The Amish Midwife

TWENTY


Feeling lost, I decided to focus on dinner. Zed didn’t look up from the computer screen when I passed through the dining room. I wondered about him tying up the landline, but then I decided Marta would call my cell if she needed to talk. I searched through the little pantry cupboard. There was a box of saltine crackers. Chicken stock. A can of black beans. A box of whole wheat pasta. A jar of what looked like homemade spaghetti sauce—at least, I hoped it was. And a couple of jars of canned pears. I check the freezer above the refrigerator. There were several plastic containers of jam and a couple bags of green beans. It looked as though we would be having spaghetti for dinner and I would be going shopping tomorrow. I started water for the pasta and then put the sauce on to heat. There was a little bit of cheddar cheese in the fridge. I would grate that to go on top of the sauce. I wondered what the kids took for lunches. Maybe I would need to go to the store tonight.

“Hey, Zed.” I stood in the doorway to the dining room. “Do you take sandwiches for lunches?”

He shook his head without looking up. “Hot lunch.”

“Do you have money for that?”

“Yeah…” His voice trailed off.

It was only five fifteen by the time dinner was ready, but I decided we might as well eat. As I set the table, there was a knock on the door. I knew Zed wouldn’t answer it, so I hurried into the living room. Alice was at the door with a casserole dish covered in foil. “I brought you a little something for dinner,” she said.

I thanked her and asked her in. She declined, saying, “Just hug the children for me. Tell them I’m praying for their mother.”

A minute later, as I turned off the burner under the sauce, there was another knock at the door. It was Peggy’s husband, Eli, with a store-bought frozen lasagna in his hands. “Peggy sent me over with this.” He thrust the lasagna toward me. His face reddened and he turned to leave quickly.

“Thank you,” I said, wanting to ask about Peggy and the baby, but he’d already reached his carriage.

Three more people dropped food off before I had dinner on the table, two Mennonite women and another Amish man. As I headed to the staircase to call Ella to come eat, she came bounding down, her cell phone in her hand. “It’s Mom,” she said. “She wants to talk to you.”

I took the phone. Marta said, “My car’s in the parking garage two blocks from the courthouse. Could you get it back to the house for me? There’s an extra key hanging by the front door.”

“Sure,” I said. Maybe Sean could help me.

“And speaking of cars, a couple from our church have a car you can borrow. I don’t think you should keep paying for that rental. It’s a waste of money.”

I agreed. She told me they would drop the car off in the morning.

Without as much as a transition, she said, “And please encourage the children to be hopeful. There’s no reason for them to be alarmed. Ella was pretty upset, but I think I talked her out of it.”

I asked her about visiting the next day with the kids, but she said that wouldn’t be necessary. She sounded touched when I described all of the people who had shown up with food. We chatted about clients for a minute, and then she asked to talk to Zed. I sent Sean a quick text about the car as Zed took the phone.

He said “Okay” several times and then, “I love you too. Bye.” That was all. Then we sat down to eat.

We bowed our heads and prayed silently and much longer than usual. When Ella said, “Amen” out loud, I marveled at the change in her outlook, not sure if the swing was due to her age or personality or prayer, or if her mother still had that much control over her. There was another knock on the door before we even started to pass the pasta. I stood. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have to go to the grocery store in the morning after all.

Sean was free to help, and he came in to meet Ella and Zed before taking me to get Marta’s car. He spoke warmly, shaking their hands and telling them how sorry he was about the events of the day. He encouraged them to be hopeful that things would work out. He then followed me to the car rental agency on the outskirts of town, and once I’d signed all the paperwork and turned over my key to the Taurus, I went outside and eagerly climbed into his two-door BMW. It was the first time I’d been in his car, and the leather seat felt like a fitted glove as I sank down onto it.

As he drove we chatted, talking through a plan to go out to dinner again on Saturday evening. When we reached the parking garage, we found Marta’s Toyota on the top floor, a prepaid all-day receipt on her dash, just as she had said we would.

Sean and I would be parting there, and as I turned back around to thank him for his help, he took my face in his hands and planted a kiss right on my mouth. I was surprised at first, but then I allowed myself to go with it, refusing to let thoughts of James enter my mind.

When we finally pulled apart, Sean grinned.

“Sorry about that,” he teased softly. “But I just knew you were going to say ‘How can I ever thank you,’ so I figured I’d go ahead and give you your answer.”

