“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,”
