Chapter 26
Out.
Bonnie needed out.
Too many patients in the clinic had something to cry about.
She was blessed.
She’d live a long life, God willing. She could still walk and feed herself and go to work at the shop five days a week. Stop being a crybaby.
The command did little to curb the tears that threatened.
Instead of turning left and heading down the hallway to the respiratory therapist’s exam room, Bonnie went right past the doctors’ exam rooms and kept going until she smacked the panel that would open the doors and set her free from the building.
“Bonnie. Bonnie!”
Mom’s voice calling after her wasn’t enough to make Bonnie stop.
She kept going until she reached Chet’s van, parked at the edge of the parking lot.
She knocked on the passenger door.
The window hummed down.
Chet sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Ready to go, my dear?”
“Wait, wait.”
Huffing and puffing, Mom marched up to the van.
“You can’t just leave like that, Dochder.
You still have to see the RT.
You were supposed to see Dr.
Newcomb again.”
“I’ve had enough for one day.
Enough for a lifetime.”
Bonnie swallowed hard.
The quiver would give her away.
She gritted her teeth, breathed, and counted to five.
“Let’s go home.
Sei so gut.”
The severe lines around Mom’s eyes and mouth eased.
She patted Bonnie’s arm.
“I’ll call Dr.
Newcomb later.
Right now, I think we need some ice cream before we get on the road. What do you say, Chet?”
The driver saluted.
“Your wish is my command, Miss Jocelyn.”
Mom helped Bonnie into the van and stowed the rollator in the back.
They settled into their seats.
Bonnie buckled her seat belt.
She inhaled the pine air freshener Chet favored.
She stared out the window, determined to corral any tears that attempted to escape.
“Dairy Queen okay with you?”
Chet’s concerned gaze met Bonnie’s in the rearview mirror.
“Or are you more in the mood for thirty-one original flavors?”
“DQ is fine.”
Mom answered when Bonnie didn’t.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.
I could use a Dilly Bar myself.
And a cup of coffee.”
“Did you ever wonder why Gott allows a person to have scoliosis and then a fused spine and then allows her to have weak hands so she keeps dropping stuff she can’t bend over to pick up?”
Bonnie stared at the passing scenery.
An Italian restaurant, an elderly couple sitting at a bus stop, a car repair shop.
People walking from store to store.
Life went on.
“What kind of sense of humor is that?”
“It’s not intended to be funny.
A person’s character is honed by trials.”
“When is it honed enough?”
“I don’t know.”
Those last words were spoken softly.
Mom didn’t often admit to not having an answer.
Bonnie’s trials were Mom’s trials too.
And she’d lost the man who’d vowed to spend the rest of his life with her.
Had she known how short that time would be, would she still have said yes to being his wife?
Bonnie scooted around in her seat.
“Es dutt mer.
I’m being a big bopli.
I know it, but I can’t seem to help it.
This place brings out the worst in me.”
“A pity party is allowed as long as you don’t stay there.
You’re allowed to vent for a minute, but then you have to get over it and get on with it.”
Mom squeezed Bonnie’s hand.
“We all have to let off steam, or we’ll blow up.
Right, Chet?”
Chet’s gray, shaggy-haired head bounced in an enthusiastic nod.
“Sometimes I get so irritated, I have to go out in my backyard and howl at the moon.”
The image of the rotund man hitching up his pants and lumbering out to his backyard to howl like a wolf tickled Bonnie.
She almost smiled.
“Does it help?”
“Doesn’t hurt.
I’m just glad I live out in the boonies where I don’t have any neighbors.
They’d think they lived next to a lunatic.”
What did Chet have to be irritated about? He was a retired teacher who carted Plain folks around in his van.
He spouted poetry and sang songs.
“Does your wife howl at the moon with you?”
“Nope, she left me a long time ago.”
Left as in died? Or left as in divorced? Chet had never talked about his life, other than his love for teaching.
Bonnie always asked how he was doing.
He always said “fine”
with a goofy grin so genuine, no way it hid a secret lament.
It seemed inconceivable that anyone would divorce a nice man like Chet.
But then the English saw marriage differently than Plain people.
“I’m sorry.”
Such pathetic words.
The English language often seemed lacking in the words needed to express real emotion.
Deutsch wasn’t much better.
“That must’ve been hard.”
“It was for the best.
I’m sure she’s very happy with the principal from my last school, and I’m very happy with Misty and Peanuts, my Chihuahuas; my books; my movies; and my community theater.”
Chet tapped a snappy beat on the steering wheel.
“She doesn’t have to listen to my snoring, and I don’t have to listen to her complaining.
When I took those vows I thought it was forever.
She thought differently.
I can’t control that.”
A person really couldn’t know until she walked a mile in a man’s shoes, what he’d been through.
“You never remarried?”
“Nope.
I promised to love, honor, and cherish until death do us part in front of my God.
There’s no going back on that.”
Which was why a person had to think long and hard about saddling someone with a lifetime of caregiving.
No matter what a person said, he couldn’t know what it was like to care for someone with progressively worsening weakness and mobility day after day, year after year.
Was Chet lonely? Dogs were good company but not the same as a wife.
They should invite him to supper soon.
It wouldn’t make up for his solitary life, but it was something.
Until death do us part.
“What are you thinking about?”
Mom nudged Bonnie with her elbow.
“You keep rubbing your forehead.
Do you have a headache?”
“Nee, I’m just thinking about a mistake I made.”
“What mistake?”
She couldn’t tell Mom about the kiss.
The hand-holding.
“Nothing.
It’s not worth talking about.”
It was, but not to her mother.
Mom didn’t seem convinced.
“I have ibuprofen in my bag, if you need it.”
