The Missing (13 page)

It had also been last evening that she’d bumped into Mammi Adah in the hallway, half hidden amongst its assortment of sweaters, black shawls, work jackets, and boots. There her grandmother had stood, face beet red in utter embarrassment, as if she’d been eavesdropping on the family’s time of Bible reading and prayer.
Awful strange
. . .

For some time now, since before Mamma had left, Dat had been reading Scripture from the English Bible. Plenty of Amish folk did this, and it wasn’t against their bishop’s wishes . . . not like some Grace knew. Even so, it troubled her to think Mammi was spying on them. Or was she merely looking in on them with pity?

Who’s to know, tight-lipped as Mammi Adah can be when it
comes to Mamma.

Grace knelt in the soft sawdust and pressed her face against Willow’s. “Hullo, sweet girl. Did ya sleep at all?”

Grace was heartened to see the horse was more relaxed today, her injured leg not so tightly pushed up against her belly as before. How many feeble old horses had been nursed back to health with various home remedies passed from one neighbor to another? Adam and Joe had given her little hope last night at supper. Dawdi Jakob had sided with her and Mandy, arguing with the boys to give it more time—
“and more homemade
liniment, just maybe.”
Mammi Adah had remained silent on the matter, which surprised Grace, now as she thought about it. Mammi wasn’t one to hold back her opinion, no matter what the supper table discussion
.

Grace touched Willow’s head, tenderly petting her. “You’ll be up soon and walkin’ round the barnyard,
gut
as new.” The words sounded deceptive even to her own ears as she looked at the beautiful horse lying there. God had made horses to sleep standing up.

She wondered what Mamma would say if she knew of Willow’s condition. Surely she would be distraught, too. “Did Mamma tell you where she was going?” she whispered to Willow. “Did she come here and talk to you before her nighttime walks?”

Grace had slipped out of the house several times to see if her mother was indeed pouring out her heart to Willow.
Like
I sometimes do.
But she’d never seen her mother do any such thing.

Willow turned her head slightly and gave a muffled whinny.

“You know I’d make ya well if I could, hmm . . . ?” She leaned forward, rubbing the upper part of the mare’s injured leg as she softly hummed a hymn from the
Ausbund.

Then, sitting ever so still, she absorbed the sounds around her. From across the road, she thought she heard the soft babbling of Mill Creek. And then . . . the crunching of gravel underfoot.

“Dat must be up already,” she said, still stroking Willow’s neck. “We’re all so worried ’bout you.”

Grace heard a shuffling sound and the barn door creaking open
.

She turned toward the door, straining to see. If only there was a smidgen of light from the moon. But she’d crept here
“on
the deepest side of the night,”
as Mamma sometimes referred to the span of time after midnight, before sunrise.

Returning her attention to Willow, she said softly, “A lantern would help, jah?”

When the footsteps were nearly upon her, she jerked around and saw the dim silhouette of a young man. She wouldn’t have known who it was, except that he spoke her name in such a gentle, hushed manner, she recognized him immediately. “Yonnie?” she asked. “What’re ya doin’ here?”

“Same as you . . . looks like.” He squatted down close to Willow and opened a bottle of liquid that smelled like turpentine mixed with vinegar. Methodically, he began to apply it to the injured leg. “I mixed in some egg to make it creamy. My Dat always used this on our horses out in Indiana,” he said.

Her eyes were accustomed enough to the darkness to see his hands making light, flowing circular movements.

“You don’t mind, do ya? My comin’ here to help Willow.”

“No.” She surprised herself by not thinking before speaking. Yet how could she say otherwise?

“
Gut,
then.”

She shook her head. “Maybe you misunderstood.”

“Oh?”

“Willow’s our pet.”

“Why, sure she is, Gracie.” He clucked his tongue as he leaned closer to Willow. “And I can see why you’re fond of her. She’s one special mare. Mighty good-lookin’, too.”

Grace was wary of his tender talk. What right did he have to sit out here in the dark like this with
her
wounded horse?
Or with
me, for that matter?
“I best be goin’ inside.” She rose quickly.

“Well, I’ll be right here.”

She considered that. “Ain’t at all necessary, really.”

