The Calling (18 page)

He shrugged and started to go through the contents of the box in front of him. “It was the economy.”

“It was more than the economy. You know that . . . don’t you?” It wasn’t really a question Rose was posing. “Tobe, if you’re in trouble, I can help.”

He startled. “What makes you think I’m the one who’s in trouble?”

“You disappeared for a reason. My guess is that you were frightened. Maybe you thought something was going to be discovered. Something you had done wrong. So you panicked and left.”

“Is that true, Tobe?” Bethany asked. She had assumed he had left because he felt like she did, tired of the whole business of failure.

He turned away from Rose and Bethany and opened up another box. “I left because the business was going under and there was no reason to stay.”

Rose slapped her hand down on a trunk so hard the dishes inside it rattled. Tobe jumped. Bethany’s eyes went wide. “No! That’s a lie!” she said. “You need to stop lying to me!
You and Jake Hertzler did
something
to Dad’s business. This isn’t going to go away, just because you hope it’s all over. It’s not. Life doesn’t work that way. You’re in serious trouble with the law, Tobe.” The words echoed and echoed, into the barn rafters.

She surprised Tobe so that his face flushed. He looked at Rose now as if he’d never seen her before. “What makes you say that?”

“There is a lawyer with the Securities Exchange Commission who wants to talk to you.”

“There’s no reason! I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t.” Tobe stared at Rose, silent, then his chest shuddered with a deep sigh. He slid to the ground, his back against a pole, and covered his face with his hands. He started to cry. Rose crouched down on the floor with him and held him in her arms, the way she held Sammy and Luke when they were little, until he pushed her away. “It wasn’t my idea,” he protested, his voice breaking on the last word so that he sounded as guilty as he seemed. “It was Jake’s. He falsified bank statements so it looked like we had money when we didn’t.”

Bethany heard the words but it was her brother’s anguished face that broke her heart. A panic gripped her chest so tightly that she thought her heart had stopped beating. She kept discovering new things about Jake that seemed impossible to believe. “How? Why? Why would Jake do such a thing?”

Tobe rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “He said it was to help Dad out. He said that if Dad and I could just keep getting new investors, there wouldn’t be any problem. He kept reassuring me that everything was okay.”

“How did you find out he falsified bank statements?” Rose said.

Tobe wiped his face with both hands. “Jake usually deposited the checks at the bank. One time, Jake was at the dentist so I deposited for the day. I checked on the balance and saw that it had dwindled down to practically nothing. That was when I first thought that something fishy was going on.”

“Then why didn’t you tell Dad?” Bethany asked.

Tobe looked up and his hard gaze met hers like a blow. “I was going to! I wanted to. But when I went back to the office, Jake was there, so I showed him the bank balance and asked what he knew about it. He told me that he knew all about it—there was less money in the bank than Dad thought there was, but he knew Dad was having heart problems. He didn’t want to worry Dad, so he just changed the statements that he showed him. He said not to tell Dad, not to put him under any more pressure, that things were going to be fine.”

“And you believed him,” Rose said, but in sadness, not anger.

“I was worried about Dad. Jake said he had enough stress. I wanted to believe him. You remember how tense Dad seemed, and he never slept, and how his heart was beating too fast.”

Bethany remembered. She used to hear her father’s footsteps downstairs as he paced in the middle of the night.

“Jake wanted Dad to concentrate on getting more investors. He said it could be a very short-term cash flow crunch, if we could only go out and get more investments. Jake had a way of explaining things that made it seem like a good idea. So I went along with him.” He picked up a piece of straw and rubbed it between his fingers. “Then the house was foreclosed on and we had to move to Mammi Vera’s. Things kept getting worse, not better. So Jake told me he had figured out a way to buy a little more time until the economy improved.”

Rose was stunned. “Did you not realize he was setting up a pyramid scheme?”

Tobe shook his head. “Jake kept saying it was a short-term solution. Just to buy some time.” He dropped his chin to his chest. “It was the simplest thing. Strangely simple. Jake just whited out the address and account number, using other investors’ statements, typed the right address and account number, and then made a copy so you couldn’t see that it had been changed.”

“And Dad had no idea?” Bethany asked.

Tobe shook his head. “It gets worse.” He crumpled the straw and tossed it away. “Checks started bouncing right and left. As word leaked out, shareholders started to try to liquidate, which only made everything spiral out of control. Dad was advised by the bank to declare bankruptcy so they could try to control the implosion and figure out what had happened. That was when Jake showed me that he had been keeping a second set of books. He had given Dad the cooked books. Jake had the real books, the real story—Schrock Investments was running out of money.”

Rose rubbed her face. “Then the ones Dad handed over to the SEC were falsified books?”

Slowly, Tobe nodded. “That’s right. I was in the office on the day the subpoena was delivered to Dad. He was told that shareholders had organized a lawsuit against Schrock Investments. That was when I started to panic. I took the second set of books and I hid them in the basement. I just needed to get away for a few days, to think. To figure out a plan of how to tell Dad what Jake and I had done.” He put his forehead on his knees. “And then Dad died. I couldn’t come back. I just couldn’t. So I ran. I ran as far away from here as I could get.”

“Es is graad so weit hie as her,” Rose said.
It’s just as far going as coming.

