Finding Mercy

That night, they’d taken off their clothes to keep them dry and, stripped bare, had gone into the cold water.

“Ooh, goose bumps already!” Sarah had said. “I’m gonna get out and just sketch the scene.”

“Of us naked?” Ella had challenged, and they’d all giggled. “Just swim around a little and you’ll warm up. Hannah’s not complaining.”

“It’s ’cause my teeth are chattering too hard!” Hannah had cried, chin-deep in the pond.

And then, somehow, amidst the laughter and the kidding, the kicking and the splashing, it happened. In the middle, where the coldest water came in from a deep stream that fed the pond, it seemed an evil, icy hand reached for Ella and pulled her around and down.

Had she put her own head under? In their horseplay, had she inhaled or swallowed water? Later, she could never remember. It was black and wet, and she held her breath, but her air was gone and a darkness like death sucked her in. She struggled, but it was too strong until someone grabbed her long hair and pulled and then…

The next thing she remembered was lying on the bank, spitting up water, shaking, gasping with her friends bending over her. Later, when she could breathe and talk, she begged them not to tell her parents what had happened—what had almost happened.

But she was changed after that. Hannah and Sarah knew it. Ella admitted it. Her parents saw it as an improvement. The daredevil had drowned and a more careful Ella was born that night, fearful the Lord had scolded her, shaken her.... Ever since, she’d lived with the curse of the sudden, drowning moods that she hid from everyone, however hard that was in such a tight community. Oh, they knew she was moody, a bit of a loner, a hard worker tending her lavender. But they never knew she carried with her the burden of the blackness, the wet, drowning fear of…

“Ella? I thought you’d stay with them.” Andrew’s voice jolted her. She saw pale moonlight sliced through the opening in the trees enough for him to see her too. He was sitting on the bank of the pond with one leg in it. “Your dad showed me this pond and said the water was cold. I needed to soak my ankle. I should have soaked my head for getting in that mess my first night here, but I’m glad we could help whoever that was. I think he’s going to live.”

“I pray he will,” she called to him, staying put at the edge of the clearing, leaning back against a big maple as if glued to it. No way was she getting closer to that water—or to him again. “You reacted like you knew that injured man.”

“No. Just surprised to see an Asian man in Amish country, which was stupid of me. I—I used to know some Chinese, and that’s what I think he was, American-Chinese, of course.” His voice had a slight tremor to it. “I didn’t expect him here, that’s all.”

She wondered if Andrew had been a travel agent. Or what if he was a spy against the Chinese and that’s why he had to hide out? No, that was crazy.

“Is the cold water helping your ankle? My grandmother is good at tending to things like that. I can head home and bring a buggy closer so you don’t have to walk far.”

“I think I’ll be able to make it with this crutch. I apologize for leaning on you earlier.”

“Oh, that’s fine. We all have to do that—lean on each other. You know, you still might have to answer some questions from the sheriff. The woman who owns the local newspaper showed up too. She’s pretty nice, though, not like the man who owned it before.”

No answer from him but a huge sigh. Silence. Just an owl’s whoo-whoo, wind rustling the leaves overhead and the ripple of the water where he moved his foot in it.

“You can tell me if I’m out of line,” he said, not looking at her now, “but are you afraid of me? Or is there some rule about not getting too close to outsiders or to men for unmarried Amish women?”

“Oh, no—not like that. I’m just—wary of the water.”

“Oh. The pond. Your dad said it’s deep. You mean you can’t swim.”

“I used to. Liked it, even, but not now.” She almost blurted out more. She had a strange urge to confide in this stranger when she’d not even told her own family. Nor had she shared her near drowning with her come-calling friend, Eli Detweiler, though they were once, briefly, betrothed. But Eli would not—could not—give up his liquor after rumspringa, and there was no way she was going to trust him to be her husband and the father of her children—or to know the deepest, fearful secret of her heart.

Wide-eyed, drawn to Andrew but not going closer, she watched him stand unsteadily. He still had his makeshift crutch. She almost ran forward to help but stayed put. He kept his shoe and sock off; they dangled over one shoulder. It was even a big step for her to be this close to that water, looking at its cold, pale face.

“I’ll run ahead and bring Daad back with the buggy,” she said, and started across the fringe of the clearing. “I can drive it through the Kauffman farm, then I’ll call for you.”

