A Rose Revealed (The Amish Farm Trilogy 3) Read online

  “Then I’ll be red tonight,” Elam said, reaching for the red men.

  “No!” Esther yelled, grabbing the four red men from the box before Elam could get them. She cleared her throat delicately. “I like red.”

  We set our men in our squares and began throwing the dice to see who went first. When Esther won the right to go first, she bounced in her chair and shouted, “Gut!”

  Elam and Jake looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

  On our first turns none of us rolled the requisite five to move onto the board. As she threw for the second time, Esther got a three and a two. She clapped and moved a man onto the board. “Just watch. Just watch,” she said, a taunting quality in her voice. “I’m going to beat you all!”

  As the game moved on, I marveled as quiet, shy Esther disappeared. She was replaced by an intense, competitive young woman. She counted every move with every player. She mocked, she teased, she hooted, she trash-talked Amish-style.

  “I’m sending you back to the beginning, Rose. And I don’t want that blue man of yours to get back on the board until Christmas. He’s an ugly color. Keep him out of my way!”

  “Is she always like this?” I asked Jake and Elam.

  “I think she’s got her good manners on for company,” Jake said.

  “Ha, Elam! I’ve got you blockaded!” Esther couldn’t sit still. She walked around the table to Elam and pointed to her pair of men blocking Elam’s green man as if he couldn’t see for himself. “You aren’t going anywhere and I’m going Home. Look! I’m taking this little red man all the way Home.” And she marched her man up the last stretch and Home.

  “I don’t know, Esther,” Elam said calmly, his eyes studying the board. “I don’t think he goes Home. I think you miscounted.”

  “What?” Esther, bristling with tension, put her finger on the board and began to count again. “No, I did it right.”

  “Only if you started at this place.” He pointed where her man had stood at the end of her last turn. “But you were here.” And he pointed back a space.

  “I was not,” she said hotly. “I was here!” She pointed to the spot where her man had been. “Wasn’t I?” She looked at me.

  I looked from her to Elam and saw the gleam in his eyes. “I think he’s teasing you, Esther.”

  “What?” She spun to Elam, appalled. “You can’t tease about something like this.”

  “No,” he said kindly. “You can’t tease about something like this. I can.”

  She sat back in her chair, her expression distressed, her cheeks scarlet. She looked beautiful. “Oh, no! I’ve done it again, haven’t I? I’ve been praying so hard that God would take my winning spirit away.”

  She looked so genuinely penitent that Elam smiled and said, “You were right in your counting. Your man is Home.”

  Her eyes lit up and she opened her mouth to let out a huzzah of some kind when she caught herself. “That’s nice,” she said softly. “I’m pleased.”

  She stayed gentle and sweet for two more turns. Then she landed on one of Jake’s men. “Hah! He goes back to the beginning, Jake. This is my space now! Back, back, back! Come on, get him out of here.”

  “What does she do when she loses?” I asked Jake later as we drove to the movies. Esther had won and done a discreet victory dance around the table. Then she had gathered up the game pieces, put the box away, and become Esther again, sweet, docile, gentle, the cover girl for Amish life.

  “She swallows real hard, puts the game away, and goes to her room for a while. When she comes out, she’s Esther again.”

  Grinning, I said, “I love people. They are so full of contradictions and surprises. Never in my wildest imagination would I have expected Esther to be as driven as any professional athlete. She’s got the heart to make a great lineman if we could find shoulder pads small enough to fit.”

  “How about me?” Jake asked. “Am I a man of contradictions?”

  “Are you kidding?” I laughed, a short burst of air. “You’re kind and comforting one minute, grouchy the next, sunk in a black fog the next.”

  Jake made a face, not exactly pleased with my analysis. “And you are sensitive and weepy, then sassy and independent. You’re Rose the Evangelist and Rose the Caregiver, Rose the Comedienne and Rose the Heartbreaker.”

  “I’m all that?” I was amazed, especially at the heartbreaker part. To my knowledge I’d never broken anyone’s heart, at least not romantically.

  “And more,” he said as we pulled into a parking spot.

