I ended up accidentally taking another nap that morning. I’d curled up on Mammi’s couch, and the next thing I knew, I’d woken up with a start, cold and unsure of where I was, with that hollow feeling I’d struggled with since Mom had died.
Had I been dreaming about her? About her accident? About finding her that day?
I fished around for my cell phone. 12:15. The battery was at three percent. I’d charge it in the pickup again. Maybe I could get it up to ten.
As I stood, my phone rang. It was the florist again. I let it go to voicemail. I’d deal with it once my phone was charged.
Mammi had a bowl of chicken noodle soup ready for me when I stepped into the kitchen. “I called Seth,” she said. “He wondered if we could stop by the store for cough syrup and crackers. I have soup for him too.” She patted the top of a jar on the counter.
Ten minutes later, we were in the pickup, which luckily started on the second try. Once we were on the highway, I passed two Amish men on bicycles, their stocking caps pulled down over their ears, and then a buggy driven by a young woman. They all seemed to be undaunted by the twenty degree weather. Farmers were outside, breaking ice in watering troughs, spreading bales of hay, and checking on their livestock.
No more snow had fallen while I slept, and the plows had cleared the country roads. Mammi wore a wool coat, and I guessed she had long underwear on under her dress and long socks too. She wore boots and mittens, and had a scarf wound around her neck. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, leaning forward just a bit. I double-checked that her seat belt was fastened. It was.
The quilt shop was about a three-mile drive from Mammi’s house, far enough that the thought of her going there in her buggy alone and in the dead of winter bothered me. It sounded as if she went several times per week.
As we approached the driveway of Plain Patterns, an Amish man on a tractor with a snowplow attached to the front of it exited the parking lot of the shop. Two large mounds of snow sat at the back of the lot.
“That’s Jane’s brother, Andy.” Mammi pointed to a small house across the lane. “And that’s where Jane lives.” It was a cute cottage with window boxes and a wide porch. “Her brother built the quilt shop a few years ago. Before that, she hung a shingle in front of her house. Her living room was the store back then.”
I frowned. That sounded crowded to me. “That’s the farmhouse over there.” Mammi pointed across the lane to a large white house back in a grove of trees. “The original house, built in the late 1830s, was up here, closer to the road.”
I whistled. “It’s quite the property, isn’t it? With quite the history, I bet.”
“Jah,” Mammi said. “No doubt, Jane will tell you more about it someday.”
I waited for Andy to pull out onto the lane, and then I turned into the parking lot. There were two buggies parked in front of the shop, sans horses. I guessed they’d been taken to the small stable near the side of the shop. Thankful Mammi didn’t have to deal with any of that today, I parked, turned off the pickup, and then opened the door and jumped down, scurrying around to Mammi’s door to help her. But by the time I arrived, she already had both of her feet firmly planted on the ground.
Just then, a black buggy pulled by a black horse approached. I was struck by the contrast of the two against the snow-white background. I couldn’t think of anything as graceful and comforting as a horse pulling an Amish buggy. The beat of the hooves against the pavement had always soothed my soul. Even though it was freezing outside, I stayed still for a moment so I could hear it. The horse, head held high, trotted past, a reminder of the steadiness and predictability of Amish life.
Mammi smiled up at me. “I’m so glad you came today. You met Jane when you were little, but I’m pleased you’ll get to see her again.”
I didn’t remember meeting her, but once we were inside and Mammi introduced us, she seemed familiar. Jane wore a navy blue dress with a white apron. I guessed she was in her mid-sixties or so. She was slim and probably five foot four. Her silvery hair was tucked under a white Kapp, except for the strip at the front. She wore a pair of reading glasses attached to a plain blue cord around her neck.
Her complexion was smooth and her eyes a deep brown. I could still see a hint of the girl she once was in her lively smile, as she greeted me. “Welcome, Savannah,” she said. “I remember you from when you were small.” She held her hand to her hip and then raised it to the top of her head, indicating I’d grown up. She grinned. “It’s so good to have you join us.”
