6

Jenny’s shoulders ached from painting the kitchen wall after Chris had finished fixing the drywall. For the first time in her life she didn’t feel like reading a book before bedtime. The problem with not reading, though, was that she couldn’t ignore all kinds of creepy, frightening noises as she lay there in the dark.

This old house was awful, truly horrible. It creaked and groaned like it was in pain. She heard mysterious scratching sounds in the walls and the pattering of feet above her head. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine her happiest day, her tenth birthday, when Old Deborah had taken her to the prison and her mother was in a good mood.

Her mother could be sweet and charming at times, but you never knew what you were getting. You always braced yourself for the first minute, as you sized up the expression on Mom’s face.

On this day, though, her mother was in a happy mood. She braided Jenny’s hair, taming her long curls into two flat plaits down her back. She taught Jenny a dozen variations on cat-in-the-cradle. It was the happiest birthday Jenny ever had. To top it off, that day happened to be a Friday, a day that Jenny had always enjoyed, although Saturday was her absolute favorite. She had the usual feelings about Monday, a day that she had never heard anybody speak up for, for obvious reasons.

The wind picked up. Somewhere outside, a door banged. A branch tapped at the window. Something whirred past Jenny’s face. Her eyes shot open to see a menacing dark shape flutter around her room. A bird? How had a bird gotten into her bedroom? She sat up in bed. It must have come in through the broken window. How many times had she complained to Chris about that broken window? Mosquitoes flew in every night, eager to torment her. It flew past again, swooping and dipping erratically. Wait. That was not a bird. It was a bat! She ran to Chris’s room, screaming as she flew down the hallway.

“Who’s there?” Chris sat bolt upright in bed. “What’s happened?”

“Chris! Th-there’s a bat flying around my room! It got in through the broken window pane!”

Chris signed and leaned back, closing his eyes. “It’ll probably fly back out the window.”

“But—”

“It’s more scared of you than you are of it. Get some sleep. I’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

Jenny crept back down the hall with the pillow over her head. She lifted the covers and checked every inch of her bed thoroughly before climbing in. As she lay there trying to sleep, she wasn’t sure if it would be better to actually see the bat flying around again and know for sure where it was, or not to see it and wonder.

She hated this house. She hated Stoney Ridge. She hated school. She hated the girls at school who never asked her to eat lunch with them. Not one time. She especially hated the leader of the girls, Anna Mae Glick.

She wanted Old Deborah to be alive. She wanted everything to go back the way it used to be. She knew what to expect while she lived at Old Deborah’s. The same friends at school. Meals waiting for her at home. People who cared about her. Nobody cared about them in Stoney Ridge. Nobody.

She didn’t want to cry. Tears wouldn’t accomplish anything and would only make her pillow soggy. She bit on her lower lip to keep her eyes from filling with tears of self-pity. Once her tears started, they would never stop.

A floorboard creaked. The chimney moaned. Minutes ticked away. Everything went quiet. The bat must have flown out the window. It was okay, Jenny told herself, relieved. Everything was going to be okay.

No sooner were the words formed in her mind than the bat whooshed past her head, making squeaky bat noises, darting and diving and swooping and sailing as if it were putting on an acrobatic show for Jenny.

M.K. had a lot of time to think all that weekend, mostly because Sheriff Hoffman saw her at the post office and told her he would put a restraining order out on her if she got anywhere near that sheep farmer’s pasture. He patted the gun as he said it too. So rude! She had merely asked him a few questions about how the case was progressing, and if he had discovered any unusual footprints. “Plenty of hoofprints!” he had told her, cackling in that rusty way of his as he said it. He refused to tell her anything more. He looked annoyed when she expressed the tiniest bit of dismay that it was turning into a cold case and suggested he consider putting more manpower into solving it—because that was when he brought up the restraining order. Outrageous!

