Finding Mercy

His father had always tried to make him grow up too fast, which turned out to be a good thing when he lost both his parents in a boating accident when he was thirteen. Until he was eighteen, he’d lived off and on with a New York City legal guardian with vacations with his grandmother at her place in Nassau—lovely but lonely. She was being tended there now by a full-time caregiver and wouldn’t recognize him even if he did visit.

His first instinct when the feds convinced him he might have a price on his head was to hide out at her place, but they’d told him that could endanger her too. Gerald Branin had said they’d seen WITSEC cases where a hit man used a close family member to flush out or coerce their target.

“Ow!” he clipped out as Grossmamm Ruth, massaging his ankle, hit a sore spot.

“Good!” the silver-haired lady said. “So that’s the exact spot of the sprain. We tie the ice bag there, but you keep drinking that good dandelion tea, keeps swelling down real good.”

Obviously, this dear old woman’s favorite word was good, or goot, as she said it, even in English. “Ella, you pour him more tea,” she said. “And please get him some more of your daad’s good honey with the comb on a biscuit—good for what ails you.”

She was bossing Ella around too, but she seemed to take it. He’d known a lot of kids growing up who didn’t get it that rules and regs from a parent—with consequences—mean they cared, they loved you, wanted you safe. Damn, he hoped he would be safe here among these kind and good people.

He was yearning for a cup of Starbucks java but he downed the weak, strange tea. It warmed his insides anyway. Ella warmed him too, and that presented a problem.

“Now,” Ruth said, “no more using that tree limb crutch you found. I got a good hospital one you can use. But, ach, even with that, you’ll not be going into the fields with Eben and the boys tomorrow, not for a couple days. I gave my ankle a bad twist our last winter in Florida, on the Lido Beach. Made me so mad—I could not walk in the sand and wade the waves.”

“In Florida?” Alex asked.

“Oh, ya. My husband and I, we had a nice little house down there in Pinecraft, right by Sarasota. You think the Amish can’t take trips, enjoy warm weather in the winter?”

“I’ve just never heard of Amish snowbirds,” he said.

“Ach, these old bones did not like the winter cold, even though there’s always work to do here.”

“That’s why I want to help,” Alex insisted, still trying to deal with a mental picture of fully clothed, black-clad Amish like Grossmamm Ruth on a south Florida beach amid the bikinis and Speedos. “I’m already enough of a burden.”

“You go help Ella with her bed—right out the back door.”

The way the old woman had put that—Ella’s gaze met his. She actually blushed, her fair skin turning rosy from her throat to her cheeks.

“Help me weed my lavender bed,” she put in quickly.

“I know what she means. If I can kneel and not put weight on this foot, that’s fine.”

“My sister Barbara usually works with me but she’s helping another family out. You’ll get to meet her at Seth’s wedding though. I think Barbara will be staying home after that, so you wouldn’t need to help me for long.”

Ella’s father came in the back door from outside. “I walked the field to tell the bishop all that happened,” he told them, bending to take off his muddy shoes before coming into the immaculate kitchen in his socks. “The sheriff was there, coming here next to talk to Ella and Andrew. The bishop says we should tell the sheriff the truth about you, have him keep the newspaper editor and others away from you, best as can.”

“I’d rather leave it for Gerald Branin to tell him—procedure, protocol, he said.”

Eben shrugged, then nodded. “Then you are only Cousin Andrew Lantz until we get the say-so, but the sheriff always been straight with us. And you tell the bishop when next you see him.”

A sharp knock rattled the back screen door and “Sheriff Freeman here!” resounded through it. Alex wondered if the sheriff could have overheard any of that. Sure, he’d been called to the accident scene, but he seemed to materialize out of the blue—the darkness—everywhere. No, that was unfair, Alex scolded himself. He was just paranoid, not trusting anyone with a gun, even a law-and-order guy.

The phone call his guard Jake had made in Atlanta the night before someone tried to kill him had been eating at him. Could the call have been to sell him out? Neither he nor Branin could figure how the would-be assassin had found him. When Alex had sneaked out to go jogging, Jake sounded like he was snoring, but it was a different sound from those he made at night. Could he have been faking it, setting it up for Alex to sneak out while the assassin awaited? And then, of course, he rushed out to help so it would look good. Could a man so deep asleep wake up and get outside that fast?

And that car last night—could someone have sat in a vehicle, waiting for Alex—Andrew—to go out alone? Was that speeding car sent to kill him and just went out of control? The black pickup sitting in the Atlanta motel parking lot had looked harmless enough. Even the glint-eyed reflection had not panicked him at first.

Who to trust? Very few in the outside world—but he did trust these people who had taken him in.

* * *

After talking briefly alone to Andrew, Sheriff Freeman called Ella into the living room. She could see why he didn’t want to question them together, but she wished he would have. That way she could help Andrew seem more Amish, maybe cover for him a bit, because she knew he hadn’t told the sheriff who he really was.

“Standard procedure to talk to witnesses separate, Ella,” he said when she sat down on the other end of the couch from him.

“We weren’t exactly witnesses to the wreck—only about as much as Ray-Lynn was.”

