by Karen Harper
Josh began counting. Daad, trying to help, echoed his numbers. Suddenly Mamm choked, sucked in a breath and opened her eyes. She gasped, spit up water while Lydia and Josh helped her to sit up and Daad chaffed her hands.
“I want to—die—too,” she whispered, her voice rasping. “I killed Sammy. Did I kill someone else? I told her—stay away from my Lydia.”
She coughed more and sucked in ragged breaths. Daad said, “Don’t talk now, Susan. Shhh!”
But she went on, gasping her words. “Why, you should have heard—the things—she asked—me!”
Even in the dark, Lydia’s and Josh’s wide gazes slammed together. Did she mean Sandra?
Josh looked quickly away, but Lydia’s thoughts terrified her. What if Mamm had taken one of those pills during the day? In her strange waking-sleeping state, could she have confronted Sandra in the barn—the loft? Mamm had been there to give Josh bread just two days before that. Maybe she’d seen Sandra drive into his place and had come over just to talk, to warn her to keep away, to keep quiet about Lydia’s adoption. And then...? No. No, impossible.
Daad cradled Mamm against him, bending over her as if he could warm her. Josh put his hand on Daad’s shoulder, gripped it. “The barn’s the closest place, and I’ve got heated blowers we can train right on you,” he told them. “The heat’s turned down in the house, and the three of you can’t all get in my single bed, anyway. I’ll carry her there and get blankets from the house for everyone. Lydia, help your father. We’re all going to freeze. We can’t stay here. Everyone up. Now.”
He lifted Mamm, and they obeyed, a straggling band trudging through the snow. It was only then Lydia realized she had one bare foot, and it had gone numb. Limping, weaving, they went through the gate and Lydia closed it behind them. Slowly they made their way across the animal enclosure toward the open camel gate in the barn. How beautiful it looked to her, that dimly lighted doorway: safety and salvation. Mamm ill but alive.
Daad had been near death’s door, too. Were they being punished for not telling her about her birth parents?
* * *
Lydia’s mother was conscious, clinging to her husband. Josh helped Lydia wrap them in camel blankets. He moved one of the two lanterns closer to them, as if that would provide warmth, and handed Lydia the other, and then he trained both warm blowers on the three of them.
“I’ll be back fast with dry clothes and house blankets. Lydia, rub and wrap your foot. And there’s some hot coffee left in my thermos.”
Josh reopened the back barn door they’d just closed and ran for the house. He knew he had to keep moving. He hadn’t been in the water, but he’d gotten wet from the splashing and carrying Mrs. Brand. Besides, he’d run out with the horse rein but no coat. How had Mrs. Brand gotten in that pond? Had she been trying to kill herself and then decided that she wanted to live? Lydia’s father had needed a heart surgeon, but her mother needed a psychiatrist. At least Lydia had been there to call for help.
He fumbled to unlock the back door. His hands were freezing, shaking, and it was so chilly in here. Maybe he’d turned the heat down too far when he went out with the animals. Had to hurry...Lydia could have broken through the ice, too, drowned the same way her little brother had, the way her mother surely would have if he hadn’t heard their screams and shouts. He could have had two more dead women on his property. He had felt so blessed when Lydia came into his life this second time, but now he almost feared there was a curse on her family.
He tore inside his house and pounded up the stairs. If only he had time to heat water, but he had to get all of them in dry clothes. Maybe he should have brought them here, but they’d barely made it as far as the barn.
In his bedroom, he stripped the quilt and both blankets off his bed, then grabbed his clean clothes, even for the women. Flannel shirts, pairs of pants, socks, slippers and shoes. A change of clothes for himself. He jammed it all into a bundle, using the biggest blanket to cover it.
When they were dry, he should take them home in his buggy, but he hated to leave the animals alone, even for that long, with all that had been going on. If KILLER wanted to hurt him even more, would he attack the animals to accomplish his sick mission?
On his rush back downstairs and through the kitchen, he grabbed a box of crackers and a sack of cookies.
