by Marta Perry
“Abby, you okay? I didn’t mean to startle you. You want to sit down in the swing?”
“No—I’m fine.”
“How’s Liddy?”
“Oh, fine,” she blurted a bit too loudly, realizing she sounded like an echo of herself. “She wed Adam Miller five years ago this fall, lives in Union County, Pennsylvania, near where Grossmamm lives now, because she—Grossmamm—had arthritis bad, so I took over for her. Liddy’s wedding was here, and I haven’t seen her for two years since I went to another big Miller wedding there….” Realizing she was rambling, she thrust the bread at him, careful their hands didn’t touch. “Here, for you and your wife. You understand I won’t be able to mix with you, but tell Mrs. Kline she’s welcome to come over anytime.”
Ben’s eyes bored into hers. She felt pinned to the porch, like a butterfly in a collection. Benjamin Kline was tall for an Amish man; she had to look up at him. His hair was cut close and mussed. Unlike the married brethren, he had no beard, though a golden stubble gilded his tanned cheeks and square jaw. His nose was a bit crooked, maybe from the brawl that had got him shunned. His shoulders and chest muscles were bigger than she recalled. Ja, he’d put on some weight from the lanky boy he’d been, but he carried it well. As ever, it was his eyes that unsettled her. They always reminded her of a deep pond she and her friends used to swim in, even though it was forbidden.
Ben took the loaf of bread in one big hand. There were nicks and cuts on it and a single, flesh-colored bandage. “I understand about your treatment of someone still under the bann, Abby. But I’m not married.”
“Oh! Well, me, neither. But I saw—I mean, when I glanced over yesterday…”
“The woman here? Maybe you didn’t see her husband. They’re friends from Cincinnati who owned the place I rented there. They helped me move my stuff in, lots of wooden boxes and carved chests. I’m a carpenter of sorts, not an artist, but an artisan. I design and carve the boxes, mostly for jewelry, and lately I’ve been doing hope chests, too—since I knew I was coming back home.”
Back home. His words echoed in her head. She realized she was gaping at him again. An Amish man—former Amish—making boxes for fancy, prideful things like jewelry. Her people did not approve of adorning themselves with anything.
“I see,” was all she could say to that admission.
“I don’t think you do. The boxes can be used for other things or sold outside the community, just like the Amish-built gazebos, where worldly folk might have their parties with liquor, or like that porch swing where someone cheating on his wife could sit with another woman. The things themselves aren’t evil, and how they are used is the choice we all make. Abby, if you talk to others, you can tell them I’ve come back to see if the old life is for me. And if not, this is a great place to get hardwood and make a living—though if I don’t ask to rejoin the church, the Amish won’t be buying a thing from me. But I had to try to bridge the gap, come on home.”
Abby’s thoughts raced. Ben Kline was unburdening himself to her. Treating her like someone who could be trusted, not like the young girl who’d tried to tag along with him and Liddy and their buddy group. Best yet, he was considering returning to the church. He’d have to atone, of course, for his display of violence and his defiance when he’d left, though it had happened long ago. Folks said he’d always been a troublemaker, even before he’d beaten up the man who had assaulted his sister, and then told the bishop and elders that he could not repent for what he’d done.
“I surely hope and pray you can find your way back to the church,” she said, “to us, just as you’ve found your new house.” She began to back away. “So it’s all right to let others know, ja?”
“Word’s gonna get out fast, anyway. I’m planning to set up a booth at the farmers’ market tomorrow, so maybe I’ll see you there.”
“That’s good,” she said, remembering just in time to turn and not tumble backward down the porch steps. “So, see you there.” And everywhere else now, she thought, not just in my crazy dreams.
* * *
BEN COULD NOT BELIEVE the transformation in Abigail Baughman. Ten years ago, she’d been a gawky girl, skinny, all legs and pretty much a pest. But she’d become a beauty with her shapely form and expressive face. He was now used to seeing women with flyaway bangs and long, loose styles—or one in particular with short, sculpted silver hair. Yet Abby’s long blond hair, parted simply in the middle and pulled back, seemed so natural. Sure, she’d been shocked to find him here, and nervous. He tried to remember why he’d always wanted to ditch her years ago when she’d hung around, staring at him with those big blue eyes. He hadn’t thought of her sister, Lydia, in a long time, but he bet she couldn’t hold a candle to her kid sister now.
He realized he was just standing there, staring at the sway of her hips and swing of her ankle-length, dark green skirt as she walked away. He hurried after her, his big strides easily catching up. She must have heard him coming because she spun around.
“Forgot to tell you,” he said, “the bread’s much appreciated.”
“It’s called friendship bread. Maybe someday you’ll be friends with your people again.”
He nodded. They stopped about six feet apart. His eyes trailed over her once again.
“Oh, I meant to ask,” she said abruptly. “Did you hear voices on the bridge last night—I mean in the morning, around 4:00 a.m.? A man’s and a woman’s? They had their car parked somewhere on the road on this side.”