At this rate, that poor sheep farmer was never going to have his murder solved. And what about the people of Stoney Ridge? They were all at grave risk with a murderer on the loose. Why wasn’t anyone else as concerned about it as she was? It was just one of the many complaints she had about living in a small town. People in Stoney Ridge were more concerned about the price of eggs at the farmer’s market than about random, senseless murders.

A plane left a long white trail across the sky, and she wondered where it was going. Maybe someplace like Buenos Aires. Or Tokyo. She wondered what it would be like to go somewhere like Moscow. Most of the people she knew were born and raised and died right in Stoney Ridge.

She was positive that the people who lived in big cities—Istanbul or London—they would be worried about random murders. Such a thought made her feel pleased that she had decided to pick up a second passport application at the post office today after losing the first one. She didn’t have any specific travel plans, but it seemed like a good idea to have a passport. Just in case. A person never knew when she might need to leave the country in a hurry. Even Canada and Mexico required passports, she reminded herself.

What really irked M.K. was that she needed to go by the sheep farmer’s field on her way home. It was her customary shortcut. But she wouldn’t give Sheriff Hoffman the satisfaction. So instead, she took the long way home.

Saturday morning, Chris was ready to do battle with the exterior of the house as soon as he and Jenny returned from mowing Erma Yutzy’s lawn. Starting at the front door, he swept his way up and down the porch, knocking down spiderwebs, dessicated insect carcasses, a long-abandoned birds’ nest, and a forest of dead leaves. Jenny sloshed Pine-Sol all over the porch and attacked it with a mop. The water in the bucket grew grimy with the accumulated grunge. Four changes of water and two hours later, he decided the porch floor was done. He’d scrubbed the old boards so hard that he could see bare wood shining through the faded battleship-gray paint.

The windows were next. The panes were so caked with grime that he didn’t even attempt to start with Windex. Instead, he hooked up a garden hose and splashed water all over the old wavy glass, sending a dirty river seeping down over his previously pristine floorboards. Shoot. He’d have to give the porch another rinsing later. But for now, he washed and polished and spritzed the tall windows that ran across the front of the house until they sparkled like crystal in the afternoon sunshine.

Chris had saved the front door for last. He scrubbed away layer after layer of dirt and dust. He spent the next few hours working feverishly. Jenny worked hard too. They scoured and scrubbed until their back and legs ached, and their hands were rubbed raw from all the bleach and disinfectant.

Chris looked over the list of things he needed at the hardware store. He couldn’t do anything more until he got more cleaning supplies, so he decided to run into town. Samson needed some exercise—he hadn’t taken him out for a few days. Jenny wanted to stay home and read a book in a bat-free room, so he hitched Samson to the buggy.

The hardware store was empty so Chris was able to get his supplies quickly. He loaded the buggy and hopped in, signaling Samson to move forward. The stallion tossed his head and whinnied. He responded to Chris’s slightest whistle.

On Stone Leaf Drive, he noticed two small figures in the road up ahead. As Samson gained on them, he saw it was a young Amish woman in a turquoise dress, with an old yellow dog trailing behind her. He recognized that young woman—it was the same one who careened into him the other day. He thought he’d seen her somewhere else, but he couldn’t remember.

Chris reined the horse to a stop behind her. “Hey, you. Where’s your red scooter?”

She spun around and looked at him. She didn’t seem to recognize him, but then, how could she? He had been covered in mud.

Chris saw her puzzled gaze shift from him to Samson. She walked toward Samson and stroked his nose. “Why, this horse is beautiful. Just beautiful. He must be eighteen hands. And pitch-black.” She stroked the neck of Samson. “Why, he’s a stallion!” She looked at Chris with interest. “Are you going to breed him?”

“Someday. I want to have my own breeding business.” He wasn’t sure why he admitted that. It wasn’t something he told many people.

She ran a hand along Samson’s withers. “Well, when that someday arrives, you’ll be off to a fine start with him.”

“Can I offer you a lift? It’s getting awfully warm.”

M.K. shook her head. “I’m almost where I need to be.” She started walking down the road.

