Upon A Winter's Night (8 page)

“Besides,” he said, “the darn deer have been nipping the tops off seedlings on the other side of the hill, and here I am worrying about pests I can’t even see. But,” he said, stepping closer, “I’ll find a way to get rid of them.”

“Hopefully, these trees will be all right by next year.”

“They’re for this year—apartment size.”

When he frowned at her, she said in a rush, “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry about your aunt—that she died that way. I know you’ll be too busy at the funeral and meal to tell you then, but please accept our sympathy, from both Josh and me.”

Her voice broke. She shouldn’t have spoken for Josh. It almost sounded as if they were a couple. As usual, she felt awkward around Connor Stark, especially since he had a pitchfork in each hand. But he stabbed them through the snow and into the ground where they shuddered a moment, then stilled. Although Connor had been around as long as she remembered, she hadn’t been alone with him for years.

“You heard the coroner’s ruling?” he asked, examining another tree limb that looked diseased, even to her untrained eye.

“
Ya.
Ray-Lynn Freeman told me.”

“Whatever you hear about Victoria Keller, Lydia, we tried our best with her, but she was, to put it nicely, beyond help.”

He moved around her to examine a tree slightly up the hill as if he didn’t want her to be looking down on him. When there was no snow on the ground, he often rode a golf cart around, but he’d obviously walked here today, carrying that equipment. And if his work was all on the up-and-up, why didn’t he send one of his seasonal workers to take care of it?

“So,” he said, shaking snow from a tree bough and staring at it, “would you like a job working at the tree barn for the next couple of weeks? I know you work for your father, but Gid Reich mentioned how good you are with customers there. It would be only for a couple of hours an evening, if you want. You wouldn’t have to run the cash register. Just oversee doughnuts and cocoa, chat people up.”

“Gid suggested it? That figures. He doesn’t like me working with the Yoder animals.”

“He’s pretty sweet on you, I’d say, and probably doesn’t want you to get hurt—by the animals or the situation.”

Lydia was going to ask him what situation he was referring to, as if she didn’t know, but Connor went on, “Gid’s one of my new investors in the tree farm. I’ve taken several locals on and plan to buy more land to the north, hire on some extra help since I’m now also ‘Mr. Mayor’ and my mother’s gone a lot.”

“I thank you for the job offer, and your family has always been kind to me, but—”

“My mother, especially. Some like to help stray animals, but she is always into causes for people—in her capacity as state senator, I mean. So, you’d better be heading home.”

Connor’s words reminded Lydia about the time he’d ordered her off their property years ago. Of course, it must have been hard on him to lose a father he’d adored to an illness with the big name of multiple myeloma. He was being kind now, at least, wasn’t he? Yet she sensed an edge to him. Others had mentioned it, too—their smiling new mayor with the invisible chip on his shoulder when he seemed to have so much going for him.

“See you tomorrow, Connor. I appreciate the job offer, but no thanks.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll see you.”

Lydia did not look back as she hurried down the hill, taking small strides so she wouldn’t slip. She’d pop in to tell her mother she was heading straight for Josh’s and she was late.

Still, it was the strangest thing. Maybe it was because she thought she’d caught Connor doing something bad, but every step she took down the hill, she was certain she felt his eyes boring into her back.

8

T
he next day, the morning of the Stark funeral, Lydia made breakfast for the family as she often did. She had not slept well last night, with disjointed dreams haunting her. More than once in the still-dark morning she caught herself staring out the window at her reflection. The glass was like a giant mirror, and she was wondering how much she resembled David and Lena Brand...David and Lena Brand...

Mamm
seldom joined them until later, though this morning
Daad
had not appeared, either. As usual, Lydia and
Daad
would buggy separately to the store as soon as dawn lit the sky. Halfway through her oatmeal, she was surprised to hear him emerge from the side parlor, his private abode, instead of coming down the stairs. His firm closing of the door behind him echoed like a single knock as Lydia popped up to ladle out his oatmeal.

