Bygones (35 page)

Based on the girl’s red-rimmed eyes and chapped nose, it appeared
Marie had spoken the truth when she said Beth was ill. Henry gestured to the sofa. “Sit down, please.”

“No!” the girl’s voice croaked hoarsely. She angled her body toward Henry, her stance reminding him of a rooster preparing to battle for kingship of the chicken yard. “Tell me what you did to make my mother cry!”

The girl’s defiance stirred Henry’s anger. Marching across the floor, he captured her arm and propelled her to the sofa. With a slight push, he managed to seat Beth on the edge of the cushion. Jamming his thumb against his chest, he said, “I did nothing. If your mother is crying, it’s over her own guilty conscience, nothing more.”

“Guilty con—” Beth shook her head, her fingertips pressed to her temples. “Mom has nothing to feel guilty about.”

Henry snorted. “Is your sense of right and wrong so distorted you can’t see the truth? She steals, yet she shouldn’t feel guilty?”

“Steals?” Beth’s head shot up, her eyes wide. “What in the world are you talking about?”

Henry stared at Beth, unable to believe she didn’t know. Was it possible Marie had acted alone? She loved her daughter desperately. Would she have done all this without Beth’s knowledge as a way of protecting the girl should she be caught? It was the only logical explanation. For one moment, Henry experienced a twinge of sympathy for Beth. How would she feel when she discovered her mother’s love for her had driven her to such extremes?

Sitting on the opposite end of the sofa, he linked his shaking fingers and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but your mother is responsible for the thefts that have been taking place in town.”

Beth sat bolt upright, her eyebrows crunching downward to create a scowl of disbelief. “No way.”

Henry admired the girl’s loyalty, but she had to face the truth.
“It’s true. This morning, when she should have been in service at the meetinghouse, I found her in the barn of an abandoned farm about three miles outside of town. All the stolen goods were there with her.”

Beth shook her head slowly, her breathing erratic. Holding up both hands, she said, “There’s got to be some mistake. My mom wouldn’t—”

“There’s no mistake.” Unintentionally, a hard note crept back into Henry’s tone. “I saw her with the stolen goods. And she offered no explanation.”

“But why would she steal?”

Henry drew a breath through his nose, gentling his voice. “For you.”

Beth jerked to her feet, swaying. Henry rose, too, poised in case the girl fainted. But she held her footing. “You’re wrong.”

“How can you be sure? Isn’t that why you came—to gather items for the business you plan to open? When people told you no, your mother found a way for you to have the things after all.” Henry’s chest constricted as he spoke the words. How it hurt to condemn Marie this way.

“You’re wrong.” Beth’s voice quivered with conviction, tears glimmering in her eyes. “My mother is the most moral person I know.” Her chin jutted forward. “Once, when I was in first grade, I took a candy bar from the store without paying for it. One of my friends from school was having a birthday, and I planned to give it to her as a gift. When mom found me wrapping it, she took me back to the store and made me apologize to the manager. I had to give the candy back
and
pay for it. When I told her I had taken it for a present, she said, ‘You don’t steal for
any
reason; stealing is wrong.’ ” Crossing her arms, Beth glared at him. “Mom wouldn’t steal. I know she wouldn’t.”

“Maybe not for herself, but—”

“Weren’t you listening to me? She wouldn’t do it for anyone!” A tear slipped free and rolled down Beth’s cheek, and she brushed it away with a vicious swipe of her hand. “I don’t know why she was out there. I don’t know why she wouldn’t explain herself to you. But I do know my mom would not steal. Not even for me. She—”

Beth’s voice broke, and she jerked her gaze away, her chin crumpling. She took a few ragged breaths, her shoulders rising and falling with each heaving inhale and exhale. When she was somewhat controlled, she looked at him again. “She taught me that the only thing a person can truly call her own is her character. Mom’s character is as pure as anyone’s. And since we’ve been back here, all her talk about God. . .”

Shaking her head, Beth fixed Henry with a look of pained betrayal. “You hurt my mom a lot. I’ve never heard her cry that hard—never. She wasn’t feeling guilty. She was just. . .hurt.”

Beth drew herself up, her chin high. “All this time, I thought you were her friend—someone she could depend on. But you’re just like all the rest of them.” She charged past him and slammed out the door before he could say another word.

Henry stood in the middle of the front room, staring at the storm door, his thoughts racing. His throat convulsed as he envisioned Marie crying harder than she’d ever cried before. Because of him.

Beth’s description of Marie’s moral character is what he wanted to believe. But the evidence was against her. He had caught her redhanded! And she hadn’t offered any explanation.

A need to discover the truth drove Henry out the door to his car. Behind the wheel, he turned the vehicle toward the county road he had traveled that morning. He would search the barn for answers.
Please guide me, Lord
. He would not rest until he found the truth.

B
eth slipped back into the house with her pocket full of packets of spearmint tea. She found her mother in the kitchen in front of the wall calendar, her fingers pressed to the square representing December 25. Beth crossed to her quickly and put her arm around her shoulders.

