Chapter Six
The next morning, I wanted to go straight to the flea market, but I didn’t have the time. Peter had gotten tangled in a pricker bush early that morning, and I spent several hours removing burs from his coat while Phillip anxiously looked on. By the time I got all the burs removed and calmed both goats down, it was time for me to leave for the Double Stitch meeting in the village.
I debated skipping it, but then I was afraid I would have to answer Ruth’s prying questions about where I had been. I already knew Ruth’s opinion on Ben courting Tess and didn’t want to hear any more about it.
I decided that I would find Ben later. Someone at the flea market would know where his second job was, even if it was only Tess.
This morning, I felt better about Ben’s note. I told myself that it was just the romantic ramblings of a young man who was blinded by love. Everything seemed more tragic when a person was young and in love. Emotions were heightened. Feelings were tender. I knew that when I saw Ben again, he would be calm, and maybe then, when he was in a better state of mind, I could find out why he and Tess were in such a hurry to marry.
I parked my buggy in front of the Sunbeam Café. As usual, Lois had offered to come to my little farm and pick me up, but I’d told her it would be silly for her to do that when she lived within walking distance of the café. Also, I didn’t want to tell her just yet about the note, so if I could leave the Double Stitch meeting and track down Ben myself, that would be the best. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell my friend—I told Lois almost everything—but I knew she would insist on going with me to find Ben. He wouldn’t speak to me about what was going on with her around.
I stepped inside the café and found that I was the first member to arrive. Darcy, Lois’s granddaughter, stood at the counter, chatting with a regular customer, Bryan Shell. Bryan was a writer and said he was working on a novel. He said that’s why he was at the Sunbeam Café every day. He claimed it was the best place for him to write, but I think it was really because he was so enamored with the pretty café owner.
Darcy may have enjoyed his attentions, but as of yet, I hadn’t seen her encouraging the relationship. She was still recovering from having her heart broken by another man. I knew it would take her some time to want to give love another try. But unlike Ben, Bryan seemed willing to wait.
I knew that things were different with the Englisch though. They didn’t feel this great rush to get married as the Amish did. They didn’t bat an eye at the idea of getting married after thirty. Or even after forty! If an Amish person waited that long to marry, it would be the talk of the district.
“Hi, Millie!” Darcy greeted me with a wide grin. “Grandma is in the back. She was just telling us about the chair she bought at the flea market yesterday. She’s so thrilled with it and says it looks great in her home.”
“Oh gut,” I said with a smile. “I was hoping that the chair made it home in one piece. I had concerns . . .”
The back-kitchen door opened, and Lois came out carrying a tray of frothy drinks. “Of course, it made it home. Millie, you make it sound like I didn’t have the situation well in hand just as I always do.”
Darcy and I shared a glance, but neither of us made a comment. However, Lois never missed a thing and turned to the young writer for support. “Come on, Bryan. You’re on my side in this, aren’t you?”
He blinked behind his glasses as he slouched off to his seat by the window. Bryan was a tall man, but I had never seen him stretch to his full height. It was as if he had spent his entire life bent and folded at the waist. Perhaps he had started doing that because of a lack of confidence, and over time it just became the way he faced the world. It might be a fine way to approach the world as a writer, but it would not do if he ever wanted to be a spouse.
In fact, I believed his demeanor didn’t bode well for his match with Darcy. Darcy might be in a weak spot now and enjoy his attentions, but she was a proactive woman who ran her own business. A time would come when a weak man would not be enough for her. I hoped that she would put him off and find someone who was more suited to her, or that Bryan had it in him to step up to be the man she needed him to be.
“Aww,” Lois said when Bryan didn’t voice his support. “You all should cut me a break. I even made these drinks for Double Stitch.”
The drinks in front of her looked far closer to straight cream and sugar than coffee. In fact, I wondered if there was coffee in them at all.
