The small hatchback sputtered halfway up the steep hill, and I was beginning to regret choosing the cheapest option for my first car since high school. The car was made when I was still in high school, so that should have been my first clue that it wasn’t a great investment. I patted the top of the dashboard. “You can do it!” I thought it was best to be encouraging when dealing with cars, computers, and any gadget that was threatening to fall apart on me.
Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, I crested the hill. I gave the dashboard a final grateful pat. “I never lost faith in you. I promise to wash you and get your oil changed on a regular basis. Just keep it together for me, okay?”
Gravel crunched under my car’s tires as I parked beside the enormous building. There were five buggies in the gravel lot, but only one of them had a horse tethered to it. The black horse shook his head as if trying to shift his bridle into a more comfortable position, and then he dug his nose back into the feed trough that was attached to a pole just in front of him.
Weaver Buggy Company stirred a memory in the very back of my mind, and it wasn’t until I was sitting in my car in the parking lot that I realized I had been there before. I had visited the buggy shop nearly twenty years ago when I was staying with my grandparents for the summer. On that warm summer day, my daadi had taken me with him to have an axle repaired. He jumped out of the buggy; I remembered it so well. He was so lithe and athletic back then, so different from the crippled man using the walker who’d finally succumbed to heart disease earlier that fall.
A bear of a man had come out of the aluminum barn to meet my grandfather. The man had even growled when speaking to my grandfather. I’d tried to make myself as small as possible inside the buggy.
The man peered inside the carriage, and there I sat in my frayed jean shorts and teddy bear T-shirt. “That’s your Englisch granddaughter, is it?” He said “English” as if it was some kind of disease. It was the first time I realized I was different from my grandparents. Yes, I knew that they dressed differently and didn’t have a television, but they were my maami and daadi. It wasn’t until that large Amish man brought it to my attention that I knew I was very different from them, and in that moment, being different felt bad.
“That is my girl Bailey,” my grandfather said. “She is my greatest joy.”
I remember looking at my grandfather, and he smiled at me with so much love in his eyes that the man’s comment about my Englishness stung a little bit less.
There was a knock on the driver’s-side window. I jumped and would have hit my head on the roof of my car had I not been restrained by my seat belt.
There was another Amish man at my window, but not the big bear of a man that I remembered. Sol Weaver, Charlotte’s father, peered through the window at me.
I unclipped my seat belt and exited the car. He stepped back out of my way.
He grimaced. “Why are you here?”
As subtly as possible, I glanced around for any sign of Charlotte.
“If you are looking for my daughter Charlotte, you’re too late. I sent her away. She’s not welcome here any longer.” His voice was bitter.
I wondered if Charlotte had finally told her father that she planned to leave the Amish life. It certainly sounded like she had.
“Charlotte was here?” I asked, playing dumb. “I just happened to be driving by and remembered this place from my childhood. I drove up the hill for a closer look to see if it was what I remembered.”
“You have been here before?” His tone clearly said that he didn’t believe me.
“Only once, when I was a little girl with my grandfather. I remember visiting this shop with him when he needed his buggy repaired. There was a different man who met my father at the buggy that day. He was a big bear of a man.”
“My brother Hiram,” he said, leaving no room for argument on that point.
I opened my mouth to reply, but he was faster. “You can’t talk to him. He’s dead.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said quickly, even though I already knew from Charlotte that Hiram had died. I thought it was best not to let Sol know that Charlotte had already told me this. Also, my mind spun as I remembered my conversation with Ruby in her tiny apartment over the yarn shop. She’d implied that Josephine’s death was somehow related to her husband Hiram’s death, even though Hiram had died so long ago. I just wished that that little tidbit of information had come from a more reliable source than Ruby. No one would consider Ruby a reliable witness. The Sheriff’s Department certainly wouldn’t, if it came to that.
“It’s no matter any longer. He’s been gone close to fifteen years,” he said, speaking of his brother’s death.
“I’m still sorry.”
“It was Gotte’s will. May His will be done.” His face clouded over. “My daughter doesn’t look for Gotte’s will in her life. She forces His hand. I know what she has chosen is not the will of Gott for her. How can it be? I had no choice but to send her away from me.”
I shifted from foot to foot. Maybe I should go now that I knew Charlotte was no longer there. “You and your brother shared his shop?”
“Amish sons do not share.” He said this as if I should have already known it. “The shop was my brother’s until he died. He was the oldest.” He looked back at the large barnlike building. “This is my shop now, and when I die it will go to my oldest son.”
“Could I look inside?” I took a step forward.
He frowned. “Why?”
“It might remind me of my visit here with my grandfather.” I knew it was a lame suggestion, but it was the best that I could come up with. I thought if I got a look at the inside of the shop, maybe I would understand a little bit better what Ruby had been implying about the connection between Hiram’s and Josephine’s deaths.
He frowned.
“I promise I won’t stay long,” I said.
“Very well. Jebidiah was a friend.” He turned toward the barn. “Follow me.”
