Upon A Winter's Night (22 page)

“Coming home this afternoon, so I can’t stay long. But I’d like a complete report of how things are going here—especially good news—so I can lift his spirits when he asks.”

“All right, good idea,” he said, closing the door and sitting down on a chair opposite the desk. She got up and pulled the drapes open to get more light and so she didn’t feel so alone with him. She saw clumps of heavy clouds that might mean more snow, and she sent up a silent prayer the roads would be good for
Daad
’s
 
return.

“Please tell him, too,” Gid said as she sat back down, “that things are under control, and that you and I will work well together until he can return. When and if he’s seeing visitors, I’d like to visit him—see you, too, outside the store, of course. But if you or your mother need anything done around the house or barn, just let me know.”

“That’s kind of you,” she said, wondering if he’d already helped himself to things in the house and barn. But now it was time to focus on business. “So, what are the sales numbers since he’s been gone, and what orders and deliveries are still pending?”

* * *

“Glad you don’t have a wheelchair for me, Liddy,”
Daad
said as he walked into the house with
Mamm
beside him, holding his arm. “They made me ride clear to our hired car in one.”

“Standard procedure, the doctor said,”
Mamm
put in.

“Well,
ya,
”
 
he muttered. “The doctor said a lot of things.”

Lydia kissed his cheek and helped him take his coat off. She meant to propel him clear into his favorite chair in the living room, but he sat down at the table while
Mamm
bustled past with their things. Lydia heard her go upstairs, heard the bathroom door close.

Should she dare to bring up the Christmas quilt already? No, she’d have to wait a bit, until he was better rested. She had no doubt there would be plenty of times when her parents were not together.

“Liddy,” he said in such a quiet voice that she sat in the chair across the table to hear him better. “You found the pills, the fake pills, in my quilting room, right?”

“
Ya,
after searching everywhere else.”

“So you saw the quilt—your Christmas gift.”

“I was hoping it was to be mine. It’s so beautiful,
Daad.
I just love everything about it. It reminds me of Josh’s animals, the manger, of course. I love the angels that remind me of the snow globe you gave me so long ago from—” she lowered her voice even more “—from my other mother.”

His eyes teared up. Oh, no, she didn’t want to get him emotional the moment he got home. Would asking about the words so carefully sewn on the quilt’s border upset him even more when he should just be resting?

But
Mamm
bustled back downstairs and took over the early supper of soup and sandwiches Lydia had begun.

“Well,”
Mamm
said, “we are both happy to have our Sol home. We’ll find out who changed those pills. Someone will tip their hand.” Without looking at them, she picked up a pot holder and tipped the big pan of steaming noodle soup into the three waiting bowls.

22

B
y Wednesday, Lydia felt things were looking up.
Daad
seemed to be adjusting well to his new medicine. Since both she and Gid had assured him things were going well at the store, he seemed content right now to stay home, resting and working on his quilt. He hadn’t noticed the door locks had been changed, and they hadn’t told him about the intruder yet. Today was mild, clear weather for the tableau at Ray-Lynn’s church. And, as busy as she’d been with her parents and at the store, she would finally see Josh tonight.

Best of all, she had managed to have another reassuring talk with
Daad
when
Mamm
was upstairs. Her parents were going to drive by the manger scene later tonight. “We always support out daughter!” was the way
Mamm
had put it.

“I was wondering about the words on the border of the quilt,” Lydia had told
Daad,
coming back into the kitchen where he was lingering over apple pie, coffee and the Amish newspaper
The Budget.
“‘Father, forgive’
 
is a Bible quote, but one I usually think of more at Easter time.”

He put the paper down, looked up at her and said, “But we all have to be reminded to forgive—even those we love.”

“True. Everyone makes mistakes,” she’d said, trying to help him when he started to look a bit upset.

“Another good Bible quote, ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’” he added, his voice catching. “I know the quilt border can be read as ‘Forgive Father’ as well as ‘Father Forgive.’ I’ve done my share of things to be forgiven for, if you want to read it that way.” He cleared his throat, then coughed and reached for his coffee.

“Me, too, of course,” she’d said, still wanting to bolster him. She wished she hadn’t brought the quilt up again. “And a lot of times problems come from going about the right things the wrong way.”

He’d lifted his gaze and met hers. She’d had the oddest feeling he was going to say something else. He bit his lower lip as if to hold words back before he looked down into his cup, seeming to seek some answer there. Lydia almost blurted out that she was sorry she’d involved Sandra in her quest to learn more about her birth parents but that she had been desperate.

“Well, it’s a beautiful quilt,” she’d said in a rush. “One I will always treasure.”

“As you and I will always treasure our time together. Time is precious, Liddy. Time and trust.”

Now why, she wondered a short while later, as she walked down their driveway to wait for Josh to pick her up in his buggy, had
Daad
not said, “Time and love?”
 
But “Time and trust”?
 
She trusted him and always had, so why did he say it that way?

