Hearse and Buggy (3 page)

“Sounds like a hate crime to me,” Arnie mused as his spoon clattered to the floor. Without so much as a word, the twentysomething plucked the utensil off the ground and dug it into his helping of potatoes, depositing a huge portion into his mouth. If he noticed the remnants that spattered onto his misbuttoned and wrinkled shirt, he showed no indication. “Regardless, Esther will be fine to interview. Besides, I think she kind of likes me.”

For the first time since eyeing the evening’s menu, Claire was grateful the guests were always served first. If they weren’t, she’d likely be wearing her own spoonful of potatoes. She quickly forced her mouth shut, but not before noticing her aunt’s eyes rolling. Arnie Streen might be intelligent in some areas, but when it came to the cues of women, he deserved a big, fat F. With a few red circles around the grade for good measure.

Before she could think of a response, Diane dismissed the man’s delusion with gentle diplomacy, a skill Claire admired more and more with each passing day. “Esther likes
everyone
.”

When Claire and Diane were done serving the meal, a couple from Wichita, Kansas, asked them to join everyone
for supper. Upon the echoed sentiment of the newlyweds seated across from the couple, as well as from Arnie, they slipped off their aprons and took a place at the table.

Dinner was a lovely affair, as each guest shared a little about his or her own hometown, interspersed with questions about the Amish. Diane’s vast knowledge, gleaned from decades of running the inn, kept everyone enthralled in much the way it had Claire when she first arrived.

Now, however, Claire was beginning to couple Diane’s words with her own experiences, thanks to people like Esther and some of her fellow Amish shopkeepers, who were slowly but surely becoming her friends.

Still, Diane knew more. And when she brought out a photo album she’d compiled over the past twenty-plus years, even Claire found herself mesmerized by the pages and pages of pictures her aunt had gathered from various sources—including postcard photographers who tended to stay at the inn while on assignment.

“The tour guide who took us through that Amish village today said they don’t keep pictures of themselves around their homes,” Gerry Baker said, leaning back in his chair and hooking an arm around his wife, Amanda. The Kansas couple had arrived the day before and were Claire’s favorite of the current guests. “The only pictures they have in their homes are on the calendars they seem to have in every room. But even those are just things like bridges and flowers and stuff.”

“That’s true. They feel as if photographs pay homage to themselves, which is something they don’t believe in,” Claire explained.

Amanda’s brows furrowed. “They don’t mind photographers taking their pictures?”

“They don’t look at the photographer. Don’t keep their
own photos around their homes. In fact, most of the pictures you see on postcards and in books were taken without their permission with high-powered zoom lenses. Needless to say, what those in the English world do with them is not their worry.” Diane flipped to the next page. “Likewise, most Amish families don’t have mirrors in their homes, and if they do, there’s only one, and it’s generally kept in the kitchen, making it difficult to linger for long. To have it any other way promotes vanity in their eyes.”

“That woman could be a fashion model.”

Claire glanced at the picture that had claimed Amanda’s interest, the beauty depicted impossible to miss. “That’s Ruth—the woman who runs the Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe just down the road.”

“The photographer who took that shot desperately tried to convince her to abandon the Amish and pursue a career in modeling, but Ruth declined,” Diane explained as she readied her page-turning hand. “I wasn’t surprised, though. Poor thing is as sweet as they come, which, coupled with her beauty, only makes Nellie Snow all the more hateful.”

“Nellie Snow?” Claire moved to the left to escape the flow of Arnie’s breath on her ear, the new crop of photos barely registering.

“Hey, that’s Esther!”

At the mention of her friend’s name, Claire forced her focus onto the picture in front of her before glancing up at her aunt with a different question. “When was this taken?”

Diane leaned forward, a smile playing across her gently lined face. “They look so much alike, don’t they? Even I get confused at times.”

And then she knew. It wasn’t Esther in the picture. It was a young Martha, with her parents and two brothers.

“It’s a shame it’s been so long since they’ve seen him. I
only pray that changes now that he’s back. Maybe they can find a way to forgive.”

