She gripped her cast with her left hand. “I can’t paint because of my arm. The reason I left everything behind is broken. Isaac is right, I have been punished.”
“Isaac is wrong. God loves you. He would never punish you like this.”
Her large blue eyes swam in tears. “Then why did this happen?”
I rubbed her back and thought. I wished Mrs. Green were here. She would know the right thing to say. I tried to remember what she said to me the many times I cried over my mother’s accident. “Because bad things happen. Bad things happen because there is sin in the world. Jesus saved us from sin when He died on the cross and rose again. Just because we’re Christians doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen to us while we are still on earth.” I fumbled over my words.
She looked unconvinced.
“I think—” The sound of my cell phone ringing interrupted me.
“Go ahead and answer, Chloe. I think I’d like to be alone for a little bit.”
“Okay.”
By the time I dug it out of my purse, the phone had stopped ringing. I checked the missed call. Sabrina. I grimaced and debated calling her back. Before I could make up my mind, the phone rang in my hand. I almost dropped it.
“Hello?”
“Chloe!” Sabrina’s voice snapped in my ear. “Why didn’t you answer my call?”
I slipped out the front door and onto the porch. “I—”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses. Your father is furious.”
I sat on the bench. “With me?”
“Of course with you! Who else would it be?”
I should have known that was a dumb question. “What did I do?”
“You are harboring a murderer.”
“What?” I stumbled into one of the porch posts. It shifted under my weight. Timothy hadn’t been able to mend it yet.
“We know about that girl killing the Amish judge or whatever he was.”
“He was a bishop, and it was a horrible accident.” I stepped away from the rickety post and sat on one of the brown folding chairs.
She huffed. “If it’s an accident, why are the police investigating it?”
“Becky’s part in it was an accident,” I said firmly.
“Is she still living with you?”
I bit my lip. “Yes. How do you know all this?”
“One of your coworkers e-mailed your father the newspaper story. You can imagine his surprise when he’s in a board meeting and reads a story about his daughter in the middle of a murder investigation.”
I shook my head. “All of that wasn’t covered in the paper.”
“Thank goodness it wasn’t. Your father e-mailed the man back and asked for more details.”
My mouth hung open, my forehead creased. “So instead of calling me, his daughter, he e-mails a perfect stranger to find out about my life.” The corners of my eyes itched, but I refused to cry. I had wasted too many tears over my father—a lifetime’s worth. “Who?” I demanded.
“Who? Your father, that’s who!”
“No. Who told you about the accident?”
“Does it matter?” she practically growled.
“It matters to me.” I scooted to the edge of the chair and tipped forward ever so slightly.
Her dramatic sigh sounded like an airplane landing. “It was something with a J, like John or Jason.”
I grew still. “Joel.”
“That’s it. He said he was looking out for you. As a friend, he was worried about you and wanted your father to know about it.”
I leaned back into the chair, and its back legs hit the porch’s warped wooden boards with a thud. “Looking out for me? A friend? Nothing could be farther from the truth.”
“The point is your father is upset, and rightly so; you never stop and think how your behavior will reflect on your family. Your father’s opponents would love news like this to use against him.”
I clenched my jaw. “My family? Is that what you are? You could have fooled me.”
“I will tell your father you spoke to me like that.”
“Go ahead. I’m not a child anymore.” I lowered my voice. “Have a nice time on your Thanksgiving cruise.” And then I hung up on her.
Chapter Forty
The next morning, the house was silent. Becky wasn’t moving around in the kitchen making an enormous breakfast as she had every other morning. When she wasn’t up by the time I was about to leave for work, I knocked on her door. She didn’t respond. In the short time I had known Becky, she’d always gotten up with the sun. I opened her door and almost tripped over Gig as he wove around my feet to get inside. He jumped onto her bed, but she didn’t stir.
She lay under a pile of blankets, only her foot peeking out from under the yellow-flowered comforter. “How can you sleep under all those covers? You must be burning up.” I tugged on her toe.
She retracted the foot as if I pricked it with a needle. “Go away.” She pushed her face deeper into a pile of pillows.
I checked my cell phone. Seven forty-five. I needed to be at work by eight if I wanted to take off early with Timothy. Today we were going to talk to Grayson Mathews. “Get up!” I felt like Mrs. Green when she tried to convince Tanisha or me to get out of bed. “Cookie and Scotch will be here in less than an hour to pick you up.”
“I don’t care,” the muffled voice said.
My brow shot up. “I thought you liked your job.”
She rolled over onto her stomach. “It doesn’t matter. I ruined my life. I ruined Isaac’s life. Why should I bother?”
“Because that’s what Isaac thinks.”
She opened one bloodshot eye. Gigabyte jumped on the bed and began kneading her hair. She swatted at him, but he moved out of range.
I smacked her on the back. “Now, get up!”
As I left, I heard the shower running.
Emotions were high at work as well. Clark and Miller waited for me in the Computer Services office. “Good morning.”