“No, don’t walk all that way alone in the dark,” he insisted. “It’s bad enough for me to be out here alone. Since you said it’s okay for us to be close, I can make it with this crutch and you.”

It’s okay for us to be close… His word snagged in her mind. A while ago he’d said, they had to lean on each other. I can make it with this crutch and you. She’d wanted someone to trust and tell her deepest fears to for so long, someone strong to rely on. Since Andrew wouldn’t be here long, maybe she could confide in him, and then he’d be gone and she could go on alone....

She shook her head to clear it, then remembered her kapp was gone and her hair was loose and wild. When she turned against the breeze, her tresses, silvered by moonlight, blew in her face. Though an Amish woman only unbound her long, uncut hair for her husband in their marriage bed, Andrew limped closer, his eyes taking her all in.

“Yeah, I suppose I’ll have to speak to the sheriff,” he said as they started off together, away from the pond. He didn’t touch her this time, and they moved slowly. “But I’m pretty sure Mr. Branin hasn’t informed him yet about my being undercover here. And the last thing I need is a newspaper interview.”

“Maybe I can help, at least with Ms. Drayton at The Home Valley News.”

“You’ve helped already, just by being here, by caring about what happened to me.”

He turned slowly sideways to stare at her. Up this close, with his face etched by moonlight, she could see how thick his eyelashes were, see the little squint lines at the corners of his blue eyes and the worry line on his broad brow. Suddenly self-conscious, she pulled her hair back behind her head, twisting and knotting it into a horse tail. When her gaze locked with his, she nearly stumbled, and it was he who reached out to briefly steady her.

Lightning leaped between them, something unspoken but understood. They both had secrets. They both had a new friend.

* * *

Alex was not used to being fussed over by women. By anyone. Yet the fact that Ella and the woman she called Grossmamm Ruth were tending to him was strangely comforting. It made him miss his own grandmother, now lost to him by her dementia.

His father had always tried to make him grow up too fast, which turned out to be a good thing when he lost both his parents in a boating accident when he was thirteen. Until he was eighteen, he’d lived off and on with a New York City legal guardian with vacations with his grandmother at her place in Nassau—lovely but lonely. She was being tended there now by a full-time caregiver and wouldn’t recognize him even if he did visit.

His first instinct when the feds convinced him he might have a price on his head was to hide out at her place, but they’d told him that could endanger her too. Gerald Branin had said they’d seen WITSEC cases where a hit man used a close family member to flush out or coerce their target.

“Ow!” he clipped out as Grossmamm Ruth, massaging his ankle, hit a sore spot.

“Good!” the silver-haired lady said. “So that’s the exact spot of the sprain. We tie the ice bag there, but you keep drinking that good dandelion tea, keeps swelling down real good.”

Obviously, this dear old woman’s favorite word was good, or goot, as she said it, even in English. “Ella, you pour him more tea,” she said. “And please get him some more of your daad’s good honey with the comb on a biscuit—good for what ails you.”

She was bossing Ella around too, but she seemed to take it. He’d known a lot of kids growing up who didn’t get it that rules and regs from a parent—with consequences—mean they cared, they loved you, wanted you safe. Damn, he hoped he would be safe here among these kind and good people.

He was yearning for a cup of Starbucks java but he downed the weak, strange tea. It warmed his insides anyway. Ella warmed him too, and that presented a problem.

“Now,” Ruth said, “no more using that tree limb crutch you found. I got a good hospital one you can use. But, ach, even with that, you’ll not be going into the fields with Eben and the boys tomorrow, not for a couple days. I gave my ankle a bad twist our last winter in Florida, on the Lido Beach. Made me so mad—I could not walk in the sand and wade the waves.”

“In Florida?” Alex asked.

“Oh, ya. My husband and I, we had a nice little house down there in Pinecraft, right by Sarasota. You think the Amish can’t take trips, enjoy warm weather in the winter?”

“I’ve just never heard of Amish snowbirds,” he said.

“Ach, these old bones did not like the winter cold, even though there’s always work to do here.”

“That’s why I want to help,” Alex insisted, still trying to deal with a mental picture of fully clothed, black-clad Amish like Grossmamm Ruth on a south Florida beach amid the bikinis and Speedos. “I’m already enough of a burden.”

