by Marta Perry
Nonfood items included young Gabe Kauffman’s birdhouses, and next to Ben’s display were wooden puzzles, games and kids’ wagons. Abby’s friend Ella Lantz sold her lavender products, and beside her was a booth with late-blooming herbs. Hand-sewn, quilted wall hangings and table runners were displayed on dowels at another booth. Faceless Amish boy or girl dolls spilled from yet another table, and more than one plain child too young to understand Amish restraint and control wailed if they couldn’t have one.
Restraint and control, restraint and control, Abby recited to herself as her former come-calling friend, Elam Garber, sauntered up to her table with Ruth Yutzy in tow.
“Still doing everything on your own,” Elam said. “Just the way you like it, ja.”
“Hello, Elam. And Ruth,” she said, ignoring his baiting tone. Elam had not taken it well when she’d turned down his marriage proposal and asked him not to come calling again—a request he’d ignored at first, appearing several nights in his new-bought, two-seat, open buggy, and pestering her to go for a ride. While they were courting, she hadn’t been sure if he’d taken a liking to her or her property. More than once he’d said he could help her sell it to the gun club in town for a hunting lodge. Not that he belonged to that group, but he had worldly friends who did.
Besides, Elam thought messing around with mushrooms and compost piles made her look off her bean. Instead of fungi, he always said ‘Fun? Gee!” and thought “There’s a fungus among us” was really funny. Elam worked at the buggy shop in town, but always turned his head when a fancy car went by, and his heart wasn’t in any kind of farming. He was brown-haired and blue-eyed, thin and very ambitious. They’d had some fun together, but she told him he’d best spend his money and his time on someone who might marry him.
Obviously, from the adoring expression on her freckled face, the much younger Ruth was that girl. Sad to say, Abby recognized the look and feeling, but not from when Elam had come calling.
As Ruth started off ahead, Elam turned back and lowered his voice. “You have put me to shame. Folks keep asking about you, even when Ruth is right there.”
“I didn’t put you to shame. You know it’s our way to keep courtships quiet. You’re the one who spread the news before you asked, not me.”
“Oh, no. Not you. In love with your mushrooms, not a man, that’s you! You’ll be sorry,” he growled, then hurried off to catch up with Ruth.
Again, Abby marveled at his pent-up anger. Could Elam have been sneaking around her house, maybe with Ruth? Just two weeks ago he had suddenly appeared and scared her silly when she was working by lantern light after dark. But as for Ruth Yutzy raising her voice and arguing on a covered bridge or anywhere else—no way.
The morning swept by as customers bought her products. Abby kept trying to catch glimpses of Ben through the shifting parade of people—just to see how he was doing. After another quick glance at him, she dragged her gaze and mind back to business.
“Yes,” she answered Ella, who had darted down from her lavender booth. “The red in the chutney is chopped peppers. The spices are cloves and allspice.”
“I think that’s what I bought from you once before and really liked,” Ella said, examining the preserve through the glass jar. “I’ll take two and give one to Mamm. By the way, I can see you know who’s back in town. Your sister’s old and now forbidden friend.”
“He’s living out across the bridge from me and says he’s here to examine his life and maybe rejoin our people.”
“Ja? I’ll have to tell Bishop Esh. If Ben’s taken back, our people will do more than just say hello. From my booth, I can see he’s only getting short greetings and nods so far. It’s probably a good thing your sister doesn’t live here now, ’cause she might still have a soft spot in her heart for him, and Daad said he was always trouble. Well, see you later if you’re going to stay for supper at the restaurant.” She turned as the owner of the Dutch Farm Table came up beside her. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Logan! Table for six of us buddy group friends when this is over!” With a wave Ella darted off with her jars of chutney.
“You all sure do love your eating and talking,” Ray-Lynn Logan said with a smile. “What’s that expression you use?”
“Klatsche und schmatze,” Abby told her. “Talking and eating. It’s one of our secret rules,” she added with a little smile.
Ray-Lynn, a middle-aged redhead with a Southern accent, usually sent one of her waitresses to the market to buy button mushrooms for breakfast omelets and soup. But word was that the owner of the popular restaurant was pretty sweet on the county sheriff, Jack Freeman, whose office was at the end of the street. He always walked the Saturday market, chatting with the locals. Maybe that’s why Ray-Lynn had come out herself today, though the sheriff was over talking to Ben right now.
“What’s the one that tastes like cashews, Abigail?” Ray-Lynn asked, looking over the array of fresh mushrooms, each with its hand-lettered label. “Not for the restaurant, but for me. I love the flavor of cashews, but if I overeat the nuts themselves, they send me to the ladies’ room a bit too often, if you know what I mean.”
“Better switch to the walnuts I’ll have in a couple of weeks,” Abby told her. “But these oyster mushrooms—that’s what you’re thinking of. Stir-fry them for about fifteen minutes or just garnish salads with them. And here are the sacks with your standing orders.”
