8
Matt asked to meet David and Dok at the Bent N’ Dent late in the day. Official business, he told them. He handed Dok the coroner’s report. As she rifled through it, Matt told David that the stranger at Eagle Hill, known for now as a John Doe, had died of a heart attack.
“But what about the blow to the head?” David asked.
Matt shrugged. “The coroner wasn’t sure what caused it, but he ruled it out as the cause of death.”
“What about his identity?” Dok said. “Have you gotten any closer to that? Someone must have reported a missing person by now. It’s been days.”
“Working on it.”
“In other words . . . no leads?”
“Nothing yet. We’re still working on it. On my way back to town, I’ll stop at the Inn at Eagle Hill and let them know they can open up for business.”
Which meant, David realized, that Patrick Kelly would no longer need to stay in Jesse’s bedroom and could move across the road, as originally planned. He felt a tinge of disappointment. He had liked having Patrick around. He might be young, only twenty, but he was quite mature and extremely well read. Twice now, they had stayed up late having a theological discussion about the effects of the Reformation. Raised as an orthodox Catholic, Patrick had been exposed to very different views about the Reformation than most Protestants. Some parts of being Amish were quite close to Catholicism—the emphasis on confession, for example. And some parts were radically different—adult baptism versus infant baptism, the worship of the Madonna, praying to saints. Patrick was full of questions, brimming with curiosity. David relished their talks.
Matt leaned against the counter. “So, Dok, how goes private practice?”
“Slow.”
That was an understatement, David knew. He’d been her only patient, all week long.
“Give it time.”
“Time is something I happen to have an abundance of right now.”
A streak of red started up Matt’s cheeks. “Maybe, then, we could get lunch sometime.” He cleared his throat. “Or dinner.”
She handed him back the coroner’s report. “Matt, it’s never a good idea to mix business and personal life.” She went to the door and lifted her hand in a casual goodbye.
“But . . . we’re not in the same business,” Matt said. “Not at all.”
She either didn’t hear Matt or pretended she hadn’t. After the door closed behind her, Matt looked back at David. “Why won’t she go out with me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Any advice?”
Advice? On how to date his sister? He laughed. “Only this—if you give up too easily, you’re clearly not The One.”
Ruthie arranged a dozen long-stemmed red roses in a vase. Luke Schrock had sent them to her as an apology for his behavior the other night. “It will never happen again,” he wrote in the card. “Just say you’ll forgive me.”
She forgave him. She always did.
There was something about Luke that made it impossible to stay mad at him for long. He was fascinating but reckless—and not in a good way. He had sworn his undying love to Ruthie since they were in seventh grade, but something always made her hold back from fully returning his feelings. It wasn’t because she didn’t have feelings for him. She did. Strong ones. She cared about Luke, at times she even thought she might love him, especially those times when he was sweet and thoughtful and attentive. He was an amazing, lavish gift giver. He remembered romantic details: her birthday, the color of her dress on the day he first saw her, her favorite flower—a red rose.
Her feelings about Luke were a mess. She was a mess. She was a jumble of messy feelings. Alles fashmiaht. Everything is messy.
But not when she was around Patrick. There was a stillness about him that made her feel calm too. He was sort of enigmatically happy, with a tranquility that drew her to him like an ant to a picnic. He was refreshing, like a summer rain shower that cleared away the oppressive and muggy air.
She’d never spent time around a boy before who didn’t seem to care at all what she thought of him. Most boys, including Luke—especially Luke—sought some kind of reaction from her. Patrick was the same before she showed up and exactly the same after she left him.
For the first time in her life, she found herself making minor adjustments to attract a boy’s attention. She wore a green dress during yesterday’s tutoring session because Patrick had casually mentioned that green was his favorite color. Tonight she stayed up much too late, reading in the living room, waiting until he returned home from stargazing. How ridiculous! He walked in the house, said hello and goodnight to her, and went straight to his room.
She’d tried hard to interest him, only to find that nothing seemed to affect Patrick Kelly. He was friendly and polite to her, but kept a slight air of distance and and detachment. Dare she think it?—he clearly did not feel any attraction to her. None in the least.
