The Revealing (4 page)

Naomi snipped off the end of a piece of thread with her teeth. Last evening, Bethany had brought over her re-sewn quilt top and together they had spread it across the frame, over a layer of white batting and the backing to the quilt. She had promised Bethany she would help quilt it, but she was regretting that promise. It pained her to see the mismatched corners, the triangles with missing points, the crooked seams.

Naomi idly threaded a needle and bowed her head over a quilt square, making small, even stitches without the benefit of a ruler or a machine. She remembered what Tobe had said
once about her stitches: “They’re so tiny, they almost seem to disappear.”

Her thoughts wandered to their brief time together last summer, when he had finally returned home after being a nomad for over a year. They spent every minute they could snatch together after that first time, when she had chanced upon him at Blue Lake Pond, sitting on an old log. He moved over to make room for her and she sat down, but he didn’t say anything and neither did she. Somehow, she seemed to understand his need for silence. Instead, she had fixed her gaze out over the lake. It was so calm, not a ripple. A perfect summer day.

Naomi considered Blue Lake Pond to be one of the best things about living in a place like Stoney Ridge. A small town on the edge of a big natural pond. It wasn’t much of a pond, considering other lakes in Pennsylvania, but it was a very nice one by any standards, full of little creeks and inlets, shaded by tall pine trees. It froze over in winter and transformed into an ideal skating rink. On that day, a hot August afternoon, stick bugs skittered over the surface of the water, while dragonflies buzzed in lazy circles.

A cottontail came and peered at them, looking curiously from one to the other before he hopped away. They laughed at the rabbit, which broke the tension between them, and soon they found they could talk to each other easily.

“Isn’t it beautiful here?” she said. “Thinking out problems gets easier here at the lake.”

He let out a snort. “I guess it depends on the problems. The problems I have—well, there’s no one I can think them out with. Certainly not my family. And I really don’t have any friends left.”

She suddenly remembered a proverb her mother used to say: To be without friends is a serious form of poverty. “Hush.” She spoke to him as a child. “I’m your friend. I’ll listen.”

He seemed to take a long time deciding and she wondered what he was thinking. She wanted to touch his hand, to squeeze it, to encourage him to confide, but she didn’t. When he finally spoke, he refused to meet her eyes, but kept them fixed on the lake. “I just don’t know how much to reveal about Jake Hertzler and Schrock Investments. Or whom to tell.”

Once he started to talk, he was like a pent-up dam. He described his anguish over his father’s death and the burden of guilt he felt, but what could he have done to prevent it? Tears rolled down his face as details of that unforgettable day spilled out. They sat for hours as the summer afternoon light came in patches between the hickory and beech trees that surrounded the pond.

Countless questions popped into Naomi’s mind, but she held back and merely listened. She was surprised by what he confessed, and yet not at all surprised. She had always known there was more to the story of Dean Schrock’s death. When he had run out of words, Tobe asked her what he should do.

“I think,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “that you need to take responsibility for your part in it, and let God handle Jake Hertzler.”

Tobe’s eyes widened in shock.
“What?”
His lips clamped, his head came down with a snap, and he shot her a cautious side glance.

“Trust the Lord to carry out revenge, Tobe. He is a just God. He’ll do what’s right. Most likely, we won’t.”

The shadows grew longer as they sat on the log at the pond and talked. That was the day that began their dependence
on each other—for him, it was the knowledge that she was the only person who understood the pressures, the pain, and the indecision he had been living with for the last few years. And for her, she had someone who viewed her not as fragile and timid but as strong and bold and wise.

They met each afternoon on the log, but their meetings had to be conspiratorial so no one, especially Galen, was wise to their rendezvous. There wasn’t time to tell each other all the things still to tell, but by the end of the week, Tobe had agreed to speak to Allen Turner at the SEC and tell him about what had gone on, illegally and with intent, at Schrock Investments. “Almost everything,” he said.

Naomi wondered what that meant, but from his demeanor she decided that it was best left alone for now.

Night after night, Naomi lay alone in her bed remembering that day Tobe had cried and she had held him in the woods. She could remember the way his body shook and how she could hear his heart beat against her. She could bring back the smell of him, of pine soap and coffee. She could remember the way his hair had tickled her neck and how his tears had wet her cheeks. And she remembered that final evening, when he had kissed her.

She had never imagined that a kiss could be so sweet, so natural, and so very easy. When they said goodbye to each other, they both had tears running down their faces, and he told her that he felt like a fool. “I should be strong and courageous for you, Naomi, not cry like a baby.”

She smiled. “Rose says that men have tears, same as women. They just don’t know that it’s good to let them flow now and then.”

After that week, Naomi King felt like a new person. She
was able to do more than ever before. She could scarcely remember the days when a headache pinned her down and time had seemed long and hung heavily around her, waiting for it to lift. Now there weren’t enough hours in the week for all that had to be done.

But when the postman arrived and she bolted to meet him before her brother, hoping he wouldn’t notice how terribly interested she was in the mail, or when Bethany spoke of Tobe and dropped hints that she thought Naomi was sweet on him—those were the times when her stomach tightened into knots of stress and she had to chew Tums like they were M&Ms.

She sighed and wondered how much longer this was going to last. She wasn’t cut out for living a secret life. It was all wrong.

But it was so right too.

