The Amish Bride (31 page)

“It’s so nice to have you with us,” she said. “And nice that Rosalee has you every day.”

I thanked them both, and then, after exchanging goodbyes, I watched them walk toward their buggy. Jacob leaned toward his wife, whispering something to her. Her head tilted forward and she patted his arm. I felt a pang of envy. That was what I wanted, minus having a preacher for a husband. I couldn’t imagine Ezra doing that and hoped the lot would never choose him. But I envied Jacob and Marilyn’s closeness, their easiness with each other, how he seemed to absolutely adore her, and vice versa. He was young to be a preacher, yes, but clearly he was doing a good job.

Rosalee joined me. “He’s a
gut
preacher,” she said. “He’s taught me so many things. He talks about God’s love in ways I’ve never heard before. It’s as if God speaks right through him.”

T
hat afternoon, while Rosalee rested, I saw my chance to thoroughly explore the farm. I’d been on the lookout ever since I arrived, searching everywhere I could, but I hadn’t been able to do a methodical search to see where Sarah’s artwork might be tucked away—if it hadn’t been destroyed. I had even asked Luke a couple of times if he’d seen it. The second time he told me he understood what I was asking, but he hadn’t seen any sort of artwork around the place.

I’d searched the bakery a second time. I knew it wasn’t in the house—unless it was in Rosalee’s room, which I doubted. It wasn’t in the shed. I’d been in the barn a few times and looked through a downstairs tack room to no avail, but I’d never been in the loft. If I were going to hide artwork, I definitely wouldn’t put it there. Barns tended to burn down. But still, I needed to look.

I sneezed a few times as I climbed the ladder. The straw was old and musty and needed to be changed. It was probably on Luke’s long list of chores. The horse neighed in her stall below me, and Rosalee’s cow mooed. It was nearly time for her to be milked.

Only a few rows of hay bales, stacked four high, were left in the loft. The floor was long plank boards balanced on beams, but as I looked closer,
to my relief, I saw they were nailed down. I scanned the open area. There was nowhere anything could be hidden. I walked to the end of the loft and stood at the open window where they most likely brought the hay in, probably on a conveyor belt. I could see past the first field and on to the second. I hadn’t been out there yet. I squinted, making out a willow tree bowing down toward a small pond, remembering
Mammi
’s story about her grandfather playing his alpine horn.

Discouraged, I left the barn thinking I would walk out to the field. But first I decided to look in the underground cellar. I hadn’t been in it before. It seemed that Rosalee always went after the potatoes herself or sent Eddie. It was worth a try.

I hurried down the stone walkway, sure
Mammi’s
grandfather Gerard Gingrich had constructed it. The wooden door at the bottom was also made of planks. I grasped the handle and pressed against the latch, easing the door wide open to give myself some light as I stepped into the cold cellar. I exhaled, noting that my breath hung in the air. It was probably around forty degrees, even though it was close to seventy outside.

The odor was pungent, a mix of earth, onions, garlic, and other root vegetables. A small pile of potatoes was in the corner. There were also nearly empty bins of turnips, cabbage, yams, and onions. Strings of garlic hung from the low ceiling.

I turned on the flashlight app on my phone and shone it around the room. The ceiling was curved and constructed of bricks, which seemed to be quite an engineering feat. There were no cupboards or shelves built into the wall, but there was a space between where the stone wall ended and the bricks began, although not enough room for much of anything. I didn’t want to run my hand along it. I stood on my tiptoes and strained to see on the ledge, hopping around the room as I did. When I got to the other side, I stopped. Something looked like a piece of dull metal. I reached up, tentatively, and then pulled down an old butter cookie tin that was icy cold against my hands. I brushed away the cobwebs and opened it.

Inside were five stacks of papers, two-inch squared I estimated, rubber banded together. Each of the top squares had a drawing on it. I picked up one with a bird, and started to take the rubber band off, but it broke in
my hand. Each of the squares had a symbol on it—many were the same ones that were in Sarah’s book. It was obvious she’d drawn these too. There was edelweiss, an alpine horn, a hen with a brood of chicks, a crow, an eagle, a small bird, a hound, a butter churn, a cow, a cat, a willow tree… then an owl and hawk. I closed the lid and left the cellar, taking the box with me and carefully latching the door. It wasn’t what I was looking for, but still it was a find.

I decided to go on to the pasture and the pond. I walked around the edge of the field because Luke had seeded it not too long ago. I stayed along the fence line and then cut across the pasture. As I neared the pond, I realized the Klines’ property was on the other side of it. I could see the cows in their pasture, and there was a gate between the two. One of the cows raised her head, as if she had noticed my approach in the distance.

I stopped under the graceful willow and sat down on a wide, flat root that was sticking out of the ground. Opening the tin, I took the rest of the rubber bands off the stacks of squares. I was more careful with these and they didn’t break. It was hard to tell how old the paper was. I guessed the coldness of the root cellar had preserved the images more than if they had been in the house.

