by Marta Perry
Marisa’s throat tightened. “That’s hard for me to accept.”
Elizabeth patted her hand. “I know. Hard for all of us, but it is best to accept that our loving Father knows more than we do.”
“After my mother left the church…” She hesitated, not sure of the right way to say what she wanted. “Would you have been able to stay close to her, if you hadn’t moved away?”
“You are thinking of the bann,” Elizabeth said. “But even those who are banned can still stay close with family, if both sides want it. They must simply obey the rules.”
She was tempted to ask about William’s attitude, but that would probably not encourage any confidences. “So you didn’t stay in touch with her?” They wouldn’t have had any long telephone conversations, she supposed.
Elizabeth looked surprised. “We wrote, of course.”
Of course. What was she thinking—people used to actually write letters to each other, instead of texting or emailing.
“She told you how she was getting along, then.”
“Ja, for sure. She was so happy when you were born.” Elizabeth smiled, clearly remembering that time. “We hired a driver to take us to see you. Mary Ann was not quite two, and she thought you were a baby doll.”
Marisa exchanged smiles with Mary Ann. So there was already a bond between them. If things had been different, they might have grown up as friends.
Or wouldn’t Barbara have wanted to keep up that relationship? Maybe she’d have found it a painful reminder of what she’d given up.
“Was she happy?” The question burst out before she could censor it. “Did she regret the choice she’d made?”
Elizabeth didn’t respond. Then she rose, and Marisa feared she’d offended her. But she held out her hand.
“Komm. I want to show you something.”
Together they went into the next room—what must be the living room of the house. Several bookshelves, a couple of comfortable chairs and three rocking chairs, one of which had a basket of sewing beside it. One entire end of the room was taken up by a large quilt frame, with a quilt spread over its surface.
“Mamm is having a quilting this week,” Mary Ann said. “We will all help to finish the quilt.”
Marisa realized she was looking at the top of the quilt, beneath which were the layers of filling and the backing. It was like a sandwich of fabric, not yet joined together. That was what would happen at the quilting Mary Ann had mentioned…. Women would sit all around the quilt, stitching the layers together.
“The design is beautiful.” She touched the quilt top lightly. Rows of patches of different colors seemed to ripple across the surface in shades that ran from dark to medium to light and back to the dark again in gentle gradations. She didn’t know a great deal about quilting, but she knew enough to recognize the artistry shown in the quilt. It evoked an almost visceral response, as if it touched the emotions in a way she couldn’t explain.
“Sunshine and Shadows,” Elizabeth said. “That is the pattern, a very old one. I like the old ones best. They make me remember the generations of women who have made the same quilts.”
Marisa nodded, her throat tight at the thought.
“It is called Sunshine and Shadows because it is meant to look like the pattern of sunshine and shadows moving across the land,” she said. “That is also the pattern of our lives, ain’t so? We have the gut things and the sad, one after another, but all part of who we are.” She put her arm around Marisa’s waist, drawing her close. “That was your mamm’s life, too. Happy and sad things, all making up her pattern. Barbara understood that, I think. Do you?”
She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “I’m beginning to.”
“Gut.” Elizabeth gave her a gentle squeeze and then let her go.
She hadn’t, perhaps, learned anything new, but Marisa was still oddly comforted. “When you read her letters, did anything change in the time leading up to her disappearance? Did she seem depressed or worried about anything?”
Elizabeth studied her face. Finally she gave a short nod. “I did not know whether I would show you this or not, but now I think that I must.” She crossed the room to a carved wooden chest that stood against the wall, lifted the lid and returned a moment later with an envelope in her hand. “This is the last letter I received from Barbara. It came the week before…” She let that trail off and held the envelope out. “You should have this. You can decide if it means anything.”
Marisa’s fingers trembled as she slid the letter from the envelope. The folds were much creased, as if it had been read over and over. Very short, it didn’t take up even a page, written in a round, school-girl hand. She touched the writing, realizing she’d never seen anything her mother had written.
My dear cousin, she read. I don’t know what to do. I wish that you were here, so that we could sit at the kitchen table together, drinking coffee and talking the way we used to. Maybe then I’d know. You’ll say I should talk to Russ, but I can’t. I’m afraid to talk to anyone about it. They—
She must have stopped there, crossing out the pronoun and beginning again. I know that if you were here you would help me. Perhaps William will, if he is able to forgive. Pray that I will do the right thing. Your loving cousin, Barbara.
Marisa wiped away a tear before it could fall on the paper. Her mother’s words, written so many years ago, still seemed to carry the weight of her worry. Not just worry. Fear.
“Did you answer her?”
“Ja, I wrote to say that I would get a driver to bring me on Saturday. I went, but when I got there, your mother was gone, and no one could tell me what had happened.”
She looked from the letter to Elizabeth’s face. “Did you show this to my father?”
“No. Maybe I should have, but she says she couldn’t talk to him about it, so I thought I shouldn’t. If I was wrong…”
“It probably wouldn’t have made any difference.” She slipped the letter back into the envelope. “May I take this?”
“Ja.” Her cousin looked troubled. “Show it to anyone you want if you think it will help.”