I thanked her and then glanced around the shop as she and Mammi spoke. The store was filled with bolts of fabric, thread, patterns, and beautiful quilts that hung from racks. A wood stove, located in the far corner, provided heat. In the back room was a small kitchen area and a quilting frame surrounded by chairs, with a large queen-size quilt stretched over it.
I didn’t recognize the pattern, but that wasn’t surprising. My expertise didn’t go beyond the usual log cabin or double ring patterns. Now I only looked at quilts on Pinterest instead of making them.
Turning toward Jane, I asked, “What’s the pattern called?”
“Hearth and home,” she said. “It’s a little fancy, but I think we can get away with it.”
Each block was made of six squares in the central part and three squares and four triangles in the border. It was definitely more complicated than a basic block quilt. The colors were all shades of blue, with just one patterned fabric that looked like forget-me-nots. I exhaled. They were Mom’s favorite flower.
“Who’s it for?” I asked.
“I don’t know yet.” Jane smiled at me. “But I will soon enough. The Lord always reveals who needs a quilt, a specific quilt, when the time is right.”
Two Amish women, both probably in their early fifties, were already quilting, pushing tiny needles through squares of the forget-me-not fabric.
I kept my coat on and introduced myself to the two.
“Hallo, Savannah,” the closest one said to me. “I’m Phyllis Raber.” She was plump with a full face and a wide smile.
The other woman poked her head around Phyllis and said, “I’m Lois Shelter.” She had a sharp chin and gray eyes.
I sat down next to Phyllis and pulled a needle and thread from the solid blue fabric in front of me. I hoped I could still make tiny stitches.
I started, following the pencil marks on the quilt top. When Jane and Mammi joined us, Lois said, “I heard Arleta had her baby the night before last. A little girl.”
Neither Mammi nor I said anything, but Jane did. “Did everything go all right?”
“As far as I know.” Lois looked at me. “I heard an Englischer by the name of Savannah delivered the baby because Delores has the flu.”
My face grew warm, even in the cold room. “Delores is my cousin.” I wasn’t sure what the HIPPA rules were when it came to midwifery in Amish country, but I didn’t want to reveal anything.
Lois nodded, as if my reaction explained everything. Then she continued, “I also heard Miriam has gone missing.”
Jane peered over the lenses of her reading glasses. “What?”
Lois glanced at me. I redirected my eyes to the quilt.
“And Tommy Miller was the last person to see her.”
“Tommy?” The needle slipped out of my fingers. “Not Kenny Miller?” Immediately, I feared I’d said too much.
“No, it was Tommy posing as Kenny,” Lois said. “And now he’s suspected of kidnapping Miriam.”
Jane gasped, and so did I.
Wouldn’t I have recognized Tommy? He’d been my childhood friend. But maybe his coat, scarf, and hat had concealed who he was. Or maybe I wouldn’t have recognized him anyway. It had been thirteen years since I’d last seen him.
“That’s impossible.” Mammi was just as surprised as Jane and I were. “Is there any proof?”
“I heard it from the bishop’s cousin.” Lois kept her eyes on the quilt top. “And it doesn’t surprise me one bit. Tommy’s not nearly as trustworthy as people think.”
No one responded to Lois’s accusations. Mammi and I continued stitching, while Jane stepped to the front of the shop to wait on a customer.
Perhaps Phyllis felt uncomfortable with the silence—or maybe she felt the need to come to Lois’s defense—but she finally asked, “Savannah, did you know Tommy?”
I nodded. “When we were children, we used to help each other with our chores.” We also rode horses together, fished in the pond on the other side of the woods, and raced bicycles down the road. For five years, he was like the big brother I never had. He was always kind to me and protective, in a respectful and non-intrusive way. In fact, when I first met Ryan, he reminded me of Tommy. Both were leaders who treated others with dignity and empathy. Or so I’d thought.
I’d been wrong about Ryan. Perhaps I’d been wrong about Tommy too.
When I was thirteen and Tommy was fifteen, I arrived at Mammi’s farm, ready for another six weeks of being his shadow.
But Tommy had changed. His voice was deep, his chin scruffy, and he’d grown a foot taller. It soon became obvious he didn’t want anything to do with me. He wasn’t mean about it, but he avoided me as best he could. A couple of times I saw him in a buggy with other boys his age, and several times I saw him walking with an Amish girl, Sadie Yoder, who lived about a mile away.
