A Heart Made New (3 page)

Breathe.
Breathing brought more nausea. Light-headed, David swayed. Concern on his face, Josiah took a step toward him.

David backed away, both hands up. “The first round of chemo didn’t work. The remission didn’t last. There’s a chance I’ll die. Is that what you want for Annie? To be a widow before she’s really a wife?” He brushed past his friend and tottered to the stall that held his mare. “How much do I owe you?”

“Annie told me the doctors said the prognosis for Hodgkin’s is good.” Josiah slipped up next to him. “Besides, you don’t know God’s will for you. Don’t pretend you do. Your daed died young. My daed died young. I figure we’ve had our share of grief.”

“It doesn’t work that way. You’re like Annie—an optimist. It must run in your family.”

“She’s an optimist because she has faith. From faith comes hope. She’s waiting for you.”

David faced his friend. “I never asked her to wait. How much do I owe you?”

“No charge for a friend—even if he is pigheaded.” His face grim, Josiah started toward the door. “I’m going to the hardware store,” he yelled, apparently for Caleb’s benefit. Josiah’s cousin waved a pencil and went back to the ledger in front of him.

Feeling like he’d let a friend down, David led Rosie from the stall. Josiah couldn’t know what it was like. Having faith meant accepting, didn’t it? If he really believed, he had nothing to be afraid of, right? Why was everyone so afraid of death? It seemed like a lack of faith. He was fighting to accept his lot, whatever it turned out to be. Pain wrapped itself around his heart and squeezed at the litany of things he would never have, never experience. Marriage. Fatherhood. Annie.

Annie had pretty green eyes and that faint dusting of freckles that made her look younger than her twenty years. Some might find fault with her daydreams, but David found himself mesmerized by the girl who wrote poems and played Mary in the school Christmas pageant. No girl smiled as often as she did. While she worked, while she walked, while she baked, while she prayed. He’d never known anyone so intent on finding the good pieces of fruit among the rotten. She believed in the possibilities of the future so much it almost made him believe in her dreams too. Almost.

The sounds of sirens jerked him from his agonizing reverie. They didn’t get many sirens in Bliss Creek. Just for heart attacks and the like. David tried to shake away the image of his father gasping in pain, his face darkening to a shade of purple as he thrashed on the barn floor. Who was it this time? Not Mudder, surely. She took her medicine every day and ate the foods the doctor said were best—David saw to that.

“David, come quickly!” Josiah threw the shed door open wide. “Quickly!”

His hands fumbling, David tied the reins to the stall railing. “What is it?”

“Michael Glick says someone robbed the bakery. Shots were fired.”

Gunfire.

Mudder.

Annie.

A
nnie flew to the oven and tugged open the door. Smoke poured out. The cinnamon rolls were blackened, unrecognizable blobs of burnt dough. She coughed, and her eyes teared up from the smoke. She sniffed hard, grabbed a hot pad, and pulled the pan out. “What a mess. I’ll have to start all over again. It’s such a waste.”

“They’re just cinnamon rolls. We’ll make more. The main thing is we’re all right.” Her kapp askew and a clump of wiry gray hair hanging in her eyes, Sadie reached for the broom. “I guess I’d better clean up the glass before someone steps on it.”

“You sit down and rest a minute.” Looking not the least bit worse for wear, Miriam tried to tug the broom from Sadie’s grip. “I can take care of the cleanup. Daed will understand. He’ll be glad I stayed to help when he hears what happened.”

Annie suspected differently. Solomon Yonkers might want his daughter as far away as possible from the scene of a shooting.

Sergeant Dylan Parker put one huge hand on the broom, making both women let go. “This is a crime scene. We need to leave it as it is until we can take some pictures.” His gaze encompassed Annie. “You too, Annie. Could you go outside and have a seat on the bench out there?”

“Burnt cinnamon rolls are evidence?” Annie instantly regretted her tart tone. Sergeant Parker had never been anything other than
courteous when he came in for a bag of pastries to take to the staff at the police station. He liked to joke about having a sweet tooth that he planned to have pulled before he went broke at the bakery. Annie tried again. “We need to clean up. Customers like a tidy store.”

