Honeymoons Can Be Hazardous, page 3
Ruth sniffed at this answer and set her fork next to her empty plate. “Dear, are you finished with your meal? I’m ready to leave.”
Bishop Yoder looked down at his half-eaten tiramisu, took two big bites in succession, and nodded. He was unable to speak because his mouth was full. He stopped and sipped his water. After he swallowed, he bid Lois and me good night.
Ruth looked down at me. “Do not forget the Double Stitch meeting on Monday. We have much to talk about.”
“How could I? It’s at my house,” I said with my most gracious smile.
Double Stitch was the quilting circle in our district. Both Ruth and I were members. Ruth viewed herself as the leader of the group, but in fact, there was no leader, at least not officially.
Ruth pressed her lips together and nodded.
After she was gone, Lois said, “Have you ever considered that she uses those quilting circle gatherings as councils of war?”
I didn’t bother to respond.
Lois poked at her salad. “I don’t think that woman is ever going to like me.”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath after all this time.”
She straightened up. “Maybe I should start a campaign to make her my friend.”
That sounded like a terrible idea, one that most certainly wouldn’t have a happy ending.
Across the room, Elijah Smucker sat alone at a table for four, tucking into his spaghetti dinner. He didn’t speak or smile at anyone. He didn’t even look up from his plate when a server refilled his water glass.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Lois, and before she could stop me, I was out of my seat.
I walked across the room, straight for Elijah’s table.
“Elijah?” I said.
He didn’t look up when I spoke.
“I just want to give you my condolences over the loss of John Michael,” I said in Pennsylvania Dutch. “Everyone in the community is praying for you and your family during this difficult time.”
He glanced in my direction but didn’t meet my eyes. What I saw was a man with bloodshot eyes, sunken cheeks, and a heart shattered into a thousand shards. In a gravelly voice, he said, “Prayers will not bring my son back.”
“Nee, they won’t,” I agreed. “But they can lead to healing.”
He looked me in the eye for the first time. “Maybe healing isn’t what I’m after.”
I wanted to say more, but a shout tore through the fellowship hall. A black and white blur raced by me with a loaf of garlic bread in its mouth. Juliet Brook, the pastor’s wife, ran after her polka-dotted potbellied pig. “Jethro! That’s too many carbs for you! Think of your headshots for Hollywood! Your diet! We’re shooting next week!”
Chapter Four
Most of the year, I worked part-time at a greenhouse owned by my niece. Usually, I watered the plants and worked at the cash register. However, in the middle of February—with six inches of snow on the ground—the greenhouse was closed. After a busy Friday helping Lois at the café and then the spaghetti dinner, it was nice to know I didn’t have to go anywhere Saturday morning. I planned to have a leisurely start. At least as leisurely as an Amish woman would allow herself. I rose at five-thirty, thirty whole minutes later than I habitually got up to do my farm chores.
I took great pride in my small farm. It was tiny by Amish standards—just shy of five acres, with a small house and a modest barn—but it was home. I’d bought it with the money I had saved over the years from odd jobs and selling my handmade quilts. Selling Amish quilts could be lucrative if you built up a good customer list and had friends, family, and past customers who were willing to spread the word. I had been blessed in that regard, and my business had grown even more since I’d moved back to Ohio after a decade in Michigan caring for my ailing older sister. This was mostly because of my close-knit quilting circle, Double Stitch. I would not be so comfortable in life without the kindness of friends who were willing to give me extra work.
Of course, comfort for a widowed Amish woman was much different from what it might be for an Englischer. I only needed a roof over my head, food, and peace. Well, that and a home for my two ornery goats, Phillip and Peter, plus my prim cat, Peaches, who was the newest addition to the little farm, but by far the most exacting. And lastly, my mild-mannered horse, Bessie. That’s really all I required. The income from my quilts, and the little money I made helping my niece in the warmer months, made it all possible.
As always, I fed Peaches even before making my own coffee. The cat wouldn’t have it any other way. The peach-colored cat buried his delicate face into his food bowl and made noises as he ate that were anything but delicate.
After two sips of coffee, I slipped on my black rain boots, winter coat, hat, scarf, and gloves to make my morning trek to the barn to let the two hoofed rascals out. I knew they would both be awake and waiting at the door for me to open up the barn for the day. It didn’t matter to them that there was snow on the ground and the sun wouldn’t be up for over an hour. All they cared about was busting out of the barn and romping around the yard. If they knocked something over in the process, all the better. As long as I wasn’t the thing they knocked over, I was fairly tolerant of their antics.
I liked to consider myself a cheerful person, but I didn’t think anyone was so truly happy as a goat when he was freed from the barn.
The goats’ joy was infectious, so most days I let them romp for my own amusement. Ruth Yoder would not approve at all.
I pulled a stocking cap down over my ears. Now, had I been heading into town during the cold weather, I would have put on my large black bonnet like a proper Amish woman. However, in the privacy of my own farm, I felt it was fine to wear my late husband’s old stocking cap. Kip might have been gone for over twenty years now, but I felt closer to him when I wore the hat. I also knew it would make him laugh to see me walking around in a man’s cap on the farm. However, had I ever sported trousers in his sight, he would have fainted dead away.