Her aunt’s voice hovered in the air like some distant cloud as Claire studied the face she’d met that afternoon, a face so like one she now called friend.

Arnie paused in the middle of picking his teeth. “Which one didn’t come back?”

Confused, Claire looked up at Arnie, then followed the path of his eyes back down to the photo. As she watched, her aunt’s finger pointed to the young man standing to Martha’s immediate left, his sandy blond hair just visible beneath the rim of his hat.

“That one.” Diane pulled her hand from the photograph in front of them and grabbed the day’s paper off the hutch. Placing it next to the album, she pointed to the man who had sent Martha and Esther scurrying from Claire’s shop that very afternoon. “Who’s also the same as
this
one.”

C
laire looked up from the novel in her lap and pointed at the rose-colored love seat on the other side of the Victorian lamp. “Aunt Diane, you really need to sit. You’ve been going a mile a minute since I got back from the shop this afternoon. The guests have been fed and they’ve all retired upstairs for the night, leaving you with only one thing to do. And that’s relax. You’ve earned it.”

“I will relax when it’s time for bed.” Armed with a dust cloth in one hand and a book of matches in the other, Diane moved from one built-in bookcase to the next, stopping from time to time to straighten a frame or knickknack and light a scented votive. “The Bakers are a lovely couple, aren’t they? And the Reynolds? Can’t you just see them as they’ll look when they come back in twenty-five years to celebrate their anniversary? Why, I’ve never seen a man look at his new bride with such love and reverence before. It’s simply a treat to witness.”

Claire turned her head, following her father’s oldest sister around the room with her eyes, the soft flickering light creating an almost halo-like effect behind the woman’s gray-streaked hair.

Fitting …

“Do you ever regret not getting married?” It was a question she’d been tempted to ask often over the past six months yet had resisted until that moment.

The woman paused, a thoughtful expression brewing behind her bifocals. “If I didn’t have you, I’d have to say yes. But, since I do, I have been blessed with the chance to know a sense of motherhood without all the red tape. Besides, with the way I tend to run off at the mouth about history and such, I’d have bored some poor fellow into an early grave.”

A smile tugged at Claire’s lips. “You sell yourself short.”

“And you, my dear niece, tend to make me bigger than I am.” Diane tucked the dust cloth and matches into her apron pocket and retrieved the day’s paper from the rocking chair. “I love my life, Claire. I love cooking, I love gardening, and I love meeting new people every few days or so. Through them, I learn about parts of the country I’ve yet to visit, and with them, I can share my love for this town and its people.”

“And you’re very good at what you do.” Shifting her novel from her lap to the side table, Claire pulled her feet underneath her body and snuggled deeper into the depths of the upholstered lounge chair. “Do you mind if I ask what happened?”

“Happened?” Diane echoed in confusion.

She pointed to the newspaper tucked beneath her aunt’s arm and nodded. “With the detective and his family.”

A rush of sadness muted the woman’s trademark sparkle,
bringing her to sit on the same love seat she’d refused to inhabit just moments earlier. “It’s a sad story, really. One I don’t see ever changing, even though I wish with all my heart that it could.”

“Tell me,” she encouraged.

Unfolding the newspaper across her knees, Diane gazed down at the picture below the fold. “Jakob was raised Amish right alongside his sister and his brother. He stayed close to home during his Rumspringa, his experimentation of the non-Amish world extending only to music and a fascination with the local police.”

“The local police?” She tugged a throw pillow onto her lap and hugged it to her chest. “How so?”

Diane scooted the paper onto the love seat and pulled her feet from her comfortable-soled shoes, wiggling her stocking-clad toes as she did. “He became friendly with members of the Heavenly Police Department. He’d ask them questions about what they did, listen to their stories, even go for a few ride-alongs when the chief allowed. But, when his year or so was over, he went back to his life and was baptized.”

She felt her mouth drop open. “I didn’t realize the Amish could be police officers.”

“They can’t.”

“Then how—”

“Sixteen years ago, a member of the Amish community was murdered as part of a hate crime. Jakob wanted a hand in bringing the perpetrator to justice.”

