A Rose Revealed (The Amish Farm Trilogy 3) Page 2

  “Right.” He pointed to the balloon chair I’d just vacated. I sat down again gratefully.

  “You, sir,” he said to Peter, “can wait in the living room.”

  Peter hesitated. “But my mother and my brother.”

  The policeman just looked at him.

  “The people in the car,” I said to the officer. “Sophie and Ammon Hostetter.”

  The cop looked at Peter. “And you are?”

  “Peter Hostetter.”

  “Well, Mr. Hostetter, if you’d wait in the living room for the detective, I’d appreciate it. And if there is any news from outside, I’ll see that you get it. And I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Peter blinked. “Thank you.” He turned and walked to the living room.

  It was almost two hours before the police were finished with me. The detective on the case turned out to be a guy named Lem Huber. I had gone to school with his younger brother Al at Pequea High School. I knew Lem as the football star who was three years older than Al and me, then as the college man who showed up at Al’s high school games to cheer for him. Most recently I had run into him at the hospital a couple of times when my ambulance runs and his investigations overlapped.

  “Well, well, Rose Martin,” he said when he came in to the Hostetters’.

  I felt my tension level diminish dramatically when I saw him.

  “So tell me everything you know,” he said as he sat in the companion balloon chair. “Nice and slow and nice and detailed.”

  He let me talk without interruption. Then he questioned me politely about what I had said, asking the same questions from several different angles. I answered as thoroughly as I could, but it all came down to one thing as far as I was concerned: through some terrible accident Sophie and Ammon Hostetter had died.

  When Lem finally told me I could leave, I sighed with relief. I grabbed my medical equipment, my purse, and keys and rushed out the front door. Fire equipment and emergency vehicles still filled the drive and lawn, many with lights revolving, all with static pouring from their radios. The fire was long extinguished, but all the attendant chaos of a crisis was present, including men and women in a variety of uniforms talking and laughing, now that the immediate need was met. Police officials were examining what was left of the Town Car under high-voltage lights. Yellow crime-scene tape was draped all over the lawn.

  I was so consumed with relief that I could finally leave that I was unprepared for what I saw. Memories long buried leaped at me, overwhelming me, choking me, a kaleidoscope of emotions tearing reason and control from me. My stomach heaved and I grabbed one of the porch pillars to keep from falling.

  “Rose?” Lem Huber spoke behind me, and his hand came out to help support me.

  I swallowed once, twice, and tried to contain the incipient panic welling inside, the great beast who waited in the shadows to devour me whenever my guard was down.

  I pushed myself away from the pillar. “I’ll be all right,” I said with what I hoped sounded like assurance. I suspected I was so white he wouldn’t believe anything I said even if my voice had been steady, which regrettably it wasn’t. “Too many memories.”

  Lem nodded as he continued to hold my elbow. “This was pretty bad,” he agreed.

  I made a little noise he took for assent, and I allowed him to think that it was the horror of today’s events that had overcome me. It was safer that way.

  Lem raised an arm and waved, and next thing I knew, one of the EMTs was holding up two fingers and asking, “How many?”

  “I am not concussed,” I said.

  “Now how would you know?” he asked with a smile.

  “I’m a nurse.” I held out my bag.

  “Ah,” he said, unimpressed, as he studied the knot on my forehead in the porch light.

  “And an EMT.”

  “Good for you, sweetheart.” He poked around the injury. “Then you know this needs to be cleaned out and disinfected.”

  “Ouch.” I flinched as he got too enthusiastic. “So clean it.”

  “Inside,” he ordered. This time I sat in the kitchen and squirmed as he painted my forehead orange with mercurochrome.

  “Hey,” I groused. “Couldn’t you have used something a bit less obvious?”

  “They don’t give me Bactine.” He stepped back and studied his handiwork. I didn’t like his smug grin.

  I took my orange forehead and my sagging energy level and went outside again. But this time I was prepared. I had my thoughts firmly in neutral as I walked across the yard and out to my car. I drove into Lancaster and to the Home Health Group office, my mind a careful blank. I pulled into the parking area behind the office and parked the car, concentrating on nothing. I unlocked the back office door and put all my supplies away, signing the supply sheets and requisition orders, thinking only of pleasing Madylyn. I got into my blue Civic and started for home.

