Upon A Winter's Night

by Karen Harper

  “Well, you look beautiful, Bess.”

  “I have to work at it more and more the older I get. I admire you Amish for not worrying one bit about outward appearances—and for having no TV in your homes, let alone the internet. My rivals have been trying to make a big deal out of Connor spraying those trees. Here, let’s go into my office, and you can make your calls from there. The others are upstairs getting ready, and my special guest from Washington is meeting us there. Heather’s in the bathtub, so Connor’s riding herd on the boys.”

  “Good. I got the idea that’s exactly what they needed and wanted.”

  Bess led her into the room with the snow globes, but the curtains were closed again. She sat Lydia in the same chair she’d been in the other day and handed her a phone—no cord attached. “You have to punch the talk button, then dial your number,” Bess told her. “By the way, we’re having the party at Ray-Lynn’s and the sheriff’s restaurant. Ray-Lynn’s been a great help.”

  “That’s the way she is. She’s helped me and several others I know. Actually, I’m calling my parents’ driver to see why they’re not back from Wooster yet where my mother had a doctor’s appointment. And then the sheriff because he needs to know the son of the man who hit my parents’ buggy years ago was outside my house just now. I think I talked him into going to the sheriff.”

  Though Bess had started to step out into the hall, she came back and sat again, turning toward Lydia. “He didn’t hurt you? If he’s like his father, he’s a loose cannon. Isn’t he the one the sheriff put out a bulletin on? You can just stay here when we leave, until you find out when your parents are coming back, because you don’t need to be out on these roads after dark.”

  Lydia thanked her and, when Bess went out, quickly made her calls. Her spirits were buoyed when the sheriff’s night dispatcher put her right in touch with him. After she explained things, he said he’d planned to spend the night with Josh, but had been called by his dispatcher that Leo Lowe was indeed at the station. He was on his way there, then hoped to stop by the party at the restaurant before “hustling” back to Josh’s barn. “And I’m gonna have to lock Lowe up tonight, Lydia, so don’t you worry about him bothering you again.”

  It made Lydia feel so much safer, stronger, especially when she talked to her parents’ driver to be sure they were all right. He was en route back to Homestead without them because her mother had been admitted to the hospital with pneumonia, and Daad wouldn’t leave her. Lydia made plans for the driver to pick her up the next morning to go into Wooster. If she had to have her big talk with Daad in a hospital corridor or lounge, so be it. She had to end this agony of waiting. And who knew, maybe the sheriff might get out of Leo Lowe that he was the intruder, the barn painter, even Sandra’s killer. A man with a knife could easily have been enough to scare someone into stepping backward off a barn loft.

  * * *

  Ray-Lynn and her staff at the Dutch Farm Table were decorating to the hilt for this Stark family party tonight. Ropes of pine boughs tied with red velvet ribbons circled the main room. Two Christmas trees—of course, donated by the Starks—studded with shiny balls and swagged loops of colored glass beads and lights shed a soft blur of color. The place smelled of a delicious blend of pine, fresh-baked bread and coffee.

  Her Amish girls were now working like mad to clean up after the last dinner customer left. They were carrying some of the tables out into the back room to make a more spacious dining area. Ray-Lynn had the red-and-green tablecloths and centerpieces ready. The Starks were paying well to rent the venue and have Ray-Lynn’s kitchen staff prepare the feast of turkey, two kinds of potatoes, a salad buffet and too many pumpkin and pecan pies to count.

  It relieved her when Jack called to say he had Leo Lowe in custody—thanks to Lydia—but he was still planning to “stop by” to greet everyone.

  “I sure hope you’ll be here,” she told him, holding her cell phone with one hand and gesturing where the tables went with the other. “Especially since the Starks are the hosts for this. Besides, Bess’s new significant other is going to be here, some mover and shaker from D.C. Ding-dang, I’ll just bet he’s advising her on a statewide or national campaign, and he’s been around here a lot more than anyone knows. Jack, it can’t hurt for you to know people like that. Maybe he can pull someone’s chain to get you a deputy with all that’s gone on here lately. You can’t help it that your last one didn’t work out.”