I opened the back door to the house, and a giant gust of icy wind and snow smacked me in the face. The gust was so hard that I stumbled back and had to hold onto the doorframe to keep from falling over.
When I regained my bearings, I looked out into the snow. I had a battery-operated lantern in my hand, and it swung back and forth with each wind gust. I debated whether I should wait another hour to go outside. The goats would not like being stuck inside the barn for one minute more than they had to, but it might be too cold for them outdoors.
Just when I had decided to turn around and head back inside to make a second cup of coffee, I spotted something moving by the barn. That wasn’t too unusual. The barn was one of the few structures for over a half of a mile. Many times, wild animals sheltered near it, especially in the middle of the winter. Even on the outside, there was some protection from the elements under the eaves.
But what I saw near the barn was a lot larger than a raccoon, and it wasn’t shaped like a deer.
I held my lantern up higher in the hope that I could get a better look at the shadowy figure.
That’s when the creature—or dare I say person—stood up. I yelped and dropped my lantern on the concrete slab at my feet, and the light went out. In the moonlight, the figure ran away from the barn and dashed across my small yard into a neighboring field.
I jumped back inside the house, slammed the door closed, and locked it.
I leaned against the door. What was someone doing out by my barn so early in the morning, and why did they run away when they saw me? If they’d come to me for help, that didn’t make any sense at all.
Was the person Amish? It had been too hard to tell in the moonlight. I supposed it was a man. The person had been wearing trousers, so I assumed it would have to be a man, if the person was Amish.
I placed a shaky hand on my cheek. This wasn’t the way I’d wanted to start my leisurely morning. Also, this was the difficult thing about living out in the country with no close neighbors. I felt vulnerable when something didn’t feel right. And a person running away from my barn in the dark certainly didn’t feel right at all.
It was another hour before the sun came up completely, but I soon saw the sky lightening with the promise of morning. The poor goats must have been beside themselves, stuck in the barn a full hour longer than they expected, and they must have heard the person outside the barn, too.
I picked up a cast-iron frying pan and opened the back door. My battery-operated lantern lay on the ground in pieces. That really was a shame. It had been a handy tool and much easier to use than my old oil lantern. A gift from Lois, who didn’t like the idea of me living all the way out here by myself. She also knew I liked to be up before the sun, so she’d said I needed the lantern. She’d even taken the extra step and talked to Bishop Yoder about my having it for safety. It was something to be considered, because in any Amish district, the bishop was the one who decided what technology the members of his church could use.
I suppose to the Englisch, a battery-operated lantern would not have been seen as technology at all, but to the Amish, it was. It had a light source other than fire or the sun. We were an Old Order district, but the bishop was lenient about what could be used at work. For the Amish businesses in the district to survive, they had to have access to electricity so their shops could comply with the proper government codes, and telephones so they could do business. Some Amish even used the internet if they could make a gut case for it. Or at least, that’s what I had heard. That wasn’t true in our district. Must have been a more progressive district than mine.
Bishop Yoder was a very understanding man. His wife, not so much. Ruth meant well, but she did have a tendency to get caught up in the rules of being Amish, rather than the heart of being Amish. Ruth liked to follow rules, but more than that, she loved to enforce rules. Lois knew all this, so she had gone to the bishop without Ruth’s knowledge to get permission for me to have the lantern.
I had to say, it was a smart move on her part, and the bishop had granted permission before Ruth had any idea what had happened. I also believed Lois took great pleasure in having outsmarted Ruth Yoder. The two of them were like oil and water, and enjoyed getting the best of each other.
Keeping all that in mind, I knew I could get a new lantern. Lois would know where to find one. I stepped over the broken piece and held my frying pan high, as if ready to strike. No one was around as far as I could see, but I didn’t take any chances by lowering the frying pan.
I was still ten yards from the barn when I began to hear Phillip and Peter making a ruckus inside. They cried and wailed, and it sounded like they were kicking at the door in the hope of knocking it down. Those crazy goats. They were going to hurt themselves if I didn’t get to them soon.
“Calm down!” I called.
The kicking stopped, but the bleating and crying increased. Phillip and Peter recognized my voice and knew they were moments away from being freed. If their protests were to be believed, I kept them locked up in the barn for days on end.
I threw open the barn door, and the goats shot out like bullets from a hunting rifle. They zipped around me in circles. Phillip raced around the entire barn, and Peter leaped in the air.
“All right. All right. Settle. Settle!” I said.
Finally, they galloped over to me and came to a stop, looking up at me with anticipation on their goaty faces. Phillip and Peter were Boer goats, and each was just shy of two hundred pounds and stood twenty-eight inches tall. They were easy to tell apart because Phillip was white and black, while Peter was white and brown. Also, even though both of them were able to get into their fair share of trouble, Phillip was usually the instigator, while Peter went along with whatever mischief his brother began.
