Rosemary Opens Her Heart: Home at Cedar Creek, Book Two (10 page)

Rosemary picked up the muslin doll, which was dressed in a blue cape dress with a
white apron and kapp, and crossed the hall to the pale yellow bedroom she and Joe
had shared. Here, she often found comfort remembering the plans she’d discussed with
her husband while they had gazed out the back window, where they could see part of
the land they had bought.

Rosemary sat in the old rocking chair where she had rocked Katie to sleep on many
a night. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Since her husband’s death, she
had come here to pray and to call up the special feeling she considered Joe’s presence.
Being in this room calmed her when she’d had a trying week dealing with Titus’s refusal
to change anything in his home, or his remarks about how Alma had fried her chicken
more to his liking.

Clutching Katie’s doll, Rosemary waited for that indescribable peace that had always
surrounded her in this room…and then she waited a little longer. After several moments
she opened her eyes, which stung with unshed tears. Why wasn’t it working? Why weren’t
memories of Joe comforting her after she’d had such a hard time at the Lambright wedding?
Hadn’t she remained true to him, as she’d promised when they exchanged their vows
four years ago?

Be true to yourself now. Follow your dreams and live your life to the fullest.

Rosemary blinked. That hadn’t sounded like Joe at all, talking of dreams. Was her
husband, in spirit, leading her toward the changes she needed to make to feel whole
again—or were her own thoughts struggling to be heard in the chorus of advice everyone
else was giving her?

Rosemary had often wondered if Joe should have pursued his own ambitions sooner, rather
than dutifully helping his father with
a flock and a farm he’d had no real interest in. Her husband had delayed starting
his remodeling business when Alma had been diagnosed with cancer, so it had taken
them a year longer to pay for their property…a home he hadn’t lived to enjoy.

The idea of following her dream disturbed Rosemary, though. The
Ordnung
taught that faith in God came first, followed by respect and love for one’s family.
Paying attention to her own desires seemed selfish, especially when Titus, Beth Ann,
and Katie needed her like a pie required a crust to hold it together. This sense of
duty had been ingrained in her since she was Katie’s age. Yet hadn’t her mother been
telling her to make a new life for herself, just as that voice in her head had?

Rosemary stood up suddenly, leaving the chair to rock crazily behind her as she went
to the window. Her property, with its overgrown grass and the underbrush along the
fencerows, seemed foreign to her now. She no longer felt connected to the untamed
acres that had become hers when Joe passed away. And worth a pretty penny, they were,
because the parcel had enough flat, tillable land to become profitable someday. She
felt Joe’s memory slipping away from her, too.

For a moment, Rosemary couldn’t remember what he looked like. She tried to call up
Joe’s voice in her mind, but couldn’t hear it. And that frightened her.

She realized then that she was clutching Katie’s doll as though she were holding on
to the last thread of her sanity. And when she looked at its round, featureless face,
which reflected the Plain belief that nothing should imitate the image of God or his
human creation, Rosemary swallowed hard. Just as the doll had no eyes or nose or mouth—no
signs of a soul or a self—she felt that she, too, might have lost these basic elements
of her identity.

If I’m no longer Joe Yutzy’s wife, who am I? And if I can no longer follow the dreams
I shared with my husband…how am I to spend the rest of my life?

These were startling questions for a young mother of twenty-three.
Rosemary’s heart began to throb painfully. She tossed the doll onto the bed, which
was covered with the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt Mamm had made for her hope
chest before she had met Joe. She couldn’t leave the room fast enough.

Down the stairs she rushed, her footsteps clattering with the same loud discord she
felt inside herself. “We’re heading home, Katie. Bring your cookies,” she snapped
as she lifted her startled daughter from the old high chair. “I’ve got pies to bake.
I’ll see you soon, Mamm.”

“Jah, well, Katie and I, we were just— Are you all right, Rosemary?” her mother called
after her. “You’re as pale as milk.”

“I’m fine,” Rosemary fibbed as she let the screen door bang behind her. Malinda, barefoot,
with garden soil clinging to her ankles, was coming toward the house, but Rosemary
hurried on over to the buggy. She urged Gertie down the lane at a trot, waving to
her befuddled sister.

