The back door to the restaurant opened behind Hannah. She turned her head to see Greg, wearing his white toque and crisp white double-breasted chef coat.
“You’re still on the phone?” Then he seemed to look more closely at her, and his expression altered.
Hannah lifted her hand to discover her face was wet with tears. She hadn’t even noticed.
Appearing alarmed, he backed up. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. Take your time.” The door swung shut behind him.
“Hannah?” asked the quiet voice from her phone.
“Sorry. I’m at work. Actually, in our break area. That was my boss. He said no hurry.”
“Your mother said you’re a cook?”
Wiping at her tears, Hannah almost laughed. Her emotions were swinging that far. “I’m a chef. A sous chef, in my current job, which basically means I’m second in command. I approve menus, I cook, I oversee staff, including waitstaff. I went to culinary school in New York.”
“I see,” her grandmother said doubtfully.
“Mom hated cooking. You probably know that.”
“I do.”
“I . . . took over shopping and meal preparation when I was ten or eleven. I always loved it.”
“Ten years old, and your mother expected you to put meals on the table.”
It wasn’t a question. It was . . . more grief, although Hannah wasn’t sure she understood it this time. She’d made the decision to take over housekeeping and cooking, not Mom. Mom . . . just didn’t care. She’d have been fine with fast food or nothing at all some of the time. She ate like a bird—a wren, not a duck or goose that could be aggressive about food. Hannah knew, after visiting farms while she was studying culinary arts. Ducks thought toes looked edible. A big white goose had bitten Hannah’s finger. She had a scar from it.
She corralled her wandering thoughts.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I love my work. Mom didn’t abuse me.”
“Let’s not argue about this.” The tremulous voice hardened. “I love my daughter, despite the inexcusable choices she made, but she kidnapped you. She tore you away from your family. From what she said, the two of you moved frequently. Did you even go to school?”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “Mostly.”
“How many schools?”
“I . . . don’t know.” Hannah closed her eyes. “I lost count.”
Her grandmother made a raw sound of pain.
“I did graduate from high school.” Probably a miracle, considering that none of the schools she’d attended had taught the same things at the same pace. She’d be ahead, or behind—mostly behind—and scrambling to catch up. Confused, humiliated, spending her school days with her head ducked, trying to avoid any eye contact with students who might make fun of her. She’d quit trying to make friends—why bother, when four months later, she and Mom would be on the move again?
She occasionally watched a TV show or movie that portrayed what was apparently a typical family, and realized she couldn’t relate at all.
And yet, she’d told the truth; her mother was affectionate and fun. Creative, delighting in fantasy—and always sure the next man would truly love them both and give them the stability, the steady income, the chance to stay in one place that Hannah had craved but never believed she could have.
She’d managed it herself, having come to realize that was the best way to achieve any dream.
“Your grandfather’s health isn’t good,” her grandmother told her. “He has congestive heart failure. We’re in our early seventies, but heart disease runs in Robert’s family. His own father dropped dead of a heart attack in his fifties. I’m hoping . . .” She hesitated.
“I’ll ask for a few weeks off,” Hannah said instantly. “I’ll come to Tompkin’s Mill. As soon as I know when, I’ll call.”
“You have no idea what this means to us.”
“It means a whole lot to me, too. I wanted family. I could never understand—” Her throat closed. And yes, she was crying again, her nose running. She tried for steady breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth—except her nose was hopelessly stuffed up. “Can you give me my father’s phone number?”
There was a moment of silence that made her wonder if she’d been cut off. She pulled the phone away to look at it, then heard a tiny voice and hastily put the phone back to her ear.
“. . . message only.”
“What?”
“Some Amish use phones in their businesses, and several households will share a phone in a shanty by the road, mostly for messages and emergencies.”
Hannah was stuck on the beginning. “Amish?”
“Yes, your father is Amish. We aren’t, but you were raised Amish until your mother took you away.”
She’d seen horses and buggies in some of the areas where she and Mom had lived. Women wearing those white caps with trailing ribbons or black bonnets, men with suspenders and hats and long beards but shaven upper lips. They were an odd religious sect she’d hardly given a thought to.
And now she was supposed to believe she was Amish, on some level?
The clop of horse hooves, the sight of a horse’s rump swaying back and forth right in front of her.
She opened her mouth, about to say, I don’t understand, then closed it. Why bother with the words? Her entire life had just been upended.
Chapter Two
Gideon Lantz trudged across the farmyard, trying to hide his limp from his son, who bounced around him bragging about how much help he’d been throwing out hay for their horses and cows.
Resting a hand on Zeb’s head and ruffling his hair in an effort to calm him down, Gideon said, “Ja, big help you were,” even though that kind of help had doubled the time it took to feed the animals. Just as his six-year-old daughter’s help doubled, or even tripled, the time it took to get a meal on the table. “Where is your hat?” he asked.
His boy looked up at him. “My hat? I don’t remember. I had it when I got home from school.”
Well, that was something. If he’d lost it on the walk home from school, they might never see it again.
