The Haven (16 page)

What was wrong with him—what made him do the things he knew he shouldn’t do and what kept him from doing the things he should? Maybe his father was right. Maybe he did have a demon inside him. “My father would say I am suffering from acute laziness.”

“What does your father do for a living?”

“He’s a neurosurgeon.”

She looked puzzled. “What’s that?”

“He operates on people’s brains.”

“So he drills holes in people’s skulls?”

“Well, not really. He specializes in endovascular work—the vessels that bring blood to the brain. A lot of problems in the brain occur in those arteries and veins, but there’s all kinds of technology that allows him to treat them without drilling open the skull. Much less invasive. No cutting bones or opening someone’s head. But endovascular neurosurgery is the most dangerous of all the specialties of neurosurgery. Most of the people he sees have run out of options. They’re either going to die, or my dad will operate and save them.”

“He must be a smart man. It’s hard to imagine having the courage to operate on a brain.”

“Dad says the brain is like a melon, with a thick, leathery covering inside the skull—the dura mater—that gets pulled back and the glistening surface of the brain is exposed. He says it’s like putting on a diving mask and looking beneath the surface of the water at a coral reef: a whole new world opens up.”

Sadie shuddered. “He has such a responsibility. What if he made a mistake?”

“I don’t think my father makes mistakes.” Will scratched his head. “Ever. He’s pretty confident that he’s the best neurosurgeon in the country.”

“What makes him so sure of that?”

“Everybody tells him so. Other doctors send their toughest cases to him. From all over the country.”

She gave him a shy smile. “I can’t imagine having that kind of confidence.”

“Sadie,” Will said, “if you had the kind of self-confidence my father has, you wouldn’t be you.” He shifted his gaze to a flock of ducks coming in for a landing near the creek. “You wouldn’t even be someone you’d like.”

Sadie rose and walked down the bank to the creek. He watched her from afar. He noticed a curious stillness about her. She was, at her center, as tranquil as Blue Lake Pond on a windless night. Just being near her had a calming effect. He discovered he was in no hurry to be elsewhere, that his normally impatient, easily bored nature somehow found the patience to stand back and just be.

You’re good for me, Sadie Lapp.

For the briefest of moments, Will entertained a fantasy—that he and Sadie were together like this, really together. Caring for a small farm, raising a family.

He chased the fantasy away, swatting it as if it were a mosquito about to bite. He and Sadie Lapp belonged in different worlds. She wasn’t his type, much as he wanted her to be.

As he noticed how absorbed she was by the nature around her, it seemed as if she were no mere observer of the world but right in the middle of it. He’d wondered if she knew there was something special about her. Probably not.

Will walked down to join her. There were six ducks, honking and rustling about in the creek. Sounding remarkably similar to last Sunday’s long-winded Amish preacher, she called out, “Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things!”

Blank stares from every last one of those ducks. She sighed. “I’m practicing my newly acquired boldness on them. It doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Don’t take it to heart,” Will said with a grin. “My guess is they just haven’t been to church lately.”

F
or the first time in her life, M.K. could not imagine life without school and books. She had only one more year of formal schooling ahead of her. After that, it would just be one endless day of chores after another. She was already worried that crotchety Alice Smucker would come back next year and Gid would return to full-time farming with his father. She thought he preferred teaching to farming, though he would never say so. Gid was private about his feelings. He was a first-rate teacher, the best. The very best.

M.K. had always annoyed Alice when she finished her work early and grew bored. Alice would tell her to redo her work for the practice. By contrast, Gid stayed late in the day so that he could give her new assignments the next morning. He always had something new for her to puzzle out and she loved the challenges. Shakespeare for studying the beauty of language, Galileo to read the mystery in the night sky. She had learned the names of all the stars and constellations. She was struggling a little with geometry—she preferred algebra. But today, Gid corrected her paper and handed it back to her with a smile. “You’re getting there.”

When Gid smiled, his dimples deepened and his eyes shimmered with satisfaction. M.K. had trouble concentrating after getting one of his smiles.

Sometimes, she would stay after class and help him clean up, chattering away about a piece of poetry she had read or an essay, and he would listen carefully. He commented now and then on her thoughts, offered her some suggestions of different poets, and even brought in a book of beginning Latin for her—to help understand the roots of words, he said. He never patronized her, not once.

She watched him work with the second-grade class. He was so handsome! It was a tragedy that Sadie refused to fall madly in love with him. It would be sheer heaven to have Gid as a brother-in-law. She would get to see him every day for the rest of her life. Maybe she could live with them! She planned to never marry because she thought all boys—except for Gid and her father and Uncle Hank—were short on brains and long on foolishness. She had no patience for them.

