Assaulted Pretzel (22 page)

With a gentle firmness, Benjamin steered the horse off the main road and onto the familiar dirt path that would take them to the top of the wooded hill he’d first shared with her two months earlier. Once they were on the winding trail, he relaxed his hold on the reins and turned to Claire. “Your life is stressful?”

Realizing she’d given a false impression, she rushed to set things right. “No, not in the way you must think. My life is very calm now. I love my quiet time with Aunt Diane, I love meeting the guests who check in to the inn each week, and I love the homey feel of that big, rambling house.” She raised her chin and breathed in the clean country air. “And I love the shop. I love seeing all of the items Martha and Esther make, I love seeing my own candles on the shelves and knowing customers enjoy them, too, and I love the friendships I’ve made with Esther and Ruth and Eli and…you…
because
of my shop.”

“Then I do not understand what causes the stress you speak of.”

She rested her hand on his forearm and did her best to ignore the warmth she felt beneath his sleeve. “Could you stop the buggy for just a moment? I think it might be easier to show you.”

With a tug, Benjamin brought the horse to a stop, the chirping of some distant birds and the gentle tap of branches above their heads taking over for the
clip-clop
of the animal’s feet. She closed her eyes and savored nature’s soothing melody intertwined with the rise and fall of Benjamin’s quiet breath. “Do you hear that?”

She opened her eyes at his audible pause. “You don’t, do you?”

“I do not hear anything besides the birds and the trees.”

“Exactly. All you hear out here are God’s noises. In town and over by the inn, it’s different. Sure, the traffic sounds aren’t as pervasive as they were in New York, but it’s still there. Horns still honk on occasion, car engines still rev, doorbells still ring, and lawn mowers still sputter to life.” She held her hands out to her sides and motioned toward the absence of those same things around them. “But here…where you live…it’s not like that. I guess that’s why I feel my happiest when I’m here. Like I’m closer to God, somehow.”

When he said nothing, she looked back at him to find that he was staring intently at her. She felt her cheeks warm in a way for which the last of the sun’s rays couldn’t take credit.

“You really feel that?” he finally asked, his normally strong voice almost hoarse.

“I feel that every single time, Benjamin.” And it was true. She just hadn’t intended to sound quite so Pollyanna when she said it.

Suddenly uncomfortable, she hooked her finger over her shoulder in the direction of the picnic basket and made a show of sniffing the air. “Ruth didn’t happen to pack fried chicken in that basket, did she?”

A slow smile made its way across Benjamin’s face just before he urged the horse to resume its trip up the slow, winding hill. “Yah, I think that she did. That is good, yah?”

She had to laugh. “It is
very
good.” She looked behind them at the basket and the folded red-checkered blanket it rested on. “How did she have the time to put that together with everything else your sister does at Shoo Fly?”

“That is Ruth’s job. Farming is what Eli and I do.”

“Ruth bakes cookies and pies. She doesn’t pack picnic dinners for fellow shopkeepers,” she reminded.

“Such picnics are a new idea Ruth has for bake shop. She will pack picnics for visitors to eat at the park. She will be happy to try on us, first.”

She clapped her hands together at the news. “Oh, Benjamin, what a wonderful idea. There are so many pretty little spots in and around Heavenly that the tourists will be able to enjoy even more now with an idea like that.” She felt the cadence of the horse slow ever so slightly as they moved through the trail’s lone covered bridge and emerged into the wide-open clearing on the other side. “Ruth really is a very smart businesswoman.”

This time, when Benjamin tugged the horse to a stop, it was for real. Jumping down from his seat, he came around the front of the horse to offer Claire a hand down. When she was safely on the ground, he reached into the back of the buggy and retrieved the basket and blanket from inside. “Where should we sit?”

She looked around them, her gaze quickly coming to rest on the large rock where they’d sat to stargaze as summer drew to a close. With the blanket spread out across the top, it would be a perfect makeshift table. She said as much to Benjamin.

Five minutes later, their outdoor table was complete with heaping plates of food and a small vase of fresh flowers Ruth had sent along for ambience. He pointed to one end of the rock. “Would you like to sit, Claire?”

Nodding, she took the place he’d indicated while simultaneously wondering what, exactly, Benjamin had said to his sister about the nature of their picnic. Surely Ruth had to know it was a simple friendship…

“You should see your face as I see it right now,” Benjamin said. “It makes me think of Eli and Ruth when they were little and Dat had made a toy for them.”

She struggled to find words to describe the smile she knew she wore despite the nagging reality that tugged at her heart. “When I was a little girl, I used to dream about going on a picnic with my prince one day.”

Benjamin’s brows furrowed beneath the brim of his hat. “I am not a prince. I am Amish.”

My Amish prince…

In an effort to keep things light, she made a face. “I was ten when I dreamed that. But even though I’m older now, the notion of a picnic still makes me happy. Hence, the smile I can feel on my face.”

He bowed his head over his plate and offered a prayer before encouraging her to try his sister’s food. “I asked Ruth to put in chocolate chip cookies. She said they were your favorite.”

She looked up from her plate, the question that had been flitting in and out of her head since he’d first mentioned Ruth finally finding its way out of her mouth. “Didn’t Ruth think it was strange you were taking me on a picnic?”

“She did not say.”

A second thought struck on the heels of the first, widening her eyes as it did. “You didn’t tell her about Isaac, did you?”

“I said I would not.” Benjamin worked his way around the chicken bone and then deposited it back on his plate. “Ruth worries like you do.”

She stopped midbite of her own chicken and stared at the man. “Ruth suspects Isaac, too?”

“No, she worries about everyone. You worry about your aunt and your friends. Ruth worries about Eli.”

“She worries about Eli? Why?”

