Upon A Winter's Night
Karen Harper
A cold night's silent majesty hides a bitter secret…Though she is deeply loved by her parents, the fact that Lydia Brand is adopted has always made her different from her close-knit Amish community. But as Christmas approaches and she begins to search for answers about her biological parents, more questions surface. Soon it seems that the deaths of two women in her small town may not be coincidences, after all. And her pursuit of the truth has left her only with hints of a dark secret and threats from an unseen adversary. While she does her best to stave off advances from her parents' preferred suitor, Lydia discovers that her heart truly belongs to the man who's been there all along: her friend Josh Yoder.It's only with his help that Lydia can ensure that the stillness of a winter's night means peace… and not danger.
A cold night’s silent majesty hides a bitter secret…
Though she is deeply loved by her parents, the fact that Lydia Brand is adopted has always made her different from her close-knit Amish community. But as Christmas approaches and she begins to search for answers about her biological parents, more questions surface.
Soon it seems that the deaths of two women in her small town may not be coincidences, after all. And her pursuit of the truth has left her only with hints of a dark secret—and threats from an unseen adversary.
While she does her best to stave off advances from her parents’ preferred suitor, Lydia discovers that her heart truly belongs to the man who’s been there all along: her friend Josh Yoder. It’s only with his help that Lydia can ensure that the stillness of a winter’s night means peace…and not danger.
Praise for the novels of New York Times
bestselling author Karen Harper
“Harper, a master of suspense, keeps readers guessing about crime and love until the very end, while detailed descriptions of the Amish community and the Ohio countryside add to the enjoyment of this thrilling tale.”
—Booklist on Fall from Pride (starred review)
“Danger and romance find their way into Ohio
Amish country in a lively and endearing first installment of the Amish Home Valley series.”
—Publishers Weekly on Fall from Pride
“The author’s likable, engaging characters and a
strong plot lend additional strength to her ever-amazing descriptions of Amish life.”
—RT Book Reviews on Return to Grace
“Harper’s description of Lisa and Mitch fighting the river and braving the elements are so realistic the reader can almost feel the icy winds. A tale guaranteed to bring shivers to the spine, Down River will delight Harper’s current fans and earn her many more.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Haunting suspense, tender romance
and an evocative look at the complexities of Amish life—Dark Angel is simply riveting!”
—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author
“A compelling story…
intricate and fascinating details of Amish life.”
—Tami Hoag, New York Times bestselling author,
on Dark Road Home
“Well-researched and rich in detail…. With its tantalizing buildup and well-developed characters, this offering
is certain to earn Harper high marks.”
—Publishers Weekly on Dark Angel,
winner of the 2005 Mary Higgins Clark Award
Upon a Winter’s Night
Karen Harper
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
To the great readers who have enjoyed and written to me about my previous seven Amish romantic suspense novels. And as ever, to my #1 fan, Don.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#uc41537a6-4772-56ef-840e-7265a974590e)
Chapter 2 (#uf2deaab7-05f0-5c7b-8025-4e1962e35342)
Chapter 3 (#u7f28a510-e73c-5ed1-ae51-69d70290a01f)
Chapter 4 (#ufc7fc522-09ae-5319-acbc-7d19f294f606)
Chapter 5 (#ud658db07-f1c1-51fb-98d9-5387c370f6fb)
Chapter 6 (#u346028d8-4f3a-5fed-974c-9150fc3823c8)
Chapter 7 (#u0ceeb4ed-47a6-53bf-ba3b-15d3f46cd592)
Chapter 8 (#u33e2eda6-722e-5ec5-bffc-692608dc37ba)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
1
The Home Valley, Ohio
November 24, 2012
Melly was lost in the storm, and Lydia was determined to find her. But it was hard going since huge flakes of snow fell thick and fast on top of the six inches already on the ground.
Josh had corralled the rest of his manger scene animals, but Melly, an eight-foot-tall female camel, loved to wander. Josh had told Lydia to stay put in the barn and Melly would find her way back, but while he was feeding his sheep, Lydia had gone out, anyway. Though she was annoyed with the big beast right now, Melly’s waywardness made Lydia love the camel even more. She sympathized with the animal’s stubborn nature.
“Melly! Melly!” she called. The bitter wind bit deep into her throat and seemed to puff back out in each cloud of breath she exhaled. Swirling flakes made her feel she was inside a shaken snow globe—one like her mother had owned years ago, now hidden under Lydia’s bed. “Melly, you bad girl, where are you?”
Lydia was grateful for her deep bonnet brim and warm cape, but her long skirt and apron were a problem as she lifted booted feet to plod toward the tall woven wire fence that kept the animals in Josh’s large enclosure. Josh Yoder considered her just another of his helpers. He thought she should take care of the docile sheep and cows he rented out to communities and churches for Christmas tableauxs. But it was the camels and donkeys she cared about. And secretly, she cared about Josh, too, and her joy in working near him was worth more than he could ever pay her.
She nearly slipped but managed to right herself. This was no time for daydreaming, but Josh Yoder often intruded on her thoughts, even when he wasn’t near. Despite going into the wind, Lydia quickened her steps. Josh would be angry if he had to come looking for her. Though he tried to stay calm and trusting in all trials, he did have a bit of a temper.
She tried not to picture him angry. Broad cheeks, square chin—he was still clean shaven. The men in their Amish church had the choice of beginning a beard either when they joined the church or when they wed, which he’d never done. Josh was a member in good standing, but as yet had no wife or maidal he courted—maybe because he’d lived in the world for several years. So handsome with his green-blue eyes and gold-as-wheat hair, he was tall for an Amish man. Ya, she looked up to him in more ways than one. If only she could say that about her come-calling friend, Gid Reich, whom her daad kept inviting to dinner, even though she saw him each day at work. She didn’t want to let her daad and mamm down, but she’d tried to tell them Gid wasn’t for her. Still, on paper, as they say, he seemed the perfect match.
Lydia stopped for a moment to get her bearings. Surely, she wasn’t walking in circles. Her parents would scold her for going out in a storm, because they were very protective. She understood that. They had lost their only other child in a tragic accident. Just beyond the fence was Creek Pond, where her five-year-old brother, Sammy, had drowned years ago. Her mother, who blamed herself for the boy’s death, didn’t want her daughter anywhere near the pond, summer or winter.
Lydia traced her way along the fence. If worse came to worst, it would guide her back to the big Yoder barn where Josh housed and tended his menagerie. But—oh, no—the back gate was open several feet! It had a latch, so could that crazy camel have escaped through the gap and be wandering back toward the pond? Would Melly’s weight crack right through the ice? Sammy’s screams clawed at Lydia’s memory again, but it was just the shrill shriek of the wind. A tear froze on her cheek, but she kept going.
She reached out and dragged the narrow gate closed and latched it. She’d have to head straight back to tell Josh now. Who could have left the gate ajar, let alone opened it? Surely, not the wind. All Josh’s other workers, some hired, some volunteers like her, knew to keep the animals in this big field and they’d gone home hours ago—Saturday night, time for courting.
Josh had kidded once about how Melly “liked to swing for the fences.” The camel loved to scratch her sides on the woven wire. Lydia could picture the big baby, along with her cohorts, Gaspar and Balty, poking their furry-lipped muzzles through the fence in good weather while they watched buggies and vehicles go by on the road. Talk about stopping traffic! The sight of camels in the heart of Ohio Amish country had caused more than one fender bender.
As Lydia trudged back toward the barn, praying she’d find her favorite camel, she stumbled over something low, sprawled under the white shroud of snow. She let out a little scream. Thank the Lord, it was too small to be Melly. She backed away. When the person—it was a person—didn’t move, she bent over it—her—then fell to her knees.
The woman lay facedown. Lydia started to speak to her in Amish Deutsche, then saw by her short, curly hair—blond hair iced with snow—that she was Englische.
“Wake up. Hello? Are you all right? My name is Lydia Brand. I want to help you, ya, I do.”
No answer, no movement. Unconscious? Dead? Had she opened the gate and come in? But from where? A narrow dirt lane, woodlot, fields and hills lay behind.
Lydia dusted off the woman’s face as best she could and put her own nearly on the ground to get a better look at her. She didn’t recognize the woman, wasn’t even sure how old she was—sixties? Older? Ripping off a mitten, Lydia touched the white, icy face with two fingers, then fumbled for a neck pulse. Couldn’t tell. She had to get help soon—now. She’d never be able to carry her. And if she dragged her through the snow, she might hurt her more.
The woman was not even wearing a scarf, hat or gloves, so was she off her bean? Clutched in her hand was a small, square piece of paper, like those sticky notes. Maybe it had her name on it or a message for someone. Lydia took it and held it close to her face. Words written in blue ink smeared the sodden paper. Not able to read it through the scrim of flakes, Lydia thrust it into the mitten she’d pulled back on, so the paper lay damp against her palm.
Panic pulsed through her as she took off her warm woolen cape and draped it over the woman, as if tucking her into bed. Josh would have to go for help in his buggy to the Stark family down the road, since they were Englische and had cars and phones. They could call the volunteer emergency squad and Sheriff Freeman.
Despite sweating in her frenzy, Lydia felt the gnawing cold even more without her cape. Could that woman have frozen to death? Fearing the flakes were turning to ice pellets, Lydia skimmed her hand along the wire fence, and calling out, “Melly! Melly!” stumbled through the deepening snow toward the barn.
* * *
Josh Yoder breathed a sigh of relief when the last camel, Melly, ambled into the barn, blinking ice crystals from her two-inch lashes and shaking the snow off her shaggy fur. He put her in her stall on camel row, then realized Lydia had not followed the big beast into the barn.
He ran back to the single tall door the camels used and pulled it back open. The wind howled at him, and snow fell like wool at shearing time. He had partly inherited this big, old milking barn from his father and had bought his brothers out. But it was no longer the Yoder Dairy. He’d kept four of the cows and acquired other animals to breed, but mostly he hired them out for living Christmas tableaux or holiday pageants in December. Spring through autumn, he ran a petting zoo, and a wagon pulled by his big Belgian horses took tourists on a ride so they could see and feed, and, of course, pet, the tamer animals in the back fields. But in wintertime he kept them inside.
Still no sign of Lydia. Surely, she’d have come in with Melly if she’d brought her back here. The barn was a shelter from the storm, a lofty, wide place with one long wing that held the old milking stanchions and rows of cattle stalls he planned to replace soon. The main building boasted two spacious haymows above the barn floor, one for fodder and straw and one to store other food supplies. He and his workers tried hard to keep the place clean. It actually managed to smell sweetly of straw, hay and warm bodies most of the winter. He only wished he’d known this sudden storm was coming.
Squinting against the spin of stinging snow—ice pellets now—and cupping his hands around his mouth, he bellowed out the door, “Lydia! Get in here! Don’t you walk home in this! I’ll take you in the sleigh or your parents will have my head. Lydia, get back here!”
Ach, that woman was willful, always had been. But she was sure-footed and bright, too. At age twenty, she was a maidal who had blossomed into a beauty from the pesky, skinny tomboy she used to be. She was a distraction sometimes, bending over to feed the animals, humming, shooting those quick smiles at him. In the four years he’d been away from the Home Valley, she’d become a desirable woman, though one who would be a lot of trouble for the man she married. She was being courted by Gideon Reich, who worked for her father, so there was probably a wedding in the offing. Gideon was a widower, so maybe he knew a thing or two about women, but good luck to him taming Lydia Brand.
Really worried now—could she have fallen or twisted an ankle out there?—Josh grabbed his heavy coat and flap-eared hat. Should he just run outside, yelling for her? Harness Blaze onto the sleigh and try to catch her before she went into the thick woodlot that lay between his place and the Brand house?
Then he saw her emerge from the curtain of snow, half stumbling, half running. He rushed out and put an arm around her shaking shoulders. “What happened? Where’s your cape?”
Her cheeks were pink with cold, her lips blue, her teeth chattering. At least she still wore mittens and boots. He picked her up and carried her toward the barn. Despite her trembling, she held tight to him.
“C-c-cape c-covered a woman, lying in the s-snow. By the back g-gate,” she stuttered through chapped lips. “It was open, but I closed it.”
He sat her at his worktable and put his coat around her. He poured hot chocolate from his thermos into a plastic cup and held it to her lips until she took a swallow and brought her mittened hands up to hold it. A woman out in the snow? And it upset him about the gate because he didn’t need more rumspringa kids sneaking in to ride or scare the animals. The animals could get hurt and the kids, too, but what had happened to the woman?
“Not sure whether to take the sleigh for her or go to the Starks to get help,” Josh muttered as he ran to harness his mare in the nearest corner of the barn.
“I’ll g-go with you either way,” she called after him.
“No, you stay here. Is she hurt? Alive?”
“Not sure. F-frozen, I think.”
“You didn’t recognize her?”
“No. Not Amish.”
“No one else lost out there?”
“Don’t know. I’ll help you harness B-Blaze, then—”
“Drink that. Stay put.”
It would be quickest to take the sleigh. He’d refused to rent it out recently for a Santa pageant. When he’d returned after four years of working at the Columbus Zoo and joined the church, he’d promised Bishop Esh that the animals would be rented out strictly for religious events. He could go find someone to help. But no, he’d go check on the woman first.
He heard knocking and a shout at the far end of the barn, closest to the road. If only it was someone with a car or a cell phone! He paid his Englische friend Hank to do his bookings on his cell, but Josh wished he had his own now.
He sprinted the width of the barn, past the donkeys braying at the intrusion, and swung the door open. Lydia’s father, Sol Brand, stood there. Snow etched his brimmed hat, narrow shoulders and graying beard. He was a head shorter than Josh. If any Amish man could be considered a loner in their friendly, tight church community, even though he worked with many people every day, it was Solomon Brand.