“Jah . . .” He paused, and she waited to hear what he’d say. “Grace, I’m doin’ this for your father. Just so you’re clear on that.”

She blushed in the darkness—she’d sounded awfully presumptuous. The air felt ever so still, as it often did just before dawn. In but a few minutes, Dat and Adam would come to look after the sheep and the new lambs, flinging their arms into jackets, their boot tongues flapping as they trudged into the barn. What would they think if they saw her here with Yonnie?

“All right, then,” Grace said gently. “Make Willow
gut
and well . . . for Dat.”

Martin Puckett’s van was filled with Amishmen. He was glad to be receiving frequent calls for transportation again, par ticularly since he’d lost some days of business following Lettie Byler’s disappearance last month.

His wife was right—the strange rumors about his running off with Lettie had blown over, and he’d come out smelling like a rose, just as Janet had predicted. Her kiss as he left the house this morning had lingered on his cheek.

Presently he was driving a whole smattering of farmers, carpenters, and one draftsman named John Stoltzfus to different locations. John, the youngest of the group, wanted to go to the Bird-in-Hand Family Inn, where he was to meet an out-of-towner.

“His name’s Roan Nelson,” John told his cousin and the others in Pennsylvania Dutch. “To think a fella from Virginia with a good-payin’ job would want to pull up stakes and build smack-dab in the midst of us.”

“Jah . . . what’s wrong with him?” said one, to which the passengers in the van burst into laughter.

“Doesn’t this Roan fellow know he’ll be surrounded by slow-movin’ traffic?” said another. “And smelly road apples, too?”

Martin smiled, enjoying all the fast-talking Deitsch. Eavesdropping was one of the perks of his job. Daily he heard tittle-tattle, putting the pieces to an enormous mosaic together in his head at the end of each week—the struggles of living “in the world but not of the world.” To think these good folk adhered to the lifestyle of another era altogether while living in the twenty-first century.
Searching for happiness is like trying
to catch a feather in the wind no matter who you are.

“Hey, is Mr. Nelson the one who bought the undersized piece of land over on Gibbons Road?” asked John’s cousin.

“That’s right,” said the oldest-looking man in the bunch. “I guess Roan Nelson told Preacher Josiah he’s always wanted to run a small farm of sorts.”

“What’ll he grow on such a small acreage?” a farmer piped up from the backseat.

“Guess he’ll have to get his house built first,” John replied. “Which is why I’m meetin’ him today . . . and his daughter, who’s staying over at Riehls’ for the summer. Preacher says Roan wants some Amish influence in the look of his house, but he also hired an English guy to rough out the blueprints.”

Martin wanted to interject a niggling thought:
Don’t you find
it peculiar when outsiders want to live among you?
The Amish he knew best wanted to keep their neighborhoods cloistered and free of worldly ways. Folks like Roan Nelson had a tendency to break down the long-held barriers within the Anabaptist community—bring in too much of a modern mentality. Martin assumed no amount of the contemporary world, even in small doses, was any good for the young people of this tight-knit community.

“Why was that parcel of land sold off to an Englischer?” John’s cousin asked. “Who slipped a cog on that?”

Several of the men chuckled, and one mentioned that a Mennonite named Bender was the original landowner. A man in the second seat spoke. “The way I heard it, the owner’s attention was caught mighty quick by the first person who came along with the right amount of cash in hand.”

That was precisely what Martin had suspected, too.
Some
folk will sell most anything, if they’re desperate enough.

But this Virginia businessman they were joking about . . . Martin was very interested in meeting him. Likely he would have the opportunity when he was hauling Josiah Smucker and his crew of workers over there every day.

What’s Roan Nelson’s motive for worming his way into an Amish
neighborhood, anyway?

Heather badly needed a morning caffeine fix, but the naturopath had strongly advised giving up coffee—all day, every day. Anything with caffeine, including chocolate, she recalled. Even the green tea she was allowed to drink had to be decaf. As a result, she was dragging around like the old-fashioned string mop Marian Riehl used to wash her big kitchen floor. Once again, Heather had taken her supplements upstairs before breakfast, then downed two full cups of the Japanese green tea.

