The Choice (13 page)

Carrie had enough to worry about right now. Ever since Eli had passed, the job of bill paying had fallen to her. The second installment of the property tax bill, still in Eli’s name, sat on Daniel’s desk, and she didn’t have the money to pay it.

Just two weeks ago, she had shown the tax bill to Daniel after they had accepted help from the church to pay the last of Andy’s emergency room bill. Carrie offered to go back to work at Central Market, but Daniel objected, saying Yonnie needed minding. The older woman had fallen recently after losing her balance. She wasn’t hurt, but she couldn’t get herself back up. Daniel had told Carrie not to worry, that he would pay the tax bill by doing extra smithy work.

But now that was over.

Deacon Abraham, a kind man with a smiling face, ruddy as a bright apple, and a great booming laugh that jiggled his big belly, brought over a spare buggy to use since Carrie’s had been destroyed in the accident. He also asked to buy Daniel’s black-smithing tools. He insisted he needed them, and then offered her three times what they were worth, refusing to pay less. Still, it didn’t come close to the amount due for taxes. And it wasn’t just this tax bill that worried her, it was the one after that, and the one after that. How was she ever going to be able to make ends meet? These were all new worries for her, ones she had never known before.

After Emma and Esther left, Carrie got ready to go to bed, exhausted. Andy and Yonnie were already asleep. As she leaned over to turn off the gas lamp in the living room, Yonnie’s stack of quilts caught her eye in the flickering light. She spread her hand over a quilt, admiring again the tiny, even rows of stitches, the even binding, the splashes of yellows, purples, and deep blues that Yonnie coordinated so skillfully.

Carrie’s heart almost slammed into her chest. She would have to talk to Yonnie in the morning, but it was just possible that she had found the means to hold on to the orchards. At least for the foreseeable future.

“I don’t mind a bit,” Yonnie said the next morning, when Carrie explained to her the idea of selling a quilt to Veronica McCall. “I made those quilts for my family to use. This is just one more way the quilts can be of use.” Yonnie went over to the quilts and pulled them out and spread them on the kitchen table. She was trying to decide which one to sell.

Carrie’s heart ached as she watched her. She knew those quilts told the story of her life.

Yonnie pulled out a red and yellow quilt she called “Ray of Light.” “Think that fancy redheaded gal would like this one? She seems flashy.”

Carrie nodded. “I think it’s perfect, Yonnie.”

As soon as the skies cleared after a soaking rain, Carrie hitched Old-Timer to the buggy. The sun shone on Carrie’s face, relaxing her a little, as she prepared herself during the ride for this visit to Honor Mansion. She hooked Old-Timer to a post at the hotel, stroked his face, and ran her hand down the length of his sore leg. He seemed fine today. The buggy looked glaringly out of place in the parking lot filled with construction workers’ trucks and Veronica McCall’s red convertible. She gathered the quilt that Yonnie had carefully wrapped up in paper and knocked timidly on the door of the hotel.

When the door opened, Carrie inhaled sharply. Grace Patterson stood at the threshold, looking just as shocked to see Carrie.

“Hello, Grace,” Carrie said. A surprising wave of tenderness filled Carrie as she looked at Grace. She took in Grace’s appearance. Her hair was short and spiked, a funny color, and her eyes were traced with a thick black liner. But she wasn’t as tough as she looked, Carrie thought. She really didn’t know much about this girl other than she thought Grace seemed like a fragile teacup.

Grace’s eyes went wide. “Did you come to see me?”

“No. I’m here to see Veronica McCall.” Carrie tilted her head. “Is your hair . . . were you born with that color?”

Grace ran a hand through her hair. “Oh no! I dyed it. It’s called Manic Panic red.”

“Well, it is really . . . bright.” She tried to sound positive. “Thank you for coming to Daniel’s viewing. I know that was hard. Please thank your mother too.”

“Mrs. Gingerich? She’s not my mother. She’s my foster mother. More like a foster grandma, actually. She’s pretty ancient.” Grace came outside on the porch and closed the door behind her. “But she’s cool. I mean, like, her viewing habits totally bite, but other than that, she’s okay.”

Carrie didn’t understand what Grace meant. She answered with silence.

“And she eats weird stuff. She only buys organic and won’t eat glutens and . . . what is a gluten anyway? I don’t have a clue but it’s all anybody talks about anymore.”

Carrie was mesmerized for a moment, watching Grace carry on a conversation by herself. There was something very earnest about her, something sweet and likable.

“It sounds so lame,” Grace rolled her eyes, “but I thought the Amish people might bring shotguns and try to off me.” She shook her head. “But everyone was so kind.”

“My people?” Carrie asked. “You thought my people would shoot you?”

“Yes. I’ve lived in Lancaster County most of my life, but I really don’t know squat about the Amish.”

Carrie smiled. “You could probably say the same thing about how little we understand the English.”

“So, um, I have to go before the judge in a few months. To see if . . . I might be charged . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked out at the street.

Carrie’s heart felt a tug of pity. Grace was so young to carry such a yoke. “Perhaps I can help in some way. I could write letters to the judge asking for mercy.”

Grace’s head snapped back at Carrie in astonishment. “Would you? Would you really do that for me?” She crossed her arms tightly against her chest and her eyes filled with tears. “But why? It’s my fault that your husband is . . . dead. I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve mercy.”

For some reason, Carrie thought of Mattie. She knew just what Mattie would say and found herself echoing it. “None of us do, Grace.”

Grace pointed down the hall to Veronica McCall’s office and went back upstairs. Before Carrie knocked on the door, she noticed a reflection of herself in a hall mirror. She hadn’t looked in a mirror since she had left Esther’s home. She walked up to it, slowly, unsure of what to make of what she saw. There stood a woman, not very tall and a little too thin, in a black mourning dress and apron and cape. Her cheeks were flushed pink, for it was a cool spring day. What surprised her most was that she didn’t look like a girl anymore. She thought of herself as barely old enough to be a wife, let alone a widow.