He reached for a second piece of chicken but paused it just shy of his mouth. “She worries for Eli as we all do. We worry his temper will cause problems.”

Returning her chicken to the plate, she reached for one of two bottles of water Ruth had included in the basket. “The two of you don’t need to worry about Eli and his temper as much anymore. He will keep it in check because of Esther. He doesn’t want to do anything to lose the trust of the woman he wants to marry.”

He offered a slow nod. “I believe that, too. And it is as good a reason as any for Eli to grow into a man.”

“Then Ruth can stop worrying as much, right?”

“Eli is not all that worries Ruth. She worries for her big brother, too.”

Claire looked down at her plate, mentally ticking off the names of each of Ruth’s brothers and sisters. When she was done, she met Benjamin’s eyes with her own. “But you are her only older brother, aren’t you?”

“Yah.”

She felt her stomach churn with dread. “But
why
? Are you sick?”

He looked down at his plate and shook his head. “I am not sick.”

“Then why is she worried about you?”

Slowly, his chin lifted until his focus was back on Claire. “She worries that I am alone. She worries that ten years have passed since Elizabeth. She worries that I will live a lonely life.”

Elizabeth.

Benjamin’s first wife.

The same Amish woman Jakob had been in love with at one time, too.

There was so much she wanted to know about Benjamin’s first wife, questions that came to her at the oddest of times. Yet, at the same time, they were questions sure to yield answers she didn’t necessarily want to hear.

Instead, she searched for something to say that would keep her own hard-to-explain heart in one piece. “Do you worry about that?”

His gaze left hers and traveled to a distant place she could only guess about. “Three or four months ago, I did not worry. But now, I do not know. I think there is worry but it is for choices I did not expect.”

“Choices?”

A flash of something resembling pain skittered across his face only to disappear behind stoicism in both word and stance. “Choices I can not make.”

She reached again for her water, observing the man on the other side of the picnic blanket as she did. For someone as normally straightforward as Benjamin Miller, his cryptic answers left her feeling confused and ready for a change in topic, even if that change brought them back to the same stressful place she’d been anxious to leave when they set out on their picnic.

“So I know I threw a lot on you this morning about Isaac, but had you given any more thought to the things I said about Daniel before that?”

“Daniel…” Another pause was quickly replaced by the man’s full attention—both verbally and visually. “I did. But today, after what you said about Isaac, I wonder if there is not a different person who could have killed the toy maker.”

Her shoulders drooped under the weight of his words. “Oh, Benjamin. If we’re right and Isaac did this, how on earth are we going to tell Martha…
and Esther
?” There
was so much about uncovering the identity of Walter Snow’s murderer that had been exciting, but nothing more so than seeing the subsequent smile on Esther’s face. But now, she couldn’t help but cringe at the image of having to tell the young woman that her Uncle Isaac had snapped and done the unthinkable.

“I do not speak of Isaac. I speak of a different person.”

She stared at him across the mouth of her water bottle and tried to make sense of what she was hearing. “A different person? I don’t…wait. Are you saying you think someone other than Daniel or Isaac killed Robert Karble?”

For several long minutes, he said nothing. But then, just as she feared he wasn’t going to answer, he finally did, the hesitant way in which he shared his thoughts out of character for a man with such quiet and understated confidence. “I do not know much of the English world. But today, while I was in the fields, I tried to think of how I would feel if I learned such news of Elizabeth.”

At a loss for what he was getting at, she simply kept quiet, her thoughts racing to dissect his words while her ears stayed tuned for further clarification.

Benjamin did not disappoint. “
I
could not kill at that news, but perhaps someone else could.”

She set her water bottle back on the blanket and leaned forward. “Benjamin, please. I’m not following what you’re saying.”

Dragging a hand down his clean-shaven face, the man released a troubled sigh. “Women kill in the English world, yah?”

She drew back. “Women? Of course. Statistically I imagine men are responsible for far more of the country’s murders than women are, but they by no means have a corner on the market. Why do you ask?”

“Today. At the shop. You feared the toy maker’s wife would be hurt if she found out about Isaac, yah?”

“Yah—I mean, yes,” she quickly corrected. “Ann just lost her husband. She can’t possibly handle hearing that kind of news right now. Especially when all she ever wanted was to give Robert a child of their own.”

“But what if she had known of Isaac
before
the toy maker’s death? Would she still be hurt or would she be angry?”

B
enjamin and his buggy were halfway down Lighted Way before Claire finally turned and went inside. She tried to rationalize her decision to linger on the inn’s front porch to a few more moments of fresh air before retiring for the night, but it was more than that and she knew it.

Spending the evening with Benjamin had been magical. Simply being in his presence had a way of making her feel as if the last piece in her self-puzzle had been set in place, allowing her to finally complete the picture she’d always envisioned for her life.

Moving to Heavenly had brought her peace. The kind of peace that enabled her to accept who she was and what she wanted for herself.

Opening Heavenly Treasures had been about accomplishing a dream and becoming a part of something special.

Spending time with Benjamin helped reinforce something she’d only recently started to believe. Suddenly, the
notion that she had a lot to offer as a person seemed to be shared with someone else—someone other than her aunt or her employee-turned-friend, Esther.

There was no reason for Benjamin to seek her out the way he did. No reason he needed to care about her accidental sleuthing. No reason he needed to ask his sister to pack a picnic dinner for an English woman. Yet he did. Because he enjoyed her company every bit as much as she enjoyed his. And it felt good.

She shut the door behind her and then stepped into the parlor, the shadows from the many dancing candle flames in the room calling to her with their usual beckoning gesture. One day, she knew she’d buy a small home of her own, but for now the inn was everything she wanted and needed in a home. It was warm, it was inviting, and it was safe.