Return to Grace

by Karen Harper

“I heard you have been asked to babysit the restaurant while Mrs. Logan’s away,” she told Hannah. Like her mother’s voice at Naomi’s wedding reception, Susan’s was icy. “I hope she’s well enough to come back soon. After all you’ve put people through, you surely don’t intend to make a career of this. There has to be a good reason Seth changed his mind about you years ago, and you’d be no good for him or this place now with one foot in the world.”

  Hannah just stared at her. It was so unusual for one of the sisters to be cruel. How many others saw her as one who’d betrayed her people and did not want her back?

  “Oh, there’s Seth and little Marlena!” she said, glancing over Hannah’s shoulder. She walked around Hannah and seated herself across from them. Biting her lower lip, Hannah didn’t give her a menu but put it back on the hostess stand. One sideways glimpse at Seth’s table revealed that Susan was now all smiles, as Amy hurried over to wait on her older sister.

  Surely Seth had not arranged that to make her jealous. But she was. Sheriff Freeman’s hurt voice when he told her that Ray-Lynn had asked for her dead husband and didn’t even know him came back to her. Blinking back tears, she was tempted to hide in Ray-Lynn’s office for a few minutes, but she stood her ground, only to see Lily Freeman come through the front door.

  “Hannah, Amanda tells me you’re in charge of the restaurant until Mrs. Logan is better. I’m here to help, and I don’t expect to be paid.”

  “Help how? I’m fine. The sheriff asked—”

  “He asked me to stay away while Ray-Lynn was here, but now she isn’t, and I know how to run a place like this. I have a lot of experience in some very busy, lovely restaurants, and this will be a piece of cake—proverbial Amish cake—at least until she gets back. Surely you can’t oversee everything, ordering, payroll, et cetera, on your own.”

  “I will and can. I’m sure you can understand that Ray-Lynn would want this run her way. She had asked to train me as assistant manager before she was hurt.”

  “How hurt is she?” she asked, propping her fists on her hips. “What happened is just dreadful! I was at the Rooster Roadhouse last night with Elaine.” She waved to her friend. Perhaps that’s who Elaine had been waiting for. “Jack phoned both of us to ask if we saw Ray-Lynn there, but we didn’t. The point is, he said it was up to you if I pitch in for a few days. He knows how to be sensible about this, especially since he’s part owner.”

  Hannah wondered if Lily was lying, or at least putting her own slant on what the sheriff said. Or was he so upset that Ray-Lynn didn’t recall their relationship that he figured Ray-Lynn no longer had it in for Lily?

  “Sorry, Mrs. Freeman, but I’ll have to honor Ray-Lynn’s wishes with this. I have faith she’ll make a full recovery.”

  “You’re way out of your league, you know that?” Lily demanded, leaning close and lowering her voice. “And you’re an ingrate. I told Elaine I’d even pay for your shooting lessons if you were serious about that. Here you drag your goth friends back to your people’s sacred place, then manage to drag your family and church through the mud of all this ugly publicity. Friendly, gracious, forgiving—baloney, if you’re the example of an Amish gone astray come home! We’ll just see about this.”

  Hannah jolted when another voice close behind her chimed in. She had not seen Elaine approach. “You’ll regret turning Lily down,” she said, shaking a finger nearly in Hannah’s face. How long had she been standing there? “Forget free shooting lessons. I thought you people were pacifists, but if you want to make something over this, that’s fine. I fight fair, but I fight!”

  “I’m not the one making something over this, Ms. Carson. I’m just doing what I think Ray-Lynn would want.”

  Elaine slapped her bill and ten dollars on the hostess stand and walked out with Lily right behind her. Seth got up, leaving Marlena at the booth with Susan, and came over to Hannah.

  “Sorry about Susan charging in here,” he said. “And what was that all about? You all right?”

  “I haven’t been all right since the night I stupidly brought my friends to the Home Valley and my world exploded. Thanks for caring, though. I need to do some things in Ray-Lynn’s office.”

  Those things were to close the door, lean against it and have a good cry. Then she wiped her tears, looked over the list of supplies from various vendors, wiped her eyes again, bowed her head for a quick prayer for Ray-Lynn and forced herself to go back out into the restaurant with a smile.

