Suspendered Sentence (An Amish Mystery) (16 page)

“I ate yours yesterday; it is only right you eat mine, today.” Annie reached around Claire and removed the piece of tan cloth that served as the basket’s lid. “There is a piece of Eva’s bread inside, too. It is good bread.”

“Annie, I can’t take your lunch,” she repeated.

“It is the right thing to do.” Annie backed into Esther’s stool and then perched atop its floral cushion. “If I did not make a mistake with the money, what have I done poorly?”

Claire peeked inside at the contents of the basket and then held out a piece of chicken and bread to the girl. “I will only eat this if we share it.”

Annie hesitated and then took the food from Claire’s hand, biting into the chicken leg almost immediately. Claire started on the bread. “Mmmm. Annie, this bread is absolutely delicious.”

“I can see why you were so hungry yesterday when I came in. It is hard work here at the store. There is much more to do than I knew.”

“Oh, it’s busy, that’s for sure, but fun, too. The nicest people come in here, don’t they?”

“Yah.”

They talked about a few of their favorite customers that morning before Annie’s earlier concern resurfaced in spades. “Please tell me what I have done wrong. I will make sure not to do it again.”

It was hard not to shake her head over the differences between the girl who’d first walked into the shop the previous day, and the one sitting in front of Claire now. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Annie. Quite the contrary, actually. You worked really hard this morning and I’m very impressed.”

A flash of something resembling disbelief flitted across Annie’s features before being pushed aside by a noticeable tension in everything from the way the girl ate to the way she fidgeted with her hands between bites.

“Annie? Is there something wrong?”

The girl pushed off the edge of the stool and wandered over to the trash can Claire kept hidden from the customers’ sight. Carefully, she wiped any residual crumbs from her hands into the can and then turned to face Claire. “My dat was happy to hear of my new job. Knowing I am okay during the day takes away much of his worry.”

“Your father is worried about you?” At the girl’s emphatic nod, she quickly tacked on the next logical question. “Why?”

“I think because I am different. Different than my older brothers and sisters.”

“How so?”

“I ask many questions. I do not just nod at his answers.”

Claire, too, stood, her focus completely on Annie. “What kind of questions?”

“I ask about the things we do not have . . . like telephones and cars. He says we do not need such things, and, still I ask why. My brothers and sisters did not question. They have all been baptized and now have families, too. But I . . . I am not sure.”

“You mean about being baptized?”

“Yah.”

She gave the girl’s words their due attention and then moved on to the sadness they held. “That’s what Rumspringa is for, isn’t it? To see how people like me live?”

“Yah.”

“When did yours start?” she asked, curious.

“Last week.”

She nibbled back the smile that started to form lest her young employee think Claire was making light of her problems. “You have a long time to go, Annie.”

“Dat found a cigarette in my pocket two nights ago. He was not happy.”

“Smoking is bad for you, Annie,” she cautioned. “People die from cigarettes.”

Annie crossed to the window that overlooked the alley between Heavenly Treasures and Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe and rested her forehead against the cool glass. “He worries that will happen. Like it did for Sadie Lehman.”

Claire grabbed hold of the countertop for support. “I . . . I’m not following. Your father worries that
what
will happen like it did for Sadie?”

“That I will die and he will not know.”

“I would imagine that is a fear
many
parents share in the wake of a story like the one from the other night. Even Amish ones.”

“But I am like her, Dat says.”

Step-by-step, Claire slowly closed the gap between the counter and the window until she could see the side of Annie’s face. “Like who?”

“Sadie. And her friend Elizabeth.”

“You weren’t even born when Sadie was alive. And you couldn’t have been much more than a baby, if anything, when Elizabeth died. So I don’t understand . . .”

Annie lifted her head from the windowpane and turned to face Claire. “My big sister, Eva, was a little younger than Sadie and Elizabeth but she remembers them. Dat, of course, does, too. He said they were good girls who did not know how to say no.”

“No to whom?” she asked quickly.

