The Lesson (2 page)

A whinny from his horse made him smile. Chris had a magnificent Thoroughbred horse, Samson, that he had raised since he was a foal. The stallion was a legacy from Old Deborah, along with the knowledge that a little piece of real estate in Stoney Ridge was waiting, intended for him from his grandfather. It was a start.

He exhaled. One day at a time.

After Jimmy Fisher watched Mary Kate Lapp charge up the road, he started to head to the Sweet Tooth Bakery but changed his mind. He wasn’t really in the mood to try to talk to Ruthie today—she often burst into a fit of giggles when she was around him. Plus, it was getting late and he knew
his mother would be wondering where he was. Chore time on the chicken-and-egg farm.

He had really wanted to talk to M.K. She would have a good idea about how he should proceed. Much better than Ruthie. M.K., for all her shortcomings, was very reliable about these kinds of things.

Jimmy was in love. At a horse auction in Leola—his favorite pastime—he had noticed an attractive young Amish woman who was selling a two-year-old brindled mare. He couldn’t take his eyes off that girl. Shiny auburn hair, snapping green eyes. And tall! He’d always wanted to marry a tall woman. It was a dire disappointment to Jimmy that he wasn’t as tall as his brother, Paul. Jimmy wasn’t tall at all, but he held himself very straight as if to make the most of what he had. He planned to rectify that genetic flaw for the next generation. Tall was good. It was number five on his list of critical requirements for his future wife.

The brindled mare had fetched a good price, and the young woman was saying goodbye to the horse, tears streaming down her face. Jimmy was touched. Three heartbeats later, he tracked down the auctioneer to find out to whom the mare had belonged. The auctioneer was taking a break behind the large canvas tent while the horse lot was being changed. A stub of a cigar hung from his mouth as he eyed Jimmy. “Why do you want to know?”

“I had an interest in that brindled mare,” Jimmy said. That was true. It wasn’t a lie. He was more interested in the mare’s owner than the mare, but he wasn’t lying. “Just wondered if they might be breeders or not.” Jimmy kicked a rock on the ground with the toe of his boot. “Giving some thought to becoming a breeder myself. Just thought I’d talk to her, ah, him.” He cleared his throat, tried to act nonchalant.

The auctioneer threw the cigar stub on the ground and rubbed it out with his shoe. “I thought you Amish knew everybody, anyway.”

“A common misperception,” Jimmy said.
Along with
assuming we look alike and think alike and act alike.
He nearly said that part out loud, but held back, given that he had become so mature lately. Still, it rankled him how the non-Amish lumped the Amish into one-size-fits-all.

Take Jimmy and his brother, Paul. They might share a passing resemblance—both blond, with their father’s strong nose and high forehead—but no two brothers could be more different. Paul was thirty now, still unmarried, still at home under his mother’s very large thumb. It wasn’t that Paul didn’t want to marry and start a family of his own; he just couldn’t quite decide on a wife. He was always juggling a few girls, attracted to each one but not in love with any of them.

Jimmy had no trouble making decisions, or falling in love. He fell in love, he fell out of love—but at least it was love! He had passion, and emotion, and wasn’t afraid to make a commitment like Paul was. Or, at least, he wouldn’t be afraid to when he fell in love for the last time. He planned to marry within two years. It was all planned out. And he had just found his missus. Done! Checked off.

The auctioneer took a loud slurp of coffee and tossed the paper cup on the ground. “Her name is Emily Esh. Father is Emanuel Esh. They live near Bart. Father’s a darn good horse trader.” He handed Jimmy a card:
Domenico
Guiseppe Rizzo, purveyor of fine horses.
“This is the guy you need to see if you want to get into pony racing.”

Jimmy peered at the card. “Wait. Is that Domino Joe?” He knew Domino Joe. Knew him well. “What makes you think I have an interest in pony racing?”

The auctioneer glanced at his watch and strolled back to the auction block. Over his shoulder, he tossed, “If you’re already acquainted with Domino Joe, then why would I think you don’t?”

Jimmy frowned and stuffed the card in his pocket. Emily Esh. What a beautiful name. It had a musical sound . . . what was it M.K. called that kind of thing? Allit, alliter, alliteration. That was it!

Now . . . how to meet Emily Esh? He remembered that M.K. had talked Ruthie into going to a youth gathering in Bart this summer, hoping to meet a more intelligent crop of boys, she had said. “I’ve known these Stoney Ridge boys forever,” she said airily to Jimmy. “And most of them have no idea how to carry on an intelligent conversation. They just want to talk about the latest prank they pulled or about what the best hunting sports are or all about their dogs.”

At the time, Jimmy took offense. M.K. was always showing off her big brain, as if it wasn’t obvious to everyone that she had a different way of thinking. He had a hunch that she could go to the ends of the earth and she still wouldn’t find what she was looking for, because that fellow didn’t exist. But now, the Bart youth gathering sounded very intriguing to Jimmy.

He just needed M.K.’s help. He wanted to meet Emily Esh, his future missus.

M.K. waited restlessly for her father and Fern to return home. She went down to the honey cabin, tucked at the far edge of Windmill Farm’s property, and wrote on some labels for honey jars, but her hands felt shaky with excitement. She didn’t like the way her handwriting ended up looking—like
she was nine, not nineteen. Just yesterday, she had finished spinning her most recent supply of honey from her brown bees’ honeycombs into long, thin clean jars. She sold her honey at Fern’s roadside stand. She wished she had left some chores to do. She swept the floor and straightened up, then went back to the house.