Really, she knew almost nothing about him. He took an interest in everything, asking question after question, but he didn’t volunteer much about himself. Her mind reeled back to their tutoring session earlier today. He had diligently mastered the lengthy list of vocabulary words she’d given him. She handed him a new list, this time with one hundred words—he told her to be a tough taskmaster!—and said, “You fit in as though you’d been around here for years. And we’re not always an easy bunch to get along with.”
“Thank you,” he said, with that straightforward look of his that made her stomach feel fluttery. “Time is short. I don’t want to waste a moment.”
“Oh?” Ruthie was immediately interested. Here was the perfect opening to discover more about him. But just then her father arrived home to announce that the cottage at the Inn of Eagle Hill was deemed ready to be back in business, and Patrick vaulted upstairs. He hurriedly packed up his backpack, thanked David for extending hospitality, grabbed Nyna the Mynah’s cage—which got her squawking in indignation—and moved across the road. He didn’t seem one bit bothered to leave the Stoltzfus home. Grateful for the time with them, but almost eager to be on his own.
What would happen to their Penn Dutch tutoring sessions? Patrick didn’t mention a word about them. Were they over?
She felt a zing of disappointment.
David went out to the garden to find Birdy picking tomatoes in the tomato patch. He’d never thought he’d see this patch of soil looking the way it did. Neat, tidy rows; green, healthy plants. It was Birdy, all Birdy. He watched her for a few moments before he interrupted her. She looked like a young girl, with the blue scarf wrapped around her head and tied under her chin. He began to think, not for the first time, of how extraordinarily blessed he was to find this late-flowering love.
She lifted her head when she heard him call her name and responded with a bright smile, such a beautiful smile. It lit her from head to toe.
“Matt Lehman said the stranger who died at the inn had a heart attack. Natural causes. The cottage was given the all clear, so Patrick packed up and moved over.”
Birdy’s face fell in disappointment. “I suppose that means he’s taking Nyna the Mynah with him.”
“Yes, but you can hear her squawk from here.” Frankly, David would not miss Nyna the Mynah’s noctural one-sided conversations. He took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead with one arm. “Let’s go canoeing at Blue Lake Pond.”
“Yes. Now. For one brief afternoon, all is well in Stoney Ridge.”
She beamed, positively beamed. The joy on her face moved his heart, every time.
“I’ll go get the girls.”
“No, no. Just you and me. The girls are fine. Ruthie said she would watch them.” He walked up to her and helped her to her feet. “Just you. And me.” He leaned over to kiss her gently on her lips.
“On a Saturday afternoon? When the tomatoes need picking and the laundry is waiting to be taken off the clothesline?”
“Especially then.”
She grinned and kissed him back. “I’ll meet you by the buggy in five minutes.”
Not much later, they arrived at Blue Lake Pond and hitched Thistle to a post in the deep shade. David lifted the canoe off the top of the buggy. He and Birdy hoisted it onto their shoulders and lowered it into the water. It was an old canoe, one David had as a boy but hadn’t used since they came to Stoney Ridge. They paddled the canoe slowly around the pond, exploring lovely nooks and crannies along the shoreline, chatting about family news.
“I was over at Katrina’s this morning,” Birdy said, “helping Molly give the baby a bath.”
David knew how Birdy loved babies, how she longed for a baby of her own. “Does holding the baby help? Maybe, satisfy the desire for one of your own?”
“It’s lovely to hold him, but it’s no substitute for having our own baby someday.” She dipped her hand in the water. “I dream of it every day.”
Every day? It was a thought that rarely occurred to David, only when he considered Birdy. He could barely keep up with the six children he already had, and now two grandchildren.
Every day? She dreamed of having a baby every single day. He had no idea.
Lord, he silently prayed, I need to pray for my wife’s deepest desire to be fulfilled. Every day.
They sat back in the warm sun and drank in the stillness of land and water and sky. The air was windless, the trees were absolutely motionless.
“It’s so quiet,” Birdy said. “Even the birds are silent. It reminds me of that moment, in church, just before the Vorsinger trills the first note. It’s like we’re in an outdoor sanctuary, one that’s hushed with reverence.”