Ray-Lynn paid Abby and put her purchases in her cloth bag, chatting about how she’d love to decorate her restaurant at Thanksgiving with the turkey tail mushrooms, because they looked just like the bird. Abby tried to concentrate on everything this kindly woman was saying, but she kept darting looks across the street to see how Ben was doing. Sheriff Freeman hadn’t been in office when Ben lived here before, so maybe he was checking Ben out.
Her next customer, a man she did not know, had bought one of Ben’s boxes. He put it down while he paid for the mushrooms, and Abby had a chance to see it up close. Maple leaves were carved on the corners and scattered across the top. It was absolutely amazing, just as Ben had always been.
* * *
ABBY, ELLA AND FOUR OTHER friends met for a late-afternoon dinner at the Dutch Farm Table Restaurant each market day. Mrs. Logan gave them a big table in the back room and they chatted and laughed. As Abby tied Fern’s reins to the long hitching post in front of the restaurant, she saw that Ben’s black truck was parked nearby. When she went in, he was at the counter where singles often sat. She just said, “Hope you had a good day,” as she went by toward the back room.
“Looking good right now,” he said to her, keeping his voice low, too.
Now what did he mean by that? she thought, as a bolt of heat raced down her spine and curled in the pit of her belly. But she didn’t glance back as she longed to do.
Abby and her friends ordered quickly—they all had the big menu memorized—and it didn’t take long for Clara to mention Ben.
“I heard a rumor he’s here to rejoin the church, and if he does, can’t you just imagine the maidals who will be hoping he comes calling? He’ll weigh an extra hundred pounds by the time their mamms and grossmamms get done feeding him up at their tables, he sure will!”
“And I bet you’ll be first in line, Clara Hershberger!” Ella said with a pert grin. “But Abby used to know him, ’cause her sister went with him for a couple of years. And did you see those not-just-for-pretty hope chests he makes? I’m going to start saving for one, fill it with lavender and linens.”
“I think,” Barbara Yoder said with a smothered laugh and an elbow to Ella’s ribs, “you two could go into business together—lavender sachets sold in his carved boxes. I saw one with butterflies all over it and another with tulips, so why not lavender outside—and in?”
Barbara Metzler, who was a bit older, sighed and rolled her brown eyes. She was the schoolteacher and always sounded like one. “Now, let’s bow our heads and thank the good Lord for bringing Ben back, and hope he’ll return to the fold. Then Abby can describe that old house he bought, since she’s just a stone’s throw away.”
“That’s right!” Clara said, looking up from her first attempt to bow her head. “He’s really close to you.”
“Living close,” Abby corrected. “But if he’s just a stone’s throw,” she went on, her pulse pounding hard for no reason except they were talking about her and Ben in the same breath, “it’s like one of those throws where the stone just skips and skips over the water and doesn’t land where you ever meant it to.”
Ella frowned at her, and the others went silent. “Like what does that mean?” Ella asked. “Never mind. Are you sure you’re not eating those kinds of mushrooms that mess up your head? Now, I’m just teasing. You can tell us how it was when he was close to your sister, and what you know about him beating up that Englische guy that tried to—” she dropped her voice to a whisper now, as if they were talking about a mass murderer “—put his hands all over Ben’s sister. That’s the way my brother Seth explained it. And then Ben refused to admit to the bishop and the elders he’d done wrong, and got put under the bann.”
As the waitress placed their rolls and salads on the table and they finally bowed their heads for a moment of silent prayer, Abby admitted to herself and to the Lord that she and her friends gossiped too much. She also admitted—as she would never do to anyone else, ever—that she still cared for and wanted Ben Kline, no matter what he’d done wrong in the past or even if he did something bad now. That’s just how much she was slipping into sinful thoughts about him again!
* * *
ABBY WAS STILL AGONIZING over Ben and that diamond she’d found when she got home just before sunset and unpacked her few unsold goods. As daylight faded, she unharnessed and fed Fern in the small barn she used for her gardening tools. Next she went down into the cellar where she hid her extra cash in a metal box, way back on the shelves. In front of it, she stacked the panes of glass held together with duct tape that kept her mushroom spore prints ready to be sown on prepared hosts.
But her lantern light wavered, and she felt a sudden cold draft down here. That was odd. The first thing she thought was that she didn’t need her spores getting chilled or the buckets of water with spore slurry icing over.
She gasped. One of the cellar windows was lifted up—wide open, when she had left it barely cracked! It couldn’t have slid up on its own! She grabbed her lantern and swung the light around the crowded room. Shadows leaped at her as the fungi growing on detached tree limbs seemed to sway.
She noticed muddy footprints on the floor under the open window. Someone had evidently jumped down into the basement. Her heart pounding, she thudded up the stairs. She wanted to search the rest of her house to be sure her spending money and that diamond she’d hidden under her stockings were still there, but instead she simply grabbed her purse, not even locking the door behind her, and ran outside.