She sat respectfully studying the rough blueprints in the pavilion near the Bird-in-Hand Family Inn, where her father had acquired a room last night. Her dad and the draftsman—an Amishman named John Stoltzfus, whom her father had met last month at an animal auction—sat across from her, drinking their coffee and tossing ideas around. The smell of the rich brew taunted her nose with its aroma.

John finally posed a question directly to her. “Do ya see any changes you want to make, Miss Nelson?” A flat pencil was pushed through his cropped brown hair and perched just above his ear.

“Well, let’s see.” She looked over the blueprints, wishing she felt more interest. She scrutinized the placement of the bedrooms but her thoughts wandered. It was still so disorienting to think her father was building a new house.

What would Mom suggest they do about the number of proposed bedrooms? Wouldn’t she be heartbroken at all this talk of moving away from their longtime family home?

As if to center her thoughts, Dad pointed to the sheet that depicted the upper level. “What about the layout of the upstairs bathrooms, kiddo?”

His enthusiasm for the plan was evident in his cheerful tone.
What sort of daughter discourages her widower father?
“How about a private bath for the second bedroom?” she ventured.

“Separate bath it is.” He leaned back and clapped his hands.
Oh boy,
Heather thought.

Focusing on the floor plan was difficult, almost impossible, when she should be prying open her heart and telling Dad about her illness. And she wouldn’t mind his input on the Wellness Lodge program she was still deliberating. Insurance wouldn’t cover the cost, and it would be tough for her to devise a way to pay the considerable expense on her own. And, too, if she enrolled in the program ASAP, she’d be disappearing from life in general even more than she already had here in Amish country.

Her father’s chin jutted forward as he moved his attention to the area of his future home office.
What use will he have for
an office here?
she had to wonder.

As she studied the blueprints more carefully, it seemed apparent a woman had been involved on some level. Maybe Josiah Smucker’s wife, Sally? The dining room was only a few steps away from the compact yet serviceable kitchen . . . where a smallish breakfast nook was situated near a fireplace at one end of the room.
Perfect for morning coffee and sweet rolls,
she thought, but caught herself.
No . . . perfect for raw-milk yogurt
smoothies and fresh fruit.

“You look tired,” Dad said unexpectedly.

She glanced up. “Guess I am.”

“Late-night party?”

“Right, Dad . . . with
you
at the buffet, pigging out, remember?” She smiled, feeling slightly embarrassed, thanks to the Amishman sitting across from them. “Besides, most people go to bed with the chickens around here. Isn’t that right?” She looked at John.

The man chuckled, his beard touching his chest as he nodded.

“I’d like to sign off on this today, but perhaps a short break would do us all some good.” Dad motioned for her to walk with him. “Excuse us, please,” he told John, who politely said he could use a moment to review the revisions up to this point. “My daughter needs to stretch her legs.”

I do?
Startled, Heather rose and followed him around the inn and out front.

“Everything all right, honey?” he asked.

She inhaled quickly.

“Are you disappointed in the house? Am I moving too fast?”

The worried note in his voice stirred her heart. Why
did
he want to leave Virginia? Their lovely house held sentimental value for them both, especially with Mom gone. How could Dad possibly walk away from all the cherished reminders of their years together? Like hers, Dad’s life had become unraveled after Mom’s death. Maybe it
was
time for him to make a massive change, just as she had needed this time away for herself.
But a permanent move?

“I’m fine with whatever you want to build, Dad—however you want to build it.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded. “It’s your house . . . it’s what you want.”

His features relaxed into a smile. “I want you to visit often.”

“Sure, Dad . . . and I will. If I can.” They headed through the parking lot toward the quaint farmers market, housed in a barnlike structure. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, gathering strength . . . or perhaps courage. She’d put this off for too long. “Dad, I’m sorry . . . it’s really hard to think about building a house right now. I’m happy for you, I really am. But I need to talk to you about something completely different. Something I should’ve discussed with you before.”

He stopped walking abruptly. “Honey, what is it?”

She paused, catching his eye. “I’m sick, Dad.” There was no turning back. “I wanted to spare you the bad news. . . .”