Fall from Pride (24 page)

“Sarah, with us so busy,” her mother said matter-of-factly, “you'll have to buggy Nate to get his VERA.” Mrs. Kauffman and Lizzie were rolling out more balls of pastry dough
for their second big batch of half-moon pies that kept coming out of the oven like a production line. “Then you come right back so you can finish the painting like you wanted.” Mrs. Kauffman gave Nate a narrow-eyed look as if to say,
You behave now.

He'd felt furious that M.E. had just shown up and ruined things. But had she? He'd wanted a chance to talk to Sarah, though he had not one clue what to say, and he'd been close to tongue-tied when she'd taken him into the sheriff's this morning because he couldn't bear to say a private goodbye, or any goodbye to her.

 

Sarah pulled the buggy out of the farm lane onto the road, heading for Sheriff Freeman's garage so Nate could get VERA and change his clothes before he headed into town. She knew he was real down about the arson case, and she wished she knew what to say to comfort him. In case this was their last time alone, she wanted to say so much, but Nate spoke first. “I don't like riding around hunched down like this—except for the view,” he told her.

“How can you see where we're going down there at all? Oh, you mean—”

He put a hand under the seat, gently grasped her right ankle, then took it back. She fought to keep her hands steady, but she jolted so hard she could have steered Sally right off the road.

“We never got our swim in the pond together,” she blurted. “The twelve days you've been here have gone pretty fast.”

“Sarah, I think I'm going to be recalled to Columbus and Stan Comstock will take over here.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Being here with you, your family and the community has given me a lot to think about. My nightmare of losing my parents in the fire my father set—I realize in a way I've resented M.E. as much as I've been grateful to her. She could never be my mother, so I shouldn't have punished her for that. I was afraid to really let her in my life, to really love her, as if I'd betray my own mother that way.”

“You just put it really well how I feel about my parents. I love them, respect them, but I'm resenting the ties that bind me to them. I feel like I'd be betraying them if I tried to paint these places and these people for a career, so that takes a lot of soul-searching and courage. Ray-Lynn introduced me to the Columbus people with the art gallery this morning at the restaurant. I practically ran away from them when I really didn't want to. Now I'm going to kind of run away from us, too.”

“Your father talked to me during the storm about not getting more personal with you. I don't want to alienate them, but you and I have had something going from the first—curiosity, sure, but a powerful attraction. You've really changed me in a short time. I feel deeply for you. If you ever do decide to leave here, I could help. Loan you some money, get you a place to stay while you paint.”

“I just don't know. It would be worse for my people than when Hannah left. She wasn't shunned because she was never baptized in the church, but I was—I would be put under the
meidung.
”

“I'd like you to meet M.E. After you let me out, will you buggy to the restaurant on your way home? I'll catch up with you and introduce you. I know your mother said to come back to the farm fast, but it would mean a lot to me if you'd come in to meet her.”

“I'd have to face Ray-Lynn after how I ran from her friends, then argued with her this morning.”

“You could wait out back. She's mad at the sheriff and me, too, for lying to her about where I really was. And right after she and Jack were flying high.”

“Flying high—that's a good one. Not very Amish, at least if it means an airplane. Now if it's a bird—”

“Or a woman at the top of the ladder, reaching up to paint the ocean or the sky…”

Sarah didn't say so, but she didn't like that picture in her head of herself at the top of a ladder. The nightmare of being tied to one and burned still haunted her really badly. But she realized she was trying to change the subject now. She was afraid of her emotions, of having to meet Nate's foster mother, of being without him. Even of having the arsonist still on the loose. She pictured a farewell kiss coming when she let Nate out of the buggy, but Sheriff Freeman was home and came out to meet them by his garage.

Well, Sarah thought, perhaps it was all for the best. She'd break into a million pieces if she had to say a final goodbye to Nathan MacKenzie.

