Treasuring Emma (26 page)
“I don’t trust him.” Adam scowled. “He’s up to something, Emma. And it’s not
gut
.”
The peace she’d briefly felt disappeared. “What do you mean?”
“Can’t you see he’s faking you out?”
Emma stopped. “Excuse me?”
“It’s Yankee talk. It means . . .” Adam rubbed the back of his neck.
“I know what it means.”
“He’s not being truthful, Emma. He’s pretending to like you.”
“Because he couldn’t possibly
really
like me.” She stepped away from him.
Adam shook his head. “
Nee, nee
. I’m not saying that at all. He wants something.”
“But not me.” She handed Adam back his jacket, but he didn’t take it. “I need to get home.”
Adam blocked her way. “Emma, that’s not what I meant. Don’t twist my words.”
“I’m not twisting anything.”
“
Ya
, you are. I’m trying to protect you—”
Emma laughed bitterly. She looked up at the sky. “You’ve been here two weeks, and now you need to protect me? From the one
mann
who’s shown interest . . .”
She clamped her mouth shut. How pathetic she sounded. “I don’t need your protection. I don’t need anything from you.”
Adam moved closer to her. “This is about more than Mark. We both know it.”
She stared at him, afraid to speak. Memories from two years ago sharpened, piercing her mind and heart. She turned from him. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
He grasped her arm. “
Ya
, Emma. It does.”
“You made your choice.”
“What if I told you I made the wrong one?”
What did he mean? That he shouldn’t have left the Amish? That he shouldn’t have rejected her?
She swallowed, her throat suddenly parched. “That depends,” she whispered. “Did you?”
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Not a single word.
She had her answer.
“
Gut nacht
, Adam.” She handed him his coat and hurried back home. Before he could see how he had devastated her all over again.
Adam watched Emma rush toward her house. He stayed put, on the edge of the quiet road, dusk surrounding him. Why hadn’t he answered her? Why had he let her believe a lie, yet again?
He shook his head, tempted to throw his hat on the ground. But the only thing that would do is make him look like a fool. Which he was. A fool and a coward. Always running away from everything. Church. His family. Emma.
God.
Adam slogged his way back home. Leona had told him to get things right with God. He’d been thinking about that a lot.
But had he done anything? No. He was living in limbo. No job, mooching off his parents, pretending he was here to help his mother and protect Emma. But he hadn’t accomplished a blasted thing. His mother and father were still distant, even with each other. Emma was still . . .
He sighed. Emma was still Emma. Everything he wanted. At least he could finally admit that to himself.
But she was also everything he didn’t deserve.
Darkness had descended by the time he reached the house. He ran his hand along the side of his truck and remembered the pride he felt the day he bought it. The liberation. Life on wheels was so much easier. He could get to work and the grocery store. Go to the movies. Listen to the booming stereo that made the bed of the truck rock.
But did any of that bring him closer to God? Closer to discovering who he was? His purpose in life?
He went inside, expecting to find his parents asleep. Instead he saw light glowing from the basement stairs. He went downstairs and found his mother sitting in an old rocking chair. Alone. A tall gas lamp hissed a few feet next to her, casting the room in pale yellow light.
“Mamm?”
He moved toward her. She didn’t respond until he called her name a second time.
“Oh. Adam. I didn’t realize you were here.” She turned and looked at him. Her eyes were glassy, distant. She blinked a couple of times. “Did you want me to heat up the chicken stew for you?”
His hunger had disappeared long ago. He knelt beside her, putting his hand on the arm of the chair. “What are you doing down here?”
“Thinking.” She stared straight ahead.
The basement was lined with wooden shelves, filled with canned fruit, vegetables, sauces, even meats, some smoked, some salted. The wringer washer sat in the corner, a small clothesline strung taut from one side of the basement to the other, to hang clothes in the winter. A coal stove in the opposite corner filled the room with warmth.
Adam touched his mother’s hand. It was icy. “Thinking about what?”
“Things.” She turned to him, slipped her hand from underneath his fingers, and touched his face. “How nice it is that you’re back. Even if it’s for a short time.”
How he longed to tell her he was staying for good. Each day he spent in Middlefield, he leaned more toward that decision. But as with Emma, he couldn’t say the words. Not until he was absolutely sure. Not until there was no possibility he’d have to take them back. “Why don’t you come upstairs? I’m sure
Daed
is wondering where you are.”
She shrugged. “I think I’ll stay down here for a little while longer.”
