Upon A Winter's Night (17 page)

Lydia drew in a sharp breath. “Like the gate hitting Victoria’s head?”

“I just want you to know—to believe—I did not hurt Sandra, however much I was upset by her, whatever past we had.”

“Was it a past either of you wanted back?”

“We both knew it would never work. It never came up.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“No. The past was the past with us. It was intense for a while, just because we were so different from each other, I think. But it was over.”

“Intense. Like what just happened between you and me?”

“Not exactly like that because I never loved her!” He’d raised his voice so fast she startled.

She stared at him. Even lit by a distant lantern, his eyes seemed to glow. The passion that emanated from him—was that a temper on a leash right now or maybe desire? But love? Did he mean he’d never loved Sandra or that he now loved her, Lydia? Whatever the intensity of his relationship with Sandra, at least it was before he and Lydia became close. She mustn’t feel betrayed by his past feelings for Sandra, but his caring for another woman still hurt. And that passion and power that blazed from him sometimes—surely it would not have turned to violence.

He sighed and let go of her shoulders. “I’ll take you home,” he said.

Suddenly eager to change the subject, she told him, “Hank phoned Ray-Lynn for me, and she can get me to Wooster tomorrow morning before work. She has that new manager, Marva, to help with the restaurant, you know.”

“Lydia, I want you with me, but not if it hurts your reputation right now. You have a lot to worry about.”

“But,” she said as he went over to Blaze to get his buggy hitched, “I intend to pay back Ray-Lynn’s kindness to me by helping you with her church’s pageant, so I’ll be here to get everything ready...when I can. With
Daad
at the hospital for a while, I’ll have to try to keep an eye on things at the store.”

“With Gid Reich there, who will keep a good eye on you.”

“But I can handle him.”

“Just so he doesn’t handle you—keeps his hands off you. Once this mess over Sandra’s death is cleared up, I want to court you. Whatever your parents or Gid say or do, I want to be your come-calling friend, if you will let me.”

“When the time’s right and things are cleared up,
ya,
Joshua Yoder, I will let you for sure.”

17

“I’
ll come inside until you get a lantern lit,” Josh insisted when he helped her down from his buggy by her back door. From the seat behind them, he lifted the lighted lantern he’d brought along.

“I think Gid made sure the buggies were back and the horses fed, but I should take a look in the barn first.”

“I can do that after you’re inside. Or...let’s just do it together,” he added and, trying to shield his lantern, he went with her through the wind toward the Brand barn. Over its double doors was painted a large quilt square done by a local artist, Sarah Kauffman, who had married an outsider and gone to live in the world. But
Daad,
a secret artist at heart, had hired her to paint a large square both on the side of the furniture store and on their barn before she was shunned. This one was a design called
Sunshine and Shadows,
because
Daad
said life was like that.

As cold as it was right now, Lydia felt the warmth of her love for Josh. Strangely, the light parts of the design above their heads seemed to glow ghostly white tonight, as if lit from within.

“If I can’t come calling on you, with your
Daad
needing quiet and all,” Josh said, “we may have to sometimes do our courting in my barn. You know, upon a winter’s night like this—like a little while ago.”

She tingled from tonight’s memory. While she held the lantern, he unlatched the barn door and slid it open. They went in together, out of the slap of the wind. She knew he was partly teasing about the courting in the barn, yet she couldn’t quite picture Josh calling for her at the store after work or
Mamm
asking him to Sunday dinner. Once the sadness of Sandra’s death was behind them...then?

“Things look normal in here,” she said, hanging the lantern from the crossbar hook and glancing around. “Gid did bring all three buggies back. The horses look curried and fed,” she added as she went over to pet Flower, who nuzzled the palm of her hand.

“Maybe he had help.”

“He’ll need it at the store, too.”

“From you?”

“And others. I got the idea from the surgeon it would be a long haul for
Daad
to get back to normal. He’ll need rest, lots of it. I have to take his medicine back with me, and I bet the surgeon will change it again. It took him a long time to adjust to it. The first one his regular doctor put him on gave him a bad cough, and the second made his hands shake, which bothered his quilting. Oh,” she gasped, turning to look at him, “I haven’t let that slip ever with anyone else!”

Josh came closer and put a foot on the lowest stall rail. “Your father likes to quilt?”

“The family secret, one of them, I guess. He’s good at it, does beautiful work.”

“I won’t tell anyone I know—especially him. I’m hoping he will honor me with his friendship and counsel someday. As for your mother, at least I got a loaf of friendship bread from her. It was delicious, though I had the feeling she came over partly to keep an eye on us.”

They left the barn and went out into the wind again. She didn’t want to worry Josh by repeating what Hank had said about seeing Gid circling her house when he drove by. Gid was probably just being helpful again, making sure none of the shutters were damaged, that everything looked all right outside.

