours before. The cloud cover had broken into large, fluffy mounds, with starkly sunlit outlines. Lovina stood in the pearly light, her face serious.
“Did Thomas tell you?” she asked. “Is that what you were arguing about?”
“You heard that?”
“I heard him yelling.”
“Oh – wait.” Matthew paused, frowning. “Did he tell me about what?”
Lovina broke the news to him about the plan which her sisters had let slip. As he listened, Matthew felt a surge of protection for Tessa and Verity. He had never been able to shake the feeling that they should by rights have been a part of his family, even though the hopes of that becoming a reality had long been lost.
“Thank you for telling me this,” he said as she finished. “I suppose... I suppose I can send Thomas back to his parents.”
“They could still meet up, if they all leave,” said Lovina, shaking her head. She reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose, an action that seemed to belong to someone far older than she was.
“You can't convince the girls to stay?” asked Matthew.
He regretted the question as Lovina met his eyes with a burning gaze.
“No,” she said. “I can't. I can't make them do anything. I'm not my mother.”
“No one's expecting you to be your mother,” Matthew said gently.
“Aren't they?” Lovina snapped. “No, no, I guess they're not, because even my mother couldn't handle everything herself, she had my father. I don't understand – ”
She pinched the bridge of her nose once more, and Matthew barely heard the words that came next:
“I don't understand why I have to do this alone.”
“You're not alone,” he said, “I'm – ” and then he stopped, realizing how similar this was to another conversation they had once had.
From the way she was watching him, Lovina had clearly made the connection as well.
“ – I'm here,” he finished. Because he had to.
Lovina looked at him a moment longer, then dipped her head in a nod, her mouth pressed together.
“Lovina,” said Matthew, “it's not the same as it was. I'm not the same.”
“Neither am I,” she said.
***
“You're really going.”
They had come to say goodbye, under the beech trees. Matthew had bid the Lapps a polite family farewell, but Lovina had known, somehow, that he would be waiting for her here.
Lovina was aware that she had not spoken to Matthew, not properly, in a long time. Wrapped up in her family, she had hardly had the chance, or that is what she told herself. She knew that things at his home had not been good for a long time – if ever they had been good – but she had not expected this.
He was leaving. Going away, for Rumspringa. He was getting a job somewhere, with the intention of traveling around as much of the country as he could see.
“You'll be all right,” he said.
Lovina's father had not had a bad spell for a year, though he had never regained his full strength. He was training the boys to run the farm, and they had thrown themselves into it as though they could bring him back to life as they brought life from the soil.
“What about you?” she asked.
“Don't worry about me.” His voice was flat and removed, as though he were saying the words by rote. As though there was no reason to think that she actually would worry about him.
When was the last time anybody worried about you, she wondered, as she watched her childhood friend turn and walk away into something he hoped would become freedom.
***
It had been hard enough to get the three of them to agree to this; Matthew had hoped that they would at least take it seriously. But Thomas was leaning his elbows on the table with an indolent air, and Tessa and Verity kept exchanging glances and smirking.
Well, there was nothing for it.
“Lovina told me what you're planning,” he started.
“Why do I feel like I'm back at school...?” murmured Thomas, and the girls spluttered with laughter.
Matthew gritted his teeth for a moment. He wondered if he should have remained standing, rather than sitting opposite them.
“You know that I did something similar myself,” he said.
“We know,” said Tessa. “You had all of your fun, and then decided to come back and be good.”
“And now you think that we should make the same decision as you, with none of the fun,” said Thomas.
Matthew took a long, deep breath. He leaned back a little, and looked up at the ceiling.
“Maybe I should just let you go,” he said quietly – so quietly, that he sensed the others were having to pay real attention to listen in. “But if my experiences could help someone else, then maybe they'd be worth something. Maybe some good could come out of it all.”
He looked back at the three before him.
“Rumspringa can be an opportunity,” he said. “For some, it is a chance to find out what it really means to make a commitment. Others find that they might be called to live a different life. Some just need to get perspective. And if I felt that your plan involved any one of these, I wouldn't say a word.”
He felt his gaze harden, and a sternness crept into his voice.
“But this, what you want,” he said, “is pleasure. Worldly pleasure. You don't want to try a different perspective, or build something new. You want to break all the rules you have had to live with, and forget the consequences.”
Thomas opened his mouth to speak, but Matthew held up his hand.
“But what you don't know – and it is a privilege not to know this, believe me – is that there are consequences. Real dangers, and in the lifestyle you're headed toward, you're going to find them as soon as you get there.”
There was a moment's silence. Verity traced a pattern on the tabletop with her finger.
“So there's a danger,” she said. “But won't it be worth it? For freedom?”
You don't want freedom, thought Matthew. You want to escape a home that is not the one you grew up so loved and coddled in, and a life that you don't want to face.
But that was not what she needed to hear right now.
“They didn't call it freedom,” he said. “The people I met. They called it something else.”
He had hoped never to remember this.
“They called it oblivion.” He closed his eyes. “Total oblivion.”
He knew, from the hush on the other side of the table, that he finally had their complete attention.
So he told them. He told of the oblivion he had found, and the people he had found it with. People who had emptiness behind their eyes, and teeth instead of smiles, whose minds had not been their own in years. Rooms that existed only in darkness, people whose lives centered only on the things that happened in those rooms. Relationships that had seemed like they meant something, only to twist themselves into nothingness. The degradation, the hopelessness of it all, the way you became bound to your body as though you were its slave, allowed only to bring it what it demanded, feeding appetites which only seemed to grow.
He told them, and they listened.
***
“Matthew?”
