“Are we sure there won’t be any extra mouths to feed tonight?” Emma asked.
“I hardly think so, considering all the family was together yesterday.” Lena recalled last evening’s wonderful-good time with Dawdi and Mammi Schwartz.
Pouring some coffee, she thought ahead to hearing Chris tell about his first day. Surely he would be as full of stories and fun as ever. She remembered last Sunday, when she’d driven Dat’s second family carriage to Preaching service—they regularly had to use two buggies to fit all twelve of them. After settling herself into the driver’s seat that morning, Lena had watched Chris race across the driveway and hop right in next to her, excited to talk about his plans with cousins that afternoon.
My sweet little brother, she thought, taking a tentative sip from her steaming mug.
At that very moment, their house cat leaped lightly down from her favorite spot on the sunny windowsill near the entrance to the utility room. She stretched long and leisurely, mouth wide.
“Your food dish is full,” Emma told the cat, pointing over to the corner, “in case you’re hungry again.”
“Our Tubby Tabby,” Lena said, laughing softly. “All she does is eat and sleep.”
“Dat says if we all ate as often as she does, we’d be as round as full moons.” Emma smiled.
They continued their work in the kitchen until they were startled by several loud raps on the frame of the screen door. Lena and Emma turned in unison to see two policemen standing on the porch.
A myriad of worries bloomed in Lena’s head—had something happened to one of the children at school? To little Chris?
Emma coaxed Lena to go to the door, where she was so nervous she could scarcely answer sensibly when the officers asked if this was the residence of Jacob and Elizabeth Schwartz.
“Jah, ’tis,” she managed to eke out.
The kind-looking older policeman asked if they might step inside for a moment, his jaw set solemnly. And even before they suggested the two young women sit down, Lena Rose sensed something dreadful, felt it clear down in her bones.
“There’s no good way to say this.” The younger officer looked at his feet for a moment before revealing that Dat and Mamma had been in a terrible road accident. “It happened earlier this afternoon in Indiana . . . on the outskirts of Middlebury,” he said, his voice low.
Holding her breath, Lena waited for more information. Are they in the hospital?
Behind her, her sister whispered, “Will Dat and Mamma be all right?”
The policemen’s expressions remained grim, and the two men exchanged glances.
“I’m awful sorry,” the younger officer said then.
She couldn’t bear to hear what followed.
“No one in the passenger van survived.”
Lena tried to process what this meant. Mamma and Dat were both strong and in perfect health. How could her precious parents be gone? Gone all too suddenly to Glory.
“They never knew what happened.” The older officer said this as if to reassure them, but Lena felt a wave of despair descend as the awful words lingered in the air.
———
After the policemen left, Lena Rose held Emma in her arms for the longest time, too stunned to cry herself. How can this be? she kept asking herself, trapped in a state of disbelief. She could scarcely take a breath, shocked to think that their parents had died, along with other Amish passengers from the nearby town of Sturgis.
Only hours before, Mamma had kissed all of them good-bye before getting into the large van with Dat—their usual routine. Lena had hugged Mamma extra close. Who would have imagined that it would be the last she’d see her and Dat alive—the last time they would say “Ich liebe dich” to each other?
Somehow, Lena and Emma managed to get themselves out of the house. They searched first in the barn for their fifteen-year-old brother, Wilbur. Not finding him there or in the stable, where the market wagon was missing, they trudged across their father’s wide pasture to Deacon Joe Miller’s adjoining farm. We must talk to him before the younger children return home, Lena Rose thought as the train whistle blew in the distance. Her heart ached at the very idea of telling them the dire news.
Fortunately, the middle-aged deacon was home, so Lena informed him of what the police had said only a mere half hour earlier. Stone-faced and shaken, the dear man vowed to undertake the job of getting the word out that Jacob and Elizabeth Schwartz had perished . . . and that their ten children were suddenly orphans.
———
“What’ll happen to us?” Emma asked later as she and Lena waited in their Mamma’s kitchen for the rest of their siblings to return from school. The minutes seemed to stretch into hours. Wilbur had returned from the Truckenmiller hardware store in town and was out in the barn with Uncle Noah, their father’s eldest brother, who had pulled up in his buggy shortly after receiving word from the deacon. And Mammi Schwartz, a good many aunts, and Clara Yoder, their nearby preacher’s wife, as well as a host of other womenfolk, including English neighbors, had arrived to take over making supper and other chores.
When the younger children hurried into the house, with confusion on their faces at all the activity and the sight of so many buggies parked in the side yard, Lena went with Emma and Wilbur to sit with all of them in the front room. “This is the hardest thing I’ll ever have to say, my dear brothers and sisters,” she said softly, struggling to get the words out as she told them what had befallen their Dat and Mamma.
The school-age boys wore deep frowns as they turned to look at one another, mirroring the shock and horror of their older siblings. Wilbur put his