“Thank you.” Impulsively she put her arms around Elizabeth, hugging her. “Thank you.”
Elizabeth squeezed her, and her cheek was wet when she pressed it against Marisa’s. “Denke. I am glad you have come back at last.”
The back door banged, loud in the quiet.
“Ach, those kinder,” Mary Ann muttered, leading the way back to the kitchen.
But it wasn’t the children who’d come in. It was a man.
Marisa hesitated, not sure that was the right word. He had a man’s height and breadth, but no beard, and his round face was unlined, as smooth and innocent as a child’s. He stopped at the sight of her, clearly disconcerted at a stranger in the house.
Mary Ann smiled at him. “Ephraim, have you komm for something to drink for the men?”
He nodded, still looking at Marisa. It was the wide, unabashed stare of a young child, and she realized that he really was like a child. She’d heard that genetic illnesses and retardation affected the Amish in larger numbers than the general population, due to their small pool of ancestors.
Mary Ann began filling an insulated jug with lemonade. Elizabeth touched Ephraim’s arm, urging him a step or two closer to Marisa. “Komm, here is someone you must meet. Marisa, this is my youngest brother, Ephraim. Ephraim, this is Cousin Barbara’s daughter, Marisa. You remember Barbara, don’t you?”
His eyes widened even more, if that was possible. His mouth opened in a chasm of what might have been horror. He uttered a harsh, guttural cry, tears spurting from his eyes.
Before anyone could move, he turned and blundered out of the room, knocking over a chair in his blind rush.
LINK RAN HIS HAND along the banister he’d been sanding. Smooth as silk. Once he’d finished, he’d put on a coat of stain and then varnish.
Painting would have been faster, but somehow that would have felt wrong. The craftsmen who h
ad built this place, probably a hundred and fifty years ago, had taken pride in their work. He could surely spare the time to do the same.
Being back at work on the house, satisfying as it was, didn’t entirely ease the tension that was riding him. He hadn’t told Marisa his feelings about Tom Sylvester’s mention of Uncle Allen’s visitors. He’d let her believe that the only thing they’d come away with was the lead to the one man left who’d been working on the house that afternoon.
His feelings about Tom’s reaction weren’t facts, he told himself. Unfortunately, his conscience wasn’t buying that excuse. He hadn’t said anything to Marisa about it because it pointed right back at Allen again.
He stopped, hand on the railing, listening to the silence in the old house. If these walls could talk—what a cliché that was. But in this situation it was only too true. Something had happened here that day twenty-some years ago. Something that might answer the question of Barbara Angelo’s disappearance. And they might never know what that something was.
Certainly not if you keep withholding things. The voice of his conscience spoke tartly, sounding rather like his mother.
Before he could pursue that, he heard something else—a real sound this time, not one in his head. A vehicle pulling into the driveway.
He walked back the center hallway and reached the family room door just as his brother approached the porch.
Trey raised a hand in greeting. “Hey. Glad you’re here. Back at work again?”
“Trying.”
Trey let the screen door bang behind him. “I thought maybe you’d be out following clues again today.”
“Don’t remind me. Marisa and I are supposed to catch up with Brad Metzger at the inn tomorrow. Seems like he’s the only one left to see.”
Trey nodded, opening the refrigerator door and helping himself to a can of soda. “Mom told me about your talk with Sylvester. At least it wasn’t a total dead end.”
“No.” He hesitated. Easy enough to let it go at that, but he was beginning to think he had to talk to someone about his suspicions. And Trey was safe. Trey’s interests and his were identical in this case.
He blew out an exasperated breath. “There is something more. I didn’t mention it to Mom. Or to Marisa.”
“Marisa was there, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah. But she hasn’t known Tom for the better part of a lifetime, like I have.” He paused, marshaling his thoughts. “He was grousing about Allen…about his being too particular, complaining about the noise and the dirt, all that kind of thing. And he mentioned that sometime that week, Allen had been worse than usual, making them clean everything up before they left because he was expecting guests.”
Trey’s eyebrows lifted. “Allen? Guests?”
“That was my reaction, too. Funny thing was that Tom seemed to back away from that topic in a hurry. And when I asked him if he knew who any of Allen’s guests were, he got defensive. Claimed he had no idea.”
“You thought he was lying.” Trey frowned.
“I thought something didn’t ring true. But what would be the big secret about somebody coming here? Allan never entertained, as far as I know, unless it was somebody who had an old book he wanted. But Tom mentioned a meeting.” Now that he’d put it into words, he could hear how feeble it sounded. “It’s nothing, I guess. Tom probably just wanted us to go away so he could put his steaks on the grill.”
Trey’s frown deepened. “Maybe. But maybe not.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out. That old journal of Uncle Allen’s. “Mom found something in here that bothered her.”
He took the journal from his brother’s hand. “What? This wasn’t from the time Barbara disappeared, was it?”
“A year or so later,” Trey said. He nodded toward the book. “Check what he says on the first page that’s marked.”
The journal, he now saw, was decorated with some of the pink sticky notes Mom put as reminders on anything and everything. He flipped it open to the first one.
“Left-hand page,” Trey said.
