Gathering the Threads

by Cindy Woodsmall

  She stood in front of him, but he could hardly look at her. “Ariana,” he whispered. His eyes filled with tears, and he removed his hat.

  “How’s your hand?”

  He lifted his arm, staring at it. “As it should be, useless and hurting.” He lowered it. “I’m going home, Ari. Probably Monday. There’s nothing left for me here, and I…I need to think.” His eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry.”

  She touched his soft reddish-brown curls one last time. “I know.”

  The front door slammed, and Ariana turned. Berta was coming down the steps, apparently heading for the mailbox. She seemed to notice them for the first time. “Rudy?” Berta called. “Hi. We’ve got desserts and coffee inside.”

  Rudy seemed perplexed. “Denki,”—he put on his hat—“but I just have a minute.”

  She pointed at his arm. “You’re in a cast.”

  “It’s hard to miss, isn’t it?” Ariana hoped Berta would drop it.

  “Ya.” Berta grabbed the mail and hurried back to the house.

  Rudy thumped his cast. “Clearly she doesn’t know yet.”

  “I’ve told no one. But considering what the community thinks of me, I’m pretty confident everyone has been expecting a breakup.”

  “Only because they don’t know what we have or who we are to each other.”

  That was sweet, and memories of their good times flooded her, and she knew they would for a long time to come. “What did you tell your aunt and uncle?”

  “You know me. I made a joke. I said I fell down and stepped on it. They think I slipped on an icy patch.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m just putting off the inevitable. I have to tell them the truth.”

  “You need to tell someone you can trust, someone who can help you get perspective on what happens to you when you’re angry and why. But you don’t have to tell your aunt and uncle. She loves you, but she talks a lot, and there’s no need for the whole town, Amish and Englisch, to know. Not here or in Indiana.”

  “I’ve had a temper since I was twelve. It doesn’t show up often, but when it does…”

  “Will you find someone who can help you? You can get a hold on this. You are a good man. Don’t doubt it.”

  He stared at her. “That’s very kind.”

  “And true. Will you?”

  “Ya.”

  “If we had remained together, we would’ve had to address the anger outbursts, but, Rudy, that’s not what ended us. I’m no longer the right woman for you, and that means you’re not the right man for me.”

  “What you’re proposing—having historians come to the café—will mean constant displeasure and disapproval from the ministers. Maybe decades of it. I’m not cut out for that.”

  “I know. It’s okay. We had no idea where life would take us when we fell in love.”

  “You did love me, then?”

  “I do love you.”

  He inhaled sharply and nodded. “Me too.” He started to touch her cheek. “May I?”

  She nodded.

  He caressed her face. “You’re a treasure, Ariana Brenneman.” He smiled. “I don’t care what the others are saying.”

  She laughed. It was an old joke, something he’d said to her before their first date. She hugged him. “Bye, Rudy.”

  He held her for a long moment and then strode to his rig without another glance her way.

  Quill sat on the floor of the attic, looking through his Daed’s old journals. The detective was late, and Ariana was steeped in grief. Quill needed a distraction. It’d been a while since he’d read through these. Maybe they held some information he’d forgotten about or not realized could be important. Mamm had some by her bedside, but those were personal notes between his parents. Daed wrote to her in those, and she responded, and Quill had never read them.

  Ten journals were stacked on the floor near him, but only two mentioned anything about Frieda. Most of them had the date, weather, orders to fill for the cooperage, and a few thoughts that’d been on his Daed’s mind that day.

  Missing his Daed washed over him. If only he hadn’t died…

  Like all those who’d lost a young parent, Quill had a list of life-changing situations that would have been better if his Daed had lived. Maybe he would’ve stayed Amish. Maybe not. But whatever the case, Quill would have felt the support of his Daed, and they could have talked.

  “Quill,” Mamm called, “the detective is here.”

