He sent her a pleading look from under his brows. “Please don’t endear the children to you.”
Ignoring them would be the hardest thing, but she nodded. Her cousins were darling, and she longed to scoop them onto her lap and tell them stories. She and Angie went to the car and hauled their suitcases to the house. Luca followed.
“I didn’t bring the cats yet,” she said. “I’ll get them later this afternoon.”
“Cats?” Luca asked.
“Four of them.” She flashed a smile up at him, but he looked away and said no more. “Where do you want us?”
He held the door open for them. “Your old room is now a guest room. I will have Naomi move her toys over to Sharon’s room. Wait a moment.” He left them standing in the kitchen with their suitcases and disappeared into a hallway. Moments later the heavy tread of his feet went up the steps.
Hannah heard Sarah’s voice murmuring, and she could sense the stress in it. Hannah believed that her presence would stop anything bad from happening. Maybe this belief was rooted in a misguided sense of her own control, but her instincts told her she had to be here.
MATT UNDERSTOOD THAT his minutes with Caitlin were drops of water draining through a sieve. Maybe that was fatalistic, but with Hannah showing no signs of leaving soon, it was only a matter of time before the truth came out. Matt wanted to hold his daughter close, treasure every moment.
Frogs bellowed from the creek, a song as mournful as Matt’s mood. He sat on the porch swing with Caitlin on his lap. Hannah wasn’t going anywhere until she’d exhausted every avenue. All she had to do was show that picture to one other person at the jail, and the jig was up. He should see a lawyer to find out what he could do to avert a tragedy. No way would he abandon his daughter the way his mother had abandoned him. The swing swayed under them, and the gentle movement lulled him.
“Me and Aunt Gina went to visit Grandma Trudy today, and she never smiled at me. Why is she so grumpy, Daddy?”
Why indeed? He’d never figured it out himself. “She’s had a hard life.”
“How come you don’t have a mommy and daddy? Trudy is your grandma, too, isn’t she? All the kids at preschool have two grandmas. I’ve only got one.”
She’d asked the question before, but Matt had always managed to put her off. “My dad died just like your mommy. My mom went away, princess.”
“Did your mom go away to heaven like my mommy?”
“No, she just went away.” He didn’t tell her that he’d come home on his birthday to an empty house. He didn’t explain how he’d gone through the house calling her name. She didn’t need to know he’d fed himself and cried all night for three days until a neighbor called Child Protective Services. “I went to live with my grandma Trudy then.” Gina had been luckier. She’d been staying with their aunt over spring break.
He tightened his grip around Caitlin. She would never feel abandoned while he had breath in his body.
“Maybe she’ll come back. I’d like to meet her.” Caitlin’s voice grew softer, and her eyes closed. Rhythmic breathing followed.
“I wish she’d come back too,” Matt muttered against his sleeping daughter’s hair. She didn’t often take a nap. He stood with her in his arms and carried her to bed. His sister was watching her afternoon soap opera. The TV flickered, but the sound was down so low he wondered how she could hear it. He tucked the covers around Caitlin and pressed a kiss against her hair before joining Gina in the living room.
“Sit down, Matt,” she said. “You’re keeping something from me. Work is always intense, but you’ve never asked me to keep Caitlin before. You know I love her, but I want to know what’s going on.”
The need to talk to someone, to confess, gripped him in a stranglehold. “Caitlin’s real mother is here in town looking for her.”
“Looking for her? What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “Her mother never gave up Caitlin. Someone stole the baby from her and gave her to us.” Almost too late, he caught back Reece’s name. “We didn’t get her in the usual way. Analise heard something at the door, and Ajax was going crazy barking. She opened the door and found a newborn baby girl in a carrier.”
Gina pointed her finger at him. “You never told me all this. I only heard a baby had come through for you.”
“We didn’t want Caitlin to hear about it someday and feel more abandoned than she would when she learned of her adoption. There’s something devastating about being tossed on someone’s porch. She was all swaddled up against the chill. And we found her immediately, just as the kidnapper thought we would.” One peek into her wrinkled little face had triggered love at first sight. He still remembered the way she opened her eyes and looked at him. He and Analise had been trying to have a baby for five years and were just starting to talk about adoption. It seemed Caitlin was a gift from heaven.
With his position at the sheriff’s department, it had been easy to keep the circumstances quiet and to put the adoption through. They told friends and family a private adoption had been arranged and they’d gone to the hospital to get her. A quiet search was made for her parents, but no traces of them were ever found. A few months later, the adoption was final.
And final was the word. He couldn’t give her up.
“Have you spoken with the mother?”
“I haven’t told her I have Caitlin, if that’s what you mean.”
“You don’t want this woman to find her. Heck, I don’t want her to find her! I love Caitlin. There would be a huge custody battle.”
“Exactly.” At least he had some support now.
SEVENTEEN
“The Chevron Quilt is an interesting pattern. And one that has special meaning when you look at the way the Amish won’t wear a uniform or serve in the military.”
HANNAH SCHWARTZ, ON THE Today SHOW
Hannah’s gaze kept returning to the center of the sitting room where she’d found the bodies of her family. No trace of the symbol marred the walls. The three hours she’d been here had dragged by, hung up on tragic memories haunting every corner and peering from every shadow.
Tableware clanged against plates in the kitchen. Hannah could hear one of her cousins talking to Sarah in German. The guttural tones took her back to her own childhood. Seated on the sofa with a tray, she picked at the food on her plate.
Angie tipped her head and listened. “How well do you still remember your German?” She’d insisted on joining Hannah for dinner.
“I’m a little rusty. I found that out when I tried to talk to the children the last time we were here. Ours is a Swiss-German dialect that’s a little different from what the Englisch call Pennsylvania Dutch.”
“Is Parke County the sect’s only home?”
“No, but the majority of the Swiss Amish came to Indiana. Our group came later than those in Pennsylvania. We made our way to the state around 1840 directly from Switzerland. Most Amish people here in Parke County are from Pennsylvania and speak Pennsylvania Deutsch. Most of us here in Indiana who speak the Swiss dialect are up around Berne, but our district was a plant from there.”
“Are the languages close enough to understand each other?”
“It’s a little challenging.” Hannah smiled. “If I were to talk with a Pennsylvania Deutsch Amish woman, it would be easier to speak English. We don’t socialize much with the other group either.”
Angie studied her face. “You keep saying we.”
Hannah’s laugh felt strained. “I suppose I do. I hadn’t noticed. I’ll always be Amish at heart.”
“How do you mean?”
“Our simple love of family, our neighbors. It’s ingrained in me, and I’ll always carry it with me. I might carry a cell phone and cut my hair, but inside I’m Amish.”