Shadows of Lancaster County

by Mindy Starns Clark

  As she returned to the table, I couldn’t help thinking what a wise, wise woman my brother had married. As she had said the day before, she might be naive, but she certainly was not stupid.

  I decided to tell her a little bit more about what I knew.

  “When you and I spoke on the phone yesterday, Lydia, I asked you if you had ever been seen at the WIRE by Dr. Updike. Are you aware that both your sister and your mother also went there during their pregnancies?”

  “Yah, of course. That was how I first reconnected with Bobby. I went with my mother to the WIRE for her testing, and I recognized him as the boy I used to play with. Of course, I hadn’t seen him since we were children and your grandparents sold their house, but I would have known that face and smile anywhere.”

  “What kind of testing did your mother have done there? Blood work?”

  “More than blood work. I think it was an amniocentesis. Whatever involves sticking a long needle through the abdomen.”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m sorry, Lydia. She wasn’t having an amniocentesis. By what we can tell from the lab’s records, gene therapy was being done to the fetus.”

  Lydia shook her head firmly.

  “She would not have done that, trust me. You did not know my mother like I did.”

  “Then it’s quite possible that she was lied to by the doctor. After all, you probably were.”

  Lydia’s eyes widened as she took in what I had said. I had a feeling she was right, that her mother had not known what was really going on. Kate had gone to the WIRE at the urging of her daughter Grete, and though she had agreed to an amniocentesis—or at least what she had thought was an amniocentesis—Dr. Updike obviously had had other plans in mind.

  Clearly disturbed, Lydia gathered up the potatoes and carried them to the sink. Trying to be a comfort, I joined her there, and as I rinsed and she sliced, Reed and Isaac came out of the stable and started walking toward the house. I couldn’t help but be warmed by the site of the two of them together, the handsome man and the lanky little boy.

  “You still love him, don’t you?” Lydia asked, startling me.

  I was going to deny it, but she had been so honest with me I felt I owed her the same.

  “It doesn’t matter. He has a girlfriend and a whole life separate from mine.”

  “That may be, but I wonder if he looks at her the way he looks at you.”

  Reed and Isaac came in the back door at that point and our conversation ended. After they took their coats off and Isaac chattered on excitedly about the horse, Reed looked at me over his head and I nodded. He turned his attention to Lydia, who also nodded, and then he said he had to get some things from the car but he’d be back in a minute. While he was out there, Lydia sat down with Isaac and explained to him that Reed needed to take a blood sample from his arm. She explained how that was done, saying that it was just like what Daddy did all day at work, taking people’s blood. Isaac didn’t look too happy about it, but he didn’t bolt from the room, either. I excused myself, saying I needed to take a little walk and I’d be back in a while. I was just putting on my coat when Reed came in the door, a white shopping bag in one hand and small black satchel in the other. We shared grave looks, and then he came on into the house as I went outside.

  It struck me that if I wanted to get a look at whatever Grete had hidden in the kitchen canister yesterday morning and carried into the henhouse this morning, now might be the perfect time. I knew that the Amish church service went on for a while and was usually followed by a community meal. I wasn’t sure how much time I had, but they weren’t here right now, so I thought I would take the chance. Hands in my pockets, I strolled up to the henhouse, swung open the door, and stepped inside.

  Immediately the chickens went crazy, cackling and squawking and making such a ruckus that I wasn’t sure what to do. Quickly I made a cursory inspection of the whole interior, my eyes finally lighting on what looked like a loose square of wood with a knot hole right in the center on the floor. Just on a hunch, ignoring the squawking and the flying feathers and the musty stench of the chicken coop, I squatted down, stuck my finger in the little hole, and lifted. Much to my surprise, as the wood came up it revealed a hiding spot below. There, in a shallow space under the floor, was a metal fireproof box. I didn’t know what was inside, but my heart pounded at the sudden thought that it could be the Beauharnais Rubies. I had no idea why Grete would have them, but then again there were a lot of things I hadn’t yet figured out. Reaching into the hole, I grabbed the handle of the box. I was about to lift it up out of the floor when the door to the chicken coop swung open.