  “Coming.” Quill picked up the journals and stood. The small attic window was more than ample to spot a young woman leaning against the far side of the barn, a view that couldn’t have been seen downstairs. Rudy was gone. Ariana was in an out-of-the-way place, looking heavenward.

  “Quill?” Mamm called again.

  He went down the stairs.

  A broad-shouldered man a few inches shorter than Quill was sitting at the kitchen table, his laptop open and a field notebook beside him. He stood. “Detective Torres.”

  “Quill Schlabach.” He shook the man’s hand.

  They made small talk while Mamm poured three cups of coffee and set them on the table along with the cream and sugar and the baked goods Ariana had brought.

  Detective Torres put a little sugar in his coffee. “I have most of the information now from the original complaint. The file was corrupted and sitting in an odd folder. Most of it was restored but not all. I need to ask some questions I already know the answer to, but I have to verify your answers with what’s in the file, and then we’ll go from there. First, what relation was Eli Schlabach to each of you?”

  The man asked his simple questions and moved to harder ones, and Quill sensed he would arrive at an intelligent conclusion. In some ways it was a relief that he was acknowledging the realness of what they’d been through. But as the man talked, Quill grappled to accept that he’d had more choices than it seemed at the time. What did a twenty-year-old know about such matters? Besides, one thing would not have changed: Frieda had to get away from everyone who knew her and start fresh. No amount of police intervention would’ve altered that.

  Twenty minutes had passed by the time Ariana opened the door. She eased into a chair at the table. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “Not a problem,” Detective Torres said.

  Ariana left her coat on and crossed her arms tightly as if she were cold. It was a sure sign of her repressing emotions and feeling stressed. Her capacity to feel so deeply was hard on her, probably a trait she’d give up if it were within her power. But if he knew anything about the amazing young woman sitting across from him, it was that she was resilient.

  The detective’s phone rang, and he pulled it out of its holder on his belt and turned it off. “This is just an informal Q and A, and I appreciate you folks’ time. So let me see if I understand this correctly. Frieda lived in Ohio when you and your husband began to realize something was wrong.”

  “Ya. Frieda’s Mamm, Thelma, is my cousin, and we were good friends. For about a year she constantly talked about how sick Frieda was and how odd her symptoms were. She said that John, her husband, wanted to trust God.” Without pausing in her dialogue, Mamm rose, poured another cup of coffee, and set it in front of Ariana. “We went to visit them, and over the course of a week, Eli managed to talk John into letting Frieda be seen by a specialist who was known for dealing with unique medical symptoms. Eli went with them to the initial visit, and the doctor arranged for Frieda to go to a lab to have blood drawn the next day. The doctor was positive they could uncover the issue and get her some relief. But he said it would take weeks to get the results, and we had to return home.”

  “What did the test results show?”

  “Nothing. But Frieda was getting worse, and John kept saying she just needed prayer. Eli was concerned that John was being flippant, so he returned to Ohio a few weeks later. He sweet-talked and cajoled until John agreed that Frieda could be seen again. The three of them returned to the doctor’s office. The doctor looked through her charts
, did a quick physical, and suggested Frieda see a mental health specialist.”

  “He thought the symptoms were psychosomatic?” the detective asked.

  “Ya, and John agreed with the doctor. But Eli pushed back, asking for more blood work to be done. John said he was being ridiculous and left with Frieda.”

  “You stayed here while your husband went for the second visit, right? So everything you’re telling me is what your husband told you?”

  “He told me, but so did Thelma. John wanted to accept the prognosis and drop the matter. Eli didn’t, but he had no parental rights. The long and short of it is Eli pestered them, calling and visiting until John agreed to take Frieda to a different specialist. The new doctor ordered a CT scan and said it revealed a possibly enlarged liver. The doctor wanted to do more blood work, this time looking for the possibility that Frieda had been exposed to a poison. And that testing would take two to three weeks. Eli said the moment the doctor mentioned poison, the look on John’s face changed, and Eli had a gut feeling he needed to get Frieda away from there. It took him a few days, but he talked John and Thelma into letting her come here, saying they needed a break from caring for her. Eli was persuasive when he needed to be.”

