Finding Mercy. Karen Harper

live at the Lantz farm, 400 Oakridge Road. I’m Ella Lantz.”

      “Oh, yeah, the lavender farm. You and one of your brothers helped the guy in the wreck the first day I was here. Sorry for being so curious, but I’m trying to familiarize myself with your people. So, three brothers still at home?”

      “No, Seth just moved out to the Troyer place. That was my cousin who found the accident with me.”

      “Oh, yeah, that’s what the sheriff said. So your cousin is living here now?”

      How much had the sheriff told his new deputy? she wondered. And why did Andrew even figure into this? A police officer trying to get his feet on the ground here or not, this man was being too nosy about Andrew. After deadly persecutions of the Amish in Europe years ago, it wasn’t her people’s way to trust government men, lawyers or law officers. After all that Sheriff Freeman had been through with the Amish community here, he was the exception. Besides, as bedraggled and upset at Ella was, her hackles went up in her desire to protect Andrew.

      “I’ll be sure to get another safety sign, Officer Hayes,” she said, hoping to change the topic. “We have one in our barn. I got caught in the rain, and I don’t want to catch my death of chill, so I’d like to head home. I plan to talk to the sheriff soon.”

      She edged away from him toward her buggy. He was frowning now. She got in, hoping he didn’t call her back or ask another question. But he let her go—that is, if she didn’t count the fact he followed so close behind her in his black cruiser all the way home that it brought back the panic of the black van. She fought hard to keep an attack of the drowning darkness at bay. When she turned into the farm lane, he sped away.

      * * *

      “I don’t need to be scolded like a child, Daad!” Ella protested at her father’s reaction to her telling him what had happened.

      The rain had stopped drumming on the barn roof. The men had come in from the fields, but only Daad was still here when she buggied in. Though wet and shivering, she’d told him right away. He’d wrapped her in a horse blanket and unhitched Fern for her while she talked.

      “Then don’t act like a child, going out on your own after those footprints around the houses!” he said.

      “Those weren’t targeting me anymore than the boys!”

      “Ach,” he went on, shaking his head so hard his beard wagged. “My fault for not insisting you take someone with you. That theft of your cape from your parked buggy at the mill, and then dragging it behind the van—what next?”

      “I’m going to talk to the men who were working there, see if they can describe or identify someone who might have been near my buggy so I can follow up—”

      “No! No. For all we know, it could be one of those men who followed you, been watching you—looking in windows. All right, you want to tell Sheriff Freeman what happened, fine. His deputy will probably tell him.”

      “But I intentionally didn’t tell the new deputy everything. Especially when he started asking questions about our family and Andrew.”

      “A new man, trying to learn the territory, that’s all. Police are too nosy anyways, always were. But you cannot go out without one of your brothers with you until we find out more!”

      “Daad, I have a business to run, and Abel and Aaron are busy in the fields with you. I can see why I shouldn’t take Andrew with me, but—”

      “But why? Someone is stalking you, I still think so, ya,” he said, starting to wipe Fern down with an old towel. Their raised voices obviously didn’t bother the horse, who was already munching from the feed trough.

      “I mean,” Ella said, forcing herself to speak more slowly and calmly, “Andrew should stick close to home to keep himself safe.”

      “And have people wonder if he’s sick? Folks would start talking about it and lots of others would get curious about him. He’s going to attend Seth’s wedding, so he’ll be on display then anyway. Besides, I think he has cabin fever already. It’s a hard time, his waiting to do the right thing, waiting to get his life back again. I didn’t ask, but wherever they were hiding him before, I think something bad happened.”

      She almost blurted out, You mean he was stalked? but she kept quiet on that one. Was her protective father suggesting he trusted her going off alone with a worldly man? Her mind raced as she watched Daad hang Fern’s tack on the wall pegs. He immediately started to hammer her bent metal wheel back into place. She pulled the blanket tighter around her wet shoulders.

      “You mean,” she said, having to talk louder again over the din, “you think I should take him with me when I leave on deliveries or errands? You didn’t even want me to show him how to hitch a buggy.”

      “Never said that, just wanted to give Aaron more responsibility. You should take Andrew and visit just once to your places that sell the lavender. Tell them for a while they need to come here to pick things up.”

      “But I’ve promised them I would make deliveries and included that in the price. All six of my vendors are busy women, and I’m hoping to expand. Daad, I’m twenty-four and am self-supporting and have my own home now, so—”

      “That’s a problem too,” he said, stopping the hammering and turning to her. “At night, for a while, you should not sleep alone in that house, but come back inside with us.”

      “But you just gave my room to Andrew.”

      Daad sighed and put down the hammer. His shoulders slumped. His anger seemed to ebb from him. “We will set it up for Andrew to sleep in your mamm’s quilting room, since the three men in one room would be too much.”

      “I can sleep in the quilting room.”

      “Must you always argue with your father, girl? You think Andrew would go for that? I see him as good man and not only because of what Mr. Branin told me about him.”

      “Here I thought Andrew was the one who had to be guarded, be worried about—not me.”

      “With the sheriff’s help, we will find out who is bothering my girl, ya?” He put an arm around her shoulders, and they walked toward the barn door together. “And maybe it is not as bad as we fear, but you just let me explain to your mother.”

      “I know it probably doesn’t mean much, but I thought I saw a light on the lavender hill the other night,” she said as they walked out of the barn and he slid the wooden bar across to close it. “I was pretty sure it was a reflection off one of my tin pans that scare the birds away.”

      “Not a flashlight?”

      “No, unless the battery was bad—dim. It was single, like an eye that opened and blinked shut.”

      He put her between the runners of the sleigh they had put outside, propped up on its end against the barn so they could fix the bottom of it. He moved away from her and, hands on his hips, stared up the hill, then looked toward the house.

      “I’m going to walk to the phone shanty and call the sheriff to come out,” he said.

      “After I dry off and change clothes, I’m planning to take Ray-Lynn Logan her weekly lavender products into the Dutch Farm Table and also stop at the gift shop and B and B. I can ask Andrew to ride with me and see the sheriff then.”

      “Ya, I guess, if you stay on the main roads, with others around from now on. And no asking those men at the mill if they saw someone take your cape. Pranksters, I pray, just that.”

      She was glad to see no one in the kitchen, because she knew she must look a drowned cat—though it jolted her to think of it that way. Despite all she’d been through today, she had a hopeful heart. Blessedly, none of the feelings of impending doom that so often plagued her when something went wrong hovered over her head. However independent she’d been these past years, maybe she felt better because she liked the idea of Andrew taking care of her, just as she’d watch out for him.

      *