An Uncommon Grace (30 page)

“I have no earthly idea, Grandma. Let’s look around and see if there is anything else of yours. Maybe this is just a freak coincidence. Perhaps someone else’s kid tried to take a bite out of their monkey, too.”

“Perhaps,” Elizabeth said, “but I doubt it.”

Grace stayed at her grandmother’s side as they looked around. She hoped there wouldn’t be any more surprises. She hoped there was nothing going on here except a huge coincidence. And then she heard her grandmother gasp.

“What is it?”

“Two of your grandfather’s prize fishing lures.” She pointed to where they were hanging on the wall. “It was awkward to display them as they were, so I paid Abraham to make that particular shadow box for them. This is no coincidence.”

Grace looked at the price and her jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding. These things are worth that much?”

“I told you we knew what we were doing.”

The proprietor finished her conversation with the other customer and came to check on them. She had a pleasant face and softly curled hair. It struck Grace that she was the kind of woman who would look equally at home running an antiques store, sitting behind a library desk, or teaching a kindergarten class.

“Can I help you ladies with anything?”

Elizabeth took charge of the conversation. “My husband used to collect fishing lures, and I’m very interested in these two in this shadow box. Could you tell me where they came from?”

“Actually, I got that piece quite recently. A darling teenaged girl came in. Such a pretty girl. She had some items her grandmother wanted her to sell. The poor old thing is bedridden and is subsisting on Social Security. I bought a couple of items to help out, even though I don’t usually purchase things from people who just walk through the door.”

“You have a lovely store.” Elizabeth had grown pale. “But I think I need to get home. Grace, I’m starting to feel a little tired.”

“My grandmother had heart surgery recently,” Grace explained. “This was her first shopping trip and I think we’ve tired her out.”

“Can I get you anything?” the woman asked. “Water? An aspirin? A chair?”

“Thank you, but we’re parked right in front. I think all she really needs is to get home and rest.”

The owner walked them to the door and held it open while Grace helped Elizabeth into the car.

“Funny that we should be talking about that girl right now,” the woman said. “Your car is almost identical to the one she drove. I think it belonged to her uncle.”

“Her uncle?” Elizabeth and Grace both spoke at once.

“Yes.” The proprietor looked perplexed. “The man who was with her. He carried in a small painting that I decided not to buy. The girl said he was her uncle.”

“Did this man, this ‘uncle,’ by any chance have a long ponytail?” Grace asked.

“Why, yes. What makes you ask?”

“It’s a long story. Right now I just need to get my grandmother home.”

“I don’t feel like stopping at Mrs. Yoder’s anymore,” Elizabeth told Grace after they had settled themselves in the car.

“Trust me.” Grace’s fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. “I completely understand.”

Becky had already been home and was gone again by the time Grace and Elizabeth got home. She had left a note for them saying that she had fed the kitten and done her homework, and a girlfriend was picking her up to go to an early movie over in New Philadelphia.

It was thoughtful of Becky to leave a note, especially since
it was starting to get dark, and they would have worried about her. Unfortunately, Grace didn’t know if they could believe a word she said anymore—except she was fairly certain Becky was telling the truth about feeding the kitten. Apart from that, who knew what the girl might be up to?

Grace dialed Becky’s cell phone. She was itching to have it out with her little sister, but the call went straight to voice mail. Becky had either deliberately turned the phone off or she had let her battery die. She also had conveniently failed to mention the name of the girlfriend with whom she was supposedly going to the movies, so there was no real good way to check up on her.

It struck her that Becky had been keeping her door closed recently, something she hadn’t been doing when Grace had first arrived. She had been careful to respect Becky’s privacy. But no more. She was going to turn Becky’s room inside out. Something bad was going on and she wouldn’t stop until she found out what.

“Do you suppose it’s drugs?” Elizabeth asked. “Usually when teenagers steal from their family it is because of drug addiction, and yet I’ve seen no signs of substance abuse in Becky. I’ve been careful to watch for the signs. I taught school entirely too long to be naïve about what kids get into.”

“I think it’s more likely that she’s supporting a boyfriend’s habit. Evidently a boyfriend who is old enough to be her father.”

“Do you think it might be that man she said was a janitor?”

“That’s the one I’m suspecting.”

“Oh, dear.” Elizabeth picked up the telephone book. “Well, it’s easy enough to find out. Do you remember the man’s name?”

“Becky introduced him as Mr. Franklin.”

Elizabeth dialed a number. “I should have done this earlier—except
that Becky has never lied to me. I just assumed she was telling us the truth about that man. Hello? Is Superintendent Allen there?”

A few moments later, when Elizabeth hung up, she looked as though she had aged ten years. “There is no Mr. Franklin or anyone of that man’s description working as a janitor. Becky has been lying to us, Grace.”

“Maybe it’s a blessing Becky isn’t here right now after all. I’m going to tear her room apart. I want to see if I can find something that will shed some light on what’s happening.”

“I wish I could help you. Maybe I could climb those stairs after all.”

“You’ve already had enough excitement for one day, Grandma. In fact, it might be a good idea if you laid down and rested.”

“I’m too upset to rest. How about I look around here on this main floor to see if anything else is missing? See if my granddaughter has stolen anything else from me!”

“I’m so sorry this is happening, Grandma.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Elizabeth patted her on the shoulder. “But I’ve endured worse. We’ll get through this.”

Becky’s room was more orderly than Grace had expected. The last time she had glanced in, the floor was littered with the flotsam and jetsam of a teenager’s life.

Then Becky had taken to keeping the door closed.

Now it was almost military in its precision. Even the bed was carefully made. Was this Becky’s way of trying to regain control of her life when everything else was out of control?

Grace realized now that she didn’t know her sister at all except that she was a very good actress. Anything could be happening in Becky’s life right now.

