Linda Castillo - Sworn to Silence

Or did I?

CHAPTER 5

I sit in the Explorer in the hospital parking lot for five minutes before I’m able to function. My hands are still shaking when I hit the speed dial for dispatch. Mona picks up on the first ring.

“I want you to compile a list of abandoned homes, properties and businesses in and around Painters Mill,” I say without preamble. “Say within a fifty-mile radius.”

“Anything in particular you’re looking for?”

“Just make the list. I’ll fill you in on the details when I get back to the station.” Putting the SUV in gear, I head for the highway and try not to think too hard about what I have to do next.

My brother, Jacob, his wife, Irene, and my two nephews, Elam and James, live on a sixty-five-acre farm on a dirt road nine miles east of town. The place has been in the Burkholder family for eighty years. In keeping with the Amish tradition, Jacob, the eldest and only male child in our family, inherited the farm when my mother passed away two years ago.

At the mouth of the gravel lane, I jam the Explorer into four-wheel drive and muscle the vehicle through foot-deep snow, praying I don’t get stuck. The familiarity of the farm strikes me as I barrel closer at a too-fast clip. A small apple orchard lies to my right. The bare-branched trees seem to glare at me in stern judgment from their white winter blanket.

I’m an outsider here, a foreigner trespassing on sacred ground. That fact has never been more evident as I enter the world of my past. I’m a stranger to the people I once knew intimately. I rarely visit. I barely know my two young nephews. It hurts knowing they’ll grow up and never know me. As much as I want to make things right, some chasms are simply too treacherous to traverse.

To my left, six milk cows huddle around a feeder mounded with snowcrusted hay. Ahead, the lane veers right where ruler-straight rows of cut corn usher my eyes to the farmhouse beyond. It makes for a pretty picture in the snow, and for a brief moment I’m reminded of a simpler time. A time when my sister and brother and I ran barefoot and carefree through wheat fields and played hide-and-seek among tall rows of corn. I recall winter days filled with hours of ice hockey with our cousins on Miller’s pond. I remember a time when our only responsibilities were milking the cows and goats, feeding the chickens, helping Mamm snap beans and, of course, worship.

That childhood bliss ended abruptly in the summer of my fourteenth year. The day a man by the name of Daniel Lapp came to our house with murder on his mind. I lost my innocence that day. I lost my ability to trust. My capacity to forgive. My faith in both God and family. I nearly lost my life, and in the weeks following many times I wished I had.

I haven’t been here since Mamm ’s funeral two years ago. Most Amish probably think avoiding my siblings the way I do is shameful. But I have my reasons.

I never would have returned to Painters Mill at all if it hadn’t been for my mother’s diagnosis of breast cancer three years ago. But Mamm and I had always shared a special bond. She’d been supportive of me when others had not—especially when I informed my parents that I wouldn’t be joining the church. I wasn’t baptized after my rumspringa or “running around” period. Mamm disapproved, but she never judged. And she never stopped loving me.

At the age of eighteen, I moved to Columbus and spent the next year broke and miserable and more lost than I’d ever been in my life. An unlikely friendship and, eventually, an even more unlikely job saved me. Gina Colorosa taught me how to not be Amish and gave me a crash course in all the wicked ways of the “English,” or non-Amish. Ravenous for new experiences, I was a quick study. Within a month of knowing her, we were roommates living on fast food, Heineken and Marlboro Lights 100’s. She was a dispatcher with the Columbus PD and helped me land a job answering phones at a police substation near downtown. In the following weeks that minimum-wage position became my world—and my salvation.

Gina and I enrolled in the community college, our collective sights set on criminal justice degrees. It was one of the most satisfying and exciting times of my life. Mamm took the bus to Columbus for my graduation. Riding in a motorized vehicle was a direct violation of the Ordnung, the rules of our church district, but my mother did it anyway. For that, I’ll always be thankful to her. I introduced her to Gina, and told her we were going to enroll in the police academy. Mamm didn’t understand, but she never condemned me. It was the last time I saw her before her diagnosis of cancer. Datt passed suddenly of a stroke six months after I graduated. I didn’t return for his funeral. But I came back for Mamm . To be with her during her final days. To help with the farm. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

But in all honesty, my roots had been calling to me for quite some time. Looking back, I realize it was more than my mother’s impending death that brought me back. Deep inside I knew the time had come for me to face my family—and a past I’d been running away from for over a decade.

A week after Mamm ’s death, as my sister Sarah and I went through her things, two town councilmen drove out to the farm. Norm Johnston and Neil Stubblefield informed me that chief of police Delbert McCoy would be retiring in a month. They wanted to know if I was interested in replacing him.

I was floored that they would ask me: formerly Amish and female to boot. But I was also flattered. A hell of a lot more than I should have been. Only later, after I’d had time to put things into perspective, did I realize the offer had more to do with small town politics than me or my law enforcement experience. Painters Mill is an idyllic town, but it’s not perfect. Serious cultural issues exist between the Amish and the English. With tourism being a big chunk of the economy, the town council wanted someone who was good at smoothing ruffled feathers, whether those feathers were Amish or English.

I was the perfect candidate. I had eight years of law enforcement experience and a degree in criminal justice. I’d been born and raised in this town. Best of all, I’d once been Amish. I was fluent in Pennsylvania Dutch. I understood the culture. I was sympathetic to the Amish way of life.

A week later I accepted the job. I quit the force in Columbus, bought a house, loaded everything I owned into a U-Haul trailer and moved back to my hometown. That was just over two years ago and I’ve never regretted my decision. Until today.

The house where I grew up is white and plain with a big front porch and windows that look like long, sorrowful eyes. Beyond, the barn stands bold and red as if in testament to its centrality. Next to it, a grain silo juts high into the misty winter sky.

I park in the driveway and shut down the engine. The backyard is visible from where I sit. The maple tree my father and I planted when I was twelve is taller than the house now. It always amazes me at how little the place has changed when my own life has shifted so dramatically.

Of all the things I’ve had to do this morning, this is the most difficult. That I can look at the tortured corpse of a young woman more easily than I can face my own family is not a comforting thought. I don’t want to ponder what that says about me as a person. It shames me to admit I could live the rest of my life quite contentedly if I never saw either of my siblings again.

I force myself to leave the Explorer. Like the Stutz house, the sidewalk has been shoveled. Not the work of a motorized snow blower, but shoveled by hand, the Amish way. My legs tremble as I step onto the porch and cross to the front door. I want to blame my shaky state on too much coffee or stress or the cold. But the tremors rippling through me have nothing to do with the temperature or caffeine—and everything to do with the man I’m about to face and the secrets that bind us.