15

Jimmy,” Naomi said, resting her forehead in her hand as she talked, “for the tenth time, I don’t think you did anything wrong.”

“But I told Bethany I’d take her home from the singing. She didn’t say anything about having to leave early. I did end up giving her a ride, but she was mostly quiet. She’s never quiet. Usually, she’s complaining about my bad character. She even wore that lavender dress that I like so much. She looked beautiful. A little tired, though. Did you notice?”

“I did.” Naomi sighed. Jimmy was her friend. So was Bethany.

“I just don’t understand what’s happened,” Jimmy said. “At times, I think she’s genuinely interested in me, you know? And other times, she acts like I’m invisible.”

“I don’t think you should be worried. She went to the singing, didn’t she? If she wanted to avoid you, she wouldn’t have even gone.”

“That girl flashes hot and cold faster than I can keep up.” He worried his hat in his hands. “Doesn’t it seem like something’s bothering her lately? More than her usual fiery temper?”

It did seem so to Naomi too, but she had no idea what exactly was troubling Bethany. “Maybe there’s just a lot on her mind with her brother’s coming, then going.” Tobe was certainly on the top of Naomi’s mind.

Jimmy wiggled his eyebrows up and down. “By the way, you and Tobe sure did make a fast getaway at the singing.”

Naomi froze. “Did anyone else notice?”

He grinned. “Your secret is safe with me.” Then his smile faded. “So do you think you could talk to Bethany?”

“If there’s a chance to talk, then I’ll try. No promises. I’m your friend, not your matchmaker.” That wasn’t entirely true, Naomi did enjoy matchmaking and thought she had a talent for it. But she hadn’t had any time alone with Bethany for quite some time now. She didn’t even know where she’d gone today.

Naomi looked out the window at Sammy and Luke, racing behind her brother Galen as he led a horse into the ring for training exercises. Those two boys never seemed to walk in a straight line. Instead, they ran in zigzags. What would it be like to have that much energy?

“I’d better get out there before Galen wonders where I’ve gone,” Jimmy said. At the kitchen door, he stopped. “Hank Lapp told me the other day that there were only two women in Stoney Ridge who could ever manage me on a full-time basis—Mary Kate Lapp, who spurned me for Chris Yoder, and Bethany Schrock. Think he’s right?”

Naomi grinned. “Let’s just say I think you and Bethany are perfectly suited.”

“Me, too. I just need to convince her of that.” He fit his hat on his head. “Thanks, Naomi. You’re a good pal.”

The ride home from Hagensburg was a silent one. As they drew closer to Stoney Ridge, Geena glanced at Bethany and wasn’t surprised to see tears pouring like hot, silent rain over her face. She fished a small package of tissue out of her purse and handed it to Bethany. “Do you want to talk?”

Bethany pulled a tissue out of the package and wiped her eyes and cheeks. “All these years, as long as I could remember, I was so angry with my mother, so angry that she’d torn our family apart. How could I even have thought such a thing? If I could, I’d take them all back. Every resentful thought, every hateful word. I feel riddled with as many holes as a wormy apple.” She blew her nose.

“You didn’t know,” Geena said kindly. “You had no idea what had happened to your mother. Is that typical of the Amish? For your father to not tell you the truth about your mother?”

“I don’t know if he knew the truth. Knowing Dad, he might have sugarcoated my mother’s illness, but he wouldn’t have lied.” Then the tears started again. “How can God ever forgive me for being so hardhearted? At times, I hated her,” she whispered.

“But he does forgive, Bethany. He does.” Geena turned off the highway onto the back roads that wound toward Stoney Ridge. “Sometimes,” she said softly, “we have to make decided efforts to let go of the past. Not so that we pretend hard things didn’t happen, but so that the power of hard things is lessened. In the Bible, Isaiah talks about forgetting the former things and not dwelling on the past.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“No, it’s not. ‘The past is not a package one can lay away.’ Emily Dickinson said that.”

“Who’s that?”

“She’s an American poet. Lived in the 1800s.”

“Well, no wonder I’ve never heard of her if she’s passed on.”

Geena swallowed a grin. At times, Bethany seemed wise beyond her years. Other times, she seemed so young, so naive. “Are you going to tell the sisters from the Sisters’ Bee that you know they’re visiting your mother?”

Bethany turned toward the window. “I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do about that piece of news. I’m still stunned. I’ve been working for them for months now and they’ve never said a word about my mother. Though, not long ago, I discovered they were feeding lunch once a week to thirty people. They are a puzzle, those old sisters.”