“You go help Ella with her bed—right out the back door.”

The way the old woman had put that—Ella’s gaze met his. She actually blushed, her fair skin turning rosy from her throat to her cheeks.

“Help me weed my lavender bed,” she put in quickly.

“I know what she means. If I can kneel and not put weight on this foot, that’s fine.”

“My sister Barbara usually works with me but she’s helping another family out. You’ll get to meet her at Seth’s wedding though. I think Barbara will be staying home after that, so you wouldn’t need to help me for long.”

Ella’s father came in the back door from outside. “I walked the field to tell the bishop all that happened,” he told them, bending to take off his muddy shoes before coming into the immaculate kitchen in his socks. “The sheriff was there, coming here next to talk to Ella and Andrew. The bishop says we should tell the sheriff the truth about you, have him keep the newspaper editor and others away from you, best as can.”

“I’d rather leave it for Gerald Branin to tell him—procedure, protocol, he said.”

Eben shrugged, then nodded. “Then you are only Cousin Andrew Lantz until we get the say-so, but the sheriff always been straight with us. And you tell the bishop when next you see him.”

A sharp knock rattled the back screen door and “Sheriff Freeman here!” resounded through it. Alex wondered if the sheriff could have overheard any of that. Sure, he’d been called to the accident scene, but he seemed to materialize out of the blue—the darkness—everywhere. No, that was unfair, Alex scolded himself. He was just paranoid, not trusting anyone with a gun, even a law-and-order guy.

The phone call his guard Jake had made in Atlanta the night before someone tried to kill him had been eating at him. Could the call have been to sell him out? Neither he nor Branin could figure how the would-be assassin had found him. When Alex had sneaked out to go jogging, Jake sounded like he was snoring, but it was a different sound from those he made at night. Could he have been faking it, setting it up for Alex to sneak out while the assassin awaited? And then, of course, he rushed out to help so it would look good. Could a man so deep asleep wake up and get outside that fast?

And that car last night—could someone have sat in a vehicle, waiting for Alex—Andrew—to go out alone? Was that speeding car sent to kill him and just went out of control? The black pickup sitting in the Atlanta motel parking lot had looked harmless enough. Even the glint-eyed reflection had not panicked him at first.

Who to trust? Very few in the outside world—but he did trust these people who had taken him in.

* * *

After talking briefly alone to Andrew, Sheriff Freeman called Ella into the living room. She could see why he didn’t want to question them together, but she wished he would have. That way she could help Andrew seem more Amish, maybe cover for him a bit, because she knew he hadn’t told the sheriff who he really was.

“Standard procedure to talk to witnesses separate, Ella,” he said when she sat down on the other end of the couch from him.

“We weren’t exactly witnesses to the wreck—only about as much as Ray-Lynn was.”

“Right, after the fact. I’ll talk to her too.”

“I hope seeing that didn’t bring back bad memories of her own accident.”

“She seems pretty steady. Still can’t thank you and Hannah enough for getting her help when she was hurt. She’s getting some of her old spunk back. Now, isn’t it a little strange for your cousin Andrew—anyone Amish—to be out for an evening run, especially with all the exercise the men get in the fields?”

“He just arrived and hasn’t started to work the fields yet. Then with the sprain he got, jumping out of the way of that car, it will be a few more days before he starts to work with Daad or the boys.”

“Yeah, thank God he wasn’t hit. By the way, the driver/victim regained consciousness en route to the hospital. Broken bones, some question of spinal injury when he was thrown clear. He was lucky he was thrown, though. If not, he would have fried in the wreck. We’ve contacted NOK—next of kin. His address was actually local, though I’d never seen him. Moved in recently from New York State. You know any reason that would upset your cousin? Andrew looked kinda green at the gills when I told him that. He’s from Pennsylvania, right?”

“Yes, from Intercourse. Lots of Amish, lots of Lantzes there.”

The sheriff led her through telling him how the wrecked vehicle began to flame, then blew up. How Andrew found the driver, turned him over.

“Which he should not have done, but I’m giving him a pass on that because it was natural to want to learn if the guy was dead or not,” he said, still taking notes. Ella saw she’d been gripping her hands in her lap and tried to relax her cramped fingers. The sheriff was writing on his notepad, so maybe he hadn’t noticed how nervous she was.

