“Mammi says we have lots of time to get better.”
“I guess.” Sadie looked back through the front screen door. “Think you’ll have another baby in your family?”
“Ya. I expect to get the news any day now.” Grace started giggling. “They still kiss a lot!”
Sadie plopped down on the front step. “I think my family’s done and I’m glad. No more room.”
“I wonder how many kids I’ll have when I’m grown. How many will you have? Do you want a lot?” Grace asked.
“Ew! I don’t want to do all that kissing.”
“Well…maybe it’s not so bad once you get older.”
“That’s what my mamm said about broccoli, but I still don’t like it.”
“True. I saw more cookies on the dessert table. Wanna go and get some?”
“Ya. Race you.” Sadie was off and running before Grace could blink.
The problem was that Grace was always thinking about the way things looked, like Sadie running across the green grass in her blue dress. That combination made for a nice picture she could draw.
So she stopped and she pulled out her tablet and sketched the outline of what she saw. By the time she caught up with Sadie, her favorite cookies, the oatmeal ones, were gone. Which taught her that if she dawdled, or if she doodled, there was sometimes a price to pay. Might be worth it though—the sketch of Sadie running toward the tables was going to be a good one.
When she finished it. There were still the details and shading to add. Maybe she’d have time later this afternoon. That was one good thing about summer. There was more extra time. She did miss school already, though. She missed seeing her friends, and she even missed class a little.
She selected one of the peanut butter cookies and caught up with Sadie. Peanut butter was all right. They were her second favorites, and sometimes art called for sacrifice.
Chapter 33
Aaron should have known things had been going too well. Reservations were holding strong and the cabins were booked up into the fall. His three employees were managing to get along—and yes, he still needed Clara and Seth as well as Lydia. But something told him the burglaries weren’t over, something more than Rae Caperton’s occasional visit to check on them.
He suspected that if the culprit attacked again, it would be on a Monday night. He was tired of waiting, so he’d planted a story that he’d be gone—only Lydia and Clara were supposed to have left already. Apparently, the girls had caught wind of his plan.
He reached forward and pulled both of them back into the shadow of the roof overhang of cabin three, his heart racing to match the patter of the rain. Though the last month had been warm and sunny, it seemed to him in that moment as if it had been raining since the day he’d stepped off the bus in Cashton, Wisconsin.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he hissed.
“I’m going to catch whoever is doing this.” Lydia tried to shake off his hand, which still firmly clutched her arm.
“And I’m going with her. You don’t think I’d let her go alone, do you?”
“Neither one of you is going alone. In fact, neither one of you is going.” The light summer rain, rain that was sure to bless Gabe’s and David’s crops, covered the sound of their voices.
Aaron could just make out Lydia’s expression in the glow of the battery-operated night-light they had installed on the porch. Though he didn’t need good lighting to picture what she looked like. He knew her well enough to envision the irritation and stubbornness. Her eyes were squinted, eyebrows were pulled together, and lips were drawn in a straight light.
He’d never known a woman as willful as Lydia Fisher.
Which only increased his desire to take care of her. The ones who didn’t know they needed protecting were often the ones who trudged out into danger.
He could see it in her pose. She was ready to slosh across the wet grass and demand a confession from whoever was in their office.
And her little sister would tag along behind her.
“Let’s go, Lydia. He can’t keep us both here.” Clara tossed her head, sending her kapp strings flying. The girl had more sass than he would have thought possible in a young Amish woman. He didn’t envy the man who fell for that one.
“I might not be able to keep you both here, but you do both know I’m right. Confronting whoever is in the office right now would be foolish.”
“Are we going to allow them to take the last toy off the shelf and the last quilt off the wall?”
“Not to mention the last dollar out of the drawer?” Lydia moved the branches of the speckled alder, the same bush he’d tried to cut back to oblivion in May. It had leafed out quite nicely again since that day, providing them good cover. “They’ve been in our office for five minutes, and apparently had no problem getting through our new lock. How is that possible?”
“I don’t know, but we need to go for help, not rush in like three fools.”
“Go for help?” They both turned toward him, but it was Clara who spoke. Lydia reserved her condemnation to a stare and a sad shake of her head. “How would you even make it to the barn without them seeing you? And by the time you got back, they’d be gone!”
“Clara’s right. This doesn’t sound like you, anyway, Aaron.” Now Lydia put her hands on her hips, and he felt his throat go dry. He did not need a confrontation with her right now.
“You’ve fought awfully hard to bring these cabins back from near ruin.” Lydia ran her fingers over her lips, as if she could bring forth the words that would reveal his secrets. “Now you’re just going to let them get away with this? I don’t think so. Not when we’re finally turning a profit.”
She turned and stepped off the front porch.
Aaron knew in that moment that he had no choice. He had to act.
Lydia thought she was a big girl. He heard the disparaging comments she sometimes made about herself. But he thought she was beautiful and precious, and he knew she weighed hardly more than Clara—maybe just another ten or fifteen pounds.