  The sheriff stopped in the restaurant just as Hannah was closing up. Leah Schwartz, who was getting to be her right-hand help, and Seth were both there. Seth had come back to make sure things went well, because it was after dark, and he’d said he’d follow both Leah and Hannah home. Leah lived the first farm out, so it was easy for her to come and go quickly.

  “Sorry I couldn’t check on things sooner,” the sheriff told Hannah as the two of them went into Ray-Lynn’s office.

  “Any change in Ray-Lynn?” she asked.

  He shook his head. He didn’t look like himself with beard stubble and dark circles under his eyes. His usual stiff stance seemed deflated as he sank into a chair across from Ray-Lynn’s desk.

  “I’m just praying,” he said, “that next time she wakes up she’s herself again—knows me, knows about us.”

  “Mrs. Freeman was in here today, volunteering to help and saying you more or less said it was okay,” Hannah told him.

  “Less, not more, would be the truth on that. She phoned me, and I told her it was a generous offer, but I didn’t think it was a good idea. It’s like no one’s listening to me anymore, like I’m not even there—here.”

  “I told her thank-you but no and she was pretty upset. Her friend Elaine Carson, too.”

  “Lily’s been itching to find something worthwhile to do around here. I thought her buying into the gift shop they’re going to put in with Harlan Kenton’s deli when they renovate the Troyer mill would keep her going....”

  He put his palms over his eyes and rubbed them. “Hannah, you were right to tell Lily what you did. I’ll talk to her when I can, but she’s down on my list of things to do. Gotta get going. Glad Seth’s here since you’re closing up late.”

  He stood and stretched. “You just close up early so you aren’t out after dark,” he went on. “You do what you have to here to keep things going, change some things if you need to. I trust you and know Ray-Lynn would, as well, and I’ll be sure you’re paid well.”

  “Sheriff, I love Ray-Lynn. I’d do this gratis for her.”

  “I love her, too, Hannah. All this— It took this to make me realize how much. Maybe being away like you were and then your tragedy has settled things like that for you, as well—living here, supporting your father in his important position. And big decisions about you and Seth—or going back to the world again. Gotta go,” he repeated, and was out the door at a faster clip than he came in.

  After they saw Leah to her driveway, Hannah went on with Seth right behind her. Maybe it wasn’t safe on the roads, she thought. She would have argued about that a couple of days ago, even after the graveyard shootings, after someone slit her bedroom screen and terrified her and Linc in the corn maze, but now, with what had happened to Ray-Lynn…

  She thought Seth might head on home when she turned up the lane but she should have known better. He brought Blaze and his buggy right beside hers when she went into the barn. He had a lantern lit and hung on a beam before she could wrap the reins and climb down. While their horses munched hay and occasionally nuzzled each other, he helped her unharness Nettie and stow her gear.

  “Sorry about that scene with Susan Zook today,” he said again. “I didn’t know she was coming, maybe even followed me.”

  “She made it pretty clear she thinks I’m a bad influence on you. She said there was obviously a good reason you’d chosen someone else before.”

  Seth sucked in a sharp breath. “She’s sealed her own future with me, or should I say, without me. The moment you came back, ther
e was no one else. God’s truth, before my mistake with Lena and from the moment she died, there has been no one else I’ve wanted. And I don’t mean that Marlena was the mistake. I’d die for her—for you, too, Hannah. I need you in my life. I need you.”

  He pulled her into his arms. Not only did she not resist but she held to him in the dim barn, her arms tight around his neck as he lowered his head to meet her lips.

  It was a mutually devouring kiss, openmouthed, moving, deepening. His arms around her waist pinned her against his hard body, then his hands dropped to cup her bottom, lift her closer. Her breasts pressed flat against his chest. She raked her good hand through his crisp hair. His hat flew off; he shoved her bonnet back and fastened his fingers in her hair as if to hold her mouth to his forever. How he must hate her hair, half real blond and half dyed red, his girl with one foot in each world as Susan had accused. But he hardly hated her. The kiss went on and on as they breathed in unison until they were nearly panting.