And why
wouldn’t
Malinda look confused and hurt? Rosemary knew exactly how that felt because she hadn’t
been so upset—so afraid and overwhelmed—since the day Joe had died. What did she hope
to accomplish by leaving her mother and sister so abruptly?

Rosemary didn’t have any answers. Her heart pounded to the rhythm of Gertie’s hoofbeats—
clip-clop! clip-clop!
—as fear pulsed through her body.

Then she caught the expression on Katie’s face: her daughter sat beside her, clutching
a snickerdoodle in each hand and looking terrified. Her eyes were wide. Her chin quivered
as though she wanted to cry but was afraid to.

Rosemary pulled over to the shoulder, set the brake, and drew her toddler into her
lap. Katie was her only living, breathing memento of Joe, for she saw him in the angle
of their daughter’s brows and her long, lush lashes. “I’m sorry, baby girl,” she murmured
against Katie’s silky hair. “Mama didn’t mean to scare you. Sometimes I miss your
dat so much I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Dat?” Katie repeated in her high, childlike voice. She looked at Rosemary with a
hopeful expression. “Play with Dat’s puppies now?”

Rosemary gaped. What on earth was her daughter talking about? Joe had never owned
a dog—

Is she talking about Matt’s puppies? Is she confusing the words “Dat” and “Matt” because
they rhyme?

Or did Katie think Matt
was
her dat? Their daughter had barely been two and half when Joe had died, so she didn’t
recall anything about her father. Maybe she had drawn that conclusion because Matt
was a man, and he had crouched down to talk with her, just as Joe often had.

Oh please, Lord…Will Katie want to spend time with Matt Lambright now? I’m not sure
I can handle one more person believing I should like him.

When Rosemary got back to the Yutzy farm, the sheep stood blathering near the barn,
waiting for their day’s ration of grain. She carried Katie into the kitchen and sat
her in the high chair with a handful of animal crackers and a few cubes of cheese.
Down from the shelf came the can of lard and the bin of flour. Without a second thought,
Rosemary measured enough of each ingredient for ten double-crust pies and began to
cut the lard into the flour. She sprinkled water over the dough, mixing until its
texture felt right. Then she divided it into twenty balls, which she set aside beneath
a damp towel so they wouldn’t dry out.

As Rosemary opened jars of ruby-red cherry filling from Alma’s cellar shelves, she
silently thanked her mother-in-law for putting up so much of it before she’d gotten
sick. She also opened a few quarts of sliced peaches and thickened their syrup with
tapioca, on the stove. Only a few quarts of gooseberries remained in the cellar, so
she kept those back because Titus was especially fond of them.

And what’s your favorite kind of pie?

She heard the words in her mind just as Beth Ann had asked Abby Lambright the same
question…and Rosemary realized she
didn’t have an answer. She made so many kinds of pies for other people—mostly for
folks she didn’t know—yet she’d never considered her own preference. At other folks’
homes, she ate what was put in front of her without thinking about what she would
rather
have.

Rosemary stopped rolling out her crusts, stunned by this revelation. She snatched
the pan of peach syrup from the gas flame before she scorched it, lost in thought.
Katie was playing with her animal crackers, singing the same tune she’d shared with
her Mammi, but Rosemary really needed an answer, so she interrupted her.

“Katie, what’s your favorite kind of pie?”

Her toddler kicked her legs happily. “Peach! Katie wants peach pie!”

Rosemary sighed. Even her three-year-old knew, without a doubt, what she liked in
the way of pie.

What was going so wrong? Why did her world seem to tilt in a different direction today?
First she’d gotten upset at Matt’s message, then she’d fussed at her mother, and then
she’d lost her connection to Joe. And now she had no answer for the simplest question.
She had been so busy pleasing everyone else that she hadn’t considered what she truly
wanted for her future—or even for tonight’s supper.

What’s wrong with me, Lord? I think I might be losing my mind.

But crying wouldn’t get her work done, would it? Rosemary rolled bottom crusts and
fitted them into ten aluminum pie pans. She filled some of them with the ruby-colored
cherry filling and arranged sliced peaches in the rest before pouring the thickened
glaze over them. Finally, as she positioned the top crusts and crimped the edges,
it came to her: she was afraid of losing everything she had ever known. If Titus and
Beth Ann were so excited about Cedar Creek, if her mother insisted she should find
another husband, and if she no longer felt Joe’s presence in the room they had shared—where
did that leave her?

