by Mary Ellis
“That’ll be fine,” his former boss agreed as he stuck out his hand.
Matt pumped it eagerly. “Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”
Mr. Macintosh bent to look inside the kitchen window. “Your place is real nice. You’re a lucky man, son.” He nodded and walked down the steps to his truck, leaving Matthew pondering his lucrative but lonely future.
Leah had planned to tell her parents anyway. After all, she couldn’t hide for the rest of her life up in her room. Today was Saturday—formerly the diner’s busiest day. Her parents knew it would take something far worse than a headache to keep her home. Dressing in her shabbiest clothes, Leah went downstairs feeling guilty, despite the fact she had never forgotten to ring up a sale.
Her parents sat at the kitchen table with mugs of coffee untouched and cooling before them. An open newspaper had been spread out and they pored over a story. Leah walked straight to the coffeepot. “Guder mariye,” she greeted. “Something interesting in the newspaper?”
Two pairs of dark eyes turned toward her. Her mamm and daed stared as though she’d turned unrecognizable while asleep.
“What’s wrong?” she asked with growing anxiety.
“This!” Simon stabbed the paper with his finger.
Leah leaned over his shoulder to read aloud. “Local diner closed. Owner arrested on suspicion of fraud.” Her eyes quickly scanned the story and locked on April Lambright’s name and “Leah’s Home Cooking.” She stopped reading and slumped into a chair. “This is worse than I thought,” she moaned.
Simon shook the edge of the newspaper. “Mr. Lee walked over at dawn after picking this paper up yesterday in Wooster. He was real upset. This says that your partner wrote at least a dozen checks from an already overdrawn checking account. Folk who got these checks deposited them in their bank accounts and paid bills, thinking the money was there. Mrs. Lambright caused an avalanche of problems for these people, one right after another.” Simon glared at her while Julia wrung her hands as if she were doing arthritis exercises.
“I didn’t pay any bills. April took care of all that.”
“No, Leah, it looks like no one took care of that!” Simon stormed. “And that kind of behavior is called fraud.”
Julia spoke in a gentler voice. “Didn’t you know this was going on? Couldn’t you have stopped her? Lots of folk are hoppin’ mad, and she’s sitting in the county jail right now.”
“Mamm, I asked her if we were current with bills and she said yes. She lied to me.”
“That’s not all, young lady,” Simon blustered. “The paper says the landlord has evicted you two and that the state might be bringing charges. If your restaurant was collecting sales tax on restaurant meals, nobody sent a dime of it into the state treasury. They’re not real happy about that.”
With trembling fingers Leah reached for her coffee and drank down half.
“How much did you know abut this, Leah?” Julia asked. “I take it this is the source of yesterday’s migraine.”
“You could say that,” she murmured.
“You’d better be saying a lot more than you are, daughter.” Simon’s face had turned the color of mulled cider.
Leah refilled her mug and began the saga of her short history as a restaurant partner. She told about the drawer of late notices, the unhappy vendors speaking to April behind closed doors, and the embarrassing trip to the poultry farm. She culminated with the visit from the nasty Mr. Jenkins two days earlier. When she placed a harsh inflection on the landlord’s behavior, her father interrupted.
“Don’t be taking that attitude, Leah. That landlord deserves to be paid the rent fully and on time. He’s not the bad guy here.”
Leah relaxed her tense shoulders. “I know, but April spent a lot of money remodeling the train cars to turn them into a diner—some of it her own, some borrowed from her father.”
“All the more reason she needed to pay the rent, to protect her investment as well as her good name…and yours, I might add!”
Leah sipped her coffee, wishing she’d never seen that rundown train.
“Did she really get turned away at the organic turkey farm?” Julia asked.
Leah could only nod her head.
Simon leaned toward her. “People coming to the diner to demand payment…that’s not good. How many people in Holmes County does she owe money to?”
A shrug of the shoulders was Leah’s second nonverbal reply as she concentrated on not weeping. This was an adult mess. She wouldn’t respond like a little girl. Tension in her back and shoulders returned with a vengeance.
