Revealing, The (The Inn at Eagle Hill Book #3): A Novel

by Fisher, Suzanne Woods

  But that wasn’t all Galen was insinuating, in his quiet way. She knew that. She and Galen may have their differences, but she could count on him to tell her the truth.

  Luke wandered downstairs and came over to look at the baby, then walked around the room. Something was on his mind.

  “If Dad’s in heaven, he could see us now,” Luke said, looking at the ceiling.

  Dean seemed to be on everyone’s mind tonight. But then, she wasn’t surprised. Some days were harder than others, and days of significance, like today, were the hardest days of all. “Of course he’s in heaven,” Rose said, pushing aside the fear that bubbled up to the surface.

  “He wouldn’t be in hell, would he?” he asked hesitantly. “Suffering torture for all eternity?”

  Rose put down Sarah’s bottle and looked at Luke in amazement. “Why would you think that?”

  “Mammi Vera said that suicide is a sin that can’t be forgiven. She said it’s giving up hope.” He turned and looked right at her. “Do you know what really happened?”

  “Luke,” she said softly, “what makes you think that your father took his own life?”

  “I remember how upset and angry he was. I remember that he couldn’t sleep at night. He was unhappy for a long time.”

  Now Rose was firm. “It’s true, he was under a great deal of stress. But I refuse to believe that your father would have done such a thing.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Luke,” Rose said, with a pain in her chest that she felt would never go away.

  Sarah had fallen asleep so she tucked her into the Moses basket and covered her up with a blanket. Then she turned to face Luke. There was something he wanted to say, and she could tell he was trying to put it into words.

  “Would it have been terrible . . . drowning? Would it have felt like he was choking?”

  Rose gave the matter some thought. “No, I think it would have been very peaceful, you know, like the feeling you get when you’re falling asleep and you can’t stay awake. You feel as if you’re being pulled away. I don’t think it would have been very frightening.”

  “Do you think he thought of us . . . of Sammy and me . . . as he was dying?” Luke’s voice was shaking.

  “I think he would have been hoping that you’d all be all right, that you’d carry on, that we’d be strong as a family and appreciate days like today, when Bethany and Tobe became baptized.”

  And then, for the first time in front of her since he was a small boy, Luke let himself go and wept.

  18

  Monday dawned beautiful, warm, and springlike. After Mim and the boys set off to school, Rose fed the baby her bottle on the porch swing. Sarah was already changing—gaining weight, stretching out her spindly arms and legs so she seemed less and less like a tightly coiled newborn. The baby waved a tiny fist in the air and Rose offered her finger for her to grab. Such miniature fingers! So fragile, so perfect. Rose wondered where her mother Paisley was and if she even thought about her. When Tobe crossed the yard from the barn, she stopped him.

  He held up a hammer. “I’m finishing up a few things with the henhouse.”

  A wave of irritation about Tobe came over Rose. Those hens were going to end up with a castle. “Not right now.”

  His head snapped up, surprised by the tone in her voice. “You sound angry.”

  “I think it’s time you take a look at this child,” Rose said. “Really look at her. She might be your daughter, she might not. But she might be the making of you. She might make you into the kind of person you need to be.” She walked down the porch steps and handed the baby to him.

  “I don’t know anything about babies,” he said. The baby stared at Tobe with wide eyes, evidently as surprised as he was. “What if I do something wrong with it?”

  “Her. Not an it. She’s a person. Her name is Sarah. A real live human being.”

  “She’s so very small.” Just then the baby began to cry, squirming in his hands. Tobe looked helplessly at Rose, but she made no effort to take the baby. “How can anyone know what a baby wants?”

  “The more time you spend with her, the more you start to learn her language. Right now, she’s telling you she doesn’t like the way you’re holding her.”

  He said he was afraid he might drop the child, who started to twist in his hands like a trapped rabbit. She whimpered, then cried, then yelled so loud she turned red as a beet.