“Mind if I give you some advice?”

“Please.”

“Don’t do anything about it for a while. Just give yourself some time to wrap your head around what you found out about your mother today. After all, the only thing you know for sure about the sisters is that they visit your mother once a month. That’s not such a bad thing.”

Bethany glanced at her from the corner of her eyes. “Keeping it a secret is.”

“Bethany, just pray long and hard before you talk to the sisters. Make sure God is the one leading you to talk to them, if you do it at all.”

Bethany nodded. “Now that is some advice I could’ve used recently. Any time I get all puffed up and self-righteous, I make a mess even bigger.” Laughter broke through her self-pity. “I need a nap. It’s been an emotional day.”

Geena patted Bethany’s arm. “In a good way.”

Bethany closed her eyes and Geena drove past rolling fields, farmhouses with clotheslines flapping, horses hanging their heads over fences. The weather was changing—gray clouds were moving in from the north and the wind was picking up. Geena rolled down her window. The air was at least ten degrees cooler now than it was when they headed to Hagensburg this morning.

She was glad she had gone with Bethany today. She wasn’t sure if the caregiver would have been as forthcoming with information had Geena not slipped into the conversation that she was in the ministry. Finding the truth today was much harder than she expected, but she couldn’t help but feel it was necessary for Bethany to come to peace about her mother.

For the first time in months, perhaps in years, Geena had a sense that she was right where she was supposed to be.

A headache came over Naomi in the afternoon that was so painful she had to come inside the house to rest her eyes from the bright sunshine. She brewed a cup of tea from the spearmint leaves that Sadie Smucker, the local herbalist, had given to her. Sadie had recommended that she distract herself from the pain, rather than lie in bed and dwell on it. So Naomi sat in the living room and tried to put a binding around a quilt, a Basket Garden pattern she had just finished.

Sitting quietly and sewing the bright green binding inch by inch to the border, covering all the uneven edges and raveled threads with a smooth band of green, seeing all those different bits and scraps of fabric come together, stitch by stitch, into a neatly finished whole, did help lessen the pounding in her head, just a little.

She had made this quilt with all kinds of scraps from her piece bag, and the scraps brought up happy memories of her siblings when they still lived at home. There were five brothers and sisters in between Galen and Naomi—they were the bookends, their mother had called them. They were the most alike too. Quiet, thoughtful, introspective, and frequently underestimated by others. Her sisters, now married with families of their own, had invited Naomi to come live with them, but she didn’t want to leave Galen. She understood him. She wondered when he would get around to asking Rose to marry him and what that might mean for her. Knowing Rose, she would want Naomi to remain with all of them. One big happy family.

And that was tempting, especially when Naomi considered Tobe, which she did quite a lot.

She wondered how the week was going for Tobe and hoped he was being completely candid with that lawyer. She had encouraged him to tell everything, to not hold back anything. Tobe seemed skeptical, but then she reminded him that he had spent most of the last year hiding from the truth and where had that gotten him? Honesty, she said, was always the best way.

Even if being honest might open up a Pandora’s box of troubles? he had asked her.

Even then, she said.

Naomi had been stitching around a corner, which took careful attention to set the tucks just right, when the headache took a severe turn. She put down the fabric pieces and rubbed her temples.

Outside, the sun disappeared as if someone had popped a lid over it. She went to the window and saw the weather was changing—no wonder she had such a headache. Whenever the barometric pressure in the air changed suddenly, she felt the pressure in her head. She watched streaks of lightning light the sky, muted and hidden by low-lying clouds. Not rain clouds, just those empties. “Always threatening, never delivering,” Galen called them. She saw Galen and Jimmy lead some horses from the paddock into the barn. No more training would happen today if lightning flashed in the sky.

Finally, she went down to the darkest part of the basement to curl up and rest on a cot. The basement was usually her last resort, but the quiet and the darkness often helped to alleviate the headaches. Sometimes she felt as if tiny men were inside her forehead, pounding on it with little hammers. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep. The lightning was closer now, with large cracks of thunder quickly following. The sound filled her with such tension that she didn’t think she could endure it. If it went on much longer, she felt it would twist her like a wire.

A gust of wind rattled the basement window and she shivered. For no reason she could have named, Naomi felt a ripple of foreboding. In her mind flashed images—bright lights, like a spinning police siren. She smelled freshly turned earth, then saw a shovel and . . .

