A Christmas to Die For (16 page)

"You're fine." She pulled her seat belt across. "One thing about the Amish—they don't judge outsiders by what they wear."

How did they judge, then? He closed Rachel's door, walked around the car and slid in. He wasn't nervous—the fact that his grandfather, even his mother, apparently, had been Amish was curious, that was all.

Rachel glanced at him as he started the car. "Relax. They'll be welcoming, I promise."

He turned out onto Main Street. "It's odd, that's all. If not for my grandfather's break with the church, my life might have turned out differently."

He stopped. Impossible to think of himself being Amish. Tonight's visit was going to be meaningless, but he'd hardly been able to refuse Emma's invitation.

Rachel seemed content with the silence between them as he drove past the decorated houses and shops. Or was
content
the right word? He'd sensed some reservation in her in the past day, and he wasn't sure what that meant.

"Looks as if your Christmas in Churchville committee is doing a good job. The only thing missing to turn the village into a Christmas card scene is a couple of inches of snow."

"It does look lovely, doesn't it?" The eagerness in her voice dissipated whatever reserve he'd been imagining. "This is exactly how I've pictured it. Like coming home for Christmas. Don't you think?"

It wasn't the home he'd known, but he understood. "That's it. You'll send visitors away feeling they have to come back every year for their Christmas to be complete."

He understood more than that. That her pleasure and satisfaction was more than just the sense of a job well done. It was personal, not professional. Rachel had found her place in the world when she'd come back here.

It wasn't his place, he reminded himself. His partner was already getting antsy, e-mailing him to ask how soon he'd be coming back.

He deserved the time off, he'd pointed out to Gil. And it certainly wasn't a question of Gil needing him in the office. They had a good partnership, with Gil Anders being the outgoing people-person while he preferred to work alone with his computer and his blueprints.

Baltimore is not that far away, a small voice pointed out in the back of his mind. It would be possible to come back. To see Rachel again.

Always assuming Rachel wanted to see him once this whole affair had ended.

Rachel leaned forward, pointing. "There's the lane to the Zook farm."

He turned. "The Christmas lights seem to stop here."

"No electricity." He sensed Rachel's smile, even in the dark. "The Amish don't go in for big displays, in any event. Christmas is a religious celebration. The day after, the twenty-sixth, they call 'second Christmas.' That's the day for visiting and celebrating."

He nodded, concentrating on the narrow farm lane in the headlight beams. "You certainly have a lot of different Christmas traditions going in this small area. I like your grandmother's Moravian customs."

"You'd see even more of that if you went to Lititz or Bethlehem. That reminds me, I want to run over to Bethlehem sometime this week to take more photos and pick up a stack of brochures before the next weekend guests come in."

The farmhouse appeared as they passed a windbreak of evergreens, lights glowing yellow from the windows.

"Just pull up by the porch," Rachel instructed. "The children are already peeking out the windows, watching for us."

While he parked and rounded the car to join Rachel, he went over in his mind what she'd told him about the family. Emma and Eli, her husband, now lived in a kind of grandparent cottage, attached to the main house, while their son Samuel and his wife, Nancy, ran the farm with their children. There was another son, Levi, who was mentally handicapped. Nobody seemed to be considered too young, too old or too disabled to contribute to the family, as far as he could tell from what Rachel had said.

The front door was thrown open as they mounted the porch, and they were greeted by five children—blond stair steps with round blue eyes and huge smiles. The smallest one, a girl, flung herself at Rachel for a hug.

"You're here at last! We've been waiting and waiting. Maam says that you might hear me do my piece for the Christmas program. Will you, Rachel?"

Rachel tugged on a blond braid gently. "I would love to hear you, Elizabeth. Now just let us greet everyone."

The adults were already coming into the room. In rapid succession he was introduced to Eli, their son Samuel, and his wife, Nancy, a brisk, cheerful woman who seemed to run her household with firm command. If he'd imagined that Amish women were meek and subservient, she dispelled that idea.

