The Letters (38 page)

She spun around, her hands flew to her face. Her eyes looked wild.

“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

“I can’t do it! I can’t go. I can’t leave them. I thought I could but I can’t.”

“Can’t leave who?”

“I thought I loved him. And I do! I thought I did. But not enough. Not enough to leave my family. Not like this, anyway.”

“What the Sam Hill are you talking about?”

“Jake Hertzler. He’s coming for me. He wants me to run off with him. I said I’d go, but I can’t. I can’t leave my family. How will I tell him? He’ll be devastated.” She looked up, eyes shimmering with tears. “Will you stay here with me? Will you help me? Jake can be very persuasive. I don’t trust myself to not cave in.”

“Of course.”

“Please, Jimmy. I need you to stay nearby because I’m not tough at all. I act like I am, but I’m not. Not really.”

He had already known that about her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, bumping hips with her, clumsy and yet tender. He stood there for a moment, holding her, and it was like he didn’t want the moment to ever end.

Then they saw the beam of two headlights in the distance and Bethany froze. A truck pulling a horse trailer stopped at the end of the driveway. The window rolled down. “Let’s go, honey!”

Bethany took a sharp breath. “Promise you’ll stay right here, Jimmy.”

“You can count on me.”

Bethany walked down to the truck and spoke through the
open window. He could hear their mumbling voices, then Jake Hertzler’s voice grew louder. And louder. He was spitting mad, Jimmy could tell that, even in the dark. Jake started hollering at Bethany, saying ugly things and calling her unrepeatable names.

Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Jimmy knew that voice.

Hank Lapp’s party guests were starting to make noises about heading home, but he wouldn’t let anyone leave without a final surprise. He wanted Jimmy Fisher to put on a fireworks show, but no one could find him. A short while ago, Mim had seen Jimmy head away from the gathering on the front yard and down the long driveway. She ran to tell Hank Lapp and the two of them walked over to see if they could find Jimmy.

They were about halfway down the driveway when they spotted Jimmy Fisher behind a tree, standing in utter stillness. Jimmy motioned to them with his arm, holding a finger up to his lips. Hank Lapp made a lot of noise, even walking. Jimmy pointed down the hill. It was getting dark, but Mim could hear Bethany arguing with someone in a truck on the road. “Mim, get Galen. Be quick about it. Don’t let anyone know. Hank—stay with me. And for heaven’s sake, man, be quiet.”

She’d never heard that tone in Jimmy’s voice. It didn’t have the teasing sound that was never far away. It was . . . it was the sound of a grown man. Something was terribly wrong. She flew up the hill so fast that her hair was flying every which way out from under her prayer cap and she was panting hard from all that running. She found Galen over by the barbecue, spreading the red hot coals with a stick so
they’d cool down. “Come with me!” She grabbed Galen’s elbow, dragging him back down the hillside to meet Jimmy. Along the way, he kept asking what was wrong and all she could say was, “Jimmy needs you.”

By the time they reached Jimmy, Hank Lapp was nowhere in sight. “Galen,” Jimmy whispered. “I think the fellow Bethany is talking to down there is the horse trader who’s been scamming me.”

Mim strained her ears. “Why, that’s Jake Hertzler!”

“Also known as Jonah Hershberger,” Jimmy said. “Horse swindler. First-rate con-artist.”

“Why is Bethany crying?” Mim said.

“She’s saying goodbye to him.”

Jake had just grabbed something from Bethany’s hands and was shouting at her. “He’s not liking it.” Mim started to feel frightened.

Galen’s gaze went from Mim to Jimmy, then down to the end of the road. “Well, Jimmy, have you got a plan?”

“Always.” Jimmy turned to Mim. “You stay put. If anything happens, you run to Amos and get help.” Then he nodded his head to Galen. “Let’s go.”

Mim watched as the two men walked down to the end of the driveway, cucumber calm. Jimmy approached Bethany as Galen slid around to the driver’s side. Mim took a few steps down the hill, scared, worried about Bethany, but not wanting to miss what was being said. Where did Hank Lapp go, anyway?

Jimmy put his hands on Bethany’s shoulders and moved her away from the truck, then leaned against the window edge. “Well, well, Jonah Hershberger. We meet again.”

“Jonah?” Bethany said. “What are you talking about, Jimmy? Are you crazy?”

“Jonah Hershberger. The fellow who keeps selling me the same horse.”

“What?” Bethany said. “Jake is the horse trader?”

Jake pulled back from the open window. “Bethany,” he said, nearly growling, “for the last time, get in the truck.”

“She’s not going anywhere,” Galen said from the other side of the truck.

Jake’s head whipped around, then back to Bethany.

“We’ve got a little business to discuss,” Galen said. “You owe my partner here a sizable amount of money. Plus a horse.”

With that, Jake flipped the ignition, revved the engine, and stepped on the gas. The truck sped off down the dark road and into the night.

But the trailer remained. Hank Lapp stood in front of the horse trailer. The trailer was slightly hitched up, the unplugged electrical cords dangled. “IS THAT WHAT YOU WANTED ME TO DO, BOY?”

Jimmy grinned. “It was, Hank. It was, indeed.”

