“I’m Chief Beamer. Are you the wife of Daniel Miller?”
Carrie looked curiously at the policeman. Why was he here? Mattie released her grip on Carrie. “Oh Carrie! There’s been an accident. The buggy. A car.”
“Slow down, Mattie. Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”
“Daniel’s buggy was turning left into my driveway when a speeding car passed by him.”
Carrie took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut. When buggies and cars collided, the buggies always lost. She glanced at Schtarm, grateful he wasn’t hurt.
“You’re going to need to come with me, Mrs. Miller,” Chief Beamer said.
“Where’s Daniel?” Carrie glanced at the police car. “Isn’t he in the car?”
“No, Carrie,” Mattie said, her voice breaking on the word. “He’s not.” She started to cry.
Carrie looked at Mattie and the officer. She tilted her head, trying to understand what Mattie meant. Her mind wasn’t working right. She had been up so early with Hope’s new calf, then Sol’s visit, and then finding out about Daniel and his cousin Abel. The fatigue of the long day suddenly hit her.
Mattie braced Carrie’s shoulders to make her look at her. “He’s dead, Carrie. Daniel was thrown from the buggy and killed instantly.” Carrie tried to concentrate on Mattie’s moving mouth, but she didn’t think Mattie made any sense. Poor Mattie. She looks so troubled. Carrie felt like she might be getting a fever, all shaky and sweaty and cold inside. Her leg muscles felt wobbly and she kept forgetting to breathe. I must breathe. I must. Everything started to swirl around her before it all became fuzzy and blended together. She didn’t even remember falling, but the next thing she heard was Chief Beamer’s deep voice, hovering over her.
“She’s fainted. Dropped like a stone. Does someone have a blanket?”
6
Over the next few days, Carrie took comfort in the long-established rituals and traditions of burying a family member, as they gave anchor to her churned-up feelings. The day before Daniel’s funeral, the bench wagon was delivered by two men. They helped move out all the downstairs furniture to store in the barn. Then they set up the benches in the empty house. Neighbors stopped by all throughout the day, bearing dishes of food for the shared meal after the burial.
As long as Carrie stayed busy, she was able to push away troubling, stray thoughts. Just like when her father died and Sol left, she found that the sun rose and set and the days would come and go, and there was the washing and the cooking and the gardens to care for. One couldn’t live on the crest of grief every single moment.
The day after the accident, the undertaker returned Daniel’s embalmed body to the farmhouse for the viewing. Tears streaming down her face, Yonnie held the Crazy Quilt in her arms that she had given Carrie for a wedding gift.
“Do you mind, Carrie?” she asked her as they tended to Daniel’s body, just as they had tended to Eli’s only weeks before. “I know it’s custom to use a white quilt to bury him, but I want to wrap him in the quilt he loved best.”
“Of course not,” Carrie said. “I think he would be comforted by being wrapped in the quilt you had made for him.” She felt numb, exhausted to the bone, worried.
The police had taken her to the city morgue to identify Daniel’s body. Mattie came too. It was nearly dawn by the time they returned to the farmhouse. When Andy woke, Carrie told him about the accident. What worried her most was that Andy didn’t cry. He became quiet and still, like a candlelight right before it’s snuffed out. Andy spent the day in the barn, playing with the Cooper’s hawk babies, avoiding the steady stream of neighbors who heard the news and wanted to pay their respect.
At the end of the day, a car turned into the driveway. Mattie climbed out of the backseat, but the other people, clearly English, remained in the car. Carrie met Mattie at the kitchen door.
“Carrie, the girl who hit Daniel’s buggy is in the car,” Mattie said. “She’s with her mother. She wants to ask you to forgive her.”
Carrie braced her hand against the doorjamb as if she needed it to hold herself upright. “Oh Mattie, I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” Mattie said, firm but kind. “Her name is Grace Patterson. She’s only seventeen. She works part-time over at Honor Mansion. She needs your forgiveness. You need to give it to her for your own sake.”
Closing her eyes for a moment against the pain and loss, Carrie asked quietly, “And what if I don’t feel any forgiveness for her?” Softly, Mattie whispered, “Feelings follow intention.” Mattie took Carrie’s hand and led her out to the car.