  Mamm looked at Quill, her expression one of sadness seemingly mixed with pride. “Of all the boys, you’re the most like your Daed. He was intuitive, persuasive, and solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.”

  Quill reached over, gripped her hand, and winked. “Can I take the good parts and give back the rest?”

  Mamm grinned, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t have changed one thing about your Daed, not one.”

  Ariana nodded. “I wouldn’t have changed anything about Eli either.” She looked at Quill. “You, my friend, are an entirely different matter.”

  Mamm laughed, which he imagined was Ariana’s goal. He chuckled.

  Detective Torres smiled, seeming to enjoy the break in the seriousness. “So Eli brought Frieda here.”

  “Ya. Getting her out of that house seemed to help a lot. She and Ariana became fast friends. That helped Frieda too. I made sure she ate well and got plenty of rest. We took her to see our local doctor, and he gave her some medication for her nerves while we waited on the blood work to come back in Ohio. But she wasn’t here long before her ministers contacted ours, saying she needed to return home. That’s when the real battle began. Eli had no proof of what was taking place, and she was only thirteen or fourteen at the time. It was a tug-of-war, and the ministers in both districts were furious with Eli, saying he’d overstepped his bounds. For all we knew, he had. But Frieda was feeling a little better physically and doing much better emotionally, and she didn’t want to go home. Eli stood his ground against her parents and the ministers of both districts.”

  “But the test results eventually came in, right?”

  “John said they did. Thelma said she never saw them. Either way, Eli had no rights to see them.”

  “But if the doctor saw she had poison in her system, he should’ve intervened.”

  “Maybe he tried. Eli called the doctor’s office. They couldn’t tell him anything, but they asked him some interesting questions. They had the wrong address for John, and John is the one who filled out the papers. The test results never arrived at Frieda’s house, and since John didn’t have insurance and there are a lot of John Millers, the doctor’s office had no way of getting the right address until Eli called. By the time Eli hung up, he knew they’d found poison in Frieda’s system, although they never said so directly.”

  “Did your husband ever get his hands on the test results?”

  “He did, but I’m not sure how.”

  “Do you have those results?”

  “Ya.”

  “Could I have them? It is a piece of evidence that corroborates your story.”

  “I’ll get the report.” Mamm rose.

  “May I use your bathroom?”

  “Ya. Down the hall, on your right.”

  Mamm and the detective disappeared down the hallway, and Ariana seemed lost in her thoughts. Quill had come early, hoping to help his Mamm navigate today, but clearly he would need to talk to someone about all this, maybe a brother or a counselor. His heart beat mercilessly as old wounds opened. But how was Ariana holding up? He dumped a little sugar and cream into her untouched cup of coffee and stirred it.

  She didn’t look up, but she grasped the cup. “I…I thought she had some rare illness and the ministers stood in the way of getting her help. I didn’t know her Daed had poisoned her,” she mumbled. “What father would do that to his own child!”

  “It’s called ‘Munchausen syndrome by proxy’ or medical child abuse. It’s a disorder where the caregiver either makes up fake symptoms or causes real symptoms so the child appears truly ill.”

  Ari’s face revealed how distressed she felt. “Her Daed deliberately caused her sickness? For what, to get sympathy or to be mean?”

  “He’s sick, Ari, or maybe just plain evil. Either way, she’s free of him.”

  “Ya, I…I never imagined someone had injured her on purpose.”

  “Whatever we thought, whatever we’ve gone through, we’ve weathered the worst of it, all of us,” he whispered.

  She nodded. “And yet this will do nothing to change the battle that needs to be fought—to change the deeply ingrained beliefs of total submission to the head of the household and total submission to the ministers or go to hell. It will take a lifetime to begin changing minds and hearts about those things, but I’d like to be a part of bringing that change about, starting with the women.”