Miller fidgeted in his seat and turned a flash drive over and over again in his hands. He gave Clark a look.
Usually low-key, Clark seemed tense, but he sat still.
I stood there, watching them both. “What’s going on?”
Clark opened his mouth, but Miller blurted out, “Is someone going to get fired?”
I put one hand on my hip. “Where did you hear that?”
“Chloe, Harshberger is tiny.” Clark eyed me and opened his laptop on the conference table. “Everyone knows everything. Word on campus is that you have to reduce our budget by twenty percent. That can only mean someone’s going to get the ax. There’s no way you can cut that much from services. It’s true, right?”
It made my stomach turn that they knew the exact amount I must reduce my budget. “I can’t answer that.”
“That’s boss talk for yes,” Clark told Miller.
The nervous programmer dropped the flash drive onto the table. It bounced off the table and onto the floor. “I’m doomed. I have the least seniority.”
I picked the flash drive off the floor and handed it to him. His hands were shaking. “Miller, if I have to make this decision, and I promise you I am racking my brain to find a way to avoid it, I won’t base that decision on seniority.”
Joel stepped into the room with a smirk on his face. “If she was going to make the decision on least seniority, boys, she’d have to fire herself.” He glared at me.
My back stiffened. “Joel, can I talk to you in the hallway, please?”
His smirk faded a little, but then he shrugged and followed me out of the office. I shut the office door behind him and walked a little way down the hall.
“Where are you going?” Joel followed me at a distance. “Are you going to fire me?” Ther
e was laughter in his voice.
When we were out of earshot of the office, I spun around. “Did you e-mail my father?”
A grin spread across his face.
I took that as a “yes.” “Why would you do that?”
“I’m a father myself, and I would want to know if my daughter was in trouble.”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m not in trouble. How did you find my father anyway?”
“Do you Yahoo?” he quipped. “Who knew your father was some big shot California executive. He made it clear in the emails that we exchanged that he’s a very important man.”
I wanted to slap Joel across the face just like in a movie, but I put my hand in my pocket. “I don’t want you contacting anyone in my family again.” I tried to keep my voice even, but I heard the quaver in it.
“Sure thing, boss. Like I said, I was just looking out for you.” He winked at me. “I’m going to take my break now if that’s okay with you.”
As he walked away, he looked over his shoulder, “Sorry about your mother’s accident.”
I felt like I might be sick.
At three o’clock, Timothy picked me up in the parking lot outside Dennis. I jumped into the truck, thrilled to escape campus. I had spent most of the day worrying over my budget. I examined my funds from every angle, desperate to find a way to save my employees’ jobs. There was nothing. Dean Klink was right. The only way to reduce the budget by twenty percent was to let someone go. Now I had to decide who that would be.
Timothy smiled. “I hope you don’t mind Mabel coming along. She was with me on my job in Sunbury, and I didn’t have a chance to take her home.”
I twisted around in my seat to pet the dog’s ruff. She woofed in return.
“I don’t mind. She will make nice company for the trip. How long will it take?”
“About sixty minutes if we beat rush hour.”
As Timothy pulled out of the lot, I buckled my seatbelt, “I did some research on Grayson Mathews. He was a huge football star, a quarterback. He took Ohio State to the national championship his senior year, and even played pro for a few years. He retired because of a knee injury.” I frowned. “I couldn’t find any online connection to Harshberger though. I wonder what he was doing talking to Dean Klink.”
Timothy gave me a gloomy look. “How did you learn all of that?”
“It’s all on the Internet.”
He shook his head. “I can barely send an e-mail.”
“You have to remember I grew up with computers. I think I had my first computer when I was six. It was an enormous beige box, and I loved it. I wish I still had it.”
“Our childhoods could not have been more different.”
I thought of Timothy’s close family, and then of Sabrina and my father. Timothy had no idea how true that statement was, and it had nothing to do with my ability to build a motherboard from scrap parts.
“What else did you learn about him?”
“The planned community in Appleseed Creek isn’t his first. There are two others on the south and west sides of Columbus.” I paused. “According to his Web site, the Appleseed Creek project will go through. He has all the plans posted online. The only caveat was the plan is currently ‘pending.’ Did you ask your father why he didn’t tell you about Mathews’s offer?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I already know the answer. Hettie Glick spoke the truth. My father didn’t tell because I’m not Amish anymore. If I’m not Amish, I don’t have any right to know.”
“Why wouldn’t your grandfather tell you though?”
Timothy shrugged. He didn’t have an answer for that question.
We were on US 36 leading out of town. “Becky and I went to see Billy’s lawyer yesterday.”
Timothy watched me out of the corner of his eye. “I thought we agreed, she didn’t need a lawyer.”
“You agreed. I never did.”
Up ahead an Amish buggy came into view. Sunlight reflected off the bright orange triangle in red outlined on the back of the buggy. Timothy slowed as his drove around it. I waved at the elderly couple in the buggy’s front seat as we passed. They didn’t wave back. “Do you know them?”
