A Lancaster County Christmas Read online

“Nonsense! I’ve got all the time in the world.” Dr. Engel pulled up a chair and eased himself into it, facing Jaime. “So, Jaime Fitzpatrick. How are you today?”

  Something in his greeting, his solicitous tone as he asked how she was feeling, made a sick anticipation rise from the center of her stomach. It felt as if time was slipping into slow motion, matching Dr. Engel’s leisurely pace. Even the song now playing on the radio was an instrumental version of “Silent Night.”

  Jaime lowered herself to her chair. “I really just stopped by to get a prescription refilled. Dr. Cramer prescribed it for me awhile ago.” She enunciated each word carefully in case he was possibly deaf on top of being slow.

  Dr. Engel opened Jaime’s chart, scanned it, humming as he read, then let it drop on his lap. He leaned back in his chair. “You didn’t answer my question. How are you today?”

  “Fine. I’m just fine.” Hurry, hurry, hurry!

  “A note here said that Dr. Cramer suggested getting some counseling along with the sleeping pills. Have you done that?”

  Jaime folded her hands in her lap. “No. I’ve solved my problem.”

  “Is that right?” Dr. Engel lifted his bushy eyebrows and tapped the chart. “So that’s why you’re here today, because you’re sleeping so well?”

  She sighed and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “Not exactly ‘well,’ but . . .” Not exactly at all. “Look, I don’t use the pills every night. Just when I really need them. I’ve had a lot on my mind and I’ve needed a clear head to make good decisions.”

  Dr. Engel picked up her chart, peering at it through his bifocals. “So your mother passed away recently?”

  Jaime shifted in her seat and crossed one leg over the other. “Last summer.”

  “So this will be your first Christmas without her.”

  She stiffened. Oh pull-eez. Did he think she wasn’t aware of that?

  “Grief takes awhile to work through. It can’t be rushed.”

  “I’m fine. Really.” She froze when she noticed that Dr. Engel’s gaze was on her foot, wiggling back and forth in the air.

  “I know I’m old school, but I believe that pain can be the most important tool in a person’s life. It forces a person to pay attention to something that needs to be changed. I worry that drugs like sleeping pills mask pain just enough that the real root of the problem gets buried, deeper and deeper. A problem—even something like grief—just doesn’t go away until it’s dealt with.”

  Jaime glanced out the window and saw large snowflakes, drifting in the wind. “I’m making a change. A big one.” Starting today. One hour ago, to be exact, when she told her manager at Sears Portrait Studio she was quitting.

  “Change isn’t the same thing as addressing grief, Jaime. It’ll just keep resurfacing. Avoidance is not a way to cope. There are better coping methods.”

  “Such as?” Jaime said coldly. She didn’t mean to sound so rude. Why was she acting so prickly with everyone? She always had a tendency to speak before thinking, but today, it seemed as if she had no filter at all.

  This doctor meant well, she had no doubt, but he had no right to be poking into her private business. Dr. Cramer never asked these kinds of probing questions. But she needed those pills! This morning, while photographing a fussy elderly woman and her cat, she felt a wave of dizziness from lack of sleep. Her entire body ached with fatigue. She simply could not get a good night’s rest. She would lie in bed and watch the glowing digital numbers on the alarm clock flip over and over, her mind bubbling with anxieties.

  “Some folks find solace and guidance in faith, for one.”

  Oh no! Talking about religion was like walking toward a bee swarm, just waiting to get stung. Same thing. She was determined to avoid that particular topic and all the unsolvable turmoil that came with it. Jaime rose to her feet. “I really need to be on my way. If you wouldn’t mind giving me the prescription slip, I’d like to get going before the storm hits.”

  Dr. Engel held her eyes for a long moment. Then he handed her the writ. “Dr. Cramer had already filled it out for you when you called in this morning.” He eased himself to a stand, creaking as he went. “Jaime, you just have to ask for help when you need it.”

  Isn’t that why I’m here? Jaime gave him a stiff smile, took the writ, and stuffed it—along with his surfeit of advice—in her purse.