He didn’t let on, but the possibility that someone could have been sneaking around really annoyed him—scared him even. What if it was that Cincinnati detective or the pushy female investigator from the insurance company again? “No,” he told her. “I was so exhausted I fell asleep with my headphones on. You know, listening to music,” he added when she frowned. He hoped she believed him.
“They just woke me up, that’s all. See you,” she called back as she hurried away.
He had more he wanted to say, but he had to let her leave, so he just called after her, “Right. See you!”
* * *
ON HER WAY HOME, with her head and heart full of long-buried memories of her secret crush on Ben, the morning sun was slanting sideways into the bridge through the eastern windows. Abby had come here once with Liddy and Ben to make plans about creating circles in the Stutzman cornfield, a prank that got them all in trouble. Well, not exactly, since no one knew who was to blame. She felt embarrassed now that she’d almost blackmailed the two of them into letting her go along.
Ben had thought it would be funny to make everyone guess what had caused the two large circles they themselves had made after dark with boards, pushing the half-grown corn flat in one direction. After all, he had argued, his laughter and voice echoing right here on this bridge, the Plain People loved a good joke.
But everything had gotten blown out of proportion, kind of the way her feelings for Ben always had. The local paper had featured the circles, and the story was picked up worldwide. Ja, even over the ocean! Aliens Visit Amish Farm, Leave Crop Circles! one headline in the grocery stores had screamed, and people had trampled a lot more corn coming to see for themselves.
Ben had felt guilty enough to leave fifty dollars of his hard-earned money from his job at the sawmill for Noah Stutzman, who had lost some of his crop. No one ever knew who was to blame. Ben had made Abby and Liddy take an oath—those were verboten, too—not to tell by pricking fingers and mingling blood drops. Besides, Ben had said
to them, all the outsiders coming into town had boosted sales in the local stores and restaurants, so something good had come of his idea.
Land sakes, Abby thought now, heaving a huge sigh. Life with Ben was probably always like that, exciting and amazing and—and entirely forbidden.
Something on the planked bridge floor caught her eye, a glitter, a tiny pinpoint dancing in a shaft of sunlight. Then it was gone, so she backed up a bit. There it was again, sparkling in the crack between two floorboards.
Expecting to find a drop of water or a piece of cellophane, she bent closer. A jewel! A diamond, set in a circle of gold with a tiny spike out the back of it. A piece of a pin? Part of a ring, or maybe an earring worldly women wore through a hole in their earlobes? Last summer at the farmers’ market, Abby had seen a woman who wore something like this stuck right through her nose.
She cradled the jewel in her palm in the patch of sunlight, examining it, turning it. Glorious colors, glinting, flashing. And since the woman on the bridge last night must have worn a sparkly bracelet, could this be hers, too? It was no doubt dear and precious, so maybe she would come looking for it. But Abby dared not leave a sign saying she’d found it, or anyone could come and claim it. She would keep it safe, though, in case someone did ask about it.
As she walked home, for one moment she regretted that her people never wore or possessed such beauty. After all, God had made diamonds deep in the earth, and they reflected his heavenly light. But thoughts like that would only get her in trouble—and so would thoughts of how much she still felt pulled to Ben Kline. It was bad enough to dream about him at night, but now with him living just across the bridge…
“Head home, Abby!” she scolded herself aloud. “Hide this jewel and get busy, ’cause you have lots to do, and Ben Kline’s not any part of it.”
CHAPTER THREE
ABBY LOVED THE farmers’ market, which ran on Saturdays from May through October. The vendors’ booths and tables stretched down both sides of the one-block downtown on Homestead’s Main Street. She always set up tables for her Wild Run Woods Mushroom Products on the north side of the street at the edge of the sidewalk in front of the Homestead Hardware Store and across from the Citizens Bank.
On blue-and-white oilcloth, she displayed her array of fresh mushrooms and canned relishes and chutneys in gleaming glass jars. In the near future, she would also have walnuts gathered from the woods and bunches of bittersweet tied with pumpkin-colored ribbons.
Besides the money she made from sales to Amish and Englische alike, market day meant she got to see her buddy group friends and meet new people. She spent the whole day in town, stocking up on supplies, chatting, getting new books from the Eden County Public Library bookmobile parked down the street, and depositing some money in the bank, which also had the town’s post office. First thing she always did was pick up her week’s mail.
Today she was thrilled to find a circle letter from Sarah Weaver, one of her second cousins who had become special friends she’d made two years ago at the big Levi Miller–Lizzie Troyer wedding in Pennsylvania. Sarah had proposed this way to keep in touch—a round-robin letter, she’d called it, where each would write about her life and then pass it on in their circle of three. Though she was anxious to read the letter, Abby tucked it carefully away in her purse with the rest of her mail until she had time to savor it. Then she would add her news and pass it on to Lena Troyer.