  Caleb stood there in the doorway looking at me, his eyes wide.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “Anna?” Caleb demanded. “What are you doing in there? I thought a fox was attacking the chickens!”

  Mortified, I had to make a quick decision. Acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world, I let the box drop back down into the hole, slid the board on top, and stood, brushing the straw and dirt from my knees.

  “Sorry, I was just looking for something. I thought maybe it had fallen under a loose board.”

  Eager to get out of there, I moved past him and into the sunlight, and then I held the door open for him to do the same. He came readily, asking what I was looking for and if he could help.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  He didn’t press the issue. Thinking of my conversation with Lydia about Caleb and drugs, I wanted to ask where he had been since he snuck out Friday night. Dressed as he was now, handsome in jeans and a leather jacket, he looked quite different from the Amish fellow who had carried my suitcase in from the car just two nights before. I said as much to him now.

  “Yah, I wanted to get home while the family was still out at church. I need to change back into my Plain clothes.”

  Together, the two of us walked toward the house. I wanted to scold him for leaving like that, for shirking his duties, for possibly getting involved with drugs. Instead I just told him I hoped he wasn’t getting mixed up with the wrong people.

  “The wrong people. Englishers, you mean?”

  “I’m talking about drugs.”

  Caleb stopped short and looked at me.

  “Drugs?”

  I glanced around and lowered my voice.

  “Your sisters may be fairly sheltered, Caleb, but they’re not dumb. They know what kinds of things go on in the outside world—especially over by the Quarry.” His eyes widened, so I added, “Bobby saw you there a few weeks ago.”

  Caleb’s face turned bright red, but the expression in his eyes was one of hurt, not anger.

  “Bobby saw me near the Quarry, so he assumed I was taking drugs?”

  “Or selling them.”

  Looking stunned, Caleb finally tilted his head back and let out a giant groan of frustration.

  “Unbelievable!” he cried, shaking his head and looking at me. “Why did no one say anything to me? I mean, they are always nagging, always complaining. But no one ever looked me in the eye and said, ‘Caleb, are you mixed up with drugs?’ No one. If they had, I would have told them the truth.”

  “Fine. Caleb, are you mixed up with drugs?”

  “No,” he replied, looking me straight in the eye. “I…I am a musician.”

  “A musician?”

  “I play guitar in a band. Electric guitar.”

  Suddenly I realized why he lived such a secret life. A guitar was one thing; for all I knew, the Ordnung might even allow that. But an electric guitar would probably be a no-no on several levels as far as the Amish were concerned.

  “We practice on Saturday mornings, but the only way I can get out of here on time and not get stuck doing my chores is by not coming home Friday night. I usually stay at a buddy’s house in town. We do two gigs every weekend: Saturday nights at The Alternative and Sunday mornings at church.”

  “Church?”

  He nodded.

&n
bsp; “It is a praise band,” he said guiltily, as if that was an even bigger crime. “If Bobby saw me near the Quarry, that is because I play at The Alternative every Saturday night, a coffeehouse run by the church and located right in the thick of things. We play music to draw in the crowds, and then the pastor gets up and talks about addiction and recovery, forgiveness and restoration, things like that. They give out free coffee and donuts along with brochures about the twelve-step programs the church offers.”

  I was so speechless that I didn’t even know how to respond.

  “I know I was wrong to keep it a secret, Anna. I want to tell Grete and Nathaniel, but it is going to break their hearts. I will have to do as Lydia did and leave home, and then what will that do to them, to this farm? They need my help here. Ezra is not old enough to shoulder my load.”

  I told Caleb that while I understood his problem, deceiving his family and ignoring his responsibilites wasn’t the solution.

