The Amish Nanny (36 page)

“What strange artwork,” Daniel said. He and Christy had joined me without my hearing them approach.

I couldn't take my eyes off the weavings. They were stunning, but more than that they captured a feeling. A feeling I knew I had, deep inside. Swallowing hard, I realized that Giselle had shown exactly what I had felt before I left Lancaster County. A restlessness. A deep longing. A missing piece of myself.

Incredible.

I expected Daniel to say more, but he didn't. In fact, he was already over on the other side of the room, looking at a shelf of books, Giselle's incredible weavings already gone from his mind.

I
was still in a bit of a daze as we headed up the entryway, through the front door, and down the steps. There was more to Giselle than her short hair and skinny jeans. There was something in her soul I longed to know. Something Daniel obviously didn't see.

The sound of a car door slamming interrupted my thoughts. Daniel and Christy were ahead of me, walking toward the parking lot. I expected that George had gone somewhere and just returned, but there was only one car and it wasn't the rental. It was a sleek, silver car. A woman stood beside it. At the open trunk of the car was Oskar, wrestling a bag to the ground. He turned toward us. “You have a visitor,” he called out.

The woman's hair was wrapped in a knot on her head, and when she turned toward us, I realized it was Morgan.

“Hello!” she called out to us.

I rushed toward her.

She hugged me tightly and then greeted Daniel. He stepped forward and gave her a quick hug. She greeted Christy next.

“Why are you here?” Christy asked, grinning.

Morgan answered that George had called her the night before and told her about Alice.

“So this morning, I thought,
Why not?
and decided to come see all of you. My dad's on a business trip to Geneva for a few days anyway. He let me take his car.” Looking around at each of us, her enthusiasm seemed to lag for a moment, her expression growing uncertain. “Is it okay that I'm here? Are you happy to see me?”

“Of course to both questions.” I laughed and gave her another hug.

She grabbed a bag out of the passenger seat and then we followed George toward Amielbach. “All I've been doing is surfing the Internet and watching German TV. I thought I could at least make myself useful if I came here.”

We checked with Oskar, who said Morgan could stay in the room I'd had. I wanted to invite her to stay at the cottage with us, but it wasn't my place to do so. That would have been up to Giselle, and she wasn't here.

First we showed Morgan around the main floor of Amielbach, stopping in front of the wall-sized carving. She examined it for a long time and I took a closer look too, counting the number of people in the carving. There were eleven, from an infant to an old man, plus several animals—a couple of cows, some goats, and a dog. The waterfall was in the far distance, but the mountains beyond the waterfall looked closer than they did in real life.

She pointed at the rugged mountain peak topped with snow that towered over the people in the carving. “I didn't realize the Alps were so close,” she said.

“The range that is close is the Bernese Alps,” Daniel answered. “But that peak isn't one of them. The carving definitely has an odd perspective.”

Our next stop was the gift shop. Morgan was as taken with Giselle's weavings as she'd been with Abraham's carving.

“Ada, do you have any talents in this area? Any artistic aspirations?”

I shook my head and explained that Plain people believed artistic endeavors led to pride.

“Too bad,” she said, her eyes still on Giselle's weavings. “Because you must have the genetics inside you somewhere.”

We stopped back by her car on the way to the cottage. “You're going to be so proud of me,” she said as she pulled a bag out of the backseat. “Remember what you told me about mutual aid? Well, I brought food. Pasta, bread, and salad.”

My eyes teared up.
Food
. That was one less thing I would have to figure out. When Morgan saw those tears, she welled up too. From the expression on her face, I gathered she was coming to understand that mutual aid was as much a blessing to the giver as it was the receiver.

After lunch Daniel went back to Amielbach to keep going through Abraham Sommers' property journals, and Morgan, Christy, and I decided to visit Alice. Morgan was happy to drive us, and when we were nearly to Alice's room we heard a burst of laughter. When we entered, Giselle was standing at the end of the bed, waving her arms around.

Alice was trying not to laugh. When she saw us, she pointed at Giselle with her good hand and said, “We were remembering when Will was little
and tipped over a bee hive. Giselle was helping that week…we were canning, weren't we?”

Giselle nodded. “I've never seen anything like it.” She wiped her eyes. “Will was running willy-nilly across the field, a swarm of bees behind him.”

“What happened?” Christy was concerned.

“He jumped the fence and headed straight for the pigpen. Dove right into the mud. I was afraid I was going to have to go in after him, but he rolled around, totally covering himself except for his eyes. I don't know if it was the mud or the stench, but something worked.”

Alice chimed in. “Giselle, Nancy, and I stood at the fence and watched him until the bees left.”

“Then we fished him out,” Giselle added.

I tilted my head, trying to absorb the story and the thought of Giselle staying with the Gundys, helping Nancy with the kids, canning with Alice. As hard as I tried, looking at the woman in front of me, I couldn't quite get there.

I introduced Morgan to Giselle before she could start in on another story, and Morgan told her how much she liked her artwork. Giselle was obviously pleased with the praise. Morgan asked how long she'd been weaving, and Giselle answered for more than twenty years. Their conversation moved into a discussion of local galleries, and as they chatted a little longer I stood back, taking the two of them in, wondering why I seemed to be the only person not able to have a normal conversation with my birth mother.