“Liddy here?” he asked, frowning, as he stepped inside. “Hope you didn’t let her walk home in this.” Beyond him Josh saw two horses hitched to a big buggy.
“She’s here, Mr. Brand. She was out in the snow, but she stumbled on an injured or dead woman on her way back, and we need to get help. Since you’re hitched up, could you go down the road to the Starks’ and have them phone for help? I’ll go out for the woman and, if she’s alive, bring her back to the barn.”
“Don’t like to bother the Starks myself, but for this... How ’bout you take my buggy and go? Is it someone Amish?”
“A modern.”
Sol frowned again at Josh as if that were his fault. “Liddy, you all right?” the older man bellowed so loud the donkeys began braying again.
“Ya, daad!” she called, walking toward them. “Glad you came so you can help!”
Sol shook his head when he saw Lydia wrapped in Josh’s coat. Josh knew the Brands didn’t like their daughter spending hours working with his animals, especially on weekends like this. But she’d stood firm on helping here. Her father often came after her since they didn’t want her out in her buggy after dark. No doubt her come-calling friend, Gideon Reich, didn’t want her here, either, “dirtying her hands,” as Josh had heard, but Lydia had a mind of her own. And, while her mother scolded her a lot, her father seemed to love her dearly.
“All right, I’ll go,” Sol told Josh. “Liddy, don’t you go back out in the storm! I’ll be right back—let Connor Stark do the calling for help.”
He lifted a quick hand to his daughter, turned and went back out. Josh had intentionally not mentioned where the woman lay, back by the gate to Creek Pond. Sol and Susan Brand’s five-year-old son, Samuel, had drowned there when Lydia was about ten and Josh was twenty. He understood that was one of the reasons the Brands sheltered their remaining child. They had Lydia working during the week as the receptionist in their family-owned Amish furniture store on the edge of town, and, otherwise, tried to keep her close to home.
Josh hurried to Lydia and steered her back toward the worktable where she’d been sitting. “I can’t believe Daad went to the Starks. He thinks they’re prideful, even though they’ve bought a lot of our furniture.”
“He’s going, and I’m going to try to find the woman near the gate, bring her here. You wait here for the sheriff or the squad. If I’m not back and they need to drive vehicles out there, they should take the dirt road outside the fence, if they can find it in this snow. I’ve got Blaze half-hitched. Sit down here by the front door and rest.”
But she followed him over to the sleigh, where he finished hitching the black mare. “You’ll need this coat,” she insisted, and took it off. “I’ll get a blanket from your buggy to wrap the woman in.”
She held his coat for him while he turned his back to put it on.
“Stay warm,” he told her when he spun back to face her. He gave her a quick hug that he didn’t know was coming, and she obviously didn’t, either. She went stiff in surprise for a moment, then hugged him back so fast and hard that it surprised him, too.
He tossed Blaze’s reins into the sleigh, jumped up into it and, when Lydia opened the camel gate for him, giddyapped the horse out into the storm.
2
Lydia didn’t hear a siren, but about twenty minutes later, Sheriff Jack Freeman opened the far barn door and came in with his wife, Ray-Lynn, who ran the biggest restaurant in town. He wasn’t in his usual black uniform, but he held some sort of little flat phone in his hand. As Lydia hurried to meet them, she realized they were dressed real fancy. Ray-Lynn had a fur collar on her bright blue coat and shiny, knee-high boots.
“Lydia, where’s Josh?” the sheriff asked.
Sheriff Freeman managed to know most of the Amish names, which was appreciated. Of course, he’d met a lot of her people in the restaurant he and his wife co-owned uptown. Right now, there was no time for small talk. He was obviously in full take-charge sheriff mode.
“He went out to see if the woman’s alive,” Lydia told him, gesturing toward the back of the barn. “He’s going to bring her into the warmth if she is.”
“If she’s not, I hope he leaves her there and the scene untouched, though this snow will mess things up. I hear you found her. I’ll need a complete statement later. I think we got us a possible ID on the woman. Connor Stark’s aunt wandered off today, been missing a couple hours since they found her gone, and that’s pretty close to here. They been searching their land through all those Christmas trees. Ray-Lynn and I been to a dinner in Cleveland with friends—had the day off. Just on our way back through this surprise storm.”
Though the Amish didn’t much trust government officials or law enforcement, Sheriff Jack Freeman had passed muster with the Eden County Amish a long time ago. And everyone liked his new wife, who was not new to the Home Valley or the little town of Homestead. Ray-Lynn hired lots of Amish girls in her Dutch Farm Table Restaurant and had helped more than one of her workers through tough times. The Freemans were quite a pair: the sheriff trim and erect with his clipped comments; Ray-Lynn, a shapely, flaming redhead with a slow, Southern drawl.
“I didn’t know there was an older woman living at the Starks’ house, besides Bess Stark when she comes home,” Lydia said to Ray-Lynn since the sheriff was back on his phone.
“There’s a lot we don’t know about the private lives of the rich and famous like matriarch Bess Stark. Ohio Senator Stark, that is. Got to watch those politicians! Who would’ve guessed the lady missing is Bess’s older sister, Victoria Keller, not married, more or less a recluse, I take it. She’s lived with them for a couple of years and—” here Ray-Lynn paused and whispered “—has severe early onset Alzheimer’s, so I hear. You know—out of her head. Says weird things. Since Bess is a state senator ready to run for governor, the family decided it was best to keep her at home—or so the story goes.”
“Oh, I see. That’s what my people would do, keep the ill, older generation at home, but I didn’t think the Starks...”
The door to the barn shoved open to admit Connor Stark, son of Senator Stark and, evidently, nephew of the poor woman out in the field. Hatless even in the storm, he wore tight black jeans, black tooled boots and an unzipped leather jacket. In his mid-thirties, he was now the mayor of Homestead, strikingly handsome with chiseled features and slicked-back, dark hair already threaded with silver at the temples. But a cold wind blew in behind him and he didn’t close the door.
Lydia had known him from years ago when Senator Stark used to be so kind to her, but she didn’t go over there anymore because her mother had found out and had insisted that the Starks weren’t churched and were a bad influence. Besides, she’d claimed, you have to either serve God or mammon, which meant money. Lydia had to look that word up in the dictionary at her reception desk at the furniture store. She thought her mother might be the pot calling the kettle black, because their own family was real well off, at least among the Amish.
“I was in my office, but my wife called me when Sol Brand showed up,” Connor said, addressing the sheriff and ignoring Lydia, who went to close the door. “I was trying to coordinate a broader search for early tomorrow morning. Damn hired help tending to Aunt Victoria let her get loose. She alive? Where is she?”
The sheriff punched off on his phone call. “Josh went out to bring her back here if she’s alive, Mayor. Lydia found her.”
“She say anything to you?” Connor demanded, turning toward her as she came back from closing the door. “She’s had dementia for years, so nothing she says makes much sense. She’s in a fantasy world.”
Before Lydia could reply, the sheriff interrupted, “I’ll ask the questions here. I know you’re used to being in charge, Connor, but not right now.”
Lydia figured Connor, who was only recently elected, looked as if he was actually going to cuss out the sheriff. But, at the other end of the barn, the camel door swung open and, through the blizzard of flakes, they could see the silhouette of Josh’s horse and sleigh.
They all hurried toward him.
“I left her out there, ’cause she’s dead for sure,” Josh told them, out of breath as he led Blaze in, dragging the sleigh across the floorboards. “Frozen to death or something else, can’t tell. I’ll take anyone out there who wants to go. I left her like she fell, except for Lydia’s cape over her, in case there was any foul play.”
“Good thinking,” the sheriff said.
Connor faced Josh. “Foul play? That’s ridiculous! She’s out of her head! She just wandered off and picked a deadly time to do it.”
Sheriff Freeman ignored the outburst, but Lydia and Ray-Lynn exchanged uneasy glances.
“I’m the only one going with you, Josh,” the sheriff said, then got back on his phone. Lydia realized he was talking to the county coroner.
Connor’s shoulders slumped, and he walked away, punching numbers into his cell phone, evidently to call his wife or his mother. Lydia thought for sure he had huffed out a sigh of relief—or was it exasperation?—when he’d heard his aunt was dead, but then she knew from her own family that people handled shock and grinding grief in different ways.
Oh, ya, she thought as her father arrived at the far door with her mother hurrying ahead of him toward Lydia. She sure knew all about that.
* * *
Lydia wanted to stay in the barn until Josh and the sheriff came back from the field. She felt she should in case the sheriff had questions for her. But her parents insisted she go home with them and the sheriff could interview her later. Ray-Lynn said the men would be out there a long time, waiting for the coroner, and she was supposed to go home, too.
With a buggy robe wrapped around her like a shawl and another one over her knees, Lydia sat wedged between Mamm and Daad on the short journey home. It was so cold it hurt to talk, but Mamm was doing it, anyway.
“See what I mean about the Starks? Ach, who knew they had an ailing aunt stashed over there? Secrets all around, oh, ya. I wouldn’t be surprised they took her in just so when she passed they could get her money, too.”
“That’s enough,” Daad said.
“Well, she’s a Keller, evidently an old maid Keller, and it was her and Bess Keller Stark’s family that had the seed money for all they do. Obviously, they can buy anything they want, including people’s silence, because they must have had someone taking care of her. Connor just grows and sells those pine trees so he’s not completely bored playing big man in town and now mayor.”
“Let’s not judge others,” Daad said.
“I try. I tried for years, but I’m only human. And, Lydia, see what a stew you got yourself into working over there with those animals!”
“It was a blessing I found her body, Mamm. And we’ve discussed my working with the animals before. Christmas is coming, and Josh needs help preparing them for manger and crèche scenes. It’s a good service to let people know about the real meaning of Christmas, and anytime people mingle with animals, it reminds them of God’s creation.”
“Don’t you preach at me, too.”
And that was that until they were home. The two women hurried into the house while Daad stayed behind in the barn to unhitch and rub down the horse. Lydia went upstairs to take a hot bath, but, as usual, the frosty air between her parents didn’t thaw even later when Daad stomped into the mudroom at the back of their big house and Mamm stood stiff-backed at the stove, making them cocoa and putting out friendship bread and thumping down jars of apple butter and peach preserves on the table.
Lydia thought Daad had been out in the barn pretty long on such a cold night, but it seemed he always spent hours out there as well as at the Home Valley Amish Furniture store he’d inherited from his father and had built up even more. Then, too, Solomon Brand often spent time in the side parlor of their house with the secret he kept from all the world except his wife and his daughter: Sol Brand loved to hand quilt.
True, that traditional craft belonged in the realm of Amish women, like keeping the garden, and making clothing and watching the kinder. But he was so skilled at it with his tiny, even stitches, intricate patterns and unique colors, especially for a man who oversaw carpenters, joiners, sanders and stainers at the store workshop. Neither Susan, though she belonged to a quilting circle, nor Lydia, who draped some of his quilts near the oak and maple bedsteads and headboards they displayed at the store, ever admitted who was the maker of his stunning quilts.
Besides luring customers into the store, his “Amish-made” quilts covered beds and lay like buried treasure in the chests and closets of their home. Amish women never signed their handwork, anyway. Many were cooperative efforts, and no one wanted to be prideful by boasting or asking who made the ones for sale. But how often Lydia had wanted to tell someone, “My daad made that, and isn’t it grand?”
Once, she recalled, Sammy had blurted out to several church leaders that his father “quilts,” but he was such a youngster that Bishop Esh had thought he’d said “Daadi builds.” One of the elders had said, “Oh, ya, but really he oversees what other men build at the furniture store.” And, of course, Sammy, flesh of her parents’ flesh, while Lydia sometimes felt bone of their bone of contention, never got scolded for telling the family secret. Oh, no, Sammy never made a mistake. Except the day he disobeyed and sneaked out of the house to go swimming in the pond when he was told to take a nap because he’d had a summer cold—and he drowned.
Lydia had heard his desperate shrieks. Mamm, hanging clothes, had, too, but they were both too late by the time they ran clear out there. Lydia had thanked the Lord more than once that she wasn’t supposed to watch him that August day but had been told to weed the side garden. She could not imagine his death having been her fault. But it was so sad that her mother had never stopped blaming herself.
How different Connor Stark had reacted today when a member of his family wandered out and died. Though he’d said they had hired help watching his aunt, would he blame his wife over the years for not seeing Victoria Keller sneak out the way Daad must surely blame Mamm? Or so Lydia had figured all these years since they were always on edge.
After her little brother was lost, it had come as a shock to Lydia when her father told her, with her mother hovering, that she had been adopted when her parents, Daad’s distant cousins, were killed in a buggy-car accident. She had only been an infant—and, thank the Lord, Daad said, she was not in the buggy with them.
She’d cried and cried at first, but Daad had assured her that the accident meant she was chosen to be their child, not just given from on high. And Mamm had blurted out once that they had believed Sammy was a special gift from God because they’d taken Lydia in. Just like Sarah and Elizabeth in the Bible, all those barren years—and then a son!
But to be adopted in Amish country with its big families was something that marked Lydia, at least to herself. Even though people seldom mentioned it, she felt she carried that scar deep inside. She had tried to talk about it with Bishop Esh. He had said that the Lord and her parents loved her very much, and that she should “learn to be content” and ask no more questions about her “real” parents—that Solomon and Susan Brand were her real parents.
* * *
Josh knew he wouldn’t sleep even though things were calm now. Finally, silent night. The storm had diminished to spitting snow; the sheriff and the coroner’s van had gone; Mayor Stark had finally departed, too, once he’d viewed his aunt Victoria’s body to identify her. Turned out the woman was only sixty, though in death she looked much older.
