Christmas at Rose Hill Farm (16 page)

“A box?” Bess said, confused. “Did Charlie Oakley forget a box?” Understanding dawned on her. “You knew! You put it there! While I was making the phone call to Caleb Zook at the Sweet Tooth Bakery . . . you hid this box!”

“Nonsense. Charlie Oakley forgot it. He was in such a blamed hurry to get to Lancaster by five o'clock to collect his money. No wonder he practically ran us down.” She pointed the beam of the flashlight at the box. “Go on.”

“Me?” Bess's voice came out in a squeak.
Of course, me.
She carefully made her way down the ditch toward the tree on the other side. She picked up the box and climbed back to where her grandmother sat in the buggy.

“Mammi, isn't it stealing?” Bess said as she set the box on the floor of the buggy.

Mammi was dumbfounded. “Charlie Oakley's done the stealing. We're putting things back where they belong.”

They'd barely gotten back home and Frieda in her stall when Mammi pulled out her flower books and started to hunt for rare roses. “What kind of rose is it?” Bess asked.

“It looks like the rose my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother brought over from the Old Country, her most treasured possession, and planted in the side yard—until it went missing. I trimmed it a few weeks ago. I was so busy tending Samuel that I didn't notice until yesterday.”

“Was it a special rose?”

“Very.” She fingered her chins thoughtfully. “The most special one of all.”

Bess yawned. “I've got the wearies.” Mammi was muttering away about the rose—so absorbed that she hardly noticed Bess was heading to bed. At the bottom of the stairwell, she turned to say good night, smiling at the details about the rose that Mammi was listing aloud—almost like ingredients to bake a cake. “Good night.”

Mammi waved her away. “Don't interrupt my strain of thought.”

“Train,” Bess corrected, but Mammi wasn't listening. While it might have been true that her grandmother didn't need much coddling in her new widowhood, it was the first time she had seen a bounce in her step since her grandfather's funeral.

———

As Bess told Billy the story, he listened, amazed. He rubbed his jaw, looking at the rose. “Do you think this could be the rose she was talking about? The most special rose of all?”

“I don't know for sure. I really don't.”

“Don't you remember what she called it? What class it might belong to? Or anything about the bloom? Single or double petals? Any clue to help identify the rose. Any clue at all.”

Bess shook her head. “Billy, I was only twelve and I didn't love roses yet. That didn't happen until the summer I was fifteen.”

He remembered. “What about the color of the bloom?”

She bit her lip and he had trouble keeping his eyes from wandering there. “I'm pretty sure the rose wasn't in bloom. It looked pretty sickly.”

“Okay, okay—that actually helps.” He pressed his fingertips together. “Let's see—this was late October. That means it probably wouldn't have been a repeat blooming bush, which means it isn't a modern rose. So that definitely rules out the China roses.” He loved this. Loved it. Rose rustling was like detective work—tracking clues, narrowing down the field, creating a hypothesis, drawing a conclusion. “Didn't Bertha keep any records?”

“No.” Bess tapped her head. “She kept her rose knowledge up here.”

Billy bit on his bottom lip. “But she did like to talk about roses. Bess—she
must
have talked about it. Think, Bess, think. Try to remember anything she might have said.”

Bess squeezed her eyes shut and didn't say a word for a long moment. “Deep pink. Bold fragrance. Medium, full, small clusters, button-eye, cupped bloom form.” She bit her lip, concentrating deeply. “And light green foliage.” Her eyes popped open in surprise. “I remember! Mammi was at the kitchen table, the rosebush was next to her, and she listed aloud its characteristics as she went through her book, repeating them over and over to herself. I thought she was sun touched.”

He grabbed a pen and piece of paper and scribbled down Bess's list. “Now we're getting somewhere.” A grin lifted the corners of his lips. “I haven't thought about Charlie Oakley in years. I can just picture a standoff between Bertha and Charlie Oakley. I'll bet my last dollar your grandmother had it all planned out to force his truck into the ditch. She was something else, that Bertha Riehl.”