Leave it to his Birdy to find a way to worship a majestic God in an old canoe on a second-rate pond. She viewed all of life in quiet wonder. Birdy taught David that he had been set down in a world of wonders: rivers and trails, birds and beavers. “A lot is going on,” Birdy often reminded him, “when you don’t think anything is.”
He loved this woman. Sometimes, it seemed as if he’d been frozen for the last few years and was only now beginning to thaw. “Birdy, have you ever seen the ocean?”
“No. Someday, perhaps.”
Someday, definitely. He would love to watch her face as she dipped her toes into the sea for the first time, breathed in that salt-tinged, oxygen-rich air. She would love it.
“So you’ve been?”
“Yes. Years ago.” He looked over the side at the placid water, watching a water bug skate over the surface of the pond.
“With Anna?”
He looked back at her sharply. How did she know? “Yes.”
“David, I like to hear about your memories with Anna. You rarely mention her name. I don’t want you to feel as if you can’t talk about her.”
She had told him such things before, but he still felt uncomfortable sharing memories of his first wife with his second wife. It was one thing to have the children talk of Anna as their mother—something he encouraged—but for him to speak of her as his wife felt completely different. Uncomfortable. Memories of Anna were . . . private. If he shared them, he felt as if they might lose their effervescence, like opening a bottle of carbonated pop.
“You get a certain look on your face when you’re thinking of her, as if you’re lost in another world.”
He reached out for her hand. “Maybe I seem to be in another world, but I’m not lost.”
She smiled.
“At times it might not be easy for me to bring my past up, but you are always welcome to ask me anything.”
“Anything?”
He nodded. “Anything.”
For a long moment, they gazed at each other, until a curious look came over Birdy’s face. “Can you swim?”
“Yes, of course. Can’t you?”
“I’m an excellent swimmer. I had to be to keep up with those brothers of mine.”
“Why do you ask?”
She pointed to their bare feet. David looked down and realized the bottom of the canoe was filling up with water. They were sinking! And far from shore.
She started to chuckle, then laugh out loud—deep down belly laughter. David watched her for a moment. He was not a man prone to levity. Often, he took life so seriously that others encouraged him to lighten up. But Birdy had a way of releasing joy in him. Holy joy. Her laughter was contagious and David couldn’t help but join in. Laughing, laughing, laughing. Laughing until his sides ached. He grabbed the paddles and turned the canoe around to paddle toward shore.
“We should just give up and swim to shore,” she said between gulps of giggles, tears streaming down her face. “We’ll never make it.”
“We’ll make it,” David said confidently, though he paddled faster and harder than he had thought was possible.
Jesse grabbed his favorite clay pitcher to fill with water for C.P.’s dish and stopped short. A strange odor wafted up. He sniffed his pitcher, then ran a finger inside it. He rubbed his fingertips together. Gasoline. Someone had filled it with gasoline! He stormed out to find his two apprentices, sleeping in the sun. “Who did this?” he roared. “Which one of you filled my pitcher with gasoline?”
The boys jumped up. Sammy looked puzzled, while Leroy looked sheepish. “I did it,” Leroy admitted. “It was Fern’s fault. She told me to mow the front lawn. The mower was out of gas, so I went to the tank, but I couldn’t find anything to catch the gas. So I found that thing and it was empty. I thought I’d use it. It was all Fern’s fault. Blame her.”
Jesse was incredulous. “Can’t you see that it’s a water pitcher? My favorite water pitcher?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll wash it.” Leroy shrugged his shoulders. “Or you could get another one and we can use this one for gasoline.”
Jesse couldn’t just go and get another one because this pitcher had once been his mother’s. But there was no way this ignorant boy could understand that. He couldn’t see that this water pitcher was important to Jesse because he couldn’t see longer than his nose. How was anyone ever going to be able to break through Leroy Glick’s thickheadedness?
Normally, he took the boys along when he delivered a repaired buggy. They would follow him in Jesse’s buggy, partly so that they could observe customer satisfaction and also so that he could get a ride home. Today, he couldn’t handle being around them for one more moment. He harnessed his own horse, Sir Galahad, to the repaired buggy traces and told his useless apprentices that he would be gone for an hour or two. He gave them specific tasks to do, repeated them for clarification, doubting all the time that they would complete them.