“Miriam.”

She tried to squelch the gasp, but it was too late. “Miriam Stoltzfus?”

“Yah. But she was a Hochstetler then.” Annie covered her face with her hands and sighed. “Dat thinks Rebecca is the same way.”

Bypassing the urge to learn more about Rebecca, Claire went straight to the part that had her antennae pinging loudest. “Is your father not fond of Miriam?”

Annie dropped her hands to her side and shook her head rapidly. “No. It is not like that now. It was when Miriam was my age.”

“What was wrong with Miriam then?”

“She made friends with the English who knew of cigarettes and drinking. She talked Sadie and Elizabeth into trying such things with her. Now, Sadie is dead. Elizabeth, too.”

She took a moment to assemble everything she’d heard thus far into some cohesive order. When she had something that made sense, Claire jumped back into the conversation. “And your father feels this Rebecca person is doing that with you?”

Annie bowed her head, nodding as she did. “Yah.”

“
Is
she?”

Annie lifted her gaze to Claire’s but said nothing.

Finding herself in uncharted territory, she reached out, took hold of the teenager’s hand, and led her back to the stools. When the girl reclaimed her earlier seat, Claire did her best to be both supportive and wise. “One of the things about getting older, Annie, is the opportunity to see things with more clarity. To realize mistakes you made and lessons you learned. One of the lessons I’ve learned is to be true to myself. If I like to sing while I drive and someone thinks I’m silly because of that, it doesn’t matter. I enjoy it, so I do it. The same goes for things I don’t like—if I don’t like something or it goes against what I want for myself, I don’t do it. Even if everyone else around me,
does
.”

“I am like that, too,” Annie exclaimed. “I did not smoke that cigarette because Rebecca did. I did it because I wanted to know what it was like.”

“And?” she prompted.

“It is not good.”

She smiled. “Did you tell your dat that?”

“I did. But still he worries. He has visited the Lehman farm. He knows of the sadness Sadie’s mamm and dat feel. He knows of the sadness Miriam holds in her heart at news of her old friend. Eva speaks of Leroy’s quiet since Sadie’s body was found.”

Her head snapped up at the familiar name. “Leroy? As in Leroy Beiler?”

“Yah. He is Eva’s husband.”

Rewinding their conversation back a few minutes to try to make the names Annie spoke match in her memory, Claire asked, “And Eva is your sister, right?”

“Yah.”

“And Leroy and Sadie were friends?”

“Yah.”

She pulled her legs up to the first rung of the stool and positioned them in such a way as to allow her arms to rest atop her thighs. “What’s Mr. Beiler like?”

Annie clenched and unclenched her hands atop her own lap before jumping to her feet once again. “I do not call him that. I call him Leroy. Mr. Beiler is Leroy’s
dat
.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She made a mental note of the clarification and then moved on to finding a way to defuse Annie’s sudden agitation. “What’s Leroy like? Is he nice?”

“He is quiet and hardworking.” Annie, herself, was quiet for a moment and then smiled ever so slightly as she continued to describe her brother-in-law. “He picks wildflowers for Eva in the summer. They are to have their sixth child soon.”

“That’s wonderful, Annie.”

“Yah. That is what Dat wants for me, too. To be baptized. To marry a nice man. To have many children like Eva.”

“And you don’t want that, do you?” she asked in rhetorical summary.

“No. I do. When it is time.”

“Then just tell him that, Annie. Hearing that from you will probably allay a lot of his worry.”

“I try. But there are always knocks at the door.”

“Knocks at the door?”

“If it is not The Pest, it is someone new. Like Benjamin Miller to tell of the body on Stoltzfus’s farm. Or the policeman my father does not like to speak to who comes to ask questions about Sadie. Then it is Eva who speaks of Leroy’s quiet. Knock, knock, knock . . . someone always has a problem to tell the bishop. But he is not just the bishop, he is my dat, too.”

