The Amish Nanny (40 page)

“Abraham said he'd put the agreement in a safe place, one that would offer ‘more privacy than the land registry office.' “What if the safe place was some other kind of office? Somewhere that a document could be legally filed but then wouldn't be so easily accessed by the public?”

“You mean instead of the land registry office he filed it with the property tax office or something like that?” Morgan asked.

“Well, think about it,” he said. “Government offices, private libraries, archive centers, church historical preserves—there are all sorts of places a man might consider safe but also somewhat private for storing an important document he would want to preserve for future generations.”

We tossed around that line of thought as we got our food, chose a large corner table, and ate together. On a paper napkin, Daniel wrote
out a list of every possible entity we could think of where a man of that era could have stored an important document. He crossed some of them back out, narrowing things down, and finally we had a short list of possibilities. Then he grabbed another napkin and mapped out the most efficient route we could take to explore them all.

Given that we had both George's rental and Morgan's car for transportation, I thought we should divide and conquer. But I was outvoted by everyone else, who wanted to stick together, especially because we all needed Daniel to lead the way. Thus, while George got on the phone to arrange for a van and driver, and Daniel consulted a map for our exact route, Christy and Morgan and I headed back to Alice's room to bring Will a sandwich and tell them where we were going.

I thought Christy might want to stay there with her
daed
, but she was eager to tag along on our treasure hunt. With a smile and a hug, Will urged her to do so, saying he wanted her to get the very most out of the time we had left here, especially if we were heading off to visit more of the sites we'd been wanting to see anyway. As we left, I found myself wishing that Will were coming too.

The van was a lot roomier than either of the cars had been. Daniel and Morgan sat in the middle seat with Christy and me in the back and George up front with the driver. Daniel pulled out one of Abraham's journals, saying he wanted to go through it again to look for clues in light of this new theory. As he did, Morgan clapped her hands in delight, saying, “I
love
this sort of thing.”

“The first entries are all business…” he said, paging through them quickly.

“Can I give it a try?” Morgan asked, reaching for the journal.

“Wait,” Daniel said, pulling a pair of white cotton gloves out of his backpack. “Wear these.”

“You are such the geek,” she teased, taking them.

Christy gave me a funny look and chuckled. I remembered she'd been asleep when Daniel had worn gloves the night before to read the letters.

He turned around and waved another pair in her face. “All serious archivists carry these with them.” He grinned, happy as could be.

Christy asked if he had any more, and he ducked his head down and then popped back up with a third pair. She slipped them on her hands.

Morgan flipped through the first pages of the journal and then said, “I'll start here, where the narrative begins.”

“When he hires Caspar Lauten?” Daniel interjected.

She nodded. “Yep, right there, at the
Cas-par
,” she said, drawing out the name so that it sounded like “at the Casbah.” Then she laughed, and I marveled at how much more comfortable she seemed with all of us.

“Okay,” she continued. “The next one is December 2, 1895.” She quit speaking as she read and then lifted her head. “The gist of it is that he's worried about the finances of maintaining the property. He feels
he made a mistake in hiring the young man to help, but he knows he can't do it alone. He writes that Caspar came across some of his old carvings and encouraged him to sell them and make some more. He's sure he could generate some income that way, but he feels too old to take up carving again.” She read a little more. “This is a couple of months later. It's about Elsbeth.” Morgan looked up with a questioning look on her face.

“That's his daughter,” I explained. “My grandmother's grandmother.”

“Got it.” Morgan pointed a white gloved finger at the page. “Anyway, he writes that every day he mourns for Elsbeth, even though it's been eighteen years since she left. He thinks of her children—all twelve of them—and if she'd stayed how fulfilling his life would have been. He feels as if God, by leading Elsbeth away, paid him back for his…” She paused and then sounded out, “
Überschreitung
?” She glanced at Daniel. “What's the translation on that? Do you know?”

“Transgression,” he said. “Sin.”

Morgan glanced back down. “‘By taking you away from me, God has paid me back for my sin.' Huh?” She didn't say anything for a moment but then glanced back at me. “What sin is he talking about? What'd he do that was so awful?”

I shook my head, as this was the first I'd heard of it. I looked to Daniel, but he just shrugged and said, “I didn't run across anything like that in the letters. He never mentioned any big sin.”

As we continued along the road, I thought about that. I'd been picturing Abraham Sommers as a kind and good and generous man. Obviously, if he had some big unconfessed sin, some dark and mysterious
Überschreitung
as he called it, then the picture was a little more complicated than I had previously imagined.

I only hoped that his big sin had nothing to do with the agreement we were trying so desperately to find.

W
e rode along in silence for several minutes. Christy seemed enthralled with the archivist gloves on her hands and kept flicking her fingers around and up and down. Daniel had his nose buried in his dictionary, probably double- and triple-checking the word
Überschreitung
to make sure he wasn't missing anything. Morgan was leaning forward over the journal, reading intently.

