Anathema (24 page)

The muscles in Matt’s belly tensed. Over his dead body. No one was taking Caitlin away from him. “Thanks. You’d better get home to Gina.”

Blake glanced at his watch. “Yikes, I told her I’d be home for supper. If I’m late, she ’ll be suspicious all over again.” He bolted from his chair and ran for the door.

Matt followed him outside. He needed to get out to the Schwartz house before they all went to bed. As he drove north out of town, his thoughts kept drifting to his mother’s e-mail. Could it be real? He was afraid to hope.

Dim yellow light shone through the windows of the house when he pulled into the driveway. He got out of the SUV and started toward the front door. A warble of some kind came to his ears. Was that yodeling? He stopped and listened. The German song rolled out across the yard, and though it was supposed to be joyous, he heard the undercurrent of a lost time that would never come again, no matter how hard they tried to find it.

THE CHILDREN’S VOICES murmuring their prayers slipped under the closed door. The sunset still glowed in the west, though it was nine o’clock. Indiana had only recently started to follow daylight saving time, and Hannah wondered if her people had adopted the
Englisch
way of changing their clocks.

“You sure you don’t mind sharing a bedroom?” she asked Asia.

“We can talk about some publicity.” Asia sat cross-legged on the single bed. “How’s the quilt coming?”

“You know I’ve struggled to work on it since we got here. There hasn’t been much time. I really want this one for the cover. The triangle is the underpinning of the Amish faith.”

“Hannah, the photographer will want pictures of it in a month and a half. You’re not even close to finished.”

“I know. I’ll work on it a little while now.” Hannah pulled the large plastic container out from under the bed where she ’d placed it earlier. “This room used to be mine.” She lifted the lid and rummaged for the last square she’d been working on.

“Homey. What chapter are you on with the book?”

“The one about Chevron quilts.”

“What’s significant about them?”

Hannah thought a moment as her needle wove in and out of the colorful fabric. “A chevron is a badge or insignia. The Amish believe very much in following secular authority, in leading a law-abiding life. It’s very rare to find any lawbreakers among the Amish, and murder is practically unheard of. But the one thing they refuse to do is to serve in the military. In fact, that’s why the men don’t wear a mustache, only a beard. In earlier centuries only military men wore mustaches, and they associate mustaches with killing. They prize peace and want nothing to do with war.”

“So they are conscientious objectors?”

Hannah nodded. “My mother was the perfect example of a soft answer turning away wrath.” Though in Hannah’s case, those teachings were what had kept her under Reece’s fist too long. She focused on making her stitches even and small. She wouldn’t think about the sound of her mother’s laugh, or the way her mother’s auburn hair caught the sunlight. She wouldn’t remember the way
Mamm
’s tender hands, rough from hard work, would stroke Hannah’s hair at night before bed. The needle blurred in her vision, and she blinked hard.

“Did she only work by hand?”

“No, she had a treadle sewing machine that she used for the piecework. The actual quilting was done by hand. I’ll talk about that when I get to the chapter on the Carpenter Patch. We prize things made with hard work, but we use tried-and-true technology. Many use a treadle sewing machine for the piecework.”

Asia frowned. “I’ve always heard quilts made by hand are more valuable.”

“When sewing machines first became available, it was a status symbol to have one to use for quilting. Around 1900, during the Colonial Revival period, interest in hand quilting grew, a return to nostalgia. But Amish women are practical. Good quilts are about design and excellent fabrics.
Mamm
always chose her fabrics with care and paid top dollar for them.”

Asia glanced around the bedroom. “Does your cousin have any I can see?”

“They were all stolen the—the night of the murders.” She stopped. “You know, the quilt that was found over the bodies should still be some-where. It would have been released to the family once the evidence was collected from it. I’m going to look for it.”

Asia sprang off the bed. “I’ll come with you.”

She followed Hannah down the hall. “This is a big place.”

“Four bedrooms up here and another one downstairs. This is another guest room.” The large room held a double bed, a dresser, a futon that could be made into another bed, and a crib. Even with all the furniture, it still had floor space to spare.