“They talk a little different in the eastern Amish enclaves, don’t they?” the sheriff said as he looked up straight at her. “Andrew doesn’t have the same kind of—excuse me for putting it this way—accent as your people here.”

“There are some differences,” she said in a rush, trying to answer him in a way that wasn’t a lie. Would he be angry when he heard they hadn’t told him the truth about Andrew? Mr. Branin should tell him soon. Why hadn’t he already? “A lot of back-and-forth, long-distance relatives,” she went on, “even marriages, but each area has some things unlike and special. All kinds of varied people come into Amish country, like that man who got hurt.”

“Yeah. Samuel Lee. Word is that he’s here to open a luxury spa and retreat in our area. Now, that’s a good one. What next? I hear it’s out on Sweetgum Lane near the Yoders’ dairy farm and the old Troyer Mill. All right, I’ve gotta go now. Thanks, Ella.”

Feeling bad they hadn’t told him the truth about Andrew, she stood and walked out with him. Andrew still sat in the kitchen with his foot up on a kitchen chair with Grossmamm Ruth keeping an eye on him. Mamm had come downstairs and was dishing out strawberry shortcake for everyone. After quick goodbyes—and the sheriff’s giving Andrew another steely-eyed stare—Ella walked him to the back door even before Mamm could ask him to stay for shortcake.

As he went out, Ella called to him, “Sheriff Freeman! Just a minute. Let me cut some lavender for Ray-Lynn if you’re going to question her. I know she has trouble sleeping sometime and, with this going on tonight, it will help her, one of the best things lavender does. I will just take a minute.”

Her hand sickle was in her new workshop, so she grabbed Mamm’s pruning shears by the back door and darted out to the closest end of the English lavender beds. As she’d come into the kitchen, she’d overheard Daad agreeing that Andrew could help her weed for the next day or so, stay on his knees and off his ankle. That possibility and the familiar, heady scent of her plants stretching up the hill, made her feel she could fly. Despite the terrible events of the night, her dark mood had lifted. Yes, with Andrew there, even the nightmare of being near the pond hadn’t pulled her down.

She cut a good armful of the fragrant, flowering spikes and handed it to the sheriff.

“I oughta have this all over my office and the jail,” he said as he put it next to him on the passenger seat of his cruiser. “Keep me calm with all the bad stuff been happening ’round here. Thanks, Ella, for Ray-Lynn and me. Night, now.”

As he pulled out, the yard, the lane, the road went dark again. Only the kerosene-lantern-lit house and the slice of moon sailing high gave wan light. Starlight—so distant, such tiny specs in the big dark ocean of sky. She spun to look up at her lavender beds, marching toward the hill and up. It was the perfect site for the crop, with the much larger hill and its woodlot above, which sheltered the flowers from winter winds and where Daad kept his beehives so the bees would work all the gardens in the area.

And she saw, reflected, atop the hill, a large, staring eye, pale and lit from within.

She started toward the house, still looking back and up. Had she imagined it? She saw nothing now. Had a camera light popped, like when English folks tried to take verboten images of her people? Could Ms. Drayton have come by to follow up on the story of the car wreck and— No, she’d come to the door, wouldn’t she? Hunter with a night-vision rifle? Binoculars?

Whatever it had been, it wasn’t there now. She rushed inside and closed the storm door but decided not to upset everyone. What if it was just some strange reflection of light off one of the tin pans she had hanging high to keep birds away? What if it was a cluster of early lightning bugs?

Out of breath, she told everyone, “I gave the sheriff some lavender for Ray-Lynn.”

They turned to her, including Andrew, as Daad said, “You can use Andrew’s help with the lavender for a couple days, ya? We’ll get him out in the fields soon enough.”

“Oh, ya, danki, Daad. Andrew too,” she said with a nod their way.

Patting the plastic ice pack on her patient’s ankle, Grossmamm put in, “You just be sure you take good care of his ankle, Ella.”

Ella bit her lower lip, uncertain whether to laugh or sulk. She was too old for Grossmamm to scold. Ella felt exhausted, yet energetic too. And she’d just take those tin pans down so they didn’t reflect moon or lantern glow and get her all het up over nothing.