His arms so full he could hardly see where he was going, he engaged the lock from the inside, then stumbled out into the cold.
He went at a lurching run toward the barn. How many times had he wished Lydia and her family would drop by for a visit and now this. He remembered Mrs. Brand’s first words when she regained consciousness. He knew what she meant when she said she’d killed Sammy since the boy had somehow gotten past her and headed to the pond. But what about her dazed question, Did I kill someone else, too? She’d seemed to refer to Sandra with all her questions. Had Sandra confronted Lydia’s mother? Here? Ach, people said a lot of things when they were in shock.
It might be a good idea to shout for Lydia to open the camel door. But as dark as it was out here, barely starlit with no moon, he could see something was written—painted—on the entrance he’d run through more than once tonight. The same crude, quick writing. This time, the paint was dry. Since he’d left the door open when he’d run back and forth, the words could have been there awhile: U KILLED S.
* * *
When Josh came back in, Lydia thought he looked like he’d seen a ghost. No doubt, the shock of all this was setting in for him, too. She’d rubbed her foot and wrapped it in a towel, then done the same for both of Mamm’s feet. Her toes had looked blue. She had gotten some hot coffee down her mother and made Daad take a few sips. Josh, at least, didn’t look as if he needed coffee. He looked wide-awake and his face was red, but not the kind of red from the cold. Was he scared or angry?
“Here,” he said, dropping his bundle on his plank desk. He told Lydia, “We’ll all have to wear my clothes and cover up with these blankets until I can buggy you home. Unless you think your mother needs a doctor right now.”
“She needs a doctor, all right, but not now,” Lydia whispered. “A doctor tomorrow, for sure. Best we just all get warm.”
Josh carried Mamm into his office, and behind stacked bales of hay, she and Daad got on dry clothes and wrapped themselves in blankets. Lydia went to change on the other side of the camel pen behind the kneeling, sleeping animals, who woke and tried to nuzzle her and nip her hair as if to say, Join us. We have room here in the hay.
Josh had gone around the corner where the old milking wing started. Unfortunately, all the hubbub annoyed the donkeys, who began protesting in their usual brays and haws.
Once Lydia got her pants cuffs and shirtsleeves rolled up, holding up the too-big trousers, she hurried back to her parents. “Daad, are you two doing all right?” she asked. “Can Josh or I get you something else from his house? He brought crackers and cookies.”
“We’re all right, Liddy,” Daad’s wan voice floated to her. “All covered up, warmth coming back.”
As she moved away from her parents, Josh came striding toward her in his dry clothes. He still looked upset. “Sorry we got the animals stirred up, so—”
He stopped in midthought as his eyes traveled over her, dressed in his clothing. She knew her hair was a mess, and she had cinched in his too-loose trousers with some twine and was still shivering from what had happened as much as from the cold. She wore so many socks on her tingling foot that she hobbled when she walked. She was shaken to her core, and she saw now Josh was trembling, too.
They moved farther away from her parents into a barely lit corner of the barn. Josh pulled her into a warm embrace, pressed tight, her soft curves to his hard angles. Her arms around his waist clamped her to him; his arms around her back felt like steel—trembling steel.
“You should lie down, too,” she murmured, her lips against his warm throat. “You’d better not buggy us home right now. You strained your muscles. You’re shaking.”
H
is only answer was to kiss her hard, his demanding mouth moving over hers. His skin felt warmer than hers. His beard stubble raspy, his tongue commanding. He broke the kiss as quickly as it began and whispered in her ear.
“Lydia, the KILLER painter has been at it again. I didn’t see it on the outside of the camel door until I came in with the clothes. It’s dry, may have been there for a while—well, at least since after I came in here to check on a sick sheep a few hours ago. When I ran in and out to get to you, I was in such a rush, and then the door was open when we came back in.”
His deep voice, his emotion and urgency vibrated through her as he held her close. Strange that even with all the terror they’d been through tonight, she felt warmed by his body, by her desire and love for him.
But she leaned slightly back to see his face. “Is the message the same as before?”