In her bedroom, she spent some time looking for her old detective notebook. She finally found it, tucked deep under her mattress. She opened it to a clean page and wrote SOLVE SHEEP FARMER’S MURDER!!! in bold letters across the top and underlined it three times, breaking the pencil point in the process. She found another pencil and numbered the page from one to ten.

But how?

She pulled out her detective books from the bottom bookshelf and spread them out on her bed.

#1. Look for overlooked clues that the culprit might have left in his haste.

A. Go back to the pasture.

She spent the next ten minutes drumming the pencil against the page as she searched in vain for ideas to proceed. When her head began to ache from thinking too hard, she put her books away and stuffed the notebook back under the mattress.

She thought the house seemed stuffy, so she opened the windows downstairs in the living room and kitchen. A breeze moved into the room, carrying a faint perfume from Fern’s rose garden. M.K. sat down, stood up, walked around, sat down again. Her mind was spinning, like dandelions in the wind. She was so antsy that Doozy gave up following her. He curled up in the living room corner and went to sleep. She
jumped up and went into the kitchen, knowing just what to do to keep her mind and hands busy.

After her sister Sadie married Gideon Smucker and left home, M.K. was at loose ends—she had finished formal schooling, she was missing the companionship of Sadie and Julia, her married sisters, and she was driving Fern crazy. A serious case of “ants in her pants,” Fern diagnosed. M.K. needed something to do, so Fern taught her how to bake bread.

M.K. went into the kitchen and pulled out the flour canister. On the windowsill was a jar filled with a noxious-looking substance, placed where the late afternoon sun would warm it but not too much. She picked up the jar, remembering the first time Fern had shown it to her.

It was the winter after Sadie and Gid’s wedding, two years ago. The lower half was a thick gray pillow, looking like something you’d find on the moon. Fern had shaken it up, then opened it. A strong sour smell exploded into the air.

“Phew!” M.K. pinched her nose like a clothespin. “What is that horrible thing?” She leaned closer to inspect it.

“It’s my sourdough bread starter,” Fern said. “It’s been in my family for generations. It came from a carefully tended mother dough that my great-great-great-grandmother brought over from Germany in 1886.”

“How could all those grandmothers have kept it alive all that time?”

“Some mysteries are best not to examine too closely,” Fern said in her matter-of-fact way. “Starters are sturdier than they appear. But I guard that starter like gold at Fort Knox.” She scooped out a hefty measure of foamy pale-yellow-white starter and put it in a bowl. “I refresh it every week so it stays healthy.” She turned on the tap, testing the temperature with
her fingers. “I add water that’s just barely warmer than your fingers.” When she got it right she gestured to M.K. “Try it.”

M.K. stuck her fingers under the stream. She hardly felt the water. M.K. filled a glass measuring cup and stirred it into the jar of starter. It foamed up.

M.K. jumped back, then stared at it. “Why, it’s alive!”

“Exactly.”

Danger! M.K. was hooked.

A noise outside jolted her back to the present. She peered out the window, hoping to see a buggy roll up the driveway. But no—it was only a noisy bluejay, gorging himself on black oiled sunflower seeds that filled the blue bird feeder on the porch. M.K. rapped on the window to shoo the greedy bird away.

She took out a large bowl and measured a cup of flour. She used a sturdy wooden spoon and stirred the flour into the heady sponge, filling the air with a sour scent, unique to yeast. She turned the dough out on a layer of fine white flour that she scattered across the surface of the counter. As she began to knead the bread, back and forth, over and under, pushing and pulling, her restlessness began to slip away. Like it always did. She didn’t like to admit it, but Fern was right. Her hands needed to be busy.

Two hours later, the loaves were baked and cooling on the counter. They were far more dense than Fern’s would have been. M.K. never had the patience to let dough rest as long as it needed. But the kitchen was clean and shiny for Fern’s critical inspection just as she walked in. M.K. met her at the door. Over Fern’s shoulder, she saw her father near the barn, untacking the horse from the buggy shafts.

“Where have you been?” M.K. asked. “I’ve been waiting for hours!”

A wall came up, chilled the air. Fern didn’t speak immediately. Doozy let go of a soft, joyous woof and his tail wagged slowly, then stopped.

“Where have
you
been?” Fern replied, sharp as a pinch. “You were due at the schoolhouse at six. There was a work frolic to get the schoolhouse ready for school on Monday.”

M.K.’s hands flew up to her cheeks. “I forgot! I forgot all about it.”

Fern frowned at her. “If you were a bird, you would be a hummingbird. Flitting from place to place. You can’t be still.”

“But there’s a reason! Something has happened!”

“So we heard,” Amos said in a weary voice as he opened the kitchen door and walked into the room. His weather-tanned face, with its work wrinkles running down his cheeks, looked exasperated. “You ran into Alice Smucker. How did you happen to do that?”

Oh.
Oh!
M.K. had forgotten all about the collision with Alice Smucker. Her mind was wholly preoccupied with the shocking murder. “Well, there’s rather a lot of Alice.”

Amos raised a warning eyebrow at M.K. “Alice Smucker will be unable to start the school year due to a mild concussion.”

“Really? She
actually
has a concussion? The doctor really, truly said that? Because—”

Amos sent M.K. a warning frown, but too late.

“—Alice can be a bit of a hypochondri—”

Amos held up his hand to stop her. “Mary Kate, it doesn’t matter whether the doctor said so. That’s what Alice Smucker believes she has, and it was because you didn’t look where you were going on the scooter and you crashed into the poor woman.”