Chris clucked to Samson to get him moving, but he kept him from trotting to keep pace with the young woman and her dog. “I don’t even know your name.”

She didn’t slow down a bit. “That’s because we’ve never met.”

“It might not have been a proper introduction, but we have definitely met.”

She stopped abruptly and looked at him with a question on her face.

“I’m the one you knocked into the ditch the other day.”

She squinted her face as if she was trying to place him. Just how many people did she crash into on that scooter? Clearly, too many to remember.

A frown pinched her face and she threw her arms in the air. “Join the long line of people who blame me for everything that goes wrong around here!” She started marching down the road.

Chris clucked to the horse. “I’m not blaming you. Well, maybe a little. You were heading down a hill, on a scooter, with your eyes shut. Probably going ten miles an hour!”

The young woman turned her face away, her jaw thrust out, and she picked up her pace.

Samson seemed to know to keep up with her. “Look, maybe we can start over. I’m Chris Yoder.”

She balled her fists on her hips. “Which way are you headed, Chris Yoder?”

They were nearly at an intersection. Chris pointed straight ahead.

“Then I’m going this way. Come on, Doozy.” She turned right at the intersection. As she swung to the right, something slipped out of her pocket. He tried to call out to her—a little awkward when you don’t know a person’s name: “Hey, you! You there!”—but she wasn’t going to pay him any mind.

He jumped down to pick up the paper and unfolded it. A passport application. What? What was a Plain girl doing with a passport application? What kind of a girl was she?

He watched her march down the lane, head held high, until she and her dog disappeared around the bend. He couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. He still didn’t know her name . . . but he was going to find out.

Jenny glanced at the clock on the kitchen counter. Was it already after two? Chris would be back soon. She had been completely absorbed in the book she was reading and simply had to find out if there was a happy ending. She loved happy endings. But now she needed to get this letter written and stick it in the mailbox before the postman came by. And before Chris returned from town. She took out one crumpled five-dollar bill from her pocket and tucked it into an envelope.

Dear Mom,

Chris and I are doing okay. I started school this week. There aren’t any girls in my grade, just boys. I feel sorry for the teacher. She’s not very bright and the big boys outsmart her. Mostly, she just sits at her desk and sifts through magazines. But at least it gives me a lot of free time to read my books. I miss you. Get better fast, okay? This is all the money I could get since my last letter.

Love you! Jenny

For one long, painful moment, Jenny remembered how her mother looked right before everything fell apart again this last time. She was so skinny that Jenny could see two scapula bones in her back that stuck out like chicken wings. She hardly ate any food. She hardly slept. And she kept getting bloody noses. Old Deborah had pulled Grace into the bathroom to stop the nosebleed.

You’d think her mother would care about what drugs were doing to her body. But all Grace Mitchell wanted, all she wanted, no matter what, was more meth.

That evening, Old Deborah talked and talked with her mom in the kitchen, long after Chris and Jenny had gone to bed. In the morning, when Jenny woke up, her mother was gone. Old Deborah told her that Grace had decided to enter the rehab center. Chris said he was pretty sure Old Deborah hadn’t given Grace a choice.

Jenny had faith in her mom, though. This time would be different. Her mom would get better. She had cleaned up twice before. She could do it again. Absolutely. She licked the back of the envelope and ran out to the mailbox. Then she came back in to finish her story in the kitchen—the only guaranteed bat-free room in the house.

The kitchen clock ticked loud in the silence.

M.K. hadn’t intended to visit Erma today, but she did not want that flirtatious young man to continue to follow her, and she certainly didn’t want to get in his buggy with him. Nosir! She had no idea who he was and had no desire to know, either—though anyone who had a horse like that couldn’t be entirely bad. The horse was well cared for, sleek and strong, with intelligent eyes. Where had she seen that horse before? In town, maybe? No. She couldn’t quite capture it—but she knew she’d seen him somewhere. She couldn’t help but admire such a beautiful creature. But her admiration for its owner ended there. Her curiosity, though, was another story. She happened to notice that the young horse owner turned down the long drive that led to Colonel Mitchell’s abandoned house. She hadn’t even thought of that house in years and years. It was hidden from the road on a long flag lot, hidden from the road with a long dirt driveway for access.

