Love Rekindled: Book 3

by Serena B. Miller

  “That family’s Christmas is not your responsibility, Lydia.”

  Lydia ignored that. Rachel could tell that there was something else bothering her.

  “Yesterday, after they arrived, the children kept talking about Santa Claus. It confused Anna. She did not know what they were talking about. She had never heard of Santa Claus. Instead, I heard her trying to explain that Christmas was about a baby in a manger named Jesus. The parents intervened. They were quite offended. They told her to please stop talking to their children about her religious beliefs.”

  “They did what? Criticizing Anna is like kicking a puppy. Is she okay?”

  Lydia sprinkled red crystalized sugar on a candy-cane shaped cookie. “She went to her room and didn’t come out all evening. I checked on her several times and she had gotten her shoebox of seashells out. She was sorting and counting them out loud. You know how she does that whenever she needs comforting.”

  “I thought she’d given her seashells to Bobby.”

  “She has new ones. Doc Peggy and Carl brought them back from Sanibel Island last month. They collected them on their honeymoon just for her.”

  “How nice of them. But why are you making Christmas cookies for these rude guests?” Rachel glanced at her watch. “At nearly three o’clock in the morning?”

  “It is not the children’s fault that their parents are dummkoffs!” Lydia glanced up in surprise that such a thing had come out of her mouth. She was not one to ever call people names. “I’m sorry. I should not have said that. It was wrong.”

  “No, Lydia. You were right the first time. They hurt Anna’s feelings,” Rachel said. “In my book, that definitely makes them dummies.”

  Lydia sighed. “I will never understand the Englisch.”

  It was a never-ending struggle between the two cultures. For so many years, the Amish had lived relatively unmolested in their tight-knit rural church communities. Then, as Englisch society became more disjointed and chaotic, many people felt themselves drawn to the Amish way of life. They seemed to equate horses and buggies and lack of electricity with peace and simplicity. They came to the Tuscarawas area in droves, enchanted with what they saw as the quaintness of the Amish culture without ever understanding the sacrifice and discipline such a lifestyle required.

  The reality of Amish life, however, was almost always more complicated and difficult than the fiction that disgruntled Englisch spun for themselves. The lack of a Christmas tree, for instance. No plain-living Amish household would ever think of dragging a pine tree into their home and decorating it. Santa Claus was definitely not part of their lives. As far as chastising sweet Anna for talking about Jesus in her own home—well, some people were just… dummkoffs.

  As she watched Lydia’s arthritic fingers decorate the delicate sugar cookies so carefully, she felt a fierce protectiveness toward her. Her aunt was one of those people who, in Rachel’s opinion, was too good for this world. She had a beautiful, loving, soul. Having no children or grandchildren of her own to make cookies for, she was here losing sleep trying to make a surprise treat for the children of these rude Englisch guests.

  Rachel often wondered what life would have been like for her widowed aunt, Lydia, if she had not miscarried every pregnancy. Not that Lydia ever complained. She accepted her lot in life and made the best of things no matter what. Rachel often wondered if Lydia somehow tried to bake the pain away, one pie crust and cookie at a time.

  They had grown even closer since her own miscarriage last year. Lydia had truly understood her grief and helped bring her through it.

  “Well, I just wanted to see why the light was on.” Rachel rose from the table, rinsed her coffee cup in the sink, and set it in the drainer. “Now that I know you are okay, I’ll head on out. You probably better get some sleep now though.”

  “I’m almost finished. I have enjoyed getting to bake the cookies for a change instead of pies for the restaurant. I’m grateful Joe and Darren decided to close Joe’s Home Plate down over Christmas.” Lydia pulled a large plastic container out of a bottom cupboard and began to layer the finished cookies within. “You and your family will still be coming to share our noon meal?”

  “Of course. Darren is coming too, if you don’t mind.”

  “Ah, good,” Lydia said. “Joe’s brother should feel free to come as well. We will have a wonderful good time.”

  Rachel was putting on her coat when her radio squawked. She listened, answered, then jammed her hat on her head and swung on her heavy coat.