“Here, let me,” Josh said, and took the key from her trembling, gloved hand to unlock the back door of her house. Inside, he lit both kerosene kitchen lanterns so that warm light bathed the room. They stood awkwardly across the corner of the kitchen table from each other.

“I’d like to kiss you good-night,” he said, twisting his hat in his hands. “But I don’t know if I’d want to leave then, and I hear Melly and Gaspar calling.” Despite his little joke, he looked painfully serious. “I’d better get going. You sure you’ll be all right? You’ve never been alone here at night, have you?”

“No, but this is home—for now. I can’t thank you enough for delivering me safe and sound.”

“With all this media attention about Sandra, it’s best that no one sees my buggy here tonight. I’d better get going,” he said again.

“I think the media folk have cleared out, though.”

“I’m praying they won’t be back. And that the blow to Sandra’s head fits the loft ladder rung I cut off for the sheriff.”

“You did? If it fits, then she hit her head falling, because no one could lift that ladder to hit her. Oh, but—” she felt her stomach go into free fall “—someone could still have pushed her out of the loft.” And, she recalled, Josh’s flashlight had been there, but—

“Lydia, I swear to you, if someone hit her, it wasn’t me.”

“As I said, I believe you, or you wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have come to you tonight—kissed you back.”

They almost swayed together, but he picked up his lantern, went to the door and put his hand to the knob.

She called after him, “Josh, an Amish man’s word is his bond. You don’t have to swear you’re telling the truth—about Sandra, about me.”
About love,
she almost added.

“And a good Amish woman trusts her man. Now lock this door behind me.” He went out and firmly closed the door.

She locked it and watched through the kitchen window as he drove away into the windy darkness. Suddenly, she realized she was hungry and took cheese and milk from the fridge. Things looked a little rearranged in there since she’d fixed breakfast this morning, but
Mamm
had probably been making more bread. She must have been distracted, though. She’d put a jar of honey in the fridge where it would crystallize, so Lydia took it out and put it back in its place in the cupboard. Mamm had obviously used a lot of it, and it wasn’t for her bread recipe. The outside of the jar was sticky, so she must have really been in a rush. Things were usually immaculate in
Mamm
’s kitchen.

Lydia got some crackers and ate them with cheese washed down by a glass of milk that tasted much colder than usual. The house seemed so chilly and silent—“Silent Night,” but somehow, not “Holy Night.” She hoped both of those were included in the carols Ray-Lynn’s friends would sing at their outdoor manger scene. She liked most of the worldly Christmas carols.

“It came upon a midnight clear,”
 
she sang, but the house seemed to swallow her words. Besides, singing right now didn’t cheer her up. It was near midnight but cloudy, not clear outside, as if another storm was hovering. The thought of
Daad
so ill hung heavy on her, especially in the wake of Sandra’s death and Victoria Keller’s. At least Josh’s almost-profession of love, her growing friendship with Ray-Lynn and renewed one with Bess Stark lifted her spirits a bit. But then there was the eternal tension with
Mamm...

She shook her head as if that could clear it. She had to gather a change of clothes for her parents and above all find
Daad
’s blood pressure medicine. It was in the medicine cabinet,
Mamm
had said. Taking one of the two kitchen lanterns, she went up the stairs. They creaked, which she hadn’t noticed before. The house was cold to the bone, and it was windy. The gentle hiss of the lantern was drowned by other sounds.

And it seemed so dark up here when one lantern had often lit her way. Shadows loomed from the open, silent mouths of the doors. Even the thought of a bath and her own bed didn’t comfort her.

She went into her parents’ bedroom and put the lantern down on the cherry dresser so she could see into their drawers. Yes, a change of undergarments for both, easily spotted, and another shirt for
Daad.
She took the pile of clothing to pack and, carrying the lantern, went into the bathroom to get the medicine.

She hesitated at the door. The dark green bathroom curtain was pulled shut when
Mamm
liked it open to air out the tub and the tiles. There were no mirrors to reflect the light like in
Englische
bathrooms she’d seen, and her own huge shadow seemed to leap at her.

Though she knew it was a crazy idea, she yanked the curtain open. An empty tub, of course, but water speckled the tiles and—yes, the bottom of the tub.
Daad
took a shower at night, and she and
Mamm
had baths then. No one would have used the tub since last night so the water would not have stayed here like this.

Her pulse started to pound. The house had been closed up. And with the shower curtain closed, the water hadn’t dried up, that’s all. She was letting everything get to her. The medicine—just get
Daad
’s
 
medicine where
Mamm
said it would be.