But back to M.K.’s current situation. The road she turned down went right by Erma Yutzy’s, and suddenly, there she was, walking up the driveway. The air was filled with the sweet scent of freshly cut grass—one of M.K.’s favorite smells. Erma was filling her bird feeders with oiled black sunflower seeds when she saw M.K. and her face lit up with delight.

“It won’t be long until the skies will be filled with a thick black ribbon of birds as they head south for the winter. Don’t you love to put your head back and watch them fly, Mary Kate? Don’t you just wonder, ‘Where is the end of that long ribbon?’” She sighed happily. “There’s so much to wonder about in the natural world.”

Imagine that, M.K. thought. Erma had seen one hundred autumns. One hundred years’ worth of skies filled with migrating birds. The same skies, every year. And still, she found them fascinating.

The two women sat on the porch in the shade, with a slight breeze wafting around them, and drank iced tea, talking. The conversation began with news about Sadie’s redheaded twins and drifted to school, as Erma asked M.K. what she thought about being a teacher.

M.K. groaned. “Awful. Just awful. Part of the problem is that I don’t think these children are capable of learning.” Maybe Danny Riehl would be the one exception.

“I have learned that most youngsters can do what you ask them to do—even if they don’t think so. They just need a little push sometimes to get them moving.”

Apparently, Erma never had a scholar like Eugene Miller. He needed a push, all right, right out the window.

“So over the years I learned to give a little push in the right direction when I had to. That’s what teachers do.”

M.K. leaned forward in her chair. “That’s the other part of the problem. I just don’t know how to think or act like a teacher.”

Erma tilted her head. “What do you think a teacher acts like?”

“Very, very serious. And solemn.” Gid was serious. Alice was serious and solemn.

Teaching was serious business. M.K. had a difficult time acting serious and solemn on a full-time basis. It was exhausting.

“And why do you think that would be true?”

“The reason, I think, is because it is an overwhelming task to maintain order. Especially when Eugene Miller is in the room. I’m only five feet three and the older boys tower over me. They ignore me. They run roughshod over all of my attempts to keep the classroom from utter chaos.”

“Mary Kate,” Erma started. She was one of the few people who called M.K. by her full name and it made her feel rather grown up. “They will see you as a teacher on the day when you start seeing yourself as a teacher.”

“But I do! I’m in that stuffy schoolhouse every day, from morning to night. I’ve been working myself to the bone. I’ve tried everything! I’ve tried to teach like Alice. I’ve tried to teach like Gid. Neither way works. I just can’t do it. I can not teach.”

“Oh, but I think you can,” Erma said in that enigmatic way she had. “Mary Kate, there is a remarkable porosity in a one-room schoolhouse. A lesson given to one age group will find its way into others as well. You watch and see. Soon, you will have that entire schoolroom functioning like a well-oiled machine.”

She asked about each of the students, and M.K. surprised herself at how much she knew about each one. Much, much more than she had thought she did. “There’s a new girl who looks at me as if I’m a stray cat—pitiful and unwanted.”

Erma stared at M.K. Then, her little shoulders began to shake, at first only slightly, and then more heavily, until her tiny wrinkled face broke open with a whoop of raspy laughter. She laughed and laughed until tears ran down her face. M.K. felt indignant. She wasn’t trying to be funny! She was only trying to describe the way Jenny looked at her—as if she had no idea how M.K. ended up as a teacher. M.K. had the same thought.

An hour later, M.K. walked back to Windmill Farm feeling better about everything. Erma had that effect on her. She was an odd person in a lot of ways, full of contrasts. She was one hundred years old, but thought and acted like a much younger person. She lived alone but loved people.