“You haven’t been working all night on a quilt, have you?” she asked, half-teasing.

“Maybe something I want to finish before Christmas, eh? I heard you stirring.”

“Ya,”
she said with a little laugh. “Stirring the oatmeal for three and hoping it doesn’t clump up before
Mamm
gets down here. I told her I don’t make lumpy oatmeal, only if it sits for a while until she gets out of bed to eat it.”

She thought
Daad
might say something about the need to understand her mother, but he didn’t comment. He sat and bowed his head in a brief, silent prayer while she poured him orange juice and coffee. When he opened his eyes, they looked tired and bloodshot.

Lydia was barely back to her own oatmeal when
Daad
said, “Gid came calling for you last night after you lit out. Said he wanted to continue a conversation you two started yesterday. He wasn’t too pleased when
Mamm
told him you’d gone over to the Yoder barn. And he was really upset when he saw you and an
Englische
woman in a little red car, roaring out of Yoder’s and heading away from town. Just a warning he’ll probably bring it up when he sees you at work this morning.”

Her spoon dinged against her bowl. “Now he’s taken to spying on me—and reporting back to you as if I were ten instead of twenty!”

“Liddy, he happened to see an unusual thing. The woman he loves—”

“I don’t think he lo—”

“Don’t interrupt,” he scolded, thumping his index finger on the table in her direction. “I repeat, the woman he loves and wants to marry was riding with an
Englische
stranger in a car, heading who knows where. That might upset any good Amish come-calling friend.”

“She’s a friend of Josh’s from his days in Columbus, visiting here, and I was showing her how to get into Wooster. She had business there. She’s writing about customs of Amish Christmas.”

“And thought to ask you about that instead of Josh?”

“As well as Josh.”

“Liddy,” he said, reaching over to cover her hand with his, “do you love Josh Yoder?”

She was shocked he’d asked. Ray-Lynn had, too, more or less. Was it so evident? Couldn’t people just accept she wanted to help him with the animals? And was that the real reason she kept going back?

“I—I care for him,” she stammered. “Also for the animals, of course. I think it’s good what he’s doing for people who celebrate Christmas, and with the petting zoo for the local kids and worldly visitors.”

“But when it comes to you, what is he doing? How does he feel about you? More than just gratitude that you are such a good friend and free help to him? You’re not a lanky kid anymore.”

“
Ya,
like you said, we’re friends,” she faltered, desperately blinking back tears.

“He won’t ever want to run a big furniture store, now will he?”

“Should that be what matters most?”

He sighed and pulled his hand back. “Liddy, I want the best for you, and I think that’s Gid Reich. And,
ach,
I know people can be wrong about the ones they love, make bad choices and suffer long for those.”

Lydia almost asked if he meant his sad marriage with
Mamm,
but she held her tongue on that. “Does
Mamm
know?” she asked. “I mean about my going with Josh’s friend in her car?”

“
Ya,
but I told her I’d talk to you about it and how you’re hurting Gid. And I told her you had to find your own way to a husband, though you know how we both stand on it. I repeat, we only want the best for you.”

Lydia almost blurted out to him that would mean sharing all they knew about her real parents...and that it didn’t mean she loved or honored them less. She almost told him what she’d learned, thanks to Sandra Myerson.

But instead she finished her nearly cold oatmeal, which sat like a lump in her stomach. She hurried to wash their dishes and darted out to the barn to harness Flower before
Daad
came back downstairs to harness his buggy horse. It was bad enough she was dreading a confrontation with Gid this morning and probably with
Mamm
later.

As she buggied past the dark Stark house on its hill, she thought about Victoria’s sad, cold death and realized something in her had died, too: her childhood. Her dependence on her adoptive parents was finally gone, though she would always love them. She wanted to learn more about her real parents and she wanted to pursue the man she really loved and wanted. And, for sure, that was not Gid Reich.

