The Amish Bride (46 page)

I glanced at Mom before looking back at
Mammi
and nodding, giving her an encouraging smile.

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Believe it or not, Malachi was very nice to me before we married. Afterward, though, he began to grow concerned about how we looked as a couple and then as a family. My mother and her ‘ways’ embarrassed him—how smart she was, how outspoken, how creative. He was always trying to make sure I wasn’t like her at all.

“She told me then that since I was little she used to recite a verse from a psalm over me, the one that goes, ‘Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars.’ She said it was her prayer for me, that I would make my spiritual home next to the altar of the Lord. That’s why I put the swallow on the painting. It was my signature.”

Mammi
looked from Mom to me. Her eyes glistened as she spoke. “I painted this the night Paul died. I couldn’t sleep. Giselle had brushes and
supplies in her room that she kept hidden. I knew my mother had given her some canvases too. I found those under her bed, and then I painted in the kitchen by the light of the lamp.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of someday forgetting what he looked like. I’d never have him with me as a boy or as a man.” She looked at Mom. “Not like I have you and Klara and Giselle.” She breathed in deeply and then exhaled. I wondered if she said all she was going to, but then she continued. “Anyway, I felt compelled to paint him. I worked fast and finished before Malachi got up to milk, but as I was hurrying up the stairs he heard me. I reached Giselle’s room by the time he was on the landing, but he saw the canvas and the paints.

“He jumped to conclusions, though, thinking I was coming out of the room instead of going in and that Giselle had done the painting. He told me he’d instructed Giselle to get rid of all her art supplies. I said she would. He demanded the painting, but I turned it away from him and told him I’d take care of it. Ever the obedient wife, I did plan to destroy it…but I just needed some time. In his anger he grabbed it from me, and the paints fell to the floor in a clatter. He stomped down the stairs and Giselle came out of her room. I was overcome with grief. The back door banged shut.”

She closed her eyes. “Oh, the things I can remember. Giselle in her white nightgown, tiptoeing down the stairs, her long blond hair hanging halfway to her waist. A minute later she returned with the painting, tears streaming down her face. She hugged me tightly and then slipped back into her room. I never asked her what she did with it. Malachi was furious. I simply told him it was gone, implying I’d destroyed it. That was after the milking. Thankfully the preacher arrived right then to talk about the burial.

“Then Malachi was killed so tragically a short time later, and regardless of all his faults, he was my husband. The next few weeks were a blur. I realized how big our debts were and that I had to sell the dairy. I had to take care of the girls. I wanted more than anything to escape all the grief around me. Then we moved to Lancaster. Mother encouraged us to go. She wasn’t well, and we both knew she couldn’t give me the help I needed.

“It wasn’t until we were here that I remembered the painting. I asked Giselle about it, hoping she’d brought it with her. The look on her face
told me she hadn’t. I was harsh with her, which was so unfair of me. In all my grief I’d forgotten it too.

“I wrote to my mother, asking her to retrieve it for us, to make some excuse to the new owners, but she had passed by the time the letter arrived. I’m sure my brother Gerry intercepted it, but I never heard from him about it.”

She held the painting out so she could see it more clearly. “And now, here it is, after all these years. I can remember now, plain as day what Paul looked like, when I haven’t been able to recall him for years. Funny how seeing little Abe brought it all back, though. Isn’t that something? How we can see the past in the present?”

She handed the painting back to me. “I want you to keep it.”

“
Mammi
, no,” I said. “You should have it.”

“No. I’ll look at little Abe and remember Paul. It’s all I need,” she said. “It’s yours now.”

I turned toward Mom and she nodded.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “It was so amazing to see this after finding the game and going through Sarah’s book—” I clamped my hand over my mouth, realizing I’d mentioned the book in front of my mother.

“It’s all right,”
Mammi
said. “We need to talk more about that, now that you know about Paul.” She nodded toward my bag. “Go ahead and show the book to your mother.”

I retrieved it and handed it to Mom.

Mammi
cleared her throat and then said, softly, “Ella, the reason I was hoping you could break the code has to do with Paul.”

I looked at her, eyes wide. “What about him?”

“I think my mother knew why he died.”

Mom’s head shot up.

Mammi
continued. “A few years after we lost him a woman here, an English neighbor, lost a baby to crib death. I began wondering if that was what it was. But the more I thought about it, the more I think my mother suspected something else. She had a brother, Alvin, who wasn’t quite right. Of course, mother always told us what a blessing he was and how much she learned about life from loving him, but through the years I’ve wondered if Paul had something like what was wrong with Alvin.”

“
Mamm
, why do you think that?” Mom asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. He wasn’t like you girls were by the time he died. He wasn’t as alert. He wasn’t as strong.”

Mom shook her head. “There are some things we can never know. Even if it was crib death—it’s called sudden infant death syndrome now—there’s no known cause for it. It wouldn’t have been anything anyone did.”

I thought of Malachi blaming Giselle.

“I know,”
Mammi
said, her eyes watering. “I would just like to know what my mother thought. I think she would have told me in time, had she lived.” She turned toward me. “Anyway, that was what I was hoping for.”

