The Calling

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Then Edith Fisher cleared her throat, determined to take charge, and Naomi wondered what everyone was in for. “Speaking of modern and worldly ways, I understand those Schrocks have a preacher staying in their guest flat now.” She pursed her lips as if tasting a sour lemon. “A lady preacher.”

  “A youth pastor,” Naomi said quietly but firmly.

  “Same thing,” Edith said.

  “Now, Edith,” Fannie said, a smile wobbling at the edges of her mouth, “your halo always did fit a little too tight.” Fannie was second from the bottom of the five sisters, the polar opposite of her younger sibling, as full figured as Sylvia was petite and as opinionated as Sylvia was soft-spoken.

  “How did you hear that, Edith?” Sylvia asked.

  Edith paused while she threaded her needle. “Oh, well, people talk. You know.”

  People do talk; Edith certainly did.

  “Mark my words. Those Schrocks attract trouble like molasses draws flies. They’re just like those Amos Lapps over at Windmill Farm. No difference at all. And I don’t mind telling them so right to their faces.”

  Something out the window caught Naomi’s eye. Up the walk came Hank Lapp, former suitor to Edith before she spurned him for her now-dead brand-new husband. And that was when Naomi’s headache took a turn for the worse.

  Jimmy was in the cool of the barn, wrapping his prize horse Lodestar’s leg before he exercised him so the horse wouldn’t knick his forelegs with his hoofs.

  “JIMMY FISHER? WHERE ARE YOU?” The horses in the barn stirred and lifted their heads at the sound of Hank Lapp’s bellow.

  Jimmy popped his head up over the stall. “Hank, how many times do I have to tell you to keep your voice low and calm around these Thoroughbreds?”

  Hank Lapp was a one-of-a-kind older Plain man in looks and personality. Wiry white hair that stuck out in all directions, a wandering eye that made a person unsure of which eye to look at, a fellow with his own way of thinking about things. Most folks had trouble tolerating him for a multitude of reasons, all reasonable, but Jimmy was fond of him. For all his bluster, Hank had a good heart.

  “Well, you could have warned me that house was filled with cackling hens.”

  “And just how was I supposed to know you were looking for me?” Jimmy bent down to finish wrapping Lodestar’s foreleg. “How was Ohio?”

  “It was fine. Just fine. Julia and Rome are trying to talk us into moving there with them.”

  “No kidding? Is Amos considering it?”

  Hank shrugged. “All depends on Fern. She’s from there, you know.” He picked up a currycomb and examined it. “Women run the world,” he muttered. “You could have warned me that Naomi had her quilting bee today.”

  “Now, how could I have warned you when I didn’t even know you were back in Stoney Ridge?”

  “Well, you should tack a sign up on the front door. Give a fellow a little heads-up.” He lifted his hands in the air, drawing a sign: “ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.”

  “When did you get back?”

  “Yesterday. Thought I’d better grab you for some afternoon fishing before someone beats us to all the good ones.”

  “I’d like to, Hank, but Galen’s at an auction and I need to get a few things done before he gets back.”

  “Now, see? Galen had enough sense to go missing from the farm on quilting days.” Hank scratched his neck. “Did you know your mother is up there in that henhouse?”

  So that’s what was nettling Hank. “Yup. She returned to Stoney Ridge a few weeks ago. You probably hadn’t heard since you were in Ohio. Her new husband passed.”

  Hank took off his hat. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” He put his hat back on. “Not too terrible sorry, though. I never did understand why she up and married him so fast after she spurned me.” He leaned against the stall wall. “Women are a mystery.”

  “They are at that.” As Jimmy wrapped Lodestar’s other foreleg, he made sure the wrap would stay tied. Galen was always chiding him for babying this horse, but Lodestar wasn’t just any horse. Jimmy didn’t want a single scar on his forelegs to mar his appearance. He had plans for Lodestar—this horse was going to be the anchor of his breeding business. He checked the ends one more time, then straightened up.

  Hank picked up a piece of straw and chewed on it. “You still trying to get Bethany Schrock to pay you any mind?”