Gid was playing a game with the second graders—at least, they thought it was a game. It was a clever way to encourage reading comprehension. The three second graders had all read a short story and Gid was quizzing them on details in the story. Each time they answered correctly, they took a giant step closer to the blackboard.

That was what made Gid so remarkable—he was always thinking up ways to make learning interesting. Not too long ago, he had a “100 Days of School” celebration. Everyone brought a collection of one hundred items. Most of the kids brought in pennies or marbles—pretty dull stuff. M.K. brought in one hundred two-week-old chicks. It was great fun until the chicks pecked through the boxes and escaped, scattering around the room. Then Ruthie sat on one and that got her all bug-eyed and tearful. After Davy Mast called her a chicken killer, she couldn’t stop crying. She sniffed and sobbed all afternoon until finally Gid sent her home, along with M.K. and her boxes of ninety-nine chicks. M.K. sighed, thinking back on that day. Like many of her plans, this one went awry.

She noticed that Gid dismissed the second graders and brought up the third graders. Now, why couldn’t Alice Smucker have ever thought of ways to make school fun? Except for the occasional mischief of Jimmy Fisher and his cohorts, every day with Alice Smucker was identical to the day before. Last fall, as the new school year started, it was almost—though not quite—a letdown that Jimmy had finally graduated eighth grade and was no longer in school.

Almost. But not quite.

Stoney Ridge was as different from Will’s life in Philadelphia as anything could be. He thought of how, at the end of a day, he would get back to his fraternity house after his last class, watch TV or play a video game, or head over to Chelsea Van Dyke’s apartment and have a beer, maybe neck with Chelsea on the sofa if she was in the mood for necking. She usually was.

Here, on this Amish farm, he was working himself to the bone. Each night, he trudged back to the cottage and flopped on the bed, exhausted. The next thing he knew, birdsong was welcoming the new dawn. When he heard the sweet music of the birds, a smile creased his face.

Will considered himself to be a closet birder. He never let anyone in his college fraternity, or any girlfriend for that matter, know how he loved birds and spent vacations on bird-watching expeditions. If he were to hunt birds, his friends would admire him. But observe them? Study them? It would be laughingstock, fodder for ridicule.

Bird-watching was the one activity he and his father enjoyed together. Dr. Charles William Stoltz could identify each and every type of the enormous variety of fowl that migrated through southeast Pennsylvania. He was a truly dedicated birder. The birds were proof in some way that Will’s father did have a tender side. Most of their good moments together were spent taking long walks through the woods with binoculars hanging around their necks, thumbing through field manuals. Beyond that, Will’s study of them gave them something to talk about. His father preferred taking him along on birding expeditions rather than any of his brainy bird-watching doctor friends. Will was quieter, he said.

It was the only compliment his father had ever given him. And Will wasn’t really sure it was a compliment. He was quiet around his father because he was thoroughly intimidated by him.

Briefly, he thought about wanting to tell his father what Amos had said to him this morning. Amos had pointed out the field he wanted Will to plow under but instructed him to leave the far corner alone because the bobolinks were nesting. “They earn their rent by giving us pleasure,” Amos had told him. His father would enjoy that kind of thinking.

Even though the spring morning was raw and bleak, awash in gray, Will was hot. He wiped the sweat from his brow and sat back on the plow, admiring the morning’s work. He thought his plowing skills were improving. The furrows in this field weren’t quite as wobbly looking as yesterday’s, and much better than the day before. He was faster too, which suited him, because he was pretty sure he had felt some rain sprinkles. From the looks of those clouds, he wouldn’t be surprised if a drizzle turned into a steady rain.

For now, he needed food. He thought about what he could scrounge up in the cottage when he saw Sadie wave to him from the fence, near the water trough. He led the horses over to the water trough and let them drink their fill. Doozy was chasing imaginary birds on the other side of the fence. He worried about that dog.

Sadie gave him a shy smile and lifted a basket. “I brought lunch.”

“Ah! You’re an angel.”

“Better eat it first, then decide. Dad and Fern took the baby with them to go visit Annie’s grandfather—to let him know to expect some help on Saturday. So I made lunch.”

Will splashed his hands in the horse trough and hopped over the fence. Sadie was already setting up a picnic under a shade tree. He sprawled on the ground and let out a deep sigh.

She handed him a sandwich. “When will your falcons become parents?”

