The Amish Bride (14 page)

I
left with Mom without seeing Ada. Will walked both of us out to the car, thanking my mother and then adding a nod of gratitude to me. I hadn’t done anything except dish up soup. Ezra was the one who read the girls book after book after book. He was the one who told them to put their pajamas on and brush their teeth. He was the one who told them jokes and then tucked them into bed.

Mom was silent until we reached the highway. Then she let out a sigh, and even though it was dark I could tell her eyes were teary by the sound of her voice.

“Did Ada have a miscarriage?” I asked.

“You know I can’t answer that,” she responded, and then she swiped her index finger under her eyes. It would be breaking confidentiality if she told me, even though Ada was my cousin. “Actually, I’m not sure.”

It was pretty clear what had happened. She was probably just trying to be vague because she felt as if I already knew too much. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I’d seen her cry.

“I’m turning into an old softie,” she said. “A lot of things hit me tonight.”

I gazed out at the pastures still covered in snow. Poor Ada. I knew how much she loved being a mom and could only guess how much she wanted
to add another baby to her and Will’s family. She must have gotten pregnant soon after her wedding.

As Mom neared the covered bridge, my phone beeped. It was a text from Ezra. I quickly opened it.

Thought through what you said about Indiana. I’d like it if you came along. I’m leaving in a week. Let’s talk more. Ez

I quickly closed my phone and did my best not to smile, but Mom was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn’t notice my change in expression or even ask me, as she usually did, whom the text was from. I waited an hour until I texted Ezra back, and then I simply sent one word.
Cool.
Another ingredient for my “recipe for life” was coming together.

Two days later, Ezra came by the library on his motorcycle and asked if I wanted a ride home. It was a warm March day. As I walked beside him out to his bike, I noticed that his hair had been cut, back into the bowl shape he’d avoided for the last four years. He probably thought that would go over better in Indiana.

“How about if we go to the park first?”

“Sure,” I said, although I would have rather gone somewhere more private.

The green shoots of daffodils were managing to emerge, even though winter had hung on so late. I gulped in the air, happy to be on Ezra’s bike again. I felt such freedom as we zipped around the block and down the street. A sense of hope filled me as we sped along.

The park was filled with people, but Ezra led the way to a bench near the playground. The voices of children clanged around us. I watched a mother carrying an infant while chasing a toddler. Another mother was trying to wrestle a little boy into a stroller.

“Have you made the arrangements to rent a room?”

“I told the woman I was interested.”

“And you talked to your mom?”

“I’m eighteen, Ez.”

“Not for another month,” he answered. “Marta Bayer is the last person in the world I want to offend.”

I wrinkled my nose. “You know how hard she is to talk to.”

Ezra stared at me, a frown on his face.

Feeling chastised, I said, “I’ll do my best.”

We sat there for a moment, both staring off at the playground, me wondering why I felt so unsettled about something I wanted so badly. Chalking it up to nerves, I broke the silence.

“You know what would be cool?”

He shook his head.

“If we could take your bike.”

He laughed. “I’d have to hire a driver with a trailer. That wouldn’t go over well with the family.”

“Or, if the weather is good, we could drive it out.”

“It’s a long trip, Ella. Almost ten hours. Something like that. And I doubt if the family I’m staying with would be thrilled to have me show up on my bike.”

I pulled my knees to my chest, my feet flat on the bench, my dress tucked around my legs. “Maybe we could store it at wherever I end up staying.”

He shook his head. “As usual, you’ve thought of everything.”

“Not everything. I just like to brainstorm, that’s all.” I hugged my legs tighter. “We could wait to decide, once we know what the weather’s like.”

We talked a little longer and then Ezra put his arm around me. I snuggled closer. With all of the angst of figuring out our futures, we hadn’t had much time for us, not like we used to. He leaned toward me, his chin brushing the top of my head. I turned my face toward his, and then, to my surprise, he leaned down and kissed me, tenderly. In the park. In public. In front of all of Lancaster if, in fact, anyone was watching. When he pulled away, he had a grin on his face.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For?” I stammered, sure he wasn’t referring to the kiss, but I had no idea what he meant.

“Going with me.”

It was my turn to smile. “Isn’t it amazing how everything has fallen into place? Obviously, it’s what God wants for us.”

Ezra gave a little nod and then popped up from the bench, taking my hand and pulling me up beside him.

“We’ll have the adventure of our lives,” I said. “Just wait and see.”

That evening I sent an email of confirmation to Penny, and then I checked the online job listings again. The waitress job at the café was still open. I decided I would call in the morning about it. I finished filling out an application to another restaurant, online, as Zed came up behind me. I turned around and glared at him, wondering if he’d seen anything. If so, was he going to rat me out to Mom?

“Give me a minute,” I barked.

Once I was done, I turned the computer over to him and then looked at what he was doing. He’d saved clips of different videos to a program he’d managed to scrape enough money together to buy. He had footage from Lexie’s wedding, clips of the three wooden boxes our ancestor Abraham Sommers had carved, and footage of Aunt Klara’s house. He’d also shot footage of horses and carriages around the county and the covered bridge near our home.

I knew he’d used the camera on my phone at Lexie’s wedding.

“How’d you film all of this?”

“Your phone.”

I nodded. “And?”

“A friend’s phone.” He lowered his voice. “Sometimes Mom’s phone.”