Simon wouldn’t let the matter drop. “Local folk showing up at the diner for a meal and finding the place padlocked…do you understand how bad this looks? It reflects on your character too, not just Mrs. Lambright’s.” He stared, waiting for an answer she didn’t have.
Leah downed her coffee, feeling the burn in the back of her throat. She might as well get everything out in the open, not leaving out a single detail. She couldn’t endure another conversation with her parents if more sordid information reached their ears. “It wasn’t just her father and husband she borrowed money from to get started,” she said.
Her parents gazed at her with utter disbelief as she revealed where most of her savings account had gone.
Helping mamm in the house and Henry with farm chores kept Leah busy and her mind off the fact she no longer had a job to go to. She also no longer had a paycheck to help with household expenses. With the first frost just around the corner she couldn’t plant extra vegetables to sell. Any apples or pears left on the trees would be bird pecked by now. She couldn’t work for Aunt Hannah because spinning and weaving wool made her allergies unbearable. Mrs. Lee already employed a girl for housecleaning once a week. That only left her pie making. April hadn’t reimbursed her for the last baking supplies. She would have to spend some of her decimated savings to stock up.
“Leah!” Julia’s voice finally pierced her daydreaming. “I’ve been calling you for ten minutes.” Her head appeared in the henhouse doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Changing straw in the chicken cages and washing water bowls.”
“With your allergies? Come out of there. Henry will finish that. You need to go take a shower.”
“Why?” Leah patted the straw down and closed the cage door. One hen offered an appreciative cluck.
“Because you’re going with me to quilting today. And don’t even think of arguing. You can’t hide from people. You’re guilty of being naive and nonconfrontational, that’s all. I know you are nineteen now, but most young people your age are naive. By the time you’re my age you won’t be so trusting.”
Leah looked into Julia’s warm brown eyes and felt that she might just survive this nightmare. “All right, I’ll come to quilting. It’s been a long while since I’ve done anything like that. And I can’t wait to put this behind me.”
Mother and daughter walked to the house with linked arms. Autumn leaves swirled at their feet while migrating ducks flew in formation overhead toward sunnier states. Leah found a sense of peace on the buggy ride over to the house hosting the bee. But her serenity didn’t last five minutes once inside the door.
Their hostess greeted them in the kitchen. Mrs. Walters hugged Julia and offered Leah a shy smile. They added their pie to the plates of cookies brought by the ladies for snack time. But when they entered the living room with their sewing baskets, welcoming smiles were few. Most ladies stared at Leah with blank faces devoid of emotion, while a few younger gals stared with open hostility.
A thin, dark-haired girl was first to speak. “You dare to show your face, Leah Miller? But then again I suppose you’ve got no place else to go since the sheriff shut down your little scam!” Her words stung Leah like wasp bites.
“Anna Boyer, you keep silent if you’re gonna talk like that,” said Mrs. Walters. “This is my home, and all are welcome here.”
Anna looked chastised but added, “My Aaron is still owed six hundred
dollars for those picnic tables he made for you. He needs the money to pay the lumberyard. Pressure-treated wood ain’t cheap.” Her lips thinned to an angry line.
Julia sat down heavily in one chair and pointed at another to Leah. Because running out the back door apparently wasn’t an option, Leah sat down and addressed Anna. “I’m sorry that Aaron still hasn’t been paid. Upon my word, I had no idea this mess was brewing behind my back. I’ll see that he is paid back if I have to sell pies until I’m ninety-five years old.”
Anna bobbed her head in acceptance while Julia smiled at Leah. However, another young woman at the end of the table didn’t want the matter dropped so easily.
She cleared her throat, drawing everyone’s attention. “Maybe, Leah, you might have noticed what was going on in the restaurant if you hadn’t been so busy flirting with every young man in Winesburg—Amish or English.”