The bang of the porch door brought her out of her woolgathering. Titus was washing
up in the mudroom, and she’d been so
preoccupied that she hadn’t even thought about what to cook for their noon meal. She
was tucking the last of her pies into the second oven when he entered the kitchen
and noticed the unset table.

“I’m running late,” she explained as she hurried to the fridge. “I drove over to see
Mamm and Malinda and lost of track of time. Sorry.”

Titus hung his straw hat by the door. He sat down in his chair at the end of the long
kitchen table. “Guess I’ll wait,” he remarked with a shrug. “Maybe Katie’ll share
one of her animal crackers with me.”

Rosemary had braced herself for a much sterner response to a late meal. She was amazed
to see Titus trotting a cookie giraffe around the high chair tray to entertain Katie.
She unwrapped a ham slice she’d taken from the deep freeze early that morning and
dropped it into a cast-iron skillet. “How are the ewes and lambs looking today?”

“Gut. I got a section fenced off behind the barn for those rams Matt’s bringing.”
Titus bounced the giraffe in the other direction, dodging Katie’s attempts to grab
it.

Rosemary relaxed. In another skillet, she simmered diced onion in butter before she
added slices of leftover baked potatoes. If Titus had built a pen for those rams,
to get them accustomed to their new home before he turned them in with the ewes, he
surely had every intention of staying here in Queen City.

“So how’s your mother?” he asked.

“Fine,” she replied over the sizzle of the ham and onions. “She was changing the bedsheets
and my sister was planting the garden.”

Titus scratched under his beard, as he often did when he was considering a new idea.
“Seems to me we’d all be better off if your mamm and sister came to live here. It’s
silly for them to keep up that big old house while the four of us are rattling around
like dried peas in a shoebox at this place.”

Rosemary stared at him. Where had this notion come from? “Mamm’s no more ready to
leave her home than you are. It’s the house Dat built her when they got married.”

“Jah, but maybe she’d like some company, same as I would. Maybe I should mosey over
there to see what she’d say to hitching up,” he mused aloud. Then he laughed until
his shoulders shook. “At our age, it’s not like we need all that newlywed romantic
stuff.”

Rosemary didn’t know whether to laugh with him—or
at
him. Bertha Keim was every bit as set in her ways as Titus Yutzy was, and she seemed
quite content to live with Malinda even if they didn’t use some of the rooms in their
farmhouse anymore.

But Titus sounded settled and no more likely to leave his home than Mamm was to leave
hers—which meant that once he traded rams with Matt, there wouldn’t be any more contact
with folks in Cedar Creek. Everything would continue just the way it had been since
Alma and Joe passed.

Rosemary turned the ham slice, inhaling its salty-sweet aroma. It occurred to her
then that no one else had forced her to feel so agitated today: she had worried all
morning that everything in her world was changing, fearing Titus would pull up stakes
and move back to Cedar Creek. That obviously wasn’t going to happen if her father-in-law
was thinking he’d propose to her mother. And that wedding wasn’t going to happen,
either, if she knew her mamm.

Smiling, Rosemary flipped the simmering, nicely browned potatoes. What a relief to
realize that it was only her imagination that had run off. Titus didn’t know it, but
he had brought her wandering thoughts right back where they belonged.

Nothing serious would change, after all. She could go on about her day now.

As she transferred the crisp potatoes onto a serving platter, Titus’s chair scraped
against the floor. “You know,” he said quietly, “you’re probably right about your
mamm not wanting to come here. And now that I think about it, I’m not so sure I could
tolerate a woman who ran the house her way, different from how Alma did. And when
you add in your sister, that would make three grown women and two girls under my roof.”

“Jah, that’s the way I see it, too.” Rosemary carried their food to the table, relieved
that Joe’s dat had come to his senses. She went to the cabinet to fetch their dinner
plates.

“I’m going to call Matt Lambright…tell him to hang on to those rams,” Titus continued
in a faraway voice. “I’ll ask him to keep an eye out for any property going up for
sale in Cedar Creek, too. What with Joe gone, I’d be better off moving closer to Ezra—taking
my flock there, where Matt and I could help each other with the lambing and the shearing
and such. Now, there’s a fella who knows the sheep business!”