Naomi’s eyes popped open and she was on her feet. Something terrible was about to happen.

Jimmy listened to Naomi’s vision and didn’t know what to make of it. Sometimes, when Naomi had a fierce headache, she would have these . . . visions or dreams or second sights . . . and while they often turned out to mean something, just as often they didn’t. He wished Galen were here, but he had gone into town to pick up some liniment for a horse’s lame leg. Jimmy appeased Naomi by saying he would check every horse on the entire King farm.

“It’s not here,” Naomi said, trembling. “The trouble isn’t here.”

“Then, where?”

That . . . she didn’t know. Jimmy saw Hank Lapp saunter up the driveway with a fishing pole in his hand and waved him into the kitchen. Maybe he could make sense of Naomi’s vision. At this point, Jimmy wasn’t sure what else to do. Hank listened carefully to Naomi, asking details as if she were a witness to a crime and not just dreaming the whole thing up. He suggested they check over Galen’s livestock first, so he walked with Jimmy through the barn, then out to the pastures, but the horses were all accounted for and nothing seemed awry. “I’m not sure what to do to appease Naomi, Hank,” Jimmy said, walking back to the house. “Those headaches can make her a little . . .” He whirled his finger around his ear.

“Her vision might not be real,” Hank said, “but it’s real to her.”

And then Mim came flying through the hole in the privet hedge. “Jimmy—we have to get to the community garden! I just got a call from Bethany. Something’s going on down there.”

Jimmy fetched a buggy horse from the barn and Hank hitched it to the shafts in record time. Mim jumped in the buggy and Naomi came out of the house to join them, but Jimmy discouraged her from coming along by promising to stop by later with news. He could almost see the headache pain radiating from her eyes. He climbed into the buggy, slapped the reins on the horse, and started to take off, when Sammy and Luke ran through the privet. “We’re coming too!”

“HOP IN, BOYS!” Hank bellowed.

Jimmy stopped the buggy and let them climb into the backseat. He glanced at Mim. “What exactly did Bethany say?”

Mim’s hands were gripping the sides of the buggy. “She and Geena were driving past the community garden on their way home and saw that the garden had been trashed.”

“What?” Jimmy glanced at her. “By who?”

“She didn’t say. It was a quick call.”

“Where were Geena and Bethany coming from?” He hadn’t seen Bethany all day, and he’d been looking.

“I don’t know.”

No one said a word for the rest of the ride. Jimmy detoured down a road for a shortcut, across a fire path in a field, and pulled the horse to a stop at the back of the garden, behind a fence. He jumped out of the buggy, tied the reins to a tree, and helped Mim down. The boys raced around the fence corner. Then they stopped abruptly, stunned. Jimmy, Hank, and Mim joined the boys; the five of them stared at the gardens with blank expressions.

Here was Naomi’s warning.

It looked like cattle had stampeded through, trampling the new and carefully tended plots. Plants were smashed, dirt was scattered, leaves and blossoms lay in clumps, gravel from the pathways was churned up. Some of the wooden boards that held the plots were smashed into splinters.

They were ruined.

Rage rose in Jimmy as he strode through the gardens. Nearly every plot had been damaged, but it was capricious, like a tornado. Some gardens had been trampled and yanked up badly. Others had only sustained wounds. A handful of others had taken a hit, with broken plants, footsteps in the middle. He started counting. Two very badly damaged plots. One of them was the Grange Hall’s kitchen plot. That was better, he felt, than if it had belonged to a needy family or the Group Home. He picked up a stake, shoved the support in the ground, tenderly knelt and propped up a listing tomato cage. Within, the tomato plant had a few broken arms which Jimmy pinched off, but its main stem was intact. It would survive.

The wanton destruction trailed off toward the far end of the gardens, as if the vandals had been chased away. Or interrupted.

He heard a slight moan and turned around to see Bethany, standing with her fist clenched against her mouth. He walked up to her. “This is unbelievable,” she said.

“Mim said you and Geena were driving by when you saw that the gardens had been wrecked. Did you see anyone?”

She pointed to the back of the garden. “In the shadows back there, I saw some figures moving. Two, maybe three people. When Geena pulled over, they ran off.” Something fierce crossed her face. “How could anyone do such a thing? Why? This is food! They’re gardens. They’re only meant to help people.”