Leah crept out of bed as quietly as possible. It had been several years since she had to share a bedroom, but her sister had come home unexpectedly. Emma explained that she had a fight with Jamie but didn’t wish to discuss the matter. She was only going to stay one night, but then she decided to spend a few days at home to help mamm finish the fall canning. Seeing Emma’s pale, wan face filled Leah with sadness, adding to her own pile of woes.
Looks like both Miller girls are plagued with trouble.
She had pictured Emma and Jamie as happy as clams, living in Charm with a tractor for him and a dishwasher for her. How naive she’d been in this matter too. It took far more than modern appliances to make a marriage work. Leah had prayed long and hard that her sister and brother-in-law wouldn’t allow their grievances to separate them for long. She’d never seen anything so romantic as the way James Davis looked at Emma during their courtship, especially while she was mending after her accident.
Will any man ever gaze on me with such devotion?
The likelihood of that diminished with each passing day. Jonah should have returned by now, and he had probably heard the news of the diner’s demise. Leah hoped he hadn’t stopped by there on his way home and seen firsthand the posted notices telling the world of their failure.
Leah tucked the quilt under Emma’s chin before heading downstairs to start breakfast, finding comfort in her soft snore. As much as she would like to, this was no time to hide her head under the covers. She wouldn’t be in this mess if she hadn’t been such a wilting violet.
In the kitchen her spirits improved by doing what she did best—cooking. While sausage sizzled in the pan, she heated her flat skillet to make thin, sweet pancakes called crepes by the Englischers. She would roll them around strawberry, peach, or apple preserves, and a few around cottage cheese—her personal favorite. She mixed a pitcher of orange juice and started oatmeal for Henry. That boy ate more than anybody she knew…except for Jonah.
Melancholy swept over her like a sudden chill. Jonah. Maybe, just maybe, he would understand the disaster had been impossible to prevent.
“Guder mariye,” Julia said upon entering the room. “Looks like I timed things right this morning. There is a hidden blessing in you not having a job—at least for me.” Julia poured coffee and lowered herself into a chair.
“At least you now have a trained professional taking over breakfast duties,” Leah said with a smile. “How would you like your rolled pancakes this morning—with strawberry, peach, or apple preserves?”
“Surprise me, or better yet, one of each.” She turned toward the window, as did Leah to the sound of gravel crunching in the driveway.
Leah pulled back the curtain and spotted April Lambright climbing out of her pickup. “Oh, no. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”
Julia was out of her chair and by Leah’s side in an instant, despite her arthritic stiffness. “Go, Leah. Be brave. And ask her in to breakfast if she cares to eat. Have courage and compassion in your heart. I’ll fry up the pancakes for you.”
Leah walked out to the porch feeling like Daniel headed into the lion’s den. “Hullo, April,” she said without emotion.
“Hi, Leah.” April approached the steps slowly, looking as though she hadn’t slept in days. “I came here as soon as I could, as soon as things calmed down at home.” She crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself as though cold.
“I’m sure you’re in hot water with your husband.” Leah crossed her arms too while she walked down the steps to be on level ground with her former partner.
“That’s the understatement of the century.”
“I heard you were you in jail.”
April’s features tightened. “Yes, for one night, and then my sister and her husband posted bail.”
“Your sister, not your husband?”
April looked at the ground, but not before Leah saw two big tears slip from her lashes. “No, he tried to…but our bank had frozen our checking and savings accounts due to this…trouble I’ve caused. My husband said it was okay with him if I cooled my heels in jail for a while to give me some thinkin’ time.”
“He sounds quite put out…just like I am.” Leah straightened her spine. “Why, April? How could you do such a thing? Our customers and vendors were also our friends.”
April lifted her chin to meet her gaze. “I didn’t mean to. I hadn’t planned to not pay folk. But when the money first started coming in, I started thinking about all the things my kids have done without since Tom’s hours were cut back at the plant. My son has never had a decent bicycle like other kids, and my girl has wanted horseback riding lessons for years.”
“You stiffed people who have their own bills to pay for riding lessons and toys?” Leah’s voice rose to reflect utter disbelief.