Reality dawned as she took in her aunt’s words. “He joined the force?”

Diane’s capable shoulders rose and fell once beneath her simple powder-blue dress. “He wanted to, but it wasn’t
allowed. Farming is more than an occupation to the Amish. It’s also about their devotion to a commandment from God that says man is to work in harmony with the soil and nature. Police work doesn’t fit with that teaching.”

Anxious for her aunt to continue, she merely nodded.

“Unfortunately, by the time Jakob made the decision to leave, the suspect had already been found.”

“But it was too late for him to go back, wasn’t it?” she asked, although she knew the answer all on her own. Leaving the Amish world after baptism was an unforgiveable offense.

“It would have been, if he’d wanted to go back. But he felt that police work was his calling in a way farming never could be.” Diane slipped her feet back into her shoes and stood. “He couldn’t face the shunning he was certain to encounter, so he enrolled in a police academy in New York and worked there until this past week, when he was hired on as a detective on the Heavenly force.”

She considered her aunt’s words and compared them to what she witnessed from Martha earlier in the day. “But why come back now? Surely he can’t believe things will be different with his family?”

Diane crossed to the bay window that overlooked Lighted Way and the gas-powered lanterns that outlined Heavenly’s quaint shopping district. “I suspect his return is more about hope than belief.”

Hope.

Claire understood what it meant to steer one’s life in the direction of hope. It was what had saved her at a time when simple belief kept her from seeing anything other than what was right in front of her face.

“Maybe he can figure out who’s behind the trouble at the
bake shop or track down Walter Snow and all that money he owes the Amish,” she offered.

“Maybe; maybe not.” With one last look out at her beloved town, Diane pulled the thick velvet drapes closed, signaling the end to yet another day. “Either way, Jakob will most certainly have his work cut out for him here.”

She looked a question at her aunt.

The woman rushed to explain even as she moved around the room, dusting the last of the knickknacks. “The English may be open to Detective Fisher and his position in this town, but the Amish … not so much. Which means that hope that most certainly brought him back here is about to disappear in a cloud of pain.”

Claire closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the lounge, her thoughts revisiting the moment Martha saw Jakob for the first time in sixteen years. Although she hadn’t known what was going on at the time, the disbelief, the shock in Martha’s face and voice had been undeniable.

Aunt Diane was right.

By coming back to Heavenly, Jakob Fisher had placed himself in a position to be hurt. Deeply.

She opened her eyes to find Diane staring at her from the foot of the lounge chair. “What?”

“I’m certain he could use a friend or two.” Diane sidestepped her way to the side of the chair. “Breakfast will be here before I know it, so I’m going to head up to bed. Would you make sure to blow out all the votives before you turn in for the night?”

She smiled as her aunt’s lips came down on her forehead, the warmth and love she felt at that moment bringing a lump to her throat. Swallowing over it, she managed to nod.

“I’m glad you came here, Claire,” Diane whispered.

“So am I.”

Left alone, Claire was all too aware of the fact that the novel she’d been engrossed in less than thirty minutes earlier no longer held any appeal.

Suddenly, she felt as if she understood this man she’d never met. A man who left the only world he truly knew in order to pursue something that no one in his inner circle would ever understand.

Yet she did.

She’d left her wealthy, high-powered husband for the life of her dreams—a place where she felt important and needed, just as Detective Fisher had left farming behind to protect and serve.

The difference, though, was in where they landed.

She found a family in her aunt and her Amish friends.

He’d pursued his passion but lost his family in the process.

And although she’d had hope on her side when Diane invited her to come and stay after her divorce from Peter, Jakob had none. Not real hope, anyway.

He’d left the Amish after his baptism.

That alone meant his return to Heavenly would go uncelebrated.

Swinging her feet over the edge of the lounge chair, Claire stood, her gaze fixed on the paper Diane left behind. Slowly, she crossed the hand-hooked rug that separated the two pieces of furniture and picked up the
Heavenly Times
. Flipping it around, she stared into the same eyes that inhabited her shop on a near-daily basis, the same eyes that agreed to give her and her shop a chance that very afternoon.