Tonight, Gideon wouldn’t have to prepare dinner with the help of his kinder, but even tired and hurting from having one of the draft horses step on his foot, his fault, he almost wished that wasn’t so. Without a wife to take care of Rebekah and Zeb, Gideon had no choice but to hire a young woman to watch over them when he was working, and to do some of the household chores. Since moving to Tompkin’s Mill a year and a half ago, he’d hired and lost three different women. This latest one, the fourth, gave him an uneasy feeling. He suspected she saw herself becoming a permanent part of his household.
If he were to remarry, he would not choose a nineteen-year-old girl.
If? Ach, he knew better than that. Eventually, he’d have to marry for the kinder, if not for himself.
When he and Zeb stepped in the house, he could smell chicken frying, and his mouth watered. Despite his caution where Rebecca King was concerned, tonight it would be good to wash up, sit down, and be able to eat immediately. He hoped this was one of the days that she would go home to eat with her own family, but he’d noticed that, increasingly, she lingered to sit down with him and his kinder. How could he say, You should go home, when she’d cooked the meal?
“Daadi!” His daughter rushed to him for a hug. She hurried everywhere. He wished he could borrow some of that energy. Like her mamm, he sometimes thought, but did his best not to make that comparison. Thinking about Leah always left him hurting and angry both. Complete forgiveness and acceptance might have let him heal, but he feared neither would come while he kept painful secrets to himself. Telling himself he hid nothing from God didn’t seem to help.
He swung Rebekah up into his arms and smiled at her. “Did you have a good day?”
He thought her smile dimmed a little, but she said
hastily, “Ja, I helped. We did laundry today, and hung it all on the line. Well, Rebecca did, because I’m not tall enough, but I shook out the wrinkles first.”
“Good for you.” He kissed her cheek. Almost done with her first year of school, pleasing her teacher and making friends. She had come a long way from the dark year or two after her mamm’s death.
“I wish I’d grow faster,” she said wistfully, then squirmed to be let down.
Rebecca King—that was another thing he didn’t like about having her here, the confusion of having two Rebeccas—turned from the stove to smile at him. “Dinner will be on the table in just a minute. We made rhubarb crumble for dessert. Rebekah says that’s your favorite.”
He feared his answering smile was more of a grimace. With only a polite nod, he hung his hat on a peg on the wall and went to the downstairs bathroom to wash up.
Once they were seated around the table and he’d signaled the start of the prayer before meals, Gideon bowed his head and thought, Forgive me, God. Rebecca King is here when she promises to be here. She keeps my kinder safe. We’re blessed to sit down to such a fine meal. I have nothing to complain about.
Except that when she popped up to refill his coffee cup as any Amishwoman would do, she laid a hand on his shoulder when she poured, and leaned so close he felt her body brush his upper arm.
At twenty, he’d have been flattered. She was a pretty girl. Now, he felt like a buck startled in the woods by the sight of two strange creatures freezing to point long sticks at him. Not knowing he would be prey; how could he? But fearing.
Was there a way that wouldn’t humiliate her for him to let her know that he wasn’t looking for a wife?
All he said was, “Denke,” and asked Zeb a question about school.
* * *
* * *
Only a few miles outside Tompkin’s Mill, Hannah got stuck behind a black buggy pulled by a single horse. The narrow shoulder of the highway prevented the buggy from moving over, and traffic was just heavy enough going the other direction, she hesitated to pass for the moment.
She could be patient. In fact, the slow pace gave her the chance to really look around, take in the bright green, leafy splendor of the wooded hills rising from each side of the highway, which followed a small river tumbling over rocks. Pretty now, this country would be spectacular in the fall. The town ahead sat in a bowl surrounded by hills.
An opening in the other lane encouraged her to put on her turn signal and accelerate past the buggy and horse, giving it a wide berth as she passed. She caught only a glimpse of the driver, clearly a man, but a black-clad shoulder and the straw hat that shielded his face weren’t revealing.
She had just veered back into her lane, the horse and buggy receding in her rearview mirror, when a thought struck her.
That could have been her father.
If not him, it might have been an uncle, or cousin, or—
She was panting as if she’d run on her own two feet past the buggy instead of speeding past in her aging sedan. Moaning, she told herself to rein it in . . . and then whimpered at the bad pun.
Yes, her father lived in the area, but from what she’d learned online, there were at least three church “districts” clustered around this typically rural Missouri town. What were the odds she’d happen to pass him?
Once she did meet him, she might recognize the horse, it occurred to her, except she’d only been aware it was a high-stepper with an arched neck and mane flying. Brown. She enjoyed watching the Triple Crown races on TV, and it seemed to her that the Thoroughbred racehorses were all some shade of brown. Probably the buggy horses were, too.
So much for that plan.
The dense deciduous woods gave way to farms that looked well kept. Rows of green shoots emerged from rich brown earth. She had no idea what crop—or crops—she was seeing. Corn? Tobacco? Fences were mostly solidly constructed from boards, not wire, many painted white, as were a lot of the houses and even barns.