“You okay?”

Mom shrugged, releasing a dismal sigh. “I’ll be all right.”

After all that crying, Mom’s nose was as stuffed up as if she had caught Beth’s cold. Beth snatched three tissues from a box on the corner of the counter and pressed them into her mother’s hand. “I’ll get your tea started.”

“Thanks.”

Mom remained at the calendar while Beth filled the teakettle and set it on the stove. She lit a burner with a flick of a match, then returned to her mother’s side while the water heated. For a few moments she stood silently, her gaze on her mother’s profile. Mom simply stood there, her focus on the calendar, almost as if she were frozen in place. Beth touched her shoulder with her fingertips.

“What are you doing?”

Mom glanced at her, her tousled hair seeming incompatible with
the Mennonite dress of hunter green. “Thinking. About Christmas.” She heaved a sigh. “We haven’t gotten a tree or anything, and it’s only a week away. Do you want to drive into Newton tomorrow morning and find one? I’m sure they’ll be pretty picked over, and we don’t have any decorations, but. . .” Mom’s eyes swam with tears.

Her chest tight, Beth put her arms around her mother’s unresponsive form. “Don’t worry about what Henry told you. He’s just a jerk. Forget about him.”

Mom pulled free and stared at Beth, her eyes wide. “How do you know what Henry said?”

Beth offered a quirky grin and scratched her head. “I went to see him. I gave him what for, too.”

Sinking into a chair at the kitchen table, Mom continued to stare, wide-eyed. “Oh, honey.”

Beth sat, too, and took her mother’s hand. “I know there’s no way in the world you took that stuff.”

Mom lowered her gaze to their joined hands. Her shoulders lifted and fell in a sigh.

Beth tipped her head. “But what were you doing out at some abandoned farmstead? I thought you went to church, but Henry said you didn’t.”

Mom turned her gaze to the window that looked over the pasture behind the house.

Her curiosity increasing with each silent second that passed, Beth said, “It is odd that you knew where to find the stolen things. Did somebody tell you where they were hidden?” Her mother remained silent. “How did you know to go there?”

Mom’s clamped jaw let Beth know she didn’t intend to answer.

She gave her mother’s hand a tug. “Mom?”

A soft whistle from the teakettle intruded. Mom removed her
hand from Beth’s grasp and rose. “The water’s ready. Do you want a cup, too?”

Beth watched her mother cross the floor on stiff legs and prepare two cups of tea. But when she set one cup in front of her, Beth shook her head and rose, backing away from the table. “Why won’t you answer me?”

Mom fitted her hands around the mug and lifted it, the steam swirling up around her face. Fixing Beth with a serious look, she said softly, “Honey, remember when I asked you where you were spending your time, and you told me I should just trust you?”

Beth gave a small nod.

“Well, now I’m telling you the same thing. You have to trust me.” She sipped the tea, her gaze returning to the calendar.

Beth, her heart pounding, turned and quietly headed to her bedroom.

Henry stood in the middle of the abandoned barn, his brows pulled low and hands shoved deep into his pockets. The floor was stirred up, showing signs of recent activity. All of the items were gone, claimed by their rightful owners, but if he closed his eyes he could remember the scene he’d discovered earlier that day. Marie, on the Dicks’ sleeping bench with her arm around Albrecht’s mantel clock. Off to the side, the Flemings’ Russian trunk had waited, and behind it, a stack of enameled pans.

Suddenly something struck him, and his eyes flew wide. He gaped, his gaze jerking here and there as other pictures cluttered his mind. The barn had been in disorder—no specific space designated for furniture, another for implements, all just thrown in with no thought given to organization. Even as a child, Marie’s school desk had always been neatly arranged, the pencils here, the paper there.
The restaurant was now attended with the same care. Would she have been careless in the storing of valuable antiques? That didn’t make sense.

Henry ambled around the interior of the barn. So many people had come and gone this afternoon, the soft dirt floor wore scuffs and gouges. He came to a halt and crouched down, his heart skipping a beat, when he discovered, in one corner, a shoe print that didn’t fit with the others. Wafflelike markings left by some sort of athletic shoe.

He swallowed. Like Deborah and Trina, Marie wore athletic sneakers in the café. He put his hand beside the print, measuring it against the length of his fingers, then jerked to his feet and placed his foot alongside it. He nodded, a smile of satisfaction tugging at his lips. A man made that print—a man who wore sneakers rather than the boots of a Mennonite.

Turning a slow circle, Henry’s gaze meticulously scanned the floor for more prints matching the one he’d just found. He located two more complete ones and a partial one. His heart pounding harder with each discovery, he continued searching for clues. Along the far wall, in the shadows, he spotted something.

He crossed quickly to the item in question. A black hat, lying upside down in the dirt. At first glance, it appeared Mennonite, but when he picked it up and carried it to the yard, where the sun sent down its light, he discovered it was constructed of tightly woven straw painted black rather than felt. No man from town owned a hat like that.