16

There was an atmospheric condition known as earthquake weather, a blanket of stillness that forecasted a shaking up. This day felt like such a day to Jesse.

After church on Sunday, everyone who wasn’t baptized—mostly children—was asked to leave and wait outside. Ruthie had organized a softball game in the yard for the children while the young adults gathered at a picnic table. “It’s times like these that I think I should just go ahead and get baptized,” Katrina whispered to Jesse. “Freeman is making Dad his scapegoat and I can’t do a thing about it.”

That was enough for Jesse. He slipped away quietly and walked the perimeter of the house, stopping when he spotted an open window. Just what he had hoped to find. He peered cautiously over the sill and saw the backs of the four old sisters from the Sisters’ House, sitting like pigeons on a telephone wire. He waved to Katrina from the corner of the farmhouse. “Hsst! Kumm mol!” Come over here! When she started toward him, he cupped his mouth and whispered, “Bring Andy!”

Katrina and Andy walked over to join Jesse. He put a finger to his lips to be quiet. “I can hear everything,” he whispered, crouched beneath the open window. “Freeman is explaining why Dad needs to confess and mend his ways.” Jesse was insulted. “Why, it’s because of us! You and me. We’ve veered off the straight and narrow path, Freeman is saying.”

Katrina was amazed. “Did you truly just figure that out now, Jesse Stoltzfus?”

Andy sat down, his back against the house, his head tilted to the open window to listen. Katrina crouched down next to Jesse.

“David Stoltzfus,” they heard Freeman say, “do you refuse to make things right?”

“What exactly do you want me to do?”

“Your daughter must get baptized, right away. She needs to marry the father of her baby.”

“Katrina is not going to marry him.”

“Why not?”

“He’s engaged to someone else and, apparently, that young woman is also with child.”

Katrina gasped, her eyes wide with shock. “Jesse, did you know that?”

Jesse shook his head. “I didn’t. I would have said so if I’d known! Aunt Nancy must have told him.”

“My daughter will make her vows when she is ready,” she heard her father say. “I can’t think of anything worse than to force baptism on a person.”

“What about that son of yours? He’s lost to the world, and you do nothing about it.”

“Lost to the world? He’s only sixteen!”

“He gambled away Hank Lapp’s life earnings.”

“Jesse will be making a full restitution to Hank Lapp.”

“JESSE AND ME ARE ALL SQUARED UP,” Hank piped up.

Jesse smiled. “He’s a fine fellow, that Hank Lapp.”

Freeman had a differing opinion. “Jesse Stoltzfus spiked the punch with the devil’s brew at Hank and Edith’s wedding. He was seen doing it.”

“By whom?” Jesse whispered. He had been so careful.

“Hush!” Katrina said. “I can’t hear what Dad is saying.”

Apparently, neither could Freeman. “So,” he said, “you have nothing to say for yourself.”

“No,” David said. “I have no defense.”

“Well, then,” Freeman said. “There’s nothing left for us to do but to call for a vote to have you quieted.”

Jesse climbed on the sill to peer into the window, searching past the sisters of the Sisters’ House, over the rows of white and black prayer caps to see the front bench, needing suddenly to see his father. He noticed that his father’s knuckles were white where they clenched at his side, and his arm muscles were taut, as if poised to jump. Jesse wished he would.

“Get down, they’ll see you,” Katrina whispered.

“Not a chance,” Jesse said. Everyone’s attention was riveted on Freeman and his father.

Then he saw Birdy stand up. “But there is something else,” she said.

Jesse saw several worshipers shift their bottoms on the hard benches to turn to her.

“Speak up, Birdy,” Freeman said. “No one can hear you. Do you have something to lay against David?”

“I said, there is something else,” she repeated, projecting her voice with effort. “But it’s not about David. I have something to confess. I have kept some information from all of you. My brothers took part in a sinful deed. A few months ago, when we voted to nominate a new bishop, they fixed the lot in the hymnal so Freeman would receive it and not David Stoltzfus. They put lots in each hymnal, but Freeman made sure to pick it up first.”

Suddenly the very air itself seemed suspended with tension, the way it felt in the time between a strike of lightning and a blast of thunder.

After some moments, Freeman found words. “Sie verschteht ken Buhn davun.” She doesn’t know a thing.