“We can’t have customers stepping on this glass.” Sadie tried to take back her broom. Sergeant Parker didn’t let go. “I need to clean up.”

They engaged in a tug-of-war that made Annie want to smile, in spite of everything. Sergeant Parker towered over Sadie. He appeared to eat well and probably went to one of those gyms she’d heard about where men lifted weights. Plain folks built muscle with work. Other folks used heavy things. That always struck Annie as funny. Sadie was sixty if she were a day and despite lifting huge sacks of flour and sugar every day, she was a little on the sparse side.

“You can’t clean up until we’ve documented the scene.” Sergeant Parker won the tug-of-war easily, but he had the good grace not to gloat over the victory. “You’re closed for business for now.”

“But we need the…” Annie stopped. She couldn’t share their problems with this Englischer, however nice he seemed. “For now. Just until they ask their questions.”

“Then I guess I’d better run back to the shop.” Miriam started for the door. “Daed will wonder where I—”

“Again, I’m sorry.” Sergeant Parker held up a hand, palm up. “I need you to stay until I can take your statement.”

“You don’t need our statements. We won’t press charges.” Sadie shook a finger at the man. “The poor man just wanted to feed his little girl.”

“Oh, ma’am.” Sergeant Parker shook his head, a funny look on his face. “Ma’am, he committed armed robbery. He fired shots at you.”

“That boy didn’t shoot at me. It was an accident. The mayor startled him. He shot the door and the windows. They can be replaced.” Sadie frowned and crossed her scrawny arms. “Besides, he seemed to need the money more than we did.”

“He didn’t shoot at me,” Miriam chimed in. “We were all the way across the room when it happened.”

If the situation weren’t so sad, Annie might have mustered a smile at the indignation in her friend’s voice. “He didn’t shoot at me either.”

A snort from across the room made Annie shift her gaze to Mayor Haag. She jumped up from the bench, her face red with indignation. She marched right up to Sergeant Parker and pointed a finger at him.

“He shot at me. That’s attempted murder. This is armed robbery. Don’t stand there—go catch him! What do we pay you for?” Mayor Haag smoothed short tufts of silver hair with a shaking hand. She needn’t have—not one hair was out of place. They wouldn’t dare move. “I’ll press charges whether these women like it or not. That turn-the-other-cheek thing works well for their kind, but I have a town full of citizens to keep safe.”

“He didn’t mean to shoot at you. You scared him and he shot at the door and the window.” Annie managed to keep her voice soft, respectful. “It was an accident.”

“Whoa! Whoa! Everyone stick a cork in it, okay?” Sergeant Parker held up a massive hand. “Mayor, you sit back down. Annie, do me a favor and take a seat on the bench outside, please. Miriam, you’re over here by the cash register. Mrs. Plank, let’s put you in that chair back there by that storage room for now.”

Annie didn’t understand why they couldn’t stay together and give each other comfort. But Sergeant Parker was a man of authority. She laid the hot pads in a neat stack on the counter and headed to the door. She nearly ran into Officer Bingham. He was another regular visitor to the bakery. Unlike Sergeant Parker, he could use a few visits to that gym—or better yet, some time in the fields. Gasping for air like a catfish tugged from the creek, he dragged the robber into the bakery.

Blood caked the young man’s nose and trickled down the front of the dingy white T-shirt he wore under the denim jacket. His hands cuffed behind him, he wove back and forth, a little off balance. Officer Bingham held onto him with both hands. “We grabbed this guy running down the alley with a gun in one hand and a bag of money in the other.” The way Officer Bingham panted suggested he didn’t run very often. “I had to tackle him to get him to stop, boss. He put up quite a
struggle. I think we can add resisting arrest to the charges. This is him, right, Mrs. Plank? Is this the guy who robbed you?”