Jesse had to travel through town to get to the Sisters’ House, to deliver their buggy with its reflector bolted tightly on the back, and happened to notice the Sweet Tooth Bakery as he drove up Main Street. On the way home, he decided, he would stop in and treat himself to a cinnamon roll, maybe two, to improve his mood before returning to the simpleton apprentices. After leaving the buggy at the Sisters’ House, he rode Sir Galahad bareback, stopped at the bakery, and tied him to the hitching post. This was a good idea to salvage his mood.
This was a bad idea to salvage his mood.
In a hurry, Jesse Stoltzfus exhaled, frustrated. The wait inside the bakery had nearly reached to the door when he had arrived. He had already waited ten minutes—watching the glass case as only four cinnamon rolls were left, then three, then two. Finally, he was at the counter, ready to order. The door opened with a gust of hot humid air. “Wann en Gaul eigschpannt is, mach mer die Lein fescht.” When a horse is hitched up, one should tie the line securely.
He turned around slowly, curious as to whom the beguiling voice, low and musical, belonged. Guckich. Gorgeous. That’s the only word he could think of to describe this young woman. His mind spun as he realized he knew her, and from the look of horror that filled her face, she recognized him too. Jenny Yoder, a girl he had known in Ohio. Swallowing with effort, he suppressed an unmanly shudder.
They went to school together for a few years, before she moved and he’d lost track of her and her older brother Chris. But he’d never forgotten her. She had been that annoying.
“Why . . . Jesse Stoltzfus!” She managed a smile that almost appeared genuine. “What a coincidence . . . seeing you . . . here. In Stoney Ridge.”
“Jenny. Hello. And you’re right, it certainly is a coincidence. I wasn’t expecting to see you either.” Ever again.
“Your hair.” She sounded amazed. “It’s still the color of carrots.”
Jesse tried to come up with a tart retort but drew a blank. Frustrating! He turned his attention back to the counter clerk. “I’d like that last cinnamon roll.”
Jenny Yoder gasped. “Oh no. I just got into town and I’ve been dreaming of Sweet Tooth Bakery cinnamon rolls for days. Weeks. Months!”
The clerk froze as she reached into the counter for the last roll, then glanced up at Jesse with a question in her eyes. Are you going to be a gentleman? the look said.
Nope. Too bad for Jenny Yoder, Jesse wanted to say. Come back tomorrow. “Yes, well . . . I . . .” He turned to look at Jenny. For an instant, her expression faltered and he was startled again by her appearance. That . . . loveliness.
Then her lips formed a tight curve. “But don’t let that stop you.”
Normally he wouldn’t. However, Jesse liked having the upper hand, especially when it came to Jenny Yoder. “It is most kind of you to concern yourself with me, Jenny, but I am, in fact, more interested in the low-fat bran muffin. That cinnamon roll could feed a family of four.” He was aware of the smugness of his tone. And the frown on Jenny’s face. Her expression told him she knew exactly what he was doing, which only increased his satisfaction.
“You could share it,” the bakery clerk suggested. “I can cut it in half and you can share it.”
“Nonsense,” Jesse said. “Let the portly girl have it.” That wasn’t kind and it wasn’t true. Jenny wasn’t at all portly. He pointed to a very dry-looking bran muffin in the case.
“Excellent,” Jenny said, uninsulted, accepting the cinnamon roll from the clerk.
Jesse took the bran muffin out of the bag and took a bite. It tasted like it looked. Horrible.
Jenny was at the door, turned, and leveled her gaze at Jesse, unblinking. “By the way, your horse is gone.”
He strode to the window and looked at the hitching post. Sir Galahad had left without him.
“That’s what I was trying to tell you when I came into the store. You hadn’t fastened the reins in a tight enough knot.” She took a bite out of that sweet, gooey cinnamon roll, slathered in icing and laced with cinnamon, and her eyes swooned. “Appeditlich,” she said through a mouthful. Delicious. “Better than I even remembered.” She gave him a breezy, queen-like wave of her hand as she walked out the door.