  The snow was falling steadily, damp and clinging. The wind had whipped up, finding every crack and crevice in the buggy to slip through. At moments like these, Sol thought back to that time in his life when he was in his Rumspringa and hid a car from his folks. He didn’t object to living the Plain life, but on bitter winter days he did think back fondly to that car. He could blast on the heat, roll up the windows, cut off the wind, and crank up the radio.

  He glanced over at Mattie as she spread the buggy blanket over her lap. What would she think of his thoughts? She was so pure, his Mattie. He doubted she ever had a taste for the worldly life, not like he did. Not like Zach did. Mattie’s seventeen-year-old cousin had been living with them since summer. Zach ran with a wild group of friends, a choice that had caused growing tension between him and his parents. All spring, his parents were at their wits’ end. Finally, after one major mishap, his father had given him an ultimatum: get baptized or get out. So Zach got out. With no place to go and no money in his pocket, Mattie scooped him up like a stray puppy and insisted he live with them. It wasn’t that Sol was entirely unsympathetic to Zach’s plight—he was no stranger to teenage shenanigans. When he was not much older than Zach, he had gone so far as to leave the community and abandon the girl he adored because he had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pitch for the Lancaster Barnstormers. It was a wonderful, awful time. He knew firsthand the dangers and temptations of the outside world. He knew the pain and heartache he had inflicted on those he loved.

  When Mattie told Sol she wanted Zach to stay with them, he thought it over and finally agreed. Sol hoped he could help Zach avoid the regrets he had—but it was starting to trouble him to see the influence he had on their Danny. Danny adored Zach. To him, Zach was the older brother he never had. He talked like him, he walked like him. He was even starting to wait to dress in the morning until he saw what color shirt Zach was wearing. It shamed Sol to admit this, but he felt as if Zach had displaced him in his own son’s life. Danny used to imitate Sol the way he was imitating Zach.

  And behind it was the nagging worry that Zach was bringing the outside world into their home.

  Sol could already see Danny would have a difficult time of it when he reached Rumspringa. Danny’s mind was eager for new things, new information. Could the Plain life satisfy a mind like that? So much of their life was routine. There was great comfort in routine, he knew, and he had grown to love his life. But he understood the longing a young man might have for the excitement of the world.

  Mattie shivered and snuggled closer to him.

  “So what did the doctor say?”

  She kept her gaze on the swishing tail of the horse. “He said not to lose hope. Miracles can happen, he said.” Mattie’s voice was sweet but thin. She spoke with forced cheer, like those narcissus bulbs she put in little paper cups every January and lined up on the kitchen windowsill.

  “That’s exactly right,” he said reassuringly. His spirits lightened slightly. He put his arm around her and drew her close. She was still weak from her miscarriage, just four weeks ago. “I don’t think we should be giving up, Mattie,” he whispered. “You always said we should expect miracles in this life.”

  “The Lord God had already given us a miracle,” she said quietly. “Danny is our miracle.”

  Hearing his name, Danny popped up and hung over the backseat of the buggy. Mattie tapped the tip of his nose.

  “He is indeed,” Sol said, “but that doesn’t mean the Lord won’t grant us another miracle.”

  They had such high hopes for this pregnancy. Mattie hadn’t conceived since Danny was born, and then one day this fall, she told Sol s
he was going to have a child. Their prayers had been answered! Until the day after Thanksgiving, when the bleeding and cramping started. And their hope was extinguished.

  Mattie tucked her arm through Sol’s and leaned her chin on his shoulder. He turned the horse into the driveway that led to their farmhouse. The horse picked up his pace, knowing that a hay dinner and a warm stall would be waiting for him. Sol pulled the buggy as close to the kitchen door as he could and helped Mattie inside, hoping she might lie down for a few minutes before dinner. He sent Danny directly to the barn to help Zach feed the animals. He unhooked the horse from the buggy traces, led it inside the barn to its stall, and pushed the buggy into the barn to keep it sheltered. Snow crunched under his feet as he crossed the yard to the house.

  In the kitchen, Sol pushed the coals around in the woodstove and added logs to warm up the downstairs. Mattie was checking on Buster, Danny’s baby barn owl. Mattie babied Buster and kept it in the kitchen, even though Sol assured her the owl would be fine in the barn. Mattie didn’t agree. So Buster stayed in a cozy box by the stove.