“It just says U KILLED S. The word you is not spelled out, like someone was used to sending messages on Twitter or something. Or, was just in a hurry.”
“Twitter? A worldly phone? Could KILLER have come into the barn when you were out, too? Should we look around again? I’ve been trying to give Mamm and Daad privacy, but could he be behind a stack of hay bales, too...or up in the loft?”
“I’m going to get a pitchfork for protection, take a lantern and find out,” he said, setting her back. “This has to stop now, but you wait here.”
“You’ll have to tell the sheriff you’re still being harassed,” she said, clinging to his hand as he started away. “Maybe he can do a stick up.”
He almost smiled. “A stakeout? Like stay outside in the cold all night, walking back and forth between your place and mine? And I’ll bet your father didn’t lock the door when he went out. Considering what happened to your place—your bed—you’d better ask him. I swear, I’m going to do a stakeout myself. But ya, I’ll have to get the sheriff out here again, as much as his continued questions gall me.”
Josh got the extra lantern and a very old-looking pitchfork and started to make a circuit of the barn. Lydia tiptoed near her parents and whispered, “Daad, did you lock our house door?”
He sat up beyond the bales, rose and tiptoed away from her sleeping mother. “I didn’t, but don’t worry, Liddy. No one will disturb a place, especially this time of night. Not in Amish country.”
She remembered that she and Mamm had not told him about the break-in at their home. Nor did he know about the first message scrawled under the loft. Or that the person who might be Sandra’s killer—Victoria’s, too, for all they knew—was in the area tonight, throwing red paint around instead of honey this time. So should she blame him too much for not telling her important things? People had their secrets and their reasons, maybe not to hurt but to protect those they loved.
But no way did she want to go home alone now to secure those doors with their new locks. For all she knew their keys might have been taken by now. Without another word, she hugged her father good-night and went back by the camel pen to wait for Josh. The barn had gone silent again but for the creak of its old wooden bones in the wind. She couldn’t even hear Josh until he suddenly appeared.
“Nothing I can find, even in the lofts,” he whispered as he came back with the pitchfork and lantern.
“You were right,” she said. “Daad didn’t lock the house when he went out in such a rush. So far, we haven’t told him about our intruder. But after all he’s been through tonight, maybe he’s ready to hear some things he’d rather not—just like I am.”
“Your burning question?”
“Ya, I’ll try again. Josh, it has to be something...well, something bad to make them keep the truth about my birth parents from me. Each time I get ready to demand he tell me, I think the Lord is giving me signs to wait longer, but all this can’t wait. Ya, I need to ask him or Bess about the truth.”
“Bess? Oh, you mean she’s lived around here long enough that she might remember something about your birth parents? And being Englische instead of Amish, she’s more likely to tell you than your parents or Bishop Esh would.”
Lydia agonized whether to confide in him about the huge collection of snow globes, about the letter she’d found to Sweetheart Sol from his Bessie. But she’d seen too many secrets, and she trusted Josh. In a quiet voice, she blurted out everything except Daad’s suspicions about Gid’s embezzlement.
“Bessie?” Josh said when she told him what the letter said. “I don’t know if Congresswoman Stark was ever called that, but that was my mother’s nickname among family and friends instead of Bethany. So there’s a coincidence for you. My father always called her Bessie. Lydia,” he said, taking a deep breath before plunging on, “they were close friends years ago.”
He’d spoken so matter-of-factly. A coincidence, he’d said, though Lydia’s stomach did a cartwheel. Another Bessie! And one in Daad’s early life. As much as Lydia had feared the wild possibility that her real mother was Bess Stark, it would be even more of a disaster if it was Bessie Yoder, now deceased, because then Josh would be her half brother.
* * *
Lydia was grateful when Josh buggied them home at dawn. They had whispered for hours, then had finally fallen asleep, leaning together on hay bales near the front door. Before exhaustion claimed them, he’d tried to keep Lydia from thinking a massive collection of snow globes was enough to prove maternity, but he’d even more strongly assured her that his mother and Sol had been no more than friends. Yet so many things had shocked her now that it seemed no nightmare was impossible.
