“He’ll be out in a few,” he tells me. “Hang tight.”
I wait fifteen minutes. I’m thinking about flagging down a detention officer when the door to the visitation room opens. Jonas starts toward me, craning his neck to see who has come calling. Some prisons and county jails accommodate the religious needs of inmates. Not so with this one. He’s clad in a wrinkled orange jumpsuit. No hat. Rubber flip-flops on his feet. His hair is long and cut in the “Dutch boy” style that’s typical for Amish males. Some prisons won’t even allow their inmates to retain their facial hair, because it makes it more difficult for the officers to identify them. To my relief, they allowed him to keep his beard, which is of great significance for a married Amish man.
He recognizes me instantly and stops cold. A quiver moves through his body. He blinks, as if his eyes are playing tricks on him. I feel a similar quiver move through my own psyche. The urge to rise and go to him for a handshake or embrace is powerful. Of course, I can’t do either.
He looks much the same as he did last time I saw him, some twenty years ago. A few pounds heavier. Leaner face. Troubled eyes the color of dark roast coffee. When I was a kid, he’d seemed as big as a giant, but he’s only a few inches taller than me. His face has seen too much sun over the years, evidenced in the crow’s-feet at his eyes, the tanned-leather appearance of his neck. He didn’t wear glasses last time I saw him, but he does now. The frames are black and unadorned.
He holds my gaze as he slides onto the bench seat and picks up the phone. “You always did know how to surprise a guy,” he says matter-of-factly.
His voice is the same, too. Deep and melodic with a hint of the Amish-English accent I myself have been accused of having. Despite the reason for our meeting, I smile. “Not all of those surprises were pleasant.”
“This one is.”
“I guess we both wish it was under different circumstances.” I hear the words as if they were spoken by someone else. A person whose pulse isn’t pounding, whose emotions aren’t swelling and a little too close to the surface, and a gut that isn’t knotted into a ball of emotions I’m not sure I could unravel even if I tried.
“You look the same.” He leans back in his chair and studies me intently. “After all these years, you’re exactly as I remember.”
“Less the kapp.”
“I always knew you wouldn’t remain Amish. The signs were there. Even when you were twelve years old.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Inexplicably, I can’t meet his gaze. An awkward combination of self-consciousness and discomfort, neither of which I can reconcile, stirs uncomfortably in my chest. I pretend to look past him at the door from which he emerged, and I use that moment to shore up.
“English suits me,” I say.
“I can tell. You look happy.”
“I am.”
“You didn’t have to come.”
“Yes, I did.” Settled now, I take his measure. He looks tired. Embarrassed. Ashamed. Humiliated. But like so many Amish I know, he has a serenity about him that transcends the negativity of the situation. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine.” He raises a hand to encompass the room, as if to dismiss any worry about his well-being. “The officers have been decent. You know, professional. Polite. Food isn’t too bad. They give me three meals a day.”
“You’re still not a very good liar.” They’re harsh words, but I soften them with a smile because it’s true.
He makes a sound of dismissal, but before he can look away, something darker peeks out at me from behind the mask of composure. It’s the first sign of a crack I’ve seen and I suspect it will grow the longer he’s incarcerated and as the reality of the situation hits home.
“I worry for my wife,” he tells me. “The children. They’re probably confused.”
“I’m happy to check on them for you,” I say.
He scrubs his hand over his face, but it’s not enough to wipe away the pain etched into his features. “Thank you.”
I recall the day my sister told me Jonas had married. I was sixteen, and though he’d been gone for a year, I still pined for him. I couldn’t believe he’d fallen in love with someone else and moved on so quickly. It wasn’t my first heartbreak, but it was the first time in my life I felt the fangs of that green-eyed beast Jealousy.
He hefts his gaze back in my direction. “The Diener came to you?” he asks. “In Painters Mill?”
“They thought I might be able to help.”
Frowning, he shakes his head, as if the three elders are misguided teenagers. “They’re good men and they meant well, but I asked them not to involve you.”
“They did the right thing, Jonas. I might be able to help.”
His mouth curves. “You never would take no for an answer.”
“Especially when I’m right.”
“Which is all the time, no?”
We share a smile.
Jonas sobers first. “The thing is, Katie. I know God has a plan. Sometimes we don’t know what that plan is. But it is divine and this is part of it. I’m in His hands, as are all of us. The one thing that I know for certain is that everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.”
It is the quintessential Amish mindset—one of many reasons I didn’t fit in and left the fold. The impulse to point out that he’s been charged with murder and faces spending the rest of his life in prison is powerful, but I don’t succumb.
“I read a newspaper story about your being a police,” he tells me. “It said you’re good at what you do.”
“I’m good at digging.”
“You always were one for asking questions.” The hint of a smile touches his mouth. “Too many, according to some, eh?”
I smile back, but a hundred of those questions swirl in the forefront of my brain. The need for hard information is tempered by the knowledge that all visitor conversations, attorney-client exchanges aside, are recorded and may be used any way a prosecutor sees fit.
“Jonas.” Without consciously thinking about it, I switch to Deitsch. “Everything we say is being recorded.”
He takes the information in stride, as if it’s the last thing on his mind and he doesn’t care one way or another. “You think I’m going to admit to something that will put the nail in my coffin, Katie?”
“Just so you’re aware.” I don’t smile this time. “I need to know what happened.”
He leans back in the chair and shakes his head. “I didn’t kill Ananias Stoltzfus, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“They arrested you,” I say.
He heaves a sigh, as if the thought of wading into the explanation of how he ended up here exhausts him. “It’s a long story that goes back a few years.”
I motion to our surroundings. “I think we have time.”
He ducks his head, sheepish. The exhale that follows is a disconsolate sound that goes through me as wrenchingly as a sob.
“I was nineteen when we left Painters Mill and moved here to Big Valley,” he tells me.
I stare at him, wait, surprised because even after all these years I have to steel myself against the punch of remembrance. The pain of the fifteen-year-old girl I’d been and the dark days that followed his departure was excruciating and real. I’d never felt so lost. So betrayed. I was broken in so many ways I didn’t think I’d ever be able to put all the pieces of me back together.