“Why is there so much furniture in here?”

“An entire family could stay here. We often have visitors who stay a few days.” Hannah glanced around the room. She hadn’t had time to go from room to room and see what changes Sarah had made. The quilt Hannah sought wasn’t on the bed. She opened the closet and pulled out a blanket chest.

Seeing the cedar chest made by her father, she remembered that her mother’s keepsake box had always resided inside. She lifted the lid and inhaled the aroma of fragrant cedar. The chest held quilts and an assortment of baby clothes. She began to lift out the quilts one by one. They’d all been made by Sarah. She recognized her friend’s favorite Log Cabin pattern.

“What are you doing?” Sarah stood in the doorway. Her brows were raised, and spots of red blotched her cheeks. Hannah refused to let Sarah intimidate her. “I’m looking for the quilt that was over my family when I found them. I wanted to look at it again. I’d never seen it before that night, and it was clearly made by my mother.” All of this belonged more to her than it did to anyone else. Even Luca didn’t have as much right to the personal effects as she did.

Sarah bit her lip. “It’s in Naomi’s room. It’s a child’s quilt. I thought she would enjoy it.”

“You gave your child a quilt that had been on her dead relatives?” Asia’s voice resounded with horror.

“It was laundered, of course.”

A practical response, but Hannah shuddered. They were taught to put others first and avoid conflict, but Hannah could tell Sarah didn’t like her snooping by the way she kept biting her lip and clutching her hands together.

“Which room is Naomi’s?” Hannah moved toward the door.

Sarah stepped out of the way. “Just across the hall. Please don’t wake her.”

Hannah reached the other door in five steps and peered inside. She caught her breath at the sight of the quilt on a rack at the end of the bed. The hall light shone on it. Her memory hadn’t done it justice. It almost seemed as though the red hummingbirds in the pattern stitching hovered over the black background. It seemed three-dimensional.

Seeing the quilt was like catching a glimpse of her mother. She found herself on her knees by the quilt rack. Pulling the quilt to her face, she inhaled, but there was nothing left of her mother’s essence, only the scent of fresh air from hanging on the line. When she got up, she realized her cheeks were wet.

So were Sarah’s. The two women appraised each other. In Sarah’s eyes, Hannah saw her own helpless yearning for a time that would never come again. A regret for years lost and never regained. A knowledge that there was nothing either of them could do about it.

Sarah averted her eyes and went to the rack. She lifted the quilt, folded it with steady precision, and placed it in Hannah’s hands. “This should be yours.”

Hannah’s upbringing caused her to open her mouth to give it back, but she realized Sarah was right. It
did
belong with her. She was the only child left of Patricia and Abe Schwartz. Even Luca’s children weren’t their grandchildren.

“Thank you,” she whispered. She resisted the urge to bury her face in the quilt again. “What about
Mamm
’s keepsake box?”

Fear returned to Sarah’s eyes. “What does it look like?”

“A box about so big.” She measured a space with her hands about a foot wide. “It’s inlaid wood with a hummingbird design. Her grandfather made it. Have you seen it? It was always in the blanket chest.”

“Where did you see it last?”

Hannah could see that the ping-pong of questions was designed to avoid a direct reply to the pointed query. “You have to have seen it, Sarah. I know it was here.”

Sarah dropped her gaze. “Yes,” she answered. “It’s in our bedroom.” She turned and left the room.

Hannah exchanged a quick glance with Asia, then followed Sarah. She dropped the quilt off in her bedroom, laying it reverently on the bed, then went downstairs, where she found Sarah in the master bedroom rooting through a shelf in the back of the closet. This was the first time since returning to Parke County that Hannah had been in her parents’ bedroom. The same bed with a plain headboard was shoved against the far wall.

“Here it is.” Sarah emerged from the closet with her kapp askew. She held the box out toward Hannah.

Hannah reached for it, her fingers grazing Sarah’s. The contact made her glance in her friend’s face. Sarah looked ashen. Hannah didn’t understand what could be so upsetting about the box. “Thanks,” she said.

“I must get ready for bed.” Sarah bolted for the door.