  Jimmy frowned. “Getting girls’ attention has never been hard.”

  “No, not most. Just hers.”

  “If I really wanted Bethany Schrock, I could get her.”

  Hank let out a rusty laugh. “Well, I never thought I’d see the day when a Fisher boy couldn’t get a girl!”

  Hank Lapp had just sailed past friendly and arrived at annoying.

  “You’re just like your brother. Always shopping, never buying.”

  “Paul did get married,” Jimmy said, teeth gritted. The Fisher boys’ reluctance to settle down was a constant source of amusement for Hank—ironic commentary from a dedicated bachelor. It deeply annoyed Jimmy to be compared to Paul. He wasn’t like him. He wasn’t. “I will, too, when I’m ready to pick the girl.”

  “Unless that girl happens to be Bethany Schrock!” Hank roared. “You’ll have to chase her till she catches you!”

  What irked Jimmy was that Hank spoke the truth. He wasn’t accustomed to not being taken seriously by a woman. Most girls loved any attention Jimmy threw their way. Bethany acted as if she could take him or leave him. For example, if they happened to be talking, she was always the first to say goodbye. That bothered him. He liked to be the first to say goodbye. He thought it left a girl wanting more.

  But it was time to change the subject. “Hank, why would you suppose someone might have a trunk of human bones hidden in a basement?”

  Hank pulled off his hat and turned it in a circle, thinking hard. “Well, there could be all kinds of explanations.”

  Now, that was just one of the reasons Jimmy tolerated Hank Lapp better than most. When Hank grew irritating, which he inevitably did, Jimmy could steer him off in a different direction. Hank didn’t mind exploring odd trails of conversation. His entire life was a giant trail of loose ends.

  “Could be a real simple reason.” Hank scratched his wooly white hair. “Not sure what it might be, though.”

  Jimmy thought about that for a long moment. “You just gave me an idea.” He closed Lodestar’s stall and locked both sections of the door with a keyed lock and hung the key on the wall. This beautiful stallion had escape on his mind at all times. “Coming with me?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just up to the house.” Jimmy grabbed his hat. “I have a question or two I need to ask the sisters from the Sisters’ House.”

  “NO SIR! I’m not going back up there. The way your mother glared at me—I felt as doomed as a chicken laying its head down on the chopping block.” He scowled at Jimmy with his good eye. “I’m going fishing.”

  “Suit yourself,” Jimmy said, grinning.

  Bethany sat in the air-conditioned waiting room of the Stoney Ridge Times office, holding a paper cup of amber-colored lukewarm tea. She’d been waiting over thirty-five minutes for the features editor to get out of a meeting so she could hand him the signed paperwork to set up Mrs. Miracle’s new column. She glanced at the wall clock again. Forty-five minutes.

  Shootfire! She was already tired of the newspaper business.

  Bethany leaned back in her chair and took in a deep breath, then let it go. Offices had a unique smell: ink and paper and waxed floors. A wisp of yearning wove through her chest. The scent reminded her of her father’s office at Schrock Investments, and that reminded her of Jake Hertzler. She felt very unsettled today, almost like a storm was heading in, but it wasn’t.

  Time. Things took time to heal.

  Rose had reminded her of that very thing after Jake’s abrupt departure. Maybe she should write it on an index card and stick it in her dress pocket.

  How could it still
sting so much, even as the weeks flew by? It was embarrassing how much she thought she had loved Jake. Humiliating how she had played right into his hands, swept along by his charm. Horrifying when she learned he had tried to cheat Jimmy Fisher out of that pretty horse with the flaxen mane.

  Where would Bethany be right now if she had run off with Jake like they had planned? Most likely, he never intended to marry her.

  She knew she should feel grateful that she had enough sense to have refused, in the end, to go with him. In a way, she was grateful. But she was also steaming mad at Jake. It wasn’t easy to be steaming mad at a person who had vanished . . . where did all that madness go? Stuffed down deep, that’s where it went.

  Most everyone thought Jake had broken her heart in two when he left, and she let them think whatever they wanted to think. She doubted Jake’s heart was broken when she refused to go—but then, she wasn’t even sure he had much of a heart. No, breaking up with Jake wasn’t the cause of the lingering sting she couldn’t shake off.

