Finding Mercy (4 page)

“He just arrived and hasn’t started to work the fields yet. Then with the sprain he got, jumping out of the way of that car, it will be a few more days before he starts to work with
Daad
or the boys.”

“Yeah, thank God he wasn’t hit. By the way, the driver/victim regained consciousness en route to the hospital. Broken bones, some question of spinal injury when he was thrown clear. He was lucky he was thrown, though. If not, he would have fried in the wreck. We’ve contacted NOK—next of kin. His address was actually local, though I’d never seen him. Moved in recently from New York State. You know any reason that would upset your cousin? Andrew looked kinda green at the gills when I told him that. He’s from Pennsylvania, right?”

“Yes, from Intercourse. Lots of Amish, lots of Lantzes there.”

The sheriff led her through telling him how the wrecked vehicle began to flame, then blew up. How Andrew found the driver, turned him over.

“Which he should not have done, but I’m giving him a pass on that because it was natural to want to learn if the guy was dead or not,” he said, still taking notes. Ella saw she’d been gripping her hands in her lap and tried to relax her cramped fingers. The sheriff was writing on his notepad, so maybe he hadn’t noticed how nervous she was.

“They talk a little different in the eastern Amish enclaves, don’t they?” the sheriff said as he looked up straight at her. “Andrew doesn’t have the same kind of—excuse me for putting it this way—accent as your people here.”

“There are some differences,” she said in a rush, trying to answer him in a way that wasn’t a lie. Would he be angry when he heard they hadn’t told him the truth about Andrew? Mr. Branin should tell him soon. Why hadn’t he already? “A lot of back-and-forth, long-distance relatives,” she went on, “even marriages, but each area has some things unlike and special. All kinds of varied people come into Amish country, like that man who got hurt.”

“Yeah. Samuel Lee. Word is that he’s here to open a luxury spa and retreat in our area. Now, that’s a good one. What next? I hear it’s out on Sweetgum Lane near the Yoders’ dairy farm and the old Troyer Mill. All right, I’ve gotta go now. Thanks, Ella.”

Feeling bad they hadn’t told him the truth about Andrew, she stood and walked out with him. Andrew still sat in the kitchen with his foot up on a kitchen chair with
Grossmamm
Ruth keeping an eye on him.
Mamm
had come downstairs and was dishing out strawberry shortcake for everyone. After quick goodbyes—and the sheriff’s giving Andrew another steely-eyed stare—Ella walked him to the back door even before
Mamm
could ask him to stay for shortcake.

As he went out, Ella called to him, “Sheriff Freeman! Just a minute. Let me cut some lavender for Ray-Lynn if you’re going to question her. I know she has trouble sleeping sometime and, with this going on tonight, it will help her, one of the best things lavender does. I will just take a minute.”

Her hand sickle was in her new workshop, so she grabbed
Mamm’
s pruning shears by the back door and darted out to the closest end of the English lavender beds. As she’d come into the kitchen, she’d overheard
Daad
agreeing that Andrew could help her weed for the next day or so, stay on his knees and off his ankle. That possibility and the familiar, heady scent of her plants stretching up the hill, made her feel she could fly. Despite the terrible events of the night, her dark mood had lifted. Yes, with Andrew there, even the nightmare of being near the pond hadn’t pulled her down.

She cut a good armful of the fragrant, flowering spikes and handed it to the sheriff.

“I oughta have this all over my office and the jail,” he said as he put it next to him on the passenger seat of his cruiser. “Keep me calm with all the bad stuff been happening ’round here. Thanks, Ella, for Ray-Lynn and me. Night, now.”

As he pulled out, the yard, the lane, the road went dark again. Only the kerosene-lantern-lit house and the slice of moon sailing high gave wan light. Starlight—so distant, such tiny specs in the big dark ocean of sky. She spun to look up at her lavender beds, marching toward the hill and up. It was the perfect site for the crop, with the much larger hill and its woodlot above, which sheltered the flowers from winter winds and where
Daad
kept his beehives so the bees would work all the gardens in the area.

And she saw, reflected, atop the hill, a large, staring eye, pale and lit from within.

She started toward the house, still looking back and up. Had she imagined it? She saw nothing now. Had a camera light popped, like when English folks tried to take verboten images of her people? Could Ms. Drayton have come by to follow up on the story of the car wreck and— No, she’d come to the door, wouldn’t she? Hunter with a night-vision rifle? Binoculars?

