She looked at me over her glasses. “Only twelve. Can you even imagine being alone in the world at that age, not knowing a soul? Somehow by his own grit and determination, he made it through. When he came to me and told me his story, I knew he would be a good fit for our mission. He could speak to the young people running away on a very personal level, especially to the young men who leave.”
“Oh no,” I whispered.
Aiden turned to me. “What?” He pulled me away from a confused-looking Sybil.
“Adam ran away from the Amish when he was twelve.”
“Yes,” Aiden said. “What does that mean to you?”
I looked up into those chocolate-brown eyes. “Stephen’s first son, Casey Raber, ran away from the Amish when he was twelve.”
“What’s that have to do with this?”
“What if Adam is Casey?”
Aiden’s brow creased and he whispered, “How did you make that leap?”
“I’ll show you.” I walked back to Sybil. “Sybil, do you know if Adam changed his name when he left the Amish?”
She frowned. “He said that he had to because he didn’t want his family to find him.”
“Were they abusive?” Aiden asked.
She licked her lips. “He didn’t say they were in so many words, but that was my assumption.”
“What was his Amish name?” I asked.
She thought for a moment. “He wouldn’t tell me. He said he left that old life behind. He left the person he was behind too. He had experienced a terrible trauma as a boy.”
“What kind of trauma did he have?” I asked.
She pressed her lips together.
“Sybil,” Aiden said. “You can answer the question here or down at the station.”
“His mother died in a farming accident when he was very young.”
“What kind of accident?” Aiden asked.
At first I didn’t think Sybil would answer his question, but then she said, “It was in the grain silo. There was a malfunction with a grain loader and a ton of grain fell on her. By the time they figured out what had happened, it was too late and she was dead.”
I shivered as I remembered that empty silo at the Raber rabbit farm. “Just like Ethel Raber,” I whispered.
“It gets worse,” Sybil said. “Adam said he found a note in his father’s Bible that held a confession. His father knew that his wife was in the grain but didn’t do anything until she was dead because he was in love with another woman.”
I didn’t bother to answer and turned to Aiden. “Aiden, we have to find Katey. She could be in real danger. There is no doubt in my mind that Adam is Casey Raber.”
Aiden and I left Sybil on her doorstep and dashed for his SUV. I’d worry about getting my car back to Harvest later. It was much more important to find Katey now. I buckled into the passenger seat while he called in the description of Katey and Adam-formerly-known-as-Casey and directed his officers to be on the lookout for them.
When he ended the call, I said, “I keep thinking that Katey was planning to run away from the Amish. If that’s true, maybe she and Adam went to her home to gather up her things.” I took a deep breath. “Or they could be out of the state by now.”
Aiden shifted the car into drive and reached across the console to squeeze my hand. “We will find her.”
“If we don’t, it’s my fault.”
“No, Bailey, don’t take that on yourself.” He squeezed my hand again before letting go. “We will find her. I promise. It’s a good idea to try her home first.”
I nodded and sat back in the seat with my hands clenched on my lap.
As we drove down the road that led to both the Raber and Beiler farms, my eyes focused on the empty silo. Now I knew why that silo sat empty and why Stephen gave up raising grain for his rabbits. How awful that must have been for young Casey, to grow up without his mother and to know that was the place where she had died. It would be a constant reminder of her death and the loss of a mother’s love that he would never have.
I was about to point the silo out to Aiden when Liam Zimmerman came running through his yard, waving his hands. “Hey! Hey!” He waved his arms back and forth and ran into the road.
Aiden hit his brakes and squealed to a stop just before he hit the man. He jumped out of his SUV with his hand on his gun. I jumped out too.
“Put your hands up!” Aiden ordered in a darker voice than I’d ever heard him use.
Zimmerman must have recognized Aiden’s tone too and froze. “Don’t shoot me. I need your help.”
Aiden lowered his gun. “What’s going on?”
“There is a crazy Amish kid in my backyard holding two people hostage with a shotgun. I told you the Amish are trouble!”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Aiden shouted. His patience was all but gone.
“My phone is in the house, and I was afraid of getting the Amish kid’s attention.”
“Who has the gun?” I asked.
He looked at me and didn’t seem at all surprised to see me. “It’s the bunny farmer’s kid.”
I was willing to bet Swissmen Sweets that the two people he was holding at gunpoint were Katey and Adam.
Aiden looked at me. “Bailey, stay here with Zimmerman until more officers arrive.”
I opened my mouth.
“Bailey, that’s an order. I am talking to you as a police officer now, not as your boyfriend.”
I bit down hard on my tongue and nodded.
Aiden removed his radio from his duty belt and barked in a list of orders. It wouldn’t be long before reinforcements arrived.
I watched as Aiden bent at the waist with his gun drawn and ran around the side of the Rabers’ house. My heart caught in my throat to watch him go. Was this what it would always be like being in love with a cop? Worrying about what he would face each day? I placed a hand over my heart. It was the first time I had admitted I was in love with Aiden.
Zimmerman didn’t give me time to digest this new revelation. “I told everyone that the Amish were rotten, but no one would listen to me. Everyone thinks they are such peace-loving people. Not in my experience. They are troublemakers.”
