Love Redeemed (12 page)

He risked a quick sideways glance. Emotion carved lines in his daed's face. “Strong in the knowledge. Glad might be a bit much to ask right now. Give them time, son. It'll take time to heal their wounds.”
He snapped the reins hard and the buggy jolted forward, as if he were in a hurry to get home. Or to end this conversation. “It'll take time for yours as well.”

An acknowledgment that his father knew he suffered.

“You'll learn from this. It'll make you a better man. A better husband and father.”

Knowing the depth of his own pain—like a gaping wound in his chest where his heart had been—Michael couldn't conceive of a time when Silas and Katie would be healed of their wounds. Or he of his. The time might never come. They might never truly forgive, as often as they said the words. He understood this. It didn't seem possible he would ever forgive himself.

He raised his face to the rain-swollen sky. The wind picked up and carried fat rain drops into the buggy, cooling his face. Still, it burned. He would have no chance to be husband and father. He would have no place in the lives of the Christners—in Phoebe's life—until the family could look at him and not ache with this awful loss. Everything he'd dreamed of and hoped for had been lost in the minutes that it took a little girl to lose herself in the trees.

It seemed only just.

Lydia lost her life. He lost his.

And God?

The God who hadn't answered his prayers for Lydia's safe return. Did that God forgive him? Or was this his punishment?

Was God gone from his life too?

The buggy had long since disappeared from sight. Phoebe stared at nothing. With a start, she let the curtain drop and sank to the floor, turning so she could lean her back on the wall. Outside the wind picked up and whistled through the eaves of her room. The sound formed words that echoed in her head.

Be good. Be good. Be good.

The curtain rose and fell as if touched by an unseen hand. Her head
lolled to one side, too heavy for her to hold up. She should put on her nightgown and get in bed. But the thought of the material lying on her skin unnerved her. It would be too much, too heavy, like the night air, like the curtain under her fingers, like her head. She inhaled the scent of the room she'd slept in her entire life. It smelled of dust and her own sweat. Nothing about it seemed familiar. The corners were dark and empty. As if no one lived there anymore.

Why had Michael come to the house and not spoken with her? He couldn't face her? He couldn't bear to look at the face of a girl who'd led him down the path of temptation to a place from which neither could return?

Be good. Be good. Be good.

Wanting to escape the thoughts that tormented her from the time she awoke to the time she slept—and even then as she dreamed in fits and starts—she crawled onto the bed and closed her eyes. Lydia's face swam in front of her. Giggling. Then scared and lost and lonely. Falling. Struggling to breathe. Then floating, floating, motionless.

Phoebe jerked her eyes open. She stared at the ceiling in the gathering dusk. The shadows crowded her. She rolled over and curled up into a ball, clutching a pillow to her chest. She wanted her mudder. Like a child. But she couldn't ask Mudder for comfort. She, who had caused this pain for Mudder and Daed, couldn't turn to them. They would look at her the way they'd been looking at her for the last two days. Like they were seeing someone they didn't recognize. A stranger they'd invited into their home, only to have that person abuse their hospitality. More than that, steal from them. Steal their serenity and security and peace.

She hugged the pillow to her face to stifle the sobs. The sound of footsteps in the hallway brought her upright. Mudder had come to check on her? She dragged her sleeve across her face to erase the tears and smoothed her kapp. A door opened. Not her door.

Hannah.

Swallowing her tears, Phoebe bolted from the bed and tugged open her own door. Hannah stood in the hallway, poised to enter her bedroom. She looked up at Phoebe. Her vacant expression didn't change.

“Hannah, are you all right?”

No response. Phoebe slipped closer. Hannah backed up. As if she were afraid. Afraid of Phoebe.

“Hannah, I'm so sorry. I know I keep saying that, but you never answer me. I should never have left you. It's all my fault.” She gripped her hands in front of her to keep from reaching for her sister. Hannah would bolt as she had done the last time Phoebe attempted to talk to her. “I'm truly sorry. Please forgive me.”

Hannah blinked. She stepped back into the room she shared with Lydia—had shared with Lydia—and Sarah. Without a word she shut the door, making no sound.

Phoebe stood in the hallway for a long moment, hands dangling at her sides. No sounds came from the other side of the door. Suddenly chilled to the bone despite the stifling heat, she scurried back into her room, shut the door, and lunged onto her bed where she pulled the quilt up to her chin. She couldn't stop shivering.

Gott, Gott, where are you?

Was what she had done so terrible that even God had forsaken her?

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

She laid there for what seemed like hours, staring at the ceiling, begging for an answer. The farewells of people leaving drifted through her open window. Luke's voice, deep, Leah's higher. Thomas and Emma. Elijah and Bethel. Her brothers and their fraas. Their voices were replaced by the sound of thunder rolling and rolling until it seemed to roll right through her window. Then the rain came. Softly at first, then harder. The wind hustled drops through the window and splattered them on the chair and floor. Phoebe thought to close the window, but instead leaned out, her face lifted to the lightning-illuminated clouds. Their first rain in months. Cleansing rain. Clear, cool water. She wanted to be cleansed of her sin. Was it even possible?

What does it take to prove it to You? I'm so sorry. I'll never do anything like this again. I'll be good. I promise I'll be good.