She looked down the road, and here came the traveling menagerie: first, Josh’s buggy and, behind him, going just as slow, Hank’s truck. Hank was pulling an open, penned load of animals in the truck bed, a camel’s head showing above the cab as if the beast was driving and had stuck his big, shaggy neck out the roof. Oh, it was Melly.

A car honked and went around the slow-moving vehicles on the two-lane road. Lydia was pretty sure her usually well-behaved Melly actually spit at the car as it roared past.

Josh pulled over onto the berm for her while Hank put on the brakes to wait.

“Slow going!” Josh called to her. “I brought Melly instead of Gaspar since you were going to be there.”

“I like things slow lately,” she said, climbing up beside him. She saw in the backseat he had the crèche filled with straw for the baby Jesus.

They made a strange parade to the Community Church, but at least it was on this side of town. Lydia’s heart lifted even more.
Daad
was healing,
Mamm
was off her sleeping pills and had been a bit calmer lately—and she was with Josh in his buggy, as if she really was the woman in his life. The reporter from Cleveland had not been back, Gid was keeping his distance at the store. And she was going to get to speak with Nathan Hostetler tonight, one of her birth mother’s cousins. Considering the tragedy of two deaths lately, and the fact Josh had briefly come under suspicion for Sandra’s, but was now in the clear—oh,
ya,
things were definitely looking up.

A crowd awaited them at the church where the three-sided manger had already been erected. The risers for the church choir were set up to one side. Several large lights on poles dispelled the twilight shadows. It would soon be dark, but those beams would illuminate the tableau. Dangling from a wire, a bright six-pointed star outlined by blue bulbs hung above the manger. Straw was strewn on the ground, and Josh took the crèche out of the backseat to put it in its place.

Striding here and there, Ray-Lynn looked nervous. Unlike the other folks, costumed in plain or fancy robes waiting to become characters in the tableau, she was in slacks and a long coat—camel hair, no less.

“Glad you’re here!” she called out as she ran over to the truck. She was carrying a clipboard with papers fluttering from it, but at least the wind was fairly mild. “A few folks who got the time wrong have been by already. Hank, Josh, we’ve checked the angel platforms more than once, but when you get the animals unloaded, can you take a look at that, too? We don’t need our angels taking a header into the roof of the manger during ‘Silent Night.’”

Lydia went to watch Melly amble down the ramp Hank had attached to the truck bed. When the animal saw Lydia, she smacked her lips—her form of an air kiss.

“I love you, too, big girl!” Lydia told her, and took hold of her bridle while Hank and Josh unloaded the ox, donkey and four sheep, then put them in a makeshift pen away from the road.

As Lydia led Melly in that direction, a flash went off in her face. For a moment, she couldn’t see. Melly balked, snorted and let out a low screech. She jerked her bridle from Lydia’s hand and took off.

Afraid Melly would head for the road and be hit, Lydia watched the camel charge toward a dark figure in the parking lot instead. Bright red-and-blue spots pulsed in both her eyes from the flash, making it difficult to see clearly.

“Melly!” she shouted. “Melly, stop! Stay!”

Josh and Hank came running, but Lydia chased the camel and got to her first, just as another bright light flashed. Photographs! Who was crazy enough to take flash pictures in Melly’s face—or photograph an Amish up close?

As she grabbed Melly’s bridle to turn the big beast around, Lydia’s eyes cleared enough that she could make out the reporter Roy Manning with a camera.

“I should have let her run you down!” Lydia shouted.

“Get away from here!” It was Josh, followed by Ray-Lynn.

“Get off our property right now, sir, or believe me, I’ll tell the sheriff. He’ll be here any minute.”

“I just took a couple of pictures!” the man shouted, but he edged away from them. “Ms. Brand here gave me a lecture on camels, so I thought I’d get a picture of her with one. But I’ll trade it for an interview.”

“Leave right now!” Josh ordered. “You do know that camels attack on cue, don’t you?”

“Sic that thing on me, and I’ll sue!” he yelled, but he headed for a car parked in the church lot, revved the engine as if it were angry, too, and drove away.

Josh looked furious as they led Melly, still sputtering, back toward the holding pen. “I think he got me in the background of the photo, too,” he muttered to Lydia.

“That’s probably what he wanted—us together—not the camel,” she told him, keeping her voice down. “At least that picture shows what I told him about our relationship—only that I work with your animals. Glad he didn’t get us in the buggy together. But what a bad start for Ray-Lynn’s big night. Oh, Sheriff Freeman’s here.”

“And Ray-Lynn’s filling him in. That reporter could be trouble. I think he’s the type to keep hanging around.”

Things definitely improved after that as the animals were moved onto the set and the cast of characters took their places. The choir began to sing. The sheriff kept cars going past on the road, unless they wanted to pull into the parking lot for a longer view. Lydia jumped each time someone took a flash picture from a car, but at least the photos were from a distance and only of the manger scene. She estimated that about one-third of the visitors were in buggies.