“Calm down,” I told the goats. “You are over three years old now. You should be out of this galloping kid stage.”
They stood in front of me and showed me their wide goaty grins. Apparently, the kid stage never came to an end when you were a goat. It was both adorable and frustrating.
“Did either of you hear that man who was outside the barn?”
Oh, if Ruth Yoder could hear me now, speaking to a pair of goats as if they were people who could answer me, she would be beside herself and planning an intervention by the church elders. However, I knew better than to speak to my goats like this in Ruth’s presence. I also knew full well they weren’t going to answer me. If they did, I probably would have toppled over.
Phillip ran to the side of the barn where I had seen the man standing. He stopped in the exact spot where the person had stood.
I held the frying pan at my side. “Don’t tell Ruth Yoder I said this, but it might just be that you two goats do understand what I’m saying.”
I trudged to the spot where the figure had been. In the snow were two large, distinctive boot prints and more leading away in the direction the person had run. The prints were too large, I thought, to be those of a woman. I shivered. I had started to wonder if I’d imagined the man standing near my barn in the dim light of early morning. I thought perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me, and I hadn’t seen a man at all. These boot prints proved otherwise.
However, what caught my eye was a handle sticking out of the snow. I knew it wasn’t mine. I was very careful with my tools. I always accounted for them and put them away when I wasn’t using them. My mother had taught me that everything must be put in its place to keep clutter away.
I grabbed the handle. It was a chisel—a wood chisel, actually. I recognized the tool because my husband had loved to whittle in the evenings. Kip would sit on the wide front porch at our old farm and chisel away at a block of wood. He would also chew the tobacco that had eventually given him cancer and killed him. It was a terrible habit he’d never been able to break, and it had cost him his life.
What was a man with a wood chisel doing by my barn so early on a Saturday morning, in the middle of winter, no less? I tucked the chisel into my coat pocket. My intuition told me he couldn’t have been up to anything gut. I was about to go into the barn to feed Bessie when the reflection of car headlights bounced off the side of the barn. I adjusted my grip on the frying pan. I was ready for anything.
There came the sound of a car door slamming, and the goats took off in the direction of the noise.
“Phillip! Peter!” I called, but it was no use. They were already around the side of the barn. I followed them at a much slower pace. I held my frying pan high, ready to protect myself and the goats if the need arose.
It is true that the Amish are pacifists. We don’t participate in wars and try our very best to settle disputes with the Englisch and within the Amish community without violence, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t give an intruder a fright that would encourage him to leave.
A sudden cry pierced the winter sky.
That was, unless Phillip and Peter didn’t do it for me first.
I rushed around the side of the barn with the frying pan still held high and found Phillip and Peter dancing around a very irritated-looking Lois.
“Gah! If the two of you get hoofprints on my new winter coat, I swear, you’ll be in my next stew!”
Possibly knowing it was an idle threat, the goats continued to dance around her.
“Millie, what on earth are you doing holding a frying pan in the air like you’re about to fling it at my head?” Lois cried. “And call back your guards!”
I glanced at my hand, and sure enough, there was the frying pan. “I wasn’t going to throw it at you.” I let my arm drop to my side and sighed with relief. The cast-iron was heavy.
“Likely story. And before you did, you sent your attack goats after me. Please.” She sounded offended.
“They aren’t attack goats, and you know it. Those two wouldn’t hurt a fly. What are you doing here so early, anyway?”
“I needed to talk to you, and it’s a matter most important to me. I couldn’t sleep because I’ve been worrying about it all night, and you know how I love my beauty rest. I don’t have this great skin in my sixties because I take risks with my sleep routine.”
I raised my brow. That sounded serious. Lois was very strict about getting her sleep, and she wasn’t an early riser, either. At least not by my estimation. She was up at seven-thirty every day so she could take all the time she needed to do her hair and makeup before she headed to the Sunbeam Café to help her granddaughter with the breakfast rush.
“Let me just feed the animals, and then we can go into the house to talk. I made cinnamon rolls last night, so they will be ready to eat as soon as I warm them in the oven.”
She clapped her gloved hands together. “Oh, Millie, you are a true friend and know exactly what I need. Carbs and sugar are the only way I’m going to get through this.”
“If you want to go inside and pop them in the oven, help yourself. The oven is already warm, and they’re wrapped in aluminum foil on the stovetop.”
“Of course the oven is already warm. They would take away your Amish woman card if you had a cold oven!” She hurried toward the house.
Shaking my head, I went into the barn and fed the animals. I didn’t, for the life of me, know what Lois was all worked up about. But I did know it had nothing to do with the wood chisel in my apron pocket. That was a different mystery entirely . . . or so I believed at the time.
Chapter Five
With Bessie and the goats fed, watered, and settled, at least for the morning, I went into the house and found Lois sitting at my small kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a mug.
A coffeepot percolated on the stovetop. Many Amish—including those in my district—were allowed to have simple appliances, and these were powered by a propane tank at the side of the house.
My home was two stories with two bedrooms upstairs. On the second floor, each room had slanted ceilings and was built more like a loft than a full story.