She darted across the room and opened the cedar chest at the foot of her bed. She scooped up the cell phone and the fake pearl necklace she'd bought at the discount store in town. She dropped them
both into her apron, along with an iPod and two country music CDs she and Rachel and Daniel played when they rode in Dylan's car. She wrapped her apron around them and slipped through the door. At the top of the staircase, she paused. Everyone except Mudder had gone to bed. Mudder sat in the rocking chair, little Sarah in her lap, rocking.

She looked up when Phoebe arrived at the bottom of the stairs and started toward the door. “Where are you going?”

She didn't sound truly interested, more as if she felt obligated to ask.

“To get a breath of fresh air.”

“It's raining.”

“I know. The first rain in months. I only want—”

“Go.”

It almost sounded like a command. Go. And never come back? “Mudder?”

“Get a breath of fresh air on the porch. It'll be good for you.”

Phoebe scurried out the door before Mudder changed her mind. She had no intention of staying on the porch. She ducked her head against the driving rain and scurried, slipping and sliding in the mud, past the corral, past the barn, and into the trees. The branches dipped and shimmied in the rain. The lightning lit up the sky, creating huge tangles of shadows that danced in unison. The rain pelted her face. Her prayer kapp came loose and slid down her back, taking her bun with it.

Gott, are You here?

Lightning crackled. Thunder boomed. She ducked and blocked her face with her free arm, silly as it was, as if to ward off a blow. The tree boughs dipped and the branches danced around her, leaves brushing her hair and her face. She stumbled deeper into the stand of trees until the darkness enveloped her and she could go no farther. If she did, she'd never find her way out of the black night that surrounded her.

There, in the almost continuous flare of lightning that snaked across the sky, dividing itself over and over as if multiplying, she fell to her knees under a massive oak, bending and waving in a strange, distorted dance in the wind. She let the phone and the iPod and the CDs and the necklace slide into the mud. She began to dig with her bare hands.

No more. No more. I'll be good. I promise. I'll be good.

She said the words over and over in her head as the slick mud caked her hands and coated her dress and her apron.

I'll be good. No more. No more.

When the hole was deep enough she pushed the phone, the CDs, the iPod, the necklace—the things that had soiled her life—into it and began to cover them with mud.

“I'll be good now, Gott, I'll be good,” she yelled over crashing thunder. Pounding rain battered her face, mixing with hot tears. “I'm so sorry.”

She sank back on her haunches and wiped futilely at her face with a sodden sleeve. She couldn't see beyond the blinding rain or hear more than the continuous rumble of thunder. “I'm so, so sorry.”

Nothing. Only rain and thunder and lightning. She dropped her head into her muddy hands and began to rock.

“I'll do better. I'll be good. I promise. Gott, I promise!”

Katie drew a finger along the line of Sarah's plump, round face. The baby cooed in her sleep, a contented sound. Katie inhaled the scent of baby powder and diaper ointment and dried milk. Baby smells. Like a balm for her scraped, raw soul. Everyone had gone home, leaving a quiet behind that unnerved her. In the daylight, with the house filled with their family and friends, she could stave off the remorse and the despair. Simon's fraa had made the new dress of white cotton for Lydia to wear. Martin's fraa brought a new prayer kapp. Jesse's fraa brought an enormous pot of chili. Bethel, Emma, and Josie baked loaves of bread and pies for the meals between now and the funeral. The scent filled the house, giving it all the trappings of a home where everything went on as usual.

Their friends and family filled the place up like a warm hug that went on and on, easing her sore heart. Now, they had gone home until tomorrow. Quiet descended and there was no doubt that something had changed. She feared getting up. Her sense of equilibrium eluded her. The sense that all would be well, all would be good…that had fled
as well. The secure knowledge that her children were safe, wherever they might be—she had been robbed of that. For years she'd floated from one day to the next, certain everything was as it should be in her world. Now she jumped and started at every noise, fearful of another loss. Even for her older sons, married and living on their own, she ached with a paralyzing fear.

Earlier in the day she'd wandered restlessly from room to room until Silas begged her to settle down. The worst of it hit her at dusk, knowing the day would finally end. All this was her fault. She should've reined in Phoebe's flighty ways. She had encouraged Silas to let their oldest daughter find her own way. She'd turned a blind eye to the depth and width of her running around.

It wasn't Phoebe who needed to be forgiven.

Gott, forgive me. I've not been a good mudder. I thought I was doing right, but look what happened. I turned my back for a second and look what happened.

Gott, please forgive me.

“You should've had Hannah put Sarah to bed when she went up.” Silas stood at the top of the stairs, one hand resting on the banister. He looked like his daed now, face lined, eyes hooded with fatigue, years older than he'd been only a few days ago. “Give her to me to carry and come along. You're tired.”

Katie tried to get up but her body wouldn't cooperate. She was too tired to move. Too tired to think. Too tired to mince words. “Hannah hasn't touched the baby since…” Had it only been two days? Katie couldn't remember exactly. “She hasn't held Sarah since they found Lydia.”

Silas put one foot on the stairs with a thud. His face creased as if each laborious movement took all his concentration. “She's hurting. She'll get over it.”