The Longing by Beverly Lewis Read Free Book Online

worry.” Rhoda went and kissed chubby Matty, squeezing his soft cheeks. I can’t wait to have my own little boy. She could just imagine how cute Ken’s and her children would be someday.
    Pushing away any feelings of rejection, Betsy Fisher pressed on, not allowing the slightest bit of discouragement to rankle her. She stopped off at James and Martha’s, hoping to see Rhoda before she headed off to work at the restaurant.
    Wiping Matty’s face, Martha told her that Rhoda had just left. She picked Matty up out of his high chair, the tray catching on his pant leg.
    “Here, let me take him.” Betsy reached for her youngest grandson as he giggled, all smiles, while Martha continued to wash his face, cleaning cookie crumbs off his earlobes.
    “Such a messy eater you are, jah?” Betsy kissed his cheek and set him down on the floor to toddle away.
    “James isn’t too happy with Rhoda lately,” Martha said, keeping her voice low. “She’s out all hours . . . on weekdays, yet. And she’s quit goin’ to church, too.” She shook her head. “Not sure what’s come over her.”
    “Wasn’t Rhoda happy goin’ to the Beachy meetinghouse?” Betsy asked. She glanced around, noticing the small radio on the kitchen counter. “If it’s the worldly life she’s after . . .”
    Martha rinsed out her washrag in the sink. “There’s more to it, I’m thinkin’.”
    Nodding, Betsy assumed Rhoda was under the influence of an Englischer, but she wouldn’t go as far as to mention that.
    Busying herself in the kitchen, Martha said no more and Betsy remembered the many food items out in the buggy.
    “Would ya like to have the day off from cooking? I’ve got a whole hamper of food out in the carriage. I’d hate to see it go to waste.”
    Martha gladly accepted, undoubtedly putting two and two together, since Betsy had already said she’d stopped off at the Yoders’. “Who’d be crazy ’nough to turn up their nose at Nellie Mae’s cooking? She’ll make a mighty gut wife someday.”
    Keeping mum on that, Betsy did not so much as move her head.
    “You need help bringing it in?” Martha offered.
    Betsy waved her hand. “I can manage.” She was glad to leave the extra food with Martha, what with four little ones to feed and Rhoda’s living here, not paying room and board, most likely. Besides, bringing the food back home for Nellie to see would only be a reminder of the Yoders’ turning up their noses at her heartfelt gift.
    When she returned with the last of it, she asked, “Where’s Emma keepin’ herself?”
    Martha called to her daughter, “Mammi Betsy’s here to see ya.”
    Putting the pie on the counter, Betsy heard the patter of feet. She knew that sound anywhere, and here came little Emma, bright as day, running into her arms. “I want to see your latest sewing project,” she said after they hugged. And Emma scampered off to show her.
    “She’ll start school next fall.” Martha wiped the table clean. “It’ll be mighty quiet round here . . . ’least during the day.”
    Betsy noticed a sad glint in her eye. “Little girls are hardest to let go.”
    “I’m finding that out.”
    No matter how old they are, thought Betsy.
    She recalled the long strip of saplings Reuben had planted as a windbreak on the northeast side of the house when their first sons, Jeremiah and Thomas, were born. She had held her newborn babes, one in each arm, as she watched Reuben and his brother, then Preacher Joseph, from the upstairs window. How fragile, if not temporary, those wispy trees had looked without their leaves.
    And she wondered, How deep into the world will my Rhoda put down her roots?
    What struck Reuben most was the starkness of the hospital. The long, sterile hallways. The lack of decoration was almost a comfort, really—like home somehow. Yet still mighty foreign.
    The nurses looked awfully young where they sat at a long desklike table with papers around them and stacks of patients’ files. There were