Upon A Winter's Night

“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.

* * *