Return to Paradise. Barbara Cameron
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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 here and they fell in love and married.
God hadn’t sent her another man when David left, and now David was back. She didn’t know what that meant for her . . . if anything.
She closed her eyes. She’d wished Rose Anna sweet dreams. Now she hoped for some of her own.
Snuggled deep in her quilt on a moon-washed, cold fall night, Lavina dreamed of the last day she had seen David. They’d taken a picnic lunch to eat in a nearby park.
“Have another piece of chicken?” she invited, holding out the plastic container.
David chose a leg. “Three’s my limit.”
Lavina set the container down on the quilt they’d spread on the grass and replaced the top. She knew he’d try to resist another piece and wouldn’t be able to so she’d packed plenty. He loved her fried chicken. And like many hard-working Amish men, he could eat a lot and not gain weight.
The day was warm but pleasantly so. The delicate white seed tops of dandelions seemed to dance on the gentle breeze that blew over the nearby pond. Lavina poured cups of lemonade and wished the day wouldn’t end.
They’d stolen a few hours for themselves after church. Summer was so busy with the harvest in and all the canning and preserving. But Sunday was a day of rest and there would be no work aside from the necessary daily chores of caring for and feeding the animals.
“More potato salad?”
“Nee,” he said with a satisfied sigh. “I’m full.” He leaned back on his elbows and stretched out his long legs. “We’ll have to head back soon,” he said. “It’s going to rain.”
She frowned. “Not fair. Why does it have to rain on the only day we have off?”
“Sometimes things don’t seem fair.” Now it was his turn to frown.
“Did you speak to your dat?”
He shook his head. “He was in a bad mood yesterday and went to bed early. I’m hoping to talk to him after supper tonight.”
His father was a difficult man, so demanding of David and his two bruders. They worked so hard and yet it never seemed to be enough for him. But it seemed to Lavina he was hardest on David, his eldest sohn.
She touched his arm. “I wish the two of you got along better.”
“I don’t think he gets along with anyone,” David muttered. He reached for his lemonade, gulped it down, and crushed the paper cup in his hand. “I don’t know how much more I can take.” He stared down at the cup in his hand as if he had forgotten it. Sitting up, he tossed it into the picnic basket.
“Surely he’ll retire soon and let you take over the farm. Your mamm told me that the doctor told him he needs to slow down, that he’s worried about his health.”
“He’s too stubborn to retire. If he did that, he couldn’t control my bruders and me.”
“Be patient,” she said softly. She hated seeing him unhappy.
They looked up as thunder rumbled. Reluctantly, she packed up the picnic things, and they gathered up the quilt and ran for the buggy as fat raindrops began pelting them.
“Guess it’s