It felt so strange to bond with long-distance cousins, both unwed and her age. Too bad they lived far apart because they had so much in common. Their conversations were deep and sharing. All three of them wanted to marry but had nothing definite on the horizon. How fast time had flown since those exciting days they had spent together. Sarah and Lena were the only two who knew about her girlhood crush on Ben. Wait until she wrote them that he was living in plain sight now and might even become plain again! Ja, that’s exactly what she’d write.
The new circle letter almost burned a hole in her purse as she hurried back to her tables.
The traffic was always diverted on market day, so only pedestrians crowded the street. Homestead, the county seat, was made up of a variety of businesses, including a grocery, hardware, three fast-food places and one Amish country cooking restaurant, an antiques shop, volunteer fire department and county sheriff’s office. A scattering of houses curled around each end of town before the hills and rolling farms began. The charm of the place and the large population of Amish living, working and selling their goods here made this a tourist stop. Two buses were already parked a couple blocks away and visitors, as usual, had poured out of them.
As she sat in her lawn chair behind her table, she saw that Ben Kline was doing what he’d said he would. From the back of his truck parked in a side alley, he was unloading several carved chests just the size to store linens and quilts for a future marriage and family. A hope chest—what a good name for that sort of big box. Someone she didn’t recognize had stopped to help him unload.
Already he’d arranged a row of polished, smaller boxes on his two long, wooden tables. The hand-printed sign hanging above them read Storage or Gift Boxes. From across the increasingly crowded street, like it were a river of people between them, she saw curious folks already stopping to look at his goods. Worldly people pressed close to his table, and though some of the Plain People greeted him, they were obviously keeping back.
* * *
BEN WAS PLEASED to be making sales, all tourists so far. Even the non-Amish farm families from the area didn’t approach his table, though some called out hi or waved his way.
Another tourist came up and stood staring at his boxes—and then he saw who it was. Melanie Campbell, the insurance investigator who had been watching him since the jewelry heist. He might have escaped to Amish country, but he hadn’t escaped her.
“I suppose this is a coincidence and you’re just another tourist, Ms. Campbell,” he said. He’d found the best way to deal with her was to be straightforward. She usually wore imposing black pantsuits and starched white blouses, but she had actually dressed down for once. Yet even this setting had not softened her stiff, sour expression. She was probably in her fifties, but tried to look younger with long, dyed blond hair that just didn’t fit the wrinkles and frown lines on her face.
“Right. Just a tourist,” she said, glancing from him to his boxes and back again. “One who’s real interested in how you’ve landed on your feet far from Cinci. You must have saved a lot of money to be able to buy a home here on the river.”
“The place is a real fixer-upper. Maybe you haven’t seen it.”
“Actually, I have.”
He squinted up at her in the morning sun. “I don’t appreciate having anyone dog my steps.”
“Are you calling me a dog, Benjamin Kline?” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “A hound dog, maybe. Yeah, I like that. And I won’t give up on your scent until you come clean, because you reek of guilt. Meanwhile, enjoy playing Amish!” She took a step away, then turned back. “Actually, I am here as a tourist today. My husband’s with me and likes plain country cooking. See you. And I will see you.” With a toss of her head, she was gone.
Ben took a few deep breaths, as if to clear the air. He could only hope the woman was as dedicated to keeping an eye on the other suspects who had worked at the store. Harassment must be her standard procedure. Maybe she and her husband were the ones bothering Abby. He’d heard Melanie Campbell would get a big cut of the v
alue of Tornellis’ stolen property if she could find it or the thief. The owners of the jewelry store where he’d worked were wealthy people.
At least he was pleased to have a clear view of Abby from time to time. She was distracting him, but in a nice way. Since his life had blown up in his face, both personally and professionally, the last thing he needed right now was to get involved with a woman, especially someone Amish. But if it was Abby…
Maybe running back here had not been the right thing to do. He’d known it might make him look guilty, but the detective and that insurance hound dog that had been sicced on him could search all they wanted. They’d find nothing but a guy who had screwed up his life once and wasn’t going to let it happen again, even if he was their main “person of interest.”
As for a real person of interest, Abby was looking at him, too, and despite the crowd that flowed between them, it suddenly seemed as if they were the only two people here.
* * *
ABBY TRIED NOT TO FEEL prideful about the bounty of the farmers’ market with its mostly Amish vendors. But who else could fill the laden tables and bright booths adorning the sidewalks with food and handmade items?
Open boxes boasted pyramids of shiny crimson and golden apples, squash and pumpkins. Stacks of fresh-picked sweet corn, globes of red and white onions and potatoes all smelled sweetly earthy, but they, too, seemed to shine in the sun. On beds of chipped ice, Swiss and Colby cheese and trail bologna awaited buyers. The Zook family booth offered honey, maple syrup, molasses and sorghum. Tables with bakery goods, from pies to cakes to breads, dotted both sides of the street. Amish cooks often shared their recipes and baking with each other, trading or giving them away. If one woman ran out of something or a pie was requested that she didn’t have, she would send the buyer right over to another table. All the Plain People ignored the American hunger for competition and lived in cooperation.
