To Love and to Cherish (12 page)

“You’re a grown man. You need a wife. Rebecca and Eli need a mother.”

“Helen Crouch will never be their mother.”

“I realize that.”

“I—”

Thomas stopped. Helen Crouch stood in the doorway. “Don’t let me interrupt. I left a piece of batting in the buggy.” Her face stricken, she slipped past them and clomped down the steps.

“Now look what you did.” His mother slapped both hands on her ample hips. “You hurt her feelings.”

“I did? You were the one…” He didn’t bother to finish the sentence. His mother flounced into the house without a backward glance.

Women.

E
mma jumped down from the buggy. She felt lighter already, just seeing Aenti Louise’s wrinkled, smiling face. She perched on the step looking like a small sparrow in her brown dress. Maybe Luke was right. Maybe Aenti Louise served a much greater purpose than any school-educated psychologist in the big city.
Please God, let that be true
.

Even though it had meant missing the quilting frolic at Thomas’s mother’s house, it had been easy to convince Catherine to come on this visit if it meant no more doctors. Catherine loved Aenti Louise as much as Emma did, and as little girls they’d always thought of Aenti Louise as a doctor of sorts. For years, she delivered all the babies in the community. In fact, she’d delivered Catherine and Emma. Her midwifing days were over, but not all the caring she did for her babies, now grown.

Emma took the basket of bread and sweets from the floorboard. Together, she and Catherine strolled up to the porch of the Groossdaadi Haus Aenti Louise had occupied since Daed’s parents passed. It was a neat little cottage dwarfed by their Uncle Noah’s rambling wood frame house, added on to half a dozen times over the years as Daed’s brothers and sisters kept coming. Aenti Louise was the oldest of nine children, while Daed had been the youngest.

“I’m so glad to see you, dearies.” Beaming, Aenti Louise set the book
in her gnarled hands aside and clamped them together with the sweet enthusiasm of a child. “You brought me goodies. How thoughtful!”

Emma wouldn’t dream of visiting her favorite aunt without treats. Aenti Louise’s sweet tooth had taken on legendary proportions in recent years. No matter how much she ate, her tiny frame continued to shrink until she looked like a little girl—a wrinkled, gray little girl. Emma held up the basket. “Your favorites. Apple muffins, oatmeal-raisin cookies, and cinnamon rolls.”

Aenti Louise squealed. “The tea is cold. Come on in, girls. We’re having a feast.”

Catherine laughed, another sound too long missing around the Shirack house. Emma relaxed a little. This would be all right. She wouldn’t have to convince Luke to take Catherine into the city to tell her darkest thoughts and fears to a stranger.

Aenti Louise stood and picked up her book. She hugged it to her chest.

“What are you reading?” Emma took her arm and helped her hobble up the steps.

“The Good Book.”

Emma read the gold letters on the front. Aenti Louise’s Deitsch translation of the Bible. Emma was thankful her community allowed study of the Bible. It gave Aenti Louise such comfort. She was one of the few people Emma knew who read frequently and for pleasure as Emma liked to do. That was part of the reason she was such a good storyteller.

Aenti Louise hugged the Bible to her. “I’ve a lot of free time these days. My fingers are too bent to sew and I don’t have the strength to help with the laundry or the cooking anymore. So I draw a different kind of strength from reading.”

Emma nodded. She understood that. She’d grown up listening to her aunt tell stories she’d read in the Bible. It gave her a sense of peace to know some things hadn’t changed.

Inside, they sat around the small pine table in the kitchen, sipping tea. Aenti Louise was so short, her tiny feet barely touched the floor.
“So.” She sank her teeth into a cinnamon roll. She chewed and sighed deeply. “Annie made this, didn’t she? Tell her it’s a little piece of heaven on earth.”

Emma smiled and nibbled at her apple muffin. “At the risk of making her big head bigger, I’ll mention to her you liked it.”

“So. You’re mourning. The grief seems greater today than it did yesterday. Or last week. It’s growing so large, you’re afraid your heart will explode and tear open your chest.” Aenti Louise never spent much time on small talk. She rubbed the spot on her chest where her heart must be. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you’ve paid old Aenti Louise a visit.”

She had an uncanny way about her.

