Esther’s pulse sped up. Was she finally going to find out Gus’s connection to her family?
“What else did mei mudder tell you?” She tried to keep her voice even and not appear too anxious. “Are you going to tell me who we are paying respectsto?”
Gus held the container tight against his belly as he stared at the rock. “Your mother and my mother were best friends, evencloser after my father died. I don’t remember him. He died when I was three. Then my mother was killed in a buggy accidentwhen I was nine.”
Esther stepped closer to him, not sure she’d heard him correctly. “A buggy accident? As in, she was in a buggy that was hitby a car, or . . .”
“Yeah, she was driving the buggy.” He turned to Esther. “I was actually at your house when the accident happened. I thinkI was pushing you on the tire swing when your mother came outside to get me and tell me the news. You’d have been about seven,I guess.”
Esther lowered her head as she searched her memory. “Ach, Gus. I’m so sorry. I don’t remember that.” How could she forget something like that? But many memories she’d tried to holdon to had faded without her permission. Maybe she’d pushed the bad recollections from her mind.
“Well, it was a few decades ago.” He shrugged.
“More than a few.” She glanced up at him as her head swirled with this new information. “You and your mother were Amish.”
“Yeah. But after my mother was killed, I got sent away to live with my aunt, who wasn’t Amish. She made arrangements to havemy mother cremated, even though your mother knew she wouldn’t have wanted that. Your mother was able to convince my aunt toleave the ashes with her until I was ready to come back to spread them properly.”
Esther was speechless.
“I didn’t lead a very good life, Esther, and I was too ashamed to come back, too ashamed for everyone to see how my mother’sson had turned out. But when I found myself with nowhere else to go, I came home. Your mother let me rent the cottage. Actually,I didn’t rent it at first. She let me stay for free. I got a job at the local meat market, and then my social security checksstarted coming, and I’ve been paying rent ever since. I asked her not to tell anyone who I was out of respect for my mother,and she agreed. She told me she’d held on to the ashes for years and to let her know when I was ready for them. I wasn’t atthe time, and then I forgot about them. A terrible thing, for a son to forget about his mother’s ashes.”
Esther instinctively rested her hand on Gus’s arm. She could feel his torment radiating like heat.
“Then your mom died, and I had no idea where they were.” He looked down at the urn. “Now I do, and after thinking about it,I decided to spread some of her ashes here, some in the river that she loved so much, and the rest on my father’s grave.”
Esther’s bottom lip quivered. Over the years she and Lizzie had speculated why their mother let Gus live in the cottage and why she’d made them promise he could live there the rest of his life. They’d concocted everything from affairs resulting in Gus being an illegitimate family member to all sorts of other nonsense. In truth their mother had been protecting her best friend’s honor at the request of her son.
“I didn’t know who else to bring with me . . . I didn’t want to come alone.” His eyes were moist, and Esther’s heart was cracking.
She wasn’t sure what to do. It wasn’t any more customary to eulogize an Amish person’s death than it was to be cremated. Amishfunerals were more of a celebration of a person’s life. But Gus hadn’t grown up Amish past the age of nine.
“You don’t gotta say anything.” Gus opened the top, then with both hands he held the urn out and spread a portion of the ashesalong the base of Jug Rock.
Sometimes there were songs during Amish funerals. Esther remembered the words to part of one that had been sung often, “JesusMy Shepherd.” She began singing it softly in Pennsylvania Dutch, since she didn’t know it in English.
Gus put the lid on the urn and stood straight and somber as Esther sang. She stood beside him, unmoving on the outside, buthurting for him on the inside. Birds chirped and chipmunks scurried around the fresh spring growth surrounding them.
Esther followed Gus when he started to walk back to the truck. From there they went to the widest fork of the East White River,then to the cemetery. When they returned to Gus’s driveway outside the cottage, he killed the engine, and they just sat quietlyfor a while.
“Danki for asking me to go with you,” she said softly.
“I’m sure you’ll tell that sister of yours, but could you maybe not share the information with everyone else?” His head was low as he made the request. “And maybe convince Lizzie not to say anything.”
“I will respect our mudders’ wishes, Gus, and not say anything to others. I’ll make sure Lizzie doesn’t either.” She glanced at the tire swing that stillhung in the yard. The tire and rope had been replaced many times over the years, even though Esther and Lizzie never gavetheir parents grandchildren to swing on it. Visitors had enjoyed it. Esther wished she could remember the day Gus referredto, but maybe it was best that she didn’t. A child finding out that his mother had been killed must have been horrific.
Esther respectfully waited for him to get out of the truck, but he just sighed, his hands resting on the steering wheel. Shesat quietly until he turned to her. “Your mother was always kind to me. I can still remember how tormented she