Hannah carried the keepsake box back upstairs to her room. She couldn’t think here with the reminders of her parents all around. Asia was already working on her lists again. She barely looked up when Hannah sat on the bed and raised the lid to the box. A faint melody tinkled out.

Asia tipped her head to one side and listened. “What’s that song?”

“
‘Land der Berge, Land am Strome.’
It means ‘land of the mountains, land on the river.’ It’s the Swiss national anthem.”

“It’s beautiful. So is the box.”

Hannah stroked the patina of the lid. “It’s from Switzerland. My grandfather made it for her when she was a child.”

The contents were from another life. Hannah had always loved going through it and having her mother explain everything. There were theater tickets to
Hair
and tickets to a Beatles concert.

Asia picked up the Beatles tickets and stared at them, then glanced at Hannah. “What gives?”

“She was a hippie until she met my father.”

“Wow, talk about culture shock. Free love and all that, and then going into the Amish culture.”

“I think she relished it. And she ’d lived on a commune for three years with no electricity or running water. The structure helped give her meaning, she said.”

“Did everyone realize where she ’d come from?”

Hannah shook her head. “I don’t think so. She was so eager to fit in, to please
Datt
.”

“Didn’t she ever miss her old life?”

“If she did, she never said so.” Hannah sifted through the contents. Letters that she’d never been allowed to read, a tennis bracelet, a Seiko watch, several earrings, and a class ring. She frowned. “I don’t see her ring in here.”

“What ring?”

“Her mother’s engagement ring. She told me it was worth a fortune. She had it tucked away here and never got to wear it. She slipped it on sometimes when we were alone, just to connect with her mother, I think. But she never let me wear it. She didn’t want me to yearn for things that had no lasting value.”

Hannah lifted everything out of the box and went through each item, carefully shaking out the letters. The ring was gone.

“When did you see it last?”

“About two weeks before she died. It’s got to be here.”

Could Sarah have taken it? But why? She would have no use for it. She ’d never be able to wear it. And Luca wouldn’t allow her to sell it. Could one of the girls have gotten in here and taken it out to play with it? It seemed unlikely. Amish children were taught respect from a very early age.

“I’ll have to ask Sarah about it.” Her gut clenched at the thought. Sarah might think she was accusing her of theft.

She put all of the items back in the box, though she lingered over the letters. She ’d wanted to read them for as long as she could remember. “When you’re older,” her mother had always said. The youth quilt caught her attention. She unfolded it and spread it out on the bed.

“That’s gorgeous,” Asia said, getting up to take a closer look. “It looks like the birds are about to fly off the fabric. It’s a solid black with just stitching as the only other color. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“All
Mamm
’s quilts are unique. It’s the way she uses color. And look at her tiny stitches. I’ve never been able to match their perfection.”

Asia leaned over to examine the quilt. “Oh, it’s beautiful. Where did she learn?”

“My dad’s mother.
Großmutter
took her under her wing, and
Mamm
was so patient to learn it all. She used to paint before she married
Datt
. Afterward, she poured all her artistic ability into her quilts.”

“I wish we had more of her quilts to feature in your book.”

“Me too.”

Asia went back to her chair. “Is there another one around here? Maybe some of her customers still have them?”

“Oh, of course! We could get some of those. I wasn’t thinking. I’d rather feature my mother’s quilts if I can find them. She had a magnificent Mariner’s Compass one. I think she sold it to the woman who owns the fabric store. We ’ll check there tomorrow.”

Hannah couldn’t wait to hold it. Maybe the woman would sell it to her.

eighteen

“The Double Nine Patch Quilt is one of the most traditional quilts,
which is fitting when you remember that the traditions handed down
through generations are supremely important to the Amish.”

—HANNAH SCHWARTZ,

IN
The Amish Faith Through Their Quilts

H
annah’s cell phone rang after Asia had gone to sleep. She flipped it open and whispered, “Hang on,” before tiptoeing out into the hall. She slipped into the bathroom and shut the door. “Hello,” she said. She ’d been half-asleep and hadn’t checked the caller ID.