Finding Mercy. Karen Harper

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