Will unwrapped the sandwich and took a lusty bite. How was it possible that food tasted better here? This sandwich he was eating, for example. The bread was homemade, the smoked turkey was real turkey, the lettuce was crisp, the tomato ripe. Delicious! “In about a month. Hopefully, they will be good parents too.” He glanced at her. “That’s not always the case.” Not with animals, not with people. Certainly Sadie couldn’t understand that, for she’d come from a family where warmth and belonging and love were like flour and sugar, staples in the pantry.

She threw a crust of bread over to Doozy, who pounced on it like a cat. “God seems to give most animals a basic instinct of how to care for their young. I’ve always thought it’s another way he shows us how he loves us.”

“Parents—” He stopped, and felt his stomach twist. “I hope God loves us more than parents do. If he doesn’t, I’m doomed.”

“Your parents weren’t loving?” she asked tentatively.

He emitted a bark, humorless mirth. “Not exactly.” Love, in Will’s family, had always come with strings. It was a reward for perfect behavior. It wasn’t handed out for free.

“Some people have a hard time showing love to the ones they care the most about.”

He gave her an odd stare. “Do you always see the world this way?”

Sadie reached in the basket and handed him a bright green apple. “What way is that?”

“Always looking for the good in a situation.” He took a bite of the apple and chewed. “I can’t think of too many girls who would be happy to have a baby dropped in their laps.”

“This wasn’t just any baby. But this baby—this one is a gift to us. It connects us to Menno.” She looked up at the sky. “I think God knew my family needed this baby.”

“Life isn’t always that way, you know. Some things just don’t work out for the best.” He took a few more bites of his apple and tossed the core away. Then he tilted the thermos to his mouth and drained it. He felt better now, much better. “The way I see it, I think it’s better not to expect too much out of life. That way, you don’t get beaten down or disappointed by people. It’s better to meet life head-on, eyes wide open, so you’re not blindsided in the end. Cut off. Left to drift in a canoe without paddles.” The last sentence tumbled with a ridiculous amount of emotion. He pressed his fingertips to his forehead and closed his eyes, embarrassed. They had drifted way too far into personal issues, and he thought he might be making an idiot of himself.

“The Bible says that for those who love God, things will work out for the best. Like the way the baby worked out to be the best.” She glanced at him. “Don’t you believe in God’s goodness?”

They locked eyes.

“I believe in you, Sadie Lapp, and your goodness.” He’d only known her for a week now, but he could tell she was a genuinely kind, genuinely good person.

“But I’m not, Will. No one is truly good. We’re all on the same level in God’s sight. We’re all sinners in need of his mercy. But the amazing thing is that God loves us anyway. And he can straighten us out and smooth out all the wrinkles and put us to use again.”

Will opened his mouth but nothing came out. He was seized with a sudden curiosity about Sadie. What would she have been like as a child? What did she want her life to look like in five years? In ten or twenty? There was so much about her that he didn’t know. He raised her hand and impulsively pressed a soft kiss on the back of it. “Thank you for lunch.” He jumped up and hopped over the fence to get back to work. Before he climbed back on the plow, he tipped his cowboy hat to her and grinned.

The week dragged by interminably—but finally it was Saturday. M.K. charged into the kitchen, her very being radiating sparks of excitement. She had a plan all worked out for today. The most brilliant plan she had ever come up with! She knew Fern wondered why she was so especially cheerful, but she would have to wait to find out.

Edith Fisher and her son Jimmy pulled up to the house at eight o’clock sharp, as expected. Uncle Hank and M.K. were waiting for them, arms filled with tools and gloves and hampers filled with groceries. From the backseat of the buggy, M.K. directed Jimmy to drive to a tired-looking house on a tired-looking lane. She hadn’t been there since before Menno had passed, and it had looked bad then. Knee-high weeds filled the front yard. Spiderwebs hung from every corner. The old man was sitting in his rocker on the front porch, like he had been expecting them. Then she remembered that he might be, since her father and Fern had dropped by earlier in the week to let him know they were coming today. Fern had taken him a casserole and come home clucking with disapproval that an elderly Amish man was living alone. “What is the world coming to if the Amish aren’t caring for their own?” she muttered all afternoon.

M.K. would never say it aloud, but sometimes she thought that Fern sounded downright prideful about being Amish, as if they could do no wrong, unlike the English, who could do no right. Such thoughts were best left unsaid, she decided, and felt that it was a sign she was growing up. She was starting to have a filter—just like Fern always said she needed—and it amused M.K. that the filter was being used for Fern!