The Amish Midwife (34 page)

I collapsed onto the sofa in the living room and closed my eyes, blinking tears away. Ella’s door opened and closed. She started down the stairs, but her cell rang again and she turned around. A moment later her door opened and closed again.

Zed spoke from his perch at the computer across the room. “Lexie, I have something.”

I jumped to my feet. The kid was amazing.

“How about this?”

I looked over his shoulder. It was an obituary for a Burke F. Bauer II, who died at age forty-eight more than ten years ago. A prominent businessman in Lancaster County, he had run his family’s nursery stock business for many years. Bauer was survived by his wife Lavonne and one son, B.F Bauer III.

I did the math. If the guy in the obituary was my father, he would have been more than thirty when I was born, which was too old to have been fooling around with a nineteen-year-old girl. The more likely culprit was his son, apparently also named Burke Bauer. I told Zed to see what he could come up with for that one, but after a good ten minutes of clicking around, Zed had managed to find only one thing, a brief newspaper article in a local paper about him winning the science fair in the spring of his senior year in high school. At least that information gave us his age relative to that date, so again I did the math but realized he would have been only eleven years old when I was born. That made him an even less likely paternity suspect than his father.

“What about the widow?” I asked. “Can you find anything at all on Lavonne Bauer? Is she still alive?”

In less than a minute, Zed came up with an address for a Lavonne Bauer near Paradise in Lancaster County. He also tried to find an address for the son, but nothing came up.

“Who are these people?” Zed asked after he printed out Lavonne’s address and handed it to me.

“I’m hoping she’s wrong,” I replied, “but according to
Mammi
, my biological father’s name is Burke Bauer. At least that’s what I think she was telling me. So either she was talking about a different Burke Bauer altogether, or back when my mother was nineteen she had an affair with a thirty-two-year-old married man who got her pregnant. That’s…shocking.” I stopped, realizing this subject material wasn’t the best for a conversation with a twelve-year-old.

“An older guy with a younger babe?” Zed replied. “That’s not shocking. That’s not even all that unusual, at least not on TV.”

I sighed.

“Seriously,” Zed protested. “I mean, isn’t that one of the signs of a midlife crisis?”

I looked at his earnest face and couldn’t help but laugh.

“What are you watching, Zed?
Oprah
?
The View
?” If he was, it was online or at a friend’s house because Marta didn’t have a TV.

He blushed as he replied, “Well, come on. You know. Older man, younger woman, midlife crisis. End of story.”

Though thirty-two wasn’t exactly midlife, Zed had a point. Older man, younger woman, end of story. But was it
my
story? Had I really been the product of an extramarital affair? If so, I had to wonder how it could have happened, how a young Amish girl and a mature married man could have even met, much less ended up in a clandestine relationship. However it had begun, I couldn’t imagine its progression either, especially regarding the pregnancy. Had Giselle been foolish, perhaps even gotten pregnant on purpose in the hope that Burke would leave his wife for her? Maybe once he learned of Giselle’s pregnancy, he had rejected her, even tried to pay her off and send her on her way. Whatever the details, if I had the correct Burke Bauer, as I suspected I did, somehow I knew there was much more to the story than I would ever be able to learn from a simple Internet search.

At least this new evidence might help answer my most important question, which was why I had been given up for adoption at all. Obviously, a married man who already had a legitimate child of his own wouldn’t have wanted me—or even been willing to acknowledge me. Perhaps Giselle’s heartache was so great from his rejection that she decided that she hadn’t wanted me either. But if that was the case, then surely one of her sisters could have taken me in, or even
Mammi
herself, and raised me. So why hadn’t they? Before today I couldn’t begin to fathom the answer to that question. But now I realized the truth, that this Amish family may have been turned against me before I was even born because I was conceived through an adulterous relationship. After all, my mother bore a scarlet letter, so to speak.

Perhaps, to their minds, that letter simply extended to me as well.

I
left the cottage immediately. After sitting in my car for a few minutes, I went to a florist shop, picked up a bouquet of red roses, and then drove to the home of Lavonne Bauer. She lived just outside of Paradise, a couple of miles from Susan Eicher’s house, in a modest, one-story colonial with a tidy, well-landscaped yard. I’d decided to pose as a delivery person. I just wanted an excuse to see her—I wasn’t necessarily going to talk to her. But she wasn’t home. On the way back to Marta’s, I threw the roses, all twenty-seven dollars worth, out the window, one by one.

That evening I was shocked when Alexander showed up at Marta’s cottage in a white van. I looked out the front window as he spoke to the driver and then climbed out. According to
Mammi
, this kind, gentle Amish man was not my father after all, a thought that filled me with a deep sense of loss.

It also confused me, given my name. If he weren’t my father, then why had I been named Alexandra? Had it simply been a matter of wishful thinking? A way to honor a supportive brother-in-law? Surely it hadn’t been mere coincidence, my mother giving me a name so similar to that of her sister’s husband. There had to have been some reason for it, I thought, watching from the window as he walked to the door and knocked.

“Lexie? Who is it?” Ella asked from her perch at the dining room table.

“Your Uncle Alexander,” I replied, moving toward the door and swinging it open, glad that Marta was upstairs. I only hoped she hadn’t heard him knock.

As Alexander came inside and took off his hat, I realized for the first time that I looked nothing like him. Neither did Ada, for that matter. He greeted Ella and Zed shyly and then explained he had come here to speak with me. Obviously sensing that this was to be a private conversation, Ella told Zed that it was time to take care of the chickens.

“I’ll help him,” she said, giving me a funny look as she followed her brother out the door and pulled it shut behind them.

I gestured toward the living room, and once Alexander and I both sat down he spoke in a low voice, saying that Ada had told him about my request.

