Most of the guys he knew probably wouldn’t notice Sadie so much at first. She wasn’t the blonde bombshell that his fraternity brothers panted after, but she was pretty in a simple, soft way. Sandy blonde hair, a small nose, a stubborn chin. Freckles. She had the prettiest eyes—big and blue, kind of skittish, the way a doe looks when she’s deciding whether to bolt for the woods or stand her ground. She wasn’t thin but she wasn’t fat. Average-sized, maybe a little round and curvy, but it seemed to suit her. Her voice was low, like music. And she walked back to the house, holding that baby’s basket, with a gracefulness that seemed surprising for a farm girl. As she opened the kitchen door, she turned and gave a shy look back at him. Cute, like a soft summer day. That’s how he would describe her looks. Very, very cute. It was quite possible being here was going to be more tolerable than he had feared only yesterday.
He slid open the barn door and waited until his eyes adjusted to the dark. He heard Amos Lapp rummaging around in a back room. He followed the noises but stopped just before he reached the feed room. High on a shelf was an assortment of empty birds’ nests. He pulled out an empty butter tub and found tiny eggs no bigger than the tip of a finger, pecked with a hole. The thieving work of a blue jay, he surmised. Another tub held random feathers. Somebody on this farm loved birds like he did.
Will found Amos in the feed room, pouring out scoopfuls of oats into a bucket. Amos looked surprised at the sight of him.
“Well, hello there,” Amos said. “I thought you might be my girls, coming to help.”
“I think I might have scared them off,” Will said.
Amos stopped scooping. “Sorry about that. Completely slipped my mind to tell them you were staying at the cottage for a few weeks. So much excitement going on last night.”
“That was sure a lot of people yesterday. Do you mind all of those visitors?”
“Used to it, I guess.” Amos dug the scooper into the barrel of oats. “We’ve always had a lot of rare bird sightings on this farm.”
Will saw that Amos had filled one bucket and grabbed another for him, replacing it so he didn’t miss a beat. His nails were clipped short, Will noticed. Large hands, working hands.
Amos nodded. “How are the falcons this fine morning?”
“I saw the male head out to hunt. The female is sticking close to the scape, which might mean she’s getting ready to lay a clutch.”
Amos finished filling the second bucket. “Well, that’s what we want.” He stood up carefully, tentatively, as if he wasn’t completely confident that his body would obey him. It surprised Will. Amos Lapp seemed healthy and strong, fit and slim. A craggy, chiseled, suntanned face. If he were trying to describe Amos Lapp to his mother, he would compare him to John Wayne—his mother’s favorite spaghetti Western actor. She loved old movies. Will bent down and grabbed the buckets. He might as well start making himself useful.
Amos started walking toward the center aisle of the barn, stopping by each horse to scoop oats into their feed buckets.
“I was hoping for a chance to talk to you about the rare bird sightings on your farm,” Will said. “I’m an avid birder, myself. It’s interesting to me that Windmill Farm has had an unusually large amount of sightings. What makes your farm different from others?”
Amos walked to the next stall and lifted the feed tray. “It’s not much of a mystery. A lot of Amish farms attract birds. One of the many benefits of plowing with a horse instead of a tractor. Using aged manure instead of chemical fertilizers. I’m not sure we have more birds on Windmill Farm than any other Amish farm.”
“Still, there have been more sightings on this farm than any other in the state of Pennsylvania. Even the staff at the game warden’s office talk about this farm.”
“Well, we might not have any more birds visiting the farm, but we might have spotted birds more than others.” Amos stopped and turned to Will. “My son loved birds. He spent 90 percent of his time outdoors and had a gift of noticing God’s creatures. He could identify each and every variety of fowl that migrated through our area.”
Will noticed that Amos’s cheeks were flushed and he was slightly out of breath. He also noticed that he spoke of his son in the past tense. He wondered if that might be how his own father referred to him lately, as if Will were dead to him.
