Upon A Winter's Night

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?