To her relief, nothing was painted on their house or barn, and inside the house things seemed to be as they had left them in their haste to chase Mamm outside. Daad got Mamm to bed and sat with her while Lydia fixed them tea, then made a quick tour of the house to be sure all was well. Nothing strange in the pantry or refrigerator, she noted, except both ice cube trays in the freezer section were empty. The way Mamm had been today, she’d probably forgotten to refill them, though who would want cold drinks today?
Lydia filled the trays and put them back in the refrigerator. As soon as she got out of Josh’s clothes, she was going out to the phone shanty way down the road because she wasn’t ready to let the Starks know Mamm had run outside just as Victoria had. She had to call their family doctor for a recommendation for someone to treat Mamm’s problems.
But when she went up to change and opened the underwear drawer of the cherry chest in her room, she found that her panties and stockings had been moved around. But then she saw that wasn’t the worst. Her undergarments were all wet, soaked with cold water—melted ice cubes?—and a note crudely printed in red ink read U R NEXT.
27
Though she was exhausted, Lydia walked into the sheriff’s office at 9:00 a.m. that morning. She had the threatening note in a plastic zipper bag and intended to tell him about the new sign on Josh’s back barn door. She’d gotten Mamm a late-afternoon appointment to see her doctor today, but Lydia vowed she was also going to drop in at the store and stop to see Bess Stark.
And tonight, no matter what happened, she was going to talk to her father about her past. Whatever threats she and Josh faced, they needed a new beginning, and she was determined to have that. If, she thought with a shudder as she looked at the bloodred ink through the plastic sack, her father had not loved Josh’s mother at one time. And if she—Lydia—was not NEXT.
“Come on in, Lydia,” the sheriff said after his receptionist went back to his office to tell him she was here. “I can see by your face something else happened. Everyone all right?”
“Not really,” she told him, trying to stem the urge to cry. She’d never had time for that cry yesterday. But she only sniffed once as she sat in the chair Sheriff Freeman indicated. She blurted out about her mother’s near drowning last night and the new message on Josh’s door. She blushed when she told him about melted ice cubes in her underwear drawer, then handed him the note.
“Ice cubes in the drawer, hmm? Makes me think your intruder was watching the near tr
agedy in the icy pond. He’s either saying to you, ‘I’ve been watching you’ or, once again, like this note, ‘You’re next—in the pond.’ Or worse, since we have two dead women.”
“I’ve been so exhausted I didn’t think of that—that he’d been watching my mother nearly drown.” She shuddered, but she had to pull herself together. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she added as she watched the sheriff frown over the note. “Josh says you can take pictures of the latest paint job and he wishes you could do a stakeout. I wish you could keep an eye on our house, too.”
“I just may have to do that, at least at Josh’s, since he’s alone there and you’ve got your folks back. I used to have 4-H animals when I was a kid, showed them at the state fair, slept with them all night in the sheep barn, no less. Yeah, I just might have to help Josh tend his herd for the night, even though I’d have to make a showing at a party for local businessmen the Starks are giving at our restaurant.”
“Oh. Tonight? What time is that?” she asked, hoping she could get to Bess before then.
“Eight. Bess didn’t want to make Ray-Lynn close the place early on her regular customers. You’ve done good to bring me this information and this note, Lydia. I’m working on all angles, including someone switching your father’s pills. Anything else I can help you with?”
She sighed and thought how nice it would be to have him inform Gid, Bess, Connor, even Daad, that he would interrogate them if they didn’t tell her the truth.
“Gid Reich,” the sheriff would say as he took him into custody, “have you been embezzling from the store? And have you been trying to scare Lydia away from Josh with those messages on the barn and in her house? Maybe you’ve been backing off from her in public because in secret you’ve been stalking and frightening her, hoping she’d run to you. Or, worse, are you trying to get rid of her father so you can take over the store as well as her life?