  When they broke the kiss, he sighed, and his big frame shook. She put the top of her head under his chin, pressing her lips to the side of his neck, and they just held on as if the earth was quaking under their feet.

  “I want you and love you, Hannah, and always will,” he whispered. She could feel the sinews of his neck move when he talked, the pulse of his life there. “Now, as much as I’d like to follow our horses leads and just lie down with you in the hay, it’s cold out here and I think you’d better go in.”

  “Cold?” she said, her voice quavering. “I need a fan and some ice.”

  He chuckled and she could feel the rumble of that against her cheek. “Listen,” he went on, holding her back at arm’s length, “I’m heading out to the sawmill before dawn to draw up some specs for the Troyer mill project, so I’ll pick you up to take you to the restaurant, then pick you up when you close tomorrow so we don’t have a parade of buggies. Ya?”

  “Ya. I’d like to be at the restaurant by six-thirty, though. So much to do and learn, especially about ordering supplies and food. Harlan Kenton’s going to drop off our meat supply sometime tomorrow.”

  “I’ll leave Marlena with Ella and be here just after six. I can see your father in the back doorway, so I think what we just shared will have to pass for our good-night kiss. He always was touchy about that. I’ll bet he used to really smooch your mother good when they were courting and can’t get past worrying how a come-calling friend wants to do more than just that with his maidal.”

  Come-calling friends, smooching, maidal. This safe, sweet, sure life awaited her just for the taking, for the staying. But would she then forever be content to have given up her chance to sing for a living and a lifetime, and for others beyond her family and friends?

  Hannah took the lantern Seth had lit and walked toward the house as he buggied down the lane. Daad held the door open for her. She wanted to tell her father she forgave him for ruining her chance for an audition, but the words stuck in her mouth. He had told her and Mamm that he was going to confess that sin in the next Sabbath service, but that wasn’t until next week. Hannah answered his questions about how the day had gone, then went to find Mamm.

  To Hannah’s surprise, since her mother seldom worked after dark in her kapp-making shop, she found her there in the light of three lanterns. Mamm was bent over bolts of white organdy she was fusing with interfacing to make the kapps stiff. A little row of others were lined up by the pleating machine. As usual, Mamm kept the kapps for the New Order Amish, with fewer creases, separate from the Old Order ones with more creases, for each church district chose its distinctive style. Over on the side table were the little black caps young girls like Marlena wore—white ones spray-painted black. None of the kapps had strings, for the owners sewed those on themselves.

  Her mother looked up as Hannah stood in the doorway. “Come in. Just a minute and I can give you a big hug for how good you did today. I was proud of you, my Hannah. Perhaps a future path for you here, ya?”

  “Maybe. But four daughters and none to carry on this work for you. I always felt bad about that.”

  “To each her own path but within the Amish way.”

  Mamm finished fusing the materials, put her iron aside and came around the table to hug Hannah. “Anytime you are ready to put a prayer kapp back on, with all it means, I have one for you—there, see?”

  She pointed to the top of her storage cabinet and there it stood, seeming to stare down at Hannah in its pristine whiteness. Hannah knew what that meant: returning to the ordnung rules, joining the church, renouncing the outside world and a professional singing career. But at least it could mean marrying Seth and mothering little Marlena.

  “But then,” Mamm went on as she returned to her work, this time cutting each kapp to fit a pattern, “you must be sure you would stay and make up with your father for what he did. If the Lord forgives him, you must, too.”

  “I think the Lord has more strength and power than I do, Mamm.”

  “Such things you say sometimes! And what about you and Seth?”

  “We’re close again, but I don’t know. Some things I guess I’ve set in motion have to be settled and solved first.”

  “Agent Armstrong said to leave things alone, and I pray you will.”

  Hannah sighed. The smell of starch in here always tickled her nose, so she pressed her finger under her nostrils so she wouldn’t sneeze.

  “What happened to your friend Ray-Lynn may be a warning, Hannah, and you out early and late on the roads, and in a buggy, not a car.”

  “Seth said he’d take me to and from the restaurant, at least tomorrow.”

