Page 1 of Shamed

PROLOGUE

No one went to the old Schattenbaum place anymore. No one had lived there since the flood back in 1969 washed away the crops and swept the outhouse and one of the barns into Painters Creek. Rumor had it Mr. Schattenbaum’s 1960 Chevy Corvair was still sitting in the gully where the water left it.

The place had never been grand. Even in its heyday, the house had been run-down. The roof shingles were rusty and curled. Mr. Schattenbaum had talked about painting the house, but he’d never gotten around to it. Sometimes, he didn’t even cut the grass. Despite its dilapidated state, once upon a time the Schattenbaum house had been the center of Mary Yoder’s world, filled with laughter, love, and life.

The Schattenbaums had six kids, and even though they weren’t Amish, Mary’s mamm had let her visit—and Mary did just that every chance she got. The Schattenbaums had four spotted ponies, after all; they had baby pigs, a slew of donkeys, a big tom turkey, and too many goats to count. Mary had been ten years old that last summer, and she’d had the time of her life.

It was hard for her to believe fifty years had passed; she was a grandmother now, a widow, and had seen her sixtieth birthday just last week. Every time she drove the buggy past the old farm, the years melted away and she always thought: If a place could speak, the stories it would tell.

Mary still lived in her childhood home, with her daughter and son-in-law now, half a mile down the road. She made it a point to walk this way when the opportunity presented itself. In spring, she cut the irises that still bloomed in the flower bed at the back of the house. In summer, she came for the peonies. In fall, it was all about the walnuts. According to Mr. Schattenbaum, his grandfather had planted a dozen or so black walnut trees. They were a hundred years old now and flourished where the backyard had once been. Every fall, the trees dropped thousands of nuts that kept Mary baking throughout the year—and her eight grandchildren well supplied with walnut layer cake.

The house looked much the same as it did all those years ago. The barn where Mary had spent so many afternoons cooing over those ponies had collapsed in a windstorm a few years back. The rafters and siding were slowly being reclaimed by a jungle of vines, overgrowth, and waist-high grass.

“Grossmammi! Do you want me to open the gate?”

Mary looked over at the girl on the seat beside her, and her heart soared. She’d brought her granddaughters with her to help pick up walnuts. Annie was five and the picture of her mamm at that age: Blond hair that easily tangled. Blue eyes that cried a little too readily. A thoughtful child already talking about teaching in the two-room schoolhouse down the road.

At seven, Elsie was a sweet, effervescent girl. She was one of the special ones, curious and affectionate, with a plump little body and round eyeglasses with lenses as thick as a pop bottle. She was a true gift from God, and Mary loved her all the more because of her differences.

“Might be a good idea for me to stop the buggy first, don’t you think?” Tugging the reins, Mary slowed the horse to a walk and made the turn into the weed-riddled gravel lane. “Whoa.”

She could just make out the blazing orange canopies of the trees behind the house, and she felt that familiar tug of homecoming, of nostalgia.

“Hop on down now,” she told the girls. “Open that gate. Watch out for that barbed wire, you hear?”

Both children clambered from the buggy. Their skirts swished around their legs as they ran to the rusted steel gate, their hands making short work of the chain.

Mary drove the horse through, then stopped to wait for the girls. “Come on, little ones! Leave the gate open. I hear all those pretty walnuts calling for us!”

Giggling, the girls climbed into the buggy.

“Get your bags ready,” Mary told them as she drove past the house. “I think we’re going to harvest enough this afternoon to fill all those baskets we brought.”

She smiled as the two little ones gathered their bags. Mary had made them from burlap last year for just this occasion. The bags were large, with double handles easily looped over a small shoulder. She’d embroidered green walnut leaves on the front of Elsie’s bag. On Annie’s she’d stitched a brown walnut that had been cracked open, exposing all that deliciousness inside.

Mary drove the buggy around to the back of the house, where the yard had once been. A smile whispered across her mouth when she saw that the old tire swing was still there. She stopped the horse in the shade of a hackberry tree where the grass was tall enough for the mare to nibble, and she drew in the sight, felt that familiar swell in her chest. Picking up their gloves and her own bag, Mary climbed down. For a moment, she stood there and listened to the place. The chirp of a cardinal from the tallest tree. The whisper of wind through the treetops.

“Girls, I think we’ve chosen the perfect day to harvest walnuts,” she said.

Bag draped over her shoulder, Elsie followed suit. Annie was still a little thing, so Mary reached for her and set her on the ground. She handed the two girls their tiny leather gloves.

“I don’t want to see any stained fingers,” she told them.

“You, too, Grossmammi.”

Chuckling, Mary walked with them to the stand of trees, where the sun dappled the ground at her feet.

“Look how big that tree is, Grossmammi!” Annie exclaimed.

“That’s my favorite,” Mary replied.

“Look at all the walnuts!” Elsie said with an exuberance only a seven-year-old could manage.

“God blessed us with a good crop this year,” Mary replied.

“Are we going to make cakes, Grossmammi?”

“Of course we are,” Mary assured her.