 

Nate parked VERA in the front of the restaurant—had to take a parking spot and a half—but figured he might as well let everyone know he was back. Had he actually cooked up the sting operation, he asked himself, just to be able to stay at Sarah's house for a while? No, it had been a viable idea, at least for someone who was desperate to catch an arsonist.

He hadn't passed her on the road into town after he'd changed his clothes and talked to Jack, who was fuming at Ray-Lynn for cutting him off after they'd just come to some
kind of an understanding. “Women! Can't do with 'em or without 'em,” Jack groused.

Nate could only hope Sarah had not gone right back to the farm but was parked behind the restaurant as he'd suggested. The only thing Ray-Lynn said to him when he walked in the front door was, “I'm not sure you deserve a mother—foster or step or whatever—as nice as that woman. Nice friends, too.”

“Have you seen Sarah?”

“I told you to leave her alone. Yes, she's out back, although I warned her to leave you alone, too.”

“Thanks, Ray-Lynn. I'm sorry and Jack is, too, but—”

She spun away and filled someone's coffee cup. He saw a lot of empty booths, but it was midafternoon. He hurried back to where he saw M.E. Silver-haired and slender, she was sitting with two chunky blondes, both on the far side of seventy. M.E.'s hair was straight and sleek with bangs that almost hid her eyebrows. She had a pug nose and pert smile.

“Nathan!” she greeted him, and stood for a hug. “You made Amish country sound so lovely that when I talked about it to Claire and Janet, we just had to come. I hear there's a big barn raising tomorrow, but we've got hospital volunteer work then.”

He knew both of the other women, had for years, so he accepted their hugs, then perched on the edge of the booth beside M.E.

“Nathan,” she whispered, “what's this about you being in Columbus when you really weren't?”

“I'll have to explain all that later. If you ladies wouldn't mind my taking M.E. away for a minute, there's someone I'd like her to meet. It's Sarah Kauffman, M.E., the Amish woman who's helped me here.”

“Oh, well, yes, of course. I'd be honored to meet anyone important to you.”

“It's not like you're thinking,” he told her as he escorted her toward the back of the restaurant. She'd been matchmaking for years. But actually, he scolded himself, it
was
what she was thinking—only impossible.

“You don't know what I'm thinking, except that you look tired but a whole lot more healthy with a little more meat on your bones. And Ray-Lynn's food is rather filling, isn't it? Tasty, too, though I'm thinking Amish fare may be a little too heavy on the salt and sugar.”

He opened the back door and escorted M.E. out into the alley. Sarah climbed down from the buggy, smiling but looking almost as shaky as he felt.

“M.E., this is my friend Sarah Kauffman, who's been such a help here.”

“We're still not sure Nate has the arsonist under arrest,” Sarah said, “but he's been a big help to us, too.”

“I'm glad to hear that. I'd love to stay for the barn raising tomorrow, but my friends and I do volunteer work on Saturdays. The house feels a bit empty since my husband passed away and Nathan moved out and is so busy. You just come and visit me sometime, won't you, Sarah—I mean not by buggy, but somehow? You are always welcome.”

“I've never been to Columbus—Cleveland, though. I'd like to take you up on that, but I just don't know.”

Was she actually wavering about leaving here? Nate wondered. If she came to Columbus maybe M.E. could take her in. But then, to visit Sarah, he'd have to go past the barren lot where what some neighbors still called “the death house” had stood.

He gave Sarah a hand up into the buggy, though he knew
she didn't need it, probably, in the long run, didn't need him. He realized she was in a hurry to get back to the farm and her family, her real life.

M.E. waved as Sarah blew a kiss to Sally and headed out. Like some kind of adolescent, Nate pretended she'd blown the kiss to him.

“WHY DOES THAT WOMAN KEEP LOOKING OUT the window?”
Grossmamm
asked Martha, as if Sarah were not in the room and she didn't know who she was. Recognizing people came and went, but their grandmother had been pretty good lately on that. It was after dark, and the three of them had moved back to the
grossdaadi haus.
They had not lit a lantern so Sarah could watch the barn and not be on display herself.

