Taken for English (38 page)

The pit of her stomach hardened.

“I’ll bet Bryan didn’t tell you that we got identical straps and water bottles about two years ago.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“They were a perk from the gym where we worked out in Colorado Springs.”

“Oh. Well, that sounds healthy.”

“Perhaps you miss my point.”

Ruth held her tongue, grateful to be progressing toward a well-populated block.

“My point,” Alan said in his easygoing tone, “is that you can’t be sure that strap is mine. It could be Bryan’s.”

“Why would it be Bryan’s? He would have just said so.”

“Would he?”

She said nothing.

“I’ve known Bryan a long time. I would hate for you to get hurt because things are not what you think they are.” An alarm sounded on Alan’s phone. “Oh, I gotta go.”

He tapped her shoulder and began to sprint down Main Street.

Rufus read David’s letter again before turning on the cell phone he used for business and calling the shop in Colorado Springs.

David could guarantee one hope chest larger than the ones on the store floor and was waiting to hear from another customer about a set of matching bookcases.

He set the phone down and began mental calculations. While Rufus was grateful that David carried his furniture, he needed more work. He would not miss hanging manufactured cabinets, though he would have said a proper good-bye to Marcus if he had known he would not be returning.

The workshop door was propped open. Rufus looked up when a shadow fell across his workbench and Joel was standing in the doorway.

“I just wondered if you were able to get hold of your boss.” Joel’s gangly arms hung from his sharp shoulders. “About the job.”

Rufus lowered himself onto a stool. “You’ve had a day to think. Are you as sure as you were last night?”

Joel nodded. “More. I’ll try again in the spring, but in the meantime I need to feel that I’m contributing something to the family.”

“Daed
is grateful for your help in all the fields, not just the one that burned.”

“I’ll be eighteen soon, Rufus. I need a start at something. I thought it would be farming, but now I’m not sure.”

“You have better instincts for the farm than all the other Beiler sons together.”

“Matthew and Daniel seem to be making a go of it. And you have your woodworking. Everything is so different here than it was in Pennsylvania. Maybe I shouldn’t assume I’ll farm.”

“Beilers have always farmed.”

“You don’t. Elijah doesn’t, either. I see other Amish families starting businesses. If I earned some money to get started, I could do something, too.”

Rufus picked up a pencil and parked it behind his ear. “The job is yours if you want it. Jeff will call when he has the details arranged.”

The cell phone on the workbench rang, and both brothers leaned toward it.

“This is another matter,” Rufus said. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

The phone rang a second time, and a third. Rufus waited until Joel was out of earshot before picking up the call right before it went to voice mail.

“I might have a deal for you.” Larry sounded upbeat.

“You said the market was slow,” Rufus said.

“It is. I just stumbled onto this. My cousin in Denver mentioned a friend of his was thinking about taking up a simpler, rural life. Working from home, growing their own food, animals, the great outdoors, that sort of thing.”

Rufus smiled to himself at the description that matched his life. But the smile faded in uncertainty. “What if I’m not sure I’ve decided to sell?”

“I’m not sure they’ve decided they want to buy. This is just an opportunity to strike while the iron is hot.”

“I’d like some time to think.”

“Of course. I’ll check back with you in a couple of days.”

Rufus shut the phone off, not wishing another interruption to his thoughts. He had saved for years for a solid down payment on land, and he was confident the land was a good choice for the future. Jacob was only eight. His parents were probably a dozen or more years away from having an empty nest, as the
English
liked to say. Although he and Annalise might start married life under his parents’ roof, they needed a nest of their own.

It was time to take Annalise to see his dream of the future.

R
ufus tied Dolly to the tree bulging the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Weichert’s shop on Wednesday afternoon. If he remembered correctly, Annalise would finish working in a few minutes. The bell jangled as he pushed through the door.

Mrs. Weichert looked up from the stack of papers she was studying behind the counter. “She’s using the telephone in the storeroom. You can go on back if you like.”

Rufus nodded his thanks and crossed the store. The door to the storeroom stood open, and he could see Annalise hunched over the small desk in the corner, a computer in front of her and a notepad under her hand. She looked up at him.

“Hello. I can’t believe they put me on hold again.”

“I thought you might like to take a drive.”

“Mmm. Sounds nice. Depends on how long this takes.”

“Trying to get a price on something?”

Annalise held up a finger and turned her attention back to the screen, where the image of a picture frame filled the shape.

“We think it’s from the 1940s,” she said into the phone. She paused to listen. “Okay, we’ll wait for your call. Thank you.”

Rufus crossed his arms at the wrists.

Annalise scraped the wooden chair back and stood. “A drive, you said?”

“I would even let you do the driving, if you’d like. Aren’t you off soon?”

