Her Brother's Keeper

by Beth Wiseman

  August 21

  Well, I managed to snag a date with an Amish fellow. His name is Isaac, and I’m hoping that he knew Ethan. It’s a quest for information, but the guy is incredibly handsome, so even if Isaac can’t shed any light on what happened to my brother, I’ll just soak in his attractiveness.

  Charlotte smiled, considered changing “attractiveness,” but jumped when someone knocked on the door. “Hang on. Just a minute.” She stood up and stuffed the legal pad between the mattresses. “Come in.”

  Hannah peeked her head in. “Sorry to bother you, but I need to get something from underneath the bed. I had stored some quilting odds and ends in a box, and I’d like to piece them together for a friend’s baby blanket.”

  “Come on in.” Charlotte sat down on the bed and crossed her legs beneath her, fighting the urge to play with her phone, which was supposed to be for emergencies.

  She jumped again when Hannah yelled, “Ow!” followed by a thud against the bed frame. Hannah slid herself out from under the bed, but she wasn’t toting any quilting supplies. Instead she was pulling out Charlotte’s emergency fire rope, and before Charlotte could explain, Hannah held it up and shook it. Her face was fire-engine red, and her bottom lip trembled. “What is this? Tell me now! Why do you have this?” She threw it on the bed. “Tell me, Mary!”

  Charlotte stood up and faced off with her. “Good grief. Quit yelling, and I’ll tell you. It’s because—”

  The bedroom door flew open. “Hannah!” Lena sailed into the room. “What is going on in here? I was coming down the hall to speak with Jacob, and I heard you yelling.”

  Charlotte lifted her shoulders, held them there, and shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  Hannah was shaking all over as she pointed to the bed. “Look what she has, Mamm.” Then Charlotte’s pretend cousin grabbed both of Charlotte’s arms and squeezed. “Please tell me that you are not planning to take your own life. Please tell me that you have brought this rope into our home for some other reason. Why would you hide it under the bed in this way?” She swiped at the stream of tears going down her face, and Charlotte realized the cause of Hannah’s outbreak.

  “No, no, no . . .” Charlotte maneuvered out of Hannah’s hold. “That’s not what it’s for. Of course not.” She stared at the floor as her own eyes filled with tears, and when she looked back at Hannah, it was impossible not to cry. “When I was a child I was trapped in my bedroom by a fire.” Charlotte could still smell the smoke when she recalled the event. “I couldn’t get out of the two-story house without landing on concrete. A fireman saved me at the very last minute. I take that rope everywhere I go so that I won’t ever be trapped again.”

  Hannah buried her face in her hands and sobbed before she ran out of the room, repeatedly saying how sorry she was.

  Lena put a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry that happened to you when you were a child, Mary. So very sorry.” She wrapped her arms around Charlotte and squeezed for a few moments before she eased away. “And I am very sorry, also, about Hannah’s outburst.” She hung her head and sighed before she looked back up at Charlotte. “We all lost someone special to us, someone we loved very much. It was about a year ago, and it was the hardest on Hannah. She was going to marry this man.” She paused, and Charlotte couldn’t breathe as she waited for her to go on. “He hanged himself. Not far from here. In his own backyard.”

  Four

  Charlotte stared out the bedroom window and watched Isaac walk toward the barn. She’d been looking forward to their date on Saturday, but any excitement she’d had was suspended. She’d known that Ethan had hanged himself, but hearing Lena say it and being witness to Hannah’s hysteria had left Charlotte in a funk.

  Hannah had apologized for her outburst two more times and seemed to want to talk, but Charlotte had stayed to herself the past couple of days. Hannah might be ready to share information about Ethan, but Charlotte wasn’t sure she was ready to hear it now. Instead, she found herself recalling parts of her past that were best forgotten.

  Their parents had spent the majority of Ethan’s and Charlotte’s childhood fighting. Their father eventually landed in jail for assaulting their mother, but after that, it was their mother who took over the beatings, and after one too many times, Charlotte had called the police, something she wouldn’t have done if she could have foreseen the consequences. She had no idea where her mother was these days. And she didn’t care.