But her eyes, they showed her youth. They looked a little frightened, like a cottontail caught in a flashlight’s glare.

Veronica was typing furiously at a computer and looked up when Carrie knocked, stunned, as if she wasn’t sure who she was. “Carrie? Sit down, sit down.” She moved some papers from a chair and pointed to it. “Listen, if you’re here about Grace, I can assure you that Honor Mansion can’t be held liable for the accident. First of all, she’s only part-time, and secondly, she was off-duty and had left the property—”

“No.” Carrie waved a hand to stop her. “No. I’m not here to discuss that . . . with you.”

A wide smile spread across Veronica’s face. “So, you’re ready to sell.”

“Not the property.” Carrie put the quilt on her desk top and carefully unwrapped the paper. “But a quilt.”

Veronica McCall leaned back in her chair. “It’s beautiful.” She spread it out and looked it up and down. “It almost looks as if it were done by hand.”

“It was. Even the pieces are sewed together by hand, not on a machine. It took Yonnie thousands of hours to make it.”

Veronica McCall’s eyebrows shot up. “How much?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at her.

Carrie took a deep breath. Bargaining was new to her, but she had given the price a great deal of thought. “One thousand dollars.”

“Five hundred,” Veronica volleyed back. She smiled, but her eyes stayed cold.

She enjoys this
, Carrie thought. “One thousand dollars.”

“There are plenty of other quilts out there.”

“Yes. There are many fine quilters in Lancaster County. None quite like Yonnie, though.”
But Veronica knows that.

One thinly plucked eyebrow raised up. “You drive a hard bargain.” “

But I don’t bargain, Veronica McCall. I’ve told you that before. It’s not our way. One thousand dollars is a fair value for the quilt.”

“Seven fifty.”

Carrie started to pack up the quilt. She wasn’t sure where she would go next, but she wasn’t going to accept less for Yonnie’s handiwork.

“Fine! Fine,” Veronica McCall said, laughing. She pulled out a checkbook from her desk drawer.

“Would you mind giving me cash?” Carrie asked her. “I don’t have a bank account.” It was one of the things on Carrie’s to-do list, under the heading, “Things to figure out now that I am a widow.”

Veronica’s eyes narrowed, as if she thought Carrie didn’t trust her. She left the room for a moment and came back with the cash, counting it out in her hand.

As Carrie stood up to leave, Veronica said with a smug smile, “Nice doing business with you. I would have gone as high as fifteen hundred.”

“But the fair value is one thousand dollars.”

“Well, all’s fair in love and war.”

Carrie cocked her head at her and wondered why the English spoke in riddles. Her gaze shifted to the computer on Veronica’s desk. “Do you use that often?”

“Oh, yes.” Veronica gave a confident nod. “I’m a computer whiz.”

“Someone told me that it’s like a library.” It was something Sol had told her once. He loved computers. He used to go to a coffee shop where he could “surf the internet.” He tried to teach Carrie, but she had felt guilty for a week and could hardly look her father in the eye. She knew her father felt that the internet was a gateway to evil, just like television. It was one of those areas she had felt conflicted about, because through Sol’s eyes she could see the good in those worldly things too.

“Sure is! I can google anything.”

Carrie was nonplussed. It almost sounded like Veronica was trying to speak their dialect. “You can ferhoodle anything?”

“No! Google. It’s a search engine.” Veronica read the confused look on Carrie’s face and waved away an explanation. “Never mind. Is there something you want me to look up?”

Carrie wasn’t entirely sure she was doing the right thing, but Daniel’s untimely death left her with missing pieces of a story. She felt as if she needed to know the truth about those fires in Ohio, and Yonnie couldn’t or wouldn’t discuss them. Just yesterday, Carrie tried asking her, straight out, but Yonnie went pale and started to tremble, then went upstairs to lie down. “I’m looking for some information about two fires in Holmes County, Ohio, that caused the death of two women, a man and his son, a few years back.”

She gave Veronica McCall the few details that she remembered from the copy of the newspaper clipping Sol had given her. Veronica pecked at the buttons on the computer, stared at the screen for a long while, asked a few more questions, then typed more buttons.

Suddenly, Veronica let out a yelp. “Voilà! Found it.” She gave a satisfied smile to Carrie. “I can find anything.” She pressed a button and another machine spit out a paper. “Here’s what you’re looking for, Carrie.” She reached over, grabbed the paper from the printer, and handed it to her.

Carrie folded it up, quickly, so Veronica wouldn’t read it. Then she thanked her and left with the quilt money and the information about Abel Miller. Just as she closed the door, she heard the printer click into action a second time. Carrie’s heart rose in her throat.
Veronica McCall wouldn’t have made a copy for herself, would
she? No, of course not. Why would she bother?

About halfway home, Carrie pulled Old-Timer off to the side and read the paper. It was a report from a newspaper article, with a grainy picture of Abel Miller on it. She started to read the article: “Amish Man Fined and Sentenced to Prison.”

Abel Miller, 21, was sentenced today to three years in prison and fined $250,000. He pled guilty to two acts of negligence that resulted in involuntary homicides. Miller had a business supplying kerosene fuel to local Amish farmers. Last November, gasoline had contaminated the containers, causing explosions in two Amish homes that resulted in the death of two women, forty-eight-year-old Lena Miller, a relative of the defendant, nineteen-year-old Katie Yoder, thirty-two-year-old Elam Lapp and his seven-year-old son, Benjamin Lapp. Against advice of counsel, Miller refused to appeal the conviction.