  “I don’t know how you can understand that thing,” Lydia complained. “What did it say?”

  “There’s been a wreck on a township road near here,” Rachel said. “A woman’s been killed. I have to go.”

  “I will pray.” Lydia handed her a small, plastic container of freshly-baked cookies. “Be careful, Rachel.”

  Rachel was as careful as she could be, but it was growing colder and the roads were icing up from the cold and rain. As she rounded the corner where the wreck was supposed to be, she felt her tires slipping a bit.

  The first thing she saw was the body of a young woman stretched out upon the side of the road. Rachel ran to her in the rain, knelt and felt for a pulse. There was none. The sight was a gruesome one. The woman’s head was badly damaged and the lower front of her t-shirt looked like it was bloody, although it was hard to tell with all the rain.

  Rachel drew on nitrile gloves, carefully lifted the t-shirt up, and winced at what she saw. In the middle of the woman’s abdomen was a gaping wound.

  “Maam took the babe,” a man’s voice spoke out of the darkness. “She had to. There was no one here to help her.”

  The scene was so macabre that Rachel automatically pulled her gun and stood upright, pointing both it and the flashlight at the area from which the voice had come. What she saw in the flashlight glare was a wet and miserable-looking young Amish man holding the reins of two horses. She played the flashlight over his face and did not recognize him. His head jerked back from the sudden light and he shielded his eyes with his hand.

  “Do I know you?” Rachel asked.

  “I’m Noah Hochstetler,” he said. “My maam is Keturah. She is a midwife.”

  “You have grown up since I last saw you,” Rachel said. “Keturah was here?”

  “Ja. Daett left me to keep watch until someone came.”

  “Where’s the baby? Did it survive?”

  He wiped the rain from his face with one of his hands. “It was alive. Maam and Daett took it home with them to care for.”

  As he explained, she holstered her gun, then bent over and pulled the t-shirt back over the wound. It felt indecent not to do so. She was so young, probably barely out of her teens, and Rachel had never seen her before. What was an outsider doing on one of Sugarcreek’s backroads on Christmas Eve in this sort of weather?

  In the far distance, she could hear the wail of an ambulance. She strode to her squad car and came back with a large, black, umbrella.

  “Can you come here and help me, Noah?” she asked. “I need to take a few pictures before the squad gets here.”

  Clearly reluctant, but determined to be helpful, Noah held the strong light of the flashlight on the young woman’s face and body, and the umbrella over Rachel and her camera phone, while she snapped pictures from various angles. She also took several of the wreck. The pictures would be far from ideal, but better than nothing.

  By the time she was finished, the siren of the Swiss Valley Joint Ambulance Service was growing closer.

  “Go ahead and get your horses out of here,” Rachel said. “The siren might frighten them and there’s already been one accident tonight. I don’t want you getting hurt too. You’ve done enough. Thanks.”

  Noah did not argue. He leapt bareback onto the nearest horse then, wheeling around and clicking his tongue, he headed home at a trot, leading his father’s horse behind him.

  Rachel understood why he was glad to leave. It could not have been easy for an Amis
h farm boy to keep watch over a gruesome scene like this in the dark, but how much more awful it must have been for his mother! Keturah was not young, yet she had performed a C-section alone in the rain.

  What a miserable Christmas morning this was turning out to be for the Hochstetler family! But receiving this terrible news tonight would be even worse for this girl’s family. Rachel hoped that she would not have to be the one to tell them.

  While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, she ducked into her squad car and turned up the heater full blast. Then, with her headlights illuminating the back of the old Buick through the rain, she called to check the number on the license tags. Within seconds the information came back. The car belonged to a Mabel Evans, an eighty-two-year-old woman who lived in Cleveland.

  The girl lying on the ground in the rain was definitely not an eighty-two-year-old woman. A relative? Maybe a granddaughter? Rachel doubted the car was stolen. A pregnant woman did not exactly match the normal profile of a car thief.

