The Amish Midwife - By Mindy Starns Clark Page 0,117

it.”

“Did she go to Switzerland anyway?”

“Yes, but I haven’t heard from her for years. She may not even be there anymore.”

Mammi began to moan about how much she missed her little girl, despite the fact that Giselle would be forty-five by now, no longer a little girl by anyone’s definition.

Afraid that Mammi might need some of her medication, I got up and searched for the pillbox, which I found in the kitchen on the windowsill. There was only one tranquilizer for each day for the rest of the week, and something new as well: an antidepressant. I was pleased, as it looked as though Ada had passed on my advice. She probably hadn’t been on them long enough to experience the full effect yet, but she was already more coherent. Soon the depression would begin to lift as well. I could understand that Klara wouldn’t want to listen to Mammi’s laments all day long, but maybe in time a balance could be found between keeping the hysteria and grief at bay and being able to enjoy the world around her.

Returning to the main room, I gave her today’s dose with a glass of water and sat down as she swallowed the pills.

“Tell me what my mother was like when she was young,” I said, trying to distract Mammi from her tears. “Was she pretty?”

Mammi sniffled, nodding.

“Prettiest girl in Lancaster County. You would think that would be a blessing, but…” She shook her head as her voice trailed off, and I waited silently, willing her to continue. “Once my brother died, we were having trouble making ends meet,” she finally went on, “so Giselle took a job over at the nursery, in the greenhouses. She liked the work itself, but her beauty turned out to be such a distraction to the others—many men were employed there, you know—that they finally had to move her into the main office instead. I thought things would be better after that, because only women worked in there.” She barked out a noise that sounded like a sob mixed with a laugh. “I forgot about the one exception. Little did I know that by moving from the greenhouse to the office, my baby had gone from the frying pan into the fire.”

I sat back, apprehension rippling through my stomach, wondering where Mammi was going with this.

“Giselle’s boss,” she explained, waiting for me to catch on. “The head of the company.”

“Burke Bauer,” I whispered, and Mammi nodded.

“It is no great mystery to see how they must have…how it all came to be. After having been surrounded by overeager boys for so long, Giselle would have been relieved to find herself in the company of a man, of someone far more mature, especially a successful authority figure that everyone seemed to respect. Once that man admitted to Giselle that he had fallen in love with her, the fact that he just happened to be married was beside the point as far as she was concerned. I am so ashamed for my daughter, but what can I say? She was a child on rumschpringe, so naive, so self-oriented. So ready to sew her wild oats, regardless of the consequences.”

I thought about her choice of words, wondering if that’s all I had been: a consequence.

“Bauer was indeed handsome,” Mammi said, dabbing at her eyes. “And also rich and generous and charming. But I never understood the hold he had over Giselle. He was like a drug to her.”

“Do you think she really loved him?”

“Oh yes. Desperately so.”

“So Giselle and Burke had an affair,” I said flatly, wishing she would get to the point, wondering where Alexander fit into this story. The same man had fathered Ada and I both. But which man? Burke Bauer, as Mammi believed? Or Alexander, the one I was named for, the one I wanted it to be, the one who had said of Ada, With everything I am, I am her father.

My heart sinking, I knew now that he had been speaking figuratively. He was her father in exactly the same way that Dad was my father. With everything he was. Except his blood.

“Of course, I knew nothing of this at the time,” Mammi continued. “No one did. They were very careful, very discreet. Later, there were rumors, of course, that Giselle was involved with someone older, someone who was married. But even her sisters did not know who it was, or even if it was true. The only one who was fully aware of