Assaulted Pretzel (21 page)

Eli and Esther were good people. They deserved happiness with each other.

Releasing the sigh that seemed to come out of nowhere, Claire turned back to the counter and the temporarily sidelined task of placing price tags on the latest round of handmade items Martha had sent in with Esther the previous day. Pricing was just one of many mundane tasks to do around
the shop that day, and the longer she put it off, the later she’d be staying at the store.

“Good morning, Claire.”

She looked up from the hand-sewn doll dress in her hands to find Benjamin standing in the open doorway between the actual store and the back room, his blue eyes trained on her face. Setting the dress down on the counter, she used the sides of her chocolate brown skirt to erase the sudden clamminess of her palms. “Benjamin. Hi. I saw you in the alley just now but I assumed you were here to check on Ruth.”

A flash of red rose in his cheeks only to disappear with the swipe of a strong, callused hand and a curiously timed cough. “I will look in on Ruth, but I want to see how you are this morning.”

She felt the matching flush as it marched across her own face, claiming all attempts at an intelligent reply. “Oh. Okay. Sure.”

He allowed himself to take in her day’s attire, his gaze moving quickly down the sage green sweater set that looked surprisingly good with the midcalf-length skirt she’d paired with simple boots. When he reached the ground, he returned his focus to her face and the simple high ponytail she’d pulled together as she was walking out of the inn that morning.

“You, you look very…pretty. But that does not stop the worry I see in you. Or the worry I feel
for
you.”

His voice still held its normal strength, yet, at the same time, it was raspy with an emotion that seemed out of character. It left her scrambling for something to say that could lessen the sudden charge in the room.

“Please do not worry about me, Benjamin. We both have enough on our plate right now without adding things that just don’t matter.”

“You matter, Claire. To me.”

She blinked away the moist haze ushered in by his words. “I…I’m fine. Really.”

He took a handful of tentative steps into the showroom only to stop just shy of the items she was no longer pricing. “I thought about what you said. About Daniel and his toy business. I do not want to believe he would be driven to sin by money. It is not his way. It is not the Amish way.”

Twelve hours ago, she’d have given some thought to arguing Benjamin’s claim; the note from Sarah, coupled with everything she’d learned from Esther about Daniel’s farm, giving her grounds to at least consider Daniel Lapp for murder. But now, after her talk with Melinda and her own observations at the monthly business meeting that morning, her suspicions were shifting.

To a
different
Amish man.

She allowed herself to meet Benjamin’s intense gaze despite the emotion she was still fighting to hold back with a few well-timed blinks. Only now, the confusing feelings his genuine concern and telling words had stirred up were slowly morphing into more of the worry variety. How did she tell him she suspected yet another member of his peaceful community? How did she tell him that a man he knew and respected had come into the Amish community on a lie?

You don’t…

But even as her heart nixed the notion of uttering Isaac’s name aloud, her head was all too aware of the plaguing questions that needed to be asked and answered. By somebody.

“There is something else—something new, is there not?”

His spot-on assessment of her mental state renewed the threat of tears and started the rapid-fire blinking once again. Never, in her life, had she ever met a man who seemed as
if he was able to see inside her soul and know when something was wrong regardless of whatever false bravado she felt compelled to display. Finding him now—and in an Amish form—seemed almost punishing.

“Benjamin Miller is Amish, dear. Forgetting that will only bring you heartache.”

She closed her eyes against the mantra Aunt Diane had taken to spouting during their many special talks and willed her heart to embrace the sentiment. Although she found the increase in similar reminders tiresome at times, she couldn’t argue the why behind the words. Benjamin touched something inside her, plain and simple. And no matter how many times she denied that fact to her aunt, she knew, deep down, it was true.

So, too, did Diane.

“I am here.”

The feel of Benjamin’s hand on her arm, coupled with the sincerity of his words in her ear, forced her to open her eyes and focus. “I just learned that someone who is close to people I know is not what he seems. Or, rather, he is what he seems
now
, but he didn’t come about it in the way they believe.”

Now that the floodgate was open, she began to ramble. “I mean, it wasn’t his fault; he wasn’t party to the misinformation and didn’t even know about it himself until he opened a letter a few weeks ago…but he does now and I worry what that knowledge will do for his relationships and what it may have made him do to one that didn’t go as he’d planned.”

There. She’d said it.

Though, what exactly she’d said was hard enough to remember let alone try to decipher. Even for her.

With obvious reluctance, Benjamin removed his hand
from Claire’s upper arm and took a long, deep breath, exhaling it just as slowly. “A letter?”

She nodded. “It was written for him more than twenty years ago and…” The seemingly generic story crumbled on her tongue as Benjamin shifted from foot to foot in a way that suggested he understood far more of the story than she’d chosen to share.

His response served as confirmation. “You’re talking about Isaac, are you not?”

Unsure of what to say, she looked down at the floor.

“I have always wondered about his mother. I think many Amish did. She did not know things she should have known,” Benjamin explained before allowing his gaze to fix on a spot somewhere over Claire’s head. Geographically he was standing in Heavenly Treasures just as surely as Claire. But in terms of whatever was playing through his thoughts at that moment, he was somewhere very different. “I remember when Isaac’s mother came here. I was ten, maybe eleven. She sat on a bench next to me at church that first day.”

She waited for him to explain how the woman’s choice of church seating had alerted a young Benjamin to something being amiss, but, instead, he went on, citing a few more examples as he did.