Whatever it had been, it wasn’t there now. She rushed inside and closed the storm door but decided not to upset everyone. What if it was just some strange reflection of light off one of the tin pans she had hanging high to keep birds away? What if it was a cluster of early lightning bugs?

Out of breath, she told everyone, “I gave the sheriff some lavender for Ray-Lynn.”

They turned to her, including Andrew, as
Daad
said, “You can use Andrew’s help with the lavender for a couple days,
ya?
We’ll get him out in the fields soon enough.”

“Oh,
ya, danki, Daad.
Andrew too,” she said with a nod their way.

Patting the plastic ice pack on her patient’s ankle,
Grossmamm
put in, “You just be sure you take good care of his ankle, Ella.”

Ella bit her lower lip, uncertain whether to laugh or sulk. She was too old for
Grossmamm
to scold. Ella felt exhausted, yet energetic too. And she’d just take those tin pans down so they didn’t reflect moon or lantern glow and get her all het up over nothing.

4

IT HAD RAINED some overnight. Ella had heard the patter on her roof, a gentle rain, but she still hadn’t slept well. Her first night in her new house…the car accident…and Andrew. Then too, when she’d drifted off, she’d dreamed she’d seen a huge glowing animal eye, watching her from the blackness.

She shook her head to pull herself back to the here and now. “I guess you can tell which are weeds,
ya?
”
she asked Andrew as they surveyed her lavender from the bottom of the hill after a hearty breakfast with the family.
Daad
and the boys had set out for the fields already.
Mamm
and
Grossmamm
had headed into town in the family buggy to help Mrs. Lantz with wedding preparations. For now, it was just the two of them.

“Of course, I can tell the flowers from the weeds,” he said, sounding a bit annoyed. Maybe he had not slept well either on his first night in a new place, in her old room. “It’s just going to be a question of getting to them since the lavender’s so tall and I’ve got to manage this crutch.”

“If I don’t keep after them, they’ll be taller than the crop, though part of the height is because I have to build up the beds with crushed limestone and ground oyster shells.”

“No kidding?” He turned to her instead of surveying the plants. “Where do you get oyster shells around here?”

“At the mill that has chicken feed. They use ground shells as grit in the feed. I’ll need to buggy there later to get some more, if you want to go along. It will look funny, though, with the man just sitting there and the woman handling the reins. One of the boys should teach you.”

“Or you could show me while we drive.”

“While we buggy,” she corrected him. “Like we say, ‘He buggied over to see me.’ Even in English, you’ve got to learn some of the talk.”

“So,” he said, frowning and looking around again, “you’ve got quite a cottage industry going here.”

“
Ya,
and now I’ve got the cottage for it. I’m going to turn the house into a workroom and store instead of just delivering things here and there.”

“Instead of buggying things here and there, you mean,” he said with a grin, then sobered again. “Your fledgling enterprise impresses me. You know, only two-thirds of small businesses survive their first two years and fewer than half make it to four years, but growth is the answer. With the right packaging, branding and promotion—financing too—your Lavender Plain Products could really turn into something with expanding market opportunities. Your dad could do the same for his honey and the honeycomb he sells on the side.”

“Our businesses already
are
something,” she said, hands on her hips. “In your other life, did you own a company that sold something?”

“Not exactly. So, tell me more about the lavender. I take it with all the mulching, the roots don’t like water.”

“Right. The saying is, ‘Lavender does not like to get its feet wet.’”

His eyes lit and, thinking he must like the way she’d put that, she smiled back. They stayed that way a bit too long, as if they were suspended at the bottom of the hill, lulled by the buzz of the bees, the scent of the flower, like in a dream.

“I was just thinking,” he said, “the lavender’s mistress doesn’t like to get her feet wet either. You wouldn’t come near that pond last night. So no wonder lavender grows so beautifully for a beautiful gardener and in Eden County, no less.”

Her stomach did a funny flip-flop. A worldly compliment. And he’d called her
mistress.
Should she explain that her people only valued inner beauty? Her family had one mirror in the whole house and that was turned to the wall and mostly unused. But she said, “Sadly, there was a serpent in the Garden of Eden. Besides, I think of myself more as a farmer, of an important crop too. Lavender does lots of things, all good.”

“It smells great, that’s for sure. I didn’t mean to imply you haven’t done a good job with all this.” They started up the hill to where she’d left off with her weeding yesterday. The two tin plates she’d left hanging up the hill were knocking together in the breeze. For sure, one of those must be what had made the reflection she saw last night after the sheriff left.