  Charlotte’s phone call had resulted in Ethan and her being separated for nearly two years. She recalled the foster home where the fire had started, and a shiver ran up her spine—but only partly from recollections of the fire. She and Ethan never talked about those two years apart, and she’d always wondered if Ethan’s foster home had been anything like the one she’d been in. She wondered if Ethan had hidden things in an empty mothball box in the closet like they’d done when they lived at home. Their mother had insisted they keep a box of mothballs in the closet, but she wouldn’t even touch the boxes, saying the smell made her gag. Charlotte and Ethan had always trashed the mothballs and stored anything they didn’t want her to see in the empty boxes. It wasn’t until she was older that Charlotte realized that mothballs were toxic. Luckily, neither she nor Ethan had ever eaten one.

  She stuffed the painful memories back in the dark part of her brain and walked downstairs. The aroma of freshly baked bread was too much to resist. She walked into the kitchen just as Hannah was taking two loaves from the oven. Lena had gone to the auction to see about purchasing more goats, and Amos and Jacob were doing whatever they did out in the fields. They came in each night smelling of hay and manure. Charlotte was thankful they both bathed before dinner—supper, she reminded herself.

  Charlotte breathed in the smell of what had become her most favorite food in the world, then she walked to the window, just in time to catch a glimpse of Isaac leaving in his buggy.

  “Are you excited about your date?” Hannah placed the loaves of bread on the cooling rack.

  Hannah’s tone was clipped. Clearly, Cousin Hannah wasn’t in the mood to apologize anymore. Charlotte shrugged. “I guess.”

  Hannah leaned against the counter and folded her arms across her chest. “You will only be here for three more weeks, so I hope you won’t lead Isaac on. He’s a very nice man, and I’d hate to see him get hurt.” Hannah raised her chin in a way that reminded Charlotte of a hair-pulling incident she’d had on the playground one time. This was a side of Hannah that Charlotte hadn’t seen before.

  Charlotte stuffed her hands in the pockets of her black apron as she raised an eyebrow. “Maybe. Your mother said I should extend my stay.” Even though there was no way she would stay here any longer than she needed to, she was just irritated enough to meet Hannah on the playground. “We might hit it off. You never know.”

  Then Hannah spoke to her in Dutch, all the while wagging her finger and frowning. Charlotte recalled the story she’d made up during worship service. She had lucked out the past couple of days during meals. Jacob had done most of the talking, in English, about a space documentary that was coming on television next week. His parents were refusing to let him go to a friend’s house to watch it even though he was in his running-around period, or rumschpringe, as they called it.

  Charlotte knew she had a deer-in-the-headlights look, but she was trying to organize her thoughts before she just blurted something.

  “Who are you, Mary Troyer?” Hannah took a step closer to her. “You did not understand anything I just said, and it wonders me why that might be.”

  Think, think. Be careful. Get it straight. She hung her head for a few moments, before she sat down in a kitchen chair and lowered her palms to the table in front of her. “I’m so sorry I’ve been deceitful.” This was going to require the best acting she’d ever done. Normally, she despised lying. “I’m-I’m just embarrassed. I became Amish late in life, and by the time I was welcomed into my Amish family, I had a hard time latching on to the dialect. So
everyone made an effort to help me out by using English around me.”

  Then Charlotte told Hannah the part of the story that was actually true, how her parents were abusive, but she omitted the part about having a brother or about being in foster care. She wasn’t sure how much Ethan had shared with Hannah, and she feared Hannah might make the connection. “I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I left. I knew my great-aunt had married an Amish man, so I ran away to their house in Texas. They took me in, and I was baptized into the faith when I was nineteen.”

  Hannah slipped into the chair across from Charlotte, her eyes round as saucers, and reached for Charlotte’s hands. “Ach, mei cousin. Why didn’t you tell us? How awful for you.” Hannah shook her head. “I feel badly that so much of the time, you couldn’t understand what we were saying. I am so ashamed for testing you.”