  She watched her waitresses flapping open and arranging the tablecloths Bess had sent over. Even as she listened to Jack, she grabbed the fancy name tags off the counter to place them herself.

  “I said I’ll be there, honey,” he went on, “but it’ll be brief. I’m going to lock this guy up for one night and depose him tomorrow ’cause I’m spending most of the night with Josh, keeping an eye on things there.”

  “But if you have him in custody, and he’s the one who threatened Lydia and had it in for Sandra, Lydia’s and Josh’s worries are over.”

  She started to place the name tags: Bess Stark, Heather Stark, Mayor Connor Stark...

  “He actually has a solid alibi for the day and night Sandra died, and only ran ’cause he thought no one would believe him since he’d threatened Sandra and Lydia,” Jack explained. “No, the guy who I think killed Sandra Myerson, who’s been painting up a storm on Josh’s barn trying to blame him, isn’t Leo Lowe. I got a gut feeling her killer’s still out there, getting closer and even more desperate.”

  * * *

  Lydia’s heartbeat kicked up the moment Bess came back into the room after she made her phone calls. “Some hot chocolate for you,” she said, putting a bright green mug on the desk in front of her. “Listen, we’ll be leaving in half an hour, but I can give you a guest bedroom for the night.”

  “That’s very kind, but I should go home. So you have a minute to talk now?”

  “Of course,” she said, but she looked suddenly wary. “Your phone calls—is everything all right?”

  “Ya—yes, fine with that. Bess, I happened to notice from outside yesterday that you have a beautiful collection of snow globes. You must have been collecting them a long time.”

  “Quite a while. I consider them seasonal decorations, don’t have them out year-round. And they seem to fit better here than in my Columbus office or condo.”

  “But you must be an expert on them. I have a very special one. It’s broken, but I intend to fix it. My father gave it to me years ago and said it had been my mother’s—my real mother’s—but I was not to ask questions about her. It always bothered me, intrigued me, and lately I tried to have someone—Sandra Myerson—help me find out about her, especially since no one, not even Bishop Esh, seemed to want me to know much about my past.”

  “No doubt because it was so tragic with that fatal buggy crash.”

  Bess had glanced at the snow globe Lydia had drawn from her sack, then quickly away. A frown line appeared above her penciled eyebrows, and her red lower lip pouted, then quivered.

  “But then several people told me that Lena Brand—supposedly my real mother—never had a child.”

  “Did your father tell you that?” she demanded, her voice almost strident.

  “No. I heard that from both a friend of Lena and David Brand and one of Lena’s cousins. But I was just wondering if you had a snow globe similar to this one which has meant so much to me. I was devastated when it got broken and am determined to put it back together.”

  Lydia got up and walked beside the desk, back to the low bookcases and the curtained window above them. She pulled the cord that drew the curtains open and gazed at the rows of snow globes—and found one almost identical.

  “Oh, there, see?” she said, pointing at it before turning back to face Bess. “This one and mine really resemble each other.”

  Despite her high cheek color, Bess’s face had gone pale. She said nothing, then finally murmured, in a whisper, “I can’t help you, Lydia.”

  “Well, maybe just one more thing, then
.”

  “This is not the time for this.”

  “There’s never been a time for this! But I have to know. I have a note here my father saved—he is really my father, isn’t he?—that I found hidden in his desk drawer at the store. It’s from someone who loved him a long time ago before he married Mamm, someone who signed her name Bessie. I haven’t told him I found it yet because of his heart attack, but I’ll have to now. Besides you and Josh’s mother growing up around here, who could this Bessie have been? I won’t tell others, really. And your sister knew about it, didn’t she, since she drew those pictures of angels carrying a baby away?”

  Bess looked frozen. She didn’t move, but two tears tracked down her cheeks. Lydia stood aghast at what had spilled from her, especially the last thought about Victoria, since she hadn’t fully reasoned that out before.

  Finally, Bess moved. She stood and went to the door, which stood slightly ajar. Lydia thought she would walk out, but she closed it. She turned back, leaned against it. They stood facing each other across the big desk, Lydia with the note outstretched in her hand, Bess staring at it but making no move to look at it closer.