“Just thinking about her quilt square she finished today, I guess,” Martha answered with a helpless shake of her head when Sarah glanced their way. Martha, like Ella, was a stickler for not even telling what the world called little white lies, but she knew not to get
Grossmamm
upset again about barn burnings.

“When I was the age of you two,” the old woman told them as she rocked in
grossdaad
's old chair, “I was stitching entire quilts, not just one square.”

“Let's go in the bathroom where there's a lantern,
Gross
mamm
. You can get ready for bed, then I'll read to you from the
Budget
again,” Martha said.

“I always did the family budget, especially the egg money,” she told them, and got up with Martha's help. “I don't know why your father decided not to keep those good laying hens when we moved to this little place.”

Well, at least she had those details right, Sarah thought. Things from the past seemed to stick if not the present. Still keeping an eye outside, she darted up from her chair and gave
Grossmamm
a quick good-night kiss on her paper-smooth, cool cheek, then hurried back to the window. Barely a moon tonight, just rising, but to eyes adjusted to the dark, it made enough light to watch the barn without the night goggles Nate was using. She pictured him sitting in her bedroom window, looking out with
Daad
right behind him.

She'd told Nate that she was ready to move on from that bedroom, but was she also ready to move on from this farm, this way of life? Ray-Lynn was right that painting made her happy and was purposeful. But would it be enough to carry her through if she lost everything here she had loved since she could remember?

Besides, Nate would haunt her heart everywhere she worked around here, everywhere she went after he was gone. At the Dutch Farm Table where she wanted to paint a mural for Ray-Lynn or a quilt square outside on the street. The pond—she'd always see him swimming there—the spot where he'd parked VERA. In the barn, the house, her own room and window and bed…

Something moved outside! Someone in black. Sarah shoved her chair aside, knelt by the window, hunched down. Someone carrying binoculars—
Grossmamm
's grasshopper
eyes! Could Nate see the man and would he come running? Her pulse pounded so hard she heard drumming in her ears.

She saw the intruder carried something. A sack? A sack with what kind of incendiary device this time? Because
Daad
was not a church leader, the arsonist must be targeting her paintings. Someone wanted her either to stop doing the quilt squares or to draw attention to them in the most horrible way.

She gripped her flashlight so hard her fingers went numb. Don't startle the intruder, she told herself. Wait. Wait. But don't let him run.

Maybe Gabe would spot him from the barn. Nate had given him the extra phone. She'd wondered if it was because she'd lost the other one in the ditch when Jacob hit her buggy or just because Nate could keep an eye on the
grossdaadi haus
but not the inside of the barn. If the intruder started toward the barn, she would have to confront him, then shout for Gabe and Nate. If a fire started, she could not let Gabe be trapped like Noah Miller.

Instinctively, she blinked and ducked as gravel hit the window.

Hannah? Could that be Hannah? The form seemed so shapeless she wasn't sure. She'd been relying on the fact that someone else—whoever had left that first Bible note—knew that signal would draw her out. Still, she wasn't stepping outside unless she saw Hannah's face. She'd trust her then, of course she would. None of this horror could be her fault.

When the person threw a handful of gravel at the window again, Sarah saw it was Hannah, the silhouette of spiky hair, the shape of the pale face. Still she hesitated, then started to open the window sash to speak before going outside.

But as she did, a second form appeared. Nate! He grabbed
Hannah, forced her to the ground as Sarah opened the window just in time to hear the confrontation.

“Ow! What? Lemme go!”

“Hannah? It's Nate MacKenzie. Just lie still.”

Sarah rushed outside. Nate held one of Hannah's hands behind her back and had her face down in the grass. He was patting her all over as if she was hiding a gun—or a wick and matches.

“Nate, she was just throwing gravel against the window,” Sarah protested. “That's how she always got me out to talk at night!”