“Right, after the fact. I’ll talk to her too.”

“I hope seeing that didn’t bring back bad memories of her own accident.”

“She seems pretty steady. Still can’t thank you and Hannah enough for getting her help when she was hurt. She’s getting some of her old spunk back. Now, isn’t it a little strange for your cousin Andrew—anyone Amish—to be out for an evening run, especially with all the exercise the men get in the fields?”

“He just arrived and hasn’t started to work the fields yet. Then with the sprain he got, jumping out of the way of that car, it will be a few more days before he starts to work with Daad or the boys.”

“Yeah, thank God he wasn’t hit. By the way, the driver/victim regained consciousness en route to the hospital. Broken bones, some question of spinal injury when he was thrown clear. He was lucky he was thrown, though. If not, he would have fried in the wreck. We’ve contacted NOK—next of kin. His address was actually local, though I’d never seen him. Moved in recently from New York State. You know any reason that would upset your cousin? Andrew looked kinda green at the gills when I told him that. He’s from Pennsylvania, right?”

“Yes, from Intercourse. Lots of Amish, lots of Lantzes there.”

The sheriff led her through telling him how the wrecked vehicle began to flame, then blew up. How Andrew found the driver, turned him over.

“Which he should not have done, but I’m giving him a pass on that because it was natural to want to learn if the guy was dead or not,” he said, still taking notes. Ella saw she’d been gripping her hands in her lap and tried to relax her cramped fingers. The sheriff was writing on his notepad, so maybe he hadn’t noticed how nervous she was.

“They talk a little different in the eastern Amish enclaves, don’t they?” the sheriff said as he looked up straight at her. “Andrew doesn’t have the same kind of—excuse me for putting it this way—accent as your people here.”

“There are some differences,” she said in a rush, trying to answer him in a way that wasn’t a lie. Would he be angry when he heard they hadn’t told him the truth about Andrew? Mr. Branin should tell him soon. Why hadn’t he already? “A lot of back-and-forth, long-distance relatives,” she went on, “even marriages, but each area has some things unlike and special. All kinds of varied people come into Amish country, like that man who got hurt.”

“Yeah. Samuel Lee. Word is that he’s here to open a luxury spa and retreat in our area. Now, that’s a good one. What next? I hear it’s out on Sweetgum Lane near the Yoders’ dairy farm and the old Troyer Mill. All right, I’ve gotta go now. Thanks, Ella.”

Feeling bad they hadn’t told him the truth about Andrew, she stood and walked out with him. Andrew still sat in the kitchen with his foot up on a kitchen chair with Grossmamm Ruth keeping an eye on him. Mamm had come downstairs and was dishing out strawberry shortcake for everyone. After quick goodbyes—and the sheriff’s giving Andrew another steely-eyed stare—Ella walked him to the back door even before Mamm could ask him to stay for shortcake.

As he went out, Ella called to him, “Sheriff Freeman! Just a minute. Let me cut some lavender for Ray-Lynn if you’re going to question her. I know she has trouble sleeping sometime and, with this going on tonight, it will help her, one of the best things lavender does. I will just take a minute.”

Her hand sickle was in her new workshop, so she grabbed Mamm’s pruning shears by the back door and darted out to the closest end of the English lavender beds. As she’d come into the kitchen, she’d overheard Daad agreeing that Andrew could help her weed for the next day or so, stay on his knees and off his ankle. That possibility and the familiar, heady scent of her plants stretching up the hill, made her feel she could fly. Despite the terrible events of the night, her dark mood had lifted. Yes, with Andrew there, even the nightmare of being near the pond hadn’t pulled her down.

She cut a good armful of the fragrant, flowering spikes and handed it to the sheriff.

“I oughta have this all over my office and the jail,” he said as he put it next to him on the passenger seat of his cruiser. “Keep me calm with all the bad stuff been happening ’round here. Thanks, Ella, for Ray-Lynn and me. Night, now.”

As he pulled out, the yard, the lane, the road went dark again. Only the kerosene-lantern-lit house and the slice of moon sailing high gave wan light. Starlight—so distant, such tiny specs in the big dark ocean of sky. She spun to look up at her lavender beds, marching toward the hill and up. It was the perfect site for the crop, with the much larger hill and its woodlot above, which sheltered the flowers from winter winds and where Daad kept his beehives so the bees would work all the gardens in the area.

And she saw, reflected, atop the hill, a large, staring eye, pale and lit from within.

She started toward the house, still looking back and up. Had she imagined it? She saw nothing now. Had a camera light popped, like when English folks tried to take verboten images of her people? Could Ms. Drayton have come by to follow up on the story of the car wreck and— No, she’d come to the door, wouldn’t she? Hunter with a night-vision rifle? Binoculars?

Whatever it had been, it wasn’t there now. She rushed inside and closed the storm door but decided not to upset everyone. What if it was just some strange reflection of light off one of the tin pans she had hanging high to keep birds away? What if it was a cluster of early lightning bugs?

Out of breath, she told everyone, “I gave the sheriff some lavender for Ray-Lynn.”