The Amish Nanny (35 page)

“It was fine.”

“You were at some sort of exhibit?”

“Yes.”

“You're an artist,” I said, more a statement than a question. When she didn't reply, I asked, “Did the exhibit go well for you?”

“Sold a few pieces, yeah.”

“Is that what is done at an exhibit? The artists sell their work?”

Giselle didn't answer. As she steered out of a curve, just past a clearing in the trees, there was a light brown cow with a bell around her neck smack-dab in the middle of the narrow road. I gasped, but before I could speak Giselle had deftly maneuvered around the beast. The cowbell clanged faintly as we sped away.

Then she said, “Yes, I do sell my work, among other things. I was supposed to talk about it, too, with slides and everything, but I had to reschedule. I'll go back to do that in a couple of weeks.”

I imagined my birth mother in a classroom, the attendees hanging on her every word. I smiled, sitting up straighter. “Sort of like teaching?” I asked eagerly, thrilled at the thought I'd inherited my gift from her.

“I guess.”

“Ada's been teaching me on this trip,” Christy interjected. “She's really good at it, way better than any teacher I've ever had in school.”

Before I could respond, Giselle said, “I'm not. I hate all that stuff. But it's a necessary part of what I do. Gotta play the game, you know.”

I slumped back against the seat, disappointed my teaching gene didn't come from her after all. Deflated, I stared out the window at the passing fields until I mustered the drive to find a new topic of conversation. “Did you drive or take the train?”

“Drove,” she answered brusquely.

She was silent after that, and I gave up, just too weary to keep trying.

Giselle took the corners in Langnau fast too, and in no time she was zipping her little car into the hospital parking lot and then stopping it abruptly in a space near the entrance.

She grabbed her purse and had slammed her door before I had a chance to step from the car. It took another moment for Christy to climb out of the backseat, and by the time she did, Giselle was already at the entrance of the hospital. “Hurry!” she called out to us.

“She's odd,” Christy whispered as she walked beside me.

“Shh.”

Giselle was at the receptionist's desk by the time we caught up with her. I said what room Alice was in before the young woman found the information. This time I led the way.

Alice was sitting up in bed, reading a Bible she held with one hand, her other arm now in a cast. Her
kapp
was back on her head, over a tidy bun, and she looked more like herself again.

“Oh, Giselle,” she said, putting down the book.

Giselle stepped forward and fell into Alice's open arm. Christy and I stopped at the foot of the bed, watching. It was obvious immediately that Alice was crying, but it wasn't until Giselle stepped away that I saw she had tears streaming down her face too. She snatched two tissues from the box on the table, handed one to Alice, and then quickly began wiping her face, including the mascara that had smeared under her eyes.

Alice reached for Giselle's hand and pulled her close again. “Frannie said to tell you how much she loves you and misses you.”

Giselle nodded. “I know. I miss her letters, even if it usually took me forever to reply.”

“It's hard for her to write now,” Alice said.

“I understand. But I still miss them.”

The thought of
Mammi
writing Giselle left me cold. Partly because my grandmother had a secret I knew nothing about, and partly because I wondered if she'd written about me all those years ago. Did she write about when I learned to walk? When I lost my first tooth? When I started school? If so, had Giselle even cared? Had she written
Mammi
back with questions about me?

Alice turned her attention to Christy then and called the girl to her, asking how she was doing and what she thought of her
daed
flying on an airplane all this way. As Christy sat in the chair beside Alice, Giselle said she needed a cup of coffee and would be right back. Without asking me if I'd like some as well, she was gone.

Alice picked up the Bible again. “The chaplain found a High German translation for me,” she said. “Listen to what I was reading.”

She read Psalm 139 aloud, and though my mind was full with other things, I forced myself to concentrate on the words. Her voice rose slightly as she came to verses nine and ten, which promised that even when we went “to the far side of the sea,” God would still be with us.

Alice paused and looked at both of us. “Isn't that fitting, girls? That's the three of us, right now, on the far side of the sea. And yet God is still with us.”

She read until we were interrupted by the telephone. I answered it and was surprised to hear Daniel on the other end of the line. He said he was calling because he and George had just returned from their appointment at the cheese factory and wanted to know where the letters were I was supposed to have gotten from Giselle and left with Herr Lauten.

My cheeks flushing with heat, I realized I had forgotten all about them. The situation between Giselle and me was so emotionally overcharged that it shouldn't have been surprising. Still, he didn't understand any of that, so I didn't begrudge the fact that he sounded a little irritated with me.

“We were so eager to get down here to the hospital that I forgot to ask her,” I said. “She's off getting a cup of coffee right now, but she should be back soon and then I can bring them up.”

“Bring what up?” Giselle said from behind me, and I realized she had returned and was listening.

Telling Daniel to hold on for a moment, I pulled the phone from my ear and explained our request to her. As I did, a look of confusion swept over her face.

“They were in a carved box,” I continued, “Elsbeth's letters to Abraham. Herr Lauten said he gave them to you when you first came here. Do you remember?”

Giselle shook her head as her face reddened. “That was twenty-five years ago,” she said lamely, but I could tell from her expression and her voice that this was about more than the simple passage of time.

Alice put a hand on my arm. “Be patient. It may come to her eventually.”

Glancing from Alice back to Giselle, I realized if Herr Lauten had given the box to Giselle just as she was moving in, that would have been when she was already distraught, depressed, frightened, and more. A box of old letters was probably the last thing on earth she felt like dealing with then. No wonder she looked so upset now.

Returning the phone to my ear, I told Daniel Giselle wasn't sure at the moment what she'd done with them, but that we'd get back to him if she managed to remember.