“I am.” She pushed her bottom lip out. “But I have a couple of personal calls to make. Mrs. Weichert doesn’t mind if I use the phone here, and it seems like the easiest thing to do.”

“I’ll wait.”

“I’m trying to line up some appointments for Leah. I have to call Ruth at the clinic and see if she was able to get Leah into the counselor’s schedule on Friday.”

“After that, then.”

“I’m afraid I’d only have about half an hour.” Annalise stacked papers and tapped them against the desk to straighten them. “Leah sometimes comes home in the late afternoon, and I want to catch her before she decides to leave again.”

This excursion was not one Rufus cared to rush. “What does your morning look like?”

“Oh! That’s much better.” Annalise brightened. “Would you mind so much? I could bike out to the farm so you don’t have to fetch me.”

“I’ll come for you.” They would have more time together that way. “I want to show you something. Then I’ll bring you back into town.”

Annalise wrote a note on a pad of yellow paper. “I’m sorry to be inattentive. I can’t get my mind off Leah.”

“Tomorrow is soon enough.” Rufus glanced over his shoulder and saw that Mrs. Weichert was consumed with her own stack of papers. He stepped over to Annalise for a quick kiss. It deepened unexpectedly. He did not want to leave her. But if they were going to spend their lives together he had to recognize her independence for the blessing that it was.

She smiled shyly. “I didn’t deserve that after turning down your delicious offer.”

He dipped his head. “Tomorrow.”

“I do not think it is a good idea.” Elijah pressed his palms flat on the coffee shop table.

“I would be careful.” Ruth countered by calmly sipping her tea.

“You already don’t trust Alan. He makes you uncomfortable.” With the heels of his hands on the tabletop, Elijah thumped his fingers. “Why would you want to try to attract his attention?”

Ruth looked a way for a few seconds then met Elijah’s gaze. “Because I think he knows something. Or did something. And what if what I suspect is true and I did nothing?”

“The
English
have their sheriff for these things,” Elijah said. “Shouldn’t you report Alan?”

“And say what? That he has a suspicious strap on his water bottle?”

“You found it in the field where the fire was.”

“That doesn’t prove anything. Alan could say I was the one who put it there.”

“Why would you have his strap?”

“The reason is not the point. Or he could say it was Bryan’s strap and that Bryan is trying to frame him.”

“The
English
have a strange concept of friendship.” Elijah picked up his coffee at last. “And what if Alan is right about Bryan?”

“Do you mean that?” Ruth could believe that Elijah might be jealous of her friendship with Bryan, but casting accusations at Bryan was going too far.

“Bryan and Alan have been friends a long time. You’ve chosen to trust one and distrust the other. What if things are not what they seem?”

“If you spent any time with the two of them, you would see the difference for yourself.” Ruth pushed her tea away.

Elijah reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “I’m on your side. I just want you to be safe.”

Bryan was consistently calm and carried a ready smile everywhere he went. Alan was the unpredictable one, congenial one moment and elusive the next.

“No. I’m not wrong. I’m not the naive Amish girl who left the valley three years ago.”

“But your
English
friends are all women,” Elijah pointed out.

“I attend a large university. They have workshops about being safe.” Ruth withdrew her hand from Elijah’s grasp. “I have to get Alan to talk to me, and to do that I have to be friendly.”

“Then let me go with you.”

She shook her head. “If he suspected anything, he would be gone before he would say anything.”

“I’ll stay out of sight.” Elijah leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I can’t just turn my head and let you arrange something that might be risky. You mean too much to me.”

Ruth wanted to bend across the table and touch her forehead to his, to feel his breath on her face. Instead she glanced nervously around the shop and pressed her spine against the back of her chair. “It has to be somewhere private enough to talk.”

“It has to be somewhere public enough to be safe,” he said. “I don’t have to be able to hear what he says, but I want to be able to see you.”

At last she nodded. “When I figure something out, I’ll text you.”

“I’ll keep my phone on.”

Annie tossed her mail on the dining room table and went immediately upstairs. Once again she had let her prayer
kapp
slide off her head, and this time it had landed in a puddle. Chronically seeming to need a spare one, she wanted to rinse it out and lay it to dry immediately.

From the bathroom sink at the top of the stairs, she heard the back door open and cocked her head to try to discern whose footsteps would pad through the house. Ruth moved in quiet, subtle ways, but Leah was a master of stealth. Annie laid her
kapp
flat on a towel to dry, hoping it would hold its shape. She moved into the hall.

When she heard the kitten meow, Annie knew Leah had come home. She went down the stairs immediately.

Leah stood at the table with an envelope in her hands. “Why is Aaron writing to you?”

Annie’s heart pounded. “I didn’t realize he had.”

“He hasn’t even written to me in weeks.” Leah’s face flushed as her pitch rose.