When Amos finished scooping the last of the oats, he turned to Will. “Menno was his name. He’d be about your age. He kept a list of all the birds he sighted. I’ll get it for you, if you want to see it. I think he’d be pleased to share that information with a fellow bird lover.”
Will lit up. “I’d like that very much. Does he live far away?”
Amos paused and cast his eyes up. “Menno passed on, six months ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought maybe . . . he had just left your church.” Will didn’t know a great deal about the Amish, but he had taken a course in sociology in college. He knew about shunning.
Amos lifted his dark eyebrows in surprise. “No, not Menno. I don’t think he would ever have left the church. He died in a shooting accident.”
“Oh no,” Will said. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m so sorry.”
“No. Menno was in the right place at the right time. His life was complete. The timing of his passing was in God’s hands. But his heart lives on.”
“Of course,” Will murmured, feeling he should say something. “Of course it does. You’ll never forget him.”
Amos gave him an odd look, with a sad smile. Then he opened the top of his shirt to reveal a large scar that ran down the center of his chest, starting just below his throat.
“Oh,” Will said. “You meant that literally.”
Amos heard the wail of a baby as he walked up to the house from the barn. He wasn’t sure just what to do about this baby. Should he contact the deacon? But would that mean the baby would be given to a childless couple? Maybe that was for the best. And maybe the sooner, the better. It troubled him to see Sadie’s protective, unreasonable attachment to that baby. Imagine—a daughter of his, holding a rifle against another child of God! The sight was almost comical if it weren’t such a serious breach of judgment. So unlike his Sadie! He walked into the kitchen and heard footsteps overhead. “Fern?”
“Upstairs.”
Just the sound of her voice made him feel better. She’d know what to do about the baby. She’d distract him from worrying about his heart, from his tension over keeping up the farm when he couldn’t even plow the fields himself. She had a way of making him forget things—she could make him smile, make him mad. Fern was like a buffer. No, she was more than his buffer. She was his—
He took a deep breath and leaned against the counter. He didn’t know what Fern was to him. Not exactly a friend, although she understood him better than other people he’d known for years.
Fern came downstairs and held out her hand to him, palm side up, with pills in it. “I found these on your bedside table, when I was changing your sheets.” She placed a hand on her hip. “You forgot to take them last night.”
“I meant to. I fell asleep. I’ll take them now,” he said.
A slight frown creased her brow, but she replied patiently. “No. You’re not supposed to double up.”
Amos frowned right back at her. “I can manage my own pill taking, Fern.”
“Apparently you can’t. I called your cardiologist and made an appointment. He wants to see you Monday afternoon.” She held up two fingers. “Two o’clock.”
Amos glared at her. “You had no right to do that.”
“Something’s not right lately and you know it. You look as worn out as an old man’s slippers. You’re not getting enough exercise. You’re as limp as a boiled noodle. And I know you aren’t sleeping well. I hear you prowling around in the kitchen in the middle of the night. You’re—”
He held up his hand like a stop sign. “Fine. I’ll go.”
Fern’s voice softened. “Don’t look so woebegone. It might be that your medications
need adjusting. Might be as simple as that.”
Amos watched her head into the kitchen to put his pills back in the little amber vials. Or it might be that my body is rejecting this heart, this beautiful, precious heart that once belonged to my son.
4
M.K. held a glass up to the wall between Fern’s downstairs bedroom—where she had been sent to put freshly ironed pillowcases on the bed—and the kitchen. It was a trick she had read in Case-Solving Tools for the Everyday Detective, a book she had checked out from the library. She listened for less than a minute before she was overcome with shame at what she was doing. The thought was tantalizing, but oh, how awful if she got caught!
But then she heard voices in the kitchen. She put the glass back up against the wall, listened carefully for a few minutes, then bolted upstairs to find Sadie. She burst into Sadie’s bedroom without knocking and found her lying on her bed reading a book about baby care. “Sadie! You won’t believe what I just heard.”
“Wunnernaase!” Nosy. Sadie frowned at her.
M.K. offered her a smug smile. “Wunnernaase un Schneckeschwenz.” Nosy and curious.