Carrying a lantern, Josh left the barn and slogged through the new foot of snow to his house to be sure the faucets were all dripping to keep the pipes from freezing. He wanted to build up the stove and hunker down by it, but he was too restless, running on adrenaline, as they said in the world he had sampled for four years.
He had liked living in Columbus, working with ruminants at the zoo, getting to know the famous and admired Jack Hannah, the former zoo director, who had built the place up to one of the best in the country. Josh had learned some important things about vet medicine, the history and habitats of different breeds, and animal conservation in the wild. But his people, his calling—the dream of having his own animals to share with others—had brought him back to the Home Valley.
The big house he’d grown up in felt achingly quiet and lonely tonight. Its bones creaked in the cold. How would it be to have a family to fill the place, a wife waiting for him, kids calling down the stairs, his own little band of workers for his furry, hairy crew?
He locked the farmhouse again and trudged back to the barn. Despite the cold, he’d sleep on his cot there tonight, comforted by the gurgles of the camels and the snorts and snuffles of the other animals. An occasional baa or moo never bothered him. Hopefully, the donkeys were asleep, his security alarm system for now, though come spring he was going to buy a couple of peacocks to take over the job. No good to have tourists arriving with youngsters for a petting zoo and hayride only to be greeted by barking watchdogs.
It bothered him that Lydia had found the back gate ajar, though Victoria Keller must have been the one who opened it. Lately, Amish kids in their running-around years had sneaked in that way, so maybe he needed to put a padlock on it. It was hard to get used to that kind of thinking, but major crimes had found their way into Eden County. When he was growing up, a lot of folks didn’t even lock their houses.
He had generator-powered blowers and heaters in the barn—which blew out cool air in the summer—and he shoved his cot over so he’d be in the draft of warm air. He put the single lantern on the board floor far away from any loose hay or straw. He saw Lydia’s cape on his cot where he’d spread it to dry—ya, the blowers had done that now, and he’d be sure she got it back tomorrow. He hoped her parents would still let her help him after all this. The cape even smelled of her, though he knew she didn’t use perfume. It was a fresh scent that reminded him of nature, of the outdoors and freedom. Lydia was a natural with the animals, as well as a natural beauty.
Groggy with exhaustion, he lay down and tugged up the two blankets and her cape over him, the cape she’d given up to help warm that poor woman. He hugged it to him, thinking of how he’d hugged Lydia tonight. She meant more to him than just a helper, just the girl—woman—next door that he’d thought of as a kid most of his life...
But it was pretty obvious she was to be betrothed to Gideon Reich. Josh didn’t know the man well, but he had piercing eyes and a big, black beard when most Amish men had hair and beard that were blond, brown or gray. Ray-Lynn at the restaurant had told him that Lydia and Reich were tight, said they sometimes came in together for lunch. Lydia never mentioned the man, but with the Plain People, courting was often private until the big announcement of the betrothal, followed several months or even weeks later by the wedding. Reich’s house was way on the other side of town, so Josh knew he’d lose her help—lose her—when she wed.
Sometime in the dead of night, Joshua Yoder dropped off to sleep and dreamed of an oasis in the desert with a warm wind and camels and black-bearded Bedouins and a veiled woman. No, that was a prayer kapp. She had big, blue-green eyes and then her kapp blew off and her long, honey-hued hair came free. He went out into the sandstorm and picked her up in his arms before anyone else could get to her. When he lay down again, she gave him a big hug and then he kissed her and held her to him and pulled her into his bed.
* * *
It was the dead of night, but, in a robe and warm flannel nightgown, Lydia sat at the kitchen table, sipping cocoa, remembering how Josh had poured her some of his cocoa, even raised it to her lips. How warm his coat had been around her, and then that hug he started but she finished well enough.
“Lydia,” Mamm’s voice cut into her thought. “You’re daydreaming again, and that’s a waste of time. Wishing and wanting doesn’t help.”
Lydia knew better than to defend herself, so she just reached for a piece of bread. Mamm started to make up her grocery list as if nothing unusual had happened tonight. Daad sat at the other end of the table, eating, quiet. Lydia was aching to talk about finding the woman, and a thought hit her foursquare: that note the dead woman had in her hand was still in her mitten.
She stood and hurried into the mudroom where she’d left it. Not much of the message could be read, she recalled, but what had the remaining words said? She’d have to tell the sheriff, give the note back to Connor or the deceased woman’s sister, Bess, when she returned for the funeral—if there was a funeral, given how secretive they had kept Victoria Keller’s presence. Word about a strange recluse living in the mayor’s mansion would have traveled fast as greased lightning in this small, tight community.
Lydia checked the first mitten pinned to their indoor line. Nothing. Had she lost it? But there it was in the other mitt, still damp.
Lydia held the paper up to the kerosene lantern hanging in the window and squinted at the writing, mostly blue streaks.
“What’s that?” Daad asked, popping his head around the corner.
“Just something I forgot,” she said.
“Don’t mind your mamm’s fussing,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Dreams are fine if you are willing to work for them.”
“Danki, Daad,” she told him. She almost showed him the note, but as he went back out she was glad she hadn’t. When she tipped it toward the lantern, she could read a few of the words, written in what looked to be a fancy cursive in a hand that had trembled: To the girl Brand baby... Your mother is—
She couldn’t read that next word for sure. Your mother is alert? Your mother is alike? No, it said, alive. Alive! Your mother is alive. And I... And I, what? Lydia wanted to scream.
From the kitchen, Daad called to her, “Don’t worry about talking to the sheriff tomorrow or on Monday, Liddy. I can be with you when he interviews you, if you want.”
“Danki, Daad, but I’ll be fine. There isn’t much to say.”
Alone in the dim mudroom, Lydia stood stunned. Alive? Your mother is alive? And I...
She’d just told Daad there wasn’t much to say. But after tonight—finding Victoria Keller, Josh’s hug, now this—she wouldn’t be fine, maybe ever again.
She had to be “the Brand baby,” didn’t she? Everybody knew who Sammy’s mother was, and she was the only girl. Dare she share this with the sheriff, the Starks or even her own parents? And could she trust a demented woman that her mother was still alive?
3
Lydia was grateful for a quiet Sabbath morning. It was the off Sunday for Amish church since the congregation met every other week in a home or barn. Daad always said a special prayer after the large breakfast Mamm and Lydia made before they went their own ways for quiet time. But Lydia hadn’t slept last night. Her mind had not quit churning and she couldn’t sit still.
In her bedroom, she stared again and again at the note she’d taken from Victoria Keller’s hand. Had it been meant for her, or at least was it about her? Then why was the woman evidently heading for Josh’s big acreage? Or, since she had what Connor called dementia, had she mixed up who lived where in the storm, stumbled on past the back of the Brand land and the woodlot and gone in Josh’s back gate by mistake? Surely she wouldn’t know Lydia worked for Josh. If the woman was one bit sane, she would not have gone out in that storm, or had it surprised and trapped her, too? And why now? Why had she waited twenty years after the Brand baby had been born—if it referred to Lydia—to deliver the note?
Yet Lydia felt that finding the woman and the note must have been a sign from heaven, a sign that she should not only learn if the note was true but also find out more about her real parents. She’d had questions pent up inside her for years. She didn’t want to hurt her adoptive parents or make them think she didn’t love and respect them, yet she had to get to the bottom of this, maybe without telling anyone. But she knew she’d be better off getting help. She had to start somewhere.
A car door slammed outside. She went to her second-story bedroom window and glanced down. It was Sheriff Freeman, in his uniform and with his cruiser this time. She slid the note she’d dried out between two tissues back into an envelope and put it under her bed next to the snow globe. When she was twelve, her father had given that to her and said not to tell Mamm, that it had belonged to her birth mother and had been left by someone at the store. No, he’d insisted, he knew no more about it.
Lydia smoothed her hair under her prayer kapp and went downstairs as she heard the sheriff knock on the front door. His words floated to her before she got all the way down the staircase.
“Afternoon, Sol, Mrs. Brand. Oh, good, Lydia. I knew there wasn’t Amish church today but wanted to give you some catch-up time after last night, and Ray-Lynn and I were at church. Lydia, Ray-Lynn’s on a committee for our Community Church doing a living manger scene, so we’re hoping to use some of the animals you help tend.”
“Oh, that will be good. Josh will be happy to take the animals to a church that’s nearby. He and his driver, Hank, usually have to go much farther.”
Daad gestured them into the living room and, to Lydia’s chagrin, sat in a big rocking chair near the one the sheriff took. Lydia perched on the sofa facing the sheriff while Mamm hovered at the door to the hall.
“Always admire the furniture from your store,” the sheriff said, taking out a small notebook and flipping it open. “Hope to buy Ray-Lynn a corner cupboard there real soon. Now, since Lydia’s the one I need to talk to—won’t take long—I hope you won’t mind giving me a few minutes alone with her. Turns out the victim, Victoria Keller, suffered a blow to the back of her head. That could be significant—or not—since she wasn’t real steady on her feet. The coroner will rule on that. Meanwhile, I’m trying to put the pieces together.”
Daad said, “I’d like to sit in. Won’t say a word, and Susan can fix us some coffee for after you’re done.”
He shot his wife a look; Lydia sensed Mamm would refuse, but she went out.
“I understand your protective instinct,” Sheriff Freeman said to Daad, “but your daughter’s able to answer on her own as an adult.”
“That she is. I will be in the kitchen with my wife, then,” he said, slapping his hands on his knees. “I know Liddy will help you, though she doesn’t know much besides finding the woman and leaving her cape. And she shouldn’t have been out looking for a camel in that storm. Josh Yoder should take better care of his animals over there.”
Though she had several things to say about that, Lydia kept her mouth shut until her father left the room.
“That’s terrible about the blow to her head,” she said, leaning farther forward, hands clenched on her knees. “But in her condition and that storm, it doesn’t mean someone really hit her, does it? I think she might have had trouble opening the gate, because I had trouble closing it, dragging it through the snow the wind had piled up there. But unless she fell into it, I doubt it could hit her hard. It wouldn’t swing open or shut in that snow.”
“Okay, that’s a start. She may have hit her head on the gate. Now tell me what you saw from the beginning.”
Lydia talked about looking for Melly, how the camel liked to cling to the fences. “Her real name is Melchior,” she told him, feeling more nervous every second. “The other two Bactrian camels we—I mean, Josh—has are Gaspar and Balty, short for Balthasar. You know, the traditional names of the three wise men. The three dromedaries he owns are Angel, Star and Song. He needs at least six to cover the manger scenes and pageant orders, like you mentioned Ray-Lynn’s in charge of.”
“And Bactrian means...?” he asked, pen poised, looking up at her.
“Oh, sorry. Bactrians have two humps, and dromedaries have one. It’s really not true that camels are nasty, though if mistreated they can spit and balk, but Josh’s are not that way. Camels are like dogs in that respect—some good, some bad, all depending on how they’re treated, and Josh is good to his.”
“So you believe a camel, this Melly, even if she was startled or panicked in the storm, wouldn’t slam into or kick someone who should not be on the grounds?”
“Melly? Oh, no. She might be curious, but— No.” Lydia’s heartbeat kicked up. “You don’t think that Melly knocked her down?”
“Don’t know what to think yet. What about if the woman was already down and Melly stumbled over her? Josh says Melly just came loping into the barn by herself and that’s when he realized you might be the one missing.”
Her mind racing, Lydia stared the sheriff down. Surely someone like Connor wouldn’t insist Melly be put down or give Josh trouble over this. It was his aunt who was trespassing, poor soul, not the camel.
“No, Sheriff,” she said. “I don’t think Melly would kick her, and if she stumbled over someone already on the ground, it was an accident.”
“Okay, so is there anything else you can tell me about what you recall, anything at all?”
Lydia thought she could hear someone in the hall. Mamm with the coffee? Daad waiting until they were done? Now, right now, she should tell the sheriff about the note she found, but it was so confusing, only a partial message, and so—personal. Hadn’t the Lord meant for her to find it and use it? Maybe the sheriff could help her learn what it meant, but wouldn’t that make it all public again that she was adopted, upset her parents... She started to sweat, her stomach cramped.
“Lydia? You all right? Is there something else?” the sheriff asked, leaning closer.
“Oh, sure. I— Of course, you know this, but I put my cape over her, tucked it in, so I hope I didn’t disturb anything.”
“Right—the cape. I took a good look at it, no blood. I told Josh he could give it back to you. So, that’s it?”
She nodded, perhaps a bit too hard, as if she were a little kid defending a fib. This man was used to putting clues together, figuring out when someone was lying or guilty. Did he know something was wrong, that she’d held information back, maybe something very important?
“Okay, then,” he said, and rose, flipping his little spiral notebook closed and putting it in his shirt pocket. “The Starks are planning a small, private funeral later this week. Connor said you’d be invited for all you did to try to help his aunt.”
“I’m sorry she was mentally ill and so young—I mean, even at sixty, that’s young to—to lose your mind. And she had no family but the Starks here?”
“Never married, no children. And now she’s not even alive...”
Your mother is alive. And I... The haunting words of the note echoed in Lydia’s head and heart.
Mamm suddenly appeared in the doorway with a tray of mugs and a plate of sliced friendship bread, and Lydia hurried to help her.
* * *
Josh had to admit he was nervous, taking Lydia’s cape back to her house. Over the years, he’d visited there various times, but everything felt different today. And it was a Sunday, when unwed Amish men, termed come-calling friends, visited women they hoped to court and eventually marry. If it had been a church day, he’d have been sure she got the cape back before this.