I was crushed. Jah, Tommy had been my first love. But of course I never told him. I’d never told anyone.
The next summer, he was away working as a farmhand for an uncle in Michigan. And the summer after that, when I was fourteen, he was on his Rumschpringe and driving an old Thunderbird. One time I was biking down the lane and nearly ran into the fence trying to get out of his way.
That was my last summer going to Mammi’s. For the next three years I assisted Mom, working my way into an apprenticeship. When I spoke with Mammi on the phone, I never asked about Tommy, and she never offered any information. I figured he’d married years ago and probably had a bowl cut, a beard, and a buggy full of kids by now.
“Savannah?” Mammi was talking to me.
“Sorry,” I answered. “What did you say?”
“Was Tommy the driver who picked you up?”
“I don’t think so. . . .” But, honestly, I couldn’t be sure. The driver wore a scarf and a stocking cap, I hadn’t seen Tommy for over a decade, and I’d never seen him as a grown man. And it was dark—really dark. Perhaps if I’d been expecting someone named Tommy, I would have recognized him. Perhaps my mind was tricked by the name Kenny.
“Don’t you think if it was Tommy that he would have recognized you?” Mammi asked. “Did you tell him your name?”
“He knew it from the app,” I said.
“Well, he wouldn’t necessarily have admitted to knowing you,” Lois said. “Not if he was pretending to be Kenny.”
That was true. “Did I ever meet Kenny?” I asked Mammi.
She squinted a little, as if looking back through the years. “I don’t believe so,” she answered. “He moved here from Michigan after you stopped coming out for the summer.”
“Kenny was a bad influence on Tommy,” Lois said. “Seems like he still is—or maybe its vice versa now.”
“I don’t know anything about Kenny,” Mammi said. “But Tommy had a good heart as a boy. I can’t believe he’d kidnap Arleta’s daughter.”
“Did Tommy join the church?” I asked.
“No,” Lois answered. “And he was gone from the area for several years. Lots of years, actually. Seven or eight.”
“He worked all over,” Phyllis said. “New Mexico. Arizona. Nevada—Las Vegas, even. Mostly on the move, usually with Kenny at his side, from what I understand.”
I glanced over at Mammi, and she nodded. She’d never told me he was so close to California. I would have liked to have seen him.
Lois picked up the story. “Then they came back here in September. Tommy had been working construction in the fall and then started on an interior renovation project when the weather turned bad.”
“What about Kenny?” I asked. “Besides being a driver?”
Lois and Phyllis exchanged glances. Finally, Lois said, “There have been a few rumors. . . .”
My stomach sank. They must be pretty bad rumors if she was mentioning them.
The two exchanged glances again, and then Phyllis whispered, “There have been rumors about selling drugs.”
“Oh. . . .” Amish in the area were sensitive about that topic. Not long before I stopped spending summers in Indiana, a documentary called Devil’s Playground came out about Plain youth in the next county over, and the Amish, even though they didn’t actually see the film, heard all about it. It explored a small group of Amish Youngie on their Rumschpringe who drove cars and partied with large groups of other Amish youth, some of whom came from as far away as Montana. One boy even sold drugs. There were those in Amish communities nearby who feared the documentary would lead people to believe all Amish Youngie behaved that way.
I’d watched the documentary with Dad back home and asked him if the kids he grew up with partied like that. “Pretty much, although I never had enough money to buy a car while I was on the farm.” He looked me in the eye. “I never had money to buy drugs either, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have.”
That was about as much as he ever said about his growing-up years, although the last summer I went to Indiana, he told me not to go to any Amish Youngie parties. “I’ll ground you when you get home if I find out you did” was all he said. I didn’t go to any parties. Then again, no one asked me to either.
“How old is Kenny?” I asked.
Lois answered, “A year younger than Tommy.”
So if Tommy was twenty-nine now, then Kenny would be twenty-eight. Way too old to be on his Rumschpringe. Perhaps selling drugs had become a way of life for him.
