Upon A Winter's Night (9 page)

Shaking his head and frowning, Josh told them who Sandra was, explaining she was writing a dissertation—maybe even a book later—about immigrant Christmas customs. He said he’d talk to Sandra about not coming on so strong like that.

Lydia said nothing, but she was upset. She had expected Sandra to keep a bit private here, not interview anyone and everyone. She stared hard at the photo of Victoria Keller with the pen in her hand, but her face blurred to Sandra’s.

* * *

After the funeral, the casket was carried out to the hearse and the guests went through the buffet line before they joined the procession to the cemetery or left for their homes. As they took plates, Josh whispered to Lydia, “Sorry to hear Sandra came on like gangbusters. I thought she’d know better, but I’m sure she didn’t tell any of your story.”

“My story?” she said, taking a spoonful of pasta salad. “I’m not even sure what my story is.”

People were heading down both sides of the table, and the man across from them was saying to another in a quiet voice, “Seems she’s laying the groundwork to run for governor and, if she gets that, the sky’s the limit.”

“Namely 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” the other muttered with a tight grin. “Yeah, I think we’re ready for a woman president.”

Lydia almost spilled the spoonful she was taking of some kind of fancy potato salad. They had to mean Bess. Governor? President? Of the whole country?

“Oh, by the way, Josh,” Connor said, walking by with one of his sons in tow, “that female writer friend of yours is going to interview me tomorrow morning before she heads back to Columbus. Says she wants to know how it feels to be selling one of the major symbols of Christmas in an area where the Amish want nothing to do with decorated trees. I figure it will be good publicity for us.”

“Publicity, publicity—not today,” Bess Stark said, coming up and tapping Connor on the shoulder while holding her other grandson by the hand. “Today, just family, friends and down-home memories. And I really don’t think the boys need to go to the cemetery, Connor. Not only is it snowy and cold, but all this is enough.”

It was enough all right, Lydia thought. This huge house was more than enough. Maybe trusting Sandra Myerson was too much. So she’d make the next moves on her own. This weekend she’d find a way to visit Victoria’s caregiver Anna Gingerich. But first, she was going into the nearby town of Amity to see if she could talk to someone at a tree cutting business there who might have known her father.

* * *

Lydia and Josh sat in his buggy atop Starks’ hill, watching the hearse lead the line of cars away. Soon the funeral caravan was lost in the swirl of snow. Lydia recalled Bess’s concern for their buggy wheels slipping in bad weather, but the steep lane down the hill was no problem with the snow melted off the pavement. She saw a few customers at the Christmas tree barn as they passed. Her people would have closed for the day, but life—and Stark Christmas business—went merrily on.

They buggied past Lydia’s house.
Daad
would not be home yet.
Mamm
must be baking bread because the kitchen light was on. She made extra loaves of friendship bread at holiday time and froze them in the generator-run freezer in the basement.

Despite Lydia’s sadness over losing the chance to talk to Victoria Keller, and being upset with Sandra overstepping in town, it was wonderful to be with Josh, to feel all sealed in with him by the fiberglass buggy and the Plexiglas screen they added for a windshield in such weather. And they shared a warm lap blanket as if they were cuddled up in bed together.

When they turned in the lane to his house—she’d left her horse and buggy not in the big barn but in his small stables—he was the first to mention Sandra again.

“Sorry Sandra’s making waves when I know you thought she’d be more, well, quiet. Unfortunately, that’s not her way, but I didn’t think she’d do public interviews in a strange place. I guess I should have warned you about that, but, as I said, I’m sure she’ll keep your secret.”

“Especially if you remind her. I can tell she cares about you, so you two know each other pretty well.”

He didn’t follow up on that little fishing expedition but jumped down to open the stable door—so she thought. Instead, he hurried around and helped her down, almost as if they were a courting couple. “She said the same about you, Lydia—that is, that you care about me,” he told her as he slid open the stable door.

“Of course I do. Even more than I care for Melly and Balty.”