  “If that’s where you want to put your energy, I have no doubts you’ll accomplish a lot. You can draw women to you and open their eyes.”

  Ariana didn’t respond, and as she brought the coffee to her lips, he wondered if she’d even heard him.

  The detective came back and sat down. A minute later Mamm returned, carrying a manila envelope.

  The detective opened the envelope and pulled out the report. “So Eli had the results, but how did he know it was John who gave her the poison?”

  “He didn’t have any evidence, that’s for sure,” Mamm said. “But he felt confident it was John, so he went to Frieda’s ministers with the test results and asked them to take the matter to the police. But John had already convinced the ministers that Frieda was troubled and had taken the poison herself. So Eli went to our ministers here in Summer Grove, but they’d been fed the same story.”

  “So his hands were tied as far as anyone listening to him?”

  “With Frieda safe here, Eli gave the ministers a little time to see what needed to be seen. John said something to the bishop, whether by way of confiding in a man of God or by a slip of the tongue I don’t know. But soon after that, the ministers said he was guilty. Still, they didn’t want outsiders involved. They wanted to discipline him through shunning and to get help for him through the Amish counseling one another. They also wanted Frieda to forgive him and return home to live under her Daed’s roof again. Pressure kept escalating against Eli to send Frieda home, and it was clear the bishops weren’t going to budge, so my husband went to the police.”

  Quill cleared his throat. “The Old Ways say all matters should be taken care of within the community. The Amish aim to be God sufficient and self-sufficient in everything. It’s considered a serious betrayal to step outside of the ordinances and go to the world for answers. So Daed’s hope of getting the bishops to agree before he went to the police would’ve benefited the community at large. It would have helped usher in some of the reform he wanted.”

  Mamm wiped a tear. “He kept trying to find ways to make it all work, to bring unity and reform and to keep us from being shunned.”

  “And where do you think John Miller is now?”

  “Gone.” Mamm raised her hands outward. “Fled the moment he caught wind of Eli going to the police.”

  “How did he hear of it?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but one of Fried
a’s sisters called me and said their bishop told John, and he gathered his belongings and disappeared.”

  “It sounds as if someone was keeping an eye on Mr. Schlabach, and when he went to the police station, that person notified someone in Ohio, maybe the bishop.”

  “No one would’ve done that without the bishop directing it. He didn’t start out a difficult man. But over the years he has become convinced that he knows when people are telling the truth or lying. He believes God has given him the ability to judge a man’s heart.” Mamm reached over and grasped Quill’s hand.

  “Our world was torn apart when my husband died, and for a while I tried to keep as much as possible from Quill, but Frieda’s anxiety was out of control. Serious anxiety issues are common if poison has been ingested. I know that, but I don’t know if it’s psychological because a parent has broken all trust or a physical reaction to the damage the poison did or both. But she was terrified the ministers would make her go back home, and she wasn’t holding up well under the stress of the ministers coming by here, trying to talk her into leaving.” Mamm squeezed Quill’s hand. “Quill took her away one night, telling no one where they were going or why. If no one could find them, no one could pressure her to do as they thought best. Quill got her to a hospital where she could be treated for anxiety and illness.”

  The detective pointed his pen at Quill. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “So you snuck away to do what none of the men in this community would do.”

  “When people don’t know what to believe, they often do nothing.” Quill had seen it happen firsthand. It was human nature. “Everyone was told lies about Frieda’s illness. They said she was looking for attention and using Daed as her shield so she could disobey her father. Our community stopped trying to sort out the truth from the lies. They focused on what they did have power over—tending to their families—and they put their trust in the leaders to administer justice.”

  “Talking about this makes the Amish sound awful, and we’re not,” Berta said. “A horrid situation arose, and a few men in power let their need to control the situation block out everything else.”