Timothy checked the rearview mirror. “Yes, but you are changing the subject. We were talking about the lawyer. We can’t hire him because we don’t have the money.”
“He said he’d take the case for free.”
Timothy’s eyebrows shot up. “Why?”
“His grandfather grew up Amish.”
Timothy pursed his lips. “Let’s hope he’s sensitive to Amish ways, then.”
Twenty minutes later, Timothy merged onto Interstate 71, and before long, the cityscape came into view. Columbus wasn’t the size of Cleveland, but a familiarity washed over me as I watched cars swerve in and around the beginnings of rush hour traffic.
Timothy glanced at me. “You miss it.”
“Miss what?” I hadn’t made a sound.
“City life.”
I thought for moment. “I miss parts of it. Yes.”
“Like what?”
“Silly stuff, like being able to run to a mall or have every store I could possibly think of only minutes away, and being able to walk to a museum on a whim.”
“You don’t plan to stay in Appleseed Creek long.” There was no question in Timothy’s voice. He stated a fact.
Mabel made a snuffling sound in the back. I used my apparent concern for the dog to cover my confusion. How would he know that?
Timothy slowed the truck as traffic increased. It was four thirty, and rush hour had begun. He idled in his lane while waiting for traffic to clear around Interstate 270. “I don’t miss city traffic, though.”
“What do you like about living in the country?”
You. I caught my tongue before it escaped from my mouth. A blush crept up my neck. I was grateful the traffic occupied most of Timothy’s attention. I breathed in and out. “I like the scenery. I like how friendly everyone is. I’ve only been in Appleseed Creek two weeks, and I feel like I belong. A large portion of that is because of you and Becky.” I turned to him. “Could you ever live in the city?”
He changed lanes. “It wouldn’t be my first choice, but I might for the right reason.”
My stomach flipped. I wanted to ask him what the right reason would be, but chickened out.
Mabel snuffled in her sleep again and kicked her front paws back and forth as if she were chasing Gigabyte in her doggy dreams.
Timothy took the Greenlawn Avenue exit, and before long we were on High Street, one of the main roads that bisected downtown Columbus. He turned right, away from downtown. Grayson Mathews’s office sat south of the city. Scarlet and Gray was out in force on every street, even though Ohio State’s fall quarter was weeks away.
Four blocks south of downtown, Timothy turned into a narrow alleyway that led to a parking lot behind Grayson Mathews’s office, a two-story glass and brick building. Mathews Real Estate Development was emblazoned on the side of the structure.
“I’ve seen that logo before,” I said.
Timothy parked under a large shade tree. “On the Internet, right?”
“No. I saw it on a utility truck the day of the accident, when I took Ruth home. It wasn’t far from your parents’ house.”
“I guess someone from Mathews’s office was surveying the property.”
Mabel jerked awake and followed us out of the truck.
I glanced at Timothy’s precocious pet. “Something tells me this place has a no-dog policy.”
Timothy opened the truck bed. “Mabel. Up!” The shaggy dog jumped into the back of the truck and curled into a ball on top of a painter’s tarp. “She’ll be fine here. We won’t be long.”
I grinned. “I guess she wasn’t done with her nap.”
Timothy laughed. “I swear that dog is part cat with how much she sleeps.” He filled a plastic bowl with water from a disposable bottle. The August air was too hot and humid to leave the dog in the truck even with the windows down. My heart melted a little as I watched the concern he showed his dog. “Stay,” he told Mabel. She didn’t even bother to raise her head, but fell fast asleep.
Timothy and I walked around the building. He tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. I reached around him and hit the buzzer. He frowned. “Why don’t they just leave the door unlocked?”
“This is the big city, remember?”
A woman’s voice came over the intercom. “Mathews Real Estate Development. How can I help you?”
I told her who we were and that we had an appointment with Mr. Mathews. I’d called earlier in the day, telling the secretary that I was a resident of Knox County interested in the planned community he was building outside of Appleseed Creek. She had said Mr. Mathews could meet with me at four forty-five today.
Mathews’s office spoke of his success, with understated, expensive furnishings that reminded me of my father’s office in California—the one I had only seen once. A blonde woman sat at a cherry wood desk angled in one corner of the room. She smiled brightly at us from behind a laptop, a telephone, and a huge vase of sunflowers. “Miss Humphrey?”
“Yes.”
“Won’t you and . . .” she looked at Timothy.
“Timothy Troyer,” he said.
Her smile grew, and Timothy smiled back.
I frowned at the display.
The blonde showed us to the waiting room. I took a seat on one of the leather-padded chairs, and Timothy sat next to me. Now it was the blonde’s turn to frown.
Chapter Forty-One
We didn’t wait for Grayson Mathews long. He entered the room and snapped his fingers, his football ring reflecting the light from the chandelier overhead. “Humphrey? Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
Appleseed Creek Trilogy, Books 1-3 Page 21