Now, she thought, why had she blurted that out? Because she didn’t want him to know how much she was attracted to him? “Actually, a bit more than that,” she added with a little laugh, hoping he hadn’t taken offense.

He hadn’t. It was great to be with someone who had a sense of humor, since that was in pretty short supply at her house. As he unhitched Blaze and hitched Flower to Lydia’s buggy, he grinned at her more than once.

“We have fun together,” he said, with a wink. “Since it’s so beautiful out, want to make a couple of snow angels before you head home—for old times’ sake, though I like the new times better. The menagerie can wait a few minutes. I trust the boys to take care of them. Of course, you’ll walk into your house with your backside all wet as if we’ve been rolling in the snow.”

“Which we will have been. I’ll just take my cape off.”

She untied and swirled it onto her buggy seat. On the day of a funeral, a day when their mutual friend Sandra had let them down, she knew she shouldn’t be so excited. Josh had taught her and some friends how to make snow angels years ago. She’d had a schoolgirl crush on him then, but now...

“Race you outside!” he shouted, as if he recalled that day, too.

He threw off his hat and winter coat on the way out. His small backyard, fenced off from the large animal field, looked pristine with the big flakes falling fast.

He took her hand. Laughing, they flopped down together, about two feet apart, and moved their arms and legs to make the wings and skirts.

“Angels from the realms of glory...” he started to sing, slightly off-key, but she didn’t care. The lacy flakes wet her face and stuck her lashes together when she blinked. Again, she felt she was in a snow globe and someone was shaking it, shaking the very earth when she lay so close in body and heart to this man.

He helped her up and, careful of their creations, which could soon be covered with snow anyway, they walked back toward the barn, his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist. He turned her to him, she thought at first to give her a boost up into her buggy, but his mouth descended on hers.

And it was swirling snow again, but this time in her head and heart and oh, so warm, so hot. She tipped her head so they wouldn’t bump noses, and opened her mouth to his invading tongue.

It was a whole new world. Gid had never kissed her like this, and she didn’t want him to. She hadn’t realized it could be this way, pressed to Josh, her soft places fitting perfectly to his muscular, angular ones. She had to concentrate on breathing, on not just grabbing him to her.

Too soon, he set her back. “I can’t apologize for that,” he said, sounding not quite as breathless as she felt. “If you’re promised to another, don’t kiss me back like that.”

“I—wanted to.”

“Better get going before someone comes after you.”

“Gid saw me leaving here with Sandra in her car.”

“You mean he’s been watching or following you?”

“Just bad timing, I think. But he was very polite today, like he was sorry.”

“Polite. And I guess I wasn’t right now.”

“I didn’t mean that. You were—just right.”

But it surprised her that, despite the kiss and her telling him about Gid, and despite how much she secretly, deeply cared for Joshua Yoder, she didn’t tell him her plans to look more into her real family. He might tell Sandra, and she might tell someone she shouldn’t. No, Lydia was going to buggy into Amity on her own to find someone who might have known her father or her family. After all, she told herself, Josh had helped her a lot and she didn’t want him to think he should leave the animals this time of year to go with her. She’d tell him, maybe Sandra, too, if she learned anything useful.

He boosted her up into the buggy and handed her Flower’s reins. She told him, “I won’t be here after work tomorrow but Friday evening and Saturday for sure, though I might be late. I have to run some errands. And thank you for everything—and I do mean everything.”

He patted Flower’s flank, but she could almost feel he’d patted hers. She smiled down at him, and he grinned like the
rumspringa
boy she remembered the day he’d first taught her to make snow angels. When she giddyapped Flower outside, the snow had suddenly stopped. At least their angels would still be holding hands, not buried in more snow. Feeling like an angel from the realms of glory, she could almost have flown.

9

T
he next day Lydia asked
Daad
if she could combine her morning break and lunchtime to leave early to run an errand in Amity.

“As long as you’re not just stepping out to avoid Gid,” he said. “It’s natural he would want to know how an
Englische
funeral goes—especially one the Starks arranged.”