April shrugged. “I never planned to stiff anybody. I thought I’d get a few things for my kids and pay the bills with the next few weeks of profits. But then the pump broke on our septic system, and it turned out we needed a whole new system. Ours no longer met codes. I had already sunk every dime of our savings into the remodeling, so I had to use the diner income to pay for it. The man insisted on payment in full before he installed the new system.”
“Smart man.”
April winced as though she’d been slapped. “I know I deserved that. I put you in a tight spot and you’re stuck sharing the embarrassment. I surely didn’t mean things to turn out this way.” She gazed toward the road for a moment. “I like you, Leah. I think you’re a fabulous cook and baker, and I’ve loved working at the diner with you. I’m sorry my mishandling finances has caused so much pain for you, my family, and for our town.” Tears ran freely down her face. “My dad warned me that running a business and keeping accounts were harder than it looked, but I wouldn’t listen. I had stars in my eyes…and dollar signs. Budgeting has never been my strong suit, but I was too proud to ask someone as young as you for help. If I had, maybe we wouldn’t have lost our money.”
The reality that Leah’s investment was truly gone hadn’t hit home until then, yet still her anger and indignation evaporated. She felt only pity for a woman whose pride had caused so much heartache. Especially as she was in no position to cast stones, considering her own past behavior. “What’s to be done now, April? How can you put this behind you?”
April looked up with a spark of hope. “My lawyer said that if I make restitution to the people I defrauded, and if they sign affidavits that they have been paid and don’t want to press charges, she might be able to convince the district attorney to drop the charges against me before my trial date. I’ll have to appear before the judge and explain I’m a bad manager but not a thief. And that is the honest-to-goodness truth. I didn’t mean to cheat anybody.”
The solution didn’t sound quite so simple to Leah. “How do you plan to accomplish that?”
April withdrew two pieces of paper from her handbag. “My lawyer took a look at the stack of IOUs and invoices I had in the drawer and compiled a list. Then she split the list in two—one for me to pay off and obtain affidavits and the other half for you.” Without a moment’
s hesitation, she handed a sheet to Leah.
“Me? Why would I have to pay these folk? I didn’t handle the money!” Indignation came roaring back.
April said quietly, “No, but you were my partner, and the attorney said it would look better to the judge if we both bore responsibility.”
Leah’s eyes swelled to the size of a barn owl’s. “This is not fair!”
“Maybe not, but I did always pay your wages regularly and reimburse you for baking supplies, except for when things had snowballed out of control.” She stood anxiously like a child waiting for a birthday present.
Leah fought the urge to mention those reimbursements never came close to the total Miller family outlay for expenses and supplies. “This isn’t fair,” she repeated in barely a whisper.
“I know it isn’t, but I can’t possibly pay everybody back before my trial date, no matter how I beg, borrow, or sell everything I own. I’m desperate, and I’m begging you to help me.” She held out the sheet of paper in her long thin fingers.
Leah stared at it as though it were a snake in the henhouse, but she saw little alternative. No way would she let her foolish business partner be sent to jail if it could be prevented. Without speaking, because her throat had grown painfully tight, she plucked the list from April’s hand.
April impulsively threw her arms around Leah’s neck and hugged. “Oh, thank you so much. God bless you, Leah. I will be forever in your debt.”
Just don’t try to convert that debt to dollars and cents. “You want to come inside for breakfast? My mamm has crepes ready to go with your choice of filling.” For a second it felt as though she was back in her beloved diner talking about the daily specials with enthusiasm.
April looked stricken. “Oh, no. I couldn’t face your parents. I’m not that brave, but thanks just the same.” She kissed Leah’s cheek with sisterly affection and then hurried to her truck. Leah watched April’s pickup reach the end of the driveway as her words “I never planned to stiff anybody” ran through her head. Somehow that knowledge didn’t lift an ounce of the burden she clutched in her hand. When her former partner disappeared from view, she looked down at the onerous paper and gasped.