Falling to Pieces (8 page)

Reacting like the high-pressured salesperson she had been would not work with the people of Shipshewana. She would only make enemies—and though she didn’t plan to stay here long, she needed all the friends she could possibly accumulate.

Or as her mother had been fond of reminding her, “You can accomplish more with a big glass of sweet tea …” A bit of a twist on the traditional saying, but for Stella Harper it made perfect sense. She knew her daughter, knew her tendency was to storm in, and often reminded her that in the South, patience and manners was the better way to win someone’s favor.

So she should try sweet tea.

Sweetness, Mr. Stakehorn, and the
Shipshewana Gazette
seemed incompatible, but perhaps not.

C
ALLIE SAT DOWN
at a table to wait on her order. Probably owing to the fact that it was a Tuesday, a market day, the deli was quite busy. Plus, Shipshewana didn’t offer many places to eat in the evening.

The thought brought a smile to Callie’s face. In Houston, many places stayed open until well past midnight. But in Shipshewana, most places closed up when the sun went down. She was grateful the deli stayed open an hour later than the others.

She seemed to be the one person waiting on a to-go order.

More than a dozen people sat at various tables or at the old time soda-fountain bar.

Some sat with their families, talking about the day’s events as they enjoyed their meal.

Some sat alone, like her. She’d been eating alone since Rick died.

Her gaze traveled to the window, to the twinkly lights in the trees lining the walk outside. Summer had been Rick’s favorite time. He loved everything about it—water-skiing, hiking, bike riding. He was a bit of an outdoors enthusiast. A lump filled her throat until she was sure she wouldn’t be able to swallow past it.

Two years, nearly two years now. Shouldn’t something as simple as eating her evening meal be easier?

On the other hand, if it became easier what would that say about her? That she didn’t really love him? She did though. She loved him, and she missed him more than she’d miss her arm if someone were to walk in and cut if off at this very moment.

“Can I get you some iced tea while you wait, Miss Callie?” Beth, a young Amish girl, smiled as she stopped at her table. Blonde hair peeked out from the prayer
kapp
Callie was growing accustomed to seeing. A dark blue dress was covered by a white apron which matched the
kapp.

“That would be wonderful. Yes, thank you, Beth.”

“Mango-peach, like before?”

“I would love that. You have a good memory.”

“Danki.”
The girl blushed slightly, then skittered away from the table.

Callie pretended to read the menu, though she’d already ordered. In truth, she studied the other customers. Many were people she’d met in her shop over the last few days.

The thought brought her up short—
her shop.

Was that what it had become?

Her shop?

When had she started to feel a personal sense of ownership for the place?

She’d been numb for so long—since Rick’s death, since her friends had deserted her, since she’d lost her job. Maybe longer. Maybe since she’d lost the baby.

The words on the menu blurred, but she blinked, forced back the tears.

Now was not the time to grow sentimental, and certainly not over an old shop that she had no ties to—no ties except Aunt Daisy.

Daisy had always been such a gentle soul, her monthly letters a balm over the last few years. True, they were short and usually filled with ramblings about her day-to-day life. What old person’s letters weren’t?

Who even sent letters anymore?

In a day of emailing, texting, instant messaging, and tweeting, Callie had always thought her aunt eccentric.

But she’d kept every one of those letters, tied them with a bit of lace, and placed them in her mother’s hope chest back in her apartment in Houston.

She’d always meant to come back and visit her aunt. The occasional postcard she’d sent to her from wherever she had happened to have been located for that week’s sales emergency now seemed like such a hollow gesture.

What kind of person was she?

She hadn’t even taken the time to connect with her only remaining family.

The deli owner, Mr. Simms, was an old gentleman with a full head of white hair. He walked to the counter and hollered, “Stakehorn, your order is ready.”

Callie clutched the menu in her hand. She watched in disbelief as a short older man walked up to the counter. It was the cranky old bald guy who had given her such a hard time in her shop on her first day. She moved toward the door as Mr. Stakehorn accepted the to-go order in a white paper bag, pulled out his wallet, and paid his bill.

He turned around, and she saw the same piercing blue eyes she’d stared into before.

“You.” Callie could barely choke out the word.

Stakehorn looked, if anything, bored. “Step out of my way, girl.”