As M.K. hopped a fence to shortcut through the Smuckers’ goat pasture, there was something else about Erma that kept rolling around in her mind. When Erma was with you, she was really, really with you. She was totally focused on you. She fixed her eyes on you and looked at you as if you were saying the most important thing in the world. She would cock her head sympathetically, ask pertinent questions, and offer her opinions tactfully.

Unlike Fern, who never concerned herself with tactfulness.

As M.K. turned up the drive to Windmill Farm, she stopped to get the mail and braced herself to be met with a scolding from Fern. She knew she was running late.

But no! Fern didn’t even seem to notice she had gone missing all afternoon. Fern was turning the kitchen inside and out, looking for her coffee can of spare cash. She barely looked up when M.K. came inside.

M.K. tossed the mail on the kitchen table. “What are you looking for?”

“You didn’t take my coffee can, did you?”

“No. Of course not.”

M.K.’s father came inside and noticed the two women taking things out of cupboards.

“Amos, I can’t find my coffee can,” Fern said. “You didn’t move it, did you?”

“No,” Amos said, washing his hands at the sink. “Why would I?”

Fern eyed him. “Well, you were the last one who had it. You’ve been paying that new hired boy cash from it each night.”

Amos grabbed a dishrag. “I always put it back where I found it.”

“Wasn’t gone yesterday.” She opened up another cupboard. “Near on two hundred dollars, if a penny.”

M.K. thought for a moment. “Dad, was the new hired hand in the kitchen with you when you paid him?”

Fern stilled a moment as she waited for Amos’s answer.

Amos looked from M.K. to Fern. “Now, wait just a minute. You shouldn’t be tossing accusations at anyone.”

Fern frowned. “I have yet to meet this fellow. He’s as skittish as a young colt.”

Another mystery! M.K. was intrigued. “Who is this fellow, Dad?”

Amos frowned. “He’s the hardest worker I’ve ever seen.”

M.K. hopped up on the kitchen counter, then hopped off again when Fern scowled at her. “Dad, what else do you know about him?”

Amos tossed the dishrag on the counter. “I know that he didn’t take money from Fern’s coffee can. That’s what I know.” He noticed the mail on the table and skimmed through it. Then he took his mail to his desk in the living room.

M.K. turned to Fern. “Erma Yutzy said she was looking around for some cash that had gone missing.”

“You were at Erma’s today?” Fern looked pleased.

“I happened to be walking by her house.”

“It’s out of the way.”

“Not today it wasn’t.” The more M.K. thought about it, the more she thought there might be a connection. According to the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a person needed motive and opportunity. She walked to the doorjamb of the living room. “Dad, do you happen to know if that hired hand is working anywhere else?”

“Yes,” Amos said, leaning back in his desk chair. “Erma Yutzy’s. She’s been needing someone to mow her lawn once a week because her great-grandnephew fell out of a tree and broke his arm.”

M.K. gave Fern a “See? I told you so!” look, but Fern didn’t pay her any mind. She was looking through another cupboard for her coffee can. Clearly, this hired hand had plenty of opportunity. But what would be his motive? “Dad, tell me everything you know about this hired hand.”

“I know two things. His name is Chris Yoder. And he’s a hard worker.” He put on his glasses to read a letter, a signal that he was done talking.

M.K. gave up trying to pry information from him and went back to the kitchen. She reached into the fruit bowl for an apple and took a bite, deep in thought. “I met a fellow named Chris Yoder on the road today. Strange man. Rather accusatory.” She chewed and swallowed. “You know what I would do? I would keep a very close eye on that hired hand, that’s what I would do. Sounds like this fellow might have a case of sticky fingers.”

“You try to make things too simple,” Fern said, her head in a cupboard. “You try to make life too simple.”

But to M.K., it was all so simple. Chris Yoder had been on these very farms and money had gone missing. The two facts seemed to be inextricably linked.