He reached forward and grabbed her around the waist, picking her up with no problem. With his free hand he opened the door of cabin three. He shoved her inside in one fluid motion and grasped Clara’s hand, Clara who was staring at him as if he’d lost his mind—and maybe he had. He pushed her in as well.
Pulling the door shut, he grabbed the master key out of his pocket and overrode the inside lock.
“Aaron! Aaron, what are you doing?” Lydia’s voice was startled, and he almost smiled. He’d finally done something that surprised her.
“He locked us inside.” Clara rattled the door, her tone clearly insulted.
“Aaron, let us out right now!”
“Keep your voices down. We don’t know if they’re armed.” He rested both hands against the door. They might raise the window and crawl out, but it was a good drop to the ground. They would risk turning an ankle—and they would have to pry off the window screen first. He didn’t think Lydia would actually damage property in order to escape the cabin. Surely they wouldn’t resort to that. He prayed they wouldn’t.
“I’ll hurry and see if I can catch a glimpse of them and identify who it is. As soon as I do I’ll go after Officer Tate.”
The girls had stopped arguing with him, but someone continued to rattle the doorknob.
“Wait here, please.”
He prayed once more that Gotte would keep them safe, and then he turned and crept out into the rain.
Lydia kicked the door, and then she realized mud covered the toes of her shoes. She’d be cleaning that off later—more work! Exactly what she did not need.
“Why would he do that?” Clara smacked the door with her hand. “He’s so rude, so arrogant, and so mean!”
Lydia turned on her sister with a vengeance, yanking her away from the door. “He was trying to protect us!”
Clara pulled back, rubbed at her arms. “What is it with you two? You’re worse than mamm and dat. It’s not as if I’m a ch
ild, and you’re not, either. And it’s not as if dat could protect us anyway.”
Maybe it was the rain, her frustration, or being locked in a room with Clara, but for the first time in a long time, Lydia listened past her sister’s words. She listened to the hurt lurking beneath.
“It doesn’t always take strength to protect someone. Dat protects us with his prayers and his words. He guides us in many ways, even though he’s physically weak.”
Clara plopped onto the bed, a sigh escaping her lips. “Do you believe that?”
“I do.”
“That sounds like something mamm would say.”
“Should I apologize for that?” Lydia sat beside her on the bed.
“I guess not.” Silence enveloped them until Lydia became aware of the sound of rain dripping on the roof of the cabin.
Clara plucked at the quilt top, her voice softening and merging with the sounds of the night. “Everyone thinks I don’t remember dat being strong, but I do. Sally Ann, Amanda, and Martha might not remember, but I do. He used to pick me up as though I weighed no more than a loaf of bread.”
Lydia thought of interrupting, but instead she waited as she listened for the bark of a rifle shot or the rumble of an Englisch car starting.
What was Aaron doing now? Should they try to escape the cabin and go after him?
“When I see how he’s changed, it makes me sad, Lydia. It breaks my heart.”
“It’s not a sin to feel heartache over what has happened to him.” Lydia reached out in the darkness and covered Clara’s hand with her own.
“But you still believe it’s Gotte’s wille?”
“I believe Gotte has a plan for dat.” She searched her heart and added, “I don’t understand it, but I trust Him. It’s only hard sometimes to know how we’re supposed to meet the needs of our family…”
Clara turned her hand over underneath Lydia’s and laced their fingers together. “Sometimes I think if I were to marry soon, it would be one less worry.”
Lydia snorted. “Is that why you go to the singings every week? Dat would not want you to marry for any reason other than that you had met the person Gotte meant for you.”
“How will I know?”
Were they actually having this conversation right now? Lydia’s mind turned to Aaron, who could be confronting the burglars even while she talked to Clara about courting. “You’ll know. If you’re not sure, wait.”
“I’m not gut at waiting,” Clara admitted.
“Runs in the family.”
“Seems as though we could be doing something to help Aaron right now.”
“I agree.”
“Are you in lieb with him, Lydia?”
“What?” Lydia’s voice jumped a notch, and she released Clara’s hand.
“It’s confusing watching you two. You argue about almost everything, but then you’ll laugh at the same moment. And you often blush when he looks your way. I don’t understand.”
“Let’s focus on tonight’s problem.”
“Maybe we could think of a way out of this cabin if we worked together instead of fighting all the time.”
Lydia didn’t answer.
Had her sister received a bump on the head when Aaron had pushed them inside?
Why had she even agreed to come back and check on him? They should have gone home. They should be making dinner right now. Why was Clara suddenly talking like a reasonable young woman instead of her bratty little sister? Why the change in attitude?
And why was she pulling her off the bed toward the window?
“Aaron told us to stay here,” Lydia reminded her.
“When did you start minding him?”
“He locked the door from the outside.”
“There’s a window.”
“This is cabin three. There’s a slope. The window’s built on the high side, and we would be jumping into the wet grass. If one of us turns an ankle—”
“It’ll be like when we were kinner and playing outside.” Clara was already working on the latch. “Find me a flashlight?”
“Nein. The burglars might see us.” Lydia realized there was no stopping her sister once an idea took root in her mind, and she was tired of waiting. “You open the right latch. I’ll open the left. They slide left to right to unlock.”
