Upon A Winter's Night

by Karen Harper

  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.

  * * *

  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 th
e 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.