  He smiled as he watched her crouch by the box, talking softly to Buster. Then his smile faded. He knew she had given up hope for another baby. He could see it in her eyes, even the way she nurtured that silly barn owl.

  Mattie hadn’t just lost her hope. She had lost her joy.

  Jaime stood by the front door of the doctor’s office and put on her hat and scarf, bracing herself for a shock of cold. She buttoned her top coat button. It looked bitter outside, with dark clouds racing across the sky. Just as she stuffed one hand into a glove, Dr. Engel opened the waiting room door and called her name.

  “Would you mind doing me a favor? That Amish boy left his toy. They live on a farm right on the edge of town . . . not far from the highway.”

  She hesitated. The snow was sticking to the road, and she was anxious to get to the drugstore to pick up her prescription before her husband expected her at his school. She didn’t want C.J. to know she had been to the doctor. He worried she might become dependent on sleeping pills. “Maybe they can just come back and get it.”

  The nurse with the perfect hair popped her head out of the reception window. “That Amish mama miscarried just a few weeks ago. She’s been trying and trying to have a baby.” She clucked her tongue.

  Oh. The extra ten pounds that had crept up on Jaime’s small-boned frame since her mother’s death no longer seemed like such a big problem.

  Dr. Engel gave the nurse a look, and she quietly closed the window. He walked up to Jaime. “After today, I won’t be seeing the Amish woman for a while. She’s going to be just fine.” He put the whistle into her gloveless hand and curled her fingers around it. “Amish kids don’t have a lot of toys. This one must have been pretty special for him if he brought it into town.”

  “Not so special that he couldn’t have remembered it,” Jaime said.

  “Boys are boys. And no boy should be parted with his whistle. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Do I really have a choice? “Fine. I’ll take it.”

  Dr. Engel gave her vague directions about how to reach the farmhouse. “When you see an old roadside cemetery—with small plain markers behind low stone walls—then you’re getting close. Turn left into the driveway when you see a long white fence that wraps along the road. The Riehl farm is hard to miss—big unpainted barn. Green shutters. White clapboard. Big wraparound porch out front.” He held the door open for her. “Not to worry. You’ll know it when you see it.”

  Jaime ran to her car and turned on the ignition, setting the heat to full blast. She sat there for a while, waiting for the car’s engine to warm up. It was a habit ingrained by her husband. C.J. was deliberate about taking good care of cars—changing the oil regularly, getting tune-ups, giving the engine time to get warm. He was deliberate about everything.

  As she waited, she looked more closely at the whistle. There was something about the way that Dr. Engel asked her to deliver it—the way he looked at her—that made her think this whistle had some kind of special significance.

  Though she’d lived in Lancaster County all of her life, she had never really known any Amish. Other than a brief chat here and there at an Amish roadside fruit stand, today’s conversation with the little boy was the longest one she’d ever had with an Amish person. It seemed there was an invisible wall between the two cultures. They felt it. She felt it.

  She held the whistle up to her lips and blew on it, gently at first, then louder. The funny squeaks made her laugh out loud. It felt good, easing the tight feeling in her chest that had been her constant companion lately.

  She turned on the wipers to knock some snow off the windshield. The entire parking lot was covered with a thick, one-inch layer of snow, just in the time she had been in the doctor’s office. She listened to the weather report on the radio and cringed when she heard the weatherman warn people to prepare for power outages and get supplies to last for a few days. She and C.J. absolutely, positively had to get to her father’s tonight. Her father had told her he had a huge surprise waiting for her, and she had a pretty good idea what it was going to be.

  Mattie covered the casserole with tinfoil and slipped it into the oven. The air was redolent with Danny’s favorite meal: roast pork and oven potatoes. Danny would be happy when he caught a whiff of this, she thought. She made a double portion so that there would be plenty for tomorrow’s lunch. She really should start cooking in smaller batches, but she just didn’t seem to be able to. A casserole as big as the one she just made would have filled up four of her six brothers. The bulk of her mother’s time, like most every woman, was spent preparing meals. Not so for Mattie. She should be finding the good in that, she knew, but instead she looked at the big kitchen table and thought about the children she had hoped would fill it. She took out forks, knives, and spoons and set four places at the table—the pine harvest table that Sol had built for her when they were newly married.