“She was . . . one of a kind.”

Billy lifted his head and their eyes met. His were bemused, hers relieved. A smile began tugging at one corner of his mouth, a smile as slow as molasses. He chuckled. Inside him the laughter built until it erupted, and Bess started to giggle, then she joined him. They stood in the greenhouse laughing together for the first time. When it ended, a subtle change had transpired.

He wanted to reach out and touch her cheek, to see if her skin was as soft as it looked, velvety as a rose petal and warmed from the sun shining through the greenhouse. Bess had asked him if it would be so terrible to admit he still cared for her. Would it? He studied her, finding it so hard to let loose.

He wondered if her insides were stirring like his. He might
not have known had she not at that very moment dropped her gaze and fussily checked the hair at the back of her neck. He leaned closer to her, his senses swirling with her nearness.

Just then a horse and buggy appeared at the top of the driveway and came to a stop at the rise.

“Well,” she said at last, the single word coming out on a soft gust of breath.

“I'd better get back to work,” he said, ending the moment of closeness.

From the greenhouse window, they saw someone step out of the buggy and Bess gasped.

Amos Lapp had arrived.

B
ess flew out of the greenhouse and ran to the buggy, hoping Amos wouldn't have noticed which direction she came from, but he had. Even before she reached him, her heart hurt. He stood by the buggy, his sad face turning pink as he self-consciously shuffled his feet. His eyes looked a little to the side, not right at hers.

Bess could almost reach out and touch the gulf between them. She willed herself to stay calm, clear the sticky cloud of confusion out of her voice. “Amos, I wasn't expecting you today. But . . . I'm glad you came.” She realized she was still holding the fading Popcorn rose bloom and handed it to him. “It's a new cultivar. Bred in 1973. A miniature.” He took it in his hands and looked at it thoughtfully.

Silence fell again, strained, before she thought to offer, “Lainey made some fresh gingerbread if you'd like to come inside.”

“No, thank you. I just needed to see you. To talk to you for a moment.” Their eyes met and she was surprised at finding them so different from Billy's. Amos's brown eyes were mild, calm, Billy's stormy blue, so like their temperaments.

Despite the knife-cold wind, a trickle of perspiration coursed down her spine, reminding her of the importance of this conver
sation. Amos only stared at Bess, not moving a muscle. When he finally spoke, his voice was guttural with emotion. “Bess, we made a promise to each other, you and I. Promises are meant to be kept.”

“I know, Amos,” she reassured him. “I know that.” She saw his Adam's apple move in his throat.

Their eyes met briefly. “I'm worried that I'm losing you.”

A thorn seemed to pierce her heart. “I just need a little more time,” she said.

“That's all?”

“That's all,” she repeated. She reached out for his hand. He grasped it like a lifeline and squeezed so hard, her knuckles cracked softly.

A poignant silence fell. She felt herself on the verge of tears and her gaze dropped to his chest. He lifted her chin with a finger.

“Aw, Bess, honey . . .” He wrapped her close and rocked her.

He released her and leaned back, holding her elbows with his hands. “Maggie wants us to meet her at Blue Lake Pond to go ice skating this afternoon. I was hoping you'd say yes and come along with us.”

“Oh, I'd like to, but—” Her eyes darted automatically to the greenhouse and instantly she regretted it. A sense of impending ache, gone for a brief moment, returned to settle between them.

He swallowed and stared at the greenhouse. “Why did he have to come back?” Amos said thickly, reaching out to hold Bess so tightly it seemed he would squeeze the breath from her.

“Amos, what are you saying?” she cried, struggling out of his arms. “He's . . . he was a friend you loved. Your cousin. Are you saying you wish he were lost to us?”

“I didn't mean I wanted him lost, Bess . . . not lost.” With
a horrified expression, Amos leaned against the buggy and dropped his face into his hands. “What am I saying?” he groaned miserably, shaking his head.