An elderly woman got out of the car first, her face solemn and sad. Then the girl got out. Carrie had to force herself to look at her. She was so young. Her eyes were swollen with crying. Her face was red and blotchy. Carrie recognized that kind of misery and despair; she felt it when her father died.
Without thinking, she opened wide her arms. The girl looked at Carrie as if she couldn’t believe what she was offering to her. Then she rushed into Carrie’s arms, breaking into big, heaving sobs.
When Carrie finally went upstairs that night, she saw that Yonnie had replaced the Crazy Quilt on her bed with another quilt. The cold March wind seeped through the windowsills, and she shivered as she undressed. She wore two pairs of woolen socks and a sweater over her nightgown and still couldn’t get warm. She wasn’t sure she had ever felt quite so alone as she did that night, slipping under the covers. Never had so many changes come upon her in so little time. It was as if she had left her old life and stepped into someone else’s life. The last thought she had before falling asleep was: And now I am a widow.
The sun shone brightly on the day of Daniel’s funeral, but the wind still had winter’s bite to it. At the graveside, four young men shoveled dirt on top of Daniel’s coffin. Carrie heard no other sound other than that—whoosh-whump . . . whoosh-whump. No airplanes flying overhead, no cars driving past, no squawking jaybirds, just the silence of grief. A cold breeze blew the strings of her prayer cap across her face. She must have flinched as the clods of dirt hit the pine box, because Mattie quietly linked an arm through hers, as if to say, “You’re not alone.”
Afterward, back at the house, as they cleaned up the kitchen, Emma asked Carrie, “Want me to stay? I could ask Mother to stay too.”
Carrie shook her head. She was in no mood for more of Esther’s advice. Her only word of solace to Carrie had been, “Folks should not overgrieve much, for that is a complaint against the Lord.”
Throughout the long day, Esther made broad hints to Carrie about the bishop’s grandson, John Graber. She had picked him for Carrie’s husband years ago, often inviting him over for supper and family gatherings. Carrie had no interest in him; she thought John Graber was odd.
Carrie had enough to worry about right now. Ever since Eli had passed, the job of bill paying had fallen to her. The second installment of the property tax bill, still in Eli’s name, sat on Daniel’s desk, and she didn’t have the money to pay it.
Just two weeks ago, she had shown the tax bill to Daniel after they had accepted help from the church to pay the last of Andy’s emergency room bill. Carrie offered to go back to work at Central Market, but Daniel objected, saying Yonnie needed minding. The older woman had fallen recently after losing her balance. She wasn’t hurt, but she couldn’t get herself back up. Daniel had told Carrie not to worry, that he would pay the tax bill by doing extra smithy work.
But now that was over.
Deacon Abraham, a kind man with a smiling face, ruddy as a bright apple, and a great booming laugh that jiggled his big belly, brought over a spare buggy to use since Carrie’s had been destroyed in the accident. He also asked to buy Daniel’s black-smithing tools. He insisted he needed them, and then offered her three times what they were worth, refusing to pay less. Still, it didn’t come close to the amount due for taxes. And it wasn’t just this tax bill that worried her, it was the one after that, and the one after that. How was she ever g
oing to be able to make ends meet? These were all new worries for her, ones she had never known before.
After Emma and Esther left, Carrie got ready to go to bed, exhausted. Andy and Yonnie were already asleep. As she leaned over to turn off the gas lamp in the living room, Yonnie’s stack of quilts caught her eye in the flickering light. She spread her hand over a quilt, admiring again the tiny, even rows of stitches, the even binding, the splashes of yellows, purples, and deep blues that Yonnie coordinated so skillfully.
Carrie’s heart almost slammed into her chest. She would have to talk to Yonnie in the morning, but it was just possible that she had found the means to hold on to the orchards. At least for the foreseeable future.
“I don’t mind a bit,” Yonnie said the next morning, when Carrie explained to her the idea of selling a quilt to Veronica McCall. “I made those quilts for my family to use. This is just one more way the quilts can be of use.” Yonnie went over to the quilts and pulled them out and spread them on the kitchen table. She was trying to decide which one to sell.