  “Put her against your shoulder,” Rose said. “You don’t have to hold her like that—she isn’t a bag of flour.”

  He dropped the hammer and shifted the baby against his shoulder. “Do you think she might be sick?”

  “No, she’s fine,” Rose said. With that she turned and walked up the porch steps, intending to leave him with the baby, who at once began to cry even harder. But, as abruptly as she had started, the baby stopped crying. She whimpered a time or two, stuck her fist in her mouth, and then quieted. He looked so relieved that he scarcely moved. The baby had wet his shirt with drool, but at least she wasn’t crying.

  “Talk to her a little,” Rose said. She stood at the doorjamb.

  “What should I say?”

  She made a snort of disgust. “Introduce yourself, if you can’t think of anything else,” she said. “Or sing her a song. She’s sociable. She likes to be talked to.”

  Tobe looked at her blankly. “I don’t know if I’ll be able . . . I mean, I’m pretty clumsy.”

  “All new parents are clumsy,” Rose reassured him. “You’ll get better at it.”

  He looked at her sharply. “Why should I have to do this at all? The DNA test will—”

  “I don’t care about a DNA test. You’ll do this because this child needs you. You’ll do it because you’re a decent man. And if that’s not good enough”—she bore down on him—“you’ll do it because I’m telling you to.”

  She felt a little heartless, but she knew he had to learn to do it without her.

  Naomi tried not to smile as she listened to Tobe’s complaints. Rose had insisted that the family, including Naomi, hand over the bulk of responsibility of the baby to him. They were allowed to give him fifteen-minute breaks now and then, so that he could shower or change clothes, but no help with nighttime feedings or walking the baby back to sleep. She was adamant about that.

  After two days of being Sarah’s primary caretaker, Tobe was near to weeping with fatigue. There were dark circles under his eyes; he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. He walked the hallways with Sarah in the night, trying to burp her after her third feed of the night. He said he found himself stumbling against furniture, almost incapable of remaining upright.

  “How can anyone learn to identify what kind of crying means hunger, discomfort, or pain?” he said. “All crying sounds the same—and it all wakes you up from the deepest sleep. No one ever told me how exhausting it is to be up three, four times every night, night after night. This is awful.” He was tired all the time.

  It didn’t occur to him that Rose and Bethany had been doing that very thing for weeks now, ever since the baby was born. Or that Naomi had cared for the baby during the day.

  Then, to his obvious relief, Naomi took the baby from him. “I’m going to grab a nap,” he said.

  “I’ll wake you in fifteen minutes,” she said, and his smile faded.

  There wasn’t much Brooke Snyder wouldn’t do for Jon Hoeffner. At times, she wondered if she was falling in love with him. Imagine that! Over cinnamon rolls in a little Amish town. So when he asked her for a small favor, she was elated. “How can I help?”

  Jon looked at her squarely, kindly. His lips curved up a little on one side, showing off a dimple in his cheek. He seemed a little sheepish to have to ask her for help, but his boyish embarrassment only melted her. “I have a safety deposit box that I share with my sister. It was something our parents set up before they passed on to glory. My sister and I both have to sign to get into it. I need to get into the safety deposit box because I’m trying to sell my car.
I’ve got to get the title.” He blew out a puff of air. “My sister is Old Order Amish and frowns on the life I’ve chosen—driving a car and using electricity and all that. She refuses to talk to me. It’s something called shunning. Kind of like excommunication.”

  “I’ve heard of that! I saw a reality TV show about the Amish.” Then, after thoughtful consideration, “How awful for you.”

  Jon nodded. “It’s been difficult. I’m left out of every family gathering. It’s been . . . well, lonely.”

  Brooke reached out and covered his hand. “How can I help, Jon?”

  “Would you mind posing as my sister at the bank to help me get the pink slip out of the safety deposit box? You’d need to sign in as her, but you could do that, couldn’t you? You duplicated my signature perfectly.”