I heard sirens in the distance. Aiden’s backup was almost here. I felt my shoulders droop with relief until I heard a gunshot and a scream. Without thinking, I ran toward the house.
“Where are you going?” Zimmerman called after me. “Do you want to get killed for a bunch of filthy Amish?”
Chapter 40
I raced around the side of the house and saw Aiden holding his hands in the air in front of Eli, who had a shotgun pointed at his chest.
“Eli, you don’t want to do this,” Aiden said calmly. “You will spend the rest of your life in prison for killing a police office in cold blood. They could even give you the death penalty.”
“Maybe I want to die,” Eli shot back. “What do I have to live for? Katey doesn’t want me. I don’t want these awful rabbits. The farm will never live up to its potential if I don’t have more land.”
I didn’t see Katey or Adam. Had they got away?
Then, I spotted them on the side of the phone shed. Adam had his hand clamped over Katey’s mouth.
I glanced at Eli, and he seemed to be completely consumed with Aiden. If Katey and Adam ran through Zimmerman’s woods, they could get away. They didn’t move. Maybe they were frozen in fear. I ducked behind the second bunny barn, which was between Eli and me. When I reached the barn, I pressed my back against it. As I slid along the building on one side, I saw Katey and Adam moving stealthily along the other, headed toward the woods.
I followed them silently into the woods, staying just out of sight behind a tree as they stopped.
Katey pulled away from Adam.
“Let’s go, love,” Adam said. “There’s nothing for us here.”
“What about Eli?” she asked, looking back at the phone shed.
“What do you care? What do we care about any of the Rabers?” He glared in the dir
ection she was looking.
“I don’t want Eli to be in trouble for something we did.”
He laughed. “We did? You’re the one who made the candy and gave it to Eli’s father.”
She blinked at him. “But you told me to do it. You said—”
“I can’t go to prison for convincing you to kill someone. The act of the killing is on you alone.”
“I didn’t know that he would die from it. You said it would only make him ill!”
Adam shrugged as if that was of little matter.
I stepped forward, giving them both a start as they spotted me. “Casey, did you ask Katey to give your father lily of the valley?”
He glared at me. “That’s not my name.”
“Maybe it’s not now, but it was once upon a time, when you were Amish.”
“Why wouldn’t I want him to pay? He might not have poured the grain onto her body, but he let my mother die when he could have done something to save her. Everyone said her death in the silo was an accident, but I knew better.”
“How did you know?” I asked, wanting confirmation of what Sybil had told me.
“I learned the truth when I saw a note in his Bible. After that, I had to run away. I promised myself I would return someday and get my revenge, and I have.”
“You sent the notes to your father. You wrote them,” I said. “But you had different Amish people deliver them.”
He snorted. “People who are running away from the faith like I did.” His eyes were bright. “They would do whatever I told them.”
“Did you tell them to slash the tires in Jud Beiler’s barn or attack me?”
He looked me square in the eye. “Those I took care of myself. It was to warn you both to keep quiet. I can see that it didn’t work with you. I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
I felt like I might be sick.
He glared at Katey. “If you don’t come with me, you will go to jail for the rest of your life. Is that what you want?”
In this case, I thought Katey might be better off in jail than under Adam’s manipulation. Heaven knew what he had told her to convince her to give Stephen the lily-of-the-valley-laced toffee.
She looked at me.
“Katey, stay,” I said as I heard the sirens arrive. The police would soon have the whole farm surrounded. “It’s better to stay and face what you have done than run away.”
Tears fell from her eyes, and she reached out her hand to Adam. It looked as if she was determined to go. She loved him. He’d tricked her into loving him.
There was a shout and a scuffle behind us. I looked away from Katey and Adam to see Eli running toward us with his shotgun pointed at Adam.
“Eli!” Aiden shouted from behind Eli. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Eli kept coming and Aiden pulled the trigger. Eli fell to the ground, but not before he got off a shot of his own. Adam/Casey staggered back, holding his shoulder. Blood oozed out from between his fingers while Eli held his right calf, where Aiden’s bullet hit him.
Aiden came running and ripped the shotgun from Eli’s hand. Eli stared at Adam as if he couldn’t believe what he had just done.
Katey fell to her knees beside him. “Adam! Adam! Are you all right? Please tell me you are all right. I love you!”
“Get away from me,” he snapped. “I never loved you. You were a means to an end, and you even managed to mess that up when I had it all laid out for you.”
She fell back, stricken, and one of Aiden’s officers helped her to her feet before cuffing her hands behind her back.
Epilogue
You can train a rabbit to walk on a leash, but don’t expect it to go very far or fast. I was learning this lesson as I stood in the middle of the village square, waiting for Puff to move on Easter Sunday. We had made it across Main Street with no trouble, but as soon as the rabbit reached the lawn, she planted herself there and began to eat the grass.
After what had happened on his farm, Eli Raber had given me the rabbit at no cost. He said she would be happier with me than with anyone else. He still planned to sell the other rabbits to a farm up north just as soon as he was through his court date for shooting Adam. I was just happy that I could save Puff from that fate. Nutmeg felt the same way. The rabbit and the little orange cat were inseparable anytime they were together in the candy shop.
