Plain as Day

by Laura Bradford

  “Hi, Ben,” she said as she pushed open the door and quickly closed the gap between them. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

  Ben diverted his attention back to Jakob. “It is as you showed me. With the changes you requested.”

  She tried to figure out what was going on, but it was no use. Instead, she formed a T with her hands in the air and stepped over to Jakob. “Okay, I know I agreed not to ask questions about our evening, but I’m reneging on that now.”

  Grinning, he looked past her to the Amish man still standing beside his buggy. “Is it in the back?”

  “Yah.”

  “It? What it?” she asked as Jakob took her hand and led her toward Ben’s buggy.

  “For months now I have seen the way your face lights up every time Ben brings in a new chest for you to sell at the shop. So I thought you might like one for yourself.” At the back of the buggy, Jakob pushed the charcoal-gray flap to the side and motioned for Claire to look inside.

  “Oh, Jakob . . . Benjamin . . .” she whispered. “This is stunning . . .” Stepping still closer, she heard the gasp escape her mouth as she noted the whimsical yet delicate hearts painted along the top of a gorgeous handmade chest.

  “I don’t know if you remember or not, but a few months ago we were sitting on the couch in my place, watching one of those home shows you like so much, when they panned back to show the fully finished room. Off to the right was a wall hanging with a series of hearts on it that you absolutely fell in love with. You talked about it over dinner that night and again when I drove you back to the inn. So I tracked down a rerun of that episode, took a picture of the pattern, showed it to my sister, and asked if she could put her own spin on it on the top of the chest I asked Ben to make. And, well, I think it’s even prettier than the one on TV, don’t you?”

  “It-it’s gorgeous.” She tried her best to blink back the tears she knew were mere seconds away from spilling down her cheeks, but it was no use. Instead, she wiped them away and turned to face the detective, her breath difficult to modulate around the lump rising inside her throat. “I-I can’t believe you did this . . . That you noticed and remembered my reaction to a wall hanging . . . That you”—she stopped, swallowed, and wiped her cheeks again—“care about me so much.”

  “If you saw the person I see every time I’m with you, you’d understand.” He closed the remaining space between them and pulled her to him, his breath warm against the top of her head. “I love you, Claire.”

  Seconds turned to minutes as she clung to him, the emotion stirred by the unexpected gift and the thought behind it almost more than she could bare. Eventually, though, she stepped back, dried her tears one last time, and found the smile both Jakob and Benjamin deserved. “Thank you. I will treasure this for the rest of my life.”

  “I’m counting on that.” Jakob tapped her nose with his index finger and then glanced back at his childhood friend. “You did an amazing job, Benjamin. Thank you.”

  Ben nodded and then looked at Claire, the raw emotion she saw in his face going deeper than his words. “I was happy to be part of it, just as I am happy to deliver it to the inn when I leave here.”

  “That would be fantastic, Ben, thank you.” Jakob rested his hand against the small of Claire’s back and smiled. “So? Shall we head back now?”

  She looked from Jakob, to the chest, to Benjamin, and, finally, to the edge of the hill and the rock that was surely big enough for three. “Actually, could we all stay for a little while? It’s such a beautiful night and I could use the fresh air after being cooped up inside the shop all day.”

  And so they stayed.

  And they talked.

  And they laughed.

  And, for a little while, they were just three people who enjoyed each other’s company.

  She knew Ben could be shunned for speaking to Jakob. She also knew he made considerable efforts to speak through her rather than directly to Jakob. But she didn’t care. Because for just a little while, two friends who had been forced apart because of one’s core beliefs were enjoying each other’s company once again, even sharing anecdotes from their childhood that had Claire’s laughter mingling with their own.

  Finally though, just as the night sky was transitioning to blackness and the stars she’d once wished upon with Benjamin began to sparkle overhead, Ben stepped down from the rock on which they’d been sitting and made a move toward his buggy. “Well, I better head out if I’m going to drop off your chest before your aunt heads off to sleep.”

  A quick glance at his watch had Jakob sliding off the rock and onto his feet, too. “Wow. I had no idea how late it was getting. I guess we should be heading out, too. Tomorrow will be here before we know it.”

  She started to protest, to tell Ben Aunt Diane would be awake for a little while longer, and Jakob that she wasn’t tired, but in the end she followed him to the car, her happiness over the chest and her time with both men surrounding her with the kind of peace she wished she could bottle up for another day. Instead, she breathed it all in one last time, tugged her hand from Jakob’s grasp, and fast-walked to catch up with their friend.

  “Ben?” she said, touching his lavender-sleeved arm.

  Slowly, Ben turned, his ocean blue eyes finding hers in the moonlight. “Yah?”

  “Thank you. For the laughter tonight, for being my friend, and for”—she pulled her hand back to point at the back of the buggy—“doing such a beautiful job on my surprise.”

  “I do not think I have ever seen Jakob so excited by something as he was the day he asked me to build that for you.”

  Feeling the burn of renewed tears, she did her best to laugh them off. “I don’t know, Benjamin, listening to you two just now, I can’t believe he could ever be as excited as he was over those frogs you two caught as children.”