23

H
ank Lapp’s birthday party would become the talk of the town for days afterward. The story would become bigger and more dramatic with every telling—all but one piece of it. Jimmy Fisher would omit the part that Bethany was planning to run off with Jake. No one would know. He would tell no one.

But Rose figured it out that night.

While the party was going on, Rose had found Bethany’s goodbye letter on her nightstand as she came upstairs to look for a book to read. She read it through, twice, heart pounding. There was a second letter addressed to the sisters at the Sisters’ House.

Rose wished she could run through the privet and ask Galen his opinion, but she couldn’t. Mainly, because he was at the party, but even if he weren’t, there was a strain between them. She had come outside when he arrived to pick up the children and he hadn’t even come down from his buggy. He wore the pain she had given him in his eyes.

It hurt so much that she was the one to look away.

On a hunch, she had gone to Mim and the boys’ bedroom and found letters left on their pillows. Then she tiptoed into Vera’s room and grabbed the letter on the nightstand, grateful Vera hadn’t seen it yet. If Bethany did leave with Jake tonight, she didn’t want Mim or Vera or the boys to read her goodbye letters before going to bed. Morning would come soon enough. Such news could wait.

She thought about what Galen would say if she were to tell him she found the letters Bethany had left, informing everyone she was leaving home. What would he say if she were to tell him she wanted to stop Bethany from making the biggest mistake of her life? She could practically hear Galen’s deep voice: “What good would it do to try and stop her if she wants to go? Bethany has her own life to lead, including making her own mistakes.” And then he would remind her, “God is faithful, even when we are not.”

Galen was right, of course. Just like he was right about Rose being unbending and stubborn. It
was
a hard truth, but it was the truth. In a way, it was prideful to be unwilling to ask for or receive help. It was prideful to think she could handle everything on her own. She blew out a puff of air. How she missed him. She missed her friend.

So Rose sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and her well-loved Bible and prayed like she had never prayed before. She prayed for a miracle to intervene in Bethany’s life. She prayed for something unexpected to occur. She prayed for Bethany’s well-being, and her future. She prayed for heaven’s protection over her beautiful, impulsive stepdaughter.

An hour later, when Galen’s buggy pulled into the driveway, Rose nearly flew outside. She let out a gasp of silent thanks when Bethany tumbled out of the buggy and hurried past her
into the house. “We had a little excitement tonight,” Galen said. “I’ll let Mim and the boys tell you all about it.”

As he drove away, Mim and Luke and Sammy took turns talking over each other to tell Rose the news: Jimmy’s horse swindler was their very own Jake Hertzler! Rose listened carefully, asked a few questions, and pieced together the story until she had a pretty good idea what had happened. When she saw Bethany had come downstairs, Rose sent the children up to bed. Bethany stood with her back against the wall, pale and sad, hugging her elbows tight against her body the way she did when she was a little girl.

Rose handed her the letters. “Are you looking for these?”

Slowly, Bethany reached out and took the letters from her. Then she tore them into pieces and threw them in the garbage can under the sink. She balled her hands into fists, her voice shaking. “I’m such a fool.”

Rose crossed the room and looked into Bethany’s face, so young, so beautiful, so filled with incomprehensible misery. She reached out and gently unfurled her tight fists. “Only if you don’t become wiser through this.”

A few tears trickled out of the corners of Bethany’s eyes, and she wiped them away with her sleeve. “Rose, how could he have left like that?”

Rose shrugged. “Jake had everybody fooled. Myself included.”

“Not Jake.” She shook her head and the tears splattered. “Dad. How could he leave us like he did, just let his family go? I couldn’t do that! I tried and I couldn’t.” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to hold back the tears. But they came faster and faster, until she couldn’t stop their coming. “Tobe is the lucky one. He took the easy way out.”

“There is no easy way out of this.” Rose pulled her into her arms as she started to sob—deep heaving sobs, finally subsiding into a few shudders. “Go on, now. Get your cry out,” Rose said, rubbing her back in small circles. Sadness had a way of piling up inside a person until there was nothing for it but to let it all out. “Cry it all out.”

On Monday afternoon, after she finished readying the basement with fresh linens for the next guest who was due to arrive any minute, Rose called Allen Turner of the Securities and Exchange Commission. She told him that Jake Hertzler had turned up and left with the company books. They had been hidden on the farm all this time. All this time! “He’s been horse trading around the county, using another name: Jonah Hershberger,” Rose said. “He said he had a job opportunity in Somerset County, but I don’t know if that was true.”

Allen Turner was silent for a long moment. “He’s probably halfway to Canada or Mexico by now. But then again, he’s pretty bold. Could be he’s sticking around, like a bad penny. In the meantime, we’re still looking for your stepson.”

“Jake said Tobe had been staying with his mother, but I don’t know where she’s living. I don’t know anything about her except her maiden name: Mary Miller.”

“Mary Miller?” He groaned. “Could there be a more common name among the Amish?”

She said goodbye, hung up the phone, and walked over to Galen’s. She found him in front of his barn, tossing a softball back and forth with Sammy, back and forth. He looked up at her and smiled when he saw her. There was something
about the smile that touched her; as if he had been hoping she would come by.