“Lavender does more than smell good,” she told him, suddenly anxious to keep their conversation on her work and not herself. He kept stealing glimpses at her. “It can be used in recipes too, all kinds of yummy things like muffins, jellies and jams, chocolate, breads, teas and honeys. I plan to hire some friends to make those products to sell when I get the store going.”

He was frowning now at some inward thought. What had she said to set him off? She wished she could read his moods.

“You won’t believe this,” Andrew said, “but I had a lavender-infused drink not long ago.”

“Of course, I believe it. Lemonade?”

“Actually, a martini.”

“Oh. Liquor. I couldn’t go worldly with my sales. You have a lot to learn about us and our ways.”

“I want to, so I’ll get busy here. The bees won’t sting me, will they?”

“Not if you let them be themselves and don’t try to take over what they do best.”

“I hear you loud and clear, Ella Lantz. Okay, boss, I’ll get to work.”

She watched him lean on his crutch, put his weight on his good leg and start to pull weeds. Though she just tried to accept the way things were, she was aching to know what he was hiding from. Had he left loved ones behind? A woman? A family? Even children? How she would hate being forced away from her life here. That thought chilled her and she shivered.

* * *

Ray-Lynn had carted her bouquet of lavender into the restaurant because it cheered her up. She put it right on the table where folks came in, near Ella’s products she sold, under the front door sign that spoke of both her love of her Southern roots and of her adopted neighbors, the Ohio Amish: Y’all Come Back Now.
Danki!

Jack was sitting in the back booth, facing the front door as he always did when he was here so he could keep an eye on things. Keep an eye on her too, she knew. Both he and Hannah had told her that Jack and she had been dating for a while and had been getting very involved before her accident and coma, whatever
very involved
really meant. She was embarrassed to ask Jack and wondered how much he really knew of her—had seen of her, in the flesh.

She was finally getting up the courage to ask him how intimate they had been and what he really wanted from her. They were business partners—she had the legal document that explained that—but had they been bed partners, too? Evidently taking the high road, good guy that he was, Jack had not pressured her on resuming where they left off—and just exactly where was that?

Today he looked not only bleary-eyed from getting little sleep after that car wreck last night, but she could tell he was upset by something the stranger who had joined him was saying. Jack, tall and imposing in his uniform, even sitting down, seemed to dwarf the outsider, a compact, balding man, maybe in his late fifties, with graying, reddish hair and a creeping hairline. He reminded Ray-Lynn of a rumpled professor and kept gesturing as he talked. Ding-dang, they looked at odds, but they were keeping their voices down, leaning forward over their empty plates, as if they’d like to leap over the table at each other. When she’d refilled their coffee cups, she had overheard only that the guy’s name was Branin, nothing else.

She went over with their check herself. Although Jack owned half of the restaurant, he always insisted on paying. She should, she thought, carry the big bouquet of lavender right over to them and plunk it on their table, since its smell was supposed to calm people down.

“…still say I should’ve been told up front, not after the fact…” she heard Jack mutter.

“We had to get him placed,” Branin said. “Since the Amish were willing and we had a go-between, it happened real fast…”

They stopped talking and looked up at her. “You two gentlemen need anything else?” Ray-Lynn asked, and put the check on the table.

“We’re doing fine,” Jack said. “Thanks, Ray-Lynn.”

She and Jack exchanged one of their “see you later” looks and she walked to the next booth and chatted with those patrons while keeping an ear cocked. Branin was saying, “Sorry I tracked you down here. Your office dispatcher told me where you’d gone. I appreciate your inviting me to join you for breakfast, Sheriff.”

“So, you staying in the area for a while? Don’t you have to get back to D.C.?” was the last thing she heard as she saw new patrons come in and went to seat them.

D.C.? Washington, D.C.? Having to put up with that FBI Agent Linc Armstrong from Cleveland a while ago was one thing, but D.C.? At least her car accident and coma had not hurt her curiosity, even though it was said that was what killed the cat.

* * *

When Ella saw that one high patch of her hardy Hidcote lavender had their flower heads about one-third open—which was ideal picking for sachets—she decided to take a break from weeding, get her hand sickle and cut some. The morning breeze and sunshine had dried out the foliage and flowers well enough for cutting.

“You are allowed to take a rest, you know,” she told Andrew as she started past him down the hill. “I’ll be right back. Oh—look,” she told him as he stood and stretched his big frame, “a car just turned in the lane.”

