A Secret Identity (The Amish Farm Trilogy 2)

by Gayle Roper

  I looked from Dr. Reasoner to Todd. “I still remember the terror I felt at that point. Pop was such an achiever, such a moneymaker, so successful. What would he say when I made my confession? ‘Pop,’ I said, my mouth so dry I could hardly form the words. ‘I don’t want to work in the family business. I want to be a novelist. I want to write romances.’”

  I looked quickly at Dr. Reasoner when I said the word romances, just like I’d looked at Pop, though for different reasons. I’d been afraid of Pop’s reaction because he was Pop and I’d always pleased him to this point, always done exactly what he wanted, including majoring in business. I was not exactly afraid of the reaction of a scholar like Dr. Reasoner to my chosen field, but I was slightly intimidated. A man who read Beowulf in the original wasn’t likely to be at all impressed by romances. And I had to admit that I wanted Todd’s father to like me. I continued my story.

  “‘Is there any money in it?’ Pop asked. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Probably not, especially not at first.’ ‘How about job security?’ he said. I shook my head. ‘Benefits?’ I shook my head again. ‘Just the benefit of doing what I love—if that counts. In fact, I already have one novel almost finished. I started it last summer, and I’ve been working on it ever since.’

  “Pop studied me for several minutes while Mom, Ward, and the couple of friends with the courage to stand by me fidgeted in the background. I felt like I was dying a slow death, waiting for his pronouncement. I knew I’d end up writing regardless of what he said, but his response would determine whether writing would be my profession or my hobby, at least for the time being.

  “‘I think God’s called me to this, Pop,’ I said, desperate to make him understand. ‘I have all these stories in my head. I see these scenes and I hear these conversations, and these people are so real!’”

  Dr. Reasoner nodded his understanding at my last comment, a fact that Todd noticed and frowned slightly over.

  “‘Well, Cara,’ Pop finally said, ‘I think you should do what you want to do, what you feel called to do. You can live at home at no expense for the time being, and I’ll bear the expense of keeping you on our insurance for now, but you must earn all your personal money and begin to pay your own insurance as soon as it’s feasible. So I suggest you keep your usual summer job as cashier at the Silver Spring Bentley’s.’

  “So I sent out that first novel and wrote days while I worked late afternoons and evenings at Bentley’s. That novel never sold, but my next one did to a flat-fee publisher. By my fourth sale, I was with a bigger publisher on a royalty basis, and soon after that I got an agent. My writing career has been getting better and better.”

  “I’m so glad he recognized your call,” Dr. Reasoner said. “I’m sure he’s very proud of you.” He glanced at Todd, who was diligently studying his feet. “I’ve always been so proud of Toddy.”

  Todd jerked at that, head whipping up to his father, mouth all but hanging open in shock. But Dr. Reasoner had turned back to me and didn’t see the struggle between disbelief and joy on his son’s face. I did though, and I wanted to cry. How tragic that Dr. Reasoner saw fit to tell me this highly important fact instead of telling the man who desperately wanted to hear it.

  “I’d like to read something you wrote,” Dr. Reasoner said gallantly.

  I pulled my eyes from Todd and smiled at the old gentleman’s kindness. “I’ll give a book to Todd to give to you.”

  “Wait!” Todd said, suddenly coming to life. “I’ve got one in the car.” And he almost dashed from the room. In no time he was back with the copies of As the Deer and So My Soul that I’d given him.

  I sighed a great mental sigh. It was painfully obvious that he had not even cracked the covers. Not that he’d had time to read them yet, but he could have at least taken them into his house instead of forgetting them in the car. He could have at least looked inside the covers, read the first page, even read the last page.

  Todd glanced at me as he handed the books to his father, who immediately began reading the cover blurbs. He turned to page one. The porch fell silent. I tried not to squirm. What would a scholar like him think? Did I want to know?

  After about fifteen seconds the silence got to Todd. He blurted, “We’ve got to go. It’s a long trip back.”