He looked around the plots, teeth clenched together. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Then he turned to face Bethany. “But we’re not going to let them think they’ve taken something away.” He peered at the sky. “It might rain soon, but until it does, we’re going to start fixing things.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

Mim had been standing nearby, listening to their conversation. “I’ll go to the Sisters’ House and let them know.” She took off running.

“WAIT FOR ME, MIM!” Hank called. “I’ll use their phone to start the Amish telegraph.” Mim waited for him to catch up and the two hurried off together to the Sisters’ House.

“Jimmy,” Bethany said, “who is capable of this kind of violence?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he called, walking backward toward the Grange Hall to get tools from the shed. “What matters is that the garden keeps growing.”

Soon the word spread and church members started to arrive. Everyone surveyed the damage, faces masked with shock and sadness. “Why would anyone do such a thing?” Amos Lapp asked, lifting a smashed zucchini plant. He tried to brace the broken boards of a raised bed, but they kept falling over again.

“I have no idea,” Bethany said. She must have said it over and over. She still couldn’t believe what had transpired here today.

A few girls from the Group Home drifted over and Geena set them to cleanup tasks. Bethany admired how easily Geena related to those girls. Bethany avoided them, was intimidated by them, but Geena always went right up and drew them into conversation.

Sammy stood by the garden plot Bethany had planted for the sisters’ soup kitchen. He was peering at his pea shoots, which had been twining up a trellis he had made out of stakes, and made a roaring noise. “Someone wrecked my peas!” he cried, hurt crumpling his face, and Bethany wrapped her arm around his shoulder.

“No, Sammy, look,” she said, bending down to examine the plants. “Some of the pea vines are broken, but not all. They’ll keep growing. Peas are hardy things.” She spied some stakes and reached out to grab them and put them back in the ground. “I think if you leave those peas alone, they’ll survive.”

Luke ran over to see the plot, a scowl pulling at his face. He jammed his fists on his hips and jutted out his chin. He whipped his head around to Bethany, his eyes flaring brightly. “Until they do it again.” He stomped off down the garden path.

Sammy’s mouth trembled. “What if it happens again?”

Gently she brushed the hair out of Sammy’s eyes. She hardly had to reach down to do so anymore, he was getting that big. He would be nine years old come fall. Before long, he’d be growing past her, like Luke already was. “There’s no point in worrying about what-ifs. Let’s see what can be salvaged.”

Kneeling, she plucked leaves from an eggplant and removed a crumpled stem of a sunflower. The carrots and potatoes and onions and garlic would be fine, tucked deep under the earth. A swath of corn shoots was crushed. She tried to appear calm, for Sammy’s sake, but as she tossed the ruined plants aside, she saw that her hands were shaking.

Jimmy walked over to where she and Sammy were working. “Sammy, Amos Lapp brought some flats of mixed bedding plants from his greenhouse to help replace those that had been lost. Run over and see if there are some plants he’ll let you have.” As Sammy ran over to Amos’s wagon, Jimmy examined the two boards of the raised bed. He pulled out some nails from his pocket and hammered the corners together. “That’ll hold for now. I’ll get corner latches on it tomorrow.”

Bethany still couldn’t imagine who would have done this. She glanced over at the Group Home and saw Rusty and her friends on the porch, watching others clean up the gardens. Maybe she could imagine whom. But why? What could cause those girls—Rusty, if she were honest—to commit such a reckless act? “What would make her do something like this?”

Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “Why’d you say that? Why’d you say ‘her’?”

Bethany didn’t know for sure that Rusty had done it. If so, she certainly would have needed help from her friends, but that wouldn’t have been too difficult. Rusty said jump and they asked how high. “Just a hunch.”

“Well, you might be on to something.” He glanced over at Rusty. “The only plot that wasn’t damaged was the Group Home’s.”

“We were just trying to do something for the community, to make things a little bit nicer.” She wiped at some dirt on her cheeks. “People think they can do anything to us because we won’t fight back.”

“I know,” Jimmy said quietly, not looking away. “But we shouldn’t stop trying to do good. Things are damaged, but most of it is fixable.”

Geena walked up to them. “Whoever did all this has been damaged too, or they wouldn’t choose to do this kind of destruction.”

“Well, we probably can’t fix them, but let’s see what we can do about this garden.” Jimmy reached down and picked up his hammer and extra nails. “Where’ve you been all day, anyhow?”

Bethany stilled and her eyes pricked with tears. She glanced at Geena for help.

“Taking care of some old business,” Geena volunteered. “Jimmy, you’re absolutely right. Let’s see what we can do about this garden.”