I fell into step behind Sol. The yellow late-fall sunlight reflected off the tin roof. I held a hand up to shield my eyes when a sunbeam hit me squarely in the eye as it lowered in the west.
Once upon a time, the old building had been a horse barn and had been converted into a buggy shop. From the shop’s location on the hillside, I could see the entire valley. Black-and-white milk cows spotted the hillside. There was no sign of a black-and-white pig though. I was constantly on the lookout for Jethro. Not that I expected to see him this far from the square.
My boots crunched on the gravel as I kept an eye out for Charlotte. On the phone, she had seemed so eager to leave the buggy shop that I had thought she would be waiting for me outside, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Sol held the door open for me. As I stepped inside, the overpowering scent of wood shavings and grease hit me. There was a faint layer of sawdust on the floor that was noticeable only because of the bright sunlight coming in through the westward-facing windows.
At first glance, I counted five buggies in the cavernous room. Behind one of the buggies, a door led deeper into the building. Three of the black buggies were jacked up onto platforms to access the undercarriage. The other two buggies sat in pristine condition.
“You sell buggies here?” I asked.
“Used buggies,” he said. “A buggy isn’t made all in one shop. Most Amish men own only three buggies in their lifetime. We, the Amish, take great pride in our buggies and care for them. It is our way. The Englisch are the ones who discard possessions when they are still useful.”
My grandfather had cared for his buggy like it was a beloved pet. On hot summer nights, he would wash and polish his buggy until it shone.
“Just like a car, there are many pieces and parts,” Sol went on. “The bulk of my business is buggy repair. Most Amish in Harvest bring their buggies to me for repair.” He puffed out his chest. “I have the best shop in the county.”
I raised my eyebrows. Typically, the Amish weren’t ones to boast about thei
r achievements. “It must have been hard to take the business over when Hiram died. How did it happen? He must have been relatively young.” I knew the story from Charlotte, but I wanted to hear his version.
He picked up a flathead screwdriver from the workbench and smacked the handle end in his hand a couple of times. Perhaps that was my signal to leave, but I ignored it.
“It was a long time ago,” Sol said. “He died right at the bottom of the hill here. He was at the bottom of the hill. A buggy got loose, rolled down the hill, and hit him. At the point when he might have realized what was happening, there was no time to get out of way, and it hit him. Hit him and killed him on the spot.”
A shadow moved across one of the windows to my right. “Did you see it happen?”
He glanced at me. “Nee. I wasn’t here that day. One of our young workers was and told me what happened. I should return to my work.” Sol turned back to the workbench. When his back was turned, I glanced at the window again. Charlotte waved to me from the other side of the glass. Her eyes were the size of dinner plates as she saw me inside the shop with her father.
I made a shooing gesture at her. That was a bad move because I caught Sol’s attention, and he too looked at the window. His face flushed red when he saw his daughter’s face peering through the dusty glass. He dropped the screwdriver onto the workbench and stormed to the door.
Charlotte saw him coming and jumped back from the window.
I hurried after Sol. He was yelling even before I reached the door. I couldn’t understand what he was yelling at his daughter because it was in their language, but his anger was unmistakable.
Charlotte stood a few feet away. She was hunched over slightly as if his words were putting some type of weight on the back of her neck, causing her to bow to her father. “Daed,” she said and then switched to English, “I’m not coming home. I have already told you what I think. I have made my choice.” She straightened up slowly as if it took much effort and stared her father in the eye.
His face deepened into another shade of red. “No child of mine is going to leave the Amish way. No Weaver has ever left the Amish way.”
“Daed, this is my choice, not your choice.” Her voice was calm and even. She had come to a decision finally, and she was going to see it through.
“You choose to turn your back on Gott?” Her father spat on the ground near her feet.
Tears gathered in Charlotte’s eyes. “Nee. I would never choose such a thing, but I can worship Gott in my way. The Amish way is not the only way. I can praise Him with the organ.”
“Get out of my sight.” Sol turned his back to her.
I shuddered and walked to Charlotte’s side. “Let’s go,” I whispered to her.
“You!” He spun around on the heels of his work boots. “You are helping her? I should have known. You come to our county to pull our children away from the Amish.”
“I came to the county to be with my grandmother and make candy. I don’t have any Machiavellian plan,” I said.
His brow knit together at my mention of Machiavelli. Apparently, The Prince wasn’t on the Amish reading list.
He turned back to Charlotte. “If you have made your choice, leave my sight. You are no daughter of mine.” He spun around and went back into the buggy shop, slamming the door after him.
The resolve that had appeared to be holding Charlotte’s spine erect dissolved, and if I had not been there to catch her, she would have crumpled to the ground.
Her father’s reaction came as a blow. It was rejection in the most devastating form. Charlotte, like me, must have known this. Rejection of this kind was like a death, but a death when you know that the other person still lives but chooses not to love you. That loss seemed so much worse.
Chapter 33
On the drive back to the center of Harvest, Charlotte was quiet. She stared out the window with her face slightly turned away from me.