“He hasn’t asked about it yet, but I’ve hardly seen him today. I was surprised
Mamm
wanted to know all about it—and you really didn’t.”

He frowned. “I have more things to worry about than the Starks.”

“
Daad,
you’re looking tired. I know it’s the busiest time of year, but you just seem, well, like you are pushing yourself too hard.”

“As do you. Work here, work at Josh Yoder’s barn. Avoiding Gid. By the way, your mother asked him over to evening meal Sunday.”

“As long as she asked him, he’s not my guest, so I won’t expect to be left alone with him afterward. It will be a family thing, the Brands entertaining their general manager, bookkeeper and common friend.”

“Listen to me, Liddy,” he said, then just threw up his hands. “
Ya,
go to Amity if you must, but you could probably buy the same here in Homestead, eh?”

That made her realize she’d have to come back with something unique from Amity. Maybe some quilting material from the dry goods shop there. She or
Mamm
usually bought material for
Daad
here in town on his strictest orders of what he wanted.

After glancing repeatedly at the big oak-case clock over the front door, Lydia left her helper, Naomi, at the greeter’s desk and slipped out the front door promptly at three o’clock. To avoid having to walk past the offices or through the workshop, she went outside to the building in back where they kept the horses. At least the weather was calm and sunny, though not warm enough to melt any snow.

After a forty-minute fast trot, she tied up in Amity and bought
Daad
a bolt of bright blue cloth and
Mamm
a pillow that was embroidered with the saying, Mothers Are Forever. Now why, she wondered, had it not read, A Mother Is Forever. No, for Lydia, at least, this was the right gift. And she was wise to come in here because her chat with the saleswomen told her what she needed to know. There was only one tree cutting farm around, and it had been in business a long time.

Rabers Cutters and Trimmers, the sign read on the Amish house just outside of town where the women sent her. Lydia could tell the place was Amish because there were no electric or phone lines going into the house, no lightning rods on the buildings and no TV antennae or disks pointing skyward. And the big giveaway, even in this weather that froze material stiff: the familiar black-and-pastel dresses, broadfall trousers and shirts hung on the clothesline.

She pulled Flower into the driveway where she saw a smaller go-round-in-back sign, so she went a little farther and parked the buggy on the far side of the barn next to a field full of dried corn stubble. The wind had mostly swept its snow cover bare. What must be the Raber family’s unhitched wagons and two buggies took most of the best parking space back here.

Her knock on the back door was immediately answered by a woman about
Mamm
’s
 
age, wearing glasses, though she still squinted. “Welcome,” the plump woman said with a nod and a small smile. “Business for the men?”

“Oh, no, sorry. My name is Lydia Brand from Homestead.” Suddenly, just to say the next words aloud made her almost stammer. “I believe my father, David Brand, used to work with the Rabers cutting trees. A long time ago. Twenty years. He died in a car-buggy accident. I—I was just hoping someone would still remember him, because I don’t. My adoptive parents took me in when I was almost a newborn.”

“Ah,” she said, seeming partly surprised, partly sympathetic. “Step in, step in. Cold out there. I’m Miriam Raber. The men got picked up by their taxi van to get all their tools sharpened, better job than they can do themselves. But I bet
Grossdaadi
can help you, my husband’s father. He had the business then. You just sit, and I’ll tell him you’re here. A good day for a visit, so I’ll pour some tea.”

Lydia’s hopes had fallen when Miriam had said the men were away, but now she trembled with anticipation. So easily accomplished?
Thank you, Lord.
And the Rabers were just far enough away they didn’t belong to the Homestead church, where word might spread that Lydia was asking questions.

Miriam left for a few minutes, then bustled back in and poured three cups of tea. “He was asleep in his rocking chair,
ya,
he was, but he’ll be glad to talk to you. David Brand, he remembers him. Here, some fresh cookies, too,” she said as she added a small plate to her tray.

Reminding herself to keep calm, Lydia followed Miriam through the tidy house. As they approached the front parlor, the woman stopped and whispered, “Forgot to tell you
Grossdaadi
is nearly blind—macular degeneration—but his mind is sharp.”