Matthew could not understand what he was looking at. Was it the ocean? It kept moving, he could hear it, and it was a greeny-gray color. But it was so far away. It made him feel happy. Like everything was going to be all right. And that voice, too, that made him happy.
“Matthew, I've called the boys, they're going to take you to your aunt's, I don't think you should go home like this.”
Matthew felt his thoughts slowly coming back to his head. He opened his eyes all the way. Oh, right, that wasn't the sea. It was the canopy of the beech wood, and he was lying beneath it on his back.
And there was Lovina, looking at him.
Wait – Lovina?
She looked the same. Different. Older.
Matthew tried to push himself up, but Lovina was already kneeling beside him, telling him to stay still.
“You look like you'll snap in half if you try to move,” she said, her voice soft.
Matthew frowned, wondering what she meant. He tried to think of what he looked like... when was the last time he had seen his reflection? He had a dim memory of a mirror in a grimy gas station bathroom, seen sometime in the last couple of days. His skin had been pale, faintly jaundiced, stretched paper thin over jutting bones. The florescent light had cast shadows in his eyes and in the hollows of this cheeks.
“How did you even get here?” he heard Lovina murmur.
“Walked,” he told her. Obviously. And he smiled, because even though she had tears in her eyes, it was Lovina, and they were in the beech wood, exactly where they should be.
“My parents...” he started to say, trying to sit again.
With a gentle touch to his shoulder, Lovina pushed him down. He noticed one of his sleeves sliding up, and hastily pulled the cuff back to his wrist.
“You can go to them once you're well,” said Lovina. “I think it will be all right. They've been doing better, these past couple of years. I think you leaving shook them. They've been getting help from the preachers. Counseling.”
“Right. Good for them,” said Matthew, smiling wryly. Yes, good for them, how nice for them. “And your parents?” he asked.
There was a pause, during which all he could hear was the swishing and hissing of leaves in the wind.
“They're dead, Matthew,” said Lovina.
The words took a few moments to penetrate.
“What.”
“Two years ago, a few months after you left.”
Matthew shook his head. “But – no – ”
“Mamme got sick,” said Lovina. “It was sudden. When he knew she wasn't going to make it, Daed just gave up. They went the same night.”
“No – ”
This was wrong. This was not supposed to happen. He had said, he had promised –
“I said I would be here,” he whispered. “I said I would be here for you.”
“Yes,” said Lovina. “You did say that.”
And Lovina was standing, moving away from him, creating a distance between them that he would never have a right to recover.
***
He works all things together for the good.
Lovina was not sure why this verse had been buzzing around her head all morning. She had been praying as she completed her chores, and it had popped into her mind. And stayed there. Almost as though it were being said to her, over and over...
All things together for the good of those who love him.
And then, as she heard the door to the kitchen open and close, his plans are better than yours.
She turned, and saw Tessa and Verity. Their eyes were reddened and swollen.
Lovina nearly dropped the bowl she was holding. She could not remember the last time either of them had cried.
“What happened? What's wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Verity, shaking her head. “Nothing's wrong.”
***
“Thought I'd find you here.”
Lovina stopped walking and turned, waiting for Matthew to catch her up. It was midday, and by rights she should have been attending to her work, but she had felt the cool green of the beech wood calling to her, for the first time in years. She had left Verity and Tessa in charge, and escaped to the shade of the canopy. The two of them had been in a whirl of baking, preparing for the picnic they were determined to have the next day, just as they used to, to remember their parents.
“Have you spoken to the girls?” asked Matthew, falling into easy step next to her. They always walked at the same pace, Lovina remembered, being the exact same height.
“They didn't want to talk too much yesterday,” said Lovina, “but they told me what you'd... discussed.”
“Ah.”
“Thank you. For telling them. That must have been difficult.”
Matthew shrugged. “It was necessary,” he said, but his tone betrayed how hard he had found it. “Are they staying, then?” he asked.
“Verity is,” said Lovina. “Tessa still wants to go away for a while, but she's talking about getting a real job, and we've discussed things like a self-imposed curfew, keeping in touch... she's trying to be responsible.”
Matthew nodded. “Thomas is saying something similar,” he said. “Though, to be honest, I get the feeling that he's not going to see it through.”
“No?”
“No, I think he was just getting carried away with the idea of no rules. I told him to pray about it – maybe he'll still go, but I think it's going to be all right either way.”
“I think you scared them straight,” said Lovina, trying to be a little flippant, but Matthew's face creased.
“I'm sorry if any of it was too upsetting,” he said. “I don't know how much they told you – ”
“I'd guessed most of it,” said Lovina. “You said some things, that day I found you here.”
“I did?” Matthew ran a hand over his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “I'm sorry.”
“It's all right.”
“No, really, I'm sorry, for everything, Lovina.” He stopped walking, his face earnest.
Lovina stopped too and shook her head, indicating that he did not need to continue, but he pressed on.
“I wasn't here,” he said, “when you needed me. I let you down. I'm sorry.”
He was standing close, so close, his expression open, and Lovina felt the bond between them as roots beneath the surface of the earth. Hidden, buried, never gone.
“I let you down first,” she said. Because it was the truth. “You needed me, and I left you alone.”
Matthew looked as though he wanted to argue, but Lovina met his gaze straight on and he hesitated. She knew that he knew she was right.
“Well, then,” he said slowly. “Perhaps we should agree that we won't leave each other again.”
Lovina felt a smile being pulled to the surface, as though her happiness were seeking fresh air and sunshine.
“Never again,” she agreed.
And they walked on, through the warm green light that filtered down through the beech leaves.