  “It’s okay.” Charlotte pushed the truths about her past from her mind, hoping she’d be able to keep all her lies straight.

  “Nee, nee. It is not okay.” Hannah kept her hands on Charlotte’s as she spoke. “Someone very close to me was also abused by his parents, and then later at the hands of his Englisch caretakers. It was heartbreaking to hear him talk of his stay with strangers. Foster care, he called it.” She paused, sighed. “And it’s a shame that this kind of thing happens everywhere. Even here.” Hannah paused again, a faraway look in her eyes. She blinked a few times, pulled her hands away, and leaned back against the chair. “He died almost a year ago. Mamm said she told you what happened. But before that, he said that coming here and learning about the Lord saved him.” She smiled. “He used to say that I completed him, a line from one of his favorite movies, which of course I’d never seen. His name was Ethan, and he also became Amish late in life.”

  Saved him? He killed himself. Charlotte was surprised that Ethan had told Hannah about those two years, since he’d never talked to Charlotte about it. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to know the details, but she’d always wondered. “I’m sorry about your friend. Was he . . .” She took a deep breath. “Was he, um . . . badly abused?”

  Hannah nodded, and Charlotte swallowed back the knot forming in her throat.

  “Ya. He was.” Hannah looked away as a tear rolled down her cheek. “I think Mamm told you . . . he was my fiancé. We were to be married.”

  Charlotte was anxious, yet relieved, that Hannah didn’t share the details about Ethan’s time in foster care. “I’m-I’m sorry.” She waited to see if Hannah would tell her about Ethan’s death, but they were both quiet. Finally, Charlotte stood up. “If it’s okay with you, I think I’d like to go lay down for a while.” She wasn’t tired, but she didn’t want to burst into tears.

  Hannah jumped from her chair, hurried around the table, and threw her arms around Charlotte. “I’m so sorry. So sorry that someone hurt you. Thank you for sharing that with me.” She eased away and wiped the tears from her cheeks with both hands. “I feel so much closer to you now. And I know how blessed I am to have such a wonderful family. I don’t want to take it for granted. Ethan always said we were the family he’d never had.”

  Charlotte doubted that was true. I was his family.

  “We couldn’t wait to be married. I still miss him.” She buried her head on Charlotte’s shoulder, and Charlotte slowly wrapped her arms around Hannah, but only because it seemed awkward not to. She was starting to like Hannah, but she didn’t want to get any closer to her than necessary. Charlotte had loved and lost plenty of times. No need to add Hannah to that list. And she still felt uneasy about Ethan’s fiancée and hadn’t been able to mentally clear Hannah from having something to do with his death.

  All the tears in the world couldn’t bring Ethan back. He might have had a hard childhood, but so had Charlotte. Before coming here, he’d had a good job as a roofer, a nice apartment, and lots of friends. It was his job that brought him to Pennsylvania in the first place. The company he worked for had won a bid to put a new roof on a church in Lancaster County following a storm that had caused some structural damages to several buildings. Charlotte had known about it, but she could have never predicted that he would end up staying. Someone needed to take the blame for Ethan’s death, and Hannah would have to sit in the guilty seat until Charlotte could prove her innocent. Otherwise, the loss was more than Charlotte could bear.

  Hannah sat down on her bed after a cool bath, and as her wet hair lay against the back of her white nightgown, she closed her eyes and welcomed the breeze coming through the screen in her room. After a few moments, she laid back and closed her eyes.

  Lord, I’m lifting up Mary with extra prayers tonight, for peace and healing. I also ask, Lord, for You to forgive me for not being kinder to Mary. Mei cousin has been through baremlich times in her life, and I cannot put right in my mind how a mother or father can hurt their own kinner. Aamen.

  Hannah recalled the awful stories that Ethan had told her before he died. And to learn that Mary was also harmed at the hands of her own family . . . it was just so sad. She wanted to do something nice for Mary, to bring some joy into her life, and maybe by doing so, she could bring a small amount of happiness into her own heart. In the strangest way, she felt like Ethan was encouraging her to befriend her new cousin. She smiled, feeling comforted.

