* * *
“She just collapsed?” His mother had taken the sight of him carrying a nearly frozen woman into their home in stride. She’d told him to place her on the couch as she’d grabbed a blanket.
“Ya. She teetered back and forth across the road and then fell into the snow as I was watching.”
“No idea who she is?”
“Obviously she’s not from here.”
Ida nodded. Her dress was of a bright blue fabric, while their community still wore only muted blues and greens, blacks and browns. They were a conservative Amish community, a mixture of Swiss and Pennsylvania Dutch, which was why they lived in the southwestern part of Indiana. They weren’t a tourist destination like Shipshewana. And unlike some more liberal Amish communities, they didn’t abide solar panels and cell phones and Englisch clothing. Not that the woman’s dress was Englisch. It was obviously plain in style, but that color...
He didn’t normally notice the color of a girl’s dress, but in this case...well, the blue fabric seemed obscenely bright. She remained unconscious, though she seemed to be breathing. Caleb pulled off his knit cap, shrugged out of his coat and tugged off his gloves. Squatting in front of the couch, he watched his mother as she attempted to revive the woman.
She murmured slightly, tossing her head left and right. Almost of its own volition, his hand reached out and touched her face. Her skin felt like satin.
Still she didn’t wake.
“She had nothing with her?”
“Nein.”
“No purse or coat or—”
Caleb jumped up, snapping his fingers. “A book. She was holding a book when I first saw her.”
“You best go and get it. Perhaps her name is written inside. Maybe there’s someone we can contact.”
Caleb snagged his coat from the floor where he’d dropped it and hurried back outside. Fat snowflakes were still falling. It looked as if the current snowfall was going to be a significant accumulation for only the third of December. Already the front path was completely obscured, any trace of his previous trek across the yard erased. At this rate they would have a Christmas to remember. It was unusual, as most of their snow usually came in January.
He jogged back the half mile, passing the place where he had been mending the fence. His tools were still there. He’d need to return them to the barn, but that wasn’t an emergency. The woman? She was. He slowed when he reached the tall pine tree and scanned the ground. Nothing, not even his footprints from earlier.
He’d forgotten his hat and the snow was cold and heavy on his head. He shook the snow off his head, wiped his eyes and walked up and down the fence line—a hundred feet in both directions. There was nothing, but he was sure that she had been holding a book of some sort. He closed his eyes, saw it fall from her hand as she dropped to the ground. She’d wandered off the east side of the road, closer to the fence.
This was not the way his Monday was supposed to go. He didn’t mind helping a neighbor, or a stranger, but he’d had an entire list of chores to complete. Farm life, his life, worked better when he stayed focused on the things he’d committed to doing. When women entered his life, trouble often followed. He pushed that thought away as soon as it formed. This wasn’t about him. He needed to find the book. He hadn’t opened his eyes that morning knowing he would save a stranger from freezing to death, but now that he had there was nothing left to do but see this thing through.
They’d find out who she was and where she belonged.
They’d return her, and he could get on with his life.
But first he needed to find the book.
He turned east, walked back and forth between the road and the fence, making a zigzag type of pattern. Then just when he was beginning to think he’d imagined the entire thing, that he’d return home and find there was no mysterious woman on their couch, he spied it—a lump of snow where there should have been flat ground.
He dropped to his knees and brushed the snow away.
The book had a green-and-gold cover with a photograph of a snowy path going through the woods, and beneath that the words The Road Not Taken and Other Poems. Had he read something like that in school? He was twenty-five now and that had been many years ago. He shook his head, picked up the book and hurried back home.
* * *
When he walked back into the living room, his father was there, and his mother was placing a cup of hot tea into the woman’s hands. She was sitting up now, looking around with a dazed sort of expression.
“I think this is yours.” Caleb placed the book on the couch beside her.
“Danki.”
That one word confirmed what he’d suspected earlier. She wasn’t from their part of the state. The Daviess County Amish had a distinctive Southern twang. This woman didn’t.
Caleb’s father sat in the reading chair. His mother perched on the edge of the rocker. Caleb folded his arms and stood behind them both. Across from them, the woman stared at the tea, then raised her eyes first to his mamm, then his dat, and finally settled her gaze on him.
“What happened? Where am I?”
“You don’t know?” Caleb glanced at his parents, who seemed content to let him carry the conversation. “You were walking down the road, and then you collapsed.”
“Why would I do such a thing?”
Caleb shrugged. “What’s your name?”
The woman’s eyes widened and her hand shook so that she could barely hold the mug of tea without spilling it. She set it carefully on the coffee table. “I don’t—I don’t know my name.”
“My name is John Wittmer,” Caleb’s father said. “This my fraa, Ida, and you’ve met Caleb.”
“How can you not know your own name?” Caleb asked. “Do you know where you live?”
“Nein.”
“What were you doing out there?”
“Out where?”
“Where’s your coat and your kapp?”
“Caleb, now’s not the time to interrogate the poor girl.” Ida stood and moved beside her on the couch. She picked up the small book of poetry. “You were carrying this, when Caleb found you. Do you remember it?”
“I don’t. This was mine?”
“Found it in the snow,” Caleb said. “Right beside where you collapsed.”
“So it must be mine.”
“Perhaps there’s something written on the inside.” Ida tapped the cover. “Maybe you should look.”
Caleb noticed that the woman’s hands trembled as she opened the cover and stared down at the first page. With one finger, she traced the handwriting there.
“Rachel. I think my name is Rachel.”
* * *
Rachel let her fingers brush over the word again and again. Rachel. Yes, that was her name. She was sure of it. She remembered writing it in the front of the book—she’d used a pen that her mamm had given her. She could almost picture herself, somewhere else. She could almost see her mother.
“My mamm gave me the pen and the book...for my birthday, I think. I wrote my name—wrote it right here.”
“Your mamm. So you remember her?”
“Praise