“But I do. I saw you do it, Freeman. You and Levi. And I’m ashamed that I did nothing. Der Verhehler is graad so schlecht as her Schtehler.” The concealer is just as bad as the stealer.

“Schtehler!” Freeman walked right up to her. His breathing was strident, the wool of his beard quivered. Jesse saw it all. Freeman pointed a stiff finger at her. “Narrisch!” Foolish! His lips twisted hard with revulsion. “Narrisch, narrisch, narrisch!” His big farmer’s hands were clenching and unclenching rhythmically, his powerful chest shook.

“I’m only ashamed that I didn’t say something on that day.”

“How dare you accuse me of such a thing?” His voice roared, as if shouting her down could make his own words truer.

Thelma rose slowly to her feet and Jesse saw people crane to look at her. “She dares,” Thelma said in a shaky voice, “because she’s telling the truth. She dares because she’s much braver than I’ve ever been. It’s time to bring it all out in the open, Freeman, and admit something that should have been told years and years ago.” She looked around at the worshipers, who were all staring back. “This terrible deed goes back further than Freeman and Levi. It started with my Elmo,” she said, nearly choking over her husband’s name.

The quiet that followed was immediate and complete, as if the very heart of the earth had suddenly stopped beating. Yet it seemed to Jesse as if he could still hear Birdy’s words ring in his ears: he fixed the lot. Freeman fixed the lot.

“It was wrong from the start,” Thelma said, “and I told Elmo as much but he wouldn’t listen to me. It started after Bishop Caleb Zook passed, and there was a dearth of good leadership in our church. Elmo thought it was best to keep the leadership in the family. He fixed the lot when he was nominated to be bishop, then he brought in Abraham as deacon, then Freeman as minister. He didn’t see what it would do, down the road. Elmo could make himself believe that fire wasn’t hot. Just like you can, Freeman. You’ve all become imposters, and it started with Elmo.”

Jesse glanced behind him to exchange a shocked look with Katrina. He turned to Andy, but his head was bowed down, his chin tucked low on his chest.

Freeman’s voice was shaking in rage. “Elmo did what he felt led to do. Just like I’ve done.”

“But you never asked yourself who was doing the leading,” Thelma said.

“Now you listen to me,” Freeman said in a voice that was low and fierce, a tone unlike anything anyone had ever heard him use before. “All of you listen to me. I’m not going to let you undo all the good I’ve done for this church.” He marched to the door, stopped, and bracing his hand hard against the frame as if he needed it to hold himself upright, he turned back. “I’ve only tried to do what was best for this church.” But then his arms fell to his sides, and something seemed to collapse inside of him, like a rotted tree.

Levi stood as if his body felt too weighted to move. Slowly, he turned and followed his brother. The Glick wives stood and brushed past them and through the door as if they couldn’t get out fast enough.

At first the congregation sat slightly stunned, afraid to move. Even the infants sensed the need to remain quiet and still. David had never witnessed anything like this. His heart felt bleak with the knowledge of a thing he could hardly bear to accept. Thelma leaned forward, her forehead resting on her folded hands. Murmurs swept the congregation and the room began to buzz like a hive; some were softly crying. Everyone looked to David, waiting for him to say something to help them make sense of what had happened, but he had no answers.

Slowly, David rose to his feet and stood in the middle of the room. “This church,” he said in a tone that hurt to hear, even to his own ears, “has been dealt a great blow. I don’t know how this will all unravel, but I do know this: we do not shoot our wounded.” He admonished everyone to pray for Freeman, for Levi, to not gossip or tell tales. To pray for the church as it moved forward to correct the wrongs. What he didn’t say aloud was that he desperately wanted prayer for wisdom and discernment for himself as he sorted out church discipline over this disturbing revelation.

Abraham walked up to David, his head bowed in sorrow. “I never knew. I . . . never knew what they’d done.”

“Of course not, Abraham. I would never have thought it of you. No one would.”

“We’ll talk later this week,” Abraham said sadly. “I’d better get on home to milk the cows.”

The way of life was strange. Terrible things happened, earth-shattering things, and life had a way of moving right along like it always had. Their little church was rocked to its core today, and the cows still needed milking and stomachs needed filling up with supper. David watched the deacon walk away, his head bowed, his shoes scuffing the floor.

“How did this happen?” Amos Lapp asked, mystified, after he made his way to David. “How could this have possibly happened?”