No doubt, in a family as well off as hers, she’d have more than one cape. He’d actually had to get out his iron and ironing board to smooth it out after he’d evidently bunched it around and under himself last night. That kind of labor was frowned upon on the Sabbath, but he could hardly give the cape back in a wrinkled mess, even though it had been tucked around the dead woman in the snow.
Victoria Keller died alone, yet she’d received that loving act of kindness on her cold deathbed. He shifted uneasily on his buggy seat. Would that be his fate when he died—the kindness of a stranger—if he never wed?
He’d left two of his best workers, teenage brothers Micah and Andy Beiler, with the animals, but he still couldn’t stay long at Lydia’s. They were kids he trusted, though, unlike the wild rumspringa ones who drank and smoked and ran around out of control.
Often Lydia came over on a Sunday afternoon to help him feed or curry the animals, but after all that had happened he wasn’t banking on that today. As he turned into the driveway he saw the sheriff was just pulling out. Though Blaze was immune to cars coming at her, he got the buggy over as far as he could on the snow-covered, narrow gravel lane.
Jack Freeman rolled his window down and leaned out. His words puffed clouds into the brisk air. “Everything okay today, Josh?”
“Back to normal, I hope.”
“Coroner’s early report says Ms. Keller was struck on the back of the head with something. If she was down on the ground, could that camel have accidentally kicked her?”
“Doubt it. Even in thick snow, camels see great—double eyelids and really long lashes. They’re built that way because of sandstorms. It’s highly unlikely, Sheriff.”
“Got that. Lydia says the camel has a nice disposition and clued me in on their names and humps. ’Preciate it. You did a great job yesterday, helping me get to the body. See you later, Josh.”
Hope not, Josh almost said. It was kind of like dealing with a doctor. You might like the person, but you didn’t want to see much of him.
At the front door of the Brand house—tire tracks showed him that’s where the sheriff had parked, too—he got down from his buggy and draped the cape carefully over his arm. A Shaker-style hardwood oak bench and matching table were on the deep front porch, even in this weather, as if to advertise the heirloom quality of the family furniture. Josh owned only one piece of inherited Brand furniture, his dining room table. It was beautifully built, but Amish craftsmen always had high standards.
Lydia opened the door before he could knock.
“Oh, how kind of you to bring that back. Please come in.”
He stepped inside, onto a dark wood, gleaming-clean floor. She closed the door behind him.
“I saw the sheriff just leaving,” he told her. “He said he talked to you about Melly. You fill him in on everything?”
She nodded, but he would have sworn she looked as if she was going to cry. Had the sheriff been that hard on her?
“I was going to come over for a little bit, anyway,” she said. “Help the boys with the camel and donkey grooming—do Melly myself.”
“I wasn’t sure they would want you to after last night,” he said, keeping his voice low and glancing around. She would know who “they” were, not the Beiler boys but her parents.
“So nothing’s changed, but everything’s changed,” she told him with a huge sigh, not that he was sure what she meant. She added, “Daad’s working in his lair, and Mamm’s lying down upstairs. I’ll leave them a note and just hitch a ride back with you. I have to get something from upstairs. Just a minute.”
“I’ll make sure you get home— Or, I know, your father might come for you.”
“I’d like to get out, like to talk to you.” She darted away, up the stairs, hardly making a sound.
He went a few steps down the hall and looked in the big parlor. Again, he admired the amazing furniture. Yet despite it being Lydia’s home, there was something stiff about the entire place, like it was part of the showroom at their store with the construction area hidden behind the formal facade.
Lydia came back down the stairs. He swirled the cape around her shoulders, thinking of how they’d hugged when she’d held his coat for him last night. That reminded him he’d been trying to remember a dream he’d had last night, something he wanted to recall but couldn’t...something just out of reach...like Lydia.
She closed and locked the door quietly, and he helped her up into the buggy before he saw, in the large, clear plastic bag she held, an old snow globe and an envelope. As he turned Blaze to head out, he also saw, in a second-story window, Lydia’s mother. He didn’t mention it to her since she seemed so on edge. Mrs. Brand was, he thought, just watching them, but behind the shiny window glass, she looked as if she, too, like the poor dead woman last night, was coated with ice.
4
“You don’t mean the cause of that woman’s death might have been kick-by-camel?” Ray-Lynn asked her husband over their midafternoon Sunday dinner. “And in the heart of Amish country?”
She’d had to hold dinner for him, but she was used to that. She’d known about the life of a sheriff—even a small-town, rural county sheriff—going in. But Jack was worth it.
“Delicious ham and sweet potato casserole, honey,” he said as he took second helpings. “No, I’m not arresting the camel. I only mentioned that since you seem so set on getting one for the church’s living manger scene. Josh Yoder’s camels sound tame enough, but I don’t want you getting near them since you’re going over there to talk to him about the manger scene. And forget anything but having one camel standing off to the side of the manger. No wise men riding them, or we’re the ones could be in for a fall. If something happens to a cast member or observer, the church doesn’t need a lawsuit.”
“I hear you, Sheriff,” she said, smiling at him. “But with a gig just a few miles from his property, I’ll bet Josh himself will come with the camel and maybe Lydia Brand to help out, too. They’ll keep a good eye on things.”
She spread marmalade on a made-from-scratch yeast roll. She loved cooking and baking for just the two of them, even though she oversaw so much food during the week at the restaurant. Honoring Amish tradition and beliefs, she kept the Dutch Farm Table closed on Sundays. If she had not, she would have lost her staff of Amish servers and cooks and been politely boycotted. No Sunday Sales, read many handprinted signs in Eden County. And her Amish friendships meant a lot to her. From the youngest server to her oldest cook, she felt honored to be entrusted with their joys and sorrows.
“I’ve been thinking, Jack...”
“Uh-oh.”
“Don’t tease. This whole thing with Victoria Keller living like a specter in the Stark mansion reminds me of Miss Havisham, the character who was stood up at the altar and turned into a recluse. She went a little crazy, too.”
“I missed that one in Gone with the Wind.”
“It’s not from Gone with the Wind and you know it. It’s from Charles Dickens’s book Great Expectations. Didn’t you ever have to read that in high school?”
“Nope. Nor your GWTW.”
Everyone who knew Ray-Lynn was aware she was a rabid fan of Gone with the Wind and anything to do with it. Their house was a treasure trove of pictures, plates and figurines of scenes from the movie. They’d even worn Civil War costumes for their wedding and reception.
“I’m listening,” he said. “You’ve got good instincts about people, Ray-Lynn, but I don’t want you poking around in the Victoria Keller investigation, so just tell me what you want to say.”
“Well, first of all, Charles Dickens was a genius at naming his characters to give his readers a hint about them and their secrets. Miss Have-a-sham, see? A sham is a trick or hypocrisy. She wasn’t what she seemed to be.”
“What did she seem to be?”
“A spinster recluse, sad and broken over having been jilted by her bridegroom at the altar. But in reality she wanted others to suffer, too. She wanted revenge. And she was wealthy enough to get it. She picked especially on one innocent person, but I won’t go into that.”
“Honey, we don’t know whether Victoria Keller had any motive for going out in the storm to help or hurt someone, get revenge—whatever, and we may never know. She had severe Alzheimer’s. I think we can trust Connor and Bess Stark, when Bess gets here from Columbus today, to tell us if there was anything suspicious we should know. And, no offense, but you better stick with Scarlett O’Hara. Now promise me you’ll steer clear of this Keller-Stark real-life minidrama and just worry about ordering some of the Yoder animals for the manger scene.”
She sensed he was about ready to close this case as soon as he talked to Senator Stark, but Victoria Keller fascinated Ray-Lynn. Hoping he didn’t notice she hadn’t sworn on a stack of Bibles to stay out of his investigation, she asked, “Are you ready for some mincemeat pie?”
“That, I’m ready for. Let me help you clear these dishes, and I’ll tell you how big a piece I can handle after all that good cooking—one way to a man’s heart, anyway.”
“And this,” she said as they both stood, “is another,” and she stretched on her tiptoes to give him a long, slanted, openmouthed kiss.
* * *
Strange, Lydia thought, but the only person she could trust to help straighten out her worries over Victoria Keller’s note was Josh. He would understand the background circumstances, her rush and panic that night to help the woman. He wouldn’t go all emotional or feel she was challenging him in any way as her parents might. He’d probably tell her she had to show the note to the sheriff right away, but at least she could get his advice first.
The minute they got into his open corner “office” in the barn, while the Beiler boys were feeding the sheep across the building, she said to him, “I’d like your opinion about something—something strange.”
He turned to her, nodded wide-eyed, then gestured her toward the bales of straw in the corner. Knees almost touching, they perched on two adjacent ones. Bless him, he seemed instantly intent. His warmth radiated, bathing her in friendship, and she saw in his eyes—something more? In her lap she clutched the envelope with the note and the plastic snow globe with its little scene of a child standing and an angel hovering overhead. An undecorated Christmas tree was off to the side. The liquid inside had gone a bit murky, but if she shook it hard, it still snowed.
“Last night,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “when I found Miss Keller, she had a damp, blurry note in her hand. I tried to read it then but couldn’t, so I stuffed it in my mitten and didn’t think to look at it again until I got home last night. Very little of it is readable.”
“And what did it say—the part you could read?”
She reached into the envelope and extended it to him.
“You still have it? The sheriff let you keep it?” he asked as he held it up to the kerosene lantern light and squinted to make out the words.
He glanced at her. She tried hard to blink back tears.
“Did Sheriff Freeman give you a hard time about not handing this over right away? But why—”
“I didn’t,” she said, her voice shaking. “I didn’t give it to him—didn’t tell him. I know I should have—have to, but I think it’s about me, the Brand baby. And if so, it says my mother—my birth mother—is still alive and that Victoria must have known something about her, like maybe where to find her. I don’t— It can’t mean, can it—that she is—was my mother?”
“Victoria Keller? I don’t think she’s ever lived around here before lately.”
“I know I’m clutching at straws, but I’ve been so desperate to know more about my birth parents. I haven’t acted on it because it would hurt my parents so. Daad would take it personally and Mamm would—I don’t know. She puts on a good front, but she’s very fragile.”
He nodded. Did he realize that? Most people who observed or knew Susan Brand thought she had a prickly personality and figured it was because of Sammy’s loss. Some thought she blamed herself for that—even blamed God.
He said, his voice low, “I had a friend when I was in Columbus who researched her roots, as she called them, online. You know, a computer, but that would be tough in this case if you can’t get information directly from your parents. You’d need to hire a researcher privately.”
“Somehow, I have to get answers on my own.”
“Like how? First of all, are you sure Victoria wrote this? If she’s as out-of-it as Connor says, couldn’t she have picked it up, found it somewhere in their house, then out in the snow, it got all wet and smeared.”
“I don’t know! I don’t know where to start. I only know I have to do something. I thought my parents might overhear if I gave it to the sheriff. Then the note would become public property, bring up things I’ve learned not to ask or talk about. Even Bishop Esh told me ‘to learn in whatever state I am to be content.’”
“That’s in the Bible. But I do have one idea. This friend of mine, Sandra Myerson, who was researching her family tree, is also a writer who was doing a doctoral paper on Christmas customs of immigrant people in the Midwest. She’s a real go-getter.”
“She’s a doctor?”
“Not a medical doctor. She’s working on a university degree that will give her the title of doctor so she can teach sociology at the college level.”
“Oh. So I could write to her with what I know? Maybe trade information about an Amish Christmas for her looking up some things for me? Should I tell her about Old Amish Christmas and how upset our people are about what’s happened to the worldly one? About how Bishop Esh said he’d almost like to kill that other Christmas?”
“I spent a lot of time trying to convince Sandra that the German immigrant Amish do not have fancy Victorian Christmas trees and lots of wrapped gifts. I explained we have a plain and simple family day without secret Christmas customs. But to most outsiders, I guess Old Amish Christmas is a secret. I’m sure she’d like to meet you, and you can back up what I said. Yet our Christmases are always, well, just plain beautiful.”
“Yes. Yes, they are. So was she working at the zoo, too?”
“I met her at a social event there my second year in the city, ironically a Christmas tree holiday extravaganza called Wildlights. We became friends, did some things together. She tried to talk me into going to vet school at Ohio State University by working my way through, but it wasn’t in my plans. I can have Hank phone her for you, ask her to come out to visit. You could meet with her here instead of your house.”
“Was this Sandra like a social friend? I mean, you dated her?”
“Something like that, but our lives were on two very different career paths. No way a humble, plain life is for her.”
Lydia’s heart was beating hard. Her face felt flushed. Had Josh been in love with Sandra Myerson? Had he been heartbroken to leave her when he came back here? He had never mentioned her. Of course, she could have visited here. Still, it sounded as if he hadn’t seen her for a while.
“Lydia,” he said, his voice gentle, as he reached out to give her the note back, “she didn’t like animals, except her three cats.”
“Oh.”
“What’s with the snow globe?” he asked. She could tell he was itching to change the subject. And had he read her mind about his relationship with Sandra?
“Daad gave it to me a long time ago. He said it was my mother’s. My real mother’s. Someone had dropped it off in the furniture store, but he didn’t know who and said not to ask more about it. I just—I thought I should hide the note with it.”
“Will you tell the sheriff about the note?”
“Will you tell on me?”
“No. It’s your decision, though now you’ve made me an accomplice.”
She almost smiled at that, but she bit her lower lip. “He—the sheriff said I was to be invited to the private funeral for Victoria. I may ask someone there about it.”
“Connor?”
“Maybe his mother.”
“At least they were trying to do the right thing, taking her in, keeping her there.”
“Then, would she have run away? I need to know more about dementia, I guess. Yes, if you could have Hank contact your friend for help with tracing my family tree—quietly—I would appreciate that. There must have been newspaper articles about the fatal buggy accident. There always are.”