  A tiny alarm bell pinged inside Brooke’s head, but she ignored it. “I suppose the signature part wouldn’t be difficult. But what about the ID?”

  He smiled. “Not a problem. I’ve got that covered. My sister doesn’t have a photo ID, being Amish, so it’s just a matter of getting her Social Security card.”

  “How would you get it?”

  He looked embarrassed. “To be entirely truthful, I saw her Social Security card on the counter awhile ago when I asked her if she’d go with me to the bank. When she refused to go with me, well, I’m not proud of it, but I slipped the card into my pocket. I’ll put it back as soon as I get this pink slip taken care of.”

  She thought about it for a while, stirring her coffee. It didn’t feel wrong, but didn’t feel quite right, either. Ping, ping went the alarm in her head. “You promise you’ll return your sister’s Social Security card as soon as you get the pink slip?”

  “Absolutely! I just couldn’t think of any other way . . . not until I thought about how easily you copied my signature. Then I realized, well, you were heaven sent.” He squeezed her hands and she melted.

  “Okay. When?”

  The bakery clerk stood by the door, an irritated look on her face. Brooke suddenly realized it was past five and they were the only customers left in the bakery. They hurried outside so the clerk could lock up.

  “I’ll let you know when I have the deal completed with the car buyer.” He closed the distance between them and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “You’re a peach, Brooke. I’m so glad we’ve met.” Jon lifted her chin and kissed her lightly on the lips. He smiled, then walked around the corner and disappeared.

  Brooke leaned against the bakery door, feeling like she might explode with happiness. Ping, ping, ping! That stupid alarm bell kept going off in her head, so she tried to wipe her mind clean of it and closed her eyes to concentrate on the sweet goodbye kiss Jon had just given her.

  Tobe handed baby Sarah to Vera and took the pan of spring peas onto his lap. Rose had to smile. He would rather shell peas than hold a baby, but at least he wasn’t shirking his duties with Sarah like she thought he might.

  “Where do you suppose that Paisley went off to?” Vera asked him.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “I called the restaurant where she worked and they haven’t seen her in months. They said they fired her because she was helping herself to the cash register.”

  “Did you try calling the manager of her apartment?”

  “I did. They said she was evicted about that same time.” He rubbed the underside of his nose with his forearm.

  Vera looked up. “But then why was she looking for the key to the apartment?”

  Tobe’s chin jerked up. “Key? What key?”

  “She told me she had lost the key to her apartment and thought you had the only spare. She said it would cost her a fortune to get a locksmith out there, so she really needed to find it.”

  Tobe’s face went white. Slowly, he sat up, his spine poker-straight. The spring pea pan crashed to the floor, and peas bounced all over the kitchen. He didn’t even realize what he’d done as he turned to Rose. “Call Allen Turner. Tell him to get out here as fast as he can.”

  Tobe and Naomi sat on the porch swing, waiting for Allen Turner. Every fifteen minutes, Mim went out to check the phone shanty to see if any messages were waiting from the lawyer. Bethany thought they should take turns waiting at the phone, but Rose said no, that they had plenty to do and staring at a phone didn’t make it ring. But no one could get much done.

  By the time Allen Turner’s car roared up to the house two hours later, Rose breathed a sigh of relief, grateful the boys were still helping Galen feed the horses and weren’t in on this. She watched Tobe warily, but color was back in his face.

  Allen Turner walked in and sat at the kitchen table, an expectant look on his face. “So. What’s the emergency, Tobe?”

  “Jake Hertzler is nearby,” Tobe said. “I’m sure of it.”

  Ten seconds of beating silence before Bethany added, “I’ve had the same thought.” Tobe snapped his head to face her. “At least, I know he was here in the last few months.”

  “Me too,” Naomi said.

  Mim bit her lip. “Same here.”

  Allen Turner’s head turned from Tobe to Bethany to Naomi to Mim, then back again to Tobe. He seemed thoroughly confused and he was not a man prone to confusion.

  Tobe pointed to Bethany. “Is this about the horse?”