* * *

To Lydia’s amazement, Gid was kind and proper that morning. He wished her well at the Stark funeral. “I’m going to be partners with Connor in a limited way,” he informed her as he cornered her in the store’s small employee coffee-and-snacks room. “I’m buying into his tree business to help him—and me—expand.”

She was tempted to warn him that she’d caught Connor spraying sick trees he intended to sell anyway, but she didn’t want to chance upsetting Gid’s apparent good mood. Nor did she want to have him questioning or confronting Connor. It was possible she’d misunderstood why he was spraying those pines. Maybe the pesticide was in the paint and would work quickly to heal a sick tree.

Taking a snickerdoodle from the plateful someone had brought in, she told him, “He mentioned your new partnership with him when he offered me a seasonal job. But I’m stretched pretty thin, so I told him thanks but no. He said you suggested it to him.”

Gid began to walk with her when she left, wending her way back toward the front desk amid the aisles of dining room tables and hutches. Holding her cookie and cup of cocoa, she still expected a lecture about working at Josh’s barn.

“Just thought you might like a short-term job at Stark’s for a while,” he said. “You told me once—I think it was when we went together to the county fair last July—that you used to love going over there but didn’t anymore, that it upset your mother. I thought that would be my way of weighing in to help you with her. If your
mamm
thought it was my idea, she wouldn’t complain.”

In the aisle with the tall, ticking grandfather clocks, Lydia stopped walking, that is, stopped hurrying to escape this man. What he’d said—his insight and kindness—touched her. This wasn’t the Gid she’d known for months, since she’d tried to slow him down and hold him off. Today he had been thoughtful of her, calm with no scolding or mention of the red car or Josh.

She glanced at one of the clocks. Ten-thirty. She was meeting Josh in two hours at the barn, and he would buggy them to the Starks’. Surely, Gid had known that, too, yet no dire warning, no mention of it. Had
Daad
warned Gid he needed to mend his ways to win her hand? And what would Gid think if she told him that Sol Brand, owner of this large store and workshop, was not her real father. No, her real father was not a shop owner but a laborer who had merely cut the trees that became the furniture for all this Brand bounty.

She was surprised again when Gid glanced quickly around, then bent to peck a kiss on her cheek. With a raised hand in farewell, a wink and a smile, he backed away and left her standing there.

Would wonders never cease? A new tactic to woo her? So far, this day was full of surprises, and she hoped there wouldn’t be any more of them, especially at the funeral.

* * *

Perhaps because they’d arrived together in the only Amish buggy parked among the cars, Lydia could tell that guests she didn’t know—most of the people here—assumed she and Josh were a couple. Strangely, she felt they were and loved the feeling. How Josh felt she couldn’t tell.

“We certainly appreciate your coming,” Bess Stark told them as she greeted them inside the large living room in a sort of reception line with Connor and his wife, Heather, just beyond her. “Especially since it’s starting to snow again, and I’ll bet those steel buggy wheels can be slippery on the roads.” She shook Josh’s hand and gave Lydia’s shoulders a light hug. “If Victoria—we always called her Vicky—were here, if she were herself, which she hadn’t been for several years, she would thank you, too. Josh, are plans afoot to expand or redo that barn?”

“As soon as the weather gets decent,
ya,
for sure.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “As you know, Senator Stark, in big cities, they like to name stadiums and hospital wings after their donors. But I promise you, I will not call the new animal wing the Elizabeth Stark barn.”

Though Bess looked tired and it seemed to Lydia new creases lined her forehead and her upper lip, her face lit in a smile. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind a bit,” she said. “But let’s keep it our secret. Best that not get out.”

“Best what not get out?” Connor asked, leaning toward them. “Ah, the Amish contingent. We’re pleased you could come, of course. The sheriff and Ray-Lynn are over by the casket paying their final respects. Closed casket, the close of a sad life. I try to remember Aunt Vicky as she was, but these last years have been so difficult—for her, of course, as well as for us to see her slip away like that.”