“She's real good at night appearances near endangered or burned barns, isn't she?” he muttered, coming up with her car keys, which he dropped on the ground next to her bag.

“That's right,” Hannah cried. “I just came to see Sarah.”

With his night goggles still around his neck, Nate shone his flashlight first on Sarah's binoculars, then inside her bag.

“Amish clothes,” he said, dumping the contents on the grass. “For an incognito getaway? And those are really big binoculars. Great for watching barn fires from nearby fields, I bet.”

Sarah shivered. That person she'd seen in the field at the Schrock fire—she hadn't been able to tell if it was male or female, but in black… No, she knew Hannah as well as she knew herself. It could not have been her.

“I borrowed them,” Hannah muttered. “You're hurting me.”

Nate ignored that and kept pawing through the things he'd spilled on the ground.
Daad
and
Mamm
came out of the house, and Gabe came running.

“Gabe, get back in the barn,” Nate ordered. “Mr. Kauffman, can you go with him? She could be working with
someone. This could be a distraction, a diversion, while someone else torches the barn.”

“I'm not working with anyone! You're crazy!” Hannah insisted.

As the men left again—looking reluctant but alarmed— Nate got up, pulled out handcuffs and put them on Hannah behind her back. He lifted her to a sitting position. She looked horrible, Sarah thought—stunned, furious, frightened, her heavily made-up face dirty. Her skin was ashen, a shocking contrast to her dark mascara running from tears. She almost looked demonic. Surely, Hannah was not the Beast who had written those threatening notes. For a moment Sarah wavered. No, she still had faith her longtime friend would not burn barns.

Nate was looking more frustrated as he kept playing his light over the items from the paper bag. As far as Sarah could see, besides Amish garments, the pile included a big bottle of water and snack bars. Nate looked hesitant, puzzled.

“Hannah, if I search the grounds near the barn, am I going to find something to light a fire?” he asked, his voice quieter now. He knelt beside her, looking closely into her belligerent face. Sarah sat down beside her and
Mamm
hovered over them. Sarah saw that Martha stood now on the other side of the
grossdaadi haus
window, but she didn't come out. Only her white
kapp
and apron showed, ghostlike.

“I have no idea what might be near the barn,” Hannah said. “If you find something bad—incriminating—it's not mine.”

“Let's hear why you're sneaking around here in the dark,” Nate said with a frown at Sarah that clearly said,
Keep your mouth shut.
“This seems to be a habit with you—all the wrong barns, too.”

“I know my family's barn raising is tomorrow,” she said with a toss of her head. “Jacob told me.”

Sarah let out a little gasp. She felt sick to her stomach at what might be coming next.

“I guess misery—and revenge—loves company,” Nate said. “Nice of Jacob to keep tabs on the barns for both of you, but then you've been doing that for yourself, too, hanging around in dark nearby fields, right? Go ahead.”

“I was going to ask Sarah if I could secretly watch the raising from the loft window of this barn, that's all. With the binoculars, I could see pretty well across the field. I know everyone will be there tomorrow at the crack of dawn and no way I was going over there to see it. You know I gave some money toward it, Mr. MacKenzie. I still can't—won't—go home, but I wanted to be near for this, at least. That stuff in the sack is the last of my Amish things, and I thought Sarah could use them—plus, some things for my breakfast if they let me stay here.”

“Of course,”
Mamm
said. “You can stay here, and we'll fix you breakfast, too.”

“Mrs. Kauffman,” Nate cut in, “Hannah Esh is only staying here tonight if she's under lock and key and if I don't find anything she brought to burn your barn around here or in her car.”

“You're arresting her?” Sarah blurted.

“I'll tell you what. Since you're evidently so certain she isn't involved in the barn burnings, even though she's demonstrated an amazing amount of guilt over her parents' barn, let's just—”

“Of course she shows guilt for that,” Sarah argued, “for leaving them. She's torn about that, not about arsons she didn't commit.”