  At times, Mary seemed familiar to her. Nothing Hannah could put her finger on, just a sense that maybe she’d known her from somewhere. That was impossible, but she was going to take it as a sign that she and Mary were growing closer, and for that, Hannah was grateful.

  She turned up the lantern on her bedside table and pulled her knitting supplies from the bottom drawer. It would take her a couple of hours to finish the fourth potholder in the set, but she wanted Mary to have them. Hannah had been making these for her home, the one she would have shared with Ethan. Two were solid red in the shape of a heart, and two were red and pink, also shaped like hearts. She hadn’t worked on finishing the last one since Ethan’s death. It would feel good to give Mary the set to take home with her.

  Charlotte squeezed her eyes closed and tensed as she told Ryan about her date with Isaac, even though there was no reason it should be awkward. “You know, it’s just to try to get information. It’s not really like a date.”

  “It kinda sounds like a date.”

  Charlotte frowned, even though she could picture Ryan grinning. “Well, it’s not, I assure you.” It was still early in the evening, and she could hear activity down the hall, so she lowered her voice. “It wouldn’t matter how good-looking this guy was, or how charming he might turn out to be, I certainly couldn’t live the way these people do.” She dabbed at the sweat on her forehead.

  “Ah-ha. So, he’s a handsome fellow.” Ryan chuckled. “We just never know who might step into our lives from one day to the next. Maybe this has been God’s plan for you all along, to hook up with a nice Amish man.”

  Charlotte had listened intently in an effort to note any jealousy in Ryan’s tone, but he didn’t seem bothered in the least. “Very funny,” she said, making a mental note that Ryan just mentioned God again. If he had any notable flaw, it was being so overt about his religion. But something was bothering her, and she decided to run with the thoughts even if it might bring on a conversation she wasn’t comfortable with.

  “I’m pretty sure God didn’t send me here to end up with an Amish man.” She sighed. “But I’m forced to sit in on the devotions now.” She told Ryan the story she’d told Hannah, why she didn’t know their dialect. “Hannah shared my big fat lie with everyone else, so now they rarely speak Dutch around me. And they assumed that was the reason I wasn’t joining them for devotions.” She paused, took another breath. “Anyway, I can’t figure a way to get out of it, but all this praying is making me feel bad about myself. And I don’t know why that is. It’s making me think about things and feel . . . weird.”

  “That’s not surprising. When a person first begins to develop a relationship with God, it’s like a cleansing of the soul or something. I didn’t find G
od until I was an adult, but when I did, it was like every sin I’d ever committed in my life ran through my mind as I moved toward a different and better way of life.”

  “I said I’m forced to pray with them. I don’t see that as any kind of spiritual cleansing,” she said softly, deciding that she didn’t want to pursue this conversation after all. “I hear someone coming down the hall. I gotta go.” She was drowning in sin . . . mostly lies. She didn’t want to feel any worse about that than she already did. On that note, she ended the conversation.

  She pulled out her yellow pad. Despite her longing to clear her mind of spiritual matters, the thoughts continued to haunt her, so she wrote them down.

  God, if You exist, I’m going to need some kind of sign . . .

  Hannah was surprised that Mary asked to ride into town with her the following day since the traffic on Lincoln Highway scared her so much. Hannah hoped that maybe this was a sign that Mary wanted to be friends as well as cousins, but it may have just been that she mentioned going by Miller’s Furniture Store.

  “Isaac is usually not at the store even though his family owns it. Besides, I thought he was going to give you a tour on your date on Saturday.” Hannah glanced at her cousin as she tethered the horse to the hitching post.

  “It doesn’t matter. I just felt like getting out. No biggie.”

  Hannah wondered if maybe Mary used these strange expressions because she’d become Amish later in life. Too many of the Englisch ways had stuck with her.

  Either way, Hannah was surprised to see Isaac behind the register when they entered the furniture store.

  “Wie bischt, Isaac.” Hannah pointed over her shoulder. “Mei daed asked us to drop off two small bookshelves.” Both pieces were solid wood and much too heavy for Hannah and Mary to carry.