“Did she still read or write?” Lydia asked. “I mean, anything normal like that?”

She felt Josh’s arm touching hers stiffen. He knew that she was digging for information about the note. The fact he took her elbow as if to steer her on made her realize he didn’t think it was a good idea—not here, not now. She could almost hear his thoughts.

“She scribbled crazy things, pictures, like senseless doodles,” Bess said. “She used to want to be an artist, but gave it up for a career in journalism. She was a bright woman. Her Alzheimer’s doctors used to try to decipher her scribblings and pictures, but that, too, went nowhere.”

Others had come in the door; they had to move on. Connor introduced them to his wife, Heather, a pretty, slender woman with long blond hair streaked with auburn. Heather Stark seemed nervous. Her eyes darted past them as they spoke briefly. She thanked them for what they had done the night Aunt Vicky died, then told them, “Please take a chair over by the casket. People have sent such lovely flowers. I’m going to have to duck out and see how our twins are behaving. Seven-year-old boys at something like this need a bit of watching, so they don’t show up in a Darth Vader mask or tell people what they want for Christmas. I’m pleased you’re staying for the buffet.”

She darted off. “Twin boys just like Hannah has,” Lydia told Josh as they moved on. She could tell some of the
Englische
folks were watching them. She’d been so few places lately where they were in the minority that she’d forgotten the feeling.

“Tragedies and blessings fall on the Plain People and the fancy ones,” Josh said as they headed for the Freemans, who had sat down in the back row of wooden chairs facing the flowers and the casket, where the funeral service would evidently be held.

Lydia was awed by the huge array of summer flowers this time of year and by the rest of the living room she’d been stealing glimpses of. The family had apparently cleared furniture from this end of the room. Through a veil of falling flakes, the array of windows on the east and west sides displayed the white Home Valley below. It made her feel they were in a snow globe.

On a third wall was a ceiling-high stone fireplace and mantel with an oil painting over it of Bess, Connor, Heather and the twins. How her artist friend Sarah would love to see that, she thought, with their unique facial expressions: Bess, prideful; Connor, possessive; Heather, loving; and the twins, one a bit smug, the other looking as if he’d rather be elsewhere.

Although the floor underfoot was polished oak, foreign-looking area rugs with ornate designs were scattered throughout. As they approached the Freemans, Lydia glimpsed the dining room off to the side. Two long tables were not yet laden with food, but linen tablecloths, plates and utensils and more flowers were in place. Beyond that, in yet another living room or den, she could see small, round tables set with candle and pine cone centerpieces.

And on the polished coffin, beside a draping of red roses, was a photo of a much younger Victoria—Vicky, they had called her—sitting at a writing desk with pen in her hand, looking off into the distance. Though her own people would have judged that as prideful, Lydia was glad to see the picture. After she had found that note, it was almost a sign from heaven that the deceased woman had pen in hand.

“Glad to see you all,” Ray-Lynn interrupted her thoughts. Some others were taking seats in the eight narrow rows. After Josh and the sheriff shook hands, Lydia sat next to Ray-Lynn with Josh on her other side.

“Quite a place, right?” Ray-Lynn asked Lydia out of the side of her mouth. “And what a view. Can you spot your house from here?”

“Not from this room, but I’ll bet from the north windows. I just wonder if Victoria didn’t look out and see our place and try to walk to it that night with the note.”

“We’ll probably never know,” Ray-Lynn said. Then, leaning over Lydia, she said to Josh, “There was a friend of yours came in the restaurant for breakfast and lunch today. Sandra something. She asked me and others a lot of questions about Amish customs, created a bit of a stir. No one wanted to tell her much at first—you know, small-town rules and Amish humility—until she said she was a friend of yours. And of Lydia’s, too. She doesn’t quite get the Amish privacy and don’t-push thing, because at first she tried to use a little voice recorder and had a camera.”