3

N
ow and then, Mim Schrock would stop by the Sisters’ House on her way home from school to help her older sister Bethany with the endless task of organizing the elderly sisters’ home. Bethany was quicker, but Mim was the one who hung about, who found excuses to have meaningless little conversations with the sisters, to try to find out more about the life they led in the white clapboard house with the lilac bushes and the tall hollyhocks that guarded the fence. It was a house filled with true stories from another time.

Her favorite sister was Ella, the eldest, who had good days in which she remembered all kinds of interesting details about her childhood and told her amusing stories about the people of Stoney Ridge, and bad days when she lived in a fog and got questions all mixed up. Last week, Mim had asked Ella if the gout in her big toe had eased up at all.

“Not bad,” Ella replied. “Though it got away after I tried to wring its neck.”

Mim tilted her head, puzzled. “Wring whose neck?”

Ella gave Mim a look as if she might be sun touched. “The chicken’s!”

The sisters didn’t have any chickens.

That was a bad day for Ella. Today, though, was a good day. Bethany had already finished organizing for the day and hurried home, but Mim stayed anyway to have a visit with Ella. She had all kinds of stories to report about the fourteenth cousin twice removed, who was soon to arrive and was, according to Ella, quite dashing and worldly and exciting. Mim often wondered if Ella had ever loved a man, if any of the five sisters had ever known the kind of love she felt for Danny Riehl.

The afternoon was cold as Mim set off for the Bent N’ Dent to pick up a few things for her mother before she went home. The March sun shone weak in a pale sky, trying to break through the gray clouds to warm the air, then it would disappear again and Mim would feel a chill. “Come on, spring, hurry up,” she whispered aloud. For a while she walked behind an Amish couple she recognized from church. The woman walked serenely at her husband’s side, nodding to those he nodded to along the road, smiling at those he smiled at, head cocked to hear his every word. Even the sun seemed to cooperate and shone down on them, scattering and dispersing the clouds left over from the morning’s storm.

That
could be me with Danny Riehl
, Mim thought with envy. And she watched until they crossed the street and disappeared down a long lane. Walking backward, still thinking about Danny Riehl, Mim tripped over something and fell hard onto her rump. The something proved itself to be the long legs of a red-haired boy of fourteen, fifteen tops, who sat with his back against a fence post, eyes closed, soaking in the sun.

The boy’s eyes popped wide open, eyes that were as round
and brown as currant buns. Mim peered up at the boy: hair orange as a carrot peeping from beneath his black felt hat; a big smile that showed more spaces than teeth, and a face beslobbered with freckles, forehead to chin, ear to ear.

The irritation, the sting of her bottom, and the red-hot scrapes on her palms loosened Mim’s tongue. “How dare you trip me!” she said as she picked herself up and brushed muck off her skirts. She gave the bow of her bonnet a straightening tug and smoothed out the now wrinkled skirt of her apron.

“I didn’t,” he said calmly, an ankle crossing a knee. “You were the one who was daydreaming and not watching where you were going.”

Mim thrust her chin into the air. “Daydreaming? You were taking a nap without even worrying to see whose way you were in.”

The boy shrugged. “I’m just passing the time, waiting for my sister,” he said, gesturing toward the Bent N’ Dent. “Enjoying the sun shining on my face.” He radiated mischief, amusement, and mockery too.

“I’ve never seen you around Stoney Ridge.”

He lunged to his feet. “My name is Jesse Stoltzfus.” He introduced himself expansively, as if his name alone should bring her pleasure. “Nor have I seen you before. A girl with eyes as gray as a raging storm cloud, cheeks like Georgia peaches, and hair as dark as a black-crowned night heron.”

Mim stared at him. She felt a blush creep up, no matter how hard she tried to stop it. She knew her face was turning the color of red raspberries. For some inexplicable reason, out of her mouth spouted something her grandmother would say: “The lowly woman and the meek woman are really above all other women, above all other things.” She had just read
that very thing in her grandmother’s favorite book next to the Bible,
A Young Woman’s Guide to Virtue
, published in 1948 and still as relevant as ever. According to Mammi Vera, anyway.

Jesse considered her words solemnly. “Then might I say, ‘Never have I seen a girl with such beautiful meekness’? Or perhaps ‘I am overwhelmed by your lowly spirited, meek-minded, lowly hearted, meek-looking humility, which meekly shines . . .’?”

Mim was staring at him with her mouth open. She knew it and she couldn’t help it. It was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard.

Jesse Stoltzfus doffed his hat and flourished it before him as if he were going to sweep the floor. He had wiry hair that grew upward from his head. It was sticky-up hair. When he straightened, he said, “No doubt we shall meet again. The glow from your jubilant meekness will lead me to wherever you are. Also your stormy gray eyes.” He smiled as brightly as a full moon. “No doubt it was God’s plan that we meet today.”

Mim thought God might have better things to do than to concern himself with a chance meeting in the parking lot of a grocery store. Jesse Stoltzfus winked at her and strode off, whistling, toward a buggy his sister, another redhead, was loading with boxes of food. The girl looked over at Mim and waved in a friendly way.

Mim gave a halfhearted wave back to her and frowned at Jesse’s back.
That
boy, she decided, thought he was
something
. She watched their buggy leave the Bent N’ Dent and then she pulled a strand of hair out from under her black bonnet to look at it closely. Like a black-crowned night heron,
he had said. It must be a bird, she thought, though she’d never seen one. Whatever it was, it had a crown as black as her hair, and she almost smiled as she skipped up the steps to the store. Almost.