She doesn’t look happy to see me, even less happy with my request. I’m relieved when she opens the door and ushers me inside. “Sitz dich anne.” Sit down.
The smells of coffee and cinnamon titillate my olfactory nerves as I step inside. Heat from the kerosene stove warms my face. A second woman stands at the kitchen sink, washing dishes. She turns as I sit at the table, nods a greeting, then returns her attention to her task. Being here in this Amish kitchen brings back memories. Growing up, I spent countless hours sitting at a big table just like this one while my mamm fussed at the stove, and I feel an uncharacteristic jab of melancholy for things lost. Not because I want to be Amish, but because I know that once pieces of your past slip away, those pieces are gone forever, and there’s no going back.
I think of my brother, Jacob, and my sister, Sarah, and for an instant I miss them so much, my chest aches. As children, we’d been close. Now they’re strangers; it’s been weeks since I’ve seen either of them. I have two nephews I barely know and a brand-new niece I’ve never met, mostly due to my own evasion. I don’t know why I avoid them the way I do. To say it’s complicated would be an understatement. As I sit at the table with the smells of an Amish house all around, I wonder if they’re part of my lost past, or if they’re part of a future I simply haven’t been able to reach for yet.
“I’m Ellen.”
I’m pulled from my thoughts to see the thin woman who’d answered the door eyeing me suspiciously as she dries her hands on a towel. “Would you like coffee and pie?” she asks.
I wonder if she’d be offering these if she knew I’d once been Amish and that I’d been excommunicated for going on fourteen years now. “Coffee would be nice. Thank you.”
She pours from an ancient-looking enamel pot and carries the cup to me. “The younger children are in their room, sleeping,” she says. “They have had a very trying day.”
I pick up the cup and sip. “What about Mose?”
“Wait.” She disappears into the living room. A moment later, Bishop Troyer appears. He’s a short man with bowed legs, a round belly, and thick gray hair that’s blunt-cut above heavy brows. A salt-and-pepper beard hangs from his chin, reaching nearly to the waistband of his trousers. He’s looked much the same since I was a child: old, but never seeming to age further.
He doesn’t look happy to see me. “Chief Burkholder.”
“I need to speak with the children,” I say without preamble. “It’s important.”
He sighs as he crosses to the table and takes the chair across from me. “Katie, the children are grieving. They have been through much already this day.”
“Solomon Slabaugh may have been murdered.”
“Murdered?” The bishop recoils as if I’d splashed hot coffee in his face. “Solly? But I thought he fell into the pit. How can that be murder?”
I tell him about the head trauma. “I need to talk to the kids, Bishop Troyer. Right now.”
The old man looks uncertain as he rises, as if he doesn’t know what to make of this new information I’ve just thrown at him. “The three youngsters are in their rooms, sleeping. Mose is outside in the workshop with the men.”
“Gather the younger kids for me.” I take a reluctant last sip of coffee, then rise. “I’ll speak to Mose first.”
The bishop bows his head slightly, then disappears into the living room.
Leaving my coffee and the warmth of the kitchen, I go back outside. The wind penetrates my parka as I make my way down the sidewalk. Midway to the barn, I turn left toward a newish steel building, noticing for the first time the dull glow of lantern light in the windows. The sky is even darker now, the gray clouds to the west approaching like some vast army. There’s no snow yet, but I can smell it—that cold, thick scent that tells me we’re about to get dumped on.
I open the steel door of the workshop and find a single lantern burning atop a workbench. The air smells of kerosene and freshly sawed wood. Two Amish men sporting insulated coveralls and full beards stand in the circle of golden light, talking to Mose. The three males eye me with unconcealed suspicion as I approach.
“Hello,” I say, but my focus is on Mose. Even in the poor lighting, he looks pale and troubled and unbearably sad.
Looking away, he mumbles something I don’t quite hear.
I nod a greeting at the two men. I’ve met them both at some point, but I don’t recall their names. “Bishop Troyer said I’d find you here,” I say to Mose. “I need to ask you a few questions about what happened this morning.”
The boy glances at the other two men, as if hoping they’ll intervene and send me packing. Of course, neither man does. Looking at Mose, I realize that the reality of everything he and his siblings face in the coming days and weeks and months is starting to hit home. He’s apprehensive, sad, maybe a little scared.