Tobe squeezed his eyes shut. “I was only trying to protect Dad. He must have known what I had done. He must have figured it out.”

“Probably so,” Rose said. “He was very upset the night before he died. He left the house and said he was going to go fix everything. I didn’t know what he meant by that. The next thing I knew, the bishop and police arrived to let me know Dad had drowned.”

At the mention of her father’s death, Bethany suddenly felt aware of how hot and stuffy it was in the hayloft. She felt as if she was having trouble getting a full breath of air. She walked over to the open hayloft window and tried to get some fresh air.

“So,” Rose said, all calm and matter-of-fact, “you only came back because you heard that the Amish committee was going to reimburse people for what they lost?”

“Yes.” The word had come out of Tobe almost like a gasp. “I thought it would be safe. I thought it was all over.”

“Are you looking for ledger books? For the accurate books?”

“I’ve looked everywhere! I’ve been combing this hayloft for two days. I can’t find them anywhere.”

Bethany’s head snapped up. “I gave them to Jake.”

Tobe stared at her. “You
what
?”

“He was here a few months ago. Jake told me you were in trouble. He said you needed those books. I thought I was doing something to help you.”

He let out a short, bitter laugh. “Jake scores again.”

“Tobe, we need to talk to the SEC lawyer,” Rose said. “Allen Turner is his name. He’s been looking for you for the last year.”

His head shot up in panic. “You would turn me in?”

“I’m not going to tell Allen Turner anything. You’re going to tell him. Everything.” Out of Rose’s pocket, she pulled Allen Turner’s business card and handed it to Tobe.

His face crumbled. “I can’t do it. I can’t. You don’t understand.”

“I understand that life doesn’t give you many moments like this. You have a very long life ahead of you. But how you handle this situation will decide the man you’re going to be from now on. The man God wants you to be.”

He fingered the card. “God has forgotten about me.”

Rose shook her head. “He hasn’t,” she whispered. “You must never think that. His love is always there, Tobe, always there. We’re here too. Your family will always support you. That’s what families do.”

Tobe listened, but said nothing.

“You heard me, didn’t you, Tobe?”

Tobe nodded. “I heard you.” He wiped his eyes and held up the business card. “I’m going to be different from now on. You’ll see. I’m going to be different.”

“In what way?”

“In every way. I am going to be a different man.”

Bethany looked at her brother. For all his faults—and she had to admit they were manifold—he had a good heart. And as much as he could be frustrating, he could also be amusing and generous and appealing.

“Don’t change too much,” Rose said gently. “We love you the way you are.”

She stood and walked to the hayloft ladder, then swiveled around to face Tobe. “I understand that cash inflow from new investors could be used to pay other investors’ dividends. I understand that returns on investments had diminished.
But what I don’t understand is where all the principal money went. Where is all
that
money?”

Tobe shrugged. “The recession. Plus Dad made some bad investments. Some real estate properties went belly up.”

Bethany looked back out the hayloft window. She thought about Jake’s new truck with all the bells and whistles he was so proud of. About his new horse trailer. About his cell phone. About the fancy restaurants he took her to. His overly generous tips. It never crossed her mind to ask where that money came from. It never crossed her mind.

And she had trouble getting a full breath of air again.

With all Tobe had revealed in the hayloft, Bethany couldn’t shake the feeling that life was spiraling out of control. She had to grab something to hold on to, something to help her feel as if she could find her own way.

Later that day, while Tobe was taking a shower, she sneaked into his room and riffled through his wallet. Tobe kept everything important in his wallet. She noticed exactly how everything was before she took it out so she could be sure to put it back the same way. She went through old receipts, a piece of gum, a few dollars—ah! no wonder he came home when he did—and a folded-up paper from a Schrock Investments’ memo pad. She opened it up and squinted, barely able to make out the faded penciled writing:

Mary Miller Schrock, 212 N. Street, Hagensburg, PA

Bingo!

That had to be it. Tobe had said she wasn’t too far from
here. She heard the shower turn off, so she scribbled down the address on a piece of paper, put the papers and gum back in the wallet, and tiptoed out of Tobe’s room.

All day, Bethany kept fingering the paper with her mother’s address on it. She wasn’t even sure how to get there, or if she even wanted to.

Yes she did.

No she didn’t.

10

T
his afternoon, Geena’s mind was mainly on dinner. Earlier today she had bought a juicy strip steak at the butcher shop in Stoney Ridge and thought she might ask the Schrocks if she could use their grill. The Amish, she was told, loved to barbecue. And it was still blistering hot, which she didn’t really mind because it meant more canceled reservations and her stay could extend at Eagle Hill. The longer she was here, the longer she could put off the inevitable job search.

As she walked out the guest flat toward the house, she spotted Bethany near the clothesline, a mound of wet bedding in her arms. Of all the Schrocks, she found herself most drawn to Bethany: feisty, opinionated, strong—probably stronger than she knew—yet with an undercurrent of pathos. She wondered what that undercurrent consisted of. Where did it come from?

As she approached Bethany, she could see that something was wrong. Bethany’s hands were trembling. “Are you all right?”

Startled, Bethany said, “Of course. Of course I’m all right.”

“You’re sure?”