“You're kidding, right? Ada, you do understand the importance of these letters, don't you?”

His tone was so condescending that I was reminded of the day he and I had first met and he'd spoken down to me as if I were a child—a small, ignorant child. I hadn't liked it then and I certainly didn't like it now, so I managed to get him off of the phone quickly, before I said something I'd regret.

As I placed the receiver in its cradle, Oskar stepped into the room with a bouquet of flowers for Alice. “When Dad found out I was headed into town, he asked me to come by with these and a get-well greeting for you.”

She thanked him sweetly, and I took the flowers and set the vase on the table while Oskar visited. After a couple of minutes he said he needed to be on his way. “Does anyone need a ride up to Amielbach?”

Christy was already bored and antsy, and Giselle's response to Daniel's demands had left me feeling unsettled. I told Oskar that Christy and I would ride along.

On the way out the door, he turned and told Giselle he was working on adding her pieces to the gift shop and asked if she wanted to help. She declined, saying she planned to spend the day with Alice. She seemed relieved to see us leaving.

I would have liked to have been able to overhear what was said once Giselle and Alice were alone, but knew if I was around, Giselle probably wouldn't be forthcoming anyway.

Once back at Amielbach, Daniel apologized to me for having been snippy over the phone. He, Christy, and I were all standing at the bottom of the staircase, and for a moment I considered telling him Giselle was my birth mother in an attempt to explain the swirling emotions he might have sensed, but then I decided against it. The time didn't seem right for such a complex disclosure. Instead, I graciously accepted his apology.

“I know you want to get a better look at the waterfalls,” Daniel said. “Because the surveyors are still over there today, how about if we go up to the third-floor ballroom? The view is spectacular from there.”

“Let's go see it.” Christy was intrigued.

I followed her and Daniel up the open staircase, trailing one hand along the carved banister, to the second floor and down the hall, past closed bedroom doors. Christy stepped aside and let Daniel open the door to the third-floor staircase, but then she stepped right behind him, assuring I was last.

The staircase was dark and steep, its banister smooth and polished under my hand. We came to a landing with a large window that cast the morning sun across the oak floor. Straight ahead of us was a carved door featuring an elaborate scene of goats climbing up an alpine trail. A shepherdess followed the goats, staff in hand. Christy asked who the girl was. I said I had no idea, but maybe it was Elsbeth. Oskar had said except for the piece in the great room downstairs, Abraham rarely included figures in his carvings, so I assumed this girl had to be someone special.

Daniel opened the door. Before us was a grand ballroom with an oak floor and windows that surrounded the entire room.

“Maybe we should take off our shoes,” I said. The floor hadn't been polished recently, but it was still in good shape. The others agreed and Daniel took his off and then slid across the floor in his socks. Christy followed with me close behind, giggling. We stopped in the middle. I tried to imagine Elsbeth as a little girl in the room. Did she dance with her father? Or maybe her dolls? Did she have friends come over to play?

Across the floor, between two windows, was a panel carving of a rugged mountain peak. Below it was a meadow and then a village, with a church steeple in the middle. I wasn't sure what the scene was depicting, really, though it obviously wasn't Langnau. The mountain was too steep and high.

We headed toward the windows facing the waterfall. There was a gazebo in the backyard I hadn't seen before and a trellis with vines covering it. Beyond was the Kessler property. From the higher view, it was obvious the land was rocky. The waterfall was also more formidable from this angle. There was no building, but a rock foundation indicated where a house used to be. Beyond the hillside of pines, we could see the Bernese Alps. My eyes fell back on the waterfall. The cave wasn't obvious from the rise by Giselle's cottage, but it was from here. I asked Daniel how far back in the hillside it went.

“Quite a way. It's big enough to hold forty people or so.”

“Isn't the roar of the waterfall loud in the cave?” I was wondering how they would have been able to hold meetings in there.

“Surprisingly not,” Daniel said. “Especially once you're in it several yards.”

“When will we see it?” I asked.

“Soon as those surveyors are finished and out of the way.”

“How do you get over there?” There was no sign of a bridge anywhere on the creek.

“See that tree?” He pointed to a lone pine near the right bank. “Across from it is a grouping of stones in the water that make a fairly safe crossing.”

I fixed my eyes on the tree and then over to the creek, just in case I had time to go exploring later. I had no idea when that would be, not with me being solely responsible for Christy now. Maybe after Will arrived I could sneak away to look around.

We stayed up in the ballroom far longer than I had intended. Christy and I were having so much fun with the slippery floor that eventually Daniel sat down in the corner and took a book out of his backpack. He seemed content to sit and read while Christy and I slid over the hardwood surface from window to window and side to side. She seemed to forget about her worries and simply enjoyed herself, laughing and giggling as she and I raced. By the time we stopped, her face was red and she was tired.

“It would be fun if the twins were here,” she said, pulling her shoes back on her feet. I smiled at the thought of Matty and Mel playing in the ballroom. It would be fun, lots of fun. I think Christy and I were both missing them.

When we reached the main floor again, the gift shop door was open, so I slipped inside. Obviously someone had been working in the room, but no one was around right now. Music boxes, cowbells, linens, and chocolates were sitting on the glass case. Behind it was a table, and spread over it were three wall hangings that had to be Giselle's. I stepped closer. This was the first time I'd seen her work. One was a garden of dahlias—orange and purple with a single yellow bloom rising above the rest and then two pink blossoms floating away. The next one was of a huge silver star on a black background with two tiny stars far above it in the right-hand corner. And the third one was of a fire with the face of a woman in the flames. Above the fire a white bird flew, its belly pink from the heat with a small empty hole, with the sky showing through, in the middle.