  As I climbed out of the van, I checked the pager on my belt, hoping I wouldn’t get a call. I could use the mindless suspension of disbelief that a good movie caused.

  We bought our tickets for an adventure movie that was all the rage and entered the lobby.

  “Popcorn?” Jake asked as he paused.

  Knowing full well that the last thing I needed was more food but as always a sucker for popcorn, I said, “Sure.”

  “Soda?”

  “Why not?”

  We joined the line by a counter where I told myself that I didn’t want that phony butter dripped all over my popcorn. It was bad for me, it would make me fat, and it would get my hands all messy. But it tasted so good!

  I was dimly aware of others taking their places behind us, but it wasn’t until a young woman said, “Rose?” in a too-pleased-with-herself voice that I paid attention.

  I turned and found myself facing Allie Priestly, a “friend” from high school whom I hadn’t seen in years and hadn’t missed. Standing beside her was Ben Abrams, my ex-fiancé.

  “Look, Ben. It’s Rose. Isn’t this wonderful!”

  Not a Kodak moment.

  Chapter 4

  As I stared with dreadful fascination at my old nemesis and my ex-fiancé, two mental pictures formed.

  One was of Allie in tenth grade. She and I had both wanted to be cheerleaders. She was leggy, blonde, just out of braces, and unencumbered by conscience. I was slim, my euphemism for straight as a board, could never make my hair obey, and I wore glasses, my astigmatism making contacts impossible.

  We both went to tryouts that long-ago day, she arriving on time, I arriving fifteen minutes late because of a makeup quiz I had to take. I slid into the bleachers beside her and asked, “Did the coach give any special directions?”

  Allie shook her head. “She said we should just get out there and give it our best. Be bouncy.”

  I nodded as I watched a couple of candidates. I felt certain I could do better than they. When my name was called, I ran onto the gym floor and gave it my all, trying to look so bouncy that I gave Tigger a run for his money.

  Allie was called after I was, and she ran out onto the floor. Just before she began to cheer, she looked over at me and smirked. Then she looked down at the floor. For the first time I saw a circle inscribed with tape. Allie carefully stood in the center and began.

  I thought back to the girls who had preceded me. I looked again at Allie. All had stood precisely in the center of the circle. I had not. I hadn’t even seen it in my excitement and nervousness.

  With a sinking feeling, I leaned forward to the girl sitting in front of me. “What’s with the circle?” I asked.

  “You have to stand in the center the whole time,” she whispered. “The coach said how important it is to her that you listen to instructions, and if you can’t remember that little bit, you’ll never remember other things.”

  I looked at Allie with her blonde hair and straight-toothed smile and knew she had deliberately not told me about the circle. It took me a long time to accept that God also knew about the circle, yet He not only allowed me to be late, He allowed me to sit next to Allie and ask her my question. Obviously He had other things besides cheerleading for me, and I gradually came to terms with that fact. Still every game as I sat in the stands and watched Allie jump and tumble, I fought my resentment. Now here she was right behind me, all smiles.

  The other image that flashed through my mind was of Be
n the night I broke our engagement. I had come to realize that even though he was a Christian, he wasn’t the Christian for me. Something I couldn’t even define wasn’t right.

  “I’m sorry, Ben,” I said that night when he came to my mother’s house to visit me. It was my senior year in nursing school and I was home for the weekend. “You’re a great guy. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I don’t love you as I should if I’m to be your wife. I just have to be fair to you and release you. You’ll find someone who will love you as you deserve being loved.” And I handed him my engagement ring.

  I’d worked long and hard to come up with lines that sounded as kind as I could possibly make them. Always Miss Nice Person, that’s me, even though I had begun to suspect he was not being faithful to me. But since I couldn’t prove it, I didn’t want to argue about it. I just wanted to break our engagement and be free of what had become his cloying and increasingly annoying presence.

  He chose to be nasty. He shouted. He ranted. He turned scarlet. Finally, in a great rush of anger, he ran out in the rain, across my mother’s lawn, and threw what had been my beautiful diamond ring across the street into a field.