It was Levi’s second evening of being shunned. During the day, he had not felt so alone because of his horses and the other livestock with whom he had one-sided conversations while he worked. He had not felt alone when he went to town for groceries—at least the store clerk had spoken to him. But tonight, he was not doing so well.

He tried to read his stepfather’s Bible, but the friendly language he spoke on a daily basis was not the same language of this Bible. The High German words were ponderous and difficult for him to understand.

He closed it back up in frustration.

He wished that he just could go to sleep and make everything go away, then awaken from this nightmare. But he doubted he would sleep at all tonight.

He paced the floor, nervous, wishing there were something to do or someplace to go. The room that he had constructed and been so pleased with now seemed small and confining. Plain beyond belief. Being Plain didn’t matter when one was with one’s family and friends. Children and other loved ones were all the decoration that an Amish home ever needed. But now, the room felt as bare as a prison cell.

An
Englisch
person would watch television, he supposed. Or listen to music. Or read a novel. Or tinker with some small hobby. Or even just go for a drive. Perhaps they would even drive to a town that had a place where those big pictures were shown. What did the
Englisch
call them? Oh, yes,
movies
.

Levi had seen television sets when he had gone into Millersburg to Walmart. He had been mesmerized for a few seconds in front of the big screen with the big faces talking to each other. There were people sitting around at a beach on that screen. Some of the words the people on the screen said embarrassed him. And he had been shocked at the scantily clad bodies.

He had paused there for only a moment because he knew that the sight of an Amish man gaping at the wall of televisions would be amusing to any
Englisch
person who happened by. And he also had Jesse with him—Jesse who was already too susceptible to trouble. He got out of there as quickly as possible and never allowed himself to be drawn to that department again.

The question he was pondering for the umpteenth time today was how one could be Amish alone. He concluded that, like those social creatures the honeybees, one couldn’t.

An anger began to smolder within him once again. What good was there in trying to follow all the rules and obey everything that the
Ordnung
decreed from boyhood, if one could be shoved out of the religious community by one vindictive, lying girl?

Through his window he could see the lights on in Grace’s house. It seemed unusually lit up. He grabbed his bird-watching binoculars and trained them on the house. He was right. Every light in the house was blazing. Usually just a couple of lights were on.

That many lights on in a house could mean problems. The only time he had ever seen it lit up like that was the night the ambulance had come for Elizabeth.

On the night that he burned his books, Grace had come running because she was afraid there was trouble and wanted to help. When his mother had been shot, Grace had come running.

That’s what neighbors did for one another in this community, whether they were Amish or
Englisch
.

It could be that Grace and Elizabeth and Becky had decided, for reasons inconceivable to him, to do their spring cleaning on a Monday evening and had turned on every light in the house. He hoped that was all that was happening. However, he had
an excuse now to do something besides walk the floors of this room. He would take Angel Dancer and go investigate.

The Connor women had not banned him from their lives—and from what he knew of them, they never would.

Becky’s laptop, Grace discovered, was password protected, and Grace did not know how to get around that.

Instead, she went through every drawer, ran her hand between the mattress and box springs, checked under the bed, looked in the jewelry box, checked the backpack that Becky used for school. There was nothing the least bit suspicious anywhere. In fact, she didn’t really know what she was looking for.

She went through the closet and looked behind the clothes. Then she dragged a chair over to the shelf in the top of Becky’s closet.

It was stacked neatly with shoe boxes. It took her a while to open them, and all she found were shoes. Until she opened a box that had been shoved far into a back corner, in which there was a stack of letters. Her heart sank when she saw that the return address was from a prison in Ohio. She lifted the box down and with trembling fingers peeled off the rubber band that had been holding the letters together. Could these hold a clue to the mystery behind Becky’s lies?

The first few letters on top were fairly innocuous. The man described his life in prison. And Becky had evidently described hers here at home. Unfortunately, it appeared that Becky had described her life in entirely too much detail. Grace could tell because of his responses to things that Becky had revealed.

He told her that she was the only person in the world who cared about him. Strong words for a girl who had such a tender heart that she could not resist taking in strays.

Grace skipped to the middle of the stack of letters, and they grew more passionate. Now he was telling Becky how beautiful she was and how much all the other men had admired the pictures she had sent him.

Grace felt sick at the thought of prisoners leering at a picture of her innocent, trusting sister.

She skipped to the final letter. The date was recent. Two days before Grace arrived home.

I have just heard that they are letting me out early. The prison is overcrowded and since I’m so close to finishing my time, I am one of the lucky ones being released. When I get out, we’ll finally get to see each other face to face.

I can’t wait until I can see you again, sweet Becky.

Again? When had he seen her before? Had Becky gone to see him in prison? This correspondence was infinitely more than Becky had indicated. Exactly how far had her sister’s relationship with the older guy gone? Obviously, it had gone far enough to cause her to lie and steal. Grace folded the letter back up carefully. She placed it back into the envelope and put the envelope back in the stack of letters. She placed the stack inside the shoe box and put the shoe box back on the top shelf. She smoothed the rumpled place on the bed where she had sat while she read the letters, and she closed the bedroom door gently behind her.

Then she raced to the bathroom, knelt in front of the commode, and was violently ill.

Levi knocked and knocked. At first no one came to the door, and then Elizabeth opened it.

“Oh, Levi. Thank goodness you’re here!”

Elizabeth grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the house. To his surprise, she was trembling.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“It’s Grace.” Elizabeth tugged him over to the staircase. “Listen.”

From upstairs he heard the sound of retching and sobbing.

“The doctor told me I am not supposed to climb stairs.” Elizabeth wrung her hands. “But I was just about to go up anyway. I’ve never heard Grace sound like this. Will you go see what’s happening up there?”