“But it would be almost twenty years ago. There was no local paper then. Maybe we could ask Sandra to check the Wooster Daily Record. Do you know the date of the accident or your parents’ names?”
She shook her head and could not stem the tears. “Not even that,” she whispered. “They were distant cousins of Solomon Brand, but I don’t even know if their last name was Brand. They were Amish, though.”
Josh covered her hands, clasped over the snow globe, with one of his. So warm, so steady, so reassuring. Except that her stomach flip-flopped and her pulse pounded when he so much as touched her.
* * *
Feeling more upset that she didn’t even know her real parents’ names, when she knew the ones for every animal in this barn, Lydia worked hard at grooming the camels. It bothered her, too, that Sandra Myerson, the woman she’d agreed to have Josh bring out to Amish country, was probably a woman he’d really cared about. What was that worldly saying? Oh, ya, maybe she was an old fire of his—no, an old flame.
Lydia kept up a string of talk to the camels, not only to calm them but to calm herself. She rubbed their ears, cleaned their eyes and brushed their heads. She was glad they weren’t shedding this time of year and she didn’t have to work through dirt, mats and mud balls. She had to smile when Gaspar tried to gently shove Balty out of the way to be next in line.
When she heard a woman’s voice, she peered around Balty’s chest. Coming down the center aisle with Josh was Senator Bess Stark, taking long strides and dressed in black slacks, white blouse and unbuttoned bright green coat. And here Lydia looked like this, red-eyed and dirty with her hair flopping loose because Melly had playfully pulled her prayer kapp off and her long braid had broken free.
But she smoothed her skirt and apron and stepped out into the aisle to greet them. Mrs. Stark’s gaze went over her thoroughly, but she didn’t let on one bit how bad she looked. Josh was staring, kind of hot-eyed at her hair. Just because he’d never seen her with her hair loose? That was reserved only for husbands among the Amish. Nervously, she tossed her long hair back behind her shoulders and was really surprised when the senator stepped forward to give her a light hug.
Elizabeth Stark, called Bess, was in her early fifties and a striking woman, though Lydia had never figured out why she’d suddenly appeared with all silver-white, sleek hair when she’d looked real nice with just a dusting of silver in her sandy-colored tresses. Her eyes were as green as grass, and her teeth were white and perfect. She’d been a widow a long time, since Connor was about twelve. Rumors always flew around that she was dating someone important in Columbus or Washington, D.C. Everyone in this area was proud of Senator Stark, even the Amish, who had no truck with politics, but more than once she’d helped them out and always supported their charity events.
Whether Bess Stark was a politician or not, Lydia had always liked her. Though she wasn’t around much anymore except at holidays or when she was campaigning for reelection, years ago she’d give Lydia cookies and lemonade when Lydia used to play in the rows and rows of pine trees the Starks grew. That is, until Connor told her to stay on her own property. She’d never told anyone—and Mamm forbade Lydia to go over there, anyway.
As Bess pulled back and held Lydia at arm’s length for a moment with her hands on her shoulders, Lydia saw there were worry lines on the senator’s forehead. Of course, she’d been grieving for her sister’s sad death.
“My little next-door neighbor from long ago! You have certainly grown up from that tomboy in a skirt and bonnet, Lydia. Hasn’t she, Joshua?”
He cleared his throat. “For sure,” he said, sounding breathier than usual.
“We are so sorry about your sister,” Lydia said, as Bess stepped away and pulled her shoulder purse up, which had slipped down her arm. It was real fancy, bright yellow leather, big, too, almost like a small, soft suitcase.
“I can’t thank both of you enough for what you did to try to help her last night. Sadly, she’s been slipping from us for a long time, wasn’t herself, didn’t know what she was saying or doing.”
Lydia’s hopes that the note could mean anything fell. Those who knew Victoria Keller best had said the poor woman was completely out of touch with reality.
She glanced at Josh, who nodded. He seemed to have read her mind again and knew that she was undecided whether to show the note to Bess Stark or not. Lydia’s heart beat faster. Did she dare to show her the note? But then she’d take it, wouldn’t she?
“I’m late and have to run,” Bess said, as if deciding for her. “I haven’t even been home yet, just saw Joshua out in front as I drove by. So much to do to plan the funeral, but I would like you two to attend. The sheriff and Ray-Lynn will be invited also, so it will just be the four of you from the community with our family and friends. I hope your parents will let you take a break from the furniture store, Lydia. Wednesday afternoon at one, our house. We’re interring her in the Wooster cemetery on our family plot near my husband, but we won’t expect you to go to the cemetery—can’t be away from the animals too long. True?”
“Ya. You’re right about that,” Josh put in.
“Lydia?”
“I would be honored to be there. I’m sure Daad will let me go.”
“I hope so,” she said, frowning, seemingly lost in thought about the funeral again. “If Victoria had been in her right mind, she would have thanked you both. Joshua, I’ve written a check—” she fumbled in that big purse and dug it out “—to help toward all you do with your animals at Christmastime. For feed, gas for transporting them—whatever. Just a little something. And don’t you mention it to anyone else.”
His eyes widened when he glanced down at the check she handed him. “But—four thousand dollars. I can’t take that for a human kindness, Senator Stark. It’s enough to rebuild one entire wing of the old dairy!”
“I hear Lydia loves the animals, too, so half of it is her contribution. Yes, get some good Amish builders in here. All of us need to promote jobs right now. You go ahead—remodel and rebuild. Everybody needs to do that from time to time, especially in great loss and tragedy. Don’t you dare tear that up,” she insisted, walking away from him. “I think you’re doing a great service to the community I represent with your petting zoo and the holiday events. And I will see both of you on Wednesday at one. Now I have to go see the sheriff and then the coroner about releasing her body despite all this nonsense about an investigation into her death, but I think they will agree with me.”
“Oh, ya,” Josh said to Lydia as they stood in the door to watch her drive away, “I think they will.”
5
Because Christmas was barely a month away, the Home Valley Amish Furniture store was abuzz with business. Although the Amish gave only single, simple gifts to commemorate the Lord’s birth, the Englische world, despite a supposed recession, seemed to be buying every piece of solid hardwood furniture in sight.
It was the Monday morning after the tragedy of the weekend, and Lydia still felt shaken. At least being so busy meant she had little time to agonize over her decisions. She would meet and hope to work with Sandra Myerson, Josh’s more-than-good friend. And she was dedicated to learning all she could about her deceased parents—if her mother really was dead.
Greeting customers kept her occupied. She let Naomi, one of their seasonal staff, answer the phone while she darted here and there with inquiries or to pair up shoppers with particular salesmen. Although the store hired Englische delivery vans, some folks came in to pick up their orders. She could see out the row of side windows that not only workers’ buggies but worldly pickup trucks filled the parking lot.
To answer customer questions for salespeople on the floor, Lydia practically ran from her front desk to the side showrooms, which displayed the various styles the craftsmen, who worked out back or in their homes, produced: Shaker-style, Mission-style and traditional furniture of all kinds. Now and then, she darted to the offices between the spacious showrooms and the large, rear workshop to ask someone a question.
“Can we do a custom stain on maple chairs? I told the buyer that our kiln-dried northern hardwoods have their own beauty.” Or, this question for Gid right now: “The buyer for that huge walnut dining room outfit—ah, number 1088—wants to know if he can make the first payment after New Year’s instead of right before.” He nodded and gestured her in, but she stood her ground.
She tried not to go into the bookkeeping office because that was Gideon Reich’s realm, but when she needed to, she went, standing in his doorway with the door open, telling him, “Sorry, can’t come in now,” she added. It’s too busy out here.” Lately, she tried not to be alone with him even here at the store.
“Lunch, then? I can send someone out for food for us, for your father, too, if you want. I brought my usual bachelor’s packed lunch. I envy the men out back. Most have wives to pack their lunch boxes,” he said with a wink before he sobered. “And I’m sorry I was away visiting this weekend when everything happened. I wanted to talk to you about that.”
With an exaggerated shrug, she told him, “It’s pretty much over,” even as she realized that was a big, fat lie. Why was she telling so many lately?
“But it’s another reason not to hang around Yoder and those animals,” he insisted, standing and coming around his big cherry desk toward her. “That sudden storm that could have trapped you, then a possible murder...”
“Are people saying that? I think the poor lady hit her head pulling open the back gate. I’ll bet she had to tug hard, to drag it through the snow where it was maybe frozen fast, then it came loose and hit her when she was bending low.” She cleared her throat. “I know the coroner hasn’t ruled yet, though.”
Gideon Reich was a powerfully built man, although he was not fat or tall. Lydia looked at him eye to eye. Gid was in his late thirties, a childless widower who had never remarried. His father had worked for her grandfather, who had started a small furniture workshop on this property. In the twenty years Gid had been employed here, he had worked his way up to head bookkeeper and general manager, at least if her father was not on-site. Gid’s home was large, second only to the Stark mansion and chock-full of beautiful Brand furniture.
Despite the usual privacy of Amish courtships, it was no secret to anyone here, in town or in their church, that Gid had his eye on Lydia. To her mind, the real question was why, as she not only tried to discourage him but had made it clear he should try to court someone else. With all the trouble she gave him, she wondered if he persevered only to court her parents because she came attached to the store and its profits.
“And,” Gid went on, his voice rising, “you were chasing a camel in the storm when you should have been inside—inside your own house, not the Yoder barn! Lydia, I know this isn’t the time, and I’m busy, too, but stray animals are all you’re chasing over at Yoder’s place, aren’t they?” He came even closer. “As your come-calling friend, who admires and appreciates you and wants only what is best for you, I’ve warned you again and again that your working in an animal barn isn’t suitable. You know that your father also agrees that—”
“As ever, thank you for your concern, but you have heard again and again how I feel about helping out at Yoder’s. And your mentioning my father reminds me I need to pop in to see him, too. As for lunch, that’s very kind of you, but I have an errand to run.”
She darted out, closing the door on him, quietly but firmly, almost in his face. How she wished she could close the door on any future with him. She feared he was going to press her for a promise. And when she said no, it was going to complicate everything at home and here at work. True, she was ready to leave her parents, but not to become Gid Reich’s bride.
As she headed toward her father’s office, she saw he was sitting not behind his massive desk, but in a big hickory rocker with one of his new quilts draped over his knees—a wedding ring design, no less. As lovely as it was with its leaping blue-and-yellow hues, she hoped he hadn’t made it for her. Sol Brand had an open-door policy here not only for her but for anyone who had a question or concern, from the lowliest sweep-up boy out back to his key advisor and master bookkeeper, Gid.
Although no one was in his office now, she knew he was busy, even overworked. He seemed tired, older than his age, even distressed. She’d forgotten there were drafts in here this time of year, and he looked a bit chilled.
“Liddy!” he said, glancing up from some sort of document he was reading. “I’ve recently had an inquiry I think you can answer.”
“Oh, sure. Anything to help.”
“A certain buyer has asked me to find out if you would prefer a blanket chest, pie safe or jelly cupboard for a gift in the near future,” he said with a lift of his eyebrows and a tight smile. “Sounds more like a betrothal gift, eh?”
Lydia’s insides cartwheeled. “Daad, I can’t commit to such a gift or something like a betrothal right now.”
“You’ve said that before. When, then? And why not, my girl?”
“I’m not ready in my head and heart. And if it’s Gid—”
“Ya, of course, it’s Gid. Do you think I would want just anyone for my only daughter? Your mother and I would miss you, but it’s time you consider that fine man. And, in a way, since all of this will be your inheritance someday—” he swept his arm to indicate the wood-paneled office lined with metal file cases “—you will need someone who knows the business, values it and not something far different.”
“Daad, I know my friends are getting married off right and left, but I need some time. And, if you and Mamm really want me to be happy, you will give me more time and help me convince Gid that it’s not a done deal. I have an errand in town to run at lunchtime—just wanted to let you know,” she added, backing away. “Got to get back to my desk...”
She’d forgotten why she’d come in here. What would she do if her father turned against her the way she sometimes felt her mother had? Worse, as she hurried back out into the showroom, she saw Gid had emerged from his office and was watching her from the display of blanket chests any good Amish girl would want to use for a hope chest.
* * *
Ray-Lynn spotted Lydia Brand right away when she came into the restaurant. She seemed to be in a hurry, alone and skimming the lunch crowd for someone. Ray-Lynn handed the coffeepot to Amy, one of her Amish servers, and asked her to keep refilling cups.
“Lydia, looking for someone?” Ray-Lynn asked, thinking, since she’d come in without her father or Gid Reich, she might be meeting Josh Yoder. She’d picked up vibes between the two of them this weekend. And she really liked Lydia. Despite the fact her family was the Amish answer to the local Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Lydia was always down-to-earth and concerned for others, evidently even Josh Yoder’s camels.
“Actually, I was hoping to talk to you,” Lydia said. She was out of breath and flushed. “Something kind of personal—you know, private. I know it’s your busy time right now, but I need to ask you a quick question, if you’d agree to help.”
Ray-Lynn put a hand on Lydia’s caped shoulder and steered her down the narrow hall toward the restrooms and her office. “Let me get someone to cover for a few minutes, and I’ll see you in my office. Just go in. The door’s marked. And if this is your lunch hour, I’ll order both of us a sandwich and soft drink, okay?”
“Thanks, Ray-Lynn.”
At the counter, she put Martha on the front desk and ordered two roast beef sandwiches with slaw and two colas to be sent back to her office. When Ray-Lynn joined Lydia, she’d taken her cape off—the same cape she’d put over the dead woman?—but was still standing. Or had she been pacing?
“Sit and talk to me,” she told her, taking one of the two chairs in front of the desk and patting the arm of the other.