Lydia’s pulse picked up as she was ushered to a straight-backed chair across a small table from the old man in his rocker. He had a shock of white hair and a long white beard and was so thin that he made Miriam look fat. He had a blanket over his legs and a quilt folded over the back of his chair, which he leaned his head against. Miriam fussed over their tea, made sure her father-in-law knew right where it was on the table, then said, “
Grossdaadi,
this is Lydia Brand from over Homestead way. If you can tell her something about her birth father, she will be glad.”

“Oh,
ya,
Mr. Raber,” Lydia said. “So grateful. I was a baby when my father, David Brand, and his wife, Lena, died in a car-buggy accident, so anything you can remember will be a gift to me.”

Miriam hovered a moment at the door, then left them alone. The old man cleared his throat. His blue eyes looked glazed, but they moved in her direction as if he could see her. When he spoke, she hung on every word.

“Eager to learn a trade, he was, David. Had to teach him most things, but he learned fast. Bright and agile. They lived out a ways, still in Eden County, though.”

Lydia blinked back tears. “Did you—ever meet my mother?”

“Couple of times. Once I think, when we had a picnic for our workers right here. Short as he was tall. Quick movements. But ah, your father. Just like me, David Brand loved to climb, more than my own boys, not a bit afraid of heights. Up he’d go with his shoe spikes on, up with his ropes.” He gestured toward the ceiling, smiling and looking up as if he could see him climbing yet. “Learned the knot-tying fast, too, so the limbs can be lowered and not just fall. Sad to lose him for me—and tragedy for you.”

He took his teacup for the first time and put the tip of a crooked finger in it, evidently to test its temperature. Lydia had a hundred questions, but she kept quiet. He’d volunteered so much on his own that she didn’t want to interrupt. The old man—she realized she didn’t even know his first name—took a sip of his tea and continued. “They wanted children bad, he told me. But they sure kept you a secret. Never heard him say you were on the way. Linda—I mean, Lydia—here’s the thing. If there’s something bad, you want to hear it, too?”

He tilted forward in his rocking chair with his cup of tea cradled between both hands. She leaned closer, too. Her stomach clenched when he hesitated to go on.

“Was there a trial for the man who hit them?” she asked. “Did it get public when our people would just have them gone and buried and forgiven the man?”

“Yes, a trial and the man went to prison. But I don’t mean that. It’s just that I think you were born before your time. I saw Lena Brand maybe a month before the accident and—I’m just an old man now—but she wasn’t showing any baby, and I’ve seen a lot of that in my years.”

“I was born premature? You said before my time.”

“Just they had no child—and then they did.”

She knew now he was mixing things up. He must have heard that she was given away, adopted by a Brand family. He’d confused that with David and Lena Brand not having a child—then suddenly having her. He’d said her mother was petite. Sometimes small, young women held in their pregnancies until real late, and with the way Amish garments were loose anyway, and maybe his eyes were going bad even then, he might not have noticed her mother was expecting. But rather than explain all that to him, since he obviously prided himself in what he did recall, she thanked him.

When Miriam returned, Lydia thanked her also and said goodbye to Mr. Raber. But before she could follow Miriam out, he asked, “So who was that other lady came yesterday, asked a lot of the same questions? Spoke
Englische,
not
Deutsche.
Said she was a friend of the Brand family that has the furniture store over in Homestead.”

Sandra! She had tracked this man down even before Lydia had. She stumbled to give an answer, said she didn’t know her friend had come here, taken his time, too...

But Lydia did know she had to corral Sandra Myerson and not just leave it up to Josh.

* * *

“Well, I didn’t know you’d be so upset by my doing some extra research on my project,” Sandra told Josh as they stood next to her car on the lane between the animal barn and his house. “Sorry I flashed my camera at people in the restaurant. I should have known word would spread around here. I could have taken photos with my phone, and they’d never know.”