  It was obvious what had caused the wreck. The girl had been driving faster in the rain than was safe. When the curve came up, the car slid about six feet in the mud before it hit the tree. The impact had been hard enough to crumple in the front end.

  She got out of her squad car and played her flashlight over the interior. Except for the glass pebbles from the broken windshield, the vehicle was immaculate. There wasn’t even a fast-food wrapper tossed onto the floor. Reaching into the still-open driver’s door, she popped the trunk so she could inspect it as well. Nothing back there except the spare tire and a jack.

  This was highly unusual. She had seen everything from milkshakes to small pets slammed against the windshield after an impact, but there was nothing in this vehicle of a personal nature. Not even a purse. Had it been anyone but Noah watching over the girl’s body and vehicle, she would have suspected that the purse had been stolen before anyone else could arrive, but she knew Noah was as honest as the rest of his family.

  Rachel wasn’t a big fan of purses and often just slipped a small wallet and her cell phone into her jeans pockets. If the girl was anything like her perhaps she, also, carried her ID in her pockets.

  She was preparing to go through the girl’s pockets when the ambulance arrived, interrupting her search for identification.

  “Who is she?” the driver asked.

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll need to search her pockets before you leave. It would be helpful if you could lift her up first.”

  She stood back while the two male emergency technicians placed the girl’s body onto the gurney. Then they waited while she went through her pockets. Nothing.

  “I guess we’ll have to identify her as a Jane Doe,” Rachel said. “At least for now. You can go ahead and take her.”

  Rachel was perplexed. No one traveled that light. Then she saw a small bulge in one of the ankle socks the girl wore.

  “Hold on a minute,” she said.

  She pulled down the sock and there was a small roll of five twenties. Not much, but enough for gas and food, assuming the girl wasn’t planning on going far. She checked the other sock and found nothing.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m finished here.”

  While the men loaded the body, she pulled a plastic baggie out of her coat pocket and bagged, dated, and labeled the money before handing it over to the EMTs. The money needed to travel with the girl, to be handed to her nearest of kin when they came to identify the body. She hoped there would be someone besides an eighty-two-year-old woman in the family to help them identify.

  Chapter 10

  Keturah hoped that it would not take Ivan long to make the phone call. The heat from the wood stove was comforting, but she was so exhausted she wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold her head up.

  She gave thanks again that her husband and Noah had come for her when they did. She wasn’t sure she could have made it home alone with the little one. Slowly, she unbuttoned her rain-soaked outer coat, shrugged it off and dropped it in a pile on the floor beside her chair. At that moment, her beloved Michael came bursting into the house. “Maam, are you all right?”

  She was grateful to see that he was securely holding the baby in his arms. Who better to see to the tiny infant than her Michael? So tender he had always been, even with the smallest baby rabbit.

  “I will be fine,” she said. “You see to the baby. That little one has had quite a harsh journey, she has.”

  He scanned Keturah’s mud and blood-stained clothing with concerned eyes. “It looks like you have had a harsh journey, yourself.”

  She glanced down and brushed at her muddy dress.

  “Tonight has not been easy,” she admitted. Her dress was badly stained from the birth and from kneeling on the ground, but she felt too weak yet to do anything about it. She lifted off her wet, wilted, black bonnet and laid it on top of her coat piled on the floor. Tomorrow she would worry about her ruined clothes. Not tonight.

  “It was too dark out on the road to see clearly,” she said. “Is she all right?”

  He reached over his head and turned up the gas jet light that hung from the ceiling. The kitchen was suddenly illuminated with a harsh, bright light. Then he laid the baby, still wrapped in Keturah’s white apron and black shawl, on the kitchen table.

  “Let’s see who you are, little one.” He gently unwrapped the newborn.

  “Her heartbeat was growing very faint before I took her,” Keturah said. “She was most definitely in distress. Is there any sign of Meconium stain?”

  “No,” Michael said, checking. “None.”