“I don’t know the answer to that,” David said. “Some things are just beyond understanding.”

Pride. The fruit of hell. That surely was the only explanation.

Instead of going home after church, Birdy went to the schoolhouse. Her haven. She sat at her desk in the dusk of late afternoon, not bothering to turn a lantern on, wondering what she would face when she finally gathered the courage to go home. She tried to pray for Freeman, for Levi, but found that she felt empty of words.

She watched a jaybird land on the feeder outside the window and frighten off the smaller birds, and she wondered if that was what her brothers seemed like to others. Like jaybirds.

No. Thelma had called them imposters, and she was right.

The door opened and she braced herself, then relaxed when David walked in. “I thought you might be here.”

“I’m not quite ready to go home.”

He took a few steps into the classroom and leaned against the doorframe, one booted foot crossed over the other, his hat dangling from his fingers. “Well, Birdy, you’re a wonder,” David said, in a voice that sounded as if he really meant it. “I can only imagine how much strength that took for you.”

“Out of me, you mean.” She felt thoroughly exhausted. “I know it was the right thing to do, but somehow, it doesn’t feel very good right now.”

“That’s one of the disturbing effects of sin. It ripples through to everyone.” He walked up to her desk. “The way you handle yourself, and your teaching, and everything that comes your way . . . I respect you, Birdy. I really do.”

She felt as though she should say something in return, but she didn’t know what to say. Instead, she ducked her head, glad for the semidarkness that hid the blush of pleasure she felt rising on her cheeks. “Another first,” she whispered.

“Excuse me?” David said, tipping his head to one side.

“Nothing,” she replied, not knowing how to explain how much the word meant to her. Never before had she earned a man’s respect. Until this moment, she had not realized how much she had desired this. “Thank you, David.”

He nodded and they stood together in the empty schoolhouse, listening to the silence. It was nice to have this moment of rest, to feel tired but peaceful, knowing she had done the right thing. And it was good to have David to share this moment with.

“What will happen to our church?”

“Honestly, I have no idea,” David said. “I suppose it will depend on what Freeman and Levi choose to do next. I hope . . . they will stay. One thing I’ve learned in life, we’re all just a few choices away from becoming just about any kind of person. Good or bad.”

She saw a muscle tick in his cheek. He lowered his head slightly, so that his long, thick eyelashes shielded his eyes. “Well,” he finally said, “seems like everything is under control for the moment. How about if I walk you home?”

She liked David. That wasn’t a surprise considering that she loved him, but this was different. She liked him too. She appreciated his quiet humor and solid good sense, his character, the way he talked to people with authority but never a hint of arrogance. She liked the way he treated his children too, the way he listened to them. And she liked that he could admit when he’d been wrong. She felt comfortable with him. Now they were friends, and friendship was what she needed. She felt like she could be satisfied like this, just walking silently, matching her steps to his.

When they reached the road to the Big House, she stopped and turned to him. “I can get home from here, David.” The last thing this long day needed was another difficult encounter between Freeman and David. He seemed to understand, because he didn’t object. He reached out and squeezed her arm, as if offering moral support.

Birdy took the last few hundred feet of her journey at very slow speed, partly because it was getting dark, but mostly to give herself time to mentally rehearse the possible menu of Freeman’s reactions and think up responses to each. The thing to do, she concluded, was to keep things light and cheerful.

By the time she walked up the driveway to the Big House, she felt ready to face her brother. But her confidence waned when she saw Freeman waiting on the porch of her little house, frowning with his arms crossed over his chest, looking exactly like he used to when she was a teenager and had stayed out past her curfew. A thud of anxiety punched her rib cage. She held her breath before deciding to get it out and over with. “Hello, Freeman.”

He ignored her greeting. “Why? Why would you do this to me?” He stood in front of her with his chin jutting forward and his hands on his hips, demanding an answer.

Birdy had only slept a few hours last night and was too tired to keep up the pretense of cheerfulness. It obviously wasn’t going to work anyway. She had expected Freeman to shout, to lecture, but instead he just stood there, staring at her with an expression of disbelief tinged by something deeper and harder to pinpoint—betrayal and profound disappointment. It was harder to take than a harangue.

It surprised her, in a way, to see him look so intensely at her, almost as if he was seeing her for the first time. So often, she realized, he looked right through her as if she wasn’t really there.