  Dr. Reasoner walked to the door with us, reading as he walked. “The cover copy makes these sound wonderful. And I like the hook of the opening. It’s obvious you’re not working a cash register anywhere these days.”

  “Nope, not at all.” I shook his proffered hand. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you,” I said sincerely.

  I had noticed that he and Todd hadn’t touched when we arrived. Not that I expected to see a hug or anything overtly demonstrative, but they hadn’t even shaken hands. Nor did they hug or shake hands goodbye. Todd sort of nodded in his father’s general direction; Dr. Reasoner sort of smiled vaguely. And then we were gone.

  The car had barely begun to move when Todd looked at me with something close to excitement in his face.

  “Did you see that?” he exclaimed. “Did you see that?”

  “Uh, what?” I asked, even though I knew what he was talking about.

  “That visit! That was the best visit I’ve had with my father in years.”

  “I was afraid of that,” I began, but he wasn’t finished.

  “And I have you to thank.” He reached over and squeezed my hand as it lay in my lap. “Now tell me how you did it.”

  “How I did it?” I couldn’t believe he was serious.

  “Yeah. How did you get him to talk to you?”

  “All I did was talk about something he likes,” I said.

  “Books?”

  “Books.” I had a moment of panic. “You do read, don’t you? I mean, if you don’t, what do you do in the evenings in your house all alone?”

  He turned off Route 10 and onto 340.

  “Well,” he said, “I work on the lawn. I watch the Phillies. I do e-mail and Facebook. I explore the Internet.” He shrugged. “Stuff.”

  “But not reading.”

  He shook his head. “I read the Bible every day and the newspaper. And of course I read lots of legal documents, but fun reading? Not a lot. I think the detail of the reading I have to do professionally has slowed my reading speed so much that reading’s not a pleasure.”

  I stared at my hands, deeply disappointed. Can a writer have a meaningful relationship—now there was a trite phrase if ever I thought one—with a nonreader?

  “I saw your face when I gave your books to Dad,” he said. “Did you mind that I did that?”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “It was nice of you.”

  “Then it was the fact that I hadn’t read them that upset you.”

  He was too perceptive. I took a deep breath. I knew I had to be completely honest.

  “I admit that it hurt me that you hadn’t even taken them in from the car, let alone begun to read them.” I was surprised at the tears that sprang to my eyes as I spoke. This man had too much effect on my heart.

  He nodded. “I thought that was probably it.”

  We were silent for a few minutes, the only sound the soft wheeze of the car’s air conditioner.

  “Did Pop and Ward read your books?” Todd suddenly asked.

  “No. And that hurt me too, but I learned to live with it. At least Mom and Marnie read them.”

  He turned to me with a challenging expression. “How’d you like to read some of my legal opinions? I’ve got a great one I just finished on an obscure point of business law in MacKenzie vs. MacKenzie, Inc.”

  “Mmm,” I said thoughtfully. I’d never considered that I was a prejudiced reader too. “Point taken.”

  He stretched out a hand palm up. “I won’t make any promises about reading, Cara. I’m too afraid I’ll break them. But I’ll always defend your right to write and be proud of you for being published. Can you live with that?”

  I looked at him and then at his hand. I nodded. “I can.” At least for now.
And I slipped my hand in his.

  Chapter 9

  I lay in bed reading, propped against my pillows, Rainbow asleep beside me. The house was quiet, the darkness outside my screened windows deep and black with no street lights sending funnels of illumination. The night was weighted with heat and humidity, and I yearned for previously taken-for-granted air conditioning.

  My new fan oscillated warm air over me, head to toe, toe to head, trying to convince me it was making me cool, but we Bentleys are not that stupid. Rainbow’s hair puffed like a filament cheering wave as it moved past her, and every so often she stretched with pleasure.

  I was trying to turn my thoughts off enough to fall asleep, but my mind refused to stop skittering, much like leaves helpless before an autumn wind. First Todd, then the adoption search, then the meeting with Alma raced across my mental movie screen. I felt as if I were at a cerebral speed photography screening, image flashing to image.