  I hadn’t gone very far when my mind, never very quiet at the best of times, exploded. Images flashed with the relentless pulse of the light strip on a police cruiser. Fire, crushed impatiens, sirens, static, yellow police tape. Surviving brothers with sunglasses. EMTs with mercurochrome. Polite detectives with fine brown hair that floated every time they turned their heads.

  And rushing white water, swollen and angry, creaming over rocks.

  And the inevitable, “Rose, what have you done!”

  It didn’t take much intelligence to realize just how close to the edge I was.

  I’m fine. Really. I’m fine. I repeated it to myself like a litany. Maybe if I said it often enough, it would become true.

  But coming out of the house and seeing those lights and hearing that static had brought such a rush of agony that I was unlikely to feel fine for quite some time. I hadn’t had this strong a flashback in years.

  You’re being stupid, I told myself. You’re a nurse and an EMT. You deal with emergencies much too frequently to be spooked like this.

  But that’s when I’m the healer, the helper. I fix the problems. I don’t cause them.

  But you didn’t cause the problem today.

  No, I didn’t, but I didn’t prevent it either.

  Like you could have. What are you, prescient?

  I shrugged away that bit of logic and went back to the real crux of my distress.

  Because I was the cause then.

  Suddenly I knew I wasn’t going to make it home. I felt the bile rise in my throat and swallowed desperately. I felt the tears begin, blurring my vision until I could barely see the road. I felt the shaking start deep in my stomach, and I knew it would radiate outward until my whole body shook.

  Oh, God!

  I blinked madly, desperately.

  Oh, God! I have to get off the road before I fail again, before I’m the cause again.

  And I saw the answer to my prayer loom out of the darkness, a white farm house with green trim, clean and orderly and known. I pulled into the Zooks’ drive, shoved the car in park, and fell to pieces.

  Chapter 2

  I don’t know how long I sat in the Zooks’ drive. My normal thought processes and emotional responses were very much on the fritz. It was one of those terrifying times when thinking is too horrendous, and your mind copes by going blank. I sat gripping the wheel, unable to do anything but sob for a long time. At least it felt like a long time. In reality it may have been only a few minutes.

  Then I tossed my glasses on the passenger seat because they suddenly felt too tight for my swollen, overheated face. I hugged myself as I shivered and cried and generally made a fool of myself, though I suppose since no one saw me but me, I didn’t, strictly speaking, play the fool. But I felt the pain. Oh, how I felt the pain.

  I saw Sophie’s smiling face, full of excitement over her foray into the real world.

  I saw Ammon’s kind face as he helped his mother with the seatbelt.

  Then the image jumped, and I saw my mother’s ravaged face, my father’s terrified face, Rhoda’s dead face. The ache in my chest expanded until
I could barely breathe.

  Oh, God, help me! I don’t want Rhoda to be dead! I don’t want Sophie to be dead! Or Ammon! Please! Oh, God! Please!

  A sharp rap on the driver’s side window made me jump, and a small scream erupted like a little verbal geyser. I spun and saw a dark figure looming in the night, the shape blurry through the condensation formed on the window by my weeping and harsh, heavy breathing.

  I was too emotionally drained to feel fear though I wondered resentfully just who was insensitive enough to bother me while I felt like this.

  “Roll down the window,” a man requested, his voice made hollow by the glass between us.

  I was so depleted with my personal agony that I couldn’t respond. All I could do was stare. Tears still streamed down my face, and the relentless pounding in my head continued unabated, but I didn’t seem to be shaking any more, a fact that gave me a strange, foolish pride.

  “Open the window!” the voice said, this time an order, courteous but implacable.

  He spoke with such quiet authority that I struggled to obey with hands so uncoordinated that I could barely push the little button on the door panel. After long moments I managed to lower the window a couple of inches.

