Upon A Winter's Night Read Online Free Page A

People, courting was often private until the big announcement of the betrothal, followed several months or even weeks later by the wedding. Reich’s house was way on the other side of town, so Josh knew he’d lose her help—lose her—when she wed.
    Sometime in the dead of night, Joshua Yoder dropped off to sleep and dreamed of an oasis in the desert with a warm wind and camels and black-bearded Bedouins and a veiled woman. No, that was a prayer kapp. She had big, blue-green eyes and then her kapp blew off and her long, honey-hued hair came free. He went out into the sandstorm and picked her up in his arms before anyone else could get to her. When he lay down again, she gave him a big hug and then he kissed her and held her to him and pulled her into his bed.
    * * *
    It was the dead of night, but, in a robe and warm flannel nightgown, Lydia sat at the kitchen table, sipping cocoa, remembering how Josh had poured her some of his cocoa, even raised it to her lips. How warm his coat had been around her, and then that hug he started but she finished well enough.
    “Lydia,” Mamm ’s voice cut into her thought. “You’re daydreaming again, and that’s a waste of time. Wishing and wanting doesn’t help.”
    Lydia knew better than to defend herself, so she just reached for a piece of bread. Mamm started to make up her grocery list as if nothing unusual had happened tonight. Daad sat at the other end of the table, eating, quiet. Lydia was aching to talk about finding the woman, and a thought hit her foursquare: that note the dead woman had in her hand was still in her mitten.
    She stood and hurried into the mudroom where she’d left it. Not much of the message could be read, she recalled, but what had the remaining words said? She’d have to tell the sheriff, give the note back to Connor or the deceased woman’s sister, Bess, when she returned for the funeral—if there was a funeral, given how secretive they had kept Victoria Keller’s presence. Word about a strange recluse living in the mayor’s mansion would have traveled fast as greased lightning in this small, tight community.
    Lydia checked the first mitten pinned to their indoor line. Nothing. Had she lost it? But there it was in the other mitt, still damp.
    Lydia held the paper up to the kerosene lantern hanging in the window and squinted at the writing, mostly blue streaks.
    “What’s that?” Daad asked, popping his head around the corner.
    “Just something I forgot,” she said.
    “Don’t mind your mamm ’s   fussing,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Dreams are fine if you are willing to work for them.”
    “Danki, Daad,” she told him. She almost showed him the note, but as he went back out she was glad she hadn’t. When she tipped it toward the lantern, she could read a few of the words, written in what looked to be a fancy cursive in a hand that had trembled: To the girl Brand baby... Your mother is—
    She couldn’t read that next word for sure. Your mother is alert? Your mother is alike? No, it said, alive. Alive! Your mother is alive. And I... And I, what? Lydia wanted to scream.
    From the kitchen, Daad called to her, “Don’t worry about talking to the sheriff tomorrow or on Monday, Liddy. I can be with you when he interviews you, if you want.”
    “ Danki, Daad, but I’ll be fine. There isn’t much to say.”
    Alone in the dim mudroom, Lydia stood stunned. Alive? Your mother is alive? And I...
    She’d just told Daad there wasn’t much to say. But after tonight—finding Victoria Keller, Josh’s hug, now this—she wouldn’t be fine, maybe ever again.
    She had to be “the Brand baby,” didn’t she? Everybody knew who Sammy’s mother was, and she was the only girl. Dare she share this with the sheriff, the Starks or even her own parents? And could she trust a demented woman that her mother was still alive?

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    L ydia was grateful for a quiet Sabbath morning. It was the off Sunday for Amish church since the congregation met