Suspendered Sentence (An Amish Mystery) (18 page)

C
laire lifted her face to the noon sun and allowed it to warm her from the outside in. All morning long she’d been saddled with an inexplicable chill she couldn’t quite shake or accurately attribute to any one particular thing.

Sure, it had been chilly when she walked to work that morning. But in the grand scheme of things, she’d contended with far colder mornings during the months of January and February.

The heat had been on the fritz when she first arrived at the shop, but a call to her fellow shopkeeper and landlord, Al Gussman, had gotten things under control and back to a pleasant temperature within an hour of opening.

She’d tried to keep her shivering to a minimum as she attended to customers and various tasks around the shop, but when Annie offered to hold down the fort while Claire took a break to warm up, she knew she’d been unsuccessful.

A pulsing vibration just beside her hip made her jump and Claire reached into her pocket for her phone. A quick check of the display screen ignited the chill all over again.

For a moment, she considered letting it go to voice mail, but knew she couldn’t. Not if she wanted answers, anyway.

Flipping the phone open, she held it to her ear, the chill that had permeated her body all morning successfully moving into her voice. “Good afternoon, Jakob. What can I do for you?”

A long hesitation was broken first by a gargled noise, and then a worried plea. “Oh no. Please tell me you got the message last night.”

“No. No message.”

The initial gargled noise turned into a frustrated groan. “I called your cell, Claire. I left a message telling you my meeting went longer than I expected and that I wanted to reschedule for tonight. If you’re free, of course.”

The sun cleared the top of Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe and bathed the alley in blink-worthy brightness. More than anything, she wanted to chalk up his unexplained no-show the previous evening to a misunderstanding, but something inside her made her falter, and she hated it.

She
knew
Jakob. She
knew
what kind of man he was—his decent ways and his unshakable integrity. Just because her ex-husband had made a sport out of standing her up didn’t mean Jakob was destined to do the same.

Still, she had to be sure . . .

“Hold on a second,” she murmured as she pulled the phone from her ear and looked down at the screen. Shielding the sun from her eyes with her left hand, she went into her message panel and scrolled down to the line dedicated to voice mails. Sure enough, a number one was listed beside the appropriate icon, yet nothing next to the missed-call category. Slowly, she lifted the device back to her ear. “I’m sorry, Jakob. I . . . I never heard the call or noticed the message.”

“You thought I stood you up, didn’t you?”

She nodded, only to realize her mistake and correct it with her verbal assent.

“I can assure you, right now, that I will never stand you up without a darn good reason—like police business. And even then, with the exception of a complete emergency, I will always let you know that I’m not coming and why.”

She swallowed over the sudden tightness in her throat and found the words she needed to say. “I’m sorry, Jakob. I’m sorry for assuming something about you because of the actions of someone else. I really should have known better.”

“Hurt at the hands of people we love and trust cuts deeper than even we realize, sometimes. I get that.” She heard a squeak in the background and knew he was calling from his desk chair, the image of the handsome detective in his office birthing her first true smile of the day. “So, since you didn’t get to listen to the message, I should probably bring you up to speed on why I had to put our evening on hold.”

“You don’t owe me any explanation, Jakob. Just knowing you tried to call is enough.”

“No, it’s not.” He paused momentarily before filling in the blanks as quickly and succinctly as possible. “When I saw you just after closing last night, I was on my way out to Ben’s place.”

“You went to Benjamin’s house? Why?”

“I wanted to talk to him directly, to see if he could shed light on Elizabeth’s mood and demeanor the last few weeks of her life—things that now, in the wake of finding her journal, might be noteworthy.”

“Okay . . .” she prompted, intrigued.

“At first, the meeting was rather stilted. I asked basic questions and Ben gave one- and two-word answers. But as we began to revisit the past by way of my questions, we found that there was a lot to say about a lot of things. Some, of course, related directly to my reason for being there, and some didn’t, but the overall conversation ended up going much, much later than I’d originally thought.”

Suddenly, it didn’t matter that she’d spent most of the night staring up at the ceiling, berating herself for trusting another man. It didn’t matter that she’d moved around the store that morning in a complete funk with a side order of incessant shivering. And it didn’t matter that all of it had been for naught. What
did
matter was that two men who’d once been friends had found a way to communicate with each other despite decades of bitterness and a belief system that only furthered that divide.

“I’m glad you stayed with Benjamin. I’m glad the two of you worked out your differences . . .”

“For the first time since I was probably eight years old, I realized that my father’s preference for Ben wasn’t Ben’s fault. He didn’t seek to make me look bad by building a really good chicken coop or chopping more wood than I did. And it wasn’t his fault that Elizabeth was interested in him instead of me. It just was.
I’m
the one who chose to blame my problems with my father on Ben.
I’m
the one who chose to see Elizabeth’s choice as some sort of final betrayal on his part.
I’m
the one who destroyed our friendship, not him.”

She leaned against the shop’s side door and sent up a silent prayer of praise for bringing a man like Jakob into her life—a man who had the maturity to open his eyes and truly
see
.

Still, she rushed to remove at least some of the weight he now shouldered. “Even if none of that had happened, the Ordnung
is the reason you can’t be friends, now.”

“True. But the Ordnung wasn’t responsible for the anger I’ve carried in my heart toward Ben all these years. That’s on me . . . and it was wrong. My father’s hang-ups were his alone.”

A telltale
clip-clop
at the entrance to the alley forced her eyes open and her attention to the approaching buggy, the hatted man seated behind the trusted horse acknowledging Claire with a quick nod and an even quicker smile. “Speaking of Ben, he just pulled up for the Miller brothers’ noon check on their sister.”

