“You think Esther’s pastry tastes better than mine?” Lydia sounded hurt.
Rachel was quick to reassure her. “No one is a better cook than you. But there is so much work to do in running this inn. I thought the breakfast pastries might be at least one thing you could hire out.”
“Hard work is from Gott, and it is good for the soul.” Lydia nodded for emphasis. “And our grossdaddi always said that it brings health to the body to get up early. He lived to be a hundred and two, he did.”
Rachel couldn’t argue with her. This tiny Amish woman in her white prayer kapp, long gray dress, and sensible black tennis shoes could work rings around most women half her age in spite of her arthritis, and she most definitely loved getting up early. Lydia was so bright-eyed and chirpy this morning, she reminded Rachel of a happy little sparrow hopping around the dimly lit kitchen.
Maybe Lydia had a point. Maybe work helped keep a person healthy—but so did sleep, and right now Rachel could have used a couple more hours. Or twenty. Before she got married, even though she was working a job that rotated shifts and she often helped her aunts as well, she could at least get enough sleep the rest of the time. Now that she had a small son to care for, it seemed like most of what used to be sleep or free time was taken up by Bobby’s need to be entertained. His latest favorite was Candy Land, which he found utterly entrancing and she did not.
She glanced at the windowsill above the sink where she had placed her engagement and wedding rings for safekeeping. Bread dough was not a friend to fancy diamond rings—a fact she’d discovered the hard way when she’d had to spend a good five minutes detailing the rings with a toothbrush after she’d forgotten to take it off first.
Her engagement ring was lovely but wearing it bothered her. Joe did not know this. He had surprised her with a proposal and a small box wrapped in silver paper the Christmas after they met. Inside was the biggest, most beautiful diamond ring she had ever seen. She’d been thrilled with the proposal but had mixed feelings about the ring. Had he asked her preference before selecting it, she would have reminded him that she came from people who never wore simple wedding bands or wristwatches, let alone diamond engagement rings. In fact, it embarrassed Rachel to wear it around her Amish relatives.
She was no judge of diamonds, but it didn’t take an expert to know that Joe had paid a lot of money for it. Her first thought was that it was something his first wife, Grace, would have chosen, which lessened Rachel’s enthusiasm for it even more. It wasn’t that she was jealous of his deceased wife, but Grace had been a beautiful and glamorous actress, which was a little intimidating to a small-town cop who had never quite mastered the art of using a mascara wand.
“You need to go to bed earlier, Rachel,” Lydia chirped, bringing her out of her woolgathering. “You were up late watching that television you Englisch people love so much, weren’t you?”
“I wasn’t watching television last night, Aunt Lydia,” Rachel said. “I was talking with Joe.”
At that moment, Bertha, who had been out feeding the chickens, entered the kitchen through the back door. She was wearing a dark navy dress that came to her ankles, thick black stockings, black tennis shoes, and an ancient black sweater with moth holes in it.
Bertha walked over to the sink and washed her hands beneath the sink’s gravity-fed faucet. “Now, Lydia, what would you have me to do?”
As bossy as Bertha could be, she always deferred to Lydia’s expertise when it came to preparing food. The kitchen was Lydia’s small kingdom, and no one questioned her about what to serve or how the cooking would be done.
“We used up the jar of applesauce yesterday morning,” Lydia said. “Could you get a new one from the cellar?”
“Of course.” Bertha left to get the applesauce.
Cousin Eli had a small orchard that bore wonderful apples for the making of applesauce. The aunts always canned at least a hundred quart jars of it.
“It has been ten minutes.” Lydia poked the dough with a finger. “I think it is ready.”
Lydia believed that dough must be kneaded a full ten minutes to fully distribute the yeast. Rachel happily relinquished the wooden kneading trough and Lydia dumped the dough onto the flour-covered table. There, she began rolling it out with an equally-flour-covered rolling pin.
“I think it would be good to start the coffee now, Rachel,” Lydia said. “We can serve that good, thick cream Eli brought us yesterday. His new Guernsey cow is giving in abundance.”
“I thought she looked like a good milker when he got her.” Bertha reappeared with the jar of applesauce and searched for the blue bowl in which they always served it.
“That sweater you are wearing is looking pretty worn, Aunt Bertha,” Rachel noticed. “We’ll need to go shopping for a new one for you.”
“This is my choring sweater,” Bertha said. “It keeps me plenty warm. I have no need for a new one.”
“But…”
“When it no longer keeps me warm, then I will use my good one for chores and go shopping for new. Until then, I am fine. We do not waste things, Rachel. You know that.”
“Whatever you say.” Rachel decided she would keep quiet for now and simply buy her aunt a new one for her birthday. Frugality was one thing. Wearing a sweater that most homeless people would discard was another.