  His answering smile stopped short of his eyes. “Even my English friend knows you are better than any frog, Claire Weatherly.”

  • • •

  Claire stepped onto the sidewalk and lifted her face to the afternoon sun, the warmth against her skin a stark contrast to the premature autumn chill that had descended on Heavenly sometime overnight. She didn’t mind, really, she just hadn’t been prepared for the change. Then again, if she’d had to miss out on her time with Jakob and Ben the previous night in order to have had a heads-up on the forecast, she’d take the surprise a million times over.

  “You look mighty happy this morning.”

  Startled back to the sidewalk on which she was walking, Claire glanced to her left to find her fellow shopkeeper, Harold Glick, eyeing her with obvious amusement from his perch atop a nearby bench. “Hello there, Harold. I didn’t see you sitting there.”

  “I can see that.” He patted his stomach and then stretched his arms above his head. “That part-timer my wife has been after me to hire at the store for years is proving to be a good idea. Though I’d sure appreciate it if you didn’t tell the missus that . . . She already has more reasons than anyone should to tell me ‘I told you so’ in the course of any given day. Don’t reckon I need to hand her another one, you know?”

  Her answering laugh turned more than a few sets of curious eyes in their direction. “It’s nice when you can leave the shop like this for a little while, isn’t it?”

  “It is, indeed.” Harold patted the open space beside him on the bench. “Why don’t you take a load off your feet and sit for a spell? It’s been a while since we’ve had time to catch up outside the regular business owners’ meeting.”

  “As tempting as that sounds, I really need to stop in at Yoder’s for a bit before my lunch break is over.”

  “In the market for some new furniture?” Harold asked as he returned his hand to the shelf that was his stomach.

  She considered telling him about the necklace and the fact that it was found in the secret compartment of a dresser her aunt had purchased from the store, but she opted to keep that tidbit to herself. While she adored speaking to the hardware
store owner in most instances, she also knew her lunch break was rapidly coming to an end. Instead, she gave a sort of shrug and hoped it wasn’t rude. “I’m not sure just yet. But since I promised Annie I’d be back before the post-lunch rush, I probably should get moving.”

  He scooted forward on the bench, stopping short of actually standing. “I probably should, too. But that smell coming out of Ruth’s bake shop right now? The one I’d bet my day’s sales on being apple pie? It’s demanding I take a detour.”

  “A detour you should heed, no doubt.”

  “A smart, smart girl you are, Claire Weatherly.” Harold hoisted himself up and off the bench. “Say hello to Samuel for me, would you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She watched him waddle in the direction of the bakery and then resumed her own trek in the opposite direction, past the Heavenly Times newspaper office and Heavenly Brews. At the corner, just beyond the coffee shop, she crossed to the other side of the street and made her way up the trio of stairs to the glass-fronted door that served as the entrance to Yoder’s Fine Furniture.

  The melodic ring of the door-mounted bell announced her arrival. Samuel’s kind eyes and hearty greeting welcomed her.

  “Good day, Claire. It is nice to see you today.”

  She met him just shy of the halfway point in the single showroom, her gaze meeting and then leaving his to take in the various pieces that truly showcased the young Amish man’s craftsmanship. “Oh, Samuel, every time I peek inside your store, I imagine the day I have my own place and the fun I’ll have furnishing it with Yoder originals.”

  A hint of crimson rose in his cheeks a half second before he cast his attention, albeit briefly, down to the floor. “Some farm. I make furniture.”

  “And you do it very, very well.” Claire wandered over to a corner cabinet and ran her hand along the delicately carved shelf. “Did you make this?”

  “Yah.”

  She moved on to a nearby headboard and drank in the details that had surely led to the orange Sold sign that hung from its post. “And this? Did you make this, too?”

  “Yah.”

  “You do such beautiful work. It makes no sense to me why anyone would want to auction it off,” she said as she moved on to a cradle in the far right corner of the showroom.

  Samuel reached a finger inside his hat and scratched his head. “I do not auction off my work. I sell it here, in the store.”

  “I don’t mean that you auction it off. I mean someone else auctioning your work off.” Claire pulled her hand from the side of the cradle and turned her focus back on the hatted man furrowing his brow not more than five feet from where she stood. “You know, like my aunt’s dresser.”

  “I bought some tools at the auction. But I did not buy back the dresser at the auction.”

  “Then I must have misunderstood . . .”

  “I bought it back, just not at an auction.”

  “But why would someone want to sell it? It looked new when you brought it to the inn.”

  “It was. But the man who bought it went to be with the Lord.”

  She opened her mouth to speak but closed it as he continued, a quick motion of his hand guiding her across the showroom and over to a counter not much different than the one in Heavenly Treasures. “The son and the daughter both live in different places—the son in upstate New York, the daughter in Shipshewana, Indiana. They each hired a driver to bring them for the funeral and did not have room for many things when they left. The dresser and other things they did not take sold with the house or went to auction.”

  “So if the dresser didn’t go to auction, does that mean it sold with the house?” Claire asked.

  Samuel neatened a stack of invoices and placed them in a wooden tray. “It would have been a good house for me since I do not farm. The barn out back would have made a good workshop. But I am not married.”