“I’ll let you go so you can say hi. But before I do, will you consider giving me another shot at our date tonight?”

“There’s nothing to consider. I’m looking forward to it very much.” She heard the breathless excitement in her voice and knew he heard it, too.

“Any thoughts on whether you’d prefer the drive, the coffee, or the movie?” he asked via a smile she didn’t need to see to know was there.

“I think the movie sounds most fun.”

“Me, too. I’ll pick you up at seven, okay?”

“I’ll be ready.” She flipped the phone closed, held it to her face for an extra minute, and then slipped it back into her pocket as she stood to greet Benjamin. “While I always love seeing your brother, Eli, it sure is nice to see you around here again.”

Ben crossed in front of his horse with an unfamiliar gait and an even more unfamiliar pair of dark circles rimming his lackluster blue eyes. “Claire.”

“You look awful. What’s wrong?” Then, realizing how she sounded, she hurried to explain. “You look like you haven’t slept in days. Did something happen?”

“I slept last night. For a few hours. But it was the first time since I found Elizabeth’s notebook.”

She lowered herself back to the step she’d inhabited while talking to Jakob and patted the top one for Ben. He remained standing, his eyes now hooded. “Was it a special memory of Elizabeth that finally enabled you to relax and sleep?” she asked.

“I have many memories. On many, many days. Her smile. Her laugh. But, most of all, I cannot forget the way she stared into the fields like she was waiting for something.” He pulled a sugar cube from his pocket and offered it to his horse, the animal as pleased with his owner’s gentle touch as he was with the treat. “When I would ask her, she would wipe at her face and then go back to her chores, saying all was fine. Now, because of her written words, I know that she wiped tears she did not want me to see.”

Oh, how she wanted to argue, to make up some sort of excuse that would remove the anguish from her friend’s heart, but she couldn’t. From everything she’d heard from Ben, Elizabeth had been a troubled woman her last few years on earth, a fact underscored by the Amish woman’s own written words. But just as Jakob had come to realize Ben was not responsible for his father’s actions, Ben was also not responsible for Elizabeth’s.

How to say that, though, was the hard part.

Benjamin had loved his wife. He’d asked for her hand in marriage and committed his life to her. Knowing, after the fact, that she had been tormented by a secret she never should have kept, had to be torturous in its own right.

“But Jakob helped me to see that her step was lighter her last day.”

“Her step was lighter?” she repeated, confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Again, Ben stroked his horse, his back to Claire. “It is there, on the last page of her notebook. She was going to tell. To know that she would soon be free of her secret would give her peace.” His hand dropped to his side and he turned until his gaze was on no one but Claire. “Before the notebook, I knew her death was God’s will and that she died content. After the notebook, I feared she died troubled. Now, because of Jakob, I believe she died with peace.”

Unsure of what to say, she seized on the mention of a man she knew they both treasured. “I’m glad you and Jakob were able to talk last night. It’s apparent you both helped each other accept something that needed to be accepted in order for each of you to find peace, as well.”

“Jakob is a good man.”

This time when her throat tightened, she didn’t fight the feeling so fast. Instead, she let herself mull over the many precipitating reasons for her reaction, not the least of which was the obvious thawing that was beginning to take place between two childhood friends and the hope it brought to her own heart.

“Now it is time for Zebediah and Waneta to know peace,” Ben said as he looked up at the sky.

“You mean Sadie’s parents?”

“Yah. It is as Jakob said. To know the truth is to be at peace.”

Chapter 18

“T
o know the truth is to be at peace,” Claire repeated beneath her breath as she stepped through the back door of Heavenly Treasures and cocked her ear toward the front room. From the snippets of conversation she could make out, Annie was wrapping up a transaction with a customer with such ease Claire couldn’t help but be impressed by the teenager’s work ethic all over again.

Suddenly, because of Annie, Claire had options again. No longer did she have to work open to close, seven days a week. No longer did she have to eat her lunch between customers or forgo it completely in order to get her list of daily tasks completed in a somewhat timely fashion.

And she had Esther to thank for it—Esther and her ability to know what Claire needed even when Claire didn’t.

“Sitting in the sunlight surely agreed with you, yah?”

Startled, she looked toward the showroom doorway to find Annie staring at her with an openly amused expression.

“I, uh—”

“You look as I feel after I have sat in the sun with Smokey.”

“Who’s Smokey?” she asked.

“He is the barn cat. When I am tired when I should not be, or I am sad about something, I like to walk into the field next to our barn and lie down in the sun. Sometimes I do not know Smokey has followed me until he climbs on my stomach and begins to purr. Soon, I feel better.”

“Thanks for suggesting the break, Annie. I guess I didn’t realize how badly I needed one.”

“You are happy now?”

She thought back to her conversation with Jakob, the smile spawned by the memory stretching her mouth wide. “Yes, I am happy—”

The jingle of the front door had barely registered in her conscious thought when she heard an oddly familiar voice calling her name. “Miss Weatherly? Are you here?”

“I’ll be right with you,” she called before returning her focus to Annie. “Your lunch is in the office, right?” At Annie’s nod, she crossed to the doorway, patting the teenager’s shoulder as she passed. “You’ve put in a really solid morning, Annie. Why don’t you take your lunch outside on the stoop and enjoy a little sun yourself.”

“Are you sure?” Annie asked.

“I’m sure.” She walked into the showroom only to stop, midstep, as the man behind the voice materialized in the flesh. “Mr. O’Neil?”

“Please, call me Mike.” The mayoral candidate stood awkwardly beside the paneled upright and shifted from foot to foot, periodically swiping his thick hand through his close-cropped hair. “I was hoping I’d find you in today.”