An e-mail marked Urgent caught his attention as he was about to click out of the program. The subject line read “Hello Son.” The air seemed close and hot, and if he’d had the energy, he would have opened the window or turned up the air. He thought he’d clicked on the message, but then he realized he was still sitting there staring at the screen.
If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought he was having a heart attack. A weight lay on his chest, and his arms were numb.
His hand holding the mouse moved slowly, and the cursor paused over the e-mail. For just one second, he wanted to linger and not know. In this case, ignorance might be bliss. He could hang on to the hope just a little longer. He swallowed hard and double-clicked the e-mail. The message sprang onto the screen, and he leaned forward to read it.
Hello, Matt. I heard you’ve been looking for me. If this is true, please reply to this e-mail. Love, Mom
Could it really be her? How did she find his work e-mail? Wait, he hadn’t left town—she had. It would be no problem to get his e-mail. It was listed on the department’s Web site. His hands shook as he placed them on the keyboard. He typed a quick reply asking her to meet him. He tried not to sound too desperate. Desperation might drive her away. And did his words sound accusing or judgmental? He reread the note.
Mom, good to hear from you. Can we meet? How about at the coffee shop tomorrow morning at 9:00? Just let me know. Love, your son Matt
Joy exploded in his chest. Whenever he thought of his mom, he was eight years old again, running home to see her. He reminded himself she wouldn’t be the same woman he’d last seen. She would be in her fifties, probably with gray hair and wrinkles. Was she remarried? What if she had kids with another man? The thought that she might have loved another child more than him and Gina compressed his chest again.
He warned himself not to get his hopes up. After all this time, if she really was trying to find him, her motive might be to ask for money or something. It wasn’t likely she had missed him as much as he’d missed her.
Blake yawned and sat up. His hair stood on end. “Man, I’m beat.”
Matt clicked out of his e-mail. “What did you find out?”
“Found the bishop. He claims Reece started coming there a month ago.”
“So it’s fairly recent. Probably a ploy to get Hannah back.”
“That’d be my guess. The bishop said Reece had been faithful to the teachings.”
“Except for driving a vehicle.”
“Well, yeah, there’s that. But the bishop didn’t know about it. He said Reece told him he’d hired a driver for a trip and would come in a few weeks with his wife and child.”
The muscles in Matt’s belly tensed. Over his dead body. No one was taking Caitlin away from him. “Thanks. You’d better get home to Gina.”
Blake glanced at his watch. “Yikes, I told her I’d be home for supper. If I’m late, she’ll be suspicious all over again.” He bolted from his chair and ran for the door.
Matt followed him outside. He needed to get out to the Schwartz house before they all went to bed. As he drove north out of town, his thoughts kept drifting to his mother’s e-mail. Could it be real? He was afraid to hope.
Dim yellow light shone through the windows of the house when he pulled into the driveway. He got out of the SUV and started toward the front door. A warble of some kind came to his ears. Was that yodeling? He stopped and listened. The German song rolled out across the yard, and though it was supposed to be joyous, he heard the undercurrent of a lost time that would never come again, no matter how hard they tried to find it.
THE CHILDREN’S VOICES murmuring their prayers slipped under the closed door. The sunset still glowed in the west, though it was nine o’clock. Indiana had only recently started to follow daylight saving time, and Hannah wondered if her people had adopted the Englisch way of changing their clocks.
“You sure you don’t mind sharing a bedroom?” she asked Angie.
“We can talk about some publicity.” Angie sat cross-legged on the single bed. “How’s the quilt coming?”
“You know I’ve struggled to work on it since we got here. There hasn’t been much time. I really want this one for the cover. The triangle is the underpinning of the Amish faith.”
“Hannah, the photographer will want pictures of it in a month and a half. You’re not even close to finished.”
“I know. I’ll work on it a little while now.” Hannah pulled the large plastic container out from under the bed where she’d placed it earlier. “This room used to be mine.” She lifted the lid and rummaged for the last square she’d been working on.
“Homey. What chapter are you on with the book?”
“The one about Chevron quilts.”
“What’s significant about them?”
Hannah thought a moment as her needle wove in and out of the colorful fabric. “A chevron is a badge or insignia. The Amish believe very much in following secular authority, in leading a law-abiding life. It’s very rare to find any lawbreakers among the Amish, and murder is practically unheard of. But the one thing they refuse to do is to serve in the military. In fact, that’s why the men don’t wear a mustache, only a beard. In earlier centuries only military men wore mustaches, and they associate mustaches with killing. They prize peace and want nothing to do with war.”
“So they are conscientious objectors?”
Hannah nodded. “My mother was the perfect example of a soft answer turning away wrath.” Though in Hannah’s case, those teachings were what had kept her under Reece’s fist too long. She focused on making her stitches even and small. She wouldn’t think about the sound of her mother’s laugh, or the way her mother’s auburn hair caught the sunlight. She wouldn’t remember the way Mamm’s tender hands, rough from hard work, would stroke Hannah’s hair at night before bed. The needle blurred in her vision, and she blinked hard.
“Did she only work by hand?”
“No, she had a treadle sewing machine that she used for the piecework. The actual quilting was done by hand. I’ll talk about that when I get to the chapter on the Carpenter Patch. We prize things made with hard work, but we use tried-and-true technology. Many use a treadle sewing machine for the piecework.”
Angie frowned. “I’ve always heard quilts made by hand are more valuable.”
“When sewing machines first became available, it was a status symbol to have one to use for quilting. Around 1900, during the Colonial Revival period, interest in hand quilting grew, a return to nostalgia. But Amish women are practical. Good quilts are about design and excellent fabrics. Mamm always chose her fabrics with care and paid top dollar for them.”
Angie glanced around the bedroom. “Does your cousin have any I can see?”
“They were all stolen the—the night of the murders.” She stopped. “You know, the quilt that was found over the bodies should still be somewhere. It would have been released to the family once the evidence was collected from it. I’m going to look for it.”
Angie sprang off the bed. “I’ll come with you.”
She followed Hannah down the hall. “This is a big place.”
“Four bedrooms up here and another one downstairs. This is another guest room.” The large room held a double bed, a dresser, a futon that could be made into another bed, and a crib. Even with all the furniture, it still had floor space to spare.
“Why is there so much furniture in here?”
“An entire family could stay here. We often have visitors who stay a few days.” Hannah glanced around the room. She hadn’t had time to go from room to room and see what changes Sarah had made. The quilt Hannah sought wasn’t on the bed. She opened the closet and pulled out a blanket chest.