Finally she said, “Abraham sounds kind of bitter. Though I guess more with himself than anyone else.” She read some more. “Caspar seems to be helping though. It's Caspar's idea to rent out rooms during the summer to attract people from Zurich, Bern, and Lucerne. And Abraham starts carving again. He writes it isn't as good as when he was younger but it has its own style. He received a commission to carve a bench for an official from Zurich. He's hoping it will lead to more government work.” She was silent again and then said, “And he's started going to church with Caspar. Not to the Mennonite group—” She looked up again. “But to the chapel in the village. He says it's good to be hearing the Word, regardless of who reads it.” Morgan's voice changed. “So what's his story? Abraham was Mennonite?”

“I don't think so.” I'd never heard anything from
Mammi
to indicate that.

“Amish?”

“Probably not with a place like Amielbach. It was his daughter who was Plain,” I said.

“And there were no Amish left in Europe by Abraham's time anyway,” Daniel said. “No, Abraham was affiliated with the Reformed Church, at least at the time of his death. I'm not sure if that was the case throughout his life, although online I found his birth recorded in the Swiss Reform Church registry in Frutigen.”

Morgan turned back around. “I'll read one more and then it's Daniel's turn.” She was silent for a couple of minutes and then said, “He says he sold one of his old carvings to a priest in Zurich who had seen the bench he did earlier at the university.”

“Ah, the University of Zurich. They have a variety of archives,” Daniel said, happily adding it to our list. “Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could find the agreement
and
the carving there?”

I agreed but knew the chances were highly unlikely.

“I'm getting carsick,” Morgan said. “Translation and riding in a van don't mix.” She handed the book to Daniel.

While he read, I focused on the landscape straight ahead of us. The Alps rose up like giants, even at a distance—stone faced and capped with snow. Rugged and jagged. Breathtakingly beautiful.

Morgan groaned after a while. “Daniel, you're supposed to translate each entry—not read the entire thing to yourself.”

He didn't look up as he spoke. “There's a lot of stuff in between entries. The price of wood. Taxes. That sort of thing.” He made various notations on our napkin list and then put it aside and began to translate some more. “This one is dated August 13, 1896. It was a good summer. They rented five of the rooms and took in some income. He says he's had a letter from Elsbeth and he worried about her health with so many children to take care of, plus the farm and her husband, Gerard. He asked her to send a couple of her sons to stay with him and mailed the letter that morning.” Daniel's head popped up. “I saw the actual letter last night. This is so fascinating.”

I hoped more puzzle pieces would come together soon. “Did Elsbeth send her sons over here?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She wrote that none of them wanted to come. She asked Abraham to come to America to visit them though.” Daniel's head popped up again. “That fits in with his letters too.”

His head was back down over the journal. “He also says he attended church regularly through the summer and planned to meet with the priest soon.”

“Maybe he wanted to talk to the priest about what he did to deserve God's wrath,” Morgan offered.

Christy yawned. I could only imagine how bored she was with the translation of the journal.

Morgan poked Daniel. “Hey, schoolboy,” she taunted. “What else have you got?”

Daniel closed the first journal. “Lots more info about his finances through 1897.” He put the first journal in a resealable baggie he pulled from his backpack and then opened the second one.

The Alps were back in sight, and much closer. I watched them until Daniel started translating again.

“He's been doing more carvings. Boxes. Headboards. More benches. He mailed a couple of his boxes to Elsbeth, including a very special one.”

“What's the story on that?”

Daniel shook his head. “Dunno. That's all he wrote about it.” He read some more and then said, “Things are turning around. He almost has enough money saved for his trip to the United States. He's thinking about the Kessler family and hopes to be able to visit Marie too. He's packed the paperwork she needed.”

I groaned. “What if he planned to take the agreement with him? It could have ended up in any number of odd places.”

“Or not,” Daniel countered, jumping right back into the translation. “He's made arrangements with Caspar to stay on the property and has drawn up papers so that when he dies Caspar can continue managing the place for Elsbeth until one of her children or grandchildren returns. Caspar is to pay the taxes and maintain the buildings and grounds. But then Abraham's health worsens and he's not sure if he will be able to make the trip.”

Daniel explained that the next several entries were full of financial information about the estate, and it looked as if Abraham was trying to get everything in order. “The last entry was written on May 4, 1898. Abraham says he poured out his heart to Elsbeth in a letter and finally confessed to her his great sin, his
Überschreitung
.”

“Do we have that letter?” I asked.

He shook his head, reminding me that the last letter we had was the one where Abraham said that he had some “important information” for Elsbeth and he would send it soon. “That information must have had to do with his big sin, whatever it was.”

“What else does it say?” Morgan prodded.

Daniel skimmed for a moment and then continued. “After talking about the letter where he pours out his heart, he writes that he's too tired to write much more, but he's told the truth and he hopes it will set him free. He says, ‘Just like the Israelites, I did not inquire of God. I am proud of her for doing what I haven't and pray her children and grandchildren will follow her good example.' That's it,” Daniel said. “Then he died.”

I wondered what sin Abraham Sommers had confessed and what Elsbeth had done with the letter after she'd read it. If the letter didn't exist—or couldn't be found—we'd never know his secret.