  She still couldn’t get her head around that piece of information that Jake had told her months ago when he appeared suddenly in Stoney Ridge—that her brother Tobe, who had gone missing, was with their mother. A fresh wave of anger washed over her. Bethany wanted to be with their mother. She wanted to know her, to find out why she had left. She knew so little about this mysterious woman who had given Bethany life, then vanished.

  Her father would never discuss their mother. Mammi Vera would turn red in the face with rage if the subject came up. And so it didn’t.

  Why had her mother left? Why? Bethany would never understand. As long as she lived, she’d never understand it. How could a mother desert her children? How did her mother walk away, knowing it would mean she would never see them sing at a Christmas program or wear a wedding dress or hold her grandbaby? Whenever Bethany looked back on all the moments of her life, both trivial and wondrous, her mother was always missing.

  Rose was a wonderful stepmother, a truly caring, loving surrogate. But how could anyone take the place of a mother? Why was finding her mother so important to her? It was all she could think about since Jake had told her about Tobe. Bethany could hardly remember her, except in the barest fragments.

  She swirled the tepid tea in the cup, mesmerized by the whirlpool it created. Something floated up from the back of her mind, a wisp of a memory—

  She closed her eyes, a rush of water swirled around her. Then there was a woman’s scream and someone lifted her up. Bethany opened her eyes and saw a woman, dressed in blue. “Don’t be afraid, Bethany,” the woman said.

  Jolted by the sudden blast of memories, Bethany put the cup down and shook her head slightly, as if to shake off that image. What was happening to her lately? Strange, disjointed memories kept floating through her head, like steam from this teacup.

  Someone cleared his throat. “Mrs. Miracle, I presume?”

  Bethany snapped her head up to discover a heavyset man leaning on the doorjamb, looking at her with a very bored look on his face. She rose to her feet and tossed the paper cup into the trash can, giving him her most charming smile. “I’m as close as you’ll ever get.”

  3

  Mim rode her scooter to the Bent N’ Dent to buy some baking soda for Mammi Vera, who preferred it to toothpaste. She had hoped Bethany would go, seeing as she had a surfeit of free time on her hands now that she wasn’t going back to the Sisters’ House because of the risk of getting murdered. But Bethany said it was too hot to go anywhere and Mammi Vera said she agreed with that. But Mammi Vera didn’t think it was too hot for Mim to go.

  As she was searching on the shelves for baking soda in aisle four, she heard a deep voice whisper her name. “Hello there, Mim.”

  Mim looked up to catch Danny Riehl peering down at her, and for a moment she felt absolutely bewildered. She hadn’t seen him in well over a month and he had grown a foot or two. His shoulders were wide, and if she wasn’t mistaken, there was some peach fuzz on his cheeks and under his nose. Why, he hardly looked like the same boy who finished eighth grade in May. He was on the old side for his grade, but still. He practically looked and sounded like a grown man.

  Mim pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose at the exact same moment that Danny did. “Hello,” she said, trying to sound casual and nonchalant, but everything inside her was on tiptoes. “Are you back from visiting your cousins in Alabama?”

  He nodded. “We got back last week. I’ve been meaning to stop by, but . . .”

  “I’ve been very busy,” Mim said. “Hardly home.” That wasn’t at all true. She was home 97 percent of the time, but Danny didn’t need to know that.

  “Did you get my postcard from NASA?”

  Did she ever! She floated on air for a week after receiving it. And now it was tucked under her pillow. “Yes. Thank you. Did you see any moon rocks?”

  A big grin creased Danny’s face. “I did. I saw rocket ships and moon rocks and an astronaut suit.”

  Mim wondered what Mammi Vera might say if she overheard Danny’s excitement. Her grandmother was always pointing out the dangers of too much book learning. Je gelehrter, no verkehrter, she would say. The more learning, the less wisdom.