"This is my mother, Liva Zook." Eli held the arm of an elderly woman, her hair glistening white, her eyes still intensely blue behind her wire-rimmed glasses. "She will be glad to talk with you about your grandfather."

He extended his hand and then hesitated, not sure if that was proper. But she shook hands, hers dry and firm in his.

"You sit here and talk." Nancy ushered him and Eli's mother to a pair of wooden rockers.

He nodded, waiting for the elderly woman to sit down first and then taking his place next to her. The room initially seemed bare to his eyes, but the chair was surprisingly comfortable, the back of it curved to fit his body and the arms worn smooth to the hand.

Eli pulled up a straight chair and sat down next to his mother. "Maam sometimes does not do well in English, so I'll help." He reached out to pat his mother's hand, and Tyler could see the bond between them. Eli's ruddy face above the white beard had the same bone structure, the same round blue eyes.

He'd begun to get used to the Amish custom of beards without mustaches, and the bare faces with the fringe of beard no longer looked odd to him.

"Thanks." Now that he had the opportunity, he wasn't sure how to begin. "If you could just tell me what you remember about my grandfather—"

For a moment he was afraid she didn't understand, but then she nodded. "I remember John. We were children together,
ja
." She nodded again in what seemed a characteristic gesture.

"What was he like?" Was he ever different from the angry, bitter man who had turned everyone away from him?

She studied his face. "Looked something like you, when he was young. Strong, like you. He knew his mind, did what he wanted."

He glanced from her to Eli. "The Amish church doesn't like that, does it?"

"He was young." Her lips creased in an indulgent smile. "The young, they have to see the other side of the fence sometimes."

"Rumspringa,"
Eli said. "Our youth have time to see the world before they decide to join the church. So they know what they are doing." His eyes twinkled. "Some have a wilder
rumspringa
than others."

Sensible, he thought. It surprised him, in a way, that the Amish would allow that. They must have a lot of confidence that their kids wouldn't be lured away by the world.

"
Ja,
that was John Hostetler. Always questioning. Always wanting to know things not taught in our school. Folk worried about him." She frowned slightly, folding her hands together on the dark apron she wore. "But then he began courting Anna Schmidt. They had eyes for no one else, those two."

It was odd, he supposed, that he hadn't even thought about his grandmother. "I never knew her."

"She died when her daughter was only twelve." Her eyes clouded with sympathy. "Your maam, that was."

"What was she like? My grandmother?"

Pert and lively like young Elizabeth, who was bouncing up and down as she recited something for Rachel on the other side of the room? Nurturing, like Emma, or brisk and take-charge, like Nancy?

"Sweet-natured. Kind." The old woman smiled, reminiscing. "She was very loving, was Anna. Seemed as if that rubbed off on John when they married. But when she died—" She shook her head. "He turned against everyone. Even God."

Something in him rebelled at that. "Maybe if people had tried to help him, it would have been different."

"We tried." Tears filled her eyes. "For Anna, for himself, for the community. Nothing did any good. He would not listen. He turned against everything Anna was." She shook her head. "She would have been so sad. You understand. She was one who couldn't stop loving and caring."

He nodded, touched by the image of the grandmother who'd barely entered his mind before this. Someone sweet. Loving. Dedicated to family.

He glanced across the room at Rachel, her face lit with laughter as she hugged the little girl.

Like Rachel. Loving. Nurturing. Dedicated to family. Emotion flooded him. He had feelings for her. What was he going to do about that?

"It was in his blood," Liva Zook said suddenly. "Rebellion. He held on to that adornment out of pride, hiding it away and thinking no one knew about it. It took him on a dangerous path, like his grandfather before him."

He blinked. "I'm sorry?" He glanced at Eli. "I don't understand."

Eli bent toward his mother, saying something in a fast patter of the Low German the Amish used among themselves.

She shook her head, replying quickly, almost as if she argued with him. Then she stopped, closing her eyes.

It was unnerving. Had she gone to sleep in the middle of the conversation?