  “ ’Tis wrong to lie, yah, but to think that Bobby’s mind went to drugs, that hurts. I would not take drugs. My whole calling is to help kids get off of drugs. Does he think I learned nothing from what happened the night my parents died? If the Dreiheit Five had not been drinking and smoking marijuana back there, maybe Daed and Mamm would still be alive.”

  My eyes widened, dismayed that he had swallowed the line about the “Wild Teen Party” that predicated the tragedy. Then again, he had a point. If my friends hadn’t been pressuring me to drink, I wouldn’t have led them to the hidden fireworks. If Reed hadn’t pulled out a joint, I wouldn’t have marched off and fallen asleep in the car and missed the first signs of the fire, before it was too late to save them.

  Finally, I could do nothing except exhale deeply and apologize for my brother’s misperception. I also suggested to Caleb that he pray about this, that if God was leading him in a certain direction, He could certainly help him find a way to make it happen.

  Together, we moved toward the house. I would have to find another chance to get back to the henhouse later and look inside that strongbox, but for now I was just glad that Caleb and I had had the opportunity to talk in private.

  At least that was one mystery solved.

  When we stepped inside, it was to find Reed sitting at the kitchen table all alone. Caleb greeted him and then headed off to his bedroom to change clothes. I sat down next to Reed, noting that he had a potato in one hand and a peeler in the other, but he didn’t quite seem to know what he was doing. He was running the peeler blade over the brown skin, but at the wrong angle and without enough force. Putting my hands on top of his, I showed him how to do it. As we moved our hands rhythmically together, I asked how it had gone with Isaac. Reed shook his head, smiling ruefully.

  “About like you’d expect. Isaac cried, his mother cried, we all cried.” With a grin and a wink, I could tell he was kidding, at least about that last part. “I think Lydia is fixing him a hot bath. That should help him calm down.”

  “Good.”

  When I thought Reed had the hang of using the peeler, I let go of his hands, though I didn’t really want to. Unfortunately, he glanced up at me just then, and I knew he caught the hesitation and the longing in my eyes.

  “Anna,” he said, his voice soft, almost like a whisper.

  Summoning my nerve, I smoothed a lock of hair into place behind my ear and then met his gaze, trying to understand the emotion on his face, trying not to be ashamed of the love that must be clearly visible on mine. Slowly, Reed reached up with one hand and flicked at my hair, at a small piece of potato peeling that was lodged there.

  Embarrassed, I looked away, but with the same hand he gently grabbed my chin and tilted my face to look at him again. We sat like that for a long moment, my heart beating, my lips aching for his kiss, my brain reminding me he was involved with someone else.

  I also could not forget that he had spurned me in the past—not once, but twice. Suddenly, more than anything, I wanted an explanation for his actions.

  “Why did you stop writing to me from prison, Reed? I treasured your letters and then they just ended, for no reason. What happened? Was it the age difference again?”

  He shook his head.

  “No, that was all me. Prison was…well, it was a nightmare, but one I knew I deserved. When I wrote to you, I was looking for absolution, I guess. At the very least, I needed your forgiveness. Once you gave me that and we kept writing back and forth, you seemed to be falling for me again, but I wasn’t ready. I had a long road ahead of me, a tough path of finding God and learning about grace. I cut things off with you because at that point I had a lot of things to sort out. It’s hard to let someone else love you when you completely hate yourself.”

  “I’m so sorry you felt that way, but I know what you mean. I had to deal with my own demons too.” I blinked, a single tear slipping down my cheek, though I wasn’t even sure which one of us I was crying for. “But what about later? You never contacted me once after you got out.”

  He shrugged and looked away before bringing his gaze back to me.

  “It was a good while before I was finally ready, but by then you had taken off,” he said simply. “Bobby told me you wanted a fresh start, so I let it go. I thought I owed you that.”

