The Amish Bride (2 page)

“I think it’s in my room,” she said. “On the dresser. Or maybe the nightstand.”

“I’m on it.” I hurried down the narrow hall, darting into her bedroom. It was tidy as a pin thanks to my Aunt Klara, who lived in the big house on the property. The dresser was bare except for
Mammi
’s hairbrush. On the nightstand was her Bible and another leather-bound book, one equally big and thick.

There was nothing on the worn cover to indicate what it was, so I
picked it up and looked inside, surprised to see that this was no printed tome but instead something homemade, done by hand. Cool.

On the first page was a list of names, four in a row, one in block letters and the other three in cursive. The first one, printed in a child’s hand, said “Sarah Gingrich.” Under that, although the handwriting of the script was small and oddly slanted and difficult to decipher, I made out the name Sarah Stoll. Then, below that, Sarah Chapman, and finally Sarah Berg. If I was recalling my family history correctly, Sarah Berg was
Mammi
’s mother. My great-grandmother. I knew she was born as a Gingrich and ended up as a Berg, but I’d never heard of her having the last name of “Stoll” or “Chapman” in between. Weird.

I carefully flipped through the book as I moved back up the hall, intrigued by the quirky things I saw inside. It held a mix of drawings both large and small, recipes, an occasional journal entry, and other miscellaneous writings. Every word was in English, which surprised me. As a first-generation immigrant, it seemed as though she would have written in German, at least when she was younger.

The whole book was offbeat, but some of the pages were especially so. They held an odd mix of numbers and letters—or at least I thought they were letters at first glance. Pausing in the hallway to take a closer look, I realized they weren’t letters at all but instead some sort of intricate, squiggly lines. Bizarre.

“
Mammi
, this is so cool,” I said as I closed the book and entered the living room. “Did this belong to my great-grandmother?”

“Yes, and I want you to have it.”

“Seriously? Wow. Thanks,
Mammi
.” I held the book against my chest. “I can’t wait to read it. I’m glad it’s not in German.”

She seemed surprised at the thought. “Well, my mother spoke German, of course, but she never learned to write it. She was taught to write only English in school.”

“Oh. Duh.” I opened the front cover. “What’s the deal with the three last names here? Did your mom marry more than once?”

“It’s a long story…”

My phone beeped. Ezra! I’d forgotten all about him.

“…and obviously you don’t have time for it tonight.”

“You’re right. I have to go, but I’ll be back soon.”

“Good. Next time you’re over, I’ll tell you more about her. My mother was quite the…oh, how would you say it?”

I shrugged. Since her stroke I’d grown used to helping her find the words she wanted, but I had no idea what she was looking for now.

Her faded blue eyes lit up. “Free spirit.”

I smiled. “Thank you,
Mammi
.” I held the book close. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

“You’re welcome, dear.”

“Why me, though? Instead of Lexie or Ada, I mean. I’m honored, but I just don’t understand.”

Mammi
met my eyes and smiled. “Because of who my mother was. Not just a free spirit, but stubborn and feisty too. Sound familiar?” Her eyebrows raised, but when I chose to ignore her implication, she added, “Just like
you.
”

“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

“Oh, it is. You’re smart like her too, and oh, so pretty. You have her thick hair and lovely skin. You’re even gifted creatively the way she was. Mostly, though, you have her spunk.”

I wasn’t used to receiving compliments from family members and felt too awkward to respond.

Mammi
didn’t seem to notice, though. Instead, her eyes moved to the book in my hands. Gazing at it, her face began to cloud over, and I could see she was troubled.

“There’s another thing, about the book,” she said.

I glanced toward the door, feeling bad for Ezra, though I didn’t protest lest she give me one of her disapproving looks. Neither his family, which was entirely Amish, nor mine, which was a mix of Mennonite and Amish, made any secret of the fact that they weren’t thrilled about our relationship.

“This is just between us,” she continued, oblivious to my impatience. “There’s something unique about it that you have to understand. And there’s something important I need you to do for me.”

Her odd tone brought my attention back to her. Curious, I lowered myself to the chair on her left and waited for her to elaborate. She gestured
toward the book, so I opened it up and flipped through it, angling it so that she could see the pages.

“All of those tiny drawings at the tops and bottoms…” Her voice trailed off.

“These nifty little doodles?” Glancing down, I tilted the heavy tome my way. “It’s funny, but they kind of remind me of icons. You know, like for a phone app?”

She stared at me blankly. Of course she didn’t know what a phone app was.

“They’re symbols,” she said. “Each one represents something.”

“Oh, yeah?”

I flipped through more pages and saw that the various icons weren’t just random—they were repeated the exact same way in different places. She was right. Symbols.

“What are they for?”

“I’m not sure. But there’s more.”

She again gestured with her hand, so I tilted the book back toward her and continued to flip through it.

“There.” She placed a pointed finger on the page to stop me.

Glancing down, I saw that she was indicating the middle part of the book, the pages of weird squiggly lines. They reminded me of letters or numbers but were completely unreadable, like a foreign language that used a completely different alphabet.

“What is this?”

She sat back and clasped her hands in her lap. “It’s a code.”

My eyes widened. “A code?”

She nodded. “My mother didn’t want just anyone reading her journal. So she invented a code to keep parts of it private.”

“Cool.” I was really starting to like my great-grandmother Sarah.