  “What?” I asked in a thready whisper. I began to yearn desperately for a tissue, for several tissues, for a box of tissues as tears dripped off my chin onto my chest. I grabbed the edge of my cardigan and wiped ineffectually across my face.

  The man leaned over and peered at me. He wore a broad-brimmed black hat but no beard. “What are you doing here?” he asked, not unkindly.

  Now there was a foolish question, I thought.

  “Crying,” I said and sniffed. I lowered my head to my hands that again rested on the steering wheel. It was too great an effort to hold myself upright. “Crying.”

  Suddenly a flashlight was shining on me, or rather on the top of my head and what little of my face wasn’t blocked by my arms.

  “Rose?” The man’s voice was hesitant, disbelieving.

  I nodded without lifting my head.

  “Is that you, Rose?”

  Now I recognized the voice of Elam Zook. I was parked in his driveway, or rather that of his father, John. Elam and John, staunch and upright Amishmen, worked the family farm together.

  I leaned wearily back against the headrest and looked toward the partially opened window, blinking in the glare. “Hi, Elam.” I barely made a sound in spite of the great effort the words took.

  “Rose!” he said in horror.

  Well, now I knew what I looked like.

  “Iss die Rose?” another male voice asked, and John Zook peered in the window at me. “Ach, look at her!” He was highly distressed.

  “Hi, John,” I managed. “I’m—” I swallowed against the constriction in my throat. “I’m just borrowing your driveway for a few minutes. I won’t be long.” I tried to sound as if it was an everyday occurrence that I drove into driveways, parked with my motor running and my lights on, and sobbed my heart out.

  “Rose.” A third voice was both stern and concerned.

  I looked as John moved aside and Jake rolled up to the window in his wheelchair, his trusty German shepherd, Hawk, at his side. I smiled, or at least I tried to. I always smiled at Jake, prickly, handsome, marvelous Jake.

  He looked at me, skewered in the stark light his brother held to my face, and muttered something harsh under his breath. “Lower this window,” he ordered.

  I didn’t move.

  “Rose,” he growled. “Lower the window all the way.”

  I nodded but still didn’t move.

  Jake made a disgruntled noise and grabbed the door handle. He pulled. Nothing happened. “Unlock the door, Rose. Now.”

  What a good idea, I thought, but what came out in a weak, quavering voice was, “Stop yelling at me.”

  “Rose.” His voice was full of exasperation and warning.

  “Right,” I said, looking at the door. It seemed miles away, but I wanted to make Jake happy. I always wanted to make Jake happy. I studied the buttons, trying to decide which one was the door lock. With great resolve, I reached and pushed. The window slid all the way down.

  I sighed and smiled weakly. “Sorry,” was all I could manage as two big tears slid down my cheeks.

  Jake looked at me and shook his head. I couldn’t tell if it was in pity or exasperation. He reached inside the car, pushed the right button to release the lock, and pulled my door open. He maneuvered around it and wheeled his chair right to the edge of my seat.

  “Rose.” He studied me for a long minute.

  “Hi,” I whispered, rolling my head toward him and trying to smile. Without warning my voice broke off in a great sob. I felt myself begin to shake again.

  “I’m s-sorry. I’m s-sorry!” And I shook harder. “You’re so brave and I’m—”

  “Rosie!” The distress in his voice washed over me like a soothing balm, but I couldn’t stop the tremors or the tears.

  He reached across me to where my hands lay limply in my lap. He grasped them, held them between his palms, and rubbed until they felt warm for the first time in hours. Then he grabbed my wrists and pulled.

  “What?” I mumbled as I automatically pulled back.

  “Come here,” he said as he continued to tug.

  I hadn’t the strength to fight him. I let him draw me out of the car and into his lap.

  “Jake! I can’t sit on you! I’ll hurt you!” I tried to pull away.

  “A little thing like you?” he said. “Never.” He put a hand on my waist and held me in place. Hawk put his head on my knee.

  “But your legs!”

  “They can’t feel you, Rose. Don’t worry.”

