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Six Months Later

It was blood red. Rachel held the ripe strawberry just above the stem, and with a slight twist, broke it off. The plump fruit plopped into her hand and rolled over, the leaf tickling her palm. Such a delicacy, heart shaped and so easily bruised—the fragile strawberry needed protection, just as her baby nestled deep inside of her did.

She touched her rounded belly, where Josef's baby squirmed inside her. A sudden bulge of its elbow or knee pushed outward, and she gently rubbed it back into place. She gave a wistful smile. “Easy, little one.”

Rachel.

The whisper of her name sent a chill through her. She turned and looked behind her. Only Mae was in the field with her, and she knelt two rows away. “Yes?”

Mae glanced up from tending Timothy, her one-year-old son. “What is it?”

Rachel tilted her head. “Didn't you call me?”

“No.” Mae plopped a strawberry in her own basket. “No, I—”

“Bah!” Timothy called out, his voice tilting upward at the end in that timeless way of a baby playing with language. He pointed his chubby finger at the dirt.

“Bug,” his mother corrected. As he reached for the crawling insect, Mae scrambled up from her sitting position and batted her son's hand away. “No, no. No eat the bug, Timothy.”

The toddler sputtered a cry, and Mae scooped him up, snuggling him against her hip, and distracted him by pointing out a butterfly that flitted from a green stem to land on a tiny white flower.

Rachel's heart faltered, and her smile vanished beneath a sudden cloud of despair. Josef would never know moments like this with their baby. Her dear husband was buried in the nearby cemetery, six feet underground, six months gone. He would never teach his son how to plow a field or harvest corn or smile at his daughter's first attempts at sewing or making blueberry muffins. He'd never sit their baby upon his knee or hold it close or pray over its soft, downy head.

During their six weeks of marital bliss, Rachel had lain by his side at night, feeling his breath at her temple and his heart near her own. They had whispered their hopes and dreams of a large family, of the seasons pieced together into a quilt of years. But none of it would unfold. And it was her fault.

Guilt seared her heart. Closing her eyes, squeezing them tight, she tried to push the feelings back inside, even while a tear rolled down her cheek. She whispered the same prayer she did each day, “Oh, Lord, forgive me…forgive me. And may Josef forgive me too. Help me guide and guard his baby.”

Her hand smoothed over her distended belly. If her mother and father had their way, Rachel would marry again, and another man would raise Josef's child as his own. But to Rachel, their baby was Josef's only legacy. No matter who came into their lives, her heart and baby would belong to Josef.

Carefully, she placed another strawberry in the basket with the growing mound of others. As a child, she'd always loved harvest season, especially June, when berries ripened and she could taste the sweet burst of flavor on her tongue. Now, the warm dirt cushioned her knees, and the sweet, tender fragrance of sweet peas, daisies, and roses growing nearby scented the morning air. Hope bloomed around her, and yet she couldn't quite believe she'd ever pull out all the weeds from her past.

“Rachel,” Mae called, “I'm going to take Timothy back to the house. He needs an awful good nap.” The little boy rubbed at his eyes.

Rachel nodded and plucked another strawberry.

Mae took a step toward the house then hesitated. “You will be all right?”

Again, Rachel nodded, keeping her gaze downward and avoiding Mae's puckered brow. In moments like this, Rachel wondered if everyone was whispering behind her back, expressing their concern, and plotting to keep someone near her…just in case.

Then Timothy cried out again, and Mae turned back to him. They headed toward the small house, which was attached to the back of the larger one, where her husband Ernest's parents still lived with their brood of boys: Ezra, Eliam, Ezekiel, Ethan, and Eli, who was the youngest at age fourteen.

Rachel had only recently begun working for the Troyer family. They had a fruit-and-vegetable stand on Slow Gait Road, where they sold buckets of strawberries, sugar snap peas, sweet corn, cherry tomatoes, and new potatoes to locals, neighbors, and the tourists who came each summer to stare wide-eyed at their plain ways. After Josef's death, Rachel had moved back home to live with Mamm and Dat again, and soon began to seek work. Her parents had advised against working so soon after Josef's death and before the baby's birth, but she needed to feel as if she was accomplishing something, contributing to the family, and avoiding the concerned gazes that followed her everywhere.

The simple task of picking the strawberries, though, was too simple, for it gave Rachel far too much time to ponder her loss and her baby's future. Thankfully, the Troyer family was large enough that someone was always nearby plowing fields, plucking weeds, hoeing the garden, hammering a fence post, or simply feeding livestock and providing plenty of distractions. Mae often brought Timothy out to the fields, and the energetic and fearless toddler kept both Mae and Rachel busy chasing after him.

But now, Rachel was alone. She glanced around at the empty fields of their Pennsylvania Amish countryside, around to the deserted barnyard. A bedsheet snapped on the clothesline. A bee buzzed near her ear. It was too quiet, too still.

She should have appreciated the peaceful tranquility, since she was so rarely left alone these days. At home, her little sister, Katie, chattered away, as if filling the silence with words might plug the aching hole in Rachel's heart. Or Mamm kept her busy with chores and quilting bees and bake sales. At night, Dat gave detailed descriptions of his day and all the chores accomplished, and avoided what Rachel did or how she felt or if she wrestled in the night with dark dreams or cried herself to sleep. Always someone stayed by her side. Katie slept in the same room. Conversations revolved around the day-to-day, minute-to-minute details, and not the past, not the pain, not the giant hole Josef's death had left.

Her middle sister, Hannah, often came to visit, as well. But ever since Hannah had married Levi and moved into their little house next to the Huffstetlers', a tension had developed between sisters like static electricity, invisible, yet even a glance or word could rub Rachel the wrong way and jolt her with its existence. Was it because Hannah had found love when Rachel had lost hers? Was she so shallow as to wallow in jealousy?