  Keturah breathed a sigh of relief. Meconium was a bowel movement that a baby sometimes had in the womb. Often it meant that the baby had been in some sort of distress. If it ingested the sticky substance, it could cause serious problems with the baby’s lungs. Because the bond between pregnant mother and fetus was so strong, it was Keturah’s opinion that what a baby felt, sensed, and heard while in utero was greatly underestimated.

  “Where is your birthing bag?” Michael said. “I need a stethoscope.”

  “Ivan carried it in. I think he dropped it beside the door.”

  Michael glanced around, located the blue diaper bag in which she carried her midwife supplies, and unearthed the stethoscope. He blew on it to warm it. Keturah watched as he listened intently to the baby’s lungs and heart while the baby kicked and fretted.

  Then he pulled a receiving blanket from the birthing bag and hooked it to the handheld weighing device Keturah also carried. He dangled the baby a few inches above the table just long enough to read her weight on the scale. “Five pounds, eight ounces.”

  “I think she was about three weeks early,” Keturah said. “So, that’s not bad.”

  “I’m no pediatrician,” Michael said, putting the stethoscope away. “But considering all she went through, she looks and sounds very healthy to me. If she were a baby goat or a puppy I could officially give her a clean bill of health.”

  Michael’s joke made her smile.

  “I did manage to hold the cord above her long enough to give her the extra umbilical blood before I clamped it off,” Keturah said. “I knew she needed every bit of extra help I could give her.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Even though the room was warm, being uncovered made the baby kick and mewl. Her little arms flailed and each time a fist touched her cheek she turned toward it like a kitten searching for its mother’s milk.

  The thought that there was no mother to nurse this infant, no one to give it the healing power of colostrum that carried within it the benefit of the mother’s immune system, made Keturah ache inside.

  She wanted to believe that this precious little girl had a loving family somewhere who would care for her, but the girl’s plea right before she died was a great worry. How could Keturah keep “him” from getting this fragile little newborn when she didn’t know who “him” was?

  “They are sending an ambulance for the mother,” Ivan said, returning. “
And the police will be here soon to talk with you about what happened.” He pulled a quilt off the couch and draped it around her shoulders. “May I bring you something hot to drink to help warm you?”

  “No.” Keturah shook her head. “I do not need something to drink, but please help Michael care for the baby. It should be bathed and dressed. I have diapers and clean receiving blankets in the bottom drawer of our bedroom.”

  “I’ll go get them.” Ivan went to collect the supplies she kept at the ready in case a young mother might be unprepared or too poor to afford what they needed. There was often great poverty, especially within the Swartzentruber Amish, who sometimes needed help. Not so much among the Old Order Amish, which was the sect to which she and Ivan belonged.

  “I left my plastic baby tub at the Yoders’,” Keturah told Ivan. “I planned to get it when I went over there tomorrow evening to check on that mother.”

  “Tomorrow has already become today,” Ivan said. “Shall I go fetch it?”

  “No,” she said. “The large turkey baker will work just as well.”

  “Turkey baker?” Michael said.

  “When our babies were small, we could not afford the luxury of a little bathtub made specifically for babies,” Ivan chuckled, remembering. “But for our wedding we had received an extra-large pot for baking a turkey. When our first child was born, Keturah padded that oval pot with a towel, filled it with warm water and bathed our Reuben in it. He did not mind being bathed in a cooking pot. It has been quite the useful possession.” Ivan grinned. “Every so often we actually use it for what it was meant for—baking a large Thanksgiving turkey.”

  Keturah did not worry about allowing the two men to care for the newborn while she tried to get some strength back. Michael had a medical background, and Ivan had always been good with babies.

  As they prepared the baby’s bath, Keturah heard them fall easily into speaking to one another in Pennsylvania Deutsch. Michael had been very young when they realized he had picked up their language. He had been spending a great deal of time at their house because his father had just died and his mother had moved in with Michael’s grandfather and had gone to work to support them. Keturah felt great compassion for her grieving neighbor and offered to care for little Michael during the long hours his mother had to be gone. The little boy had picked up their language surprisingly fast.