  I blinked again, this time sending twin tracks of tears down my face. He reached up and brushed those tears away with his starchy potato hands. Smiling despite my tears, I grabbed one of those hands in mine, turned it over, and slowly kissed it, right where the scar peeked out from under his cuff. Tears filled his eyes then too. With both arms, he reached out and pulled me close and just held me, rocking back and forth right there, pressing my face tightly against his strong shoulder.

  For some reason, I wanted to sob, to let out all the pain of all the years we had spent apart. But I had already stepped over the bounds with that kiss. Now that I understood we had truly gone our separate ways, my sobbing was best reserved for when I was alone, for my own private mourning.

  Lydia came back into the room at that moment, startled when she spotted us in an embrace. Flustered, she excused herself again, but Reed and I pulled apart, and he called her back in as I used a corner of a napkin to wipe the tears—and the potato starch—from my cheeks.

  When she returned, she was blushing, but she tried to act nonchalant as she gathered up the rest of the potatoes, carried them to the sink, and began to rinse them.

  “How’s Isaac?”

  “He will be okay,” Lydia said, her back to us as she worked. “Though I don’t know if he’ll ever get over the realization that that is what his father does for a living, sticking people with needles and taking out their blood.”

  We all chuckled.

  “By the way, Caleb’s here,” I said. “He’s in his room.”

  “Oh! I didn’t even hear him. Did you fuss at him for disappearing like that?”

  “We had a nice talk, actually. I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to the wrong conclusions with him, if I were you. He’s a good kid.”

  An electronic tone went off in Reed’s pocket. He pulled out his cell phone, looked at the number, and excused himself. From the expression on his face, it was a call he didn’t want to take.

  “Hi, Heather,” he said as he stood and began walking toward the door. As he went, I could hear the vocal tones of a female voice come through, and she sounded very angry. “I know. Yeah. I told you how the press is with us. They always say things like that.”

  He stepped outside, softly closing the door behind him, to continue his conversation in private. As he did, I asked Lydia if she had a copy of today’s newspaper.

  “Yah. ’Tis right there in front of you.”

  I realized she had spread the paper on the table to catch the mess from the potato peelings. I pushed some of those peelings aside to get a look at the front page. Just as I had suspected, the photo of Reed and me in his car was front and center. It wasn’t bad as photos go. In fact, the photographer had caught us in such an intimate gaze that I didn’t blame
his girlfriend for being angry. In this paper, at least, the lead story focused more on us than on Bobby’s disappearance or Doug’s death. Then again, this was an old familiar tale around here, and if Reed and I were somehow an item, that was just the type of juicy tidbit that sold newspapers. The headline said “Old Flame Rekindled As Search Intensifies?” At least they put a question mark at the end. In the old days, we wouldn’t even have been offered that courtesy.

  Reed came back inside, but this time he didn’t sit down. Instead, he said he was going to deliver Isaac’s blood samples to the Clinic for Special Children, change into a suit at the hotel, and then he would be back to pick me up for the drive to Doug’s wake in Hidden Springs.

  “What about Heather? Didn’t you just get in trouble for hanging out with me?”

  “Heather’s fine. It’s the paparazzi she can’t stand.”

  “Well, that makes two of us,” I replied as I walked him to the door.

  “By the way, that’s for you,” Reed told me, gesturing toward a white shopping bag sitting on the floor under the coat pegs. “See you in a bit.”

  Before I had even picked up the bag, he was gone.

  I finished helping Lydia with the soup, and then I carried the bag upstairs, where I looked inside and pulled out what felt like fabric wrapped in tissue paper. Gently tearing off the paper, I unfolded a beautiful black sweater dress. It was gorgeous, long-sleeved and knee length, with a tag that identified it as a Nicole Miller. I had no idea what it had cost, but it had to be several hundred dollars at least. There were two more items in the bag as well, and I took them out each in turn to discover a classic gold-plated chunky necklace and a lovely pair of black pumps with a modest gold buckle at each toe.