When Hannah and Levi had married, Rachel felt relief. Hannah had finally let go of Jacob and clasped a new and real love and life with Levi. Yet a part of her had remained numb from Josef's sudden death.

Maybe Rachel simply resented everyone hovering around her, handling her like fragile glass. Maybe she begrudged the way they'd moved on with their lives. Maybe she wasn't as strong in her faith as she'd hoped.

Six months ago, when Hannah and Levi had delivered the news as gently as possible, a glass box had descended on her. All the voices speaking to her, words of comfort and concern, were muffled and distorted. She'd focused on her baby, keeping her baby within her womb, and pushed all questions aside.

From time to time, she allowed her thoughts to wander. She fretted and dreamed about Josef—of his being thrown from his buggy, of a car slamming into the buggy. Of blood.

Steadily, she withdrew into herself more and more. She didn't want to know the details of Josef's death.
What
would
it
matter
anyway? Would knowing the details, blaming someone or something change anything?
She would still have to forgive. She would still have to move on. She would still face having a baby on her own. The sad fact was that Josef was gone. Forever.

Maybe his death was the cause of the tension. Hannah knew the details but wouldn't speak of it to Rachel. If pressed, she spoke in vague terms: “It was an accident. Josef is in a better place.”

A
better
place?
Of course, heaven was better than here on earth, which was what they'd been taught. But Josef had been too young to die. He was needed here to be a husband and father. Didn't Hannah understand? But her sister had simply remained stoic and unapproachable on the subject.

Still, Rachel feared her past had finally caught up to her and the words of Moses would come to pass on her and her baby:
And
the
LORD
passed
by
before
him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

Rachel tapped down her tumultuous emotions and searing questions and attempted to soothe her soul with God's word:
For
we
know
that
if
our
earthly
house
of
this
tabernacle
were
dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven…Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.

And now, in this rare moment when she was totally alone in the fields, she should have felt reassured. Life was finally getting back to normal, and she should feel peace settling around her, hedging her in. But instead, a sense of foreboding descended on her like a sudden lightning storm.

The sky, however, was clear, and the sun made its slow, reliable rise into the bright June day. Rachel dabbed at the perspiration on her forehead with the hem of her apron.
There's nothing to worry yourself over.
Even though she'd had a slight scare at the beginning of her pregnancy, all was well with the baby now. Her back ached though, and she kneaded the muscles at the lower juncture near her hip, thinking how nice it would be to have Josef offer his dependable arm or solidness to curl up next to at night and make her feel safe.

A ruffling breeze stirred the loose strands of hair at her nape, and a chill rippled down her spine.

Rachel.

She lifted her chin. Had she heard her name on the wind?

It was a silly thought, and she brushed it aside as she waved her hand to shoo a bumblebee. Her gaze strayed away from the strawberries and across the field. As far as she could see—the fields of corn and hay, the whitewashed house with laundry hanging on the line, and the weathered barn where goats and chickens meandered—she was alone. Still, despite the warmth of the sun slanting downward out of the bright blue sky, goose pimples speckled her arms.

Pushing up from the ground, she stood, arched her back to stretch out the kinks, and picked up the two full baskets of strawberries. The wind stirred the heart-shaped leaves of a mulberry tree, and her footsteps faltered. There it was again—her name.

Rachel.

She stopped, turned, but there was no one around, no one at the barn or on the porch, no one calling to her.
Was
it
her
imagination? Or too many sleepless nights?

***

When she reached the house, she placed the baskets of berries on the back porch, so Mae's husband could drive them over to the fruit stand when he returned with the buggy. She glanced toward the green-shaded windows and wondered if Timothy was napping already. Not wanting to disturb Mae, she tiptoed down the steps and walked along the path toward the barn where more baskets were stored.

It felt good to stretch her legs and move instead of crouching down in the field. She passed a tiller and plow, then the fenced-in yard containing the family's chickens and irascible rooster. Several goats were penned nearby; one of the kids had climbed a stack of hay bales, while an expectant mother goat lay in the shade, chewing her cud.

The barn door was wide open when she entered, and a whiff of smoke wrinkled her nose. She glanced around for its source. “Hello?”

No one answered. As she moved farther into the barn, the haze of smoke vanished.
Could
Eli
Troyer
have
been
smoking
again?
But she didn't spot the fourteen-year-old or anyone else for that matter. A harness clinked against a metal pole, and Rachel flinched. Then she noticed the open window and soft breeze, and laughed at her nerves.

The snuffling of a horse reassured her all was as it should be, and the smell of dust and manure filled her nostrils with familiarity. Toward the tack area, stacks of half-bushel and full-bushel baskets, which were used for collecting the vegetables and fruit and sold at the stand, were nested in a tall pile. She gathered several in her arms, resting the bottom one on the top of her belly.

When she heard her name again, she jumped. The baskets tumbled and scattered on the floor. This time, the sound of her name wasn't floating on the wind or a puff of cloud. This time, it was distinct and solid, as if she could grab hold of it.

“Rachel.”

Her breath snagged on her windpipe as she turned. She fell back a step. A dark-haired man stood between her and the open door, his face in shadows. But his silhouette, his stance, the tilt of his head and timbre of his voice reminded her of Jacob Fisher. A shiver shot through her. “Jacob?”

Deep laughter rang out, and the rumble of it vibrated through the barn, unsettling her even more. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the sudden movement of a leg sticking out of the hay in the loft above and suddenly disappearing.
So
Eli
was
up
there smoking, after all.
A minute ago Eli's sneakiness would have irritated her, but she was now too stunned by the man in front of her to feel anything but fear.