“Did she tell Klara?” I spoke as softly as I could.

“No, thank goodness.” His hazel eyes pled with me. “Please don’t pursue this.”

“Are you my father?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Are you Ada’s father?”

He sat up straight. Now his eyes drilled me. “Yes,” he answered. “With everything I am, I am her father.”

I swallowed hard. Ada and I both knew a daddy’s love. Still, there was something odd about his choice of words.

“But… are you her biological father?” My voice wavered.

He fingered the brim of his hat nervously. “You don’t have any idea the damage you are set to do,” he said. “You are pushing all of us to the brink. You can’t imagine how fragile the people involved are.”

“Ada doesn’t seem fragile at all. In fact—”

He interrupted me. “I beg you, let this go.”

A door opened upstairs, and I inhaled. Alexander and I should have been the ones to go tend the chickens. “You should leave,” I said.

“Who’s here?” Marta was at the top of the stairs.

Alexander stood. “It’s me.”

“Alex.” She hurried on down, and she smiled as she made eye contact with him. “What brings you out this way?”

He held his hat against his chest. “Sorry business, I’m afraid. Lexie has asked Ada to do one of those DNA tests.”

“Lexie?” Marta stopped on the bottom step. “Why ever so? Isn’t it enough that you know you’re cousins?”

I looked from Alexander to Marta, from his hazel eyes to her blue. I pointed to my brown eyes and thought of Ada. “Chances are Alexander is not Ada’s father. Or else Klara isn’t her mother. Or both.”

“Oh, gracious,” Marta said. Her tone was different than what I’d heard before. Patronizing, yes, but also a little showy. “You’re speaking statistics, not real life. Of course Alexander is Ada’s father.”

I crossed my arms. “Does the name Burke Bauer mean anything to either of you?”

Marta and Alexander looked at each other, clearly alarmed, though they both managed to recover quickly.

“I think he used to own the Gundy place.” Marta spoke with an air of nonchalance. “Where Will lives now.”

Alexander nodded, his jaw tight. “Bauer was
Englisch
. I believe he passed away a while back.”

“Oh, right. I’d heard that too,” Marta replied, and then she returned her attention to me. “Why are you asking?”

“
Mammi
mentioned him to me.” I felt flustered. Suddenly I realized my source didn’t have much credibility.

“Ah,” Marta said, nodding sadly as if in pity for me that I had believed the absurd musings of a senile old woman.

“Yes, well,” Alexander added, clearing his throat, “you probably noticed that her mind is all over the place.”

Our eyes met, and I knew there was more that he wasn’t saying. Looking away, he took a deep breath and continued.

“Anyway, Lexie, I’m not sorry you’ve come out to Lancaster County from Oregon. It’s been a pleasure to meet you, really, and if I weren’t afraid of what trouble you might cause, I think I would be pleased to get to know you. But you don’t know the hornets’ nest you’re stirring.” He turned to Marta. “I’ll be on my way then.”

She thanked him for coming and walked him out the door. “I’ll talk with her,” came Marta’s faint voice as the door was closing behind her, “and convince her to drop this whole DNA thing.”

No, you won’t
, I thought fiercely. I took the stairs two at a time and grabbed my computer and my purse, and then I flew back down the stairs. I was at the door before Marta had come in, and without saying a word, I breezed past her to my car.

“Lexie,” she called after me, “come back.”

I shook my head as I climbed into my car. I’d had enough.

Running away from Marta meant going to Lancaster General and sitting with Sean while he had a late dinner. As he ate I told him about my day, starting with finding my name whited-out from the family Bible and ending with Alexander and Marta trying to bully me about the DNA testing. He listened attentively to the whole tale, commenting occasionally, and then he urged me to stand strong on the matter of the DNA testing if it was important to me.

“Do you know how accurate those send-away tests are?” I asked.

“Not really, but I have a buddy here who works extensively with DNA. He could do the testing for you and probably have some answers back in no time.”

“Seriously? Sean, that would be wonderful.”

Grinning, he pulled his phone from the pocket of his lab coat and typed in a message. Moments later came the reply, which he read to me.

“‘No problem getting the test done, but sisters are hard to match. Need a DNA sample from the mother.’” Sean met my gaze, a look of pity on his face.

I slumped in my chair until I remembered the carved box with its two locks of hair, one that looked as if it had come from an infant, and the other that had probably come from an adult.

“Wait! Would hair work?” I asked, thinking of the lock of longer, thicker hair had surely been Giselle’s.

Sean smiled as he texted his friend back. I held my breath. Sean’s phone beeped again. He read it quickly and then met my gaze.

“Bingo! He’s going to be out of town for a few days, but he can do it next Wednesday if you want.”

“I’ll get a hold of Ada.” She was twenty-four. Surely she could make her own decisions. But she was also totally dependent on her parents and
seemed to be very much a daddy’s girl. I took out my phone, wrote out a quick text, and hit “send.”

“Thanks, Sean.”

“If you get the info you want, do you think you can let all this go?” He picked up his turkey wrap.

I shrugged, feeling too fried to answer.

“Cuz this is the sort of thing that could send a person over the edge.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant me or him. I changed the subject to his house. He’d had four people look at it already and an offer had come in an hour before. He was going to think about it overnight, but he was pretty sure he’d accept.

“How about your place out West?” he asked.

I told him I hadn’t called my Realtor. The truth was that I didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with that too. I’d wait until she called me.

Next he asked about Marta’s case.

“Oh no,” I groaned. “Her pretrial hearing is next week. Wednesday. I promised I’d go with her.”

“And miss your DNA test? Come on, Lexie, blow her off. Look at how she’s treated you over and over.”