Mom must have found the code because she was turning the book on its side.

“I bet Zed could help me figure it out,” I said.

“Don’t ask him now,” Mom said. “Wait a few months. Until he’s healed.”

I agreed.

Mammi
sighed. “I hope I’m still around then.”

For a second none of us said anything, and then all at once all three of us started laughing. She’d been saying that sort of thing for the last several years, but the truth was she kept getting better—not worse.

After we told her goodbye and headed out to Mom’s car, I realized I had another clue—a big one—to Sarah’s book.
Mammi
was the swallow. Sarah had borrowed a symbol from the Bible and then prayed for
Mammi
based on that verse.

Zed still wasn’t allowed on the computer because of his concussion, so I had it all to myself that evening. First, I viewed the raw footage he’d put together for his film class, at his request, while he rested on the couch. It started out with a still photo of Lexie’s box with Amielbach carved on the top and then a photo of Abraham Sommers.

“Where did you get this photo?” I called out. The man had dark hair, a beard, and intense eyes. He wore a suit with a thin tie.

“Herr Lauten sent it to me.”

There was footage of the box with the Frutigen bakery on it, a still of my box with the Home Place, then the outside of our cottage and Aunt
Klara’s house, and then scenes from Lexie’s wedding and our train trip out to Oregon and back. He’d included the footage of Freddy, along with a close-up of his face I hadn’t seen before. He had footage of the back of an Amish girl—Izzy, I was sure—toward the end.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Take another film class next year,” he said. “I have to figure out what my story is.”

“Good luck,” I muttered. He definitely had a lot to work with, but I didn’t envy him figuring out how it all fit together. Designing a cake was obviously a whole lot easier than putting together a film, even a short one.

Next, I pulled up an online Bible concordance and started looking up different birds. Both the sparrow and swallow were referenced in the verse in Psalms. There was a reference to a hen and her brood in the New Testament. There were quite a few references to hawks, owls, and eagles. I had already decided the last one represented David. I wasn’t sure about the crow, though.

I wished I could just mention the secret code to Zed to see if he had any ideas, but there was no way I would. I just hoped there was someway we could figure it out for
Mammi
’s sake, now more than ever, knowing why she so desperately wanted to find out what Sarah had written.

R
osalee told me she would send a driver to pick me up at the bus station in Nappanee. As I stepped off the bus, I looked for someone familiar—one of the drivers she sometimes used. Or even Penny. But no one was there. As the bus driver hoisted my bag out of the luggage compartment, I was just about to reach for it, when an Amish man stepped forward, his back toward me.

“Pardon me,” I said. “That’s mine.”

As he turned toward me, I realized it was Luke. A smile spread slowly across his face, but at the sight of him I began to cry.

He blushed as he directed me away from the bus with the nod of his head.

I wanted so badly for him to hug me, but I knew he wouldn’t, certainly not in public and probably not even in private. He put my bag in the back of his buggy and then helped me up to the bench, squeezing my hand before letting it go.

After he climbed in, he turned toward me. I’d found a tissue in my purse and was blowing my nose.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Just emotional.”

“I really am sorry about your
daed
. And Zed. And Ezra.”

I started to cry again. All the tears I’d been holding in came rushing out. Luke put his arm around me, a little awkwardly, but still it felt comforting.

“Someone will see,” I said.

“
Ach
,” he replied. “It doesn’t matter.”

I leaned against him then, gently, and cried some more.

He waited quietly, and once I’d stopped and he eased the buggy onto the road, he urged me to talk as we slowly made our way to the Home Place. He asked a question now and then. By the time we reached the lane, I’d dried my tears. By the time we reached the bakery, I was smiling. By the time I saw Eddie on the lawn of the Home Place, jumping up and down, waving his arms at me, I was laughing.

I redid my final with Pierre, using one of Sarah’s cake recipes, the sour cream spice cake, and a simpler design than the first one. I only used swallows instead of all the birds in Sarah’s book, but even at that I was pretty sure it was the last fancy cake I would ever do.

Pierre groaned when he saw it and said, “Not this fowl cake again.” Then he laughed at his pun. He grew serious and added, “Such a waste of talent. You could do so much better.”

“I like it,” I answered.

He gave me a mark of eighty-five out of a hundred and then offered me the job anyway.

“No, thank you,” I answered. “Your shop is too fancy for me.”

“So you’re sticking with that little backwater bakery? Where the fanciest thing is a turnover?”

“Pretty much,” I said.

“Such a waste,” he said again.

I thanked him for all he taught me, knowing I’d learned far more than he intended.

“Why?” He threw up his arms. “You won’t use a fraction of it!”

“I will,” I said. “Wait and see. Somehow I will.”

Then he touched my sleeve. “I still see you as a cook. Making big farm breakfasts. Feeding a family. Lots of homemade breads and soups and
stews. Then a pie to top it all off.” He sighed. “Just know, even though I teased you, how important that work is. What I wouldn’t give to have a family to feed. There is nothing more important.”

“Where’s your family?” I knew it wasn’t any of my business, but I asked anyway.

“Outside Paris. I have two boys. They are grown now. Raised by their
mère
and
beau-père
—stepfather.”