“It’s a favor,” Lydia said, perching on the edge of the chair. “I know you hear a lot of things in the restaurant, know a lot of people.”
“That, I do.”
“Would you happen to know who had the jobs at the Stark house—overseers or nurses, I don’t know—to take care of Victoria Keller?”
Ray-Lynn leaned closer to Lydia over the arm of her chair. “Until Saturday, I didn’t even catch a whiff that they had Senator Stark’s demented sister living there.”
“Oh, right. So you wouldn’t have any idea about—”
“I didn’t say that. The sheriff intends to interview both of the caregivers to learn more about Victoria’s state of mind, and he mentioned who they are—both Amish. You probably know them, though they’re older than you. Connor wasn’t too pleased about the interviews, but he had to cooperate and give their names. The woman who was on duty when Victoria sneaked out came under scrutiny, of course, for dereliction of duty.”
“Are their names law enforcement business, and I can’t find out?”
“Before I answer that, why do you want to know? I mean, the coroner just declared Victoria Keller’s death accidental this morning. He ruled that evidence indicates she caused her own demise by yanking that swinging gate open in the eight or so inches of snow and hitting her head—which I believe was a theory you gave the sheriff. So, it’s all over, Lydia. Did you just want to know more about Victoria from those who tended her? At the funeral Wednesday, I’d be glad to help you ask Senator Stark, or even Connor’s wife, about her for you.”
Lydia looked as if she were about to cry. Her lower lip trembled and she gripped her knees. Ray-Lynn covered the girl’s cold hands with her own.
“I know you’ve helped several friends of mine,” the girl whispered. “But the fact that you’re married to the sheriff and shouldn’t keep anything back from him, even if he can’t sometimes tell you everything...”
“My dear girl, you have a lot to learn about marriage. I will always be faithful and true to Jack Freeman, but that doesn’t mean I have to tell him absolutely everything I happen to hear, everything I know. Do you have some kind of information about Victoria?”
“Do you know if there’s any such thing as privileged information with the sheriff?” the young woman countered. “I mean, if I show or tell him something that could hurt my family—not about her death exactly—would he have to make it public?”
“I do know there are things the police hold back to use in interrogations or in court, so they can be sure they have the right person arrested, charged and convicted.”
Martha knocked and came in with the tray of food and drinks and set it on Ray-Lynn’s desk. They thanked her but neither of them made a move toward it or said anything else until she went out.
“It’s just,” Lydia said, her voice a shaky whisper as she dabbed at tears with her fingers, “I don’t want to hurt my parents.”
“How would it hurt your parents? Listen, Lydia, do you want to just tell me, or do you want me to call the sheriff and have him come over to hear it, too? In a way, you can trade what you know for the caretakers’ names. Unless he’s gone out in the last half hour, he’s just across the street. And if you ask him not to tell your parents, even if you’re under their roof, I’m sure he would agree. You’re considered an adult among your people, so surely you can make your own decisions.”
“Make my own decisions,” she repeated, nodding. “Ya, I intend to. And I hate doing things in secret, but sometimes it’s best.”
Ray-Lynn went for the phone on her desk. She used the speed dial to get Jack, then pushed the food tray toward Lydia.
“If he’s not there now, I’ll have to head back soon,” the girl said, stabbing her straw into her soft drink.
“Ray-Lynn, you okay?” came the familiar voice she loved.
“Just fine. Jack, Lydia Brand and I need your help. Can you drop by my office at the restaurant?”
“Right now? Something about the Keller case?”
“She’ll have to tell you, but she has to go back to the furniture store soon.”
“Sure, honey. For you and one of your little Amish friends, be right there.”
* * *
Lydia wasn’t as nervous as she thought she’d be, especially since Ray-Lynn stayed when Sheriff Freeman arrived. He sat in the chair Ray-Lynn had vacated, while she sat behind her desk. Putting his hat next to their half-eaten tray of food, he leaned his elbows on his knees but looked up toward Lydia.
“Okay, talk,” he said with a nod and small, encouraging smile she appreciated.
In a nearly breathless rush, Lydia explained what she knew—and suspected—about the note. “I’m sorry I don’t have it here,” she said. “It’s hidden under my bed at home.”
“You shouldn’t have withheld evidence,” the sheriff said, sitting up straight. “But I see why you forgot about it that night in the barn and why you didn’t want to tell me with your parents hovering. I’ll need that note.”
“Not to show it to them or the Starks?”
“The case has been closed with an accidental death ruling, but it does throw light on what the deceased might have thought she was doing or where she was going. But she has no connection to you, right?” he said, frowning, with a shake of his head.
“No. Not that I know about now. She can’t possibly be my real mother—I mean birth mother.”
“I’ll keep it in my evidence file and only mention it to Connor if something else comes up. I think they’re eager to get her buried proper and go on with their lives.”
“Danki, Sheriff. I—”
“But that’s only because I talked to one of her caregivers from the Starks’ home and got the deceased’s medical records from the place she was being treated in Cincinnati, a top-of-the-line Alzheimer’s care facility. She was mentally bad off, Lydia, just like Connor said. Victoria Keller was delusional, claiming wild things, and tried to wander off there. That note probably means zilch, so don’t get your hopes up—or down.”
Ray-Lynn had been real quiet, which seemed pretty unusual, but she piped up, “So there’s no harm in letting Lydia talk to the local caregivers?”
“I hear you, honey,” he told his wife without looking at her.
“Ya,” Lydia put in quickly. “Just a private talk. I’ll tell no one what they say—except you or Ray-Lynn, if you want, Sheriff. My mother is still fragile over my brother’s drowning years ago. I didn’t want to upset her or my father, because they’re touchy about my looking into my birth parents.”
“I can see that when they always told you your parents were dead. ‘Your mother is still alive, and I...’” he quoted what Lydia had told him about the note. “Tell you what now. You get me the note to examine and put on file. As spacey as Victoria Keller was, I repeat, it probably means nothing. Meanwhile, you have my permission to talk to the two women who were watching Victoria, though one of the caretakers just moved out of the area. ’Cause with Victoria’s medical history, far as I’m concerned, this case is closed. But you let me know what you find out. Connor Stark’s not one to be crossed, and I had to come down hard on him not to press charges of negligence against the two women. As it is, he refused to give them their last month’s paychecks.”
Ray-Lynn gave a loud snort. “Our rich/cheap, kind/cruel new mayor,” she muttered.
“Now, Ray-Lynn,” the sheriff scolded, but his voice was gentle. “So here—” he reached for a pen and paper on the corner of the desk “—are the two women’s names and the one’s address I can recall offhand because the other one lives up near Cleveland. They’re both members of other Amish churches—not yours. But you keep things low-key with them, okay?”
“Low-key, ya,” Lydia promised, gripping her hands in her lap so hard her fingers went numb.
But how could something so momentous in her life be “low” anything? As for a key, since she wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, this just might be the key to answering questions about her past—and her future.
6
Even though Lydia stayed later than usual at the furniture store that same day, she lit out in her buggy just before Daad and Gid closed up the place. She hurried home and unhitched her horse, Flower. Relieved Mamm was still taking her nap, Lydia grabbed the precious note from under her bed, snatched a container to protect it and walked down to the road to wait for Ray-Lynn to pick her up.
Their cover story was that Lydia was going with her to Josh’s to help her place an order for manger animals for the Homestead Community Church Christmas tableau. Actually, Lydia was to give her the note so it could be delivered to the sheriff. She also planned to feed the camels while Ray-Lynn and Josh sealed the deal. Like most Amish, Josh never worked with contracts but believed in a handshake and trust, even though he did take careful notes about what animals would be delivered where and when by him and his Englische driver, Hank.
“Here it is,” Lydia told Ray-Lynn as she climbed into her van. “I sealed the note in a Tupperware sandwich box to keep it safe.”
“Good. Just slide it under your seat, and I’ll be sure my man gets it. Speaking of which, you and Josh are pretty good friends, right?”
“Well, we’ve known each other for years,” Lydia said, fumbling for words, realizing she was talking in almost as slow a drawl as Ray-Lynn used. Why didn’t she just spit it out? She cared about him more than he did her. At least the drive to Josh’s was about one minute long, so she didn’t have time to explain—and explain what, she wasn’t even sure.
“Oh, look!” Ray-Lynn cried, pointing. “Wonder who that is. A long-lost friend of Josh’s, for sure.”
Lydia’s gaze followed her friend’s finger. Not by the barn but over on his front porch, Josh was hugging a woman with long auburn hair. And she was sure hugging him back. She wore a short denim skirt, boots and red jacket and, despite the cold wind, looked pretty warm—hot, like worldly folks said. Lydia couldn’t see her face but the rest of her looked pretty good.
Then she realized who it was. Sandra Myerson was here.
“I think that’s an old friend of his from Columbus,” she told Ray-Lynn, trying not to gawk. And here she’d blown up the importance of her and Josh’s hug in the barn last Saturday night. It hadn’t been like that long, hard hug with Sandra at all. It had meant so much to her but to him...
“Quite a flashy car, too,” Ray-Lynn said as she pulled up by the barn and stopped in one of the two parking spots next to the hitching post for buggies.
Lydia darted another glance at Josh. The hug was over, and she’d hardly noticed the low, small red car parked in his driveway. Oh, now he was taking Sandra—if that’s who it was—into his house.
“Well, if he’s preoccupied, I can’t wait around,” Ray-Lynn said, hitting her fist on the steering wheel. “Listen, Lydia, hugs and kissy face are common in the world, so don’t let all that get to you.”
“Get to me? I’m glad she’s here as she knows how to trace family trees, and that’s what I hope to do.”
“Oh, you know her. Ding-dang, you’ve got to forgive me for jumping to conclusions. Jack says it’s my weakness, but I know it’s only one of them. By the way, Josh did wave to acknowledge he saw us, or maybe he recognized my van. Can I drop you back at home or are you staying?”
“I came to take care of the camels,” she told Ray-Lynn with a forced smile. “I’ll just go in the barn and maybe meet her later, as I’ve only heard about her so far.”
“Will you tell Josh for me that the Community Church would like to rent a manger scene? One camel, one donkey and a couple of sheep for Wednesday, December 12, in the evening, like six to nine? We intend to really kick off the Christmas season for the area.”
“Sure, I’ll tell him. That early and the middle of the week, it will probably be fine. I’ll bring you a list of the prices next time I see you. Ray-Lynn, danki and thanks, both!”
As Lydia started to get out of the car, Ray-Lynn grabbed her arm. “If you need to talk to someone who cares, you come see me.”
“I will,” she promised. As she got out of the van, she glimpsed the pale green plastic sandwich box with the note in it sticking out from under the seat. She hated to give the note up but she was getting much in return. The sheriff, maybe thanks to Ray-Lynn, wasn’t angry with her. He had given her the names of Anna Gingerich, who lived about twenty miles away, and Sarah Miller, who lived up near Cleveland. So there was a place to start, a trail to follow, people to question. Now, if only Sandra Myerson could help her out without trying to get Josh back—because, of course, she must have been in love with him.
With a wave at Ray-Lynn, Lydia hurried into and through the barn, greeting animals by name, petting her favorites among the donkeys who pushed against their bars to get their ears scratched and a dried apple to eat from the bin. “Melly, Balty, all of you are expected to be on your best behavior today,” she told the six camels as they swung their curved, shaggy necks over the railings to greet her with fluttery, fat-lipped air kisses.
“Hugs and kissy face!” she told her avid furry listeners. “What do we care about all that in the big, bad world, right?”
Since she had left the donkeys with only one apple apiece, they brayed in protest, and the sheep murmured their baa-baas.
Lydia wrote Ray-Lynn’s requests on a piece of paper on Josh’s barn desk—long oak boards on barrels—then turned toward the camels just as the back door opened and Josh stood there. Hatless, his hair blew free in the wind. Vital and strong, with the crisp blue, winter sky behind him highlighting the color of his eyes, he seemed to fill and warm the large door frame.
“Lydia, glad you’re here. As you may have seen, Sandra’s here from Columbus, wants to stay a day or two—that is, at the Plain and Fancy B and B in town. She’d rather not come out to the animal barn, but can you come in the house? She’s pretty excited to meet you and exchange some genealogical help for info on Amish Christmas, if you’re still willing.”
Oh, ya, Lydia thought, she was still willing, despite the fact Josh’s face looked much more flushed than the winter wind usually made it.
* * *
Up close, Sandra Myerson was very pretty with auburn, arched eyebrows and full lips that smiled easily to display snow-white teeth. Her expressions came quickly and were full of emotion and life. She shook Lydia’s hand, then pressed it between both of hers. Her brown eyes were alert and sharp and warmed when she looked at Josh. Lydia tried not to take that all in and instead managed glances at Josh’s living room.
She hadn’t been in his house since he’d bought his brothers out. She figured the place must tell a lot about him. A spacious, two-story white farmhouse with high ceilings, it was well-lighted from the tall windows. Maybe a bit sparse on furniture but what he had was well arranged. On the table next to the comfy-looking dark blue sofa was a stack of zoo and animal magazines, and the calendar on the wall had a picture of zebra in the snow for the month of November.
“Josh had his friend Hank fill me in on the phone about you, Lydia, but I’d love to hear your take on everything,” Sandra said. “I’d be happy to help you try to trace your biological roots and take in trade anything you can tell me about an Amish Christmas here in Eden County. Not that Josh and I didn’t have some go-arounds about that, but women see things a lot differently from men.”
Sandra gave Josh a playful punch in his midriff, which Lydia figured was a lot more intimate than a punch to his arm. Oh, well. She had to work with and get along with this woman. And if these two still meant something to each other, Lydia had to accept that, at least for now.
