The Amish Midwife - By Mindy Starns Clark Page 0,52

a freak. I’d always get a stomachache on the days I presented. I’d felt like a poser.

“What do you think?” Ella asked. “It might be a way to see if there’s more info in the Bible.”

“Sounds good,” I said, even though I really wanted a look at Ada myself. Patience had never been a virtue for me—except when it came to labor and delivery. “What about your mom?”

“She has a meeting tomorrow afternoon with her lawyer. At least that’s what she said this morning.”

I agreed to the plan, although I did feel bad that I was encouraging both children—Zed by association—to go behind their mother’s back. Then again, I didn’t feel bad enough to give up hope of finally getting some information—especially if Marta was going to keep blowing me off.

I slipped the box under my bed and closed my eyes as Ella and Zed scurried down the stairs. I dozed and then woke to Marta standing over me. It was dark outside and I could barely make out her form.

“Amielbach is a property in Switzerland,” she said. “It was in my mother’s family until a number of years ago.” She spoke as if she were reading from a script or had rehearsed, over and over, what to say. “I have no other information about it.”

I sat upright, coming out of my fog. “Was the property sold?”

“Yes.” Her voice still sounded robotic.

“By?”

“My mother, I presume.”

“When?”

She stepped backward. “I don’t know, exactly.”

“How about approximately?”

“More than twenty years ago.”

I was sitting on the end of the bed now. “Why?”

She stepped back again. “That’s all the information I have.” She turned. In a couple of steps she was descending the stairs.

“Marta!” I was scrambling after her. “Please.” By the time I reached the staircase she had disappeared. In a minute I was in the living room and then the dining room. Marta sat at the table next to Zed, his algebra book between them.

“Yes?” she said, without looking up.

I stopped. I didn’t want to risk my plan with Ella and Zed for the next day by pushing Marta further. And she had upheld her end of the bargain. “I was wondering if there’s anything leftover from dinner,” I said. “I must have slept through.”

James didn’t phone me back, but when I awoke the next morning I had a text from him, apologizing for not calling. I texted him, saying I’d delivered one baby already and was present for another birth at the hospital. I included that I’d had breakfast with an OB doc and it was fun to hear about the baby business in Pennsylvania. Then I asked him to call late that afternoon his time, and I would update him about my adoption search. I was hoping to have more information after Ella visited Klara’s house.

I spent the day seeing patients in Marta’s office. When the last one left, I finished my charting and anticipated taking Ella out to Klara’s. As I closed the cabinet, the front door opened and Marta stepped inside, her cape around her shoulders and what looked like a homeopathic bottle in her hand. “Could you take this to Esther?” she asked. “I’m late for a meeting.”

I twirled a strand of hair. Esther’s wasn’t that far from her lawyer’s office. Had she gotten wind of what Ella and I planned to do?

“And could you take Zed and Ella with you? It would do them good to see Simon.”

I took the bottle. It was tincture of valerian, a sleeping herb. It wouldn’t take that much longer to go by Esther’s, at least I didn’t think it would. My geography of Lancaster County still wasn’t very good. And it gave us an excuse to be out. I agreed, not that Marta had any doubt I would. She was almost out the door without so much as a “thank you” when she stopped and turned around.

“What else?” I asked, waiting for yet another demand from this difficult woman.

Instead, I was surprised when she took a step toward me, her cheeks flushing a bright pink, and spoke. “Nothing. I just wanted… I… Thank you. Not only for bringing that to Esther, but for everything. I know I haven’t said it much since you got here, but thank you.”

Could it be that under the hard Marta shell beat the heart of a real live person?

“I hope you understand that you have come here at the single most difficult point in my life,” she continued. “I know I tend to be short with people