Feeling just a tad unsteady on my feet, I got into the car and started it up before rolling down the window and giving him a reply.

“Shows how much you know,” I said, shaking my head in mock scorn. “I was going to give you a fruitcake.”

He threw back his head and laughed.

All the way to the cottage, even as my heart felt heavy with guilt, a smile lingered on my lips.

When I arrived, Zed called me into the dining room. “I joined a Swiss genealogical site,” he said. “And found some info on the property. According to a response I got, it’s in the Emmental.”

I peered over his shoulder. There was a posting written in German.

“Which is…” he clicked open a Wickipedia screen, “located in the Canton of Bern.”

“Cool.” I leaned forward and skimmed the article. It was the second largest canton in Switzerland. The city of Bern, not surprisingly, was the capital, along with being the capital of the entire country. It was located in west-central Switzerland and included the Bernese Oberland, a portion of the Alps that consisted of the Jungfrau, among other peaks. The Emmental was a hilly landscape mostly devoted to farming, particularly dairy farming.

It sounded a lot like Lancaster County, minus the nearby Alps.

“Amielbach is outside the town of Langnau.” He clicked open another window. The outlying area was forty-nine percent agriculture, again mainly dairy farming, and forty-two percent forested. The village was the “sunniest” in Switzerland and had only nine thousand inhabitants.

“And,” Zed said, opening a fourth window, “I had a response about an Abraham Sommers, who lived in the Emmental area from the mid- to late-1800s.” An email in German popped open. “But I haven’t verified it’s the man you’re looking for,” he said. “Not yet.”

I thanked him for his work and then asked if I could use the computer for a minute. I logged onto the registry first. There were still no responses. Next I checked my email. I had a message from James, asking how things were going and saying he had a weekend retreat with the kids from the group home where he was doing his internship. He said he’d call me Sunday night. He didn’t mention our last phone conversation.

As I stood, sliding the chair back to Zed, I asked how Ella was doing.

“Fine, I guess,” Zed said. “She went out right after you left.”

“What do you mean?”

He focused back on the computer as he spoke. “Someone came and got her…”

“Who?”

He shrugged. “Someone who needs a new muffler.”

“Someone in a car?” I hoped it was a car and wasn’t who I feared it was.

“Nope. Sounded more like a motorcycle.”

I called Ella’s phone but she didn’t answer. I walked down to the bridge, listening for the telltale sound of Ezra’s motorcycle, but I heard nothing except for the hoot of an owl. The sky was clear and the stars bright with no city lights to compete with, but the icy chill of the night made me shiver. Just the thought of Ella in her thin dress on the back of Ezra’s bike speeding along the highway had me vaguely nauseated.

As I headed back to the cottage, I heard the distant roar of the motorcycle coming from the other direction. I made my way through the darkness as carefully and quickly as I could back toward the cottage, but it sounded like the roar had beaten me there. The sound paused and then, after a few moments, started up again. A lone headlight was coming toward me. I waved my hands for Ezra to stop, but he merely ducked his head as he buzzed by. I watched his taillight swim a little as he bounced onto the bridge. He wore his leather jacket and helmet, but another helmet was secured on the metal loop at the back of the empty seat.

When I got to the house, Ella was in the shower.

“A hot shower,” Zed said. “She was really cold.”

“I’ll bet,” I said.

“Her birthday is Saturday.” Zed spoke with eyes glued to the screen.

“So she said.”

“She’ll be sixteen,” he added, as if that explained everything. He sat up straight and his eyes popped wide. “Incoming message.”

I peered over his shoulder, but this email was in German too.

Zed spoke slowly as he read. “Abraham Sommers had a daughter Elsbeth. And a property called Amielbach.” Zed paused. I already knew all that. “He was a councilman in the Emmental.” That I didn’t know.

Zed continued. “His daughter left in—sometime in the mid 1870s—for America and ended up settling in Indiana.”

I’d guessed at that, but it was nice to have it confirmed.

“Elsbeth retained the property and passed it down through her family, but it was sold twenty-four years ago and turned into a hotel.”

I would have been two years old at that point.

I pulled a dining room chair next to Zed and sat down. It was too bad the beautiful house wasn’t in the family anymore, but I could still visit it someday.

“And,” Zed looked at me furtively and then back at the screen, “an American woman moved to Amielbach right after it sold. She lives in a little house on the property.”