“Something like that.” Catherine spoke in a halting voice. “Not just my heart, but my head. I feel as if every part of me will collapse in a heap of worthless pieces.”

“Catherine!” Emma reached across the table.

Catherine held up both hands. “Don’t comfort me, please, I’m sick of comforting words. Meaningless comforting words.”

Aenti Louise rocked back and forth in her chair, nodding her head. “Uh-huh, uh-huh. She’s right, Emma. In order for her to get better she must confront her grief. Let it out. Rage against it.”

“But isn’t it wrong to be angry about Mudder and Daed’s death?” Pain and fear made Catherine look far older than her years. “Isn’t that questioning God’s will? Deacon Pierce says God has a plan for us and we have to accept that.”

“God understands your pain. His innocent Son suffered terribly and then died. Think about how that must have hurt God’s heart to let that happen. But He did. For us.” Aenti Louise rocked some more. “When your Uncle Samuel died, I was truly bereft. When they told me what had happened, I ran out to the barn and threw myself down on the ground next to his poor, broken body after the fall from the loft. I thought I’d just stay there until I died, too. I held my breath, thinking I’d starve my brain of oxygen until I was gone. But you know what? After a while I got up and went about my business.”

Tears slipped down Catherine’s face. To her surprise, Emma realized her own face was wet. “How? How did you do it, Aenti?” She brushed tears from her cheek with the back of her sleeve. “How did you get that image of his broken body out of your head?”

Catherine nodded. “That’s the problem. The nightmares. Every time I close my eyes…”

Aenti Louise hopped down from the chair. Her knees popped and creaked as she shuffled around the table. One arm encircled Emma, the other went around Catherine. “It will take time. You will let it go. You will move on. I promise. Right now what you need is peace. Let’s take a walk, dearies.”

So they walked, a slow, leisurely pace that allowed Aenti Louise to keep up. She held Catherine’s hand. No one said anything for a while. Emma breathed in the warm air of the July day. She didn’t mind the heat. It might melt the hard lump of anger in her chest.

When they reached a small stand of trees, Aenti Louise trotted over to a fallen trunk and plopped down on it. “Sit a spell.” She fanned her face with her fingers. “Heat feels good to these old, achy bones.”

With a sigh, Emma sat. Dabbing at her face with a hankie, Catherine joined them. Her face seemed as tranquil as Emma had seen it since the accident. A delicate breeze rustled the leaves. Soft shafts of light filtered through the tree branches.

Aenti Louise took her hand. “Do you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“God’s presence.”

Emma swallowed the knot in her throat. She closed her eyes and listened to the coo of a mourning dove. “Yes.”

“Forgive.”

She opened her eyes, startled. “How did you know?”

“Don’t you think I rail against the circumstances? I loved my brother, your father. I loved your mother too, like a little sister.” Aenti Louise plucked at her apron. “A person gets to be my age and she’s been through this a few times.”

“How do you do it? Forgive.” Emma so wanted the answer to that
question. She didn’t want this poison coursing through her veins anymore. It separated her from her family. It separated her from her faith. “Luke forgave Mr. Cramer in an instant. It’s been weeks, and I still feel anger every time I think about it.”

“Luke is a smart man.” Aenti Louise squeezed her hand. “He started by simply saying it. Whether he felt it or not. He knew that he had to commit to forgiving. So he did. Because that’s what we do.”

A bitter taste in her mouth, Emma shook her head. “It’s not just Mr. Cramer.” She swallowed. Dare she say this aloud…even to Aenti Louise? “I’m not just angry at Mr. Cramer.”

“You’re angry at God.”

A statement, not a question. Aenti Louise didn’t even sound shocked.

Emma ducked her head and nodded hard.

“He understands.”

“How can He?”

“He had a Son.”

Of course.

Emma clutched her arms to her waist, head still lowered. If she didn’t start trying now, she might never be able to move forward. “I forgive Mr. Cramer.”

She waited. Nothing felt different. Not yet. And she didn’t feel better. Honestly, she didn’t forgive. She couldn’t. Not Mr. Cramer. And not God.

Her wrinkled face sad, Aenti Louise patted her shoulder. “You must forgive yourself first.”

Emma forced herself to look up into her aunt’s sweet face. “What do you mean?”

Aenti Louise smiled. “You’re not perfect, Emma, as hard as you try. You’re forgiven. God forgives you for not being perfect. He knows what’s in your heart.”