  “Yes, God forgive me for hurting you,” Bess said, her voice a mere whisper. “Sol and I...after my husband had been dead two years... Yes, my girl, yes.”

  Bess opened her arms, and Lydia went to her, half joyous, half afraid. Bess pulled her hard into her embrace. They both cried, Lydia shaking but holding on tight to stop the tilting of the room, Bess crying, then kissing her wet cheek, again, again.

  “It was a terrible decision to have to make—to give you away, but I was ready to run for public office the first time. I was widowed, a single mother with a young son who was spending the month of July with his aunt Vicky. But Sol and I—that one insane summer...”

  Blinking back tears, Bess hesitated. She put Lydia in one chair, pulled two tissues from a brass container on the desk, sat down next to her and handed her one of them. She scooted her chair closer. Their knees almost touched.

  Bess leaned forward as she talked. “Connor was thirteen when I got pregnant with you. He and I moved away and lived with my sister Vicky, who wanted you for her own. But Sol said an Amish adoption was best, as he wasn’t married yet, hadn’t even proposed. Bishop Esh weighed in on it and suggested it be a secret—a sealed deal. Vicky was hurt and angry, and I regret that. But Sol found a distant cousin of his whose wife wanted a child.”

  “David and Lena Brand.”

  She nodded and took Lydia’s hands in her own. “And then that buggy catastrophe, but at least you weren’t with them. I was both glad and sad when Sol insisted on taking you in when he got married. He told your mother—then his wife—whose child you were, of course. But to see you growing up and not as mine...”

  Her shoulders shaking, she started to cry again.

  “Mom, you ready?” Connor’s voice came from the other side of the door. He knocked but didn’t come in. “Whose buggy is that out there? We’ve got to get going.”

  “I’ll be right out. No, you go ahead without me, and I’ll be a little late. It’s important,” she called to him. Bess got up, opened a little door in the tallest bookcase and stared at herself in the small mirror there. “Wow, time for major repair.”

  “You have just done major repair—helped me. I won’t tell anyone, except my father, that I know. Well, Josh, if I marry him someday. I don’t want to hurt your career. And Connor—”

  Bess turned back, grabbed another tissue and dabbed under her eyes. She blew her nose. “And Connor has a half sister he should love and admire. That was one of the hardest things, besides not being able to be with you enough. Connor maybe sensed how much I loved you, and he took it out on you sometimes. I mean, he knew I’d had a baby, but I told him it died. Too—too many lies. That one he evidently figured out later.”

  “Victoria—your sister Vicky—had a note in her hand the night she died. It said, ‘To the girl Brand baby. Your mother is alive.’”

  Bess turned and put both hands on her desk to steady herself. “She was saying things like that a lot, the worse her Alzeimer’s became. Truth from a demented woman and lies from a supposedly sane one,” she whispered as if to herself. “She never forgave me for not letting her adopt you, but back then—a single woman... That wasn’t common like it is now. But that’s one reason we brought her here, so she wouldn’t tell others the truth. Somehow, over the years, she’d tracked you down or guessed who you were, and Connor caught on, at least got suspicious then, I think, though he didn’t exactly say so.”

  Lydia wanted to comfort Bess. But what if Connor was the one who had shut Sandra up? Maybe he was the intruder who was trying to put the blame on Josh. But no way could she spring that on Bess tonight, too, maybe never.

  Bess shook her head, straightened up and went into a desk drawer. She produced a purse and took out more face powder, looking now in the tiny mirror attached to the skinny silver powder case.

  “I still think you should stay here tonight,” Bess said. “We can talk when I get back, and I won’t stay long. We need to make some decisions about how to handle this, who to tell.”

  “I told you I’m willing to keep your secret. It’s just that I had to know or I’d go crazy, and then Sandra Myerson jumped in with both feet and... Bess, now Mamm is really ill, and I can’t hurt her or Daad more. He’s made me a Christmas quilt that says Forgive Father all over it.”

  Bess teared up again. “And it will hurt her more if we declare our relationship.”

  “Mom!” Connor called outside the door. “Heather’s going ahead with the kids, and I’ll wait for you. Let’s go. You’re supposed to be the greeter.”

