A Heart Made New (35 page)

Before David could answer, a booming knock sounded at the front door.

“Get that, Miriam, will you? I’m in no condition to greet more company.” Emma wiped at her face with a hankie. She chuckled some more. “I needed a good laugh. Thank you, David.”

“Glad to be of service.”

A bemused look on her face, Miriam opened the door. “Oh. It’s you.”

“Miriam, is that any way to greet a guest?” Emma set her sewing basket aside and stood. “Who is it?”

Miriam backed away from the door. Josiah strode past her. He didn’t look any happier than she did. “I didn’t know you had company.” His dark gaze flitted from David to Miriam. “A lot of company.”

Josiah caught Miriam’s light scent as he brushed past her. Like vanilla, only sweeter. He wanted to capture that smell and put it in his pocket for later, when he would pace the floor wondering why he couldn’t make one person happy. He concentrated on Emma. This visit was about his sister.

“How are you, schweschder?” Josiah allowed himself a quick hug. His family was more demonstrative than most, maybe because of the losses they’d suffered. “Feeling better?”

“Much better.” The dark circles around her eyes and wan face belied her answer. “Don’t tell me Luke sent you to check on me?”

“Annie, actually. She knew I had to pick up a part and take it to Luke at our place.” He glanced at Miriam and away. “But I need to get back to the shop.”

“Ach.”
One syllable from Miriam. Josiah glanced at her again. She folded her arms and tapped one bare foot on the wooden floor. “Your sister also suggested I pay a visit this afternoon. I had to beg my daed to let me take the afternoon off.”

“Matchmaker, matchmaker.” Emma actually laughed again. “She’s getting good at it.”

“If it makes you feel better, it’s worth it.” Miriam flew across the room and put an arm around Emma. “It’s good to see you smile. Isn’t that right, Josiah?”

His blood still boiling over Annie’s little plan, Josiah managed to nod.

“
Gut
. Miriam, take Josiah out to the kitchen and give him a piece of that pie you made.” Emma patted his shoulder. “Did you know Miriam makes a good pie?”

He assumed she did. Most Plain women were good in the kitchen. They started learning young enough. Nothing special there. Not bothering to fight it, he followed Miriam into the kitchen where the twins, Rebecca, and little Kinsey Navarro appeared to either be making a big mess or cleaning it up. He couldn’t tell which. The aroma of baking pastry made his mouth water. It reminded him of his own mudder. She had taught Annie to bake and would’ve taught Mary and Lillie, had she lived long enough.

“Are you all right?” Miriam tilted her head, her expression concerned. “You look so sad.”

“I’m fine.”

“Have a seat. There’s tea and lemonade and lots of pie. Don’t be mad at Annie.”

“I just don’t like my sister meddling.” He sounded like a jerk. He couldn’t help it. “Annie should mind her own business.”

“She is. She considers you her business.” Miriam motioned to a chair at the table. “I’ll cut you a slice of cherry pie. You’re Annie’s brother. She loves you. I’m her best friend. She loves me. She wants…” Her cheeks turned pink and her voice trailed away. “She thinks she can make everything better.” Given her problems with David, she should know that wasn’t always possible.

“She’s not in control.”

“She knows God is in control.” Miriam set a plate of steaming cherry pie in front of him. “Sorry, there’s no ice cream. Annie has faith in people. She believes in good.”

“Enough for a dozen people.” On that they could agree. He needed some of Annie’s single-minded faith. As he picked up his fork, he glanced at the girls. They were busy washing dishes or splashing the sudsy water on the floor. “Things are so black and white for her. Not for me. I’m trying, Miriam, I am—”

“This isn’t the place for this. Little pitchers have big ears.” Miriam cocked her head toward the girls. She sighed. “I know you very well. You don’t have to explain.”

She didn’t know him that well. She didn’t know how caught he felt,
one boot in each world. One wrong step and he lost everything. He’d almost done that before, but he’d managed to crawl away from the precipice. He had this sneaking suspicion he liked it out there on the ledge. Here in Bliss Creek it was so safe, so secure. So monotonous. “I don’t want to make a mistake again. You know—”

Mary knocked a glass from the counter in her haste to grab another pan to dry. Miriam dove for it and managed to make the catch before it hit the floor. “Slow down.”

“We want to show Kinsey the new baby kittens. There are five of them.” Mary waved her towel around so hard another glass was in danger. “They’re black and white and some are all black and some are all white.”

“Work first.” Miriam gently turned her back to the drain. “Finish up. It looks like a tornado went through here. You cook, you eat, you clean.”

She was good with children. She would make a good mother. Josiah shoved a bite of pie in his mouth before he said something he shouldn’t. The tart cherry mingled with sweet, sugary syrup. Like life. Every new, fragile moment framed in bitter sweetness.

Smiling, Miriam turned to Kinsey. “You too. No exceptions for visitors.”

Kinsey saluted with her towel. “Yes ma’am.” She picked up a bowl from the drain. Her gaze traveled from Miriam to Josiah. “You’re David’s friend. Is Miriam your girlfriend?”

Josiah opened his mouth and shut it. Miriam’s cheeks went from pink to cherry red. “That’s another one of those questions little girls and boys aren’t supposed to ask.”

“Like whether someone is dying?” Kinsey frowned as she wiped at the bowl. “That’s pretty stupid. I mean boyfriends aren’t forever. Dead is forever.”

“Unless you marry the boyfriend,” Rebecca pointed out. She had a blob of suds on her nose. “Husbands are forever.”