“I don’t even have names to start tracing,” she admitted as Josh sat in his chair and the two women took the sofa, facing each other. “But there has to be a newspaper record of my parents’ deaths, because car-buggy accidents are always written up. I do know the week they died because I was ten days old. It was the second week of February 1992.”
“You mean you weren’t even told your parents’ names?”
“It was— I just sensed it was difficult to ask. As if I would be disloyal if I did. Actually, I did ask once and Mamm said that she and Daad were my real parents now, so I got that message loud and clear. I didn’t want to upset her more and wanted Daad to know I loved and trusted him—which I do,” she added hastily.
Sandra raised an eyebrow at Josh. “Well, more of a mystery, then, though I’ve seen other situations where key information had been lost or even lied about. I can check the database archive from the Cleveland Plain Dealer online if it goes back that far, but is there a more local paper?”
Josh put in, “Homestead has a weekly paper but it’s only about nine years old. We’d need to go into Wooster in the next county to check on articles from the Daily Record.”
We’d need to go? Lydia thought. Was Josh going to help Sandra? But this was his busiest time for the Christmas animals. Or did he automatically think of himself and Sandra as a team?
“Is there any way you could go to Wooster with me now?” Sandra asked Lydia. “I saw a mileage sign a ways back that I think said thirtysomething. I can call ahead to check on the paper’s closing time.”
Lydia’s head was spinning. Go in that little red car right now when her parents would think she was working over here?
“I came to work with Josh’s animals so—”
“I can take care of them,” he said. “I know how much this means to you and how much you’ve meant to the animals and me.”
Lydia’s gaze met and locked with his for a moment, but it seemed a long time. Sandra cleared her throat. “Let’s do it,” Lydia heard herself say. “I can’t thank both of you enough for your help.”
“Besides, we need to get to know each other better, since we’re going to work together,” Sandra said, bobbing up from the sofa. “Who knows? Maybe their archives are online.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Josh said.
She got a flat, little thing out of her purse, flipped it open and started stroking the small screen. “I’ll just check the closing time of the Wooster Daily Record offices or else get their number and call them. And thirty-some miles means you can talk about your genealogy project en route and about an Amish Christmas coming back.”
“You’ll be surprised how complicated my problem is compared to how simple our Christmas is—both of them,” Lydia told her as she and Josh stood, too. She wished she’d dressed better than her barn clothes but that wouldn’t stop her from going to Wooster. She was too eager to get started on finding out who she really was—and who this Sandra really was, especially what she meant to Josh.
* * *
By the time they pulled up in front of the Daily Record newspaper office in Wooster, the county seat for the next county, Lydia had talked a lot but learned a lot. One thing, though she hated to admit it, was that she liked Sandra Myerson. She seemed honest and straightforward, as Josh had said, a go-getter who knew what she wanted from life, and Lydia couldn’t help but admire that. Sadly, the woman did not like animals except cats, but surely there were worse flaws in human beings. At least, Lydia thought, that probably meant Sandra and Josh were not meant for each other, except for the fact Sandra had carried on about what a great, genuine guy he was.
Dusk was descending as they hurried into the Daily Record office and told the curly haired woman at the reception counter what they hoped to find. She didn’t blink an eye that the two of them looked so different, but Wayne County had plenty of Amish, too.
“Okay,” the receptionist said when she’d heard their inquiry, “a double death, car hits buggy. That or a court case means a clip should have been kept, though only events from the last ten years are stored in our computer system. From the time period you want, our clips are not in a database but should be in an envelope filed in the morgue.”
“The morgue?” Lydia said.
“Just our slang. We don’t have a librarian anymore, but some of our veteran editors know how to find stuff in the morgue—it’s kind of like a library. Let me see if someone can help you, but several have gone home already.”
They waited about five minutes until a plump, sixty-something woman named Monica Jordan came out to help them. They wrote out their information for her and sat down to wait again.
“I’ve done research in the States and Europe,” Sandra told her in a quiet voice. “It’s sometimes just like this—fill out forms and wait, but then—voilà!—some hidden gem falls right in your lap.
“So what’s this about two Amish Christmases?” she asked. “Josh only told me about one, December 25, a family day, keep-it-simple, sometimes homemade gifts, a traditional meal. It sounds like the rest of us except for the lack of razzle-dazzle and ooh-la-la, no over-the-top decorations and Santa stuff we moderns enjoy.”
“For sure no Santa stuff.”
“But how about decorated trees? I passed a Christmas tree farm near Josh’s.”
“That’s the Stark tree farm on the outskirts of Homestead, but the Amish don’t buy those. The moderns do, though, and the farm ships truckloads of trees to local cities to be sold on rented lots. That’s Ohio Senator Bess Stark’s family business, though she’s almost never here, and her son oversees it.”
“Boy, that’s a good one. Snarky Stark’s family sells Christmas trees.”
Lydia didn’t know what snarky meant but she didn’t want to ask. Sandra used all kinds of strange words like voilà.
“So, go on about Christmas,” Sandra prompted.
“The truth is that many Amish want to ignore the December 25 celebration, since the world has commercialized it so much. We struggle to ignore outside temptation and keep the day focused on our faith. But as for the second so-called Amish Christmas, we just call it Old Christmas because it went with the historical religious calendar from centuries ago. We close our stores on that day, too. It’s January 6, called Epiphany, the traditional day of the arrival of the wise men from the East—probably the first non-Jews to see the baby Jesus, and that shows anyone can approach Him.”
“So you celebrate January 6, too, while the rest of America does not? I don’t think that’s very well-known. Great, I can use that in my dissertation on immigrant holidays. The modern-day Amish are against commercialized Christmas, so they cling to another day when the wise men brought their gifts to the manger.”
“But it’s a simple day, too, sometimes spent with extended family. You know, that’s one of the things I might have missed, being adopted. I have a few cousins on my father’s side, but they don’t live within buggy distance, so I see them mostly at weddings and funerals. Mother’s family is from Pennsylvania, so the same there. But maybe if I learn who my biological parents were, there will be new cousins, even some in buggy range.”
Sandra leaned closer and put her hand on Lydia’s arm. “Don’t dream too big. They might not even find the old article of the accident. Then, if you still don’t want to involve your adoptive parents, we’d have to start asking around on the sly.”
But her voice trailed off as Monica Jordan came back out to the front desk with a manila folder in her hand. “Ladies,” she said, “I think I’ve found what you’re looking for.”
They rose. Lydia’s heartbeat kicked up. They approached the counter where Ms. Jordan spread open the folder, filled with old newspaper articles that looked more black-and-yellow than black-and-white. And on top lay one with a photo of a crumpled buggy in a ditch and a dead horse.
Lydia sucked in a sob. Any hurt or killed animal got to her, even when the local men went hunting. But this—her parents’ death scene...
“Could we look at this over there?” Sandra asked the woman. “We’ll be very careful with it.”
Evidently noting Lydia’s distress, Monica said, “It’s almost closing time, but I can photocopy it for you.”
Lydia carried the warm copy of the article outside into the thickening dark. She cradled it to her cape; it seemed to burn her hand. When they got back in Sandra’s car, the overhead light popped on. Lydia was suddenly afraid to look at the picture again, though it didn’t show dead bodies. Sandra turned on the ignition and the heater, but it blew out cold air at first.
“Can you read it out loud or should I?” Sandra asked.
“I can. I want to—have wanted to for a long time,” Lydia whispered. Then, despite feeling chilled from within, she read aloud, “‘Young Amish Couple Die in Buggy Accident. Driver Cited.’”
Lydia frowned. “Driver cited?” she muttered as Sandra leaned closer to look at the photo. The article was trembling in Lydia’s hand.
“That means the driver of the car. Go on, and I’ll make notes,” she said, fumbling in her big purse for a pad and pen.
Her voice shaking, Lydia went on.
“A young Amish couple from the Charm, Ohio area, David Brand, age 24, and Lena Hostetler Brand, age 23...”
Her voice caught. David and Lena, David and Lena... Their names were David and Lena... And her mother’s people were Hostetlers. She knew of some in this area, though not in the Homestead Amish church.
She cleared her throat, blinked back tears and continued.
“...were pronounced dead at the scene after a vehicle carrying four tourists from Parma, Ohio, struck their buggy at approximately 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday.
Clinton MacKenney, the Holmes County sheriff at the scene, theorized that skid marks indicate the vehicle, a station wagon, careened over the hill behind the buggy at a speed of at least fifty miles per hour, could not stop in time and hit the buggy from the rear. Marvin Lowe, 65, was cited for driving over the speed limit with reckless abandon. Further charges of double manslaughter may be forthcoming.
Lowe made no statement but said he will soon have a lawyer. His vehicle sustained minor damage...
“Minor damage,” Lydia whispered, blinking back tears. “It isn’t fair. So perhaps there was a trial.”
“But this gives us all we need to know to start searching.”
“And there’s no way my mother could still be alive,” Lydia admitted with a sigh. She’d told Sandra about the note. “Talk about getting my hopes up...”
Sandra shook her head. “So sad. A tragedy that could have been avoided. Do you want me to read the rest of it?”
“Okay but I’m fine. Well, not really, but I want to find out no matter what.”
Sandra took up where she’d left off.
“Since it was nearly four hours after dark, the Brand buggy had two lanterns on the back, both surprisingly found still lighted in the ditch when medics and the sheriff arrived. The horse was also killed. The couple had wed barely a year ago and leave one infant daughter who is staying with relatives. David Brand was a tree cutter with a company in Amity.”
“A tree cutter,” Lydia repeated. “I wish it said if they left behind other family—siblings, cousins.”
“I can search for their obits later, and those might tell.”
“Maybe. The Amish come from far and wide for funerals. More likely their obituaries appeared in The Budget, the national Amish newspaper. But I’m sure no one keeps clippings from that in folders or databases.”
“I forget I’m dealing with an enclave culture here.”
Another word Lydia didn’t know but she got the idea.
“I just wonder,” Sandra said as she turned off the light on the car’s ceiling and backed out, “if the relatives you were staying with the night of the accident or thereafter are your adoptive parents or if there were others who took care of you at first. What’s the relationship between your adoptive father and your biological father?”
“I’m not sure. A cousin, not first cousin. Ach, our people value family, even extended family, and many know their roots way back to the few Amish families who migrated from Europe to escape persecution there. And here, I know next to nothing,” she added, blinking back tears again.
“But you know a lot more than a few minutes ago, and it gives me information to start digging. It’s obvious your real mother died in this accident,” she said, “but Victoria’s note gives us such an interesting twist we might still want to check it out.”
“Yes, I still do,” Lydia told her, stroking the old photo of the scene of the double murder—that’s what it was, murder! Nothing to do about that this late, of course, except try to forgive. But unlike what her daad and mamm wanted, after today, she could never forget. Like she’d heard Josh say once when he was talking about his time in the world, A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
7
“Lydia, it’s so raw outside, and I’m afraid I’m getting a cold,” Mamm told her late Tuesday afternoon, the day after Lydia and Sandra had been to Wooster. She did, Lydia thought, sound nasal and had been blowing her nose, though sometimes she thought Mamm had private crying bouts and sounded like that, anyway.
“I know you’re heading for the animal barn,” Mamm said, “but could you take these four loaves of bread outside to Mattie Esh for the Stark funeral?”
Although Lydia had overheard that some local Amish women referred to her mother as “Sad Susan,” Mamm was also known in the community for her generous gifts of what most outsiders called Amish friendship bread. She gave loaves of it away for Christmas gifts and anytime the church had a special event. Even the local Englische knew to look for it in her plain brown wrappers at Amish benefits and yard sales.
But Mamm kept the starter yeast mix and recipe to herself. Lydia had once asked why, when the sharing of those things was part of the idea of friendship. Her mother had simply said that the bread alone was her gift to her people. But Lydia came to believe the cinnamon-crunchy sweet bread was Mamm’s way of trying to make up for a tart tongue and sour outlook on life. And Mamm’s sending anything to the Starks surprised Lydia, though Mamm often contributed bread to local funerals.
Pointing out the window, Mamm went on, “Mattie and Anna Kauffman are buggying up the lane right now, see? Since I’m on the church list to donate bread for local events, I could hardly say no when the Starks, living next door all these years, have a family funeral—which I wish you were not attending, you and Josh.”
“Mamm, we’re honored to represent the Amish community. Sure, I’ll take the bread out to them, then just head over to Josh’s. I’m going to walk through the woods because Flower got chilled waiting for me in the store barn all day.”
“Flower! You and your animals. Here, the bread’s in this sack.”
“And smells wonderful, as usual!” Lydia lifted the sack and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. She had tried very hard since yesterday to be affectionate toward both her parents. After all, they’d taken her in after the tragic death of her birth parents. They had treated her as their own when she’d lost David and Lena Brand...David and Lena... She loved to recite their names to herself. Lydia wondered what else Sandra might have found, cross-checking other sources, as she’d put it.
In the mudroom, she quickly donned her bonnet and warmest cape—the one she’d placed over poor Victoria Keller—stuffed her feet into boots and tied a woolen scarf around her neck. She yanked her gloves on, picked up the sack of fragrant bread and hurried outside. Lacy snowflakes sifted down, but they didn’t seem to be piling up fast. The two women, Mattie Esh, the bishop’s wife, and one of her good friends, were in a large family buggy.
“Hello, Mrs. Esh and Mrs. Kauffman,” Lydia greeted them. As she lifted the sack to Mrs. Kauffman, she saw the backseats were full of baskets and bags. “Oh, my, what a lot of food!” she blurted.
Mrs. Esh told her, “The church really wanted a special outreach to the Starks to show our love and concern for them.”