“I’m gut.”
Bonnie would make the best of her situation.
She always did.
She had no choice.
* * *
Even a sweet, creamy, cold Peanut Buster Parfait couldn’t erase the acrid taste in Jocelyn’s mouth.
A mother couldn’t fix everything.
But it would be nice to be able to fix a few things here and there.
She cast a glance at Bonnie.
Her scowling daughter sat across the table in the Strasburg Dairy Queen, stabbing her plastic spoon into an Oreo Cookie Blizzard.
Whatever was going through her head, she was done sharing her thoughts.
Likely tuned in to the unspoken tension between his two passengers, Chet had disappeared down the hallway to the men’s room after consuming a Dilly Bar.
This wasn’t the time to talk about the farm, Mr.
Steadman’s offer, and the future.
It would never be the right time to tell Bonnie that her mother was thinking about selling the home in which they’d lived her entire life.
Nor was it the time to share how Theo Beiler kept winding his way into Jocelyn’s thoughts.
Stuck.
She was simply stuck.
She couldn’t see her way forward.
So much depended on what happened with Bonnie.
For twenty-three years, Jocelyn had focused her energy on two people: her husband and Bonnie. Then, for the last two years, on Bonnie.
Her own needs weren’t important.
Sell the farm.
Don’t sell. Gott?
“That was something about Chet’s wife.”
Bonnie patted her lips with a napkin, her scowl fading.
“I can’t imagine how awful he felt.
He’s in limbo, really.”
Thinking about someone else.
That was always a good move.
“Jah, not like being a wittmann.”
The mere word brought to mind Theo’s rugged, smiling face.
With the big nose.
Really his nose wasn’t that big.
In fact, it was perfect.
Jocelyn tucked her smile in tight where it couldn’t be seen. “A wittmann can remarry.”
“Among Plain folks, he’d be expected to remarry.”
An actual smile gracing her face, Bonnie waved her spoon, flinging tiny drops of melted ice cream in the air, then pointed it at Jocelyn.
“Same with a wittfraa.”
She was making a definite effort to get past the day’s events.
Somehow Bonnie had managed to take the conversation with Chet and wind it around until it came back to Jocelyn.
Had she somehow heard about the incident at the diner? Or had Bonnie acquired the ability to read minds?
Thank goodness no one could read minds.
Theo had been on Jocelyn’s far too often—like a pesky mosquito that she couldn’t swat away.
The thick silver hair, the teak eyes, the beefy shoulders.
The lazy grin. Stop it.
Jocelyn took a quick bite of her parfait.
So good, unless a person ate it too fast and got a brain freeze.
Punishment for moving too fast.
That could apply to many situations in life.
“What’s your point?”
“No point.
Other than a wittfraa is expected to remarry.”
Bonnie fixed Jocelyn with an intent gaze that reminded Jocelyn of her own attempts to elicit information from Marlin when she knew he was keeping a secret from her.
Usually about something important like the Christmas or birthday present for her he’d hidden somewhere in the house.
Or sometimes the barn.
“When you came back to the shop from the diner on Wednesday, you were in a tizzy.”
Stand strong.
“I’m never in a tizzy.”
“Is it because of Mr.
Steadman’s offer?”
“Nee.”
Yes.
No.
All of the above.
“Then why won’t you talk about it?”
Because if she did, it would become a real possibility.
What if Bonnie hated the idea? Even more daunting, what if she thought it was an excellent idea? If Marlin were here, what would he say?
If Marlin were here, none of this would be happening.
“I don’t want to. Not yet.”
Her eyes narrowed, Bonnie ate some more of her Blizzard.
She licked her lips.
“Rachelle Miller was at the diner that day, having lunch with Layla Troyer.
They came into town together to get some material.
Their boplin are growing like crazy, according to Rachelle.”
“Really? It was super crowded at the diner, like it always is at lunchtime.
I didn’t see her.”
“She saw you.”
“Really?”
“Really.
With Theo Beiler.”
“I wasn’t with him.
Not with him, with him.”
Jocelyn’s heart bucked like a horse spooked by a rattlesnake.
Heat worse than a hot flash flooded her body.
Her tongue twisted her words.
“We ran into each other on the sidewalk.
He was going to the diner. I was going to the diner. So we both walked in the same direction. That’s all. Really.”
“She said you were reading a bunch of papers.”
Bonnie laid her spoon on the table.
She leaned back and crossed her arms.
Her gaze skewered Jocelyn.
“Did you show the offer to Theo? The one you refuse to share with me, your dochder, your family?”
“I was waiting for our order.
It takes a while to get a bunch of orders that time of day.”
“That’s not an answer, Mamm.”
“Bart and Martin and Jed stopped by to say hallo.
I dropped my salad.
Terri helped me clean it up.”
“Mudder.
What did Theo think of the offer?”
“You haven’t said anything about your buggy ride with Elijah.”
“Don’t try to change the subject.
What happened with Theo?”
Chet chose that moment to return to the table.
“I took a walk around the block to stretch my legs.
Figured you two needed a minute to get your bearings.”
He peered at Bonnie, then turned to Jocelyn.
“I’d give you another minute, but if we don’t get a move on, I’ll be late taking Misty and Peanuts for their evening constitutional.
They get a wee bit cantankerous if I mess with their schedule.
As it is they’ll be sitting at the door, waiting, with their legs crossed.”
“I’m ready to go.”
Jocelyn stood.
A feeling not unlike the one she used to get when the school bell rang on Friday afternoon swept over her.
Free.
She grabbed their trash and stepped away from the table.
“I’m eager to get home.”
“Me too.
Very eager.”
Jocelyn glanced back.
Bonnie’s expression said this conversation was far from over.