"What did she say?" Eli must know.

Eli shrugged, but his candid blue eyes no longer met Tyler's so forthrightly. "Old folks' gossip,
ja
. She has forgotten now. That's how it is sometimes."

There was more to it than that. His instincts told him. Eli knew perfectly well what his mother meant, but he didn't want to repeat it.

He could hardly cross-examine an elderly woman, but Eli was another story. "It was you who found him, wasn't it?"

Eli's face tightened.
"Ja,"
he said. "Heard the cows, I did, still in the barn and not milked. I looked inside, saw him."

Eli was the closest thing to an eyewitness he'd find, then. "Where was he?"

"Chust inside the door he was. I could see things was messed up—a lamp broke, his strongbox lying there open. I went for help, but it was too late."

His mouth clamped shut with finality on the words, and for a moment he looked as grim as an Old Testament prophet. Tyler would get nothing else from him.

He thought again of what the elderly woman had said, frowning. He hadn't expected much from this visit. But what he'd heard had raised more questions than it answered.

R
achel leaned against the car window to wave goodbye to Elizabeth, who stood on the porch, her cape wrapped around her, waving vigorously until the car rounded a bend and was lost to her sight.

"She's such a sweetheart." She glanced at Tyler, wondering if he'd say anything to her about what Eli's mother had told him.

The conversation had been general during supper. His manner had probably seemed perfectly natural to the others, but she knew him well enough to sense the preoccupation behind his pleasant manner.

"She certainly is. What was the piece she was talking about? Something she had to memorize?"

So apparently they were going to continue on a surface level. They turned onto the main road, and the Christmas lights seemed to blur for a moment before her eyes.

"The Christmas program in the Amish school is one of the most important events of the year for the children. The families, too. The kids practice their pieces for weeks, and the day of the program you'll see the buggies lined up for a mile."

"Do they ever invite non-Amish?"

She smiled. "As a matter of fact, we both have an invitation from Elizabeth to attend. It's the Friday before Christmas."

"If I'm still here—" He left that open-ended.

Well, of course. He probably had a wonderful celebration planned back in Baltimore. He wouldn't hang around here any longer than was necessary.

She cleared her throat. "I'm glad you had a chance to try traditional Amish food tonight. Nancy is a great cook."

"I thought if she urged me to eat one more thing, I'd burst. I hope I didn't offend her by turning down that last piece of shoofly pie."

"I expect she understood." She gestured with the plastic food container on her lap. "And she sent along a couple of pieces for a midnight snack."

"She obviously loves feeding people. She could go into business."

They were passing The Willows at the moment, and she noticed, as always, what her competition had going on. The Willows looked like a Dickens Christmas this year.

"I wonder—" The idea began to form in her mind, nebulous at first but firming up quickly.

Tyler glanced at her. "You wonder what?"

"What you said about Nancy's cooking made me think. If we could offer our guests the opportunity to have dinner in an Amish home, that might be really appealing."

"Sounds like a nice extra to pull people in. Why don't you go for it, if Nancy and her family are willing?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that." The light was on in the back room of Phil Longstreet's shop. He must be working late.

"Why complicated? Just add it to the Web site, and you're in business."

"Not complicated at my end. At theirs. Even if Nancy and Samuel are interested, they'd have to get the approval of the bishop first."

He turned into the inn's driveway, darting her a frowning look as they passed under the streetlight. "Don't the Amish have the right to decide things for themselves? Seems pretty oppressive to me."

"They wouldn't see it that way." How to explain an entire lifestyle in a few words? "The Amish way is that of humility, of not being prideful or trying to be better than their neighbors. If something comes up that is not already part of the local Amish way, then the question would be taken to the bishop, and they'd abide by his decision."

"Still seems restrictive to me." He pulled into his usual parking space. "Maybe it would have to my grandfather, too."

"Do you think that's why he left the community?"

For a moment he didn't answer. Her hand was already on the door handle when he shook his head. "No, probably not. Will you stay a while? I'd like to talk."