“Not always. I saw something on TV…” Kinsey swayed. “I don’t feel…”

The bowl slipped from her fingers and sailed toward the floor. The sound of shattering glass followed. Kinsey took two tottering steps and then collapsed in a heap, her small body sprawled on the wood floor like a rag doll, skinny arms and legs askew.

“Kinsey?” Miriam dropped to her knees and touched the girl’s cheek. Her fingers traveled to her neck. “She’s fainted. We need to get her to the clinic.”

“David!” Josiah squatted next to her. Rebecca and the twins hovered behind him, their tearful questions loud in his ears. “David, get in here!”

D
avid whirled and leaned his back into the emergency room doors. Kinsey flopped in his arms, her slight body dead weight. No, not dead. Just unconscious, he told himself. Her dress flapping around her ankles, Miriam dashed ahead of him. “Help! We need help,” she called out, her voice high and breathless. “Someone, please.”

A nurse David didn’t recognize among the many he’d met in the last year trotted between the rows of chairs. “Triage is that way.” She pointed toward a second set of double doors. She stopped, her chubby face creased in a sudden frown. “Oh. It’s little Kinsey again. Best bring her into an examining room.”

Ignoring the aggravated looks of the half-dozen people sitting in the waiting area, David plowed ahead.
God, please.
She couldn’t go yet. Not without Willow and her Grammy at her side. “She collapsed. One minute she was fine, then she was on the floor. She ate a piece of pie and that was it.”

The nurse picked up her pace, surprisingly swift on stubby legs. David struggled to keep up. She glanced back. “Where is Ms. Navarro? And Violet?”

“Josiah…my friend went to get them.” David panted. “He’s on horseback so it will take a little longer.”

The buggy ride had seemed endless. One of those times when
David longed for a phone to call an ambulance or a car. A fast car. Glad the bishop couldn’t read his thoughts, David laid Kinsey on the bed in the tiny examining room. She didn’t stir. Her face was as white as the sheet underneath her.

The nurse picked up a phone attached to the wall, spoke into it, then slapped the receiver into its cradle. “Doctor Burton is on his way.” She grasped Kinsey’s wrist and then looked at the watch on her own arm. After a minute, she wrote something on a clipboard and then picked up a stethoscope. “What’s your name?”

David backed away until he was up against the far wall. He’d never imagined he’d be in the room at this moment. “Is she…is she going to make it?”

“Sir, who are you?”

After a second Miriam answered the question for him.

“What happened?”

“We were making pie.” Miriam’s voice trembled. “I told her to help wash the dishes. I never thought…”

“Oh, honey, don’t worry about it. This sweetie may look like a little princess, but she’s tough as old leather.” The nurse patted Kinsey’s pie-stained T-shirt. “Now go on, y’all shoo. Have a seat in the waiting room. When her family gets here, send them on back.”

Together they trudged back to the waiting room. All his energy gone, David focused on picking up his feet and setting them down.
Step. Step. Step.

“You look like you may need a doctor too.” Miriam settled into a chair next to him. “You’re green.”

“Blue.” It came out automatically.

A faint smile appeared. “At least you still—”

Willow burst through the door and sprinted across the room. “Where is she?”

David stood and pointed. “She’s that way.”

Willow didn’t slow. A second later she disappeared from sight.

Josiah slipped through the doors, one hand on Violet Hawkins’s arm. She had tears on her wrinkled cheeks. “Is she…is she still with us?”

David nodded.

“Thank God.”

She went on alone, leaving Josiah standing in the middle of the aisle.

David went to him. “You made it.”

He nodded.

“What did they say?”

Josiah sank into a chair next to Miriam and exhaled loudly. “They were upset.”

“I know that.”

“Her mother said she should never have let you take her from the hospital again.”

David sat. “She’s right.”

“No.” Josiah and Miriam spoke at the same time. To David’s surprise, Josiah gripped her hand for a second. Her face turned a pretty pink color. “No.”

Miriam tugged her hand gently from Josiah’s and folded them in her lap as if she were praying. “She was happy. She was having fun. She liked it at Emma’s house. It was good for her.”

Kinsey happy. Kinsey having fun. David held on to that image. It might be the last one he had of her.

They sat silently then. Josiah and Miriam huddled closer than he’d ever seen them before. It helped his heart to settle. Hope for them in the midst of the hardships of others helped him to find a balance again. The moments dragged by. In each passing second he waited, sure someone would appear to say she’d left them.

Miriam closed her eyes and napped. When her head lolled against Josiah’s shoulder she awoke with a start, her face pink all over again. Josiah bought them coffees from a machine. It tasted like oil. Finally, after an hour, Violet Hawkins returned. She stepped more lightly now than she had before. David tried to read her lined, exhausted face. One part resignation, one part relief, one part hope. “She’s conscious and they’ve stabilized her, but her white blood count is way up and her blood pressure is way down.” She twisted the strap of her big purse with both hands. “They’re going to admit her.”

“
Gut
. That’s
gut
.” David had to clear his throat again. It hurt. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. The child is sick. We all knew the danger of letting her roam the countryside.” Her voice broke. “We also know the danger of letting her waste away here, losing her will to live.”

“We’ll go then.”

“No, no, she’s asking for you.” Violet’s watery smile only lasted a second or two. “First thing, when she opened her eyes.”

Sucking in a breath, David squared his shoulders and followed Violet into the exam room. Willow turned a tear-stained face toward him, but didn’t speak.

David leaned over the bed, letting his total focus be on Kinsey and not the emotions swirling around her family. She raised a hand and grabbed his index finger. “I liked making pie,” she whispered, her voice so soft he could barely hear. He leaned closer. “I told my mom not to be mad I made pie today.”