Free A Time for Peace by Barbara Cameron

overtook her and she raised up and grabbed some tissues from a box on the bedside table and covered her mouth. Color faded from her cheeks as she struggled for breath once the coughing stopped. Matthew helped her to sit and propped up the pillows behind her, then helped her ease back against them.
    "That sounded horrible," he told her frankly. "Phoebe, do you think we should go back to the doctor? No," he said quickly when she started to object. "Don't insist you're fine. You have pneumonia and you have heart problems. We need to be very careful with you. You see, we love you very much, Phoebe. We don't want to lose you."
    Tears came to her eyes. "And I don't want to lose you. I promise you that if I feel worse I'll tell you or Jenny. But I want to get better here at home."
    Home. He was so glad to hear her call this part of his home hers.
    "I know you sent Jenny away so we could talk," he said. "Don't pretend you didn't. But when she returns, you'll eat the soup, won't you?"
    She sighed. " Ya."
    " Gut," he said. "You know, from the first time that I met you when my eldre bought this place next to yours I felt like you were a grossmudder to me, not a neighbor. I love you, Phoebe."
    She smiled. "And from the time you moved next door as a charming little boy, I've loved you, too, Matthew," she said in a low, raspy voice caused by her illness. "And now you've grown into a wonderful mann for my granddaughter."
    Jenny walked in just then and her eyebrows rose as she saw the two of them talking low and seriously.
    "Don't be jealous, lieb," he told Jenny when he saw her. "Phoebe and I love each other but you're still my number one."
    "Good thing," she said sweetly, putting the tray with the soup on her grandmother's lap. She grinned at him. "Otherwise you'd be wearing this soup."
    But even though she joked and he'd kept his words light, they exchanged a silent message over Phoebe's head as she bent to raise a spoonful of soup.
    He nodded slightly and smiled and she let out a relieved breath, obviously understanding that he was trying to let her know Phoebe was doing okay, that she shouldn't be alarmed.
    " Gut nacht," he said and he hugged Jenny and kissed her. Reaching down, he squeezed Phoebe's shoulder and tried not to frown when he realized how frail she felt, like a little bird.
    He so wanted her to get well quickly—not just because Jenny worried but because he felt unsettled about Phoebe's condition. Perhaps if he hadn't had Amelia, his first wife, die young, he'd be more optimistic. While Phoebe didn't have cancer as Amelia had, in someone who was older the pneumonia and heart condition were worrisome.
    God's will be done, he told himself. He went to make up his bed on the living room sofa again and before he closed his eyes, he prayed—for the highest good, not selfishly for himself because he didn't want to let Phoebe go but for whatever was best for her.
     

     
    Jenny opened the front door a week later, so exhausted from caring for Phoebe that she felt she was moving in a daze.
    Fannie Mae, Naomi, and Lydia stood there, smiling and holding plastic storage containers of something that smelled delicious. Well, it smelled delicious but Jenny thought she might just be too tired to eat whatever was inside.
    "May we come in?" Lydia asked.
    Jenny hesitated but she was too polite to refuse. "If you've come to see Phoebe, I'm afraid she's asleep."
    "We didn't come to visit Phoebe," Fannie Mae said. "We know you'll tell us when she's ready for visitors."
    She took the coats and shawls the others wore and went to hang them up.
    Casting up a fervent prayer she wouldn't fall asleep in the middle of a visit, Jenny gestured for them to follow her into the kitchen. "Would you like some coffee? Hannah baked some cookies and sent them over."
    Naomi, a young woman who was a co-owner of Stitches in Time, a quilt and craft store that Hannah taught at, made a shooing motion. "We didn't come to visit with you, either, dear one. We're here to