She struggled to find words to fill the silence and break the uneasiness that lay between them. “Freeman . . .”

“What kind of sister are you? What have I ever done to you that you would shame me?”

“It had to stop, Freeman. You were trying to quiet David when he did nothing wrong. You were the one who did something wrong.”

“And you couldn’t have come to me in private? Du hot mich yuscht fer en Narr ghalde.” You just made a fool of me.

She brought her shaking hand up to her forehead. I’m tired, she thought. And scared of him. “I thought of doing so. But if I had come to you in private, would you have done something about it? Or would you try to convince me that I was foolish and mistaken? To try to make me believe that I hadn’t seen what I know I saw?”

He said nothing.

“The problems you have with David Stoltzfus are because you can’t control him like you can everyone else.”

Freeman thrust his face into hers, so close she felt the hot breath propelling his words. “I’ve had a bellyful of him and you both.” His jaw bunched, then he pushed out a hard sigh. “You are to leave this home and never return,” he said in that cold, cold voice. “Your father’s home.”

She held her hand out to him. “Freeman . . .” He looked at her, then through her, before he shoved off from the porch and walked across the yard, leaving behind an arctic silence.

She watched him walk away, the gait of an old, ill man though he wasn’t old or ill, and the sight of it touched her heart with pity. She had known that revealing his deception would anger him. She hadn’t realized it would hurt him.

Katrina had thought she was over John. She was sure of it. And then she heard her father say in the Members’ Meeting that John and Susie were expecting a child, and she realized that John had been going out with Susie while he was also going out with her. No, not just going out. He was sleeping with her. And an anger started to simmer inside her, steadily, until it was red hot and glowing. She hated John, hated him with every fiber of her being. And a part of her hated herself too, for being so naïve and trusting. So stupid! She missed every signal he gave off, ones that she could see as plain as day now.

The week she visited him in Ohio and he said he had to attend a wedding of a relative, though he didn’t invite her along. Or that visit where he spent all day Saturday helping someone repair a fence. At the time, she wanted to ask him, In the pouring rain? But of course she didn’t. She never let him know she was sad, or disappointed, or angry. Because if she did, he might stop loving her.

And wasn’t that fear a red flag too? She never truly trusted him with her heart. She saw that clearly now too.

She wished she could see him, just once, to look him in the eye to force him to consider things from her perspective. To tell him how she felt, make him understand what he’d done to her, what he had stolen from her and how it had changed her life. But knowing John, he would somehow turn it all around and place the blame on her. She could hear his voice in her head: I never remember inviting you to visit me in Ohio. You just told me you were coming. And that was true.

No, there was no point in wishing she could tell John how she felt, so instead, she stuffed it inside. Deep, deep down, and tried to ignore it.

When David had prayed for God to open his eyes, he hadn’t meant he wanted to see all this. Early the next morning, as early as he could muster the girls to get ready for school, he paid a call to Moss Hill to ask Thelma some questions. When he knocked on the door, he was surprised to discover Birdy at the door.

“David! You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

David didn’t mention that he’d been thinking the same thing about her. Nor did he mention how the unexpected sight of her had caused his heart to race. Why was that? Lingering emotion, he concluded, from yesterday’s tumultuous event.

“Freeman told me to leave,” she volunteered before he could ask. “So last night, I packed up and came over to Thelma’s, and she welcomed me in.”

“He made you leave,” David recited mechanically. How much more damage would Freeman inflict? When would this stop?

Remarkably, Birdy seemed unperturbed by being ousted from her childhood home. She was as cheerful as always. He had to hand it to her: she was the most resilient person he’d ever known. She had . . . joy. True joy.

Over his shoulder, she noticed the girls waiting in the buggy. “I’m sure you’re here to talk to Thelma. I’ll go outside and keep the girls entertained.” She gestured to the living room. “Thelma’s in there, having a cup of tea by the woodstove. Go on in and I’ll bring you a cup.” She turned, then pivoted around. “Oh, I forgot! You’re a coffee drinker. I’ll make a fresh pot.”

“Birdy—don’t go to the trouble.”

“No trouble at all.” And she whisked away.

Thelma, it seemed, was expecting him, despite the early hour. She was dressed, sitting in her rocker by the woodstove. The room smelled of peppermint tea.

“Morning, Thelma. Your tea smells good.”

“It settles my nerves. Sit down, David. Katrina and Andy went to town early to make a delivery to a florist for a wedding. Now’s a good time to talk.”