  “Ben, what did you do!” I yelled in horror, staring at the plowed field. “You just threw away a diamond ring!”

  “If you won’t wear it, Rose, then no one should wear it!”

  He stormed to his car and roared off. I wasn’t even in the house before I heard the screech of tires and the thud and crash that turned out to be Jake’s accident.

  As these thoughts raced through my mind in a second or two, I stared at Allie and Ben. I became aware of Jake, sensing my consternation, looking on with great interest. Gritting my teeth, I smiled sweetly and made the introductions. Jake shook hands with Ben with great aplomb and smiled charmingly at Allie. But then he had no history with them.

  “Guess what?” Allie asked me while Jake turned to order our popcorn.

  I spread my hands, at a loss as to what to guess.

  Allie grabbed Ben’s hand and looked at me with a smug smile. I noticed that her teeth were still beautifully straight. “Ben and I are engaged!”

  I blinked. “How wonderful.” I think I managed to sound somewhat pleased. In fact I was pleased. They deserved each other.

  “Just look!” She stuck her left hand under my nose. I couldn’t imagine how I had previously missed the sparkling stone on her third finger. The solitaire sat on an S-shaped shank with a tiny baguette on each side of the central stone.

  “Very beautiful,” I said as I stared first at it and then at Ben, who was suddenly busy studying the candy in the display case.

  A giant tub of popcorn was shoved into my hands.

  “Come on, Tiger,” Jake said. “We need to get our seats.” He wheeled off and I had no choice but to follow.

  As I walked away, gnashing my teeth and screaming inside, I heard Allie say, “Tiger? Oh, please!” I’d never known anyone who could drip condescension like she could. The fact that I’d been thinking the very same thing only made me angrier.

  I stalked after Jake. I grabbed a handful of popcorn and shoved it into my mouth. Yes! Phony butter. Maybe the evening could be redeemed.

  Just outside the auditorium where our film was showing, Jake stopped. He looked at my clenched jaw and stormy expression.

  “I seem to be asking this of you a lot, but are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I ground out.

  He raised his eyebrow. “I can tell.”

  “Did you see that ring?” I demanded.

  “Not really. I’m not into engagement rings.” Jake studied me. “Why does the ring bother you?”

  “I used to be engaged to him.”

  He nodded. “Do you still love him or something?”

  “Ben?” I stared, aghast. “Are you kidding? It was one of the greatest escapes in recorded history that I got away from him before it was too late.”

  “Then are you upset because you resent Allie so much? She got your man and all that, even though you no longer wanted him?”

  I sputtered at the idea. “Hardly. They deserve each other.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “The ring!” I held out my left hand and pointed to the third finger with my popcorn tub. “It was my ring! I picked it out! He bought it for me and now he gave it to her!”

  “It was your ring?”

  “My ring!”

  “And you want it back?”

  “Never!”

  He shook his head and shrugged his massive shoulders. “Then what?”

  “He threw it away!”

  Jake looked at me, confused. “He threw it away?”

  I nodded. “He was so mad when I broke up with him that he raced to the bottom of my mother’s yard and tossed the ring as far as he could, right into the field across the street!”

  Jake picked up a handful of popcorn. “He actually threw away a ring worth all that money?” He stuffed the popcorn in his mouth. “No wonder you broke up with him. He’s too dumb to be on the loose.”

  I stilled for a moment. Dumb? I’d always thought egotistical, but dumb might be better.

  “But he never threw it away, did he?” Jake was right with me, as usual. “What a grandstander!” Jake grabbed another handful of popcorn. A huge grin spread over his face as the absurdity of it all hit him.

  “Don’t you dare laugh!” I was livid at Ben, my jaw so tightly clenched I might have had tetanus. “This is no laughing matter! Why, he probably didn’t even care that I broke up with him! He probably never really loved me after all!” I was breathing fire. “I’d like to strangle him!”

  “You’re just mad because he put one over on you,” Jake said.

  “And that’s not the worst of it!” I spun around in a circle in my frustration, several kernels spilling from my tub onto the rug. Jake pointed to them and I picked them up without being totally aware of what I was doing. My mind was going in agitated spirals, and I stood staring at the popcorn in my palm.