She could tell he tensed right away. “It looks like the same make of sports car that was in the wreck,” he said. “A white one, though. Do you know who it is?”

“No, but sometimes customers see my sign down the road and just stop by. It’s all right. You can stay here.”

Since no one was at the farmhouse, she walked down to the driveway. It was a stranger, a woman dressed fancy in a pale blue linen suit, white silky blouse and gold jewelry that glinted in the sun. Her hair was sleek and black, collar-length, with flat, straight-cut bangs. The ebony sheen of it in the sun looked so unusual in this area full of fair-haired folks. Just like the young man in the car wreck last night, she looked Asian.

“Hello,” the woman said, nodding. “This is the Lantz farm? Sheriff Freeman told me on the phone where to find it. I’m Connie Lee, Sam Lee’s mother—the man whose car went out of control last night.”

“Oh,
ya,
how is he doing?”

“Back injuries, two broken legs, but at least they don’t think he’ll be paralyzed. His father’s with him, and we’re having him flown to the Cleveland Clinic, but his long-term prognosis is good. I understand that you and your cousin were the first to reach him and risked your lives to be sure he was out of his burning car. I can’t thank you enough. I wanted to give you this token of our gratitude,” she said, and reached in her purse for a white envelope.

Ella’s eyes widened, not in the surprise at a gift, but because she glimpsed a gun in that purse. A small one, gleaming silver. She tried to keep calm. Amish women might not deal with firearms, but lady
Auslanders
evidently did.

“Unless that’s just a thank-you note, we are glad to have helped but nothing else is needed,” Ella told her.

“Oh, but—a donation for your church then.”

“It is not our way, but you could donate to our church’s Help Haiti fund—in your son’s name.”

She drew the envelope back. “Haiti? Yes, that was a mess there. How nice of your people. I need to rush today, but let me just mention the other thing then, something that has nothing to do with the accident. My husband, Chang, and I are from New York City, and we’re going to open a luxury spa here in the Home Valley. You know, clients can come for few days or a week, get out of the rat race, lose weight, find peace and quiet. I believe Sheriff Freeman said you are the one who sells the lavender.”

“Yes, Ella Lantz. I’m currently expanding my shop and products.”

“That’s great, because we want to decorate our new spa with country decor, kind of Amish chic. We were thinking of calling our own products we use here the Skinny Spa line, but we’ll probably repackage things as the Sweetgum Spa line, since that’s the road we’re building on. Great buzzword for anything today, you know—
skinny
. You might want to consider that for your products line. We’d want to purchase and sell for you things like lotions, essential oils, spritzes, scented candles, body candles…”

“Body candles?”

“Right. People love them. They burn with a fragrance, then leave a puddle of warm liquid we use for massages. Well, more later, as I’ll be back and forth, but we are so grateful that you helped save our Sam. He’ll eventually be running the Sweetgum Spa, and I’ll be sure you and your family have unlimited free beauty packages.”

“That’s kind of you,” Ella told her, but it just showed this woman knew next to nothing about Amish anything. “Skinny” products and Amish chic decor around here? No way.

“So, where is the man you were with?” she asked, evidently as an afterthought as she squinted up the hill into the sun. “He seems to have disappeared, but if he’s your cousin, I’d like to thank him in person.”

As if she expected no answer to that, Connie Lee headed for her sleek car, which still had its motor running. She got back in, slammed the door, backed up and drove down the lane.

And the woman was right. Andrew was nowhere in sight on the brow of the hill. Wasn’t he overdoing hiding himself? He was only Cousin Andrew now, not whoever he really was. At least since he’d seemed eager to lend advice about organizing her business, he’d probably be happy to hear there would be a new demand—an expanding market—for her lavender.

She headed toward her house. Surely, with his sprained ankle, he hadn’t hiked higher up the hill. He’d no doubt reappear when he saw the stranger was gone. She got the hand sickle, which she kept good and sharp, picked up a big basket and started back outside, still thinking about Connie Lee, her husband with the strange name of Chang and injured son, Sam. Was that really Samuel, a good biblical name? And in Connie Lee’s world, was that little gun just what this sharp blade was to Ella, a part of her she didn’t even think as a weapon? Because, in Amish country, what could she be afraid of?

Ella startled and almost cut herself when she glimpsed a man standing right outside her kitchen window. Oh—Andrew! But what…why?