I was studying the squiggles more closely when I realized
Mammi
was leaning toward me in her chair, her expression intense.

“Ella, I need you to decipher that code. Figure out how to make sense of it. The symbols too. I want you to translate the code and the symbols into words. I need to know what it says.”

My first reaction was to giggle, but her face was so serious I held it in. What was this, the CIA or something?

“I’m not exactly good at this sort of thing. I mean, Zed’s way smarter than I am. Why don’t you ask him?”

Mammi
placed a hand on my arm and gave it a firm squeeze. “Never mind him. I’m asking
you
, Ella. You can do this. You
have
to do this.”

“But why?” I looked into her eyes and was surprised to see pain there. Deep pain. “What is it,
Mammi
? Why is this so important to you?”

Without responding, she broke our gaze, released my arm, and let herself fall back against the chair. Then she gave an elaborate shrug and spoke in an odd, singsongy voice. “Oh, I’ve just wondered over the years what she wrote, that’s all.”

I stared at her. An actress she was not.

“I’m not
that
dumb,
Mammi
. I can tell there’s way more to it than mere curiosity.”

My grandmother’s eyes brimmed with sadness. She turned her face away and spoke in a soft voice. “Just let me know when you figure it out, will you? It’s important to me.” Clearly, she wasn’t going to elaborate.

I sat there for a long moment, trying to decide whether to insist she explain or just let it go for now. It was no big surprise that she wouldn’t tell me, nor that she’d asked me not to tell anyone else. Our family was known for its secrets. I hadn’t imagined there were any left, but it looked as though I was wrong.

“I…I’ll give it a shot,
Mammi,
but I’m not making any promises.”

She nodded. “If it would help, maybe you could even go visit the Home Place. It’s still in the family. One of your distant cousins lives there now, and I’m sure she’d be happy for you to come out.”

Visit the Home Place? In Indiana? It was a neat idea, but there was no way I could take a trip like that any time soon. There were other things in my life that were much more pressing.

“My mother grew up there, you know,” she said dreamily, not catching the reluctance in my expression. “Lived there on and off as an adult. Ended up raising a family there. Died there.”

The Home Place was legendary in our family, built by Sarah’s parents in the late 1800s when they emigrated from Switzerland to Indiana.
Mammi
had grown up there, and though she moved out when she married, she and her husband had lived on a farm nearby. Once he died,
Mammi
and her three daughters moved away from Indiana entirely to
start life anew here in Lancaster County, but it wasn’t hard to see she’d left a piece of her heart behind. I’d heard her stories of home. I even had a very special wooden box with an image of the Home Place carved onto the lid.

“You’ll see she drew it in the book a lot. Sometimes the whole farm, sometimes just a particular tree or piece of furniture or view from a certain window. I don’t know the significance of those drawings, but they are obviously tied in with the symbols and the code somehow. Maybe if you went there yourself, it would be easier to figure it all out.”

I looked down at the book in my hands, feeling the weight of my grandmother’s request—and her memories—pressing down on me.

“Let’s take this one step at a time, okay? I’ll see what I can do here first. You never know. I might just crack this baby wide open without having to go anywhere at all.”

Mammi
’s eyes met mine. “Thank you, Ella” she whispered.

“No problem.”

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket with a text. Poor Ezra had to be going stir-crazy by now. I closed the book—which was taller and slightly wider than even my biggest school textbook—and wiggled it into my backpack for safekeeping. Then I stood and gave
Mammi
a quick kiss on the cheek. As I turned to go, she wrapped a hand around my wrist, her fingers cold, her grip surprisingly strong. I paused and looked down at her.

“Do whatever it takes, Ella,” she said, her voice tinged with desperation. “I’m an old woman, and the Lord has numbered my days, but before it’s too late, I simply must know what my mother wrote in that book.”

O
nce I was out of sight of the house, I rolled down the cuffs of my jeans—which I already had on under my clothes—and removed my skirt. Folding it quickly, I shoved it into my backpack and zipped it shut. I tucked my shirt into my jeans.

At the end of the long driveway, waiting for me, sat Ezra on his motorcycle. I gave him a small wave, and just the sight of his smile in return made my heart flutter.

“There you are.” He handed me a jacket and an extra helmet.

With a quick “Thanks” I pulled off my
kapp
, stuffed it in my pocket, and strapped on the helmet instead. Then I climbed on behind him and wrapped my arms around his broad chest, ready to zoom through Lancaster County on his motorcycle.

Holding on tightly, I leaned with Ezra as he steered his bike around a sharp curve toward the covered bridge, and then I braced myself against the jolt as we jumped onto the wooden slats. A moment later he brought the bike to a stop next to the railing. We both climbed off, removing our helmets and holding them in our hands.

It was unusually warm for January—no snow or ice, which was why Ezra wanted to be out on his motorcycle. However, it was still crisp and
cold, and even more so on the bridge, with the creek rushing below us. He grasped the railing with his free hand and leaned over, dangling his helmet above the water.

It was our special place. Over the past two years we’d stood side by side in the same spot many times, but tonight was different. I’d taken the last of my high school finals yesterday, finishing my senior year a semester early so I would be able to work and save money until next fall, when I planned to start taking college-level classes. In three months I would be eighteen. Our lives were no longer on hold. Finally, we could make decisions about what lay ahead.