Accidentally Amish (9 page)

“I feel loopy,” Annalise said, though she signed the form as directed.

“That’s why you need your friend.” Now the clipboard was in front of Rufus. “Driver signs here,” the nurse said. She reached over to a side counter and picked up a plastic bag to push into Rufus’s arms. “Here are her personal items.”

“Can she walk?” Rufus asked.

“I’ve got a wheelchair ready.” The nurse stepped into the hall and returned in a few seconds with the wheelchair.

Annalise was going to need looking after. She could not go back to Colorado Springs in this condition, and Mo was running a motel, not an infirmary.

He would take her home, Rufus decided. He would not take no for an answer.

“She can stay in Ruth’s old room,” Rufus told his mother. “I know I am asking a lot, but I will try to be home more the next couple of days to help.”

Annie listened in a vague, medicated haze. She did not recall agreeing to this arrangement and was not entirely sure who Ruth was or why her room was available, but she liked the idea of lying in a bed at that moment. She was on a sofa in the Beiler house and had a fleeting thought that she could no longer understand the conversation. It was as if Rufus and Franey had switched to another language. If she could just rest a few minutes, she could muster the strength to call the attorneys.

The conversation went mute.

When she woke, the sparse bedroom was dim, the only light coming in from the hall through the open door. The shadows formed themselves into Rufus’s shape sitting in a straight-backed chair just outside the door, and gradually Annie’s brain made the necessary neurological connections. This was Ruth’s room at the Beiler house, and she had dozed the day away in the fog of painkillers.

“Rufus,” she said. He was instantly on his feet. “Why am I here?”

“Because you need to be.” He stood tentatively in the doorway. “I … have business matters….” She sighed, which hurt.

“You are in no condition.”

She lifted a lightweight quilt and saw that she was wearing a nightgown.

“Do not worry,” he said, “my sisters helped you change. Then they washed your things and put them over there.” He pointed to a neat stack on top of a dresser. “I will go back to the motel tomorrow to get whatever you left.”

“It’s not much,” she said.

“Yes, as I recall, you had little with you.”

“I really do need to check on some things,” Annie pushed herself to a half-sitting position. “Where’s my bag?”

Rufus pointed toward the foot of the bed.

Annie winced as she leaned forward to reach her bag.

“You should rest.”

“Fortunately, in my business I can work and rest at the same time.”

“Does your line of work have something to do with why you ended up in the back of Tom’s truck?”

“That has more to do with the people I chose to work with,” she said, “and less with the business itself.” Slowly, she managed to fish her phone from the bag.

“Must you do this now?”

“Let me just check my e-mail on my phone.” She ignored Rufus’s scowl. “You can come in.”

Rufus stepped tentatively into the room.

Three messages from Jamie reporting on client actions.

Thirteen Facebook notifications.

Six client questions.

One from Barrett.

Annie opened the site her family used for messages and found one from her mother.

“Rufus,” Annie said, “did your ancestors come from Switzerland?”

“Nearly three hundred years ago. That is a strange question to ask at the moment,
ya
?”

“I told you I had a Byler great-great-grandmother. Her ancestors came from Switzerland, too.”

“I suppose it was a common name then, just as it is now.” Rufus moved closer to the bed, glancing at the open door. “I’ll get one of my sisters to help you.”

“I don’t need help. Tell me about your ancestors before I get loopy again.”

“Our roots go back to Christian Beyeler, who was a child when he came with his parents to Pennsylvania. He grew up to be prominent among the early Amish in Lancaster County.”

“I’ll have to find out more,” Annie said. “Meeting your family has made me curious. But first I have to deal with some pressing matters.”

“Can I help you with any of these pressing matters?”

She lifted one shoulder and let it drop—and regretted the motion. “I doubt it. I run a tech company. Some personnel matters are heating up right now.”

“Well, the company will have to run itself for a couple more days.” Rufus took the phone from her loose grip. “Are you ready to try to eat something with your medication?”

October 1737

C
hristian Beyeler opened his mouth and sucked in a long, slow breath, filling his lungs with fresh air until he thought they might pop. Only that morning had he convinced his mother he was truly well and would not collapse if she allowed him to go up on deck without Barbara standing guard. He did not care that she only relented today because she was absorbed with baby Elisabetha. The little girl’s spots disappeared at last, and the fever broke, but she was not taking water very well and was far from the cheerful, curious Lisbetli who entertained the family. His mother was up most of the night with the fussy child, trying to soothe every sound before it emerged to awaken other passengers. Christian closed his eyes and breathed a prayer for his baby sister.

