glancing over my shoulder. A woman drove it, the strings of her heart-shaped bonnet blowing away from her face. I looked in my rearview mirror. The horse was beyond beautiful. It moved like a racehorse, its lean muscles rippling with graceful determination.
A few minutes later I was in the town of Strasburg—that or I’d time-warped to 1776. I half expected to see George Washington walk out of one of the brick houses. The entire town looked like a Federalist colony with building after building of red brick with white trim and black shutters. At the crossroads in the middle of town, an Amish carriage waited for the traffic signal to change. Ahead a gaggle of Amish girls stood on the sidewalk. It was hard for me to tell, but they looked as if they were fifteen or so. They had gathered around a boy with a tray in his hand. The sign on the shop above the teenagers read “Pretzels.” There were several other shops in the little downtown district. The village was obviously a tourist draw.
A few miles out of town, the GPS instructed me to turn left onto a one-lane country road. Green pastures rolled up the sloping hillside. A flock of sheep dotted one side. A McMansion topped the hill to the left. I sighed. Obviously not everyone in these parts was Amish. But next was an Amish farm. A woman stood on the back porch, working the pulley to bring in the line of clothes.
I maneuvered a turn in the road and immediately faced a covered bridge. I eased the car over it, holding my breath as I hoped it would hold, hoped the GPS wasn’t sending me on a road meant only for carriages. The wooden planks groaned as the car bumped back onto the asphalt. At the top of the hill, the GPS instructed me to turn left onto a highway.
“Arriving at your destination,” the digitized voice immediately declared. To the right was a brick cottage and to the side of it an outbuilding. My heart began to pound. I turned the car into the driveway and parked, my hands frozen on the steering wheel.
At the least I hoped to be able to meet Marta, to see if she looked anything like me. But honestly, I also hoped she would change her mind and tell me everything she knew about my story. By tomorrow I’d be in Harrisburg searching for my original birth certificate. Or meeting my birth parents.
I forced my right hand to put the car in park and turn off the ignition. Then I slowly opened the door, patting the pocket of my jacket to make sure my camera was where it belonged. Maybe I could sneak a photo of her—especially if she did look like me. As I stepped from the car, the front door to the cottage opened and a young woman stepped out. She wore a cap over auburn hair, and for a second I thought she was Amish. Obviously the GPS hadn’t done its job. But then I noted her dress—a yellow print. The cap had a round shape to the back, not heart-shaped like the Amish woman’s in the buggy. Maybe this young woman was Mennonite. Whatever she was, she was far too young to be Marta. She was younger than I.
“Since when have you been driving?” she said, breaking out into a smile as she came down the steps.
I turned my head, half expecting to see someone behind me. I turned back toward the girl just in time to watch her freeze at the bottom step, her smile disappearing just as quickly as it had come. “Oh, sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
She moved backward and up one step.
“Who? Who did you think I was?” I asked, moving forward, trying to sound far more matter of fact than I felt. She thought I was someone else, someone who looked like me.
“Uh…no one. Never mind. Can I help you?”
I hesitated. A boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, clad in navy blue slacks and a short-sleeved checked shirt, banged through the door. As he gaped at me for a moment, I thought I could see the flash of recognition in his eyes as well, but then it passed. Standing a head shorter than the girl, who wasn’t that tall herself, he simply acknowledged me with a nod, flicking impatiently at blond bangs that fell across his forehead.
“Hi,” I said. “Did you think I was someone else too?”
He shrugged