  Dear Sol. He was trying so hard to make things a little better. How she loved him—his steadiness, his honesty, his humor, and his kind, kind heart. The buggy ride home from the doctor’s office today nearly undid her. Sol’s eyes, so sad, searching her face, trying to see into her heart, hoping there would be good news. He liked problems he could fell like trees, problems he could solve. Mattie’s barrenness left him confounded.

  She ran a hand along the tablecloth and brushed off some crumbs from Danny’s spot. Maybe they should think about getting a smaller table. Maybe, then, it wouldn’t seem like someone was always missing.

  A single tear seeped from the corner of her eye and spilled down her cheek. She rubbed her face and took a deep breath. She had to stay strong for Sol, for Danny, but it was hard, so hard, to accept the will of God.

  C.J. Fitzpatrick wiped down the dry erase board and scanned his classroom. “Looks like a wrap for the year, Tucker.” His yellow Labrador retriever stared up at him with large dark eyes. C.J. stooped down and unhooked Tucker’s service jacket. “You’re off-duty, buddy. School’s out.” He patted Tucker’s large head. He adored that dog. Tucker had been bred to be a guide dog for the blind, but was career changed because he was considered “too much dog”—a euphemism for a dog that was hard to handle. C.J. had been volunteering for Search and Rescue when the organization called him and said they thought they had a prospect for an SAR dog. They were right. Tucker was the best SAR dog C.J. had ever worked with—this dog was wired to work. He would go to any lengths for a Find.

  C.J. and Tucker had rescued many lost people over the past two years. Most were Live Finds, but not all. He knew that would come with the territory of SAR, but it was still a terrible blow when he and Tucker found twin five-year-old boys last fall, too late, after a twenty-four hour search. The boys had wandered off while their parents were setting up camp. One boy was found first, early into the search. He had fallen down a steep ridge and hit his head. It took another nineteen hours to find the other boy. C.J. shuddered. The boy must have
wandered in circles because his trail—his scent path—was scattered in all directions. C.J. finally found him quite a distance away, badly dehydrated and in severe shock. The boy was airlifted to a hospital, but pneumonia had set in and he died a day later. C.J. couldn’t shake that experience off.

  Tucker licked his hand, as if sharing the thought.

  “Come on, Tuck, we need to get over that. We win some and we lose some. We know that.” He walked over to the window to see if Jaime had arrived yet.

  His thoughts drifted to the argument they’d had this morning. They’d started the day off on the wrong foot. But what had triggered it? He had just asked her if she was packed for the trip and she snapped at him. He had stepped in mud and he hadn’t even seen it. Where was safe ground anymore? All that he was wondering was if she needed him to take her suitcase out to the car, but she assumed he was nagging her to get ready. Jaime was so tense about this trip. He sighed. Lately, Jaime was tense about everything. The past few months, things seemed to be unraveling between them. He couldn’t remember the last conversation they’d had that didn’t end with Jaime upset with him, or worse still, silent. He could feel them drifting, drifting, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

  “C.J.? Yoohoo, are you there?”

  C.J. spun around to find Eve, the principal’s receptionist, standing by his desk with an envelope in her hand. He gave her a warm smile. “I’m sorry, Eve. I was just daydreaming.”

  “Here’s your paycheck, darlin’. I already locked up the office and thought you might have forgotten about it.” She put the envelope on his desk and turned to go, then came over to give him a hug. “Have a very merry Christmas, C.J. You deserve it. Especially after being nominated for the district’s Teacher of the Year award. What a Christmas this is going to be!”

  Sol told Zach to finish up in the barn while he and Danny went up the hill behind the farm to check the trap he had set yesterday for a pesky bobcat. He wanted to check on it before the storm hit. He told Mattie he thought there would be a good chance of outsmarting a hungry cat in a winter storm. Mattie watched her husband and son climb the hill until they were swallowed by the falling snow. The air was raw and piercing, and dozens of chores awaited her inside, yet she lingered still. She drew in a deep breath, smelling the cold that pinched her nose and the acrid smoke from the chimney that rose into the sky. She lifted her face to the snow, tasting it on her lips, letting its coldness sting her flushed face. Shivering, she gathered her shawl closer to her and went up the porch steps that led to the kitchen.