  “Good, or your father would have.” She straightened, a big spray can of starch in hand. “Hannah, your daad loves you, wants only the best for you. We both want you to stay, not to follow your friend Sarah across the fence to the world. But I know you, most of all of my four God-given daughters, have a stiff neck and will make your own way. Whatever you do, your father and I will always love you, but it is best to be like this piece of material in life, fitting to our ways.”

  Mamm picked up a piece of organdy stiffened by the interfacing and pressed it gently around the head-shaped form, sprayed it with starch, then placed it with the others in a line waiting to be pleated, glued and sewn. Hannah glanced up once more at the prayer kapp waiting for her atop the cabinet, kissed Mamm’s cheek and beat a quick retreat.

  26

  LINC WAS THE first customer in the door when Hannah opened the Dutch Farm Table on Saturday morning. He sat on the farthest tall, rotating stool at the counter.

  “Coffee and something quick,” he said after she greeted him and asked for his order. “The Bureau—my boss—is sending a small airplane for me in about a half hour, landing, ironically, on the road in front of Troyer’s mill. I’m going to Detroit to personally check out and interview the Collister Company execs you gave me a lead on. The Bureau office there has already done some checking. Michael Collister’s the CEO, Steve, his son, the financial affairs man, and they’ve been into some borderline shady projects, buying up large, foreclosed properties. I just hope my investigation and, hopefully, interviews of them doesn’t screw up funding the mill project Seth’s so gung ho on. He’s going to need something to take up his time after you leave.”

  She was tempted to argue that, but of course she would have to leave, at least for the audition Linc had promised. He downed coffee and multigrain toast with peanut butter, then got up immediately, leaving his money on the counter. “For once, I’m glad you’ve got Seth bird-dogging you,” he told her. “I passed him on the road, and he said he’s taking you to and from the restaurant. I hope to be back by midday tomorrow.”

  “I just know you’re going to get answers soon. I have a feeling about those men—maybe helped by Levi Troyer, though I hate to say so.”

  When he smiled, she realized she’d seldom seen that from him. “Your belief in me when this has been one heck of a case means a lot. Then we’ll look into an audition, I promis
e. And other things.”

  “Including the Meyers brothers, maybe even Elaine Carson?”

  “Including us,” he said, and he hurried out.

  When the restaurant mail arrived, Hannah found a beautiful postcard for her and one for Ray-Lynn from Sarah—from Paris! Paris, France! The glossy pictures on the cards were paintings, both by an artist named Monet, one of water lilies and another of a lake with a bridge. Hannah skimmed both cards. They were very happy. Paris was wonderful. They ate snails here. The faces of the people were very different from Amish faces. They were going to look at more paintings. Some of the dancers and singers here performed nearly naked, which they called nude. She was so in love.

  Hannah took her friend’s boldness to follow her heart as a sign this would be a good day. She sighed as she put Ray-Lynn’s postcard on her desk and put her own in one of the pockets of Ray-Lynn’s apron. Hannah wanted to see Ray-Lynn soon, and she would show her the cards, talk to her about Sarah, about the restaurant. She would remind her how hard she had worked to get Sheriff Freeman to care for her. She felt hopeful she could help Ray-Lynn. For some reason, today she felt hopeful about a lot of things.

  When Ray-Lynn awoke the second time, it scared her to be in a hospital room. A nurse was checking the IVs in her arm. And the other arm—her shoulder, too—was in a huge cast!

  “Why am I here—and where am I?” she asked the woman.

  “You were in a car accident three days ago, Mrs. Logan. Your vehicle skidded over the edge of a ravine on a slippery road over in Eden County. You’re in Wooster. You have a broken right arm and shoulder and a severe concussion. You have a little short-term memory loss but you’re doing just fine.”

  Tired, so drowsy, but some of what the nurse said made sense. Wooster was the biggest city around, the closest with a hospital. And Eden County. Yes, where she had bought the restaurant in Homestead a few days ago. But she recalled nothing about an accident. And why was the road slippery in the summer—well, maybe rain or oily pavement. And her short-term memory…what did that mean?