  So I sat stiffly on his knees with my tear-ravaged face, my wild woman hair, and a bad case of the hiccups I’d gotten from all the crying. Elam continued to shine the flashlight on me. I put my hands to my face to block both the light and Jake’s view of me. I wasn’t surprised to feel tears slide between my fingers. At the rate I was weeping, I’d be suffering from dehydration momentarily.

  Jake pulled my hands from my face and held them again in his strong ones.

  “Tell me, Rose. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Oh, Jake,” I said miserably. “It was awf…I s-saw…” I couldn’t articulate a complete sentence. I took a deep breath. “Sophie and Ammon. And the lights! The static!”

  He put a hand under my chin and turned me to face him. He looked at me like what I had said made sense.

  “If it’s got you this upset, it must have been rough,” he said, reaching out to push my hair off my face. For the first time he noticed the abrasion on my forehead.

  “Rosie!” He ran a finger softly over my skin, being careful not to touch the injury itself. “What happened? Did you fall? Or have an accident?”

  “No,” I answered the last question. It was too difficult and too confusing to remember everything he asked. I was too tired. “I didn’t have an accident.”

  The flashlight beam moved off of me, and Elam, John, and Hawk began a careful tour of my car, looking for dings and collapsed fenders.

  “I didn’t,” I protested weakly.

  “I don’t see anything,” Elam said when they completed their circuit.

  John nodded agreement. “The car’s fine.”

  “I told you,” I said, irritated that they hadn’t taken my word.

  “Then what, Rose?” Jake’s voice was so gentle. If I weren’t already crying, I’d have burst into tears at his concern.

  My feelings for this man were so complicated, yet so fierce. I’d known him for two years, ever since the night he was nearly killed outside my mother’s home in Honey Brook, the night his motorcycle skidded on wet leaves and landed on his back, leaving him a paraplegic. I had sat with him in the street in the pouring rain that night while we waited for the medevac helicopter to arrive to transport him to the hospital. I’d felt his failing vital signs and watched the emergency techs shake their heads. I’d
thought he died. I’d even planted a little cross by the site of his accident as a memorial.

  It was a year before I learned he was alive. I met Kristie Matthews, who boarded here at the farm, and she told me he had survived. I took down my little cross, but almost another year passed before I actually met the man. When his mother took a terrible fall on the cellar stairs during the summer, I’d been on the emergency crew that took Mary to the hospital. Then I’d been the home health nurse assigned to her care when she returned to the farm.

  Often on my visits to Mary, I talked with Jake, lingering after I should have left for my next case. I enjoyed our conversations and apparently so did he. He made it a point to be around when I had a visit scheduled. We talked about everything from his parents’ strict faith to why I liked being a nurse to how his life had changed in the past two years.

  After my official visits to Mary ended, I stopped by unannounced two more times, ostensibly to check on her but really to talk with Jake. He’d been home one time and we’d talked for an hour. He was absent the next time, and I was appalled at the disappointment I felt at missing him. I knew I couldn’t stop again unless he specifically invited me. Otherwise I was setting myself up for heartbreak.

  Jake called me after that second visit, saying Mary told him I’d dropped by. His voice on the phone made my mouth go dry and my palms sweat. Since then he called at infrequent intervals, always surprising me, always getting the same physical reaction, not that he knew. We talked every time for an hour or two. But he never mentioned meeting or my coming to the farm or his coming to my place. Just friends talking.

  Only it always felt like more. Or maybe, more accurately, almost more.

  One thing I’d never told Jake was that Rose, the home health nurse, was the same woman as Rose who sat in the street with him. He didn’t want to meet the latter, a matter of pride as far as I could discern. Rose in the street had seen him at his worst, his most vulnerable. As a man who liked to be in control, he found it bad enough to be confined to a wheelchair. To be reminded of the night his world had collapsed was more than he could handle.

  So I’d never told him that I was Rose from the street. In all our conversations about life and death and God and salvation, I’d never told him. Someday I would, when the circumstances were right. It certainly wasn’t my intent to be less than truthful with him. After all, I was a woman who prided herself in being honest. Soon, I always told myself. Soon.