Sadie couldn’t lie. None of them could. But something about the man’s anguished face spoke to Annie’s heart. She shook her head ever so slightly. Sadie’s shoulders rose and fell. She frowned. “It was very fast—”

“That’s him! Why are you asking them?” Mayor Haag’s hands flailed in the air. “That’s the man who tried to kill me.” She marched over to him. “You will have a lot of time in jail to think about how smart it is to take a shot at an elected official, mister.”

“That would be a positive ID, then.” Sergeant Parker stepped between the two of them. He turned to Officer Bingham. “Get him over to the station and get him processed.” The officer nodded and turned the man around roughly.

“Wait.” Annie wrapped her arms around her middle. She took a tentative step toward the man in handcuffs. “What’s your name?”

He raised his head. His hair hung in his eyes and Annie wanted to push it back like he was a little boy and she was his mother. His lips trembled. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I want to pray for you. It helps me to have a name.”

His white skin went red as a radish. “Logan. Logan McKee,” he whispered.

“What about your daughter?”

“Grace. We call her Gracie.”

Annie smiled. “That’s a pretty name.”

Sergeant Parker cleared his throat. “Outside, Annie, please.”

Annie complied. Her legs still soft as strawberry preserves, she sank onto the bench in front of the store. Sergeant Parker’s black police car sat next to the curb, red and blue lights on top still flashing, one door open. It felt…untidy. Ignoring the curious gazes of more than a dozen people—all Englischers—who were loitering outside the yellow crime scene tape Sergeant Parker had strung across the front of the bakery, she scurried over and shut the car door, then went back to her seat.

“Annie, Annie, are you all right?”

Long legs pumping, David raced across the street, Josiah right behind him. David’s hat flew off, revealing his smooth, bald head. He stopped long enough to retrieve it. A car horn blared and the driver shook a fist. Both men kept going. Annie shot from the bench. They were going to get themselves killed over nothing.

“Is Mudder all right? They said shots fired. Shots fired!” David ducked under the tape and skidded to a stop so fast Josiah almost ran into him. “Who would shoot at you and Mudder?”

“
Ach
, David, you shouldn’t be running! Sit down.” Annie offered him her spot on the bench. He staggered away from her, put both hands on his knees, and gasped. She followed him. “We’re fine. Your mother’s fine. Miriam’s fine. Nobody was hurt.”

“Miriam? Miriam was in there?” A look of near panic on his sweaty face, Josiah started to push past Annie. “Is she hurt?”

“Listen to me.” Annie grabbed his arm. “Everyone is fine. Sadie. Me. Miriam. The mayor. You can’t go in there. The sergeant says it’s a crime scene, and he’s interviewing each one of us—taking statements, he calls it.”

“The mayor was in there?” His face stony now, Josiah crossed his thick arms over a chest made broad by almost a year of working the anvil. “Police statements? Luke isn’t going to like this. Maybe you should go back to working at home.”

“It was an accident. The mayor scared him.” A chill ran up Annie’s arms. Surely she wouldn’t be forced to give up her independence and a job she loved because of this. If Luke agreed with Josiah, she wouldn’t be given a choice. “Don’t tell Luke you think I should stay home. I’m fine.”

Josiah picked up his hat, revealing his wild mop of brown curls, and slapped it back down hard. “I don’t know—”

“Ach!”
David sagged against the wall, his breathing so noisy that Annie started. “I think I…”

“What is it? What do you need?” Annie took a step closer to him, longing for the freedom to offer him her hand for support. “Didn’t you have your treatment today? Shouldn’t you lie down?”

“I don’t want to talk about chemo!” Still hunched over, David stared up at her, his dark eyes full of emotion. His flaring anger didn’t surprise Annie. David never wanted to talk about his illness or admit the slightest weakness. He didn’t trust her enough for that. “Where’s Mudder? Something like this could give her another heart attack.”

Annie understood his fear. He’d already lost his father to a heart attack. Sadie’s first one had been mild, but still scary. “She’s fine—”

David ducked past her just as Officer Bingham came through the door with Logan McKee. David stopped moving. “Is this him?” He scowled at Logan. “Why would you do this? Shoot at women who never hurt you?”

Logan hung his head. “I didn’t mean—”

“You could’ve given my mother a heart attack—”