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Five
    Teen Years
    Anxious footsteps awakened Berta from a sound sleep. She lifted her head from the pillow and listened. She could hear the troubled voices that drifted down the hall, but she could not understand the words.
    She sat up and swung her feet to the area rug beside her bed. It was still dark outside. Something strange was going on.
    She looked over at her younger sister. Berta could see her faint outline beneath the bulk of Granna’s pieced quilt. Glenna still slept on.
    Stealthily, so as not to awaken Glenna, she moved toward the door, her white flannel nightgown swishing about her bare ankles.
    There was a light on in the living room. She could see its faint glow from the hallway. She moved toward the light, wondering what had brought her folks from their beds at such an unearthly hour.
    She stepped to the door of the room and was shocked to see the doctor. No one was sick.
    Then her eyes moved to Pastor Jenkins, the minister of their small church, sitting on the settee, his hand sympathetically placed on the robed arm of her mother. A strange fear gripped Berta’s heart.
    Berta took a step into the room. Three heads lifted. Three pairs of eyes fastened on her face. She could tell her mother had been crying.
    “What is it?” Berta managed to ask. “What’s happened?”
    “Oh, Berta,” sobbed her mama, and she extended a hand toward the young girl.
    Berta moved quickly to her and knelt in front of her, one hand going to her mother’s dampened cheek. “What happened?” she repeated, but her mother was unable to answer because of the sobs that shook her body.
    It was the minister who spoke. “Your father,” he said slowly, sadly.
    Berta’s head jerked up, her eyes wide with fear. “What?” she asked. “What has happened?”
    “It was a heart attack,” responded the doctor, sympathy deepening his voice. “We were unable to save him.”
    “You mean—?” began Berta, looking from one drawn face to another. She couldn’t finish the sentence. Would not even allow herself to finish the thought.
    Pastor Jenkins nodded. “I’m sorry. So sorry,” he said. “He’s gone.”
    Berta stood quickly to her feet. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. She had seen her father just a few short hours before. They had spent the afternoon tramping through the meadow by the creek searching for leaf specimens for her biology class. He was fine. Just fine. There was some mistake.
    She looked again at her mother. The woman was still weeping. Berta knelt again by her side and took her hand in both her own.
    “Mama?” Her one word was a question. A plea.
    Her mother reached out to her and placed her hands on each side of her face. The anguish in her mother’s eyes answered the question for her. It was true. It was real. They had lost her father. Berta buried her face in her mother’s lap and wept unashamedly.
    What would they ever do without him?
    Her thoughts went on. He had been so much more than a father. He had been her friend, her encourager, her constant source of love and acceptance. Whatever would she do without him?
    ———
    Somehow the two girls and their mother made it through the difficult days that followed. Somehow they stood by the open grave as the last words were spoken by Pastor Jenkins. Somehow—somehow—they made it through the first agonizing weeks, the months—that eventually stretched into a year. They clung together. Sharing—yet keeping secret thoughts from one another.
    They discovered that life went on. They even managed to establish some sort of daily routine to replace the familiar. The girls continued on with their schooling on weekdays. Their mother spent her time in baking, sewing—family chores. But Berta felt that the glow had left her mother’s cheeks, the light had left her eyes. She wondered just how often her pillow was soaked with tears after she retired to an empty bedroom at the end of the day.
    Glenna was their one bit of sunshine. In spite of her own pain,