Free The Amish Midwife by Mindy Starns Clark, Leslie Gould Page A

reminded him that we were taking “a break.”
    He turned his twenty-year-old car with the duct-taped bumper onto Airport Way. “I don’t care. I could come right now.”
    I shook my head. “You have school. And you don’t have the money.”
    “I can withdraw this term,” he said. “I’ll use my tuition.”
    I looked straight ahead. “That would be ridiculous.” He would be done after the coming fall term, and then he’d move back to Aurora or at least close by and open a practice and go on short-term mission trips to third world countries instead of ever taking a proper vacation. And he’d never have any money because he’d do half his work pro bono, and the money he did make would go toward his mission trips. I clutched my Coach purse tightly, which, after worrying about it, James hadn’t even noticed. For all he knew, I’d bought it at a yard sale.
    “Lex, you should wait. We could go together this summer. Or you could wait and go to Philadelphia in two weeks.” He braked for a hotel shuttle that slowed ahead of us. “But don’t go crashing in on someone who doesn’t want you.”
    I didn’t answer.
Someone who doesn’t want you
. The words stung but not badly enough to stop me. I was going to go find this woman named Marta. Sophie had given me the address of her office. I already had it programmed into my GPS. Obviously she was related to me. Why else would she have told me not to come?
    I pulled my camera from my bag. He grimaced. I slipped it back inside.
    “Thanks for giving me a ride,” I said as he pulled up in front of the airline door.
    “Are you flying into Harrisburg?”
    “Philly,” I said, liking the way it sounded.
Philly. Philly. Philly
.
    He put the car in park and beat me to the trunk. “Call when you get there,” he said.
    I nodded.
    “And come home if it’s too weird.”
    Home
. I wanted to cry.
    He hugged me quickly.
    Surprised that I wished he’d kissed me, I said, “I’ll be back,” trying to sound upbeat.
    His eyes darkened and then he smiled just a little. His lips moved but I couldn’t hear his words.
    “Pardon?”
    “We’ll see,” he said.
    He left me and walked around the car to the driver’s side. I rolled my bag toward the revolving door and stepped through, my Coach tote over one shoulder and the cloth bag with the carved box and my baby quilt over the other. When I turned my head, his old beater was easing its way into the stream of traffic.
    Eight hours later I rolled the same bag through the Philly airport, imagining Mama and Dad there twenty-six years before with me in their arms. For the first time I wondered why they met my birth grandmother at the airport and not a lawyer’s office or her home or their hotel. Where did they stay when they were in Philly? Downtown? Out by the airport? How long were they here? Did they see the Liberty Bell? Independence Hall? Who held me on the plane?
    An hour later I was sailing past the Philly suburbs, heading west on the Expressway in my Ford Taurus rental car. Patches of snow, with blooming crocuses poking out, hid in the shadows at the side of the road. The river to my right ran high and muddy. The bare trees along the hillsides hung heavy with vines.
    “I’m in Pennsylvania,” I said out loud, and then I wondered if Dad would have come with me if I had asked him to a couple of years ago. I turned up the radio to drown out my sorrow.
    I’d decided to get off of the Turnpike at Valley Forge and take the back roads the rest of the way to Lancaster County because one of the guidebooks I’d skimmed had recommended it for a better view of the countryside. At first that made for slower going, with far more lights and traffic than countryside, but eventually the congestion lessened and the scenery improved.
    I nearly slammed on my brakes at the sight of my first Amish farm. Aman drove a team of four mules pulling a plow through a field. He wore a straw hat, cobalt blue shirt, black trousers, and suspenders. A