  After reading for a half hour, I finally felt my eyes growing heavy. I closed my book and reached to turn off my lamp. I had maybe five minutes to fall asleep before my mind started up again.

  A car roared down the road, its loud sound tearing the stillness. It slowed for an instant, then sped on. Rainbow raised her head, blinking sleepily at the rude interruption of her peace. My eyes snapped open, and hopes of slumber were gone. I groaned in frustration. How long would it be before my busy mind was once again lulled toward dreamland?

  The bang was so loud, so unexpected, that I froze in a moment of stunned incredulity. Rainbow gave a bleat of terror and leaped from the bed. She threw herself beneath it to cower in safety, poor baby.

  The ice of shock quickly melted, leaving my limbs with a tingling sensation. My heart began to pound, and my breathing became jerky. What had just happened? All I knew was that the sound had been very near…scarily near.

  I raced to the window. Had the car that just passed crashed? But it wasn’t the right kind of noise for a crash. It was one quick loud boom, like fireworks, only there were no lovely bursts of color lighting the sky.

  The black night hid whatever had happened.

  I grabbed a pair of slacks and a shirt and pulled them on. I could hear John and Elam calling to each other, and I saw Jake’s lights flick on and stream out from his apartment, the soft glow illuminating the yard and the road. I looked out the window again, but I still could see nothing amiss, no clue to what had caused the horrendous noise. At least I didn’t see a car wrapped around a tree. The only movement was Hawk, let out of Jake’s apartment and jumping the rail of the wheelchair ramp, racing for the road.

  Feet thundered down the stairs, and the front door slammed open and closed. John and Elam raced toward the barn to make sure the livestock were all right. Jake’s door slammed seconds later.

  I thrust my feet in flip-flops and raced into the hallway where Esther stood, robe and nightgown falling to her ankles, hair in a long braid down her back, a flashlight in her hand.

  “What happened?” She looked dazed.

  I shook my head and tore downstairs after the men without waiting to see if she would follow.

  I met up with Jake on the drive. He had a strong electric torch that he was using to check out vehicles and buggies. Hawk came to him and poked at his hand, clearly disturbed.

  “It’s okay, Hawk.” Jake ran his hand over the dog’s head several times.

  Hawk’s anxiety lessened though it didn’t disappear completely.

  I know just how you feel, boy. I wasn’t exactly frightened with the three men checking things out, but I wasn’t totally at ease either.

  “Nothing wrong here,” Jake called loudly enough for his father and Elam to hear over the rustlings of agitated animals in the stalls. I could see flashlight beams dancing around in the barn as John and Elam made certain all was well in there.

  “My car’s okay too?” I asked Jake.

  “Looks fine to me.”

  I walked toward him and kicked something dark and unseen, something that hurt my uncovered toe and clattered as it rolled across the drive. Jake followed the sound with his flashlight.

  I picked it up and held it out in my palm. “What in the world?”

  He took it. “It’s a piece of metal.”

  Jake sent a beam of light back and forth over the drive and the lawn. Another shard of bent metal showed at the edge of Mary’s garden, several feet from where we stood. I crossed the lawn and retrieved it, Hawk coming with me before disappearing into the darkness. I was showing it to Jake when John and Elam came out of the barn.

  The two men studied the pieces, one in Jake’s palm, one in mine.

  John frowned, uncertain what he was looking at, but Elam and Jake moved at the same time, turning their lights toward the road.

  A post stood there with a small distorted piece of metal still attached.

  “Someone blew up your mailbox?” I was floored. I’d seen rural mailboxes smashed with baseball bats by kids thinking it was cool to be destructive, but blowing one up?

  “A cherry bomb or an M-80,” Jake said in disgust.

  “Aren’t those things—cherry bombs and M-80s—illegal?” I asked.

  “They are, but you can undoubtedly buy them on the Internet,” Jake said. “You can buy anything on the Internet.”

  “You can?” Elam shook his fading flashlight. “Why would people sell something so dangerous?”

  “Because other people will buy them,” Jake said.

