The Search (26 page)

Billy took a few deep breaths, trying to steady himself, and went up to the farmhouse. He was looking for Jonah, before he remembered Jonah was spending the night at the hospital with Bess. It looked like their company—Sallie and her boys and that Mose—were gone too. Probably at the hospital, Billy figured. Billy rubbed his face with his hands. His father would know what to do. He hated leaving Bertha like this, but he couldn’t move her on his own. Boomer was standing guard by her. He bolted down the drive and ran home to fetch his father.

Billy knew word would trickle quickly through the community about the passing of Bertha Riehl. He had to act fast to get to the hospital in Lancaster as quickly as he could. His father tried to insist they get Caleb Zook to tell Jonah and Bess the news about Bertha. “That’s what bishops are for,” he told Billy. “They know best how to say these things.”

Billy was tempted, but he knew, deep down, he needed to be the one to go. Part of being a man was not avoiding hard things. He changed clothes and his father drove him into town to catch the bus to Lancaster.

“Maybe I should go with you,” he told Billy.

“No, I need to do this myself.” Billy wasn’t sure how he was going to break the news to Jonah about Bertha’s passing. But he had to get to them before they returned to Rose Hill Farm and found a group of women gathered, preparing the house for the viewing.

Just before he hopped on the bus, his father stopped him by placing a hand on his shoulder. Billy turned to him, and his father didn’t say anything, but there was something in his eyes—a look that said he was pleased with him. He couldn’t remember ever seeing that look from his father before.

Not an hour later, Billy arrived at the hospital and found Jonah and Lainey and everyone else sitting in the waiting room.

“Billy!” Lainey said when she spotted him. Then she grew solemn, sensing from the look on his face that something had happened. “What’s wrong?”

Billy sat near them, struggling to speak. Lainey took hold of his hand to give him strength. “It’s Bertha,” Billy started, then tears filled his eyes. “She’s gone.” He had to stop and wipe his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “I found her in the roses.” He covered his face then, unable to continue.

Jonah heard the words come out of Billy’s mouth, but he couldn’t understand them. It was as if everything had stopped. The sound of the nurses’ shoes as they hurried up the hallways, the clocks ticking, the elevator opening and shutting. He looked at Billy and felt pity for him. Poor Billy. He was suffering. And then he looked at Lainey, with tears running down her cheeks. Sallie started to tell Mose a list of things they needed to do for the funeral. It was like Jonah’s mind had shut down and he wasn’t able to process the meaning behind the sentence, “She’s gone.”

His mother had passed? She was dead?

Like a fog lifting, the full meaning behind those words started to sink in to him. Then the pain rushed at him, as real as an ocean wave, and he felt the tears come. Billy crouched down beside him and Jonah put his hand on Billy’s head. They sat there for a long while, until a nurse came and timidly interrupted to let them know Bess was ready to go now.

Jonah nodded and wiped his face with his handkerchief. “I need to tell her.”

“I’ll go with you,” Lainey offered.

“
I
should go,” Sallie said as she rose to her feet.

“No,” Lainey said, giving Sallie a firm look. “No. I’ll go.”

Sallie looked confused, then hurt, but Mose put a gentle hand on her arm. Jonah didn’t have the presence of mind to do anything more.

Before walking into Bess’s room, Jonah took a deep breath and prayed for God’s strength. Bess had grown so close to his mother this summer. More and more, she was acting like her too. She even cooked like his mother. He opened the door a crack and saw her waiting by the window, dressed and ready to go.

“How are you feeling?” Lainey asked her.

“Not too bad,” Bess said. “A little sore. They won’t let me see Simon, but they did tell me it went well for him.”

Jonah nodded. “So I heard.”

Bess picked up her bonnet and cape. “Let’s go home.”

Jonah pulled up a chair for Lainey to sit in. “Bess, something has happened.”

Bess looked curiously at her father. Then she gasped. “It’s Simon. He’s dead, isn’t he? All this effort, and he’s dead.”

“No. Simon is fine.” In a twist of irony, Simon
was
fine and his mother was dead. Jonah pulled the curtain around her bed to give them privacy from the other patients. Then he leaned a hip against the bed frame, crossed his arms against his chest, and lifted his face to Bess. Gently, he told her that her grandmother had passed this morning while she was out tending the roses. He waited, expecting her to break down.

Bess turned to face the window. She hugged her elbows as if she was holding herself together.