“Zed!” The thing was, Mom probably had no idea she had a video camera on her phone. I looked him in the eyes. “What are you going to do with all of it?” As I asked the question, a video of the man I was sure was Freddy came on the screen. I leaned closer to the monitor. “Is that him?” He wasn’t any clearer than he’d been on the street corner. It was the same coat and cap, but I still couldn’t see his face. He was in downtown Lancaster though, walking toward the camera.

“Yep.”

“You see him without Mom?”

“I have a couple of times.”

I made a face.

“He’s on disability, Ella. He gets lonely—although he helps out at the soup kitchen on weekends.”

I hadn’t listened very carefully the few times Mom had tried to talk with me about Freddy. It sounded as though he had some sort of digestive problems that made it hard for him to work.

Zed clicked on another clip. It was of me on Ezra’s motorcycle. You could see my face but not his.

“What are you going to do with all of these?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I just like to play with the clips. Rearrange scenes, that sort of thing.”

I’d been annoyed with Zed ever since Freddy returned, but I grew teary at the thought of how much I would miss him. He was a constant, steady presence in my life. There was no doubt I’d taken him for granted his entire existence.

I wouldn’t be around for the end of his freshman year. Or for his sophomore year. And maybe ever again. I always thought he was much too responsible to get into any kind of trouble, but now that I knew he was Freddy’s son, that added a whole new set of ingredients. What if he took after his father? What if it turned out he hadn’t fallen far from the family tree?

On Sunday afternoon I talked Mom into dropping me off at
Mammi
’s while she went to check on a first-time mother who had been having contractions on and off for a few days.
Mammi
was happy to see me and asked me to make us a pot of tea. Aunt Klara and Uncle Alexander were still away at church.
Mammi
had been fighting a cold and had chosen to stay home.

After I served her tea, I positioned a straight-back chair close to her recliner and sat down.

“How goes the code breaking?” She leaned toward me, a twinkle in her eye.

I smiled. “Well, we’re not there yet.”

Her face fell, and I realized that when she saw me show up this afternoon, she must have assumed I had come with big news. I felt terrible.

“Don’t look so sad,” I told her quickly, “it’s not like I haven’t made any progress at all.”

“No?”

“No. I’ve been working on it. Besides, we knew this would take time. Be patient, okay? I really feel as though I’ll have a breakthrough on this stuff very soon.”

I bit my lip, wanting so badly to tell her everything, to tell her I was about to do exactly what she’d been hoping for all along, go to Indiana. To the Home Place. Once there, I had no doubt I would find some clues or leads or explanations or something that would help me figure this out for her.

Changing the subject before I gave in to the urge to spill all, I pulled the carved box from the flannel pillowcase I’d stashed it in.

“I brought this,” I said. “I’d like to hear more about the Home Place, and I thought having the image of it might help.”

Mammi
reached out for the box and I passed it to her. She handled it with such care. She knew as well as I did that all three boxes—mine, Ada’s, and Lexie’s—had been carved from sycamore wood well over a century ago.

“What can you tell me about the different buildings in the picture?” I prodded.

She studied it for a long time, carefully running her fingers over the carved ridges and dips of the wood. Finally, she began to talk, saying that the first part of the house had been erected in the late 1870s—and that the original tile roof was still on it a hundred years later when she left Indiana. The big barn had been built first, then the one-room front part of the house, but within a few years the structure was turned into a two-story house, and later the two wings were added. A
daadi haus
had been built as a separate structure for her grandparents when her parents had purchased the property.

Once I’d received the architectural run-down, I asked more questions about the people who’d lived there, and soon she was off and running again.

“We were a small family, just six total,” she said, “though there was a seventh, a baby who died. As you know, I was the youngest, and the only girl. My oldest brother, Caleb, left home when I was still little and moved to Lancaster County, so I never knew him all that well when I was growing up.”

“How about the other two? Were you close to them?”

I saw a flash of something in her eyes, some pain of long ago that for a moment bubbled to the surface. Then she answered my question. “Of
the three, the brother I was closest to was Gerry, the father of Rosalee, the niece I was telling you about who lives there now.”

Feeling guilty as I held in the fact that Rosalee and I had actually played phone tag with each other just recently, I asked what made her decide to leave Indiana and move to Pennsylvania.

“When Caleb first came to Lancaster County, the woman he married had no brothers, so it was arranged that he would run his in-laws’ farm. Many years later, after Caleb’s wife died, he needed a housekeeper, so my mother urged me to come out and work for him that way. It ended up being a good move. He was kind to me. After he died, of course, the farm still belonged to his late wife’s family, who had no obligation to my children or me. But they were also kind. They let me lease the property, and eventually I was able to buy it from them.”

I nodded, knowing that out of all the descendants of Abraham Sommers,
Mammi
had been the one to inherit Amielbach, the old family mansion back in Switzerland. When she sold it, she’d used the proceeds to purchase this farm.

“Did you ever go back to Indiana, at least to visit?” I crossed my legs to get more comfortable.

“No. Once we left there, I never looked back.”

“Why?”

“Oh, Ella…We’ve gone through hard times here in Lancaster County too, but nothing like back in Indiana.” She took a raggedy breath and then stared off toward the window. “There was too much pain there. I know I speak glowingly of my time at home when I was a little girl, but every childhood eventually comes to an end. The realities of adulthood can be far more cruel…” She turned back to meet my eyes. “For one thing, I’m sure you’re aware that my husband was…well, that he was difficult.”

Difficult? From my understanding, he was downright abusive to her and to their children. But of course I didn’t say that out loud. Instead, I just nodded.