Callie didn’t budge. “You came into my shop, snooped around, and wrote things down in your little notebook. You didn’t even bother to check your facts with me first.” Callie shook her finger in his face. “Then you wrote lies about me in your paper.”

Around them the deli grew as quiet as snow falling across the plains of the Texas Panhandle.

“If you have a problem with my paper, Miss Harper, I suggest you write a letter to the editor.”

“A letter to the editor?” Callie thought the top of her head might literally come uncorked. “You are the editor, and I will not write a letter. I don’t need to write a letter, because you are going to print a retraction.”

Callie slapped the menu she still held down on top of the nearest table. “You wrote lies about me—lies that could very easily hurt my business. That, Mr. Stakehorn, is cause for a libel suit, which I have no reservations about pursuing.”

“Be my guest, Miss Harper.” Stakehorn rattled his paper bag. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to take my dinner home and eat it before it becomes soggy.”

“That’s it? Just like that? You won’t even consider being reasonable?”

“Harper, do you even have any proof what I wrote was untrue, or are you harassing me for the fun of it?”

“Harassing you?” Callie heard her voice rise an octave and she fought to regain control. “You’re the one who filled your paper with drivel.”

“So you have no proof, as I thought. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

Stakehorn inched right to move around her, but Callie had seen far quicker moves from elderly receptionists trying to avoid sales reps—trying to avoid her! She moved right as well, determined he wouldn’t leave with the smug look on his face.

“Oh, I’ll excuse you, all right.”

Unfortunately at that moment Beth walked up with her tea. Not knowing what to do with it, she set it on the table nearest Callie and once again dashed away.

“I’ll excuse you the minute you admit that you’re a liar and you’re only interested in making a profit.”

“Who is only interested in profits here? At least the people who buy my paper realize what I’m about, what I’m doing.” Stakehorn
took two steps forward, what Callie later realized was his biggest mistake.

Stakehorn lowered his voice. “But you have to admit that those poor women have no idea how much you’re taking them for. They don’t even use electricity, and you’re hustling their wares on the internet highway. Robbery, Miss Harper. Plain and simple.”

“Plain and simple? What’s plain and simple is that you will regret making an enemy of me.”

When he laughed his self-righteous little laugh, Callie lost the last remnant of her flimsy control.

The tea was too close.

The temptation too great.

Callie picked it up and with one flick of her wrist she dumped the entire thing on the top of Mr. Stakehorn’s head.

Then she turned and stormed out of the deli.

Sitting in a far back booth, the man continued eating his pastrami on rye and watching Stakehorn.

The scene with the little shop owner had been interesting.

But did it change anything?

He’d need to factor it in to what he already knew, to what he had planned.

The waitress rushed over, handed the editor a dishtowel. Stakehorn used it to pat himself dry, though it did nothing to remove the stain the tea had left on his shirt.

Scowling, Stakehorn picked up his to-go order and pushed his way out the door of the deli.

The man counted to five. Then he tossed a ten-dollar bill down on the table, and he followed the editor out into the gathering dusk.

Deborah stood at the sink with her mother-in-law, cleaning up the dinner dishes, looking out the window, which gave a good view of the approaching evening.

“So you trust this English woman?” Ruth’s voice was smooth and calm as the surface of the pond behind the old farmhouse.

As she rested her hands in the warm rinse water, Deborah stared out at the fading image of the pond in the subdued sunset—a mingled display of blues and grays and blacks.

Ruth slipped another dish into the soapy water, sponged it off, then handed it to Deborah to rinse and dry.

“Ya,
I do trust Callie. I can tell she’s an honest person, in the same way Daisy always dealt fairly with us. It wasn’t even Callie’s idea to put the quilts on the computer auction. It was my idea. I heard some boys in town speak of it.”

“And the bishop hasn’t made a decision yet?”

“No. I believe he might stop by this weekend.” Deborah dried the dish and placed it in the cabinet. Like nearly everything else in Ruth’s home, the dishes weren’t fancy. Plain off-white, no pattern bordered the edge. The dishware was old and dependable and had been used at Ruth’s table for many years—long before Deborah was a girl of sixteen and had started coming to the Yoder home, courted by a young boy who made her heart beat like the wings of a hummingbird.

“I’m worried he’ll say no,” Deborah confessed. “Melinda and Esther sorely need the income. They need as much as we can earn.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you and Jonas either,” Ruth pointed out.