Darkness was descending, but the sunset still silhouetted the Hanging Bridge in streaming reds. Not stopping to get Fern, she fled toward the bridge and Ben’s house. Bann or not, she needed help, and he was it.
CHAPTER FOUR
ABBY’S INSTINCT WAS TO shout for Ben, but she kept quiet in case her intruder was nearby. At least she could see Ben’s lights across the river. She’d noticed his truck in the driveway earlier, so he’d beat her home. The bridge loomed ahead, and she ran into its dark, cavernous depths.
Sounds outside muted instantly. Panic pounded in her ears as her feet thudded on the floorboards. Her bonnet bounced off, held by its strings around her neck, and she felt her heavy braid come loose from its hairpins under her prayer kapp. As she burst out the other side, an owl’s hoot demanded Who? Who? as if echoing her own fears. Who would break into her house and why? All these years out here, so safe. Now everything had changed, since Ben came back.
Gasping for breath, she tore up onto his porch and knocked hard on the door. He peered out the closest window. Frowning, he yanked the door open.
“Abby, what hap—”
“Someone broke into my house, though the cellar. I don’t know if he’s still there or not!”
He came outside fast, stooped and squinted across the creek, but she could tell he couldn’t see much. A breeze had come up, and the trees shed more leaves. “Did they steal anything?” he asked, taking her elbow. A lightning bolt shot clear up her arm. Ben, forbidden. Ben, touching her. Verboten, but what could she do?
“I don’t know,” she answered, panting for breath and pulling slightly away. “I saw the open window and footprints and ran.”
“Stay inside here while I go over to look around.”
“No, I can’t—shouldn’t. I’ll come with you.”
“Wait right here.”
He ducked inside and came out with a leather jacket and a rifle.
“Ben—a gun. You can’t—”
“It’s my old hunting rifle, and I haven’t used it since I left here. It’s not even loaded, but it could be useful, even as a club.”
“I don’t mean for you to do violence—you know what I’m saying,” she insisted as he frowned at her.
“We’ll just be sure your place is safe,” he said. “Come on then.”
He locked his front door and started off at a jogging pace, with Abby holding up her skirt a bit to run behind him. He called back to her, “I’d like for you to put this jacket on, but I know you can’t take it from me. You’re sweating but shivering.”
“I ran out so fast without a coat—just nerves.”
“You have anything valuable over there? You had any trouble with this kind of thing before?”
“Never. Never in all these years.”
But he’d asked about something valuable. Her stomach cartwheeled. What if the person who lost that diamond had come back to look for it and broken into her house? Should she tell Ben about shining the light on that couple?
As soon as they entered the bridge, he threw his leather jacket on the ground. He must mean for her to put it on, though she could not take it from his hand. He’d waited until they were hidden on the bridge.
She stooped to pick it up, and swirled it around her shoulders, then hurried to catch up with him again. Even in the dark—a half moon was now tilting over the treed horizon when they ran from the bridge—Ben seemed to know the trail to her house.
Did that mean he’d explored here before? Without breaking stride, he followed the sawdust path past her stacked logs and around the irregular mushroom patches. She saw now that, in her panic, she’d left the lantern in the cellar. Wan light shone from the two low, closed windows on this side of the house.
“Do you want to just peek down into the cellar first?” she whispered, out of breath. “I know the window the person used to get in.”
“Okay. Show me.”
She took him around the back of the house, which faced the forest. Dark now, with the wind up, the Wild Run Woods seemed a living, breathing thing, shifting, whispering, watching.
She stuck so close to Ben that she bumped into his back when he stopped and knelt to look in the open window. She stooped beside him.
“Mushrooms down there, too,” he whispered. His mouth was so close to her ear that his breath heated her temple even in the chill breeze. “Let’s go in, but you stick tight.”
Holding his gun like a club, he led the way through the back door. “Sheriff Freeman here!” he bellowed, so loudly she jumped. Despite the fact it was a lie, it was somehow a good one. Maybe there were shades of gray in what this man said and did.
They stopped just inside the kitchen, barely breathing. Ben locked the door behind them. No sound came from inside the six-room, single-story place but the familiar creak of its old bones.
“Light another lantern,” he whispered. Nervous, but feeling so much safer with Ben here, she fumbled with the match, then blessed the gentle hiss as soft lantern light enveloped them. His eyes gleamed as he looked over at her, then nodded as if to give her courage. She’d slipped her arms into his jacket now, and appreciated its warmth. It felt cold in the house, as if the wind were trying to break in, too.
After opening the pantry door to look inside, and then checking under the sink while she held the lantern for him, Ben started into the living room. With Abby close behind, he peered into each nook and corner, in closets, behind doors, under beds in both bedrooms. Well, she had nothing to hide, though it felt strange to have the man of her dreams in her bedroom. He seemed to dwarf her bathroom as he pulled the shower curtain aside and checked the tub. She wished she’d scrubbed it better. They bumped into each other as he turned around to head out.