I took a deep breath. “What’s her name?”

“No name given.”

Zed kept reading silently.

“What does it say about her?”

“Just that she’s not your average American and she’s very private and he doesn’t feel that he should give out any personal information.”

“Wait a minute. Not your average American how? In what sense?”

“I don’t know. That’s how he put it.”

I tensed. “Who is this man?”

Zed reread the email. “Hey, my German isn’t perfect, but I think he owns the hotel. He’s a history buff. That’s why he’s on the list where I posted.”

“Email him back and ask him for more information about the woman. Tell him…” Tell him what? That I wondered if the woman might be my birth mother? What were the chances of that? “Ask him if the woman’s name is Giselle.”

It couldn’t hurt to try.

Ella avoided me for the rest of the evening. Finally, I confronted her in her room. “I was worried about you.”

“Why?” She wore a white nightgown under a terry cloth robe and sat on her bed with a textbook in front of her. Her hair hung long and wavy halfway down her back. The light caught the dark auburn sheen when she turned her head.

“Let’s see…I didn’t know where you were, whom you were with, or when you were coming back.”

“I was fine.” She looked up at me demurely and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Besides, I already told you that Ezra and I are good friends.”

“What would your mom say?”

Ella shrugged. “I turn sixteen on Saturday.”

“But you’re Mennonite, remember. Not Amish. We don’t do rumschpringes.” Oops. Freudian slip—I’d meant to say “you,” not “we.”

“But Mom has Amish roots, you know. She’s always said I’ll have more freedom when I’m sixteen.”

“I doubt if she ever intended that freedom to include riding on the back of Ezra’s motorcycle.”

“Well, she’s not here, is she?” Now Ella’s tone was a little bit sassy.

“Next time, if I’m still in charge, call me. Or send me a text.”

She closed her textbook with a thud. “That’s just it,” she said. “We don’t need you to be in charge. We’re totally capable of taking care of ourselves.”

I stepped back.

She stood. “Besides, Mom will be out soon. That’s what Ezra said.”

Maybe Will or Alice or someone was raising the bail.

“And you can go back to delivering babies and not feel like you need to watch my every move.”

“Ella—”

“I have homework to do.”

I told her goodnight and left the room, marveling at yet another mood swing in a short time. It had only been ten years since I was sixteen. Why did I have no idea how to deal with her?

The house creaked and groaned throughout the night. Around three the wind picked up and must have blown clouds in, because soon it was raining. In my restlessness I kept dreaming of a roaring motorcycle racing by Amielbach. Over and over I woke with a start.

In the morning, Ella was quiet and sullen. I checked the adoption registry site and found no messages. There was nothing concerning my adoption search in my email box, either. I turned the computer over to Zed. The man from Switzerland hadn’t emailed him back. Strike three and it was only seven thirty.

After Zed and Ella left for school, the couple from Marta’s church dropped off their car for me to use. It was a green Datsun B210 and was, I felt sure, older than I. I thanked them warmly and hoped it would run. After they left, I took it for a test drive down the highway and then across the covered bridge. The seat was vinyl and uncomfortable, but it seemed to have been well cared for, although it was pretty noisy. The gas tank was full and a sticker in the corner of the windshield indicated that the oil had been changed the day before.

When I returned to the cottage, I pulled my phone from my pocket. I’d missed a call and had a voice mail from Marta. “Bail’s been posted. Can you come and get me?”

“Who paid your bail?” It was one question I couldn’t contain as I drove Marta back to the cottage.

In true Marta form, not only did she not answer, but she didn’t even acknowledge my question.

“I mean, did a group of Amish raise the money?” My face grew warm. “Like Will and Alice? Did your church contribute?” Maybe the couple who loaned me the car were closet millionaires.

“There was no group contribution,” Marta said. “And, no, I asked our pastor not to use church money or money from anyone in our district on me. There are more worthy causes.”

I turned and headed south. “What’s the big deal in telling me who it was?”

“Some things are private,” she said.

I shrugged. “I’m not going to tell anyone. I’m just curious.”

She didn’t answer me. Her cape was fastened at the very top and her bonnet was perfectly in place over her immaculately combed hair. There was nothing about her that looked as if she’d spent a night in jail.

After a while she sighed. “I don’t want this told to anyone, not even my children.” She glanced at me and I nodded.

She looked straight ahead again and said, “Klara paid the bail.”