4

IT HAD RAINED some overnight. Ella had heard the patter on her roof, a gentle rain, but she still hadn’t slept well. Her first night in her new house…the car accident…and Andrew. Then too, when she’d drifted off, she’d dreamed she’d seen a huge glowing animal eye, watching her from the blackness.

She shook her head to pull herself back to the here and now. “I guess you can tell which are weeds, ya?” she asked Andrew as they surveyed her lavender from the bottom of the hill after a hearty breakfast with the family. Daad and the boys had set out for the fields already. Mamm and Grossmamm had headed into town in the family buggy to help Mrs. Lantz with wedding preparations. For now, it was just the two of them.

“Of course, I can tell the flowers from the weeds,” he said, sounding a bit annoyed. Maybe he had not slept well either on his first night in a new place, in her old room. “It’s just going to be a question of getting to them since the lavender’s so tall and I’ve got to manage this crutch.”

“If I don’t keep after them, they’ll be taller than the crop, though part of the height is because I have to build up the beds with crushed limestone and ground oyster shells.”

“No kidding?” He turned to her instead of surveying the plants. “Where do you get oyster shells around here?”

“At the mill that has chicken feed. They use ground shells as grit in the feed. I’ll need to buggy there later to get some more, if you want to go along. It will look funny, though, with the man just sitting there and the woman handling the reins. One of the boys should teach you.”

“Or you could show me while we drive.”

“While we buggy,” she corrected him. “Like we say, ‘He buggied over to see me.’ Even in English, you’ve got to learn some of the talk.”

“So,” he said, frowning and looking around again, “you’ve got quite a cottage industry going here.”

“Ya, and now I’ve got the cottage for it. I’m going to turn the house into a workroom and store instead of just delivering things here and there.”

“Instead of buggying things here and there, you mean,” he said with a grin, then sobered again. “Your fledgling enterprise impresses me. You know, only two-thirds of small businesses survive their first two years and fewer than half make it to four years, but growth is the answer. With the right packaging, branding and promotion—financing too—your Lavender Plain Products could really turn into something with expanding market opportunities. Your dad could do the same for his honey and the honeycomb he sells on the side.”

“Our businesses already are something,” she said, hands on her hips. “In your other life, did you own a company that sold something?”

“Not exactly. So, tell me more about the lavender. I take it with all the mulching, the roots don’t like water.”

“Right. The saying is, ‘Lavender does not like to get its feet wet.’”

His eyes lit and, thinking he must like the way she’d put that, she smiled back. They stayed that way a bit too long, as if they were suspended at the bottom of the hill, lulled by the buzz of the bees, the scent of the flower, like in a dream.

“I was just thinking,” he said, “the lavender’s mistress doesn’t like to get her feet wet either. You wouldn’t come near that pond last night. So no wonder lavender grows so beautifully for a beautiful gardener and in Eden County, no less.”

Her stomach did a funny flip-flop. A worldly compliment. And he’d called her mistress. Should she explain that her people only valued inner beauty? Her family had one mirror in the whole house and that was turned to the wall and mostly unused. But she said, “Sadly, there was a serpent in the Garden of Eden. Besides, I think of myself more as a farmer, of an important crop too. Lavender does lots of things, all good.”

“It smells great, that’s for sure. I didn’t mean to imply you haven’t done a good job with all this.” They started up the hill to where she’d left off with her weeding yesterday. The two tin plates she’d left hanging up the hill were knocking together in the breeze. For sure, one of those must be what had made the reflection she saw last night after the sheriff left.

“Lavender does more than smell good,” she told him, suddenly anxious to keep their conversation on her work and not herself. He kept stealing glimpses at her. “It can be used in recipes too, all kinds of yummy things like muffins, jellies and jams, chocolate, breads, teas and honeys. I plan to hire some friends to make those products to sell when I get the store going.”

He was frowning now at some inward thought. What had she said to set him off? She wished she could read his moods.

“You won’t believe this,” Andrew said, “but I had a lavender-infused drink not long ago.”

“Of course, I believe it. Lemonade?”

“Actually, a martini.”

“Oh. Liquor. I couldn’t go worldly with my sales. You have a lot to learn about us and our ways.”