The saltiness that hung heavy in the air across the Atlantic thinned now as the
Charming Nancy
navigated the channel into Philadelphia. The ship had entered Delaware Bay two days ago and was fighting the winds the last miles of the journey. Christian hoped for an early glimpse of Philadelphia. So far he had not seen more than lanterns along the shoreline.

Now the sun was shrugging away from the horizon and pinking up the eastern sky. Christian kept to the starboard side so he could watch dawn’s hues meld into the waiting day. He moved toward the bow, determined to be the first one in his family to see Philadelphia.

His parents were doing a brave thing. Of that Christian was sure. Europeans had been moving to the Americas in fits and dribbles for two hundred years because they believed enormous profit lay in the new land, but Christian’s father had explained that no one had attempted anything like William Penn’s holy experiment. Christian’s eight years were pockmarked by sores of exclusion because of what his parents believed. But in Pennsylvania, belief would be as free and abundant as air. He was as sure of that as anything he had ever known.

Jakob watched his second daughter climb the ladder from the third-class passenger quarters to the deck. Barbara had gone up ahead. He glanced over his shoulder at Verona, who sat on their lower berth with Lisbetli limply on her lap and Maria leaning into her shoulder. He had promised he would go up and check on Christian. Once Anna clambered through the opening at the top of the ladder, Jakob began his ascent.

In the time it took him to emerge on deck, the girls had wandered in separate directions. Jakob caught a glimpse of Anna going toward the bow and Barbara toward the stern. Christian was nowhere in sight. Jakob’s instinct told him to chase the younger daughter. Anna always had a nose for where her only brother would show up. Barbara was fourteen, practically grown. She would know to return to their berths when the time came.

Jakob had to move quickly to keep up with Anna, dodging rigging, barrels, mops, and idle planks. He breathed a prayer of thanksgiving that the scourge that sent passengers into the sea had calmed. Verona thought the baby was still fragile, but Jakob believed that if she had survived this long, they were unlikely to lose her now. They were so close to Philadelphia. By the end of the day they should be on solid ground and out of the cramped quarters where disease thrived. Perhaps Verona would start to believe again that a better life lay ahead, not behind.

“Anna,” he called, “wait for me.” He recognized the posture of her reluctance, but she did stop and turn toward him.

“I see Christian.” She pointed. “He’s right up there, close to the bow.”

Jakob followed the line of her finger and saw his towheaded son transfixed as he watched the Pennsylvania coastline with its evidence of settlements and promise of civilization. The boy looked thin, he realized. All the children did. Jakob was suddenly alarmed by his own acquiescence to what the journey had done to his family. Clothing hung on all their frames as if it were made for husky strangers rather than stitched by Verona’s fingers for their familiar frames.

But it was over. They had survived. All of them. Many families around them bore sickness compounded by death, but the Beyelers were whole and present. Moving to a new life was not for the fainthearted. If they could survive the journey, they could survive homesteading their own land and living in the freedom of their own beliefs.

“Are we going to have real beds in Philadelphia?” Anna wanted to know.

Jakob stroked the back of her head. “You’ll still have to sleep with your sisters, but at least the bed won’t be riding the waves of the sea.”

“Good.”

They reached Christian. The three of them stood, wordless in a sacred moment, peering ahead and scrutinizing the view for any sign of the port city.

“Are we going to have a garden in Philadelphia?” Anna asked.

“No, not in Philadelphia,” Jakob answered. “We will only stay there to get the papers we need. Then we will go to our own land.
Die Bauerei.
The farm.”

“Will we have a big house?”

“Not at first. But someday, if God blesses us. We will be with other Amish families, and we will be grateful for whatever God gives us.”

“Will Lisbetli have to be baptized?” Anna asked. “Will I?”

“Not until you are all grown up and decide to join the church.”

“I’m going to join the church as soon as I can,” Christian announced. “I already believe in my heart.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“There’s Barbara.” Anna pointed.

The ship listed to one side as it turned. Anna slid toward Jakob, but it was Christian who caught her.

Verona rubbed circles in the center of Lisbetli’s back, a touch that had soothed the little girl since she was a newborn. With her other hand, Verona coaxed the baby to sip water from one of the three tin cups the family shared. Lisbetli had little weight to spare.

At her mother’s knee, Maria picked up the loose nail she had gripped every day of this journey. Near the base of the berth’s wooden frame, she scratched a mark into the wood.

“How many is that,
Mamm
?” Maria asked.