Electrical wires. That’s what distinguished an Amish home from an Englisch one. She’d learned that term, too, from her online searches. Now she paid attention, seeing the wires strung from the main line along the highway up to the next house—but the farmhouse across the road had no electrical wires leading up to it. Which meant . . .
That could be where I grew up.
Wow. She had to quit thinking like that.
She passed a large building set back from the road with a sign that read “Produce Auction House.” Although it didn’t seem very busy right now, there were two cars in the parking lot as well as two buggies with horses presumably used to waiting.
The town sprawled to each side of the river, Hannah discovered, two concrete bridges connecting it. Tompkin’s Mill was bigger than she’d expected, although she didn’t see any buildings taller than three stories. The speed limit dropped to thirty-five, then twenty-five miles per hour. The outskirts had some of the same businesses you saw anywhere: a convenience store, several brand-name gas stations, a McDonald’s, and a Subway. What looked like a tacky gift shop that advertised “AMISH” in big letters.
But a few blocks farther, downtown was classic small-town America: a clothing emporium, a bank, a pharmacy, a corner business with a classy-looking sign reading “Bowman & Son’s Handcrafted Furniture,” a jeweler, and down the block, what appeared to be a fabric and quilt store. A hat store, a—
Wait. She needed to be paying attention to cross streets. She was supposed to turn left on Dogwood. Had she passed it . . . ? No, it was the next street.
Left took her over one of the bridges and through another part of town, past a hardware store, a plumbing supplies business and a business labeled only: Buggies. Her head turned as she tried to take everything in. Modest older homes partly showed their age by the size of the trees shading them: oaks, maples, and sycamores, and others she didn’t recognize.
And there was the senior housing complex right where it was supposed to be. Much newer than the surroundings, it consisted of an attractive building that had several wings. Separate, smaller buildings included an adult day care and a child day care as well as what were probably maintenance buildings.
Hannah’s grandparents had sold their home and moved here when Robert’s health declined, a year after his heart condition was diagnosed. From what her grandmother had said, this was the kind of facility with several stages. When he needed more help, they could move to a smaller apartment where round-the-clock nursing care was available. Right now, they had the option of cooking meals in their own apartment or eating in a common dining room.
Hannah parked, surprising herself with her bout of nerves. Her grandmother had sounded nice. She’d even spoken briefly with her grandfather on the phone. He’d been breathless but deeply emotional about meeting her.
Her problem was that she’d never had family, and didn’t have the slightest idea how to be part of one. She was actually a little bit glad that her grandparents didn’t have a guest room to offer her, so she’d been able to make a reservation at a hotel that was apparently on the way out of town without hurting anyone’s feelings. She could retreat to a room that was hers alone.
She hadn’t succeeded in talking to her father, although she’d left him a message and he’d left her one in return, telling her in strongly accented and oddly constructed English how much it meant to him that she was coming home. She was to go to his house for dinner tomorrow, where she would also meet her other grandmother, her stepmother, and four half siblings.
“We will start small, ja?” he’d said with apparent humor. “The rest of the family can wait.”
How many others? There must be some aunts and uncles and cousins, as she’d imagined. It sounded like Amish families tended to be large, so her father might have had five or six sisters and brothers, maybe more, and if they each had four to ten children . . . Hannah’s mind boggled.
T
he one person she hadn’t talked to was her mother. Hannah’s decision. She was too mad, and afraid of what she’d say if she did answer one of Mom’s calls. She’d have to eventually, of course, but by then she’d know more about what her mother had hidden from her all these years.
One thing that did make Hannah uneasy was wondering where Mom was. Surely she hadn’t lingered here in Tompkin’s Mill now that she had money in hand.
Hannah so hoped her mother wasn’t anywhere close by. She hadn’t even begun to grasp the magnitude of her mother’s lies, or to meet the other people who might have been hurt as much by those lies as Hannah was. She wasn’t ready for a phone call, never mind a face-to-face confrontation.
She got out of her car, locked it, and started for the main entrance, telling herself she was mostly excited and only a little nervous.
A receptionist inside sent her to the right elevator, and a minute later she knocked on the door marked 219. It opened to reveal a white-haired woman who looked astonishingly like Hannah’s mother, from brown eyes to the slightly pointed shape of her chin and the height Hannah had inherited.
“Oh, my,” her grandmother said, surveying her. “Oh, my.” Already, her eyes were damp. “I can see Jodi in you, but also your father.”
Hannah’s own eyes stung. “You look so much like Mom.”
When her grandmother’s arms opened, Hannah unhesitatingly stepped into them. Locked together, both women wept.
* * *
* * *
Helen said, “I’m afraid Jodi is still in town. She has friends from high school, and she’s probably staying with one of them. The last time I talked to her, she insisted she had to warn you, that she wasn’t going to let us all brainwash you. She’s upset that you aren’t answering her calls.”
Robert made an incoherent sound. He sat by his wife’s side on the sofa, a tube connecting him to an oxygen tank. Talking had him breathless so quickly, he mostly listened. When she’d hugged him earlier, his eyes shared the wonder she felt, though.
Finding Hope Page 2