I thumbed through the pictures. There were probably fifty altogether. At first I thought the squares seemed as if they were made for a game like Memory, but there were no matches. Each symbol was different. There were more herbs. More household objects—a lamp, a pitcher, a ladle. There were raspberries, blueberries, peaches, and apples. There was also a Bible, a songbook, and a notebook. I stopped at the very last picture. It was a baby. I gasped.
Mammi
said her mother didn’t draw people. But here was proof that she had. I went through the pictures again, one by one, and then stopped at the picture of the baby once more. The infant had curly hair and bright eyes and was smiling. I wondered if it was a particular baby or just a drawing of a random baby. If it was a specific one, I couldn’t help but wonder who it was. My
mammi
? Rosalee’s father, Gerry? Mom or one of her sisters? It could easily have been a boy or a girl. I puzzled over it as I put the rubber bands back on the stacks and then carefully tied the rubber band I broke. I put everything back in the box for
safekeeping. Unfortunately, I didn’t see how any of the drawings would help me figure out the code, but I was grateful to have found them, even though they only added to the mystery of Sarah’s work.

The mooing over at the Klines’ grew louder, and I realized someone was herding the cows toward their barn. I stood up and stepped away from the tree and pond. Standing on my tiptoes, I shielded my eyes. It was Luke. He spotted me and took his hat off and waved it at me. I waved back, smiling a little.

He was hard to figure out. I was never sure if he was happy to see me or not. I was surprised he was doing the milking. He would miss the singing if he didn’t hurry.

By the time I got back to the barn, Rosalee was already milking Bossie, perched on the little stool, her head against the cow’s flank. The ping of the milk against the galvanized bucket masked the sounds of my entrance, and I had to say hello twice before she heard me.

“Goodness,” she said, turning her head toward me and stopping the milking as she did. “You startled me.”

Her hands returned to her work, picking up the steady rhythm again of the milk against the pail, but she kept her eyes on me.

“What do you have in the box?”

“A sort of game, I think. I found it in the underground cellar.” I hesitated. “I hope you don’t mind that I was snooping around.”

She smiled a little. “No, I told you to. I expected it.”

Relieved, I continued, “I think Sarah must have made it.” I opened it as I spoke. “It has many of the same symbols as in her book, plus more, but these don’t seem to be tied to recipes.” I held up a stack of cards, showing the willow tree on top. “Do you remember these?”

She shook her head. “But that’s the willow in the field.”

I nodded but was disappointed that she didn’t remember the cards or if they were part of a game. I put the stack of symbols back inside and closed the box, deciding I’d go fix dinner.

First, though, I retreated to my room and sat down on the bed, placing the box beside me. I took out my phone and hit the speed dial key for Mom’s number. For once she picked up right away. I didn’t want to chat or hear about Freddy, so I jumped straight to my question, asking her
about the squares with the pictures on them and told her Rosalee didn’t remember them.

“Oh, my,” she said. “I hadn’t thought about that in years.”

“You remember them?”

“Yes.” She paused and then stammered, “Barely. Let’s see…”

I waited as patiently as I could. “It was a game
Mammi
Sarah made up. Like Concentration.”

I was right!

“I used to play it for hours with Zed, but the one we had was just farm animals and we got it at a toy store.
Mammi
Sarah drew all the symbols,” Mom said. “We would play at her house.”

“The tin I found only has one set of symbols. There aren’t any duplicates.”

“That’s funny…No, wait. It makes sense.” She paused again.

“Mom.” I knew my voice sounded impatient.

“We used to keep one of the tins at our house,” she said. “I remember walking through the woods with it, going to the Home Place.”

“Did you take that set with you to Pennsylvania?”

“I don’t think so,” she answered. “I don’t remember having them after we left Indiana, and it’s not surprising Rosalee doesn’t remember them. She’s older, probably a good ten years more than Klara. She was married and had moved to Michigan by the time
Mammi
Sarah played that game with us.”

“You don’t think she played games with Rosalee?”

“Not that game. That was for us—for Klara, Giselle, and me.”

My voice increased in excitement at the thought of the game being special to our family. “Some of the symbols in her book represent different people—do you think it’s the same in the game?”

“What book?” Mom asked.

I faltered.
Mammi
hadn’t wanted me to tell anyone about the book. How stupid of me.

“It’s a recipe book of hers…” Perhaps Mom would think I’d come across it here, in Indiana.

She didn’t seem to notice my blunder. “I bet the other box is around there somewhere,” she said. “Keep looking. But it was just a game, Ella.
Nothing more. As we got older she had us spell the names of the object. She was teaching us while we had fun.”

“What about the birds? Do you think they could represent different people?”

“Such as?”

“Herself. Her children. Her husbands.”

“Husbands?”

I took a deep breath. “She had three.”

“I only knew about
Daadi
David.”

“She had two husbands who died before she married him.”

There was a pause and then, “Are you sure?”

“That’s what
Mammi
told me.” I didn’t bother to say the book verified it. “She didn’t have kids with either of them, of course. Only with David.”

“Well, then…” Mom’s voice trailed off.

“How about the herbs?”

“Besides using them in her cooking, she was a bit of a healer too,” Mom said. “She always had a remedy for every little thing. People used to come to her from all over, and she’d mix them up something. She used to dry herbs in the attic of the Home Place, I remember that. Uncle Gerry didn’t like it—and neither did his wife.”

“Maybe that’s where you got your medical sense.” I wouldn’t bother to tell Mom, not now, that her grandmother had studied to be a nurse and then worked as one. I’d tell her that sometime—probably when it was okay for me to tell her about the book.

The more I learned about my great-grandmother, the more I liked her.

“I certainly didn’t get her love of cooking,” Mom said. “She was amazing.”

“The recipes in the book are mostly for baking.”