impressive.
“This place is so huge you guys are going to lose each other,” I had said to Haley with a laugh when she gave me a tour.
Sadly, I thought now, losing each other was exactly what had happened. I wondered how it felt to be widowed at only twenty-nine.
Turning into their neighborhood, I had second thoughts about showing up unannounced. Doug’s body had just been discovered the day before, so Haley was probably overwhelmed right now, dealing with funeral arrangements and out-of-town relatives, not to mention working through her own grief. On the other hand, a visit from her old best friend might be just what she needed most at the moment—not to mention that hearing her story firsthand would help in my investigation.
I continued driving there, but when I was half a block away, I could see that her home was surrounded by the media, with three different news vans parked outside. Heart pounding, I put on my brakes and then quickly pulled into someone else’s driveway, turned around, and drove away.
Of course they are camping out there,
I thought as I raced out of the neighborhood. This was a big story, with ties to another, older big story that simply refused to die. My stomach still in knots by the time I turned onto Lincoln Highway, I decided I would try to connect with Haley later, via phone.
For now, I needed to move on to Dreiheit, the very town where, on that fateful August night in 1997, an Amish farmer and his wife and their newborn baby died—but five other people essentially lost their lives as well. As I crossed into Lancaster County and turned onto a winding, picturesque road, I thought in detail about the tragedy that had so deeply marked the turning point in all of our lives.
FOURTEEN
The story actually began when Bobby and I were just children.
Though we lived with our parents in Hidden Springs, we often visited our grandparents in Dreiheit. They owned a gorgeous old stone home on about five rolling acres there, and as children Bobby and I loved to explore the grounds and play with Grete and Lydia Schumann, the Amish sisters who lived next door with their parents and grandparents and baby brother, Caleb. Their whole family was just so different, so sweet, that I used to come home from our visits there and try to talk my parents in becoming Amish too.
Our grandmother died of cancer the year I was twelve and Bobby was fourteen. Her illness had been so prolonged that her death hadn’t come as much of a surprise, but we were all stunned when an aneurism took our vibrant grandfather’s life just one year later. As my father was their only child, he inherited the beautiful old family home in Dreiheit that had been passed down through several generations of Jensens. Though our parents would have liked to keep the house in the family, they couldn’t afford the cost of maintaining it. As sad as it was, our family had had no choice but to clear out the century-old, Federal-style stone mansion and put it on the market. Mr. Schumann expressed an interest in buying the land, which worked out quite well because the Realtor was able to sell just the house to an architect who had property along the Susquehanna River and hadbeen looking for a uniquely beautiful structure to move there. Once the deal was sealed, Bobby and I missed our grandparents terribly, of course, but we also missed their gorgeous home in Dreiheit, not to mention our Amish friends from the farm next door.
Over time, as Haley Wynn and I grew closer, I began to go back to Dreiheit occasionally with her. Her parents were divorced, and though Haley lived in Hidden Springs with her father, who had primary custody, she spent many weekends in Dreiheit with her mother, who lived in a little cottage about a mile away from the very place where my grandparents’ house had once stood. Though her small home was a far cry from the grandeur of the old Jensen homestead that was no more, it was still nice to visit the town I
“This place is so huge you guys are going to lose each other,” I had said to Haley with a laugh when she gave me a tour.
Sadly, I thought now, losing each other was exactly what had happened. I wondered how it felt to be widowed at only twenty-nine.
Turning into their neighborhood, I had second thoughts about showing up unannounced. Doug’s body had just been discovered the day before, so Haley was probably overwhelmed right now, dealing with funeral arrangements and out-of-town relatives, not to mention working through her own grief. On the other hand, a visit from her old best friend might be just what she needed most at the moment—not to mention that hearing her story firsthand would help in my investigation.
I continued driving there, but when I was half a block away, I could see that her home was surrounded by the media, with three different news vans parked outside. Heart pounding, I put on my brakes and then quickly pulled into someone else’s driveway, turned around, and drove away.
Of course they are camping out there,
I thought as I raced out of the neighborhood. This was a big story, with ties to another, older big story that simply refused to die. My stomach still in knots by the time I turned onto Lincoln Highway, I decided I would try to connect with Haley later, via phone.
For now, I needed to move on to Dreiheit, the very town where, on that fateful August night in 1997, an Amish farmer and his wife and their newborn baby died—but five other people essentially lost their lives as well. As I crossed into Lancaster County and turned onto a winding, picturesque road, I thought in detail about the tragedy that had so deeply marked the turning point in all of our lives.
FOURTEEN
The story actually began when Bobby and I were just children.
Though we lived with our parents in Hidden Springs, we often visited our grandparents in Dreiheit. They owned a gorgeous old stone home on about five rolling acres there, and as children Bobby and I loved to explore the grounds and play with Grete and Lydia Schumann, the Amish sisters who lived next door with their parents and grandparents and baby brother, Caleb. Their whole family was just so different, so sweet, that I used to come home from our visits there and try to talk my parents in becoming Amish too.
Our grandmother died of cancer the year I was twelve and Bobby was fourteen. Her illness had been so prolonged that her death hadn’t come as much of a surprise, but we were all stunned when an aneurism took our vibrant grandfather’s life just one year later. As my father was their only child, he inherited the beautiful old family home in Dreiheit that had been passed down through several generations of Jensens. Though our parents would have liked to keep the house in the family, they couldn’t afford the cost of maintaining it. As sad as it was, our family had had no choice but to clear out the century-old, Federal-style stone mansion and put it on the market. Mr. Schumann expressed an interest in buying the land, which worked out quite well because the Realtor was able to sell just the house to an architect who had property along the Susquehanna River and hadbeen looking for a uniquely beautiful structure to move there. Once the deal was sealed, Bobby and I missed our grandparents terribly, of course, but we also missed their gorgeous home in Dreiheit, not to mention our Amish friends from the farm next door.
Over time, as Haley Wynn and I grew closer, I began to go back to Dreiheit occasionally with her. Her parents were divorced, and though Haley lived in Hidden Springs with her father, who had primary custody, she spent many weekends in Dreiheit with her mother, who lived in a little cottage about a mile away from the very place where my grandparents’ house had once stood. Though her small home was a far cry from the grandeur of the old Jensen homestead that was no more, it was still nice to visit the town I
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