Birdy brought a cup of coffee to David. “One lump of sugar, one dollop of milk, yes?”

“Perfect.”

“I’ll be outside with the girls, then.”

“I’ll drive you to the schoolhouse with the girls in a few minutes, Birdy.”

He watched her as she put on her coat and bonnet and headed outside, then he turned his full attention to Thelma. “Why did Elmo ask me to come to Stoney Ridge?”

“We heard you preach when we were visiting family in Ohio. Afterwards, I told him that this terrible deception with the lot fixing had to stop. That I believed you were the one who could put a stop to it. To my surprise, he invited you to move to Stoney Ridge. It was the only time he ever listened to me.” She took a sip. “Though, I have to admit, it all turned out differently than I would have expected. You can thank Birdy for that. I wouldn’t have had the courage to do what she did. She was absolutely right. Der Verhehler is graad so schlecht as her Schtehler.” The concealer is just as bad as the stealer.

“Both of you were put in a terrible situation. Do you support your husband or brother? Or betray them? I don’t know what I would have done if I were in either of your shoes. No one does.”

He heard laughter outside and walked to the window. Birdy was helping Molly and the twins fill a bird feeder and hang it on a tree near the house. Ruthie remained in the buggy, reading, with her feet propped up against the dashboard. Molly saw him and waved, then ran to the window. She cupped her mouth and shouted, “Birdy is going to set one up at our house too, and we’re going to compare notes on how many birds we see at the feeder this winter!” Then she ran back to join Birdy and the twins by the tree. David was studying Birdy in a new light and found he liked what he saw.

Birdy made Molly feel important. She made all the children feel important. And now him.

One morning, after they had finished their walk around the property, Katrina and Thelma sat down for a cup of peppermint tea. “I’m so disappointed that Mary Mast and my father’s romance fizzled. It seemed to be going so well, and then—” Katrina snapped her fingers—“it was over. Done.”

“It’s just as well. She didn’t have the hardiness to be a minister’s wife. It takes a very special woman, after all this.” She waved her twig-like hand in the air.

“Don’t I know it.” Katrina sighed. “Back to the drawing board.”

“Hardly necessary. Your father only has eyes for Birdy.”

Katrina looked at her in surprise. “What?”

“Yes. And she for him. I don’t know how you keep failing to notice.”

Katrina considered Thelma’s observation. On one hand, she was relieved to think that her father might have set his sights on someone, but she was shocked by the thought of Birdy. Birdy Glick? Like everyone else, she considered Birdy, in her early thirties, to be on the shelf and there to stay.

How curious!

“Speaking of fizzled romances, what’s going on with Andy?”

Katrina ignored Thelma’s insinuation about a fizzled romance, but she had no explanation for the sudden change in Andy’s demeanor. It started on Sunday afternoon, on the buggy ride back to Moss Hill after the Members’ Meeting. Andy seemed preoccupied and withdrawn.

Over the next few days, he barely said a word to her and Thelma. He ate his meals up at the house, like he’d always done, but otherwise kept to himself. Usually, he would disappear off to the moss fields for large chunks of time, but he was sticking close to the house.

Katrina saw him drive himself hard all day long, tackling all the hard, dirty jobs that no one ever wanted. He mucked out the horse stall, tarred the roof of the chicken coop. He replaced the broken windows in the old greenhouse and set the foundation in place for the new one. He replaced rotten gateposts in the paddock and repaired the loose shingles on the barn roof. He mended all the fences, dug postholes by hand, and brought in an additional supply of feed and hay. The barn loft was as full as it possibly could be.

Katrina’s chair made a loud grating noise in the quiet room as she pushed away from the table. She picked up the empty teacups. On the way to the kitchen, she paused at the window and watched Andy stride from barn to mossery, Keeper trailing behind him. She stood so close that her breath fogged the glass and she had to set down a teacup to wipe it clear. Andy stopped for a moment, his head up and slightly tilted, as his gaze took in the entire hillside, and something about him in that moment pierced Katrina’s heart.

“He’s battening down the hatches like we’re about to face a hurricane. Guess he senses that winter’s on its way.” She hadn’t heard Thelma come up behind her; she jumped at the sound of her voice so close to her ear.

“Maybe so,” Katrina admitted. Or maybe he’s planning to leave.