“Then, when it was her turn to have services at her house, I went with Dat on the bench wagon the day before the service. When I went to the door to tell her Dat had arrived with benches, she did not know she was to host.” Benjamin sidestepped his way to the edge of the counter and leaned heavily against it, the weight of his childhood suspicions coming to roost.

And then she got it. Regardless of which Amish community you lived in, Amish families took turns hosting a
Sunday service for their district. It wasn’t something confined just to Heavenly. As a supposedly Amish woman, Isaac’s mother should have known that.

“But what was it about her sitting with you that you found odd?” Claire finally asked.

“Men and boys sit on one side of the room for service. Women and girls sit on the other.” Benjamin paused to study her before going on, his not-so-subtle attempt to gauge her reaction to the tradition catching her by surprise. “I whispered her mistake to her. But even as young boy, I knew something was not right. These were things she should have known.”

She willed herself to concentrate on the conversation unfolding between them rather than the flutter in her chest every time he looked at her in the way that he did. “Will Isaac be kicked out?”

Benjamin pushed off the counter, his head shaking side to side almost immediately. “No. Of course not. Isaac was baptized. He accepted the Amish life for himself. He is Amish now just as I am Amish.”

She inhaled a sense of relief only to have it disappear against a reality she’d managed to ignore thus far. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

“I do not see why I—”

“Because his real identity stands to hurt more than just Isaac. And she’s been through so much already this week that I…I can’t imagine burdening her with something like that.”

Benjamin drew back in confusion. “I do not understand. Who do you speak of being upset? Mary Schrock died many, many years ago.”

She opened her mouth to answer but closed it just as quickly. The way Isaac had come to be was not all that
unusual any longer. Television programs and newspaper stories had desensitized the English to such accounts, removing much of the surprise to such real-world tales in the process. But for the Amish, the notion of a child growing up amid lies of their paternity was a novelty.

“Claire?” Benjamin prodded again. “Please. I do not understand what you say.”

There was a part of her that wanted to tell him everything about Isaac’s true paternity and the fears it had stoked in her heart. But there was also a part of her—a part she hadn’t been aware of until that very moment—that wanted to view the world through Benjamin’s untainted eyes, instead. After all, it was a far nicer view than the one her world afforded at times.

Knowing she had to give him some sort of answer, she offered the best one she could without telling more than absolutely necessary. “I’m talking about the woman who was married to Isaac’s father. Learning of Isaac’s existence on the heels of her husband’s death might just be the thing that brings on a nervous breakdown.”

For several long minutes, Benjamin said nothing. He merely stood there, watching her. And as he did, she realized she didn’t mind. In fact, if she was honest with herself, there was something comforting about being in a room with this man. He didn’t judge, he didn’t saddle her with expectations to be something she wasn’t, and he seemed to genuinely care about her thoughts and her feelings.

Eventually, though, he spoke, the accuracy of his quiet assessment more than a little impressive. “Isaac’s father was the man from the toy company, yah? The man who was murdered at the festival?”

She tried to nod but wasn’t entirely sure if she’d been successful.

“That is why he came to Heavenly to make our toys.” Since he hadn’t phrased his comment in the form of a question, she simply remained silent as Benjamin continued connecting the dots. “But it did not go the way Isaac wished. Instead of good, it turned bad.”

“Or it would have if Robert Karble hadn’t been murdered.” She hated that she had to add that caveat to Benjamin’s synopsis of the events, but knowing what she now knew about the originating letter, the deal-gone-bad, Daniel’s partial farm, and the victim’s ransacked room, she simply couldn’t ignore its presence.

Silence blanketed the space between them for the second time and she found herself wondering if she’d overstepped. In less than twenty-four hours, she’d all but accused two different Amish men from Benjamin’s community of the unthinkable. But just as she was searching for something to say to offset her potentially offending comment, his mouth turned upward in the faintest hint of a smile.

“You need time to not worry. Time to be at ease and to smile. The worry will not go away because you do, but it will be easier to face after some time to take a breath.” He swept his hand toward the screen window she’d first spied him from. “I go next door, to the bake shop. Ruth will pack dinner. I will get it…and you…when the shop is closed. We will have a picnic and smile. When it is done, I will take you back to the inn and you will sleep. We will decide what to do about Isaac and Daniel tomorrow.”

“
We
will decide?” she repeated in an emotion-filled voice she could do little to squelch.

“Yah. We will do. Together.”

She considered arguing, citing his friendship with both men as a reason he shouldn’t get involved, but she couldn’t. Because deep down inside, she knew she wanted Benjamin’s
help in tracking down Robert’s killer. He was smart, he was observant, he had access to the Amish in ways she didn’t, and he wasn’t one to rush to a careless conclusion.

The fact they’d also be spending more time together
as
they pursued the truth was completely beside the point.

Or was it?

I
f Claire could freeze the highlights of her time in Heavenly and stick them on a shelf to be relived at will, there was little doubt which ones she’d choose…

Her first morning in town.

The day she told Diane she was staying.

The first moment she saw the Heavenly Treasures’ shingle above the door of her shop.

And that exact second; sitting on the buggy seat beside Benjamin with a carefully packed picnic basket behind them and the anticipation of their time together lifting her heart in a way she couldn’t ignore.

She knew Diane was right. She knew there could never be anything between them of any romantic nature, but still it felt nice. Nice to know her company was enjoyed, nice to know someone wanted to get to know the person she was inside, nice to know her happiness meant so much to another human being.

“I never get tired of the peacefulness I feel every time I travel this part of town,” she mused above the hypnotic sounds of the horse. “It’s like your way of life quiets the everyday stress of my own.”