  “More later,” Bess said to Lydia with a forced smile. “For the two of us, much more later, my sweet, smart girl. Stay here a bit, then, and when you go out, just be sure the door is locked. And don’t be too hard on your father. If you love Josh Yoder—and I think you do—you understand how loneliness and passion can make you be careless. But one more thing.”

  With her purse on her arm, she came over to Lydia and took her face in her hands. “Don’t you ever think Sol or I regretted you for yourself. I mean, as much as we were upset then that people would know we’d made love, and we were upset with ourselves that my pregnancy caused such problems, we have always been proud of our girl. We just didn’t get to share you together.”

  Bess kissed her cheek again and wiped a tear away with her thumb. “Take care, my Lydia and Sol’s Liddy. I’ll see you as soon as I can, and we’ll talk more.”

  She went out, leaving the door ajar. Lydia could hear Connor starting in on her, “That’s Lydia’s buggy, isn’t it? Here’s your coat. You go with Heather and the kids, and I’ll be sure she gets home, then be right over.”

  “Connor, I don’t know.”

  “Well, there’s a lot I don’t know, but I’ll just follow her home in the buggy, all right?”

  Lydia wanted to run out and protest, but since he was clearing it with Bess and he knew the two of them were friends, he wouldn’t dare do anything out of line. Would he? She grabbed the old Bessie note and her broken snow globe from the desk, stuffed them in her bag and went directly outside while Bess, Heather and the boys were just heading down the driveway in one of their three cars.

  Lydia was relieved she didn’t have to say a word to Connor. Thank heavens, he just stormed to his car and got in. Their big garage threw huge blocks of light out so she could see to unwind her reins and get up into the buggy. But she hadn’t even turned Flower around to head down the drive when Connor came running at her and seized Flower’s bridle.

  “By the way, I heard what you told her before she closed her office door,” he shouted up at her. “And you know what? I wondered about that all along, what with the weird stuff Aunt Vicky said. I saw my mother once, years ago, just stop the car and watch you play Andy-over in your front yard with your little brother. Sometimes I thought she was stalking you, but never knew why. But it’s gonna ha
ve to stay a secret because she’s going places and not with an Amish daughter in her campaign ads!”

  “Let my horse go, Connor! If you want to talk about this later, we’ll wait until she can meet with us.”

  “Meet—that’s good. That’s what she does, you know. Meetings, events, campaigns. She may have stopped to give a speech to the tree shoppers and workers below. She’s hardly ever here except at election time in her district or holiday time like this. Especially since my dad died, where has she been?”

  “But your boys are feeling the same thing about you, so you can change that for them—change yourself.”

  “Stay away from us and keep quiet! I don’t get enough of her, and now there’s you! Oh, don’t worry that I’ll give the big secret away, and I’ll see to it you don’t, either. I’ll follow you home, so get going.”

  But she was suddenly terrified to get going. Connor in that big black car was going to follow her home? An image leaped into her brain: the newspaper picture of David and Lena Brand’s broken buggy and dead horse on the road. No, she had to get away from Connor. She pictured him with those two pitchforks he used to knock snow off the trees, pictured the pitchfork drawn in the snow and painted on Josh’s barn.

  But maybe she could get down the driveway to the Christmas tree workers and just stay there until he had to go. After he left for town, she would not turn in her driveway but head straight for Josh. If Bess had known he’d overheard them, would she have trusted Connor to see her safely home?

  “Giddyap!” she shouted to Flower and snapped the reins. But they came loose in her hands—cut off by the traces. She bounced back in her seat, hit her head on it then slid sideways onto the floor. Now she’d have to run from Connor, run through the trees to her house. He was the one! He’d made sure she couldn’t flee!

  But she jumped down from the buggy just in time to see someone in black Amish garb, carrying a pitchfork, run into the garage and swing the handle hard at Connor. She felt dizzy and her right ankle hurt, but had someone come to her rescue? Connor cried out and sprawled flat on his face on the concrete next to his car, which was still running, puffing out smelly smoke into the cold night air. Then his attacker, Amish hat pulled low, pitchfork in his hand, turned and rushed toward her.