Studying him, Bess, too, suffered. She understood the conflict of emotions that battled inside of Amos. She felt the same conflicts. She cared for them both, each in a different way and for different reasons, yet enough to want to hurt neither.

“The rose will open soon, Amos. Then everything will go back the way it was.”

He reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand. “Of course. Of course it will.” His voice still hinted of skepticism. A small bird darted past them and his gaze followed it up to a tree. “An evening grosbeak.” He turned back to Bess with a quizzical look on his face. “Do you like birds? I've never asked.”

“I like them well enough, I suppose. I like them best when they eat aphids off the roses. I like them least when they take their job too seriously and peck right through the buds.”

He tilted his head as if he were considering her answer. Then, without another word, he climbed back in the buggy. After he drove off, she noticed he had dropped the white Popcorn bloom she had given to him on the driveway.

And she thought of how differently he viewed the roses than Billy had.

Slowly, Bess turned and walked to the farmhouse. Lainey stood by the kitchen sink, grating carrots for coleslaw. Bess slumped down at the kitchen table and put her head on her arms; the tears she'd held at bay since morning came gushing with a vengeance. A moment later, Lainey's consoling arms were wrapped around her.

“Why, Bess, is this about the wedding? I saw Amos come and go so quickly. Did he say something to upset you?”

“Oh, Lainey,” she wailed.

“Shh . . . shh . . . it can't be as bad as all that.”

“It is.” Bess reached for a paper napkin from the pile in the center of the table. “It's j-just awful.”

Lainey drew back to see Bess's face. “What could be so awful? I can't help you if you won't tell me.”

“I . . . l-love him.”

Lainey barely bit back a smile. “What's so awful about that? I would think Amos would be happy to know that.”

“Not Amos.” Bess shook her head, tears splattering. “B-B-Billy.”

“Ah. I see.” Lainey blew out a puff of air. “I was afraid of that.” A new rash of weeping wilted Bess. Lainey rubbed her shuddering back. “Does Amos know?”

Bess nodded wretchedly. “I think so.”

“Poor Amos.”

“He still wants to set a new date. He said that promises are meant to be kept.”

“That's true, but you haven't actually made a promise yet. Have you spoken to Billy about your feelings?”

“Yes. Sort of. I tried to, anyway.”

“Well, that took some courage. What did he say?”

“He said no. Absolutely not. ‘Never going to happen' were his exact words. And he wouldn't tell me why.”

Lainey frowned. “That boy is just as stubborn as his father.”

“Don't tell him that. He wants nothing to do with his family. Or with the Amish. Or with me.”

“Poor Billy. Poor Bess. Poor Amos.” Lainey handed another paper napkin to Bess. A pile of scrunched-up napkins sat on the table. “So what do you want to do?”

“I want to keep everyone from getting hurt,” Bess said miserably.

“I don't think that's possible, little one.”

Lainey's eyes lifted to the window and Bess followed her gaze. Billy was striding past the barn from the greenhouse and
paused for a moment, looking up at the farmhouse as if he considered coming in. He wavered, right on the brink. Then he dropped his head, tucked his hands in his coat pockets, and hurried down the hill.

The bleak gray sky seemed the perfect accompaniment for Amos's morose mood. He guided the horse over to Blue Lake Pond, not because he really wanted to go ice skating, but because Maggie had said she would wait for him. She was still sneaking around during the day, postponing the inevitable: telling her father she'd been fired from the Sweet Tooth Bakery until after he had hired another teacher. Amos spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to think up a solution to Maggie's problem, until it occurred to him that it wasn't
his
problem.

He steered the horse down a road he seldom used, a familiar shortcut to get to the pond. Far off in the distance, he spied the rooftop of Billy's childhood home.

Billy Lapp seemed to be everywhere.