“Sarah, I'm not reading her her Miranda rights or calling the sheriff in—yet. How about you stop playing defense lawyer and let me handle this?”

“
Mamm
and I know her better than you do, that's all.”

“Hannah,” Nate said, “I have a witness who spotted you in the field watching your family's barn burn.”

Hannah gasped for air like a beached fish while Sarah insisted, “I didn't say I saw Hannah through your night goggles that night!”

“Not you. Keep quiet or go back inside the
grossdaadi haus!
”

“It wasn't me!” Hannah cried. “Someone's mistaken or lying.”

“Then that's enough from all of you right now,” Nate said. “Here's the deal. Hannah agrees to stay in the house—handcuffed to you, Sarah—while I search the grounds and her car. Is it at the cemetery again, Hannah?” She nodded.

“Do I have your permission to search it? If not, I'll get a search warrant.”

“Yes, I don't care. Look, I can understand it looks bad. I know you've been bugged by my lack of alibis, but I did not harm our barn or any other, let alone watch them burn. I did not!”

He unlocked one of her cuffs and, without asking for Sarah's permission, snapped it on her wrist. “Let's go inside the farmhouse,” he said, putting Hannah's things back in her bag and handing it to
Mamm
while Sarah and Hannah got to their feet, not only cuffed together but holding hands. “Mr. Kauffman and I have a lot of ground to cover out here in the dark,” he said as they all trudged toward the farmhouse.

“Don't waste your time,” Hannah told him. Her voice had slowly come to sound like her again, almost defiant.

“You going to tell me where your stash of fire starters is, then?” Nate challenged when Sarah had thought he might be softening.

“I've done a lot wrong in my life, Mr. MacKenzie,” Hannah said, turning to face him on the back porch, so that Sarah's hand was yanked around and she faced Nate, too. “But you're the one who's wrong about this. Dead wrong.”

 

It was nearly dawn when Nate finally had to admit he'd found nothing to incriminate Hannah Esh. A few cigarette butts in the ashtray of her car was the closest he and Ben Kauffman could get to anything having to do with fire, though the interior of the old compact model smelled of smoke—incense, Sarah had said once—the same scent on Hannah's clothes and in her hair. He could not see hauling her into the same small jail cell that held Cindee Kramer, because that would make three suspects locked up, none of whom he could prove were guilty of arson.

“Hard to believe anyone Amish or former Amish would do it, anyway, Nate,” Ben said as they dragged themselves into the farmhouse just before dawn and slumped at the kitchen table. “We know how precious the barns are. In the old days, folks would build a decent barn before they built themselves a good house.”

Mrs. Kauffman poured them both coffee and, without a word, pointed to her husband's grimy hands. He and Nate got up to wash at the sink while she got bacon and eggs going on the stove.

“I haven't heard a peep out of the girls for a couple of hours,” she told them. “But I heard them talking for a long
time last night, not what they said, though. Always tight friends, those two, and Ella Lantz, they sure were.”

“I'd better go up and unlock their handcuffs,” Nate said. “I can't see grounds for holding Hannah.”

“Her watching the raising will hold her here today,” Mrs. Kauffman said. “It's fine with us if she watches from the barn window. I'm going to take your
mamm
over with us, Ben. I think it will do her good, but if it disturbs her, I'll bring her back. She keeps muttering about burnings, so seeing the
sheierufschlagge
up close will do her good. As for Hannah, I'm just praying that Sarah will convince her to come home for good—and not the other way around.”

Taking a quick swig of his coffee, then pausing at the kitchen door, Nate said, “Sarah told me she'd never go to live with Hannah.”

Both of the Kauffmans looked at him. The silence, but for sizzling bacon, screamed at him. Were they still afraid he would take Sarah with him?

“I'm leaving after the barn raising,” he told them. “VERA's needed in Columbus for other cases, and Stan Comstock's back now. I apologize to you and your people for stirring the waters without forcing the arsonist to the surface.”