She opened the pinewood cabinet. As usual, it was immaculate with perfect placements of over-the-counter remedies for headaches, bug bites, bruises and—sleeping pills, no doubt
Mamm
’s! When had she started taking sleeping pills? But she didn’t find
Daad
’s prescription bottle. Had she missed his medicine beside his bed? No, if
Mamm
said it was here, surely it was.

From the cabinet, Lydia took
Daad
’s
 
hand razor. No Amish beards were cut or trimmed, but the men shaved above their mouths to keep a mustache at bay. That was a tradition from the terrible days when European soldiers who sported mustaches hunted down the Amish and dragged them off to torture and death. Lydia pictured one dreadful drawing in the Amish book called
Martyrs’ Mirror
and shuddered again.

She also gathered their toothbrushes and toothpaste, a brush and comb. She’d already taken some money for
Mamm
from her top dresser drawer.

Frustrated, wanting to get to sleep—maybe on the sofa downstairs because she didn’t like the idea of being up here alone tonight—she hurried down to the kitchen.

No medicine bottle there. Maybe the surgeon would have to phone
Daad
’s
 
doctor, but what if he had not been taking his pills? Maybe he had lost them or thrown them away. That would need to be reported, too. As stubborn as he was, perhaps he’d brought about his own heart attack. He’d looked especially bad these past few weeks. After those first two medicines gave him bad side effects, what if he’d gone off the latest one on his own?

Once she’d checked the dining room table and the end table by his favorite chair, Lydia decided to look the only other place she could think of—the side parlor, his quilting room. She’d been in there before but not for several years. She’d had the feeling he would still welcome her there, but he didn’t want
Mamm
coming in, and he could hardly bar just one of them.

It was locked, but she knew where he kept the key, under the back foot of the table near the sofa. She put down the pile of clothing and tried the door.

Feeling like a naughty child about to be caught at something, Lydia unlocked the door, lifted her lantern and went in. Bolts of cloth were neatly stacked on the shelves of walnut cabinets once used for books. Several evidently completed quilts were piled in the rocking chair near the door.

A large frame stretching a nearly completed quilt—a Christmas gift for her or
Mamm?
—claimed the center of the high-ceilinged room. Two straight-backed chairs faced the quilt as if a specter quilter joined him in his solitary abode. No doubt he just didn’t want to move a chair when he changed positions. An unlit, suspended double lantern hung over the quilt frame, but now her lantern cast the only light. Things seemed to shift in shadows as if an unseen hand were quilting, moving the material.

She got hold of herself, whispering a little prayer of thanks that
Daad
would be coming back to finish this beautiful quilt, dominated by Christmas colors, white-and-gold squares on a dark green background. The Amish avoided red, the color of martyrs’ blood.

The quilt was upside down from her position, but she could see it did have a Christmas theme with an angel in every fourth square. It also featured repeated sheep and donkeys—even camels! Could it be intended as a gift for her? Was he honoring her work with Josh’s animals or was he simply using manger symbols?

As she started to walk around the quilt to see it right side up, she caught sight of a pill bottle on a lower shelf, nearly hidden by scissors and spools of thread. That had to be the blood pressure medicine. It better be because her heart was pounding so hard she probably needed it herself.

She picked up the bottle and turned the label close to the lantern.
Ya!
His Hytrin medicine.
Mamm
just hadn’t known he’d moved it here. And beside it, or rather behind it, another bottle of pills. She squinted in the dim light to read Paxil, whatever that was. Oh, around the back of the label it read, “for depression.”

Daad
was taking medication for depression? Sure, her people used modern medicines and saw worldly doctors when they needed to. The bishops had permitted that for years. But
Mamm
couldn’t know this, could she? Besides, it seemed to Lydia that
Mamm
was the one depressed, not
Daad.
He’d only seemed tired to Lydia. Of course, she’d have to tell the surgeon this. Was
Daad
unhappy with his life? With his tense marriage? Could he have been upset that she didn’t like Gid, who could run the store for him someday?

Holding both medicine bottles in her left hand, Lydia lifted the lantern higher to examine the quilt from the bottom up. How lovely the angels were. They looked just like the one in the precious snow globe she had broken and must get fixed. On the main border of the quilt draped over the frame, the star of Bethlehem was sewn around the edges in a repeating pattern, and, just above that, an inner border was stitched with the scripted German words
Vergeben Sie Vater—
Father Forgive, the Lord’s words from the cross.

Or, since those two words were duplicated over and over with no punctuation between them, did it say, “Forgive Father”? No, it must be the Bible quote, but it puzzled her. That was an Easter, not a Christmas quote. Another mystery like Victoria Keller’s half-written note to the girl Brand baby. And if this quilt was meant as a Christmas gift for Lydia, what was the message? At least, if it was to be hers, she could ask
Daad
when and if he gave it to her. It wouldn’t be a strange message as if from the grave, as Victoria’s had been.