The words, the meaning behind them, light a fire of outrage inside me, a mix of anger and disbelief and the sense of unfair judgment levied upon the innocent. “She had no choice in the matter.”
He raises rheumy eyes to mine. “Some things are so broken, they cannot be mended. It is the way of the world.”
“I don’t agree with that.”
He gives me a sharp look. “I thought it best that she didn’t return.”
I stare at him, incredulous, and so taken aback by his narrow-minded arrogance that for a moment I’m rendered speechless. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s not for you to understand. It’s done. In God’s hands.”
Before I realize I’m going to move, I’m hovering over him. “Do you know something about what happened to her?” Despite my efforts, my voice has risen.
His eyes roll back in their sockets slightly when he looks at me. “A few years after Willis and the children were killed, I received a message from the bishop of the Swartzentruber Amish in Pennsylvania.”
The Swartzentruber clan are the most conservative Amish. The group emerged after a split of the Old Order back in 1917 over a conflict between two bishops regarding Bann und Meidung, or “excommunication and shunning.” Several Swartzentruber families live in Painters Mill. Generally, they’re stricter with regard to the use of technology, rejecting conveniences like milking machines and indoor plumbing. Their buggies are windowless. Even their dress is plainer, especially for the women.
“What message?” I ask.
“One of the families in Cambria County had taken in an Amish woman who’d been in an accident and had severe injuries. The woman had no memory. She didn’t know her name or where she lived. The family nursed her back to health, fed her, clothed her, and opened their home to her.” He looks down at his gnarled fingers. “Months after she arrived, the woman began to remember things. She was fluent in Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch. She knew she had a husband and children and wanted to come home. The Swartzentruber family began contacting Amish bishops all over Pennsylvania and, later, Ohio.”
“The woman was Wanetta Hochstetler?”
“All I can tell you is that she was not the woman who had been married to Willis Hochstetler.”
I can’t tell if he’s speaking figuratively or literally. “What happened?”
“The Swartzentruber Amish do not permit a community telephone booth, as we do here. It took several weeks, but she was finally able to contact me.”
“You spoke with her?”
“On the telephone.” He hesitates. “She didn’t know that Willis and the children had passed. When I told her, she became very distraught. She accused me of lying and used ungodly words.” He touches his left temple. “Sie is ganz ab.” She was quite out of her mind.
“Did you go to the police?”
“Why would I? We are Amish. It was an Amish matter.”
“But they would have—”
“There were bad feelings between the Amish and the English police.” He shrugs. “I don’t know how it would have been for her, coming back, after everything that happened. There had been talk.”
“What kind of talk?”
“That she’d left her husband and children. That maybe she didn’t want to come back.”
“But she had a son,” I say. “William.”
“The boy was with an Amish family. A good family that had welcomed him into their lives and given him a home. This woman was … narrish.” Insane. “It was for the best. For the boy. He needed to be protected from what she had become.”
“That wasn’t your choice. It wasn’t your decision to make.”
“I left it in the hands of God.”
I look at him, this grizzled, disapproving old man, and I want to rail at him, call him a son of a bitch. I want to tell him the woman could have sustained a head injury or suffered a stroke. But I hold my tongue. “How long ago did you speak with her?”
“Many years,” he says.
“She was living in Pennsylvania at the time?”
“Yes, but many of the Swartzentruber Amish have left that area for New York. Too many disputes with the government.”
“What was the name of the family that took her in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember the bishop’s name?”
He shakes his head.
I sigh. “Where in Pennsylvania? What’s the name of the town?”
“Cambria County,” he tells me. “Near Nicktown.”
CHAPTER 24