I chewed on my lower lip. There were so many things I wanted to ask her. I wanted to know why she had gone to her father’s buggy shop in the first place, how she got there, and how her uncle’s death was related to her aunt’s death. But I couldn’t speak. It felt wrong to invade her grief at that moment, and I knew she was grieving the loss of not only her father’s love, but possibly her entire family. Amish families were close-knit. That was one of their best qualities. Family was always first to them. However, the closeness could come at a cost as well. When the head of the family chose to turn his back on another family member, it was likely the rest of the family would too.
Traffic slowed as we drew closer to town, and I was happy to see the remaining tourists in the village carrying brown paper bags of Amish goods from many of the shops. It had been one of the busiest Saturdays I had seen in Harvest. Margot Rawlings was right. The ACC was good for the town.
I squeezed the ancient compact into a semi-legal spot in front of Swissmen Sweets.
Even before I had shifted the car into park, Charlotte had her seat belt off and the door open. “Danki for coming to get me, Bailey. I’m going to see if Clara could use some help at the candy shop. She said we have to make a lot of fudge tonight to restock.”
I shook my head. “You don’t have to . . .”
She shook her head. “I do. The work will do me well.”
Charlotte might not consider herself Amish anymore, but her strong Amish work ethic remained safely intact.
Before I could respond, she slammed the car door shut. A knot twisted in my stomach. I didn’t know how to help this girl. Perhaps my grandmother would. She’d been in the same place as Charlotte once upon a time, when she’d followed her heart and risked being cut off from her family to marry my grandfather. The difference was that my grandmother had Daadi to lean on when she made the choice. Who did Charlotte have? She wasn’t leaving for the love of a man. She was leaving for the love of music. And then I realized that she had us, Maami and me. She could lean on us.
Charlotte knocked on Swissmen Sweets’ front door, and I watched through the windshield of my car as my grandmother opened it, letting the girl in. Maami wrapped her arm around Charlotte’s shoulders, and the younger woman rested her head on Maami’s shoulder as they made their way inside. Yes, Charlotte had Maami and me to lean on during this difficult time in her young life.
I climbed out of the car and was amazed to see how empty the square was. The last few tourists with their brown bags of Amish goodies had climbed into their cars and headed back to the city. It was as if the ACC had never been there. It was after five o’clock, and the village was closed for the night. It would not open again until Monday morning since tomorrow was Sunday and no Amish shopkeeper would dare open on a Sunday, no matter what Amish district they might belong to.
As I stepped through the door to Swissmen Sweets, the bell jangled. Nutmeg greeted me the moment I stepped inside, as he always did. Other than the cat, the shop was empty.
I locked the door behind me.
Nutmeg meowed.
“Where did Maami and Charlotte go?” I asked the cat.
He turned and walked to the bottom of the stairs that led to my grandmother’s apartment above the shop. Then he ran up the stairs. The kitten was more reliable than Lassie.
At the top of the stairs, I heard voices coming from my grandmother’s sitting room at the back of the apartment. The old floorboards under my feet creaked and moaned as I walked to the room. The door was open. My grandmother and Charlotte sat on the sofa together. They had their heads bowed, and my grandmother murmured words I couldn’t understand. She was praying. I hesitated in the doorway. I didn’t want to disturb them. I stepped back, and the floorboards groaned under the weight of my foot.
Maami and Charlotte looked up. My grandmother smiled at me and patted the girl’s hand.
Charlotte stood up and brushed tears from her eyes. “I think I will go read for a little while until dinner. Would that be okay with you, Clara?”
My grandmother nodded.
Charlot
te gave me a shy smile and ducked her head before walking around me and through the doorway.
I entered the sitting room and perched on the rocking chair in the corner of the room. “Is she all right?”
My grandmother picked up her knitting, which lay across the arm of the sofa. The Amish work ethic was alive and well in my grandmother. I supposed, if I was honest, I had inherited a lot of it too. It was almost impossible for me not to do something every minute of the day. Sometimes I wished that I could be like some of my friends back in New York, who could unplug during the weekends. When I lived in New York, most weekends I experimented with new recipes or found new ways to manage the kitchen at JP Chocolates or poured over vendor accounts looking for ways to save Jean Pierre money, money that he could then reinvest in the business. I had done that, at least, until I’d met Eric Sharp.
I had thought Eric was the one who would help me have a more balanced life. I had been so very wrong. Eric’s life as a jet-setting chef with all the money and women he could want was anything but balanced. It wasn’t until I was sitting there with my grandmother quietly knitting that I realized what a lucky escape I had made, and the tiny part of me that had been holding onto some slim hope that Eric would fly to Amish Country to try to win me back let go.
“Are you all right, my dear?” my grandmother asked. Her knitting needles were poised in front of her as she paused mid-stitch to study me.
I shook my head. “I’m fine. I’m worried about Charlotte though.”
“I am too.” She resumed knitting. “Deacon Clapp paid me a call while you girls were gone. He said if Charlotte doesn’t return home tonight, he is going to ask the community to shun her.”
I leaned back in the rocking chair. “Can he do that?”
“He is the deacon, and if the district bishop goes along with it, he will.”
Lethal Licorice Page 22