Carrie’s heart ached as she watched her. She knew those quilts told the story of her life.
Yonnie pulled out a red and yellow quilt she called “Ray of Light.” “Think that fancy redheaded gal would like this one? She seems flashy.”
Carrie nodded. “I think it’s perfect, Yonnie.”
As soon as the skies cleared after a soaking rain, Carrie hitched Old-Timer to the buggy. The sun shone on Carrie’s face, relaxing her a little, as she prepared herself during the ride for this visit to Honor Mansion. She hooked Old-Timer to a post at the hotel, stroked his face, and ran her hand down the length of his sore leg. He seemed fine today. The buggy looked glaringly out of place in the parking lot filled with construction workers’ trucks and Veronica McCall’s red convertible. She gathered the quilt that Yonnie had carefully wrapped up in paper and knocked timidly on the door of the hotel.
When the door opened, Carrie inhaled sharply. Grace Patterson stood at the threshold, looking just as shocked to see Carrie.
“Hello, Grace,” Carrie said. A surprising wave of tenderness filled Carrie as she looked at Grace. She took in Grace’s appearance. Her hair was short and spiked, a funny color, and her eyes were traced with a thick black liner. But she wasn’t as tough as she looked, Carrie thought. She really didn’t know much about this girl other than she thought Grace seemed like a fragile teacup.
Grace’s eyes went wide. “Did you come to see me?”
“No. I’m here to see Veronica McCall.” Carrie tilted her head. “Is your hair . . . were you born with that color?”
Grace ran a hand through her hair. “Oh no! I dyed it. It’s called Manic Panic red.”
“Well, it is really . . . bright.” She tried to sound positive. “Thank you for coming to Daniel’s viewing. I know that was hard. Please thank your mother too.”
“Mrs. Gingerich? She’s not my mother. She’s my foster mother. More like a foster grandma, actually. She’s pretty ancient.” Grace came outside on the porch and closed the door behind her. “But she’s cool. I mean, like, her viewing habits totally bite, but other than that, she’s okay.”
Carrie didn’t understand what Grace meant. She answered with silence.
“And she eats weird stuff. She only buys organic and won’t eat glutens and . . . what is a gluten anyway? I don’t have a clue but it’s all anybody talks about anymore.”
Carrie was mesmerized for a moment, watching Grace carry on a conversation by herself. There was something very earnest about her, something sweet and likable.
“It sounds so lame,” Grace rolled her eyes, “but I thought the Amish people might bring shotguns and try to off me.” She shook her head. “But everyone was so kind.”
“My people?” Carrie asked. “You thought my people would shoot you?”
“Yes. I’ve lived in Lancaster County most of my life, but I really don’t know squat about the Amish.”
Carrie smiled. “You could probably say the same thing about how little we understand the English.”
“So, um, I have to go before the judge in a few months. To see if . . . I might be charged . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked out at the street.
Carrie’s heart felt a tug of pity. Grace was so young to carry such a yoke. “Perhaps I can help in some way. I could write letters to the judge asking for mercy.”
Grace’s head snapped back at Carrie in astonishment. “Would you? Would you really do that for me?” She crossed her arms tightly against her chest and her eyes filled with tears. “But why? It’s my fault that your husband is . . . dead. I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve mercy.”
For some reason, Carrie thought of Mattie. She knew just what Mattie would say and found herself echoing it. “None of us do, Grace.”
Grace pointed down the hall to Veronica McCall’s office and went back upstairs. Before Carrie knocked on the door, she noticed a reflection of herself in a hall mirror. She hadn’t looked in a mirror since she had left Esther’s home. She walked up to it, slowly, unsure of what to make of what she saw. There stood a woman, not very tall and a little too thin, in a black mourning dress and apron and cape. Her cheeks were flushed pink, for it was a cool spring day. What surprised her most was that she didn’t look like a girl anymore. She thought of herself as barely old enough to be a wife, let alone a widow.
But her eyes, they showed her youth. They looked a little frightened, like a cottontail caught in a flashlight’s glare.