  John sighed. “We can thank Gott that it happened in the night when no one was around to get hurt by flying pieces of metal.”

  “Not that anyone would do it in the daylight,” Elam said with an astonishing amount of sarcasm.

  John nodded. “Doers of evil love darkness rather than light.”

  “We should tell the police, Father,” Jake said.

  John shook his head. “It is just someone wanting to shake up an Amish man. Like we are so easily scared.” He made a scoffing sound. “We will turn the other cheek. Vengeance is the Lord’s.”

  “It’s not for vengeance’s sake.” Jake took the piece of metal from my hand, and we all stared at the two mutilated pieces of steel. “What these troublemakers did is very dangerous. A piece of metal flying fast through the air could hurt someone really bad. It’s like shrapnel flying on a battlefield. Whoever did this may do it again to someone else, maybe another Amish family. The police might patrol more often or take other precautions if they knew about this. Maybe they can even trace where the bombs were bought.”

  John stared at the steel shards for a few minutes. He reached out and touched his finger to a lethal-looking point on one piece. “You’re right, Jake. Perhaps it is dangerous not to speak. Tomorrow will you call the police?”

  “I will. And I’ll get a new mailbox too before Mom comes home. We probably shouldn’t tell her about this. It would upset her.”

  On that we all agreed.

  Esther and I brought Mary home from the hospital late Friday morning. I felt so sorry for her because I knew she was in severe pain, her leg in a cast, her cuts barely crusted with scabs. In fact there was a very deep gash on her right hip that they wouldn’t let close up. They kept it open to wash it regularly with an antibiotic drip because of an osteo infection that wouldn’t go away.

  “They say I probably got the infection from something on the cellar steps,” Mary said. “But I keep a clean house!”

  She was clearly offended at the suggestion of dirt in her home—more upset about the perceived lapse in her housekeeping skills than about the wound itself. I thought of the manure that came into the house as a natural part of living on a farm. It was impossible to keep all traces of it out. Maybe that had been the source of the infection. Who knew? A visiting nurse would come daily to oversee the antibiotic drip as well as dress the cuts, and Mary was to be confined to bed for some time.

  Elam and John had come in from the field and were waiting for us when we arrived. They carried Mary inside and up to the bedroom she
and John shared. She was barely settled when the home-nurse showed up.

  “Rose!” I said in surprise as I let in the woman EMT, now dressed in the blue uniform of the Lancaster Home Health Group. “Do you moonlight as an emergency tech or as a visiting nurse?”

  She smiled. “You remembered me.”

  “That’s because I already knew who you were. Or guessed it anyway. You are Rose Martin, right? The woman from Jake’s accident?”

  She nodded. “Just don’t let Jake know, okay? He doesn’t want to meet me for some reason, so let’s not tell him who I am. I’m just Rose, his mother’s nurse.”

  I liked her with her curly brown hair and those sparkling hazel eyes beaming through her glasses.

  “He’s still at school right now,” I said.

  “School?”

  “Millersville University. I’m not certain when he finishes classes today, but I’m sure he’ll try to get home as soon as possible. Like the rest of the family, he’s concerned about Mary.”

  “It was wonderful to finally see him the other night,” Rose said, eyes dancing. “Did you know that for some time I thought he had died in the accident? I even put up a little white cross at the scene as a memorial. I felt so badly that I, a nurse, hadn’t been able to save him. I think that’s why I became an emergency tech. I wanted to be sure that it would never happen again. Then I found out he was alive after all. Taking down that little cross was one of the happiest things I’ve ever done.”

  “And now he won’t meet you.”

  She shrugged. “It’s a pride thing, I think. But I tell you, it’s made me intensely curious about him. That’s why I asked for this case. I knew from the ambulance run that she would need home care, so I spoke to my supervisor. To my surprise she said okay.”

  “What are you doing working all the way up here if you live way down there?”

  “I don’t live at home anymore,” Rose said. “When I got my job with the Lancaster Home Health Group, I moved to Bird-in-Hand. I’ve been here about six months now. I joined the emergency squad as a way to meet people.”