many strangers passing through. Yet for some reason, his thoughts kept drifting back to Reese Powell. In addition to her fierce, intimidating intelligence, he also sensed something sterile and lonely about her. When they’d gone to the cafeteria, she hadn’t talked to anyone along the way. It was probably out of character for her to take the time to help him through his first night in the city.
Jonah gazed at him in silence, and Caleb felt guilty for dwelling on his encounter with a woman. Jonah’s face took on a soft, sleepy look, his eyes half-lidded. “Where’s Hannah?” he asked softly.
Caleb pictured Jonah’s sister, crumpled in a tragic heap as the helicopter bore her brother away. “Back home in Middle Grove. I left word with Alma at the phone box that you were going to be all right. And you are, little man, I swear.”
“How can I be all right if my arm’s gone?” Jonah’s voice was the tiniest whisper.
“Because you’re Jonah. My best good boy. And I swear by all that I am that we’ll get through this.”
His throat felt thick with the lie. There was no getting through a loss like this.
“Hannah knows about my arm? Did you tell Alma to tell her?”
“I told Alma you’re going to be all right,” said Caleb. “She’ll let Hannah know.” He had not said anything about the arm, only that Jonah was going to get better. Given what Hannah and her brother had already lost, he owed her the full story, but not until he could see her, hold her hand, and reassure her.
“You’re wearing funny clothes,” Jonah said.
Caleb looked down at the borrowed shirt and trousers. “A lady named Reese loaned these to me.” He didn’t want to explain that his other clothes were covered in Jonah’s blood. “They’re called scrubs, which is curious, since they don’t seem to be used for scrubbing anything.”
Jonah nodded, then yawned. His eyes fluttered shut.
“You rest now,” Caleb said, gently stroking his brow. “You rest as long as you like.”
Caleb, too, shut his eyes, but he didn’t sleep. Instead, his mind wandered back over time, touching on moments forever enshrined in memory.
When he was a boy about Jonah’s age, Caleb used to loiter around the village phone box, hoping against hope to hear the phone ring and his mother’s voice on the other end. Hoping she would explain why she had walked away from him and his older brother, John, never to return.
Of course, it never rang. Caleb had tried to find her name in the phone book, a slender paperbound directory with scenic pictures of the Poconos on the cover. He remembered sitting on the floor of the small shelter and methodically reading every name in the book, searching for Jenny Stoltz or Jenny Fisher, her maiden name. Finally, John had come along and explained that the book only listed folks who had their own telephones.
“Mem could be a million miles away,” John had explained. He was seven years older than Caleb, and he knew things. “You won’t find her name in any book around here.”
Some time afterward, Caleb recalled, John had made the big leap, determined to end his life by jumping off the hanging bridge at Stony Gorge. Until that day, no one had understood the terrible demons that haunted John, tormenting him to the point where he wanted to end his life. Caleb hadn’t grasped the connection between their mother’s absence and John’s desperation.
But that day, a miracle had occurred. Despite falling a hundred feet, John had not died. He’d walked away with nothing but bruises and scratches and a broken arm. Folks who witnessed the incident talked about it in hushed and reverent tones.
John himself had been transformed by the fall. A man reborn, no longer an angry rebel, John declared that it was the hand of God above that had saved him. In the time it took for him to fling himself off the swinging bridge, his life had been remade and given back to him. In gratitude, he declared that he was going to spend the rest of his days serving God. And he set himself to the task with a devotion that was almost fanatical. He had returned to the community, accepted baptism with a humble heart, married Naomi, and set himself on a new path.
After the kids came along, everyone seemed to feel the bad times were finally behind them. Caleb still thought about his mother, but time dulled the gnawing ache of missing her. He admired the way his brother had put his life back together after that desperate day at Stony Gorge.
Yet Caleb often found himself wondering about the world. He used to daydream about the jet planes soaring overhead or the cars roaring down the highway. In defiance of his father’s edicts, he borrowed books from the county library and read novels about imaginary worlds and far-off places, and people grappling with matters he could only imagine. When he turned sixteen, he knew he needed to go out into the world. His father had forbidden it, of course, but Caleb had been determined.
The thing about being Amish was that kids were not only allowed but encouraged to experience life beyond the confines of the community. There was even a name for it—rumspringa. Running around. Most youngsters came running back to embrace baptism and Plain life. Folks thought Caleb would spend his rumspringa the way most kids did—riding around in cars, smoking tobacco and weed, listening to loud music, going to shopping malls and movies.
Caleb had known he would be one of the small percentage of Amish kids who left for good. He knew he’d never join the church, never marry an Amish girl, never raise a family the way his brother was doing. He was forever yearning, one foot out the door, poised for flight. He wanted to see the ocean one day. Wanted to fly in a plane. To learn the calculus and study science and literature and things of that nature. He wanted to experience the world in all its messy, confusing glory.
Most of all, he wanted distance from his father.
Instead of partying, Caleb spent his time at the library. He learned to use books and computers as sophisticated information systems to find out all he could about anything imaginable.
That was how he’d eventually found his mother. A grueling bus ride had taken him to central Florida, where the air was so hot and muggy he could scarcely breathe. The town was nowhere near the ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, but hunched at the side of a highway that bisected the long, narrow state. His search ended at a street lined with modest houses surrounded by scrubby grass and trees decked with little orange bittersweet fruit called calamondin. He still remembered the expression on her face when she had opened the front door. Complete and utter shock had drained her cheeks of color, then blossomed into wonder.
“John?”
“Caleb,” he said. For the love of God, she couldn’t tell her sons apart.
“Who is it, Mom?” called a voice. A young girl came to the door. She stopped and stared at Caleb. Although he wore English clothes, she stared as if he were an alien from outer space.
Mem leaned her back against the doorframe and tipped back her head, looking up at the sky and then closing her eyes.
He’d scarcely remembered her face. There were no photographs of her. He used to try drawing the image he had of her in his mind, but the picture never turned out. Now he saw Hannah in the curve of her cheek and in the wavy blond hair. He saw Jonah in the bright blue eyes and the busy hands.
She mouthed some words, but no sound came out. Her legs seemed to give out and she slid down to the mat, hugging her knees up to her chest. A dry sob heaved from a place deep inside her, and then