“They’d know! Most of my people have had those little phones pointed at them. And using both my
and
Lydia’s names as a calling card isn’t good!” He tried to control his temper and his voice. “Come on, Sandra, think! It links Lydia and me publicly.”

“So what? You two are linked. I can see it, I—”

“You’ve got to tread lightly here. Our customs don’t include tabloid talk about who is dating who. Even betrothals are secret until invitations to the wedding are sent out, and everyone thinks Lydia is more or less pledged to another man.”

“See! So there is talk about who goes with whom. It’s human nature, Amish, English, Spanish, Turkish...”

“Would you just listen?”

He forced himself to stop yelling, something he struggled not to do when he got angry. This day had started out with someone stealing one of the expensive camel seats the wise men rode on in the Christmas pageants, the saddle with dark green fringe. He’d left it outside the back door to clean and use this afternoon. It was smart to reacquaint the camels with the saddle before they were ridden every year, but stupid to think nothing would go wrong out back anymore. He had to put a padlock on that back gate where some
rumspringa
kids and Victoria Keller had wandered in.

“I’m sorry I raised my voice,” he said, realizing he still sounded steamed.

“You tend to do that, oh Josh of the humble folk. Look, I said I’m sorry and I’ll be more careful doing interviews with your Plain People around here. I was going to ask you if I could stay here at your place when I come back, but I won’t even mention that. The B and B is great, even reasonable, but it adds up. Gas for that car,” she said with a nod at it, “is enough to crimp my budget.”

“You’re right, you can’t stay here. And I’ll cover the gas next time you come. Maybe you’ll find the time and courage to come out in the barn and see my animals.”

“Only if you have house cats out there.”

“Actually, I do, barn cats, at least. A tabby cat just delivered six kittens up in the loft.”

“Oh, I adore kittens! Now, that’s my style of pet, and that’s my let’s-change-the-subject-and-stay-friends farewell for now. I’ll let you know through your friend Hank when I’m coming back. Tell Lydia I’m sorry if I upset any Amish applecarts, and I may have more to tell her about her biologicals when I get back.”

She gave him a peck on the cheek, got in her car, honked and drove out. He felt strangely relieved to be rid of her, yet it annoyed him even more when she turned toward town instead of taking the road out to the highway. Then he remembered what Connor had said at the funeral: she planned to interview him, too. Josh could just see her trying to pit the Amish against the Starks about Christmas trees. Worse, if Bess Stark was still home and Sandra ran into her, would she try to interview Bess, too? Lydia said Sandra had referred to the senator as Snarky Stark for some reason.

Muttering under his breath, he hurried into the house and headed upstairs to the bathroom. One of the things he’d liked about the homes of moderns he’d known in Columbus was that most of them had bathrooms on the first floor as well as upstairs, but in an old farmhouse, you went with tradition. On the small landing that marked the turn in the two flights of stairs, he glanced out the window at the two snow angels he and Lydia had made yesterday. He liked seeing them there, but—

“What in the—?”

He pressed his forehead to the cold windowpane and scraped away the frost in the upper right corner. Not only had someone put carrot horns on the angels but they’d drawn a pitchfork in the snow where the angels held hands as if to make them into demons. Worse, two real pitchforks were stuck in the ground—right where the angels’ hearts would be.

* * *

Upset again by Sandra—and by Mr. Raber’s ominous words that she was
born before her time—
Lydia strode toward her buggy. She gasped. Flower had been freed from the traces and was missing!

She spun around to scan the area, especially the barren cornfield where the mare could have wandered. Had Flower been stolen? No one had come into the house who might have unhitched the horse and put her in the barn, but she’d have to look there. She’d also have to get Miriam Raber’s help. She ran back along the fence and saw a place where it was broken. Could Flower have gone through the opening? But still, who would have loosed her? And where was she?

Lydia tore behind the barn and found her mare tied by her halter and a rope to an old water trough. But her relief soon turned to shock. The nervous, stamping horse bore on her back one of Josh’s camel saddles, the one with the dark green fringe.