Lydia especially loved the angels, pretty, blonde teenage girls with wire wings who stood on a platform hidden behind the manger under the star of Bethlehem. They held trumpets and pretended to play. The Virgin Mary cradled a doll, and the church choir sang all the hymns Lydia loved, even the one with the haunting tune, “When blossoms flowered ’mid the snow, upon a winter night...” And Melly, even though they had strapped the ornate seat on her, seemed to be behaving for the three bearded wise men who more than once knelt before the manger with their treasures for the holy child.

Lydia kept watching the buggies that went by, looking for her parents and others she knew. Gid drove by and pulled in the lot for a few minutes. She talked to him briefly, hoping he would not hang around, and he didn’t. He told her he had somewhere else to go and left with a wave. Bess drove slowly past with her grandsons and daughter-in-law in the car but no Connor. Lydia wondered if he was still out spraying sick trees. Wouldn’t it get all over town, and beyond, if he was actually defrauding his Christmas customers?

Others from her church passed by in a line of buggies. She saw Bishop and Mattie Esh, and following them, Hannah and Seth Lantz with their two young children. The third buggy in that group carried Ella, a lavender grower, her husband, Alex Caldwell, and their young daughter. They were members of Lydia’s church, but a family with a worldly last name because Alex had been reared in the world and was one of the few outsiders to turn Amish. The last family she recognized were wood carver Ben Kline and his new wife, Abigail Baughman, who raised mushrooms, of all things.

But, from the moment she’d arrived, Lydia had wondered which one of the background workers was her distant relative, Nathan Hostetler. By eight o’clock, with only an hour left to go, the donkey and sheep were starting to eat the straw on the floor of the manger and Melly had pulled a turban off one of the wise men. Ray-Lynn, looking frazzled but happy, came up to Lydia and whispered, “Nate Hostetler has some time to talk to you now. He’s taking a break on the porch steps behind the tableau. Good luck,” she added with a pat on Lydia’s back before she darted off again.

Lydia whispered to Josh where she was going and hurried back toward the church.

* * *

Josh sure hoped that newspaper reporter didn’t show up again, because he was afraid he’d lose his temper and hit him. The guy had dared to come to the barn this afternoon, announced by the raucous greeting of the donkeys. He’d had the gall to walk right in and flash his name card, as if that made everything on the up-and-up.

“I’m busy, Mr. Manning,” Josh had told him, once he’d read his card which announced he was a field reporter for the Cleveland newspaper. “And I’d appreciate it if you would get out of my barn and off the property.”

“I know the Amish are good businesspeople,” he’d said, ignoring that request. “How about I do a story this spring on your petting zoo to bring in a lot of extra people, and you, in turn, answer a couple of my questions now? Like which loft did your friend Sandra Myerson fall from?” He craned his neck to look around. “Oh, I’ll bet that one there with the ladder.”

“The Amish are law-abiding, nonviolent people, Mr. Manning, but I’m asking you to leave. There will be no answers to questions, no interview. Talk to the sheriff if you must, but—”

“I have. He didn’t exactly say so, but you surely must have been a suspect in your former girlfriend’s death, at least before the accidental death ruling.”

Josh fought to keep his temper locked down. It had gotten the best of him more than once recently, and the results were always bad. Besides, this guy had what they call the power of the pen. All he needed was to throw him out bodily or shove him...

Instead, he forced himself to just turn away—turn the other cheek—and walk over to get Melly out of the pen. He was tempted to spit at the guy, just like a camel.

“Just a few questions about your relationship with Ms. Myerson, then,” the idiot dared to ask, following but at a distance, so he had to shout. “I’ve interviewed the Columbus friends you have in common, but the fact she came here several times, was asking around, some say about your current girlfriend—seems Ms. Myerson still cared about you and wanted you back...”

That,
Josh thought, was too close for comfort. Was this guy fishing for a way to imply that either he or Lydia had wanted Sandra out of the way? The last thing he needed was Manning hitting on the possibility he had shoved Sandra off that loft.

Josh flexed his fists and fought to keep from throwing the man out. Then he realized he should get Melly and maybe let her do the dirty work.

He swung the gate to the pen open wide and called Melly out, Gaspar then Balty. With an open sack of feed in his hand, he walked straight for Roy Manning, the three camels shuffling in quick step behind him. He even threw a bit of camel feed at the man’s feet, so the animals crowded closer and swung their big heads toward him.

Ya,
thank the Lord. Cursing, the man raced for the door he’d come in. But as he started his car, Josh wondered if the intruder who had been lurking around his barn could be someone like that reporter.

Josh had hoped he wouldn’t see Manning again, but he’d figured he might—and then here he’d turned up tonight at the tableau...with a camera.

Josh shook his head to clear the memory and walked along the fence to look at the manger scene from the side. His animals were pretty much behaving. Hank had been picked up to go to his son’s birthday party, though he’d left the truck for another
Englische
guy to drive the animals back home.

And, Josh saw with a glance back at the lighted church steps behind the manger, Lydia was finally getting to talk to a Hostetler relative who might have known her birth mother.