The days turned back and Amos was a boy again, a time when Billy's mother was still alive, and Amos had felt comfortable slamming in and out of their house at Billy's heels. He was fishing with Billy, presenting his mother with a fresh catch, staying for supper when she'd cooked it. Playing tricks on Billy's brothers to quietly get back at them for bullying Billy: greasing horse reins with Vaseline, adding weights inside of hay bales, putting mice in their tack boxes, loosening screws on their bedroom door handles so they would get locked in.

How many times had he and Billy run along this road to swim in the pond on a hot summer day? He pictured the two of them as they'd been then, but immediately Bess's face alone emblazoned itself upon his memory. He moved onto the turn
off for Blue Lake Pond, wondering what Bess was doing at this very moment.

“Amos! Amos Lapp!”

He snapped out of his funk to see Maggie Zook waving to him near a row of buggies. She had saved a prime parking spot for his horse and buggy, and the sight of her frantically waving to him made him grin, then chuckle. He pulled the horse to a stop, grabbed his skates from the seat of the buggy, tied the horse's reins to a tree, and joined Maggie to walk down to the pond. In the cold her cheeks were bright red, her eyes snapping brown. She pointed to a bird preening on an icy branch. “Is that a white-winged crossbill?” she asked in a reverent voice.

“I think it is.” They stilled for a moment, until it flew off.

Her arm brushed against his as they walked along the narrow path. Face warming at this familiarity, he stole a look at Maggie. Lately he felt a bit odd alone with her, as if their old camaraderie was slipping away and turning them in a new direction.

They sat down on a big log to put on their skates. She finished first and stood on wobbly legs, carefully picking her way down the shore to join other skaters as they skimmed across the ice. Leaning back on the log after lacing up his skates, Amos took off his hat and ran a hand through his unkempt hair. He sighed, wishing Bess had agreed to come skating, wondering if she was going to spend the afternoon in the greenhouse with Billy. He knew this outing was intended to get his mind away from his troubles, but his troubles kept finding him.

Maggie whirled around in her usual fashion, reminding Amos again of the erratic flight of a hummingbird—darting this way and that with such abrupt turns that it seemed she wasn't done with one turn before heading for the next. He watched her in amazement.

Unexpectedly, Amos felt his spirits rise as he skated after Maggie, hands behind his back. She began to skate away from him, circling and doing a little twirl. He sailed past her, then turned to face her, skating backward.

She slid to a stop and clapped with happiness. “Teach me how to do that!” she called, her breath curling in the icy air.

Clasping her mittened hands, he tugged her toward the center of the pond where the ice was smoother.

“Push with your calf muscles,” he instructed her. “Let your legs take you backwards.”

The lake's surface was slick in places and she nearly fell, but Amos was always near, steadying her, until she got a sense of the movement required to skate backward. They skated until their feet grew numb with cold.

He pointed to the bonfire on the shore, where skaters were warming themselves. “Let's go.”

They drank hot chocolate from a thermos Maggie had brought along and ate a few Christmas cookies she had baked. The gray cloud cover from earlier in the day had broken up and moved on, swept away by a brisk wind from the north. Maggie's gaze was on the wispy white clouds.

“Mares' tails, my dad calls them, as they gallop across a delft-blue sky.” She looked at him square in the eyes. “Do you ever wish you could jump on a cloud and skim across the sky, the way we skated on the pond?”

He actually had such a thought now and then, but would never have dreamed of saying so for fear of sounding silly. “Maybe,” he admitted, ill at ease with her sitting so close.

Maggie pointed out clouds that resembled, in her vivid imagination, people in their church—one with a big watermelon belly like the new minister, another with a pointy chin like Sylvia Glick, three soft puffy ones who reminded her of her ancient great-aunts, who considered themselves first-rate matchmakers.
He laughed out loud at that. Bachelors were known to slip out windows and hide under beds when Maggie's old aunties arrived at the door, bearing a long list of eligible girls.

Time seemed to stand still, easing the soreness he felt over Bess just a bit.