Eventually, Giselle said she had an order she needed to work on. After she left, Alice said that Giselle's memories had worn her out, even though she'd had a morning nap. Soon she was asleep, and Morgan, Christy, and I went out to the waiting room. Morgan asked if Giselle had told me anything about when I was a baby. I pursed my lips and shook my head.

Because I didn't want Christy watching more TV, I pulled
Jane Eyre
out of my purse and began to read it aloud.

Two hours later, after Alice had awakened and we were back in the room with her, the phone rang. It was Daniel, who was calling to say that George was planning to pick Will up at the Bern airport unless we wanted to.

“I can drive,” Morgan said when I relayed the conversation to her. “I have my dad's GPS.”

“I want to go too,” Christy said.

“Of course,” I said. I relayed their answers to Daniel, who said he'd like to tag along if that was okay. He said George had offered to come down and sit with Alice while we were gone. He'd much rather do that than drive in the dark on roads he wasn't familiar with.

We ate dinner at the hospital, stopped by Amielbach for Daniel, and then left for Bern. An hour later we were on the outskirts of the city. George had told Will he'd pick him up at the arrivals around nine thirty.

Daniel sat up front and helped Morgan navigate her way by the instructions of the GPS. He pointed out that the airport was west of the city, and we were bypassing the old part of town. When we approached the arrivals, Morgan said to Christy, whose face was pressed up to the window, “Keep an eye out for your dad.”

Pedestrians rushed across the street and taxis lined the roadway in front of us. Morgan slowed. The car ahead of us pulled to the curb.

“He'll definitely be easy to recognize,” Daniel said.

“There he is!” Christy reached for the door handle, but I told her to wait. I didn't see him. But then there he was, coming toward us with a wide smile on his face, his black hat firmly on his head, the only Plain man anywhere in sight. He must have spotted Christy through the window.

Morgan came to a complete stop and Christy bolted from the car. As Will rushed forward, swooping his daughter up into a hug, my pulse surged at the sight of him.

“Look at that,” Morgan said, her head tilted so she could see out the window. “What a perfect picture they make.”

Daniel and I climbed out of the car, and the two men shook hands. Will then gave me a warm pat on the shoulder. All he carried was a single bag and the box from
Mammi
under his arm. The trunk popped up—obviously Morgan had anticipated our need—and Will stashed the bag in the trunk and then ceremoniously handed the box to me. I took it from him, running a hand over the design that had been carved into the lid. It was of a farmhouse and a barn, nestled among wheat fields, with sloping hills in the background.

Daniel offered Will the front seat, but he said he'd sit in the back with Christy. Cradling the box to my chest, I hurried around to the other side and climbed in behind Morgan. Christy settled into the middle and then Will began trying to squeeze himself into the space next to her.

“Not exactly the same as American cars, eh?” Daniel teased, watching the struggle Will was going through. Christy chuckled but her father just grunted.

Once he managed to get his long legs all the way in and close the door, I took a moment to introduce him to Morgan.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, reaching up between the seats to shake her hand. “Here I was expecting a middle-aged Mennonite man to be sitting at the wheel, and instead it's a young American woman.”

We all laughed.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Morgan replied as she put on her blinker to pull out from the curb. “Next time I'll wear a plaid shirt and strap on a beard.” We all laughed at the thought.

Soon we were off. While Morgan navigated the busy streets of Bern and Will asked Christy about the trip, I turned my attention back to the box in my lap. Again running my fingers over the wood, I asked Will if he knew where this scene was from.

“According to Frannie, that's Elsbeth's family farm in Indiana.”

“Indiana? But wasn't it carved by Abraham here in Switzerland?”

I knew Daniel was listening, and no doubt his imagination was spinning. “Did Abraham come to America after all?” he asked.

Morgan chimed in. “How else would he have known what to carve unless he saw the place himself? It's not as though they would have sent him a photo.”

“I don't know if he traveled to Indiana or not,” Will said. “Frannie didn't elaborate. She did say he sent the box from Switzerland, though. That I remember.”

None of us could fault Will for not asking more questions. Clearly, his mind had been on other things.

“May I see it?” Daniel asked, eyeing the box eagerly.

As I passed it up to him, Will told him, “Frannie asked me to apologize on her behalf. She's embarrassed that she didn't remember the box of letters earlier when you came to Lancaster County. But she said she hadn't looked through them or even really thought about them for many years.”

“It's not surprising she wouldn't have thought of it, then,” I commented, feeling bad that
Mammi
was embarrassed.

“I just hope they'll prove to be of some use,” Daniel said as he carefully lifted the lid and looked inside.

Will shrugged, glancing at me. “To be honest, I looked through the letters on the flight over, but the ink has faded and I could only make out a few words.”

“Thanks for trying, at least,” I responded, hoping Daniel would be able to do better.

Bored with our talk of letters and boxes, Christy asked her father who was caring for Mat and Mel while he was gone.

“Aunt Hannah mostly, during the days,” Will replied, referring to his sister, “though others will be taking turns each night.”