“M.K., how many times have we told you to stop eavesdropping?”
She lifted her chin. “Fine. I’ll just keep the news to myself.”
“Fine.”
M.K. hung around for a few minutes, peeked at the baby sleeping in his basket, and waited until Sadie couldn’t stand it any longer.
Sadie sighed and put down her book. “What exactly did you hear?”
M.K. sidled up to the bed and sat down. “Dad’s heart is acting up.”
Sadie sat straight up, stunned. “What do you mean? Tell me exactly what you heard. No embellishment. No exaggeration. No editing. And who was doing the talking?”
“Fern and Dad. She’s making him see the heart doctor on Monday.”
Sadie leaned back on the bed, her face ashen.
“The doctor can fix him. I heard Fern say that very thing. She said that maybe he was just tired because his pills needed adjusting.” M.K. patted Sadie on the shoulder. “He’ll be fine. Fern said so.”
“How has Dad been the last few months? Think, M.K.”
“I’m always thinking.” She rose from the bed and tucked one hand under an elbow, then tucked her chin into the palm of her hand, pacing the room as she thought about Sadie’s question. Now that Sadie mentioned it, something did seem a little off with their dad lately. “He seemed fine up until a few weeks ago. Then he started acting tired again, like he did when he first got sick.” She brightened. “But yesterday, he sure seemed happy after the Bird Lady brought him the fancy letter for Menno. And then, you came home.” She peeked into the basket as the baby let out one tiny squeak. “Last night, though, he seemed sort of sad. Maybe the baby’s got him worried.”
Sadie was quiet for a long time, watching M.K. fuss over the baby. “I think we need to try and reduce Dad’s stress.”
M.K.’s eyes went wide. “What stress do I possibly cause? You’re the one who nearly killed a harmless game warden intern this morning.”
Sadie ignored that reminder. “Mind that you don’t get into any trouble at school.”
M.K. knotted her forehead. “That is a perfectly ridiculous comment. Especially now that I have a teacher who actually makes the day interesting.”
Sadie snorted. “Probably helps that you haven’t broken his legs in a sledding accident like you did the last teacher.”
“That was not entirely my fault!” M.K. was outraged. People were always blaming her. “Why would anyone in their right mind stand at the bottom of a hill when folks are sledding?”
“Especially when one of those folks happened to be Mary Kate Lapp—a girl known for speeding out of control on hills,” Sadie said smugly. Then she clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Gid! I haven’t even thought about him since I got back. He’s probably heard by now that I’m back.”
“Not to worry,” M.K. said, bouncing back on the bed. “He knows you’re busy with the baby.”
Sadie jerked her head toward M.K. “You told him too?”
“No! You told me not to.” She studied her feet. “But Ethan Yoder might have,” she mumbled under her breath.
“What did you say?”
M.K. cleared her throat. “I said . . . Ethan Yoder might have.”
Sadie shot to her feet. “And how would Ethan have heard?”
“Maybe . . . Susie Glick.”
“How would Susie Glick know?” Sadie was really mad now, steaming like a teakettle.
M.K. was very focused on a shadow of a tree branch, dancing on the wall. “Ruthie might have said something.”
Sadie propped her fists on her hips. “And Ruthie only knows because of you! It always circles back to you and the words that tumble out of your mouth.”
M.K. scratched her head. “I think that’s a bit of an overreaction, Sadie.”
Sadie glared at her. “What did Gid say?”
M.K. looked up at the ceiling. “Nothing, actually. He didn’t say a word. Not a thing. Just got real quiet. He had everybody read for the rest of the afternoon, which suited me just fine because I’m in the middle of Taming of the Shrew and I want to find out what happens between Kate and Petruchio.”
The baby started making noises and Fern bustled into their room. “There, there,” she cooed, as if he had been hollering for hours.
“I’ll get the baby’s bathwater ready,” Sadie said.
“I’ll help,” M.K. said.
“The both of you are making that baby spoiled as can be,” Fern said, snuggling the baby on her shoulder and patting him gently on the back. She tucked her chin over his head, nuzzling him.