“Ya,
but I know that we have you and Saul to help us.”

“It’s true.” Ruth handed her a bowl. “But it’s not the two of us that you put your trust in, Deborah. It’s the Lord.”

“You’re right. Jonas said as much to me last night. Didn’t the Lord give us the gift of quilting though? And he brought Callie here. Callie who knows how to sell things this way. So how is it wrong?”

“Don’t be giving me your arguments, child. I’m sure you already presented them to the bishop.” Ruth washed the last dish and pulled the plug from the sink, watched the water swirl away. “Sometimes our dreams are like this water. They drain away and we don’t understand why.”

Ruth sat down at the table, reached for the knitting she always kept close.

Deborah pulled out a chair and joined her. “Tell me there’s more to that example, or I’m going to be a bit depressed.”

Ruth peered at her over her glasses, gray hair peeping out from under her
kapp.
When she smiled, wrinkles folded around her eyes, across her forehead, down her cheeks. In her mid-sixties, she seemed ageless to Deborah—energetic and healthy, though signs of her age were beginning to show, like the gray and the wrinkles. Deborah realized anew how lucky she was to have this woman in her life, this mother who had replaced the one she’d lost all those years ago.

Focusing on her knitting, Ruth clucked her tongue. “Ah, but life is a bit sad at times. A bit like that dishwater swirling down the drain—slipping away. We don’t understand it, why it has to be so, but it is.”

A screech came from the other side of the room, where the children played on the rug and Jonas and his father read
The Budget,
though they’d no doubt poured over it from cover to cover the day before.

Ruth followed her gaze. “Other times life is like what you see there—full of joy.”

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

“Merely that we’re not meant to comprehend everything. We’ll have moments of simple joy, like watching our loved ones enjoy an evening together. And we’ll have moments of pain, like the illness of Melinda’s child, where you want to help but aren’t sure how.”

“Or the death of Esther’s husband.” Deborah felt her throat tighten with the pain of her best friend’s loss.

“Yes, that too.” Ruth’s hands knitted the blue yarn so quickly, Deborah wondered if her tears were clouding her vision. “Much like the water swirling down the drain, you want to reach out and stop the pain for her. But you can’t always bring an end to pain—anymore than you could have stopped the water once I pulled the plug.”

Deborah shook her head, needing to argue with her.

Ruth pushed on. “It isn’t always our job to stop the pain. Even if we don’t like it, pain has a place in this life.”

Sighing, Deborah pulled the bowl of walnuts toward her, picked up the nutcracker, and set to work. Ruth would bake in the morning, and she’d heard the boys ask for oatmeal walnut cookies. Ruth might talk about pain and the inability to ease it, but she spoiled her grandchildren considerably.

“I don’t know what the bishop will decide,” Deborah admitted, “but what Stakehorn did was wrong.”

“Ya.
It’s not the first time he’s stretched the truth.”

“Pulled it clear out of shape.” Deborah cracked a walnut with extra gusto, separating the meat from the shell. “Callie needs some proof to take to him tomorrow—something more than our word.”

“What would convince Stakehorn?”

“You know how stubborn he is. It would take something solid. Something like …” Deborah dropped the nutcracker on the table. “Like a recording.”

Pushing her chair back, she stood up, looked around as if seeing her mother-in-law’s house for the first time. “That’s it—we need a recording.”

“And you have such a thing?” Ruth smiled, but didn’t slow in her knitting.

“We do!” Deborah reached down and hugged Ruth. “We certainly do.”

Pausing just long enough to clean off the shells and toss them into the trash, she gathered her things. “Jonas, we need to go. Hurry
kinner,
find all your things.”

“We’re leaving?” Martha looked up from where she was lying
stretched out on her belly, sprawled on the rug, paging through a book. “Now?”

“I’ve only started reading the paper,” Jonas said, a frown forming between his eyes.

“You already read that paper, Jonas. I need to stop by the phone shack on the way home.”

She heard some rumblings about women and phone cards, but within minutes everyone had climbed into the large buggy and they were off. She’d dropped the smaller buggy at the house earlier, after seeing Callie, then ridden over with Jonas in the larger buggy so they could all ride back together after dinner.

“Have any more children and we won’t fit in a single buggy—even this large one.” Jonas smiled over at her, his eyes twinkling in the dim light given off by the small battery-operated lamp they kept in the front.