The subject changed to Arleta. Her first husband had died three years ago of complications from diabetes, and she married Vernon a year ago, moving from Newbury Township back to the Nappanee area where she’d grown up.
“Miriam’s been running around all year,” Lois said, “and Joshua just started.” She shook her head. “If only these kids knew how much heartache they could save themselves if they’d just join the church and quit living such foolishness.”
Jane smiled kindly. “But it’s only through free will that we can truly come to know the Lord,” she said. “Running around serves its purpose.”
It hadn’t for Tommy and Kenny, though, if neither had joined the church. It surprised me that Tommy hadn’t. I vividly remembered our conversations about him wanting to farm, get married, and have a bunch of kids, because the way he talked always made me sad. Because I knew I would never be the girl Tommy wanted to marry. I’d always be the Englisch girl who visited in the summer. The outsider. The one who didn’t belong.
But it sounded as if Tommy didn’t belong anymore either.
JANE WAS UP and down, helping customers as we quilted. After two hours, she insisted we take a break and get a snack. I was surprised at how healthy it was. Carrots and celery sticks, apple slices, hard cheese—that Jane had made—and slices of homemade whole wheat bread. There wasn’t a single sweet baked good, what the Amish were famous for, on the kitchen counter.
“I’m trying to eat healthier,” Jane said. “In the spring, I’ll plant a garden here on the property so the quilters will have produce to take home. Not all of them have access to a garden.”
“Some of your quilters aren’t Amish?” I was surprised by that.
“No,” Jane answered. “But even all the Amish ones don’t have gardens. Some live in town now.”
Mammi had told me that more and more Amish were taking jobs in manufacturing, as there wasn’t enough farmland for each subsequent generation. Nappanee was known for its RV factories, which took a hit during the recession, but most had recovered and were back in full swing now.
“I’m also hoping to include some circles on preserving food,” Jane said. “It’ll be much like the quilting circle, but we’ll be working together to promote canning, drying, and freezing food. I think those will be especially popular with some of my Englisch customers.”
I nodded. Of course Mammi canned, but so did my mother. Most of my friends, however, had never learned about food preservation and thought of it as something Pinterest had invented.
Ryan thought it quaint but sweet that I knew all of those basic things. “If the preppers are right and the apocalypse is around the corner,” he’d say, “we’ll be fine, thanks to you.” He’d grown up in Santa Monica and liked to say his family was middle class. They weren’t. They were wealthy. Not obscenely so, but enough that he was well traveled and didn’t have any student loans.
Because of that, there were all sorts of things Ryan did that I didn’t—until I met him. He’d rather order a ride than ask for one. He had lots of acquaintances but few friends. He would have found it amusing that I was quilting with a group of Amish women who were constrained by patterns and colors. He’d be dismayed to learn that the quilt we were working on was actually considered quite innovative, that in some districts using what was considered a fancy pattern would be entirely prohibited.
When he’d found out my grandmother was Amish, he’d said, “But you’re not that close to her, right?” I’d assured him that I was—that I loved her very much and she was one of my favorite people in the whole world, even though I hadn’t seen her for years.
For a moment I felt sorry for Ryan. I swallowed hard as I dished up carrots, celery, apple slices, cheese, and bread.
I glanced out the window. More snow was falling, and I figured we should go soon. We still needed to stop by the store for Uncle Seth. But I hated to leave. Mammi seemed the happiest that I’d seen her since I’d arrived.
I was enjoying myself too. There was comfort in being with the other women, and even though I found myself thinking about Ryan, I wasn’t obsessing about him the way I did when I was alone.
Lois brought up the topic of Miriam again. “I sure hope they find that missing girl.”
“I imagine with Miriam missing that Arleta needs some help,” Jane said. “I’d be happy to make a casserole, although I don’t know that I can run it over there.”
“I could do that,” I said.
“Denki.” Jane smiled at me. “Will you be coming to the quilting circle on Wednesday? I could give it to you then.”
I glanced at Mammi. She said, “I’d like to come that day, if it works for you.”
“All right.” I might as well come back for the quilting circle and to collect the casserole. Hopefully by then Miriam would be found and Tommy’s name cleared.
And I’d have a few job possibilities lined up.