M.K. stood behind Fern and tapped the baby’s tiny nose. “Dad tried to change his diaper this morning. You’ve never seen such a complicated process. We’ll have to ask him to do that chore more often, just for fun.” Because changing a diaper was one task she was never, ever going to perform. You had to draw the line somewhere.
Late Friday afternoon, Gideon Smucker drove the buggy down the road toward Windmill Farm, following another buggy.
A little girl was watching Gid through the open back window. She’d turned in her seat, climbed onto her knees, her head tilted slightly to the side, as if she were curious about him, or confused by him. Her dark hair floated in wispy, tangled curls around her face, her pale blue eyes regarded him with a concern that seemed out of place in the round orb of a child’s face. She couldn’t have been more than five, maybe six. He didn’t recognize her, but in another way, she reminded him of his own boyhood. He loved sitting in the back of the buggy when he was that girl’s age, watching the world unroll around him. Life seemed so simple, so unencumbered.
Unlike now.
When Ethan Yoder told him that Sadie had returned with a baby, he felt as if she had delivered a blow to his gut. He was completely, thoroughly shocked. He couldn’t stop thinking about it, wondering about it, hoping Ethan had his facts wrong. But then he returned home after school let out and his sister, Alice, had heard the same story from two friends who had stopped by to visit with her.
He knew he had to see Sadie, to talk to her, face-to-face. Maybe this was all a terrible mistake. He couldn’t believe it. Sadie, his Sadie, had a baby. This sting of betrayal was the sharpest emotion he’d ever felt. It was like someone was carving his heart out with a dull kitchen knife.
As he drove up the road that led to Windmill Farm, he saw Sadie up by the farmhouse. “Whoa.” Gid pulled back on the reins, drawing the horse to a stop by the side of the road. He reached a hand under the buggy seat and pulled out a pair of binoculars. It felt wrong, like he was a Peeping Tom. He’d never done anything like this before, but he justified his spying on Sadie by telling himself he was just gathering facts.
He saw Sadie walking on the porch, back and forth, with something in her arms. Then he heard a wailing sound carry down on the wind. That was the sound of a crying baby. He focused the lens. Yes, there was defini
tely a baby in Sadie’s arms.
Gid let the binoculars drop. Should he go up to talk to Sadie? To find out more about this baby? He should. He definitely should. He needed to be man enough to get up there and ask her directly. Whose baby is this? What’s happened to us since you left? He picked up the reins to get the horse moving, but then his attention was distracted by someone coming out of the open barn, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with hay. A stranger. Or at least a stranger to Gid. A young man with shingled hair, cut differently than Plain men wore theirs, and a confident way of holding his head. When the stranger saw Sadie, he set the wheelbarrow down and crossed over to her. Gid picked up the binoculars again and focused them on Sadie. He saw the man lift the baby out of her arms and press the child against his shoulder. The wailing sound stopped.
Tears prickled Gid’s eyes. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t see Sadie. What if she told him the very words he didn’t want to hear—that there was someone else? He slapped the horse’s rump with the reins, startling it to lunge forward. As Gid came to the driveway to Windmill Farm, he drove right past.
Will handed the baby, now quiet, to Sadie and went back to pushing the wheelbarrow filled with hay out to the horses in the pasture. He had to keep his chin to his chest to keep from smiling. He could hardly resist releasing a snort of amusement when he observed the deep shade of red Sadie Lapp’s face blazed whenever he spoke to her. She was so painfully shy! It was charming. Refreshing, in a way; so different from the kind of girls he was accustomed to at the university.
When the youngest daughter, Mary Kate, had rushed to find him in the barn, begging him to help Sadie get that baby settled down, Will found himself powerless to turn her down. He was getting a kick out of being the only person who could quiet that baby. Twice in one day! It felt good to solve someone’s problem. True—it was pretty much a given that it’s easier to sort out other people’s issues than your own. If only his problems could be solved so easily. Still, his mother would be proud of him. She always said he had a special knack with children. She wanted him to be a pediatrician.
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