  She grinned. “Yet. You’re not married yet.”

  Again, his cheeks reddened, but this time his gaze bypassed the floor in favor of the window and, she suspected, whatever he could see of Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe from his vantage point. “One day, if it is God’s will, I will find such a home for Ruth and me. But if I do, I will hope it does not go for as much money as that one did . . .”

  Closing her hand over the top of his, she gave a quick squeeze. “When the time is right, I’m sure everything will work out beautifully for you and Ruth.” Then, pulling her hand back, she leaned into the counter, her reason for being there pushing to the forefront of her thoughts once again. “So how did you come to buy back the dresser if it sold with the house?”

  “The woman who bought the house from Bontrager bought a desk and headboard here. When I delivered them, she asked if I would take the old dresser because it did not match the new pieces and Bontrager’s children did not want it. At first, she would not take my money. But when I said I could not just take it, she sold it back for the same price I sold it to your aunt later that same day.” Samuel reached onto a shelf beneath the register and pulled out two notebooks. A quick glance at the cover of each had him returning one and placing the other on top of the counter in front of Claire. “When I told your aunt that the piece was used, she did not mind.”

  “Are you kidding me? She was like a kid in a candy store when she came home from shopping that day.” Claire smiled at the memory. “And when it was delivered? I’m pretty sure I saw her hop up and down at the window.”

  “I am glad.”

  “Anyway, it’s because of that dresser that I wanted to stop by and see you today. Would you happen to remember the name of the man who passed? The one who had the dresser before you purchased it back?”

  “Yah. It is here. In my book.” Samuel opened the notebook and flipped through a handful of pages before stopping on one near the midway point. “Lavern Bontrager purchased it from me last year. I delivered it to his home after work that same day.”

  She searched her memory bank for a face to go with the name, but she came up empty. A request for assistance yielded a quick shake of the Amish man’s head. “Bontrager was from Smoketown.”

  Heavenly’s neighbor to the west, Smoketown was a primarily Amish town—one that didn’t market to tourists with shops and tours. Still, she was familiar with the area to an extent thanks to the occasional Sunday afternoon drive with Jakob. When the sun was shining and a breeze was blowing, they often parked Jakob’s car along the dirt trail just outside Heavenly’s town limits and meandered into the neighboring town on foot, their destination often dictated by the distant moo of a cow or the echo of a child’s laugh across the meadow. In fact, the bouquet of wildflowers sitting in a vase in her bedroom at that very moment had been picked from the side of a road in Smoketown just four days earlier.

  “Is there a problem with the dresser?”

  She shook off the unexpected trip down memory lane and forced herself to focus on the present and the man looking back at her, waiting for an answer to—

  “No, no . . . I’m sorry. Diane still loves that dresser,” she said. “It’s just that, well, there was a funny rattle every time one of the drawers was opened or shut and Jakob figured out that it was coming from a special compartment my aunt and I hadn’t known about. When he opened it, there was a necklace inside. Now my aunt is all worried that someone is looking for it and . . .” She inhaled away the rest of her sentence and then followed it up with a shrug. “Anyway, would you happen to know how I could reach Lavern’s daughter? Or perhaps his son if you have information on him instead?”

  Swapping the current notebook for a different one, he turned to a page near the front and scanned his finger down until he came to a notation for a date in December. Next to it was a dollar amount and Lavern’s name, along with two others. “The daughter’s name is Sarah Burkholder. The son is Abram—Abram Bontrager.”

  “Do you have any contact information? A phone number or, if there is not a phone close to their house, perhaps just an address?”

  “I do not.
I’m sorry.” He closed the book and returned it to the stack beneath the register. “Perhaps a call to the bishop in Shipshewana where the daughter lives will give you the information you need.”

  “Thank you, Samuel.”

  “I do not think I have helped that much.”

  “I know more now than when I walked in here ten minutes ago, so it’s something.” She glanced down at her watch for confirmation of the time and gestured toward the door. “Anyway, I probably should be heading out and—”

  “Claire?”

  She glanced back at Samuel. “Yes?”

  “What is it you hope Lavern’s daughter can tell you?”

  “If the necklace is hers.”

  “You do not need to speak to her to know it is not.”

  She stopped, mid-step, as the reality that was Sarah Burkholder’s plain life hit her with a one-two punch.

  • • •

  “Claire? I’m sorry to disturb you but—”

  Leaning back in her desk chair, she looked up at her teenaged coworker. “No, no, it’s okay, Annie. I shouldn’t be much longer. I just needed to check a few things.”

  “You needn’t rush. I have done the things that needed to be done.”

  “Things?”

  “Yah. I straightened the displays, set aside the day’s consignment money in the zippered envelope, shut off the lights in the shop, and closed and locked the front door,” Annie said, shifting her lunch pail to her opposite hand. “If there is nothing else, I should head out. Dat and I are eating supper this evening with Eva, Leroy, and the children. She is making schnitzel from Mamm’s recipe.”

  “But . . .” The rest of her protest fell away as she looked back at her laptop screen and the time noted in the bottom right corner: 5:25. “Oh, Annie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be in here so long. I just wanted to check my email and I guess time got away from me.”