Return to Paradise. Barbara Cameron

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СКАЧАТЬ and chose an apple from a bowl on the counter. He pulled on his jacket and walked out to the barn. When he slid the barn door open a chestnut mare stuck her head over her stall and neighed a welcome.

      “Nellie,” he crooned to her. “I’ve missed you, girl. Did you miss me?”

      She nuzzled his neck and pushed her nose at his arm, pulling his hand out of his pocket. “Yeah, I think you miss me bringing you an apple more than you miss me.”

      He gave her the apple and then found himself wrapping his arms around her. “Oh, Nellie I missed you so. I’m back, Nellie. I don’t know for how long, but I’m back.”

      She made a snuffling noise as if trying to comfort him. They stood like that for a long time until he finally went back into the house and climbed into the bed in his old room.

      Sleep came hours later.

      ***

      “Well, that was tense,” Lavina said as they walked back home.

      “David’s dat sure hasn’t changed. He’s always been such a grump.” She glanced over at Lavina. “I know, I shouldn’t talk like that. But he is.”

      “He’s not well.”

      “He’s always been that way.”

      Mary Elizabeth was right, but still, they shouldn’t talk about him like that. So she changed the subject as they walked and was grateful when they reached their house.

      Everyone was gathered around the table. Lavina and Mary Elizabeth quickly shed their jackets and bonnets and joined their family for their own supper.

      As she listened to Rose Anna chatter, glanced around the table and saw her parents and her siblings enjoying being with each other, Lavina couldn’t help wondering what was happening at the Stoltzfus house. She didn’t envy David sitting at their table with his dat. What if his dat had thrown him out of the house? What if David had left—after all, he’d done so voluntarily last time.

      “Gut stew,” her dat said. “Warms the belly on a cold day.” He tore a piece of bread in half and used it to dip into the gravy.

      “Lavina took a pot over to Waneta and Amos this afternoon,” her mamm told him. “I’ll take them my chicken and dumplings tomorrow.”

      “Take enough for three,” Lavina said as she buttered a slice of bread. “David may be back.”

      “David?”

      She nodded. “Waneta was hoping he’d come back since his dat is sick with the cancer. He was there for supper tonight.”

      “It would be so nice if that family could get together again. Especially now that Amos is sick. God wants us to care for each other.”

      She finished her stew and got up to get the apple crisp from the top of the stove where it had been cooling.

      “He gave us a ride in his truck,” Mary Elizabeth said as she got ice cream from the freezer.

      “Truck?”

      “He told his mudder he hasn’t become Englisch. He bought it to get to work.”

      “Are his bruders coming back, too?” Rose Anna asked, sounding hopeful.

      “I don’t know. We didn’t get to talk.” Lavina hugged to herself the secret that David had said they’d talk tomorrow.

      She accepted the bowl of apple crisp Mary Elizabeth passed her, breathing in the scent of the warm apples and cinnamon before she plunged her spoon into the dessert. Mary Elizabeth was telling them about how the two of them left when David’s dat had come downstairs. Lavina tuned out what her schweschder was saying.

      It was her turn to wash up, but Rose Anna helped while Mary Elizabeth took a cup of tea upstairs to drink while she read a book.

      “How did David look?” she asked as she took a dish from Lavina and dried it. “Was it hard seeing him again?”

      Trust Rose Anna to ask such a question. She had such a tender heart.

      “He looked gut,” she admitted. “Thinner,” she remembered.

      “Maybe he hasn’t been eating as well as he did when his mudder cooked for him.” She put a dish in the cabinet. “I’m glad he came back. It was the right thing to do. Now if John and Samuel will come back . . .”

      Lavina handed her a dish, but when Rose Anna tried to take it she held on to it. She knew that Rose Anna loved John and hurt when he left just as Lavina had.

      “Rose Anna, even if David and his bruders come back, it doesn’t mean things will go back to the way they used to be.”

      The corners of Rose Anna’s mouth turned down. “You don’t know that.”

      “Nee, I don’t,” She sighed. “But I don’t think we should get our hopes up. We don’t know that David’s come back for good.”

      She stared into the sudsy water as if she could see an answer there. “David’s dat didn’t seem all that happy to see him tonight. As a matter of fact, he was awful to David. I wouldn’t have wanted to sit down at the table with him.”

      She handed her a dripping dish. “For all I know, he left shortly after we did.”

      Rose Anna dried the dish and fell silent. They worked together and finished the dishes, wiped down the table and counter tops. She didn’t say another word.

      They turned off the gas lamp and climbed the stairs to their room. There they changed into nightgowns, brushed their teeth, then climbed into their twin beds. Lavina pulled her quilt up to her chin and stared at the pattern the moonlight filtering through the bare branches of the tree outside made on the ceiling.

      “Lavina?”

      “Ya?”

      “I hope things work out. With David, I mean. For you and for his family.”

      “Danki, Rose Anna. Gut nacht. Sweet dreams.”

      She was only twenty-three, but at that moment Lavina felt so old. Once she’d harbored simple dreams. A maedel’s dreams. She and David loved each other, and they were going to get married. But life was more complicated than that. Things changed. People changed. She’d grown up this past year, accepted that David hadn’t loved her or he’d have found a way to stay in the Amish community.

      At the very least he’d have contacted her sometime this past year . . .

      She’d thought David was the man God had set aside for her, but she’d been wrong. There must be someone else. He just hadn’t shown up yet.

      Sometimes God’s timing wasn’t what people wanted. She punched her pillow to make it more comfortable and closed her eyes, thinking how most of the time it wasn’t. Look how one of her mamm’s friends had prayed for a boppli for fifteen years and then had zwillingbopplin when others her age were becoming grossmudders. A woman in her church had been widowed for twenty years and never thought she’d marry again. Then a man from Ohio moved СКАЧАТЬ