“If He does, He knows I don’t deserve His forgiveness. He knows my heart is hardened against Him.”

“It will soften, dearie, in time. It will soften. The Lord knows what He’s doing.”

Emma slapped her shaking hands to her face. The tears began to fall. They might never stop.

E
mma shoved open the window. The schoolhouse had been closed up for two and a half months. The hot, stale air smelled dusty. She couldn’t wait to get the place clean and fresh, ready for another school year. Since her visit to Aenti Louise, Emma had worked hard to help Catherine—and herself—put the tragic events of the summer behind them. Getting back to school would serve as another step on that journey.

Chattering and laughing, the mothers of her scholars bustled about, wiping down desks and scrubbing the blackboard. With this much help the annual cleaning would take no time at all. Then Emma could review her curriculum and her record books. Having taught for three years now, she knew the name of every child. There would be a new batch of first graders, but in this small community, she would know them anyway. It would be nice if they could afford some newer, more updated textbooks, but the district’s parents preferred to put their resources into the farms where their children were getting on-the-job training for their life’s work. They didn’t need advanced subjects for that.

She tugged open a second window. She still had two weeks before class actually began, but the school cleanup frolic signaled the beginning of a new year full of learning for a group of children she
loved. She thirsted for knowledge and some of them did, too. She could see it in the way they touched the pages of the books with careful, gentle fingers. The way they read and reread passages.

She mentally shook a finger at herself.
Be content. These are your children. The ones God has given you to be their steward of learning
. The third window seemed to be stuck. She gritted her teeth and tugged harder. It didn’t budge.

“May I help you with that?”

Thomas’s voice. It had been two weeks since the last time she’d seen him. He’d kept his distance at the hog butchering, where Emma couldn’t help but notice Helen Crouch had her eye on him. Which was just fine with Emma. She smoothed her apron, turned, and nearly bumped into him. “Jah.”

He leaned into the job, his broad shoulders tensing with the effort. He had a solid, muscular build. Emma dropped her gaze to the floor. A squeaking sound told her when the task was completed.

She looked up. He brushed his hands together and smiled. “You loosened it for me. Rebecca and her friends can dust the windowsills.”

“Danki.”

He shifted from one foot to the other.

Emma cleared her throat.

“I—”

“I—”

Emma closed her mouth. Men first.

Thomas’s cheeks had red spots that hadn’t been there a second earlier. “I noticed the board on the second step is loose. I’ll take a hammer to it.”

“Good. Danki.” Was that all she could say? Thank you? He would think she was trying to be fancy. “How have you been? You haven’t been to the house since the barn raising. Luke was just commenting on that last night.”

He crossed his arms, uncrossed them. “You know how it is this time of year. Everything happens at once. Always work to be done.”

She nodded.

Another pause.

Thomas adjusted his hat again. “I’d better take care of that step. The tree branches also need to be trimmed back from the road in front.”

He strode away, looking relieved.

“He’s a hard worker, that Thomas Brennaman.”

Emma jumped despite herself. She turned to face Helen Crouch. “Yes, he is.”

Helen wiped at a puddle of water near the bucket Emma had filled for mopping the floor. “A good father, too.”

Uncertain where Helen would have her go with this conversation, Emma picked up her scrubbing brush. “Yes. His children are well mannered and good scholars.”

The other woman seemed very interested in the wet rag in her hand. Then she looked Emma in the eye. “My husband has been gone three years now. I still miss him terribly. So do the children.” She faltered. “A good man not already yoked to another is difficult for a woman such as myself, with four children, to find.”

“I’m sure that is true.” Emma knelt and dunked the brush in the bucket. “But I know God has a plan for you, Helen. Time will show it.”

Just as He had a plan for Emma. She clung to that thought. Mudder always said to wait quietly for God’s plan to unfold.

“I’ve had four children. I’m not young or…noticeable.” The doubt and shame in Helen’s voice hit Emma like a two-by-four. “Men don’t… they think of me as someone else’s wife and mother.”

Dumbfounded, Emma sat back on her haunches. She had shared many casual conversations with Helen, but never one of such a personal nature. These doubts were unfounded and a bit untoward, but a testament to how far down Helen had sunk in the muck and mire of loneliness.