Lainey walked up to Bess and put her hands on her shoulders. Softly she said, “It was your grandmother’s time. She’d done everything she needed to do. She brought Simon back to his family. She brought you and your dad back to Stoney Ridge.” Lainey turned Bess around to look at her. Bess was dry-eyed. “God’s timing is always perfect. You see that, don’t you? Her life was complete.” She spoke with conviction.

Jonah remained silent as Lainey said those words. He was amazed by her, nearly in awe. But it distressed him to see Bess so quiet. It wasn’t like her. Two years ago, when their pet dog had been hit by a car, she had cried for two days straight. “Are you all right, Bess?”

Bess nodded but didn’t say a word.

“When you’re ready,” Jonah said, “Billy is waiting for us in the hallway.”

“I’m ready now,” was all Bess said in a voice unfamiliar to him.

It was afternoon by the time they returned to Rose Hill Farm. The hardest moment of all came as the taxi drove up the driveway. Knowing Mammi wasn’t there—and wouldn’t be there ever again—made Bess feel an unbearable pain in her chest, as real as if she had been stabbed.

Everyone in the taxi was aware of Mammi’s absence. She saw the tight set of her father’s jaw. Billy kept his chin tucked to his chest, Lainey just went ahead and let the tears flow. Sallie was quiet, which was a great blessing. Even her boys seemed to know they needed to be calm and still, but it helped to have Mose sit between them in the back of the station wagon.

Rose Hill Farm wasn’t empty. The news had spread quickly throughout Stoney Ridge. Friends and neighbors were in and around the farmhouse, cleaning it from top to bottom in preparation for the viewing and the funeral. The women fussed over Bess, but all she wanted was to go upstairs and lie down on her bed. She was stiff and exhausted after an uncomfortable night. Her hip felt sore and so did her heart—aching for her grandmother. It was the bitterest kind of heartache she had ever felt—an ache that burned and gnawed. She hoped that tears would come in solitude and help wash away the pain. It seemed a terrible thing that she couldn’t shed a tear for Mammi. She had loved her grandmother more than she had even realized. She knelt by her window and looked out over the rose fields, wondering where it was that her grandmother had lay down and died. But still no tears came, only the same horrible ache of grief.

When she finally went downstairs, she learned that the undertaker had returned her grandmother’s body. The women had dressed Mammi in burial clothes and laid her out in the front room. One had stopped all of the clocks in the house at the early morning hour they assumed Bertha had died. They would be restarted after the burial.

Bess walked slowly into the front room. Mammi didn’t look like Mammi, she thought as she stood next to her grandmother’s still body, lying on the dining room table. Jonah came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

“She’s really gone,” Bess whispered. “You can tell. Whatever it was that made her Mammi is gone.”

“Gone from us, but gone to God,” Jonah told her.

At first, Boomer seemed to be in everyone’s way, all the time. Bess knew he was looking for Mammi, and it nearly broke her heart. She knew what he was thinking: almost everyone else in Stoney Ridge seemed to be in and out of Rose Hill Farm, doing errands of kindness, but there was no sign of his mistress.

Later that day, Boomer went missing. Bess called for him and put food and water out on the porch, hoping he would return. He seemed to have disappeared.

It was a muggy, rainy day when Bertha Riehl was buried, three days after she passed. Jonah and Bess stood by Bertha’s graveside and viewed her for the last time in the large, plain pine coffin.

Jonah stood looking down at his mother. Her face was relaxed and serene, but Bess was right—whatever it was that made her Bertha—her soul? her pneuma?—it was gone.
Our bodies are just a shell, a house, for our eternal souls.

How differently he would have done things if he’d known his mother was slated for death this summer. How much time he had wasted. He felt moved with a deep grief for the years lost between them. And yet, on its heels came a quiet joy. Coming back to Stoney Ridge last week had been no accident. He and his mother, in the end, they made their peace. Just in time.

He saw Billy lean close to Bess and whisper, “Are you okay?”

Bess nodded without looking up. She was calmer than Jonah would have thought possible, considering. His mother would be proud of her.

The lid of the coffin was nailed shut and lowered into the ground; the young men—Billy was one of them—picked up their shovels to heave dirt. When the first loud clump of dirt hit the coffin, Bess broke down with a loud sob. Jonah took a step toward her, but Billy had already handed his shovel to another boy and was at Bess’s side. He patted her on the back to comfort her, handed her his handkerchief, then as her weeping grew worse, he steered her by the shoulders to lead her to his buggy.