I wasn’t the least bit surprised when Lois placed a frothy drink in front of me, even though she knew I would have preferred black coffee. It seemed to me that Lois took it as her mission to expose me to as many Englisch customs as I would allow. I stared at the drink. “Isn’t the point of serving a customer at a café to give them what they would really want and ask for? The ladies would be fine with coffee. You don’t have to go to all this trouble.”
Lois shook her head. “You’re not a customer, you’re family, so that means I can order for you.”
I eyed the drink as she picked it up and put it in my hand. “What is that?”
“Just taste it and let me know if you like it. Then I will tell you what it is.”
“I think that’s what every poisoner says to their victim before the victim drops dead.”
“My, Millie, who knew you had such a dark imagination? That’s not a very Amish thing to say. I think the fact that you solved a murder last spring might have gone to your head.”
I made a face at her. “You’re right. It wasn’t very Amish. I know you wouldn’t poison me. Well, I’m fairly certain that you wouldn’t.”
“Thank you. It does comfort me to know that you trust me in that way.” She placed her elbows on the counter. “Now, out with it. What’s up with you?”
I eyed her with the same wary look I had given my drink. “I don’t know if anything is, as you say, ‘up,’ but I do feel a bit of anxiety this morning. I didn’t sleep well. I was kept up by some unsettling dreams.” I hoped she would leave it at that.
“You’re not one to have nightmares. At least, I can’t remember you ever mentioning having one.”
My brow wrinkled. “I know. I think that’s why I’m so out of sorts over it.” I pointed at my drink. “I’m sure this will set me to rights.”
“Or give you a sugar high,” Darcy said. “Just remember, I taught Grandma how to make the drink, but she likes to give it enhancements.”
“My, my,” Lois said. “Between the two of you, I’m starting to doubt my cooking skills.”
“I didn’t know you had cooking skills,” Darcy teased.
Lois laughed. “It’s true. My goal is to boil water without setting the pot on fire, but I think I’m improving.”
Darcy gave her grandmother a hug. “You are. You are so much better than when you first started to help at the café. You make a mean pot of tea.”
“You see, I finally got the knack of boiling water,” Lois said and winked at me.
Darcy grabbed a mug and a pot of coffee and carried both over to Bryan’s table, where he was already hunched over his computer.
Lois nodded at them. “What are the odds on those two, do you think?”
“Odds?” I asked and sipped from my drink. It was even sweeter than I’d imagined it would be.
“Oh, I know you don’t like to speak in gambling terms,” Lois said. “But do you think they will work together?”
I pressed my lips together.
Lois nodded. “Your silence is telling, and I feel the same way. I just don’t want to say anything to Darcy yet. She is still reeling over her last boyfriend. I also don’t want to tell her because I’m afraid my disapproval will spur her into liking him. You know how the young are when they think they are told not to love someone. They latch on like a catfish on a worm.”
I did indeed, and that made me think again of Ben and Tess. It seemed to me that Ben and Tess were already invested in their romance. I still didn’t understand why they felt they couldn’t wait to marry. Even a year would make a world of difference to Tess’s father. They might be even surer about their relationship in a year’s time too.
She frowned. “You look upset. What’s wrong?”
“I’m just worried about Ben. I think that’s what brought the dreams on. When I spoke with him at the flea market yesterday, he looked so incredibly tired. For a man that young to look as if he could fall asleep at any second was startling. I’m worried that he is pushing himself too hard. I was the one who suggested he work at the flea market.”
“You did, but you never told him to get four jobs and only sleep a few hours a day. That was all on him.”
“Even so, I should have known better. Ben has always been the type to take a suggestion three steps past where you expected him to go.”
She patted my hand. “Don’t you worry. He will be fine, and the boy will find his balance just as we all have. It’s part of growing up.”
I cocked my head. “Since when have you been the one passing out sage advice?”
Lois grinned. “I guess all those Amish proverbs you have been repeating over the years finally wore off on me.” She chuckled at her own joke. “Drink that pumpkin latte. In my book, there’s nothing that a little sugar can’t ease. If that doesn’t help,” she added, “I will walk over to Swissmen Sweets and buy you a chocolate Jethro Bar.”