  Mim didn’t agree with Mammi Vera about book learning, and she definitely didn’t think Danny was losing wisdom. Just the opposite. Danny’s mother was Mattie Zook Riehl, and everyone knew those Zooks were overly blessed with wisdom. Danny’s mother was the most respected woman in their church. Everyone went to her with problems. Mim liked to think that someday she would be thought of just like Mattie Zook Riehl. It was one of the reasons she took her job as Mrs. Miracle so seriously. Training for the future, she hoped. Training to be Danny’s Mim.

  “I was just getting a few things for my mother,” Danny said, holding up a small basket filled with some spices. He cleared his throat. “Are you heading home?”

  Mim snatched the baking soda off the shelf. “Yes.”

  After paying at the cash register, they walked down the road and Danny told her about a special chart his father bought him at NASA that displayed the constellations. Once Mim’s father had taught her how to identify the Milky Way—like a swirl of milk in a cup of black coffee. “I used to think that the Milky Way was like a big curtain in the sky,” she said. “If you pulled it back, you could see Heaven.” She felt her cheeks grow warm. “Not logical, I know.”

  “Not logical, but a nice thought,” Danny said.

  “Do you think logic can always find answers?”

  “No. Some things are just mysteries. Like Heaven.” He slowed down a little so she could keep up with him. “I saw your sister in town yesterday. She didn’t see me. She was heading into the newspaper office.”

  “Oh?” A stain rose on Mim’s cheeks. Most of the Amish didn’t read the Stoney Ridge Times because they thought it was too liberal, which was a relief to Mim. She wasn’t sure how many might have even heard about the story claiming there were miracles to be had at the Inn at Eagle Hill, but the fewer Amish who knew of Mrs. Miracle, the better.

  Danny was waiting for an answer from her. About why Bethany was in the newspaper office.

  Diversion. That was how Mim handled topics she’d rather not discuss. “My sister has a mystery. She was cleaning out the basement at the Sisters’ House. She opened a trunk and found human bones. Skulls, too. She thinks the sisters might be killing people and stuffing them in the basement. She thinks she is next on their list. She’s afraid to go back to work.”

  Taking a moment to adjust his eyeglasses, Danny seemed in deep thought. “The old sisters don’t strike me as ruthless murderers.”

  “That’s just what I told Bethany.”

  “Why would she think the Stoney Ridge Times could help explain a trunk full of bones?”

  Oh, boy. So much for trying to derail Danny. “That’s an excellent question.”

  “Has Bethany asked the sisters about the bones?”

  “Of course not. She’s not very logical.”
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  “That seems like the best place to start. Certainly better than the newspaper.”

  Mim nodded. Phew.

  “Let’s go ask.”

  “Really? Now?” She never liked to miss opportunities to talk to the sisters, especially Ella. If it was a good, clear day for Ella, Mim found she often gained insights to use in her important role as Mrs. Miracle.

  Danny nodded. “We’re not far from the Sisters’ House. Let’s go.”

  So Mim and Danny turned down a road that led to the Sisters’ House and asked to speak with them about a very private concern. All five sisters came to the door, curious looks on their wrinkled faces. They invited Mim and Danny to come in for tea. That did slow down the investigation considerably, but Danny didn’t seem to be in a hurry. “It’s best not to alarm them,” he whispered to Mim. “Just in case they are murderers.”

  Mim had been going to the Sisters’ House with Bethany since school let out in May, but she was still amazed by the clutter. Every horizontal surface was covered with . . . stuff. Bethany could have a job here until she was an old lady herself, which was good news because she had said those sisters paid well.

  When the tea was finally served, all five sisters sat on the living room sofa and waited for the very private concern to be explained. Mim decided she would try to keep her eyes open for what didn’t sound right, to see things from the sides of her eyes.

  “Go ahead, Mim,” Danny said.

  What? She thought he was going to be the one to talk. She took a deep breath. All five sisters smiled serenely at Mim, capstrings bouncing.

  “Of course you know that my sister Bethany has been cleaning out your house.”

  More smiles.

  “Two days ago, she was down in the basement and opened a trunk and found . . .” Mim squinted her eyes shut.

  “My thimble?” Ella said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for my thimble.”