Adam rose. His mother stared at her lap, her gaze not moving. An alarm went off inside him. Whatever was troubling her, she wasn’t going to tell him. Then again, why would she? He hadn’t proved the most trustworthy of sons.
He had always known he’d disappointed his father, yet assumed his mother felt differently about him. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Emma intended to go straight to her room, to nurse the wound Adam had reopened. Somehow she had to be free of him. She couldn’t keep living like this, pretending not to love him. Not as long as he stayed in Middlefield.
She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and touched her forehead to the banister. Maybe there was only one way to get Adam out of her mind and heart. She’d have to marry someone else. Devote her life to another man.
A man like Mark.
Her stomach churned at the thought. She didn’t believe Adam’s claim that Mark was up to no good, and yet she felt awkward around him. They had little in common. Her skin didn’t tingle and her blood didn’t warm when he was near. Not like with Adam.
Emma heard a low moan, followed by a hacking sound, and a chill ran through her. She scrambled upstairs to her grandmother’s room. As she entered, the old woman was sitting up in bed, wheezing. She reached out toward Emma.
“Grossmammi?”
Her grandmother didn’t answer. Another round of coughing seized her, and it sounded as if her lungs might burst. She pressed a handkerchief to her mouth. When she drew it away, it was stained with—
Blood.
Adam was halfway up the stairs when he heard pounding on the front door. He opened it to find Emma, panting and terrified.
“Grossmammi.”
Her breathing came in spurts. “Something’s . . . wrong.”
“Emma, catch your breath.” He pulled her into the house and put his hands on her trembling shoulders to steady her. Adam heard his mother ascending the basement stairs behind him. “Is Leona okay?”
“I don’t know,” Adam said. He turned to Emma again.
“She’s bleeding.” Emma’s words were nearly a sob. “Coughing up blood. Wheezing. Really hard. I need to use your phone. Have to call an ambulance.”
“The phone is in the barn. I’ll go.” Carol started for the door. “Adam, run upstairs and wake your father.”
“I’ll take Leona in my truck. By the time the ambulance gets here, we’ll already be at the hospital.” He turned to Emma. “Is it all right if she rides with me?”
“We’ll both ride with you.”
His mother pushed Adam’s back. “I’ll let your father know. Hurry!”
Adam dashed to his bedroom and grabbed his keys off the dresser. He took the stairs halfway down, then vaulted over the banister, grabbed Emma’s hand, and ran with her to the house and up to Leona’s room.
“Get anything you think she’ll need,” Adam said. Emma went to Leona’s dresser while Adam rushed to the old woman’s bedside. His stomach lurched when he saw the bloodstained handkerchief in her hand. “I’m going to take you to the hospital in my truck,
ya
?”
Her eyes barely opened, but she didn’t hesitate. “
Ya
. Hand . . . me . . . cane . . .”
“Nee.”
He scooped her featherlight body into his arms. “Get the quilt off the bed, Emma. We’ll wrap her in it.” He rushed downstairs, holding Leona against him, cringing with every wheezing breath she took.
“Mrs. Shetler, we have to admit you.” The petite doctor, her straight black hair pulled into a tight bun, wrote something on the chart. “You have severe pneumonia.”
“I . . . just . . . need . . . my . . . tea.” Emma’s grandmother tilted her head toward the bag of IV fluid to her right. “Not . . . all . . . this . . . stuff.”
Emma sat in the chair in the corner of the small examination room. “Stop being so stubborn. Dr. Chang is trying to help you.”
“Take . . . me . . . home.”
Emma shook her head and looked at the doctor. “She must be feeling a little better. She didn’t put up a fight when we brought her in here.”
“That’s because she’s getting some fluids and a powerful dose of antibiotic.” She looked at a computer screen situated above
Grossmammi’s
head. Emma didn’t understand what the numbers meant. Or what the white clamp was on her grandmother’s finger.
Dr. Chang checked the instruments and frowned. “She’s resting. Can I speak to you outside?”
Emma followed the doctor into the emergency room hallway. A nurse passed them and entered the room beside her grandmother’s. The beeping sound of all the machines pounded in Emma’s brain.
“We need to take your grandmother to Intensive Care,” Dr. Chang said. “Pneumonia can be deadly for patients her age.”
“Admit her, then.”
“I can’t, not without her consent.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
Dr. Chang nodded. “Once she’s in ICU she’ll have excellent care. It’s her best chance for survival.”
Emma nodded and went back into the examination cubicle. She held her grandmother’s hand.
Grossmammi’s
eyes opened.