“September 1,” he read aloud. “Didn’t sleep again last night. I should have known better. I never should have gotten involved with them.”
He looked up, his gaze questioning. “Them?”
Trey shrugged. “I don’t know who. He doesn’t name names, but there’s a lot more in that vein—complaints about sleepless nights and bad dreams, vague references to people who caused trouble for him.”
“Sounds like the old boy was getting paranoid.” He’d rather think that than assume this had anything to do with Barbara’s disappearance.
“Not so old then. He was a year younger than Dad.” Trey rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d like to believe it’s nothing, but I can’t dismiss it, especially—well, go to the last reference Mom has marked.”
Link flipped through the diary reluctantly. He didn’t want this—didn’t want any part of it. Closing around him, keeping him here. Maybe he was the one who was paranoid. He found the page. The writing straggled, the words uneven.
“I hate the very thought of that cursed bird. It’s led to nothing but grief.” The line trailed off, as if the pen had gone slack in Allen’s hand.
Link slapped the book closed. “That makes no sense at all.”
“Unfortunately, it does.” Trey stopped, shook his head. “You never heard the full story of what happened back in June, when the Esch boy was accused of murder. Mom didn’t want us telling you anything upsetting.”
That nettled him. “Like I’m such a fragile plant. I know Bobby Stephens turned out to be a nutcase and almost incinerated you in the process of confessing to killing Dad. What could be worse that than?”
“Not worse, necessarily.” Trey grinned. “All right, so Mom was being overprotective. She kept saying you didn’t need all the details to give you nightmares.”
“I had plenty of my own nightmares,” he said shortly. “Give. What details? And what does that have to do with Barbara Angelo’s disappearance?”
Trey’s face tightened. “There was a lot of ugliness surrounding the Esch kid’s arrest. Jessica came here to defend him, hired by Mom. She started getting threats, marked with a black bird. A raven, to be exact.”
“Sounds like something out of a comic book.” But something stirred in the recesses of his mind, like a monster slowly surfacing and then sinking back into the mud.
“That’s what we thought. But in the process of trying to figure out if it meant anything, Leo Frost finally traced the symbol to a secret society that flourished around here back in the 1700s.”
Leo Frost, the attorney who’d taken Trey’s finacée into his practice was also an old family friend.
He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Get serious.”
“I know. It sounds screwy. But Bobby…” Trey stopped, his face twisting as if he tried to hold back pain.
The sight jolted Link. Trey was the big brother, the strong one, the responsible one. He never showed weakness.
“Bobby was raving there at the end. He kept talking about how he shouldn’t have used the sign to try and scare Jessica. That they wouldn’t like it.”
“They again.”
“Right. Bobby apparently believed that the secret society existed, ready to punish him for screwing up.”
Link’s mind reeled. “You can’t seriously expect me to accept that there’s some secret society running rampant in bucolic Lancaster County, can you? What do they do—skulk around at night in white robes?”
“Nothing so crude. And no, I don’t believe it, not really. But Bobby did. And now that.” He gestured to the book in Link’s hands. “I can’t ignore the possibility.”
Link felt like his head was about to explode. “Why haven’t I heard about this? Did it become public knowledge?”
“The symbol was briefly in the news, but Bobby’s efforts to kill me kind of eclipsed that. The rest of the story was bizarre enough without dragging in a secret society.”
“I still don’
t believe it, but… Well, what do you propose to do?”
“See if there are any more diaries, for one thing. That’s why I came over. And then…maybe we ought to sit down and talk this over. All of us.”
“Including Marisa?”
“She’s involved, isn’t she?”
His gut tightened at the thought of bringing Marisa in on something so potentially damaging to his family. But did he have the right to keep her out?
He took a breath, trying to ease the tension. “Let’s check for any more diaries first. And see what we come up with when we talk to Metzger. Then… Well, maybe you’re right. But let’s make sure we have all the ammo we can find first.”
IT HAD BEGUN TO RAIN shortly after Marisa left Cousin Elizabeth’s farm—a steady, relentless downpour that turned the fallen leaves to a spongy mass on the ground. The gray atmosphere unfortunately matched her mood. She had a quick supper at the local cafe and headed back to her room.
She was alone in the bed-and-breakfast again. Two retired couples had come in for a couple of days, but left this morning. She must be getting used to it. The silence no longer felt vaguely threatening, and she didn’t even bother looking out the window at the willow tree.
Once again she checked her cell phone for messages. One from her agent, saying she had an expression of interest in the Amish illustrations; nothing from her father. She flipped quickly to check emails. Nothing from him there, either, though she hadn’t really expected that.
She put the cell phone on the bedside table and looked longingly at the bed. At the moment, her body felt as if she’d been flattened by a steamroller, but her mind jumped restlessly from one subject to another. She’d never sleep, and it would be useless to try.
Piling pillows against the headboard for comfort, Marisa pulled out her sketch pad. That would settle her mind.
She lingered at the drawing of her mother, walking away toward a misty wood. Marisa touched the figure lightly with her finger. Odd, now that she thought of it, that her imagination had pictured her mother in Amish dress even before she’d seen that Amish kapp in the suitcase.