As for Katey and Adam-formerly-Casey, they were in custody awaiting their bond hearing. Adam was at the local hospital, and Katey was in the county jail. I wasn’t sure who would pay bond for either of them. I was hoping that Katey would get a lesser sentence as she had clearly been manipulated by Adam into believing murder was the only way that the two of them could be together after she left the Amish. She was so blinded by her love of Adam that she would agree to anything to be with him, which I found almost as tragic as Stephen’s death. I also hoped that they locked Adam up and threw away the key for what he’d done to her. Although there was still a small part of me that had compassion for the little boy who’d lost his mother so young. Stephen Raber’s love for a woman who was not his wife was the root of all of this. I couldn’t help but wonder if his second wife, Carmela, knew he had let Ethel die. There was no way to answer that question.
I tried not to dwell on it. It was Easter Sunday, and across the square I could see people stream out of the church’s sunrise service. My grandmother and Charlotte were at their district’s Easter service, and I stood in the middle of the square in a belted, flowered dress and white-heeled sandals walking the quintessential white Easter bunny as I waited for Aiden to arrive. He and I were to go to the church’s ten a.m. service together. Juliet had asked me to bring Puff to join Jethro in the sanctuary. Since she had Reverend Brook wrapped around her little finger, I agreed.
Families poured out of the church and paused to take Easter photos on the square. Children held on to new stuffed animal rabbits and baskets of candy. I felt as if I was walking in a Norman Rockwell painting, and in my dress, for once, I fit right in.
Juliet Brody waved at me as she ran through the pastel-dressed families on the green. “Bailey! Bailey!”
Puff looked up from the grass with a piece of clover hanging from her lip just as Juliet made a beeline for us.
When she reached us, Juliet set Jethro on the ground, and the pig and rabbit rubbed noses. I was learning that Puff was the kind of animal who could get along with anyone. Despite everything that Stephen Raber had done, knowing how much he loved Puff made me like him a little bit more.
“Aren’t they the sweetest thing together? They are like two peas in a pod,” Juliet cooed.
Her cheeks were pink and she couldn’t stand still. I studied her. “Juliet, are you feeling well? You look a little flushed. Are you running a fever?”
“No fever! Look!” Juliet flashed her left hand in my face, revealing a diamond on her ring finger. “Can you believe it? Reverend Brook asked me to marry him! It came out of nowhere.”
I had to stifle a smile. I had known this was coming; I was just relieved that Reverend Brook had worked up the nerve to ask.
“I’ve cared for him for so long, but I never knew he felt the same way.” She looked down at her ring. “And then he asked me to marry him. It’s a dream come true.” There were tears in her eyes. “He’s such a good man. I never thought happiness would come for me. I wished and prayed, but never thought I would find love again. I decided instead to be happy in the life I had in Harvest in the church and with my friends.”
My heart broke a little for her. On the outside, Juliet was a happy-go-lucky, flighty woman, but I knew she was much more than that. Her first husband, Aiden’s father, had been abusive, and she had been brave enough to take Aiden and run away, raising her only son into an amazing man. She deserved all the credit for that, and no one deserved a happily ever after more than she.
“It’s a beautiful ring, Juliet,” I said with tears in my eyes. “I am happy for you both.”
“Thank you,” she said. “And I have
a favor to ask of you. Would you be willing to make our wedding cake? It would mean so much to us if it came from you.”
“I’d be happy to. I’ve never made a wedding cake before, but I will give it my very best.” I smiled. “How hard can it be after making a giant toffee rabbit, right?”
She laughed. “The reverend and I haven’t set a date yet. As soon as we do, I will let you know so you can start planning the cake.” She scooped up Jethro. “Jethro will be the ring bearer, of course.”
I expected that.
“I have another request,” she said.
“Oh?” I asked.
“Will you be my maid of honor?”
I blinked at her. “Me? Isn’t there someone else you’ve known longer that you’d like to have in the wedding?”
She shook her head. “No. You’re the only one I want to do it. Your family has been so kind to Aiden and me over the years. I would love Clara to be in the wedding, but she is Amish. I know that their customs would not allow it, but you can. You can stand by my side as I marry the man of my dreams.”
“Yes, of course, I will do it. I am so happy for you.” I felt tears in my eyes.
Aiden’s departmental SUV pulled up alongside the square and he got out.
Juliet took in a quick breath. “I haven’t told Aiden yet.”
I whispered, “Now is your chance.”
Aiden grinned at us as he approached. “My two favorite people in one place.” He frowned. “What’s with the serious faces? Should I have said my two favorite people and my favorite pig and my favorite rabbit? Because that’s all true.”
“I’ll give you two a minute,” I said.
Aiden looked from his mom to me and back again. “What’s going on?”
“There’s something your mom needs to tell you.” I picked up Puff and walked with her across the street to Swissmen Sweets. I stood there in front of the candy shop door and watched Juliet tell Aiden her news. She waved her arms and began to cry.
Aiden wrapped his arms around his mother, giving her the biggest hug. Over her shoulder, he had a huge smile on his face that was for me alone.
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