She’d never really thought of it that way, but now that Annie had put things in perspective, it made a lot of sense. Bishop Hershberger was, essentially, the go-to guy for everything that happened in his district. But he was also a father—a father Annie was desperate to connect with one way or the other.

“Can I give you a hug?” she asked.

At Annie’s empathic nod, Claire slid off the stool and pulled the teenager close. “Growing up is hard on everyone—kids and parents alike. Maybe what your father needs more than anything is someone he can talk to who
doesn’t
have a problem.”

Chapter 16

S
he locked the back door of Heavenly Treasures and waved to Annie as the girl disappeared around the corner of the shop in a pair of bargain-basement blue jeans and an oversized long-sleeved shirt. Part of Claire wanted to call Annie back, wanted to demand the teenager switch back into the light blue dress and apron covering that fit more naturally than the newly donned evening wear, but she didn’t.

Annie needed to experience the world from a slightly different vantage point than her father’s buggy allowed. It was a rite of passage, a way to be sure.

Still, Claire worried. Despite the tough, I-don’t-care attitude the girl had exhibited twenty-four hours earlier, Annie was fragile. Whether or not the girl was truly strong enough and savvy enough to stay away from the pitfalls of the English world remained to be seen.

“Hey there, I was hoping I’d catch you before you headed to the inn.” Jakob half walked, half jogged up the alley to greet Claire with a warm hug. “How was your day?”

She stepped back, slipped the shop’s keys into her coat pocket, and did her best to rustle up the smile he deserved. “I hired a new employee and I actually think she’s going to work out just fine.”

“Now that’s fantastic news,” he said before addressing the latter part of her sentence. “But you had doubts?”

“She’s only sixteen. When she came into the shop asking about the job I’d told Esther I wasn’t ready to fill, she didn’t necessarily project the image of someone who wanted to do a whole lot of working. And her attitude? Not good.”

“And today?”

“She worked hard all day long.”

He fell into step alongside her as they turned and made their way down the alley and onto the sidewalk that lined Heavenly Treasures’ side of Lighted Way. “And the attitude?”

“A ruse to get noticed.”

“Sounds like a teenager,” he joked. “What’s her name?”

“Annie.”

“A junior at Heavenly High School, I imagine?”

Stopping just shy of the road, Claire leaned against the clapboard exterior of her shop. “No. Annie is Amish.”

Any momentary surprise she caught on Jakob’s part vanished just as quickly. “Oh? Which family?”

“She’s Bishop Hershberger’s youngest daughter.”

He walked a few feet away and then retraced his steps back to Claire, the tone of his voice difficult to read. “Then she won’t be acknowledging me when I stop by the shop to see you, that’s for sure.”

It was a wrinkle she hadn’t considered. Then again, maybe it wasn’t . . . “She’s on Rumspringa,” she offered as a counterpoint.

“She’s still Atlee’s daughter.”

“Which might be the exact reason she
does
speak to you,” she mumbled before lifting up the bottom of her left boot and resting it against the shop.

“You lost me.”

“Remember what I said a few minutes ago? About Annie’s attitude being a ruse to get noticed?”

Jakob nodded, his gaze fixed firmly on hers.

“The person she’s trying to get noticed by is her dat.”

“Oh. That changes things . . .” Jakob turned and leaned against the building beside Claire. “Sounds like Miriam Hochstetler part two.”

“Huh?”

He palmed his mouth then let his hand slip down his chin, slowly. “Before Bishop Hershberger, there was Bishop Hochstetler. He’d handed the reins to Atlee just a few weeks before I left, making me Hershberger’s very first—and, I believe only—excommunication.”

“So what does that have to do with Annie and Miriam?”

“Miriam saw her father’s role as bishop as some sort of reason to be more rebellious during Rumspringa. And she tried her darnedest to entice Elizabeth and Sadie down the same road.” Jakob cocked his head up until he had a view of the late-afternoon sun. “I always found it curious that the bishop’s daughter would be the crazy one.”