Would she regret agreeing to this?
The summer night air came through the window with a whoosh, and with it the soft rain still falling. “Help me with the screen so it doesn’t fall out into the mud.”
Clara held the tabs at the bottom while Lydia inched the screen up. It raised enough for her to slide her fingers underneath the frame and pull it into the room.
“I’ll go first,” Clara said.
“No, you don’t. I’ll go first, and if it’s dangerous, you’ll stay here. If I whistle, you’ll stay here. Agreed?”
She felt more than saw Clara’s nod.
So she climbed over the sill, careful that her dress didn’t catch on the window casing. She couldn’t tell how much of a drop it would be. She couldn’t see anything as she hung there, her feet dangling in the darkness.
So she closed her eyes, pictured the wall of the cabin on the slope, and let go.
Chapter 34
Aaron had no intentions of confronting the two men rifling through the office cabinets.
As he crouched beneath the windows, peeking inside, he tried to get a better look. All he could make out was their clothing—work boots, leaving muddy tracks all over Lydia’s clean floor, blue jeans, long-sleeved cotton shirts, and baseball caps.
Both men had brown hair that went below the baseball caps and reached to their collars.
Both men had their backs to him as they searched through the desk and the filing cabinet.
They each carried a duffel bag, which they were dumping things into, apparently anything they found to be of value.
If they would just turn around, Aaron might be able to tell if they were Amish or Englisch. He might be able to tell if he knew them.
He’d looked for a car or buggy first, but there was nothing in the parking area. They must have left their ride farther down the road. So again—they could be Amish or Englisch.
He’d been hunkered in the rain for ten minutes, watching, water from the roof dripping down the neck of his shirt, when he heard a noise behind him.
Turning, at first he saw only darkness, but then he made out the white prayer kapps of Lydia and Clara.
He wanted to rant. He wanted to holler at them for not staying put. But he did not want to alert the robbers, so he kept his mouth shut and motioned them beneath the sill of the window.
They crept closer and peered inside.
At the exact moment Lydia and Clara pressed their faces to the glass pane, the taller of the two burglars turned toward them. Young and clean shaven, the man’s face was gaunt, his eyes sunken and bloodshot. Aaron’s first thought was that this was a very ill person, someone who must need the money for medical reasons. But if that were the case, and he were Amish, he’d only need to make his need known. He’d only need to ask.
Whatever the situation, he didn’t appear to notice them. Unaware of the flashlight in his hand, its beam shining up on the ceiling, he stood there for maybe fifteen seconds. Instead of calling out, or running, he stared past them for a moment, and then he walked across the room and began shoveling David’s toys into his duffel bag.
Aaron became aware that Clara was clutching his arm, pulling him down and away from the window. When all three of them were crouched near the ground, huddled in the darkness, she hissed, “I know who that is!”
“What?” Lydia squeaked.
“It’s Jerry Beiler!”
“The bishop’s nephew?”
“Ya.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Girls, I hate to interrupt, but if you’re certain maybe that’s all we need to know. We can go to the phone shack and call Officer Tate. As long as you can identify him—”<
br />
Aaron never finished his sentence.
Before he had a chance, before he even realized what she was doing, Clara had let go of his arm. Initially he was relieved to have the pinching sensation stop, but then he understood she meant to go inside. She meant to confront this Jerry Beiler.
He reached out for her, but his hand closed around darkness.
Lydia was also gone. She was sprinting after her sister.
And he was running to catch up, following them up the steps of the office, through the front door, and into the midst of the burglary.
As they thundered through the door, the two burglars turned to stare at them, their hands frozen in the middle of pouring more goods into their bags.
Aaron understood two things instantly.
The taller of the two was more than ill. He was off in some other sense, completely disconnected from the reality around him.
And the second burglar? He was not a he at all, but rather an Amish girl, no older than Clara.
Lydia skidded to a stop in the middle of the room, bumping into her sister, who had stopped a few feet shy of Jerry Beiler. Maybe she was mistaken. Could the eighteen-year-old in front of her be Jerry? She hadn’t seen him in several years. Now that she was closer and saw him in the light of his and Mattie Keim’s flashlights, she wasn’t absolutely sure.
It was their neighbor Mattie standing beside him, though she wore a man’s clothes, with a ball cap covering her hair. She looked pale and scared, but not sick—not like Jerry. Only determined.
“Jerry! Are you narrisch? Why are you here? Why are you stealing from us?” Clara threw the words at him, as though they were rocks, and she could make him drop his flashlight and duffel bag and run away.
Instead, Jerry clutched the bag in his hand and glanced first at Mattie, back at them, and then to Mattie again—his eyes widening. He flinched at Clara’s words, drawing back into himself, pulling his jacket around his shoulders tighter and looking up at the ceiling. Did he expect more people to jump out at him?
“Clara?” he asked, but he didn’t sound certain as he pointed the beam of his flashlight directly at them.
A Home for Lydia (The Pebble Creek Amish Series) Page 24