Veronica was typing furiously at a computer and looked up when Carrie knocked, stunned, as if she wasn’t sure who she was. “Carrie? Sit down, sit down.” She moved some papers from a chair and pointed to it. “Listen, if you’re here about Grace, I can assure you that Honor Mansion can’t be held liable for the accident. First of all, she’s only part-time, and secondly, she was off-duty and had left the property—”
“No.” Carrie waved a hand to stop her. “No. I’m not here to discuss that . . . with you.”
A wide smile spread across Veronica’s face. “So, you’re ready to sell.”
“Not the property.” Carrie put the quilt on her desk top and carefully unwrapped the paper. “But a quilt.”
Veronica McCall leaned back in her chair. “It’s beautiful.” She spread it out and looked it up and down. “It almost looks as if it were done by hand.”
“It was. Even the pieces are sewed together by hand, not on a machine. It took Yonnie thousands of hours to make it.”
Veronica McCall’s eyebrows shot up. “How much?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at her.
Carrie took a deep breath. Bargaining was new to her, but she had given the price a great deal of thought. “One thousand dollars.”
“Five hundred,” Veronica volleyed back. She smiled, but her eyes stayed cold.
She enjoys this, Carrie thought. “One thousand dollars.”
“There are plenty of other quilts out there.”
“Yes. There are many fine quilters in Lancaster County. None quite like Yonnie, though.” But Veronica knows that.
One thinly plucked eyebrow raised up. “You drive a hard bargain.” “
But I don’t bargain, Veronica McCall. I’ve told you that before. It’s not our way. One thousand dollars is a fair value for the quilt.”
“Seven fifty.”
Carrie started to pack up the quilt. She wasn’t sure where she would go next, but she wasn’t going to accept less for Yonnie’s handiwork.
“Fine! Fine,” Veronica McCall said, laughing. She pulled out a checkbook from her desk drawer.
“Would you mind giving me cash?” Carrie asked her. “I don’t have a bank account.” It was one of the things on Carrie’s to-do list, under the heading, “Things to figure out now that I am a widow.”
Veronica’s eyes narrowed, as if she thought Carrie didn’t trust her. She left the room for a moment and came back with the cash, counting it out in her hand.
As Carrie stood up to leave, Veronica s
aid with a smug smile, “Nice doing business with you. I would have gone as high as fifteen hundred.”
“But the fair value is one thousand dollars.”
“Well, all’s fair in love and war.”
Carrie cocked her head at her and wondered why the English spoke in riddles. Her gaze shifted to the computer on Veronica’s desk. “Do you use that often?”
“Oh, yes.” Veronica gave a confident nod. “I’m a computer whiz.”
“Someone told me that it’s like a library.” It was something Sol had told her once. He loved computers. He used to go to a coffee shop where he could “surf the internet.” He tried to teach Carrie, but she had felt guilty for a week and could hardly look her father in the eye. She knew her father felt that the internet was a gateway to evil, just like television. It was one of those areas she had felt conflicted about, because through Sol’s eyes she could see the good in those worldly things too.
“Sure is! I can google anything.”
Carrie was nonplussed. It almost sounded like Veronica was trying to speak their dialect. “You can ferhoodle anything?”
“No! Google. It’s a search engine.” Veronica read the confused look on Carrie’s face and waved away an explanation. “Never mind. Is there something you want me to look up?”
Carrie wasn’t entirely sure she was doing the right thing, but Daniel’s untimely death left her with missing pieces of a story. She felt as if she needed to know the truth about those fires in Ohio, and Yonnie couldn’t or wouldn’t discuss them. Just yesterday, Carrie tried asking her, straight out, but Yonnie went pale and started to tremble, then went upstairs to lie down. “I’m looking for some information about two fires in Holmes County, Ohio, that caused the death of two women, a man and his son, a few years back.”
She gave Veronica McCall the few details that she remembered from the copy of the newspaper clipping Sol had given her. Veronica pecked at the buttons on the computer, stared at the screen for a long while, asked a few more questions, then typed more buttons.
The Choice (Lancaster County Secrets 1) Page 8