  She nodded and explained how Galen had found Lodestar, abandoned. She looked at Mim. “What makes you think he’s here?”

  “There’s been a couple of times when a car has driven by me, slowly at first, then it sped up to pass me. The driver was a man, and even though I never saw his face, something about him seemed like Jake.”

  “That’s the same feeling I’ve had,” Naomi said. “I thought I saw someone who looked like him near the post office one day. But it was too dark to tell, for sure.”

  So far, Allen Turner wasn’t impressed by hunches and feelings. He glanced impatiently at his watch and turned to Tobe. Soon, all eyes were on Tobe. He took a deep breath and explained to Allen about Paisley’s sudden appearance, about the fact that Paisley had known Jake—quite well, in fact. Much better than he knew her—and then came to the part about the key. “Jake must have sent her here to look for the key.”

  Allen leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about the key.”

  “It belongs to a safety deposit box in the York County Savings and Loan. The account is under Dad’s and Jake’s and Rose’s name.”

  “My name?” Rose said.

  Tobe looked at her. “Don’t you remember when Dad had you sign some papers to set it up? It was right when Jake started working for Schrock Investments. Jake wanted to put the P&L statements in the box each week. Dad felt it would be wise to have three names on it, so two would always have to go together to sign in.”

  Rose vaguely remembered when Dean set up the safety deposit box, but she had never used the box. Not once. “Go on,” she urged.

  “I know Jake and Dad visited the safety deposit box regularly, weekly, but knowing Dad, he would have signed in, spotted someone he knew in the bank, got talking to him, and let Jake go into the vault alone. I found the key in Jake’s car on the day—” he glanced at Rose and hesitated—“well, I grabbed it. Along with the ledgers.”

  “Where is the key?”

  “I hid it in a very safe place.”

  “Where?”

  He cut another glance at Rose’s direction. “I hid it in my mother’s nursing home. In her room.”

  “What?” Rose said. The word came out as a tiny squeak. “Your mother’s . . . what? She’s . . . where?”

  Tobe pressed on. “My mother isn’t well. She’s a paranoid schizophrenic. She lives in a home for mentally ill women.”

  Vera pinned Tobe with an accusing look. “You’re mistaken. Your mother left years ago. She ran away and abandoned the children.”

  Tobe held her gaze for a moment, then flickered aside. “Bethany knows. She visits our mother once a month.”

  All eyes turned toward Bethany, but her attention was riveted to a small mark on the tabl
etop. She was aware that everyone was waiting for an explanation, but she hesitated, taking time to gather her thoughts, before her voice cut into the silence. “That’s what my mother wanted everyone to think. She knew that Dad would try to have her come home, and that she wasn’t capable of taking care of her children. She checked herself into the facility and had papers drawn up that allowed Dad to divorce her because of abandonment. She planned it all out. She wanted everyone to move on without her.”

  Rose had often heard of people saying they were rooted to the ground by a shock, and she just realized how apt a description it was. She was not able to move, not able to say a word.

  It was almost too huge to grapple with. For years, Rose had felt as if she was picking up the pieces that Dean’s first wife had left behind. She was astounded to think Mary Schrock had given her family away to protect them. She felt dizzy, as if she might faint, and she tried to steel herself.

  Vera! She glanced over to see how her mother-in-law was taking this revelation. Vera remained as colorless as skim milk. Her lips moved silently, but not a sound came out. One hand was touching her heart.

  Allen turned to Tobe. “What do you think is in the safety deposit box?”

  He lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug. “Money. What else? Enough to get him out of town and set him up somewhere. I think he was siphoning money off the top, right from the start.”

  Allen Turner released an exhausted sigh. “Why didn’t you tell me about the safety deposit box when you were getting interrogated? You could’ve saved us a lot of trouble.”

  Tobe looked away. “I wanted to deal with Jake myself. I couldn’t figure out how, but that was my intention. My plan.” He looked straight at Naomi. “I know better now.”