“A Jethro Bar?” I asked.
“Oh yes, Juliet Brook’s pig has become a celebrity since the release of Bailey’s Amish Sweets. Because of that, the candy shop is now making white and milk chocolate pigs that look just like him. They are adorable. People are buying them like hotcakes.”
Jethro the pig had been a bit of a celebrity in the village of Harvest even before his television debut. Juliet, who had recently married Reverend Brook, the pastor of the last white church on the village square, took the little pig everywhere she went. I’d heard her say that he was her comfort animal. A “comfort animal” in the Amish world was a completely foreign concept. Animals were livestock, beasts of burden or service. Yes, Amish kept dogs and cats, but even those “pets” were for practical purposes too. The dogs helped with farm work and the cats caught mice. Interestingly, both the Englisch and the Amish accepted Juliet and her pig everywhere they went in the village. Juliet was one of the sweetest women I knew, and everyone in the village loved her. Jethro, although cute and endearing, could be a bit of a handful, but he was tolerated in the village for Juliet’s sake.
“I’m continually amazed at what Englischers will buy,” I said.
“Not me. I knew when my second husband bought a singing bass for our living room wall that there were no more rules when it came to good taste.”
I was going to ask her more about this bass when the front door of the café opened and Raellen walked inside. Raellen always looked a little bit overworked and harried, but that could be put down to the fact that she was the mother of nine children ranging in ages from one to fifteen.
“Oh, Millie, thank goodness I have found you. I went to your little farm as soon as I heard the news, but you weren’t there. Your goats chased me right out of the yard! You would have thought they hadn’t seen a human at the farm in years by the way they acted.” She took a breath. “When I saw that you weren’t at the house, I knew to come here because of the meeting. I told the older children to watch the little ones. I had to get to you as quick as I could. I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else first.”
Raellen might be sweet, but she was a terrible gossip, and it wasn’t unusual for her to want to be the first one to share news, but this was the first time that she had tracked me down especially for it.
“Is it my niece?” I asked. “Is Edith all right?”
My niece Edith had had a rough go last spring when she’d almost married the wrong man. Ever since then, I kept an eye on her and helped out at the greenhouse once a week. Now that it was the end of September, the greenhouse was all but closed for the season, and Edith was starting to plan for the next year. She didn’t need my help there as she did in the spring and summer. I’d seen her at church the Sunday before, and both she and her children looked well. There had been no signs that there was trouble brewing.
“It’s not about Edith.” She paused. “Is there something I should know about Edith?”
“Don’t be a nosy parker about Edith, Raellen,” Lois cautioned. “And spit out what you came here to say.”
Without preamble she said, “The Harvest Flea Market is on fire!”
“What?” Lois and I both cried.
The Englischers who were quietly reading and eating in the café stared at us.
Raellen leaned across the counter. “It’s true. My husband got a call on the shed phone to go help with the fire.”
“Shouldn’t they have real firemen taking care of that?” Lois asked.
“They do, but it was taking so long for the fire department’s water trucks to get there, the men got a bucket chain going from the well. All the men in the district were called up.”
“Oh dear, was much of the flea market lost?” Lois asked.
Raellen shrugged. “I haven’t heard. My husband has been gone for nearly two hours. I will be sure to find out all the details from him when he gets home.”
That, I didn’t doubt. There was nothing Raellen liked more than gathering new information.
“That’s just awful,” I said. “Lois and I were there only yesterday. Was anyone hurt?”
Raellen took a breath. “That’s what I came here to tell you. I wanted you to hear it from a friend.”
“What?” My heart began to race as I waited for her to get to the point.
“A young man died in the fire.”
I gripped the edge of the counter. “Oh, Lord in Heaven. Please don’t tell me it’s—”
“It’s Ben Baughman,” Raellen practically shouted to the room.
It was the name I had expected to hear.