  “Trash receptacle.” Jake nodded in its direction.

  “Right.” I walked across the hall and dumped the corn. I was still frowning when I came back. “Mom and I spent hours over in that field looking for that ring! Hours!”

  Jake stared at me for a moment. Then he began to laugh. “Oh, Rosie, I can just see you out there, down on your hands and knees, sifting through the dirt and grass, hoping against hope that you could find the thing, thinking of all the stuff you could buy when you traded it in.” And he began to laugh harder.

  He was much too close to the truth for comfort. “Wait until my mother hears about this. She’ll have a fit over all those lost hours.”

  For some reason this statement made Jake laugh even harder. That was because he’d never met my mother.

  I stared at him through slitted eyes until the absurdity of the whole thing finally washed over me. Ben’s great show of pique that was only that, a show. And all those hours searching for a ring that was never there! I started to laugh too, and soon we were wheezing, gasping for breath. I had to use the wall to hold myself up.

  Into this scene of great merriment walked Allie and Ben. Ben took one look at the two of us and spun Allie around on her heels, rushing her into the first auditorium they came to, the one showing a bland kiddie flick that had been creamed by the critics as less than stellar.

  “But Ben, this wasn’t what I wanted to see,” Allie cried as the door swung shut behind them.

  We found our movie to be vastly entertaining. In fact we laughed so readily that the people around us began looking at us askance. I didn’t care. I kept imagining Allie looking at the wrong movie, getting more agitated with Ben by the moment, and Ben, sitting there worried about seeing Jake and me again. After all, what if I told Allie what I knew about her ring? I was willing to bet anything that she had no idea of its previous history.

  I started to giggle again, only to feel Jake’s elbow in my side. I looked at the screen and saw I was giggling at a death
scene. That made me laugh harder. Soon he joined me, and the people in front of us actually moved.

  The upshot was that I went to bed feeling much better than I had the night before. That’s why the nightmare took me so by surprise.

  I sat bolt upright in bed, my heart pounding. My dream wrapped dark tentacles of terror about me, gripping me as tightly as imprisoning chains. I was sweating, trembling, almost hyperventilating. It seemed impossible that I was staring into ordinary darkness in an ordinary bedroom, so vivid had been the flashing red lights and the crackling static. And the bodies! They lay in the road, floated in the water, and sat in burning cars.

  They all looked at me and chorused, “You! You! You!”

  I slashed at the tears on my cheeks and reached for my bedside lamp. Immediately, in the glare of the light, the phantoms retreated. I stared with relief at my coat hanging on a peg in the wall and reveled in the sheer normality of the sight.

  But the feelings of horror clung, sticky cobwebs of emotion that refused to release me.

  I pushed back the covers and climbed shivering from bed. I padded into the bathroom. I’d discovered long ago that movement or a different location banished the emotions that clung long after the visions had ceased.

  I drank two glasses of water. I wet the cloth and wiped it across my face. I brushed my teeth.

  Still the clammy terror remained.

  A cup of tea, I thought. That’s what I need. Chamomile to help me relax and sleep again.

  I started out of the bathroom only to realize I wasn’t in my place. I was at Zooks’.

  If I lived here, I thought, one of the first things I’d do would be to get me a microwave to keep up here for just such emergencies.

  I padded into my darkened living room and stared out the window at the quiet countryside silvered by a three-quarter moon. Everything looked so peaceful, so tranquil, so at odds with what I felt.

  Oh, dear Lord, calm me down. I feel like I’m coming apart here.

  I took my shivering body back to the bedroom and tugged a set of sweats from my duffel bag. I pulled them on over my nightshirt. I grabbed my sweater and pulled it on over the sweatshirt. Then I stuck my arms into my bathrobe and tied it about me. I felt like the little brother in The Christmas Story, the one who couldn’t move because of so many layers of winter clothes. I could barely bend enough to tie my sneakers. It was sheer habit that caused me to attach my beeper to my bathrobe belt.