“And not because Connor is mayor now,” Anna Kauffman added with a sharp sniff. “Nor because Bess Stark has worldly political power. But we want to extend the right hand of fellowship to those who seem trapped in the world’s ways. Speaking of hands, we could use an extra couple of strong ones to unload, sure we could. Lydia, can you ride along with us next door to help drop these things off? It won’t take long, and we’ll bring you back home.”
Though she was eager to head over to Josh’s, she told them, “Ya, of course, I’d be glad to help.” She climbed up in the buggy and held the sack of still-warm bread in her lap so she could fit on the second seat.
Mrs. Esh turned the buggy around, and they headed back down the lane. “How are Hannah’s twins, Mrs. Esh?” Lydia asked. Her daughter Hannah had gone to the world for a while to pursue a singing career, but had returned home, wed Amish and sang now only at their weddings.
“Big for their ages, and lungs strong like Hannah’s. They will be two strapping boys, Lord willing. You know, she sings to them all the time. Hannah’s little adopted four-year-old girl, Marlena, is a big help.”
Oh, ya, that’s right, Lydia thought. Hannah had more or less adopted Marlena when she married the widowed Seth Lantz, but Seth was the girl’s real father, so she’d never actually been orphaned. And Lydia just bet Hannah and Seth told their little girl all about her real mother and didn’t try to ignore or hide the truth.
“And how is your daughter Sarah doing?” Lydia asked Mrs. Kauffman. A noted Ohio artist, Sarah had been shunned for painting the faces of people she knew and for wedding an outsider. But Lydia knew the Kauffmans still saw her and her husband and their little daughter from time to time. What would happen when Mamm and Daad finally learned that their own daughter had defied them?
“Sarah’s doing good but should still stop painting faces for her work,” Mrs. Kauffman said, and Lydia realized that was that.
Soon they were buggying past the rows of Christmas trees the Starks sold this time of year. The big banner was up over the lane that led a short way to the barn where they bundled their yearly crop of firs and pines, the short-needled ones barely dusted with snow, others bowing their branches under its weight. Those who lived near the tree farm knew it was almost a year-round task to care for the trees. The seedlings were planted mid-April, and shearing and shaping went on through the hot months of June and mid-July. In the late autumn, skilled workers with rotary pruners trimmed the trees which went on sale late November and December. The familiar banner read, Stark Choose-and-Cut Christmas Tree Farm. Open Now to Christmas. Hay Rides, Cider, Cocoa Free.
More rows of trees, some tall, some growing for future years, sped past Lydia’s gaze. The Starks had twenty-five acres of trees, just the right size farm, she’d heard, for a family to run with only seasonal help. She had not been at the Stark house for years, not since Mamm had laid down the law about her visits there. The fragrant, crisp scents of blue spruce, Fraser fir, Scotch and white pine vied with the smell of the bread in her lap. The rows of trees wrapped around the slant of the hill on which the Stark mansion perched. When it was lighted at night, Lydia used to think the house was like its own star atop a giant tree.
The horse team pulled the big buggy easily up the lane, since it wasn’t slippery. Years ago, the Starks had put some sort of heating pipes under the pavement, so the snow and ice melted off. It sure saved a lot of shoveling. Who knew what wonders were to be found in their house itself after all these years.
At the side door, they unloaded their goods, met not by a family member but by a woman in a canvas apron. “Hi, I’m Jenny from the caterer’s,” she told them. “What wonderful gifts. Perhaps we can have an entire Amish table at the funeral, and the family will be so grateful. Senator Stark’s in town with her daughter-in-law, but Mr. Stark is out in the trees somewhere. They will all be delighted. How kind of you.”
The three of them and Jenny carried the baskets and boxes of food inside to a pantry area with Jenny’s continued thanks. From the vantage point of the side porch, Lydia could see that Connor was not down by the barn, with the other seasonal workers, but in a row of about five-foot trees on a slant of the hill overlooking her house. She would, of course, have a chance at the funeral tomorrow to tell him she was sorry for his loss, but he’d be busy with other people. He’d been so upset that night they found his aunt in the snow.
“If you don’t mind,” she told Mrs. Esh, “I’ll just walk back to my house. Cutting down the hill will be much shorter.”
“Of course, my dear, and we thank you for the help, we surely do. We will be in prayer tomorrow that you and Josh Yoder will represent our people well at the funeral.”
“Danki,” she told them. “I appreciate all the prayer support I can get.”
* * *
“Lydia’s late,” Sandra told Josh when he came back to the house to see how she was doing. She was sitting at his dining room table still typing away on her laptop about, he guessed, Old Amish Christmas. “She’s not in the barn, is she? I’d rather go over a battle plan with her in here.”
“A battle plan?” Josh said as he poured himself a mug of the now-tepid cider he’d left for Sandy and Lydia. He threw his coat over his chair and sat across the table from her. “You still have a lot to learn about our ways.”
“Our meaning the Amish, or you and Lydia? I can see you care for her, and she— Let’s just say the same.” As if they were making a toast, she leaned across the table to clink her cider mug to his.
“Lydia’s just the tomboy next door who grew up,” he countered.
“And so doesn’t know her own power over men yet? But you do, right, and you’re very surprised. Besides, you sound defensive, my friend. By the way, you know what she asked me?”
“I’m afraid to hear it. She really cuts to the heart sometimes.”
“Touché. She said since I didn’t like animals, why was I at the zoo in Columbus where you and I met?”
“Ya, I did mention that. So you told her you got the ticket free and as a starving grad student couldn’t turn down wine and a buffet?”
“I told her I was hunting for a rare beast to study and I found one. No, don’t look at me that way. I told her grad students seldom get invitations like that, and I was always up for a new adventure, at least at a place where the animals were all in cages. She also asked me why I didn’t like animals— Was I afraid of them because of something that happened to me when I was young? You never asked me that. Lydia’s bright and perceptive. You’d think she was a soc or psych major, for heaven’s sake!” she said, leaning back in her chair and closing her laptop.
“She’s a rare one, exotic in her own way,” Josh said. “Good with animals and good with people. Most girls—young women—who weren’t being told about their real parents by their adoptive ones wouldn’t be so careful not to hurt them, at least I think so.” He leaned forward in his chair. “But did something happen in your past that kept you from liking animals, at least some animals?”
Sandra jumped up from the table and started to pace, dining room to living room and back with jerky steps. “I wish I had a cigarette or a drink,” she muttered, wrapping her arms around herself as if she were cold.
“I’m proud of you that you gave up smoking, and cider’s the strongest thing I have in the house.”
“I wasn’t being serious! But—but yes, I once closed a closet door on my brother’s puppy when I was about six. I—I smashed his head, and he yelped and cried and I felt horrible when he died. I ran and hid in the basement, but had to face up to what I’d done. I swear, my brother hated me for months after that—years—and nothing my parents said about it being an accident made things better for me.”
She sniffed hard and strode away again. “The thing is,” she said, her voice shaky and almost choked, “I think I meant to do it— I mean, looking back at it now, analyzing, playing my own shrink. Grandpa had given that dog to him, not me, and everyone was fussing over it. I was the first born, used to be the family princess, and then here came my brother and everyone doted on him...
“Oh, damn—sorry,” she blurted out, but he wasn’t sure if the ‘sorry’ was for swearing or for telling him her painful story. “You just heard true confessions about what an idiot I was—still am.”
He stood and snagged her arm when she passed again, hugged her awkwardly with one arm around her shoulders. “We all have things in our past that haunt us. Look at Lydia, even me.”
“You? Such as what?”
“I agonized over jumping the fence, you know, leaving home to pursue my dream of working at a zoo for several years. I hurt my mother. I’m regretful to this day that her grieving, even though I hadn’t yet joined the church and so wasn’t shunned, probably made her cancer worse and hastened her death. And that I was too late getting a ride back here and didn’t get to say a final goodbye. But you’re not going to hurt animals ever again, or be hurt by them, and my mother needed to accept my dreams, even if they weren’t to work the fields and milk cows with Daad and my brothers.”
She pulled away and blew her nose. “That— You helped me. Lydia did, too, like you say, cutting to the heart of things. You know what? I have a bumper sticker I should put on the back of the car that says, I Brake for Squirrels. I do, really. Now, camels and donkeys, I don’t know, but maybe later, sometime while I’m here, I’ll go out to the barn with you or Lydia. Now, what in the world is keeping her?”
* * *
“You been up to the house?” Connor called to Lydia as she approached him down a row of white pines that were not quite as tall as he was. Next year’s trees, she guessed. “My mother’s in town with my wife.”
“I heard. I was just helping some of our women deliver food for the funeral and thought I’d walk home. This is like a well-ordered forest,” she said, with a sweep of her gloved hand at the acres of trees. She noticed he had hastily put aside what looked like a spray paint gun. Ya, she could see he’d been spraying some of these trees with a green paint that smelled. On closer look, some did seem a bit brown on the tips—wilted.
“Not that well-ordered. It’s a struggle. I was just touching up some of these with insecticide where a beetle’s been at them. See. They have a few dead needles, but I just knock those off.”
Though she was no expert, Lydia knew this wasn’t the time of year to be spraying for insects. And that was paint for sure, so was he doing something wrong by covering up the wilted branches? She decided she’d better not ask or let on she suspected him of lying and maybe more. For a moment, she just watched him handle two pitchforks, one in each hand as he quickly knocked dead needles off the tree. But it seemed to her the needles falling to the snow were more than a few.
“Besides,” he said, “the darn deer have been nipping the tops off seedlings on the other side of the hill, and here I am worrying about pests I can’t even see. But,” he said, stepping closer, “I’ll find a way to get rid of them.”
“Hopefully, these trees will be all right by next year.”
“They’re for this year—apartment size.”
When he frowned at her, she said in a rush, “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about your aunt—that she died that way. I know you’ll be too busy at the funeral and meal to tell you then, but please accept our sympathy, from both Josh and me.”
Her voice broke. She shouldn’t have spoken for Josh. It almost sounded as if they were a couple. As usual, she felt awkward around Connor Stark, especially since he had a pitchfork in each hand. But he stabbed them through the snow and into the ground where they shuddered a moment, then stilled. Although Connor had been around as long as she remembered, she hadn’t been alone with him for years.
“You heard the coroner’s ruling?” he asked, examining another tree limb that looked diseased, even to her untrained eye.
“Ya. Ray-Lynn Freeman told me.”
“Whatever you hear about Victoria Keller, Lydia, we tried our best with her, but she was, to put it nicely, beyond help.”
He moved around her to examine a tree slightly up the hill as if he didn’t want her to be looking down on him. When there was no snow on the ground, he often rode a golf cart around, but he’d obviously walked here today, carrying that equipment. And if his work was all on the up-and-up, why didn’t he send one of his seasonal workers to take care of it?
“So,” he said, shaking snow from a tree bough and staring at it, “would you like a job working at the tree barn for the next couple of weeks? I know you work for your father, but Gid Reich mentioned how good you are with customers there. It would be only for a couple of hours an evening, if you want. You wouldn’t have to run the cash register. Just oversee doughnuts and cocoa, chat people up.”
“Gid suggested it? That figures. He doesn’t like me working with the Yoder animals.”
“He’s pretty sweet on you, I’d say, and probably doesn’t want you to get hurt—by the animals or the situation.”
Lydia was going to ask him what situation he was referring to, as if she didn’t know, but Connor went on, “Gid’s one of my new investors in the tree farm. I’ve taken several locals on and plan to buy more land to the north, hire on some extra help since I’m now also ‘Mr. Mayor’ and my mother’s gone a lot.”
“I thank you for the job offer, and your family has always been kind to me, but—”
“My mother, especially. Some like to help stray animals, but she is always into causes for people—in her capacity as state senator, I mean. So, you’d better be heading home.”
Connor’s words reminded Lydia about the time he’d ordered her off their property years ago. Of course, it must have been hard on him to lose a father he’d adored to an illness with the big name of multiple myeloma. He was being kind now, at least, wasn’t he? Yet she sensed an edge to him. Others had mentioned it, too—their smiling new mayor with the invisible chip on his shoulder when he seemed to have so much going for him.
“See you tomorrow, Connor. I appreciate the job offer, but no thanks.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll see you.”
Lydia did not look back as she hurried down the hill, taking small strides so she wouldn’t slip. She’d pop in to tell her mother she was heading straight for Josh’s and she was late.
Still, it was the strangest thing. Maybe it was because she thought she’d caught Connor doing something bad, but every step she took down the hill, she was certain she felt his eyes boring into her back.
8
The next day, the morning of the Stark funeral, Lydia made breakfast for the family as she often did. She had not slept well last night, with disjointed dreams haunting her. More than once in the still-dark morning she caught herself staring out the window at her reflection. The glass was like a giant mirror, and she was wondering how much she resembled David and Lena Brand...David and Lena Brand...
Mamm seldom joined them until later, though this morning Daad had not appeared, either. As usual, Lydia and Daad would buggy separately to the store as soon as dawn lit the sky. Halfway through her oatmeal, she was surprised to hear him emerge from the side parlor, his private abode, instead of coming down the stairs. His firm closing of the door behind him echoed like a single knock as Lydia popped up to ladle out his oatmeal.
“You haven’t been working all night on a quilt, have you?” she asked, half-teasing.
“Maybe something I want to finish before Christmas, eh? I heard you stirring.”
“Ya,” she said with a little laugh. “Stirring the oatmeal for three and hoping it doesn’t clump up before Mamm gets down here. I told her I don’t make lumpy oatmeal, only if it sits for a while until she gets out of bed to eat it.”
She thought Daad might say something about the need to understand her mother, but he didn’t comment. He sat and bowed his head in a brief, silent prayer while she poured him orange juice and coffee. When he opened his eyes, they looked tired and bloodshot.
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