While Rachel filled the old-fashioned ceramic percolator with water and put it on the stove, Lydia ladled softened butter onto the spongy, flattened dough and then sprinkled it heavily with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. Rolling the dough into one long, fluffy cylinder, Lydia made thick slices and arranged them onto the industrial-sized baking pan she favored for her cinnamon rolls.
“What else will you be serving, Aunt Lydia?” Rachel asked.
“Sausages and fresh eggs.” Lydia’s hands paused in their work as she considered. “Scrambled, I think. In lots of butter. Oh, and the individual custards I made last night. Those are in the refrigerator. Will you start the sausage frying, Bertha?”
“Of course.”
“You spoil your guests,” Rachel said.
“I hope so,” Lydia said. “Some people have very hard lives. I want our guests to leave here with full stomachs, feeling hopeful and renewed. I want them to think that maybe this world is not such a bad place after all.”
“And you can accomplish all that with sausage and cinnamon buns?” Rachel asked with a smile.
Lydia shrugged. “I can try.”
“Lydia has always shown her love to people through her cooking, Rachel.” Bertha said. “You know this. Did I say that right, Lydia?”
“Your words are true.” Lydia lifted a blue ceramic pitcher from their propane-powered refrigerator and poured thick cream from it into a bright yellow creamer-and-sugar set that was older than Rachel.
“I know,” Rachel said. “But you are in pain all the time, Aunt Lydia.”
“Yes, but the happiness I see on people’s faces when they sit at my breakfast table makes me feel the pain a little less, I think.” Lydia shoved the tray of cinnamon rolls into the oven.
The coffee began to percolate, and Rachel desperately wanted a cup before she left. The Keurig coffeemaker she had in her home was handy, but it could not touch the taste of her aunt’s coffee. Whether that was in fact reality, Rachel didn’t know. Sometimes she suspected it had more to do with the aromas and good memories in her aunts’ kitchen than the actual flavor of the coffee.
“Want me to start the eggs now?” Bertha asked.
“Please.” Lydia stirred up her special caramel sauce from butter, brown sugar, cream, and vanilla.
“Pecans?” Rachel asked.
“Walnuts,” Lydia said. “They are in the drawer next to the refrigerator.”
Rachel started chopping walnuts into the small pieces that Lydia would sprinkle over the cinnamon rolls once the caramel sauce had been drizzled over them.
“Boo!” Anna said, as she wandered into the kitchen.
The three of them gave the requ
isite start.
“You scared me, Anna!” Rachel said.
This was Anna’s little joke, and no one knew or remembered when it had started or where it had come from. They always reacted with feigned fright because it gave Anna so much enjoyment.
“I’m hungry.” Anna rubbed sleep from her eyes. Her dark green dress was pinned crookedly and her white kapp was askew. She held her apron in her hand. Apron strings were hard for her to tie without help.
“Breakfast will be ready soon.” Lydia repinned Anna’s dress, straightened her kapp, and helped her put on the apron. “In the meantime, go see what gifts our hens have left us this morning. I heard Fanny boasting about her newest egg.”
“That Fanny is a proud one, she is,” Bertha said. “I think that chicken must be Englisch, the ways she struts about all hochmut and cackling every time she lays an egg.”
Then Bertha realized what she had said and shot a guilty glance at Rachel. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I didn’t mean…”
“That’s okay, Aunt Bertha,” Rachel said. “You’re right. We Englisch can be a proud bunch.”
Most of the Amish people she knew sometimes enjoyed poking quiet fun at the Englisch, many of whom they considered loud, arrogant, and often downright silly in their pretentiousness.
Anna picked up the egg-gathering basket and went outside. Bertha pushed the skillet of sausage to the back of the woodstove, settled herself in the rocking chair beside the kitchen stove, and folded her hands atop her lap.
That was not a good sign. Bertha was seldom still unless she was ill or preparing to have a serious conversation with someone.
Bertha cleared her throat. That was also not a good sign. Bertha always cleared her throat in preparation of broaching a difficult subject. Silence lay between the three of them as the kitchen clock ticked the seconds away and Rachel waited to hear what Bertha had to say.
“We need to talk about Anna,” Bertha said.
“Anna?”
“Yes. I do not think she is well.”
Rachel’s heart plummeted. She would much rather receive another lecture on the evils of carrying a gun than hear that something was amiss with her sweetest aunt.
“What’s wrong with Anna?”
“I think her heart might be worsening,” Bertha said. “She seems to be having more difficulty doing the things she loves to do. She gets winded easily now. Sits down more often to rest. I was hoping you could take her to the doctor on this coming Tuesday. I made an appointment for three o’clock. I would use the buggy to take her, but…”
Bertha left the sentence dangling. They both knew it was getting harder for the aunts to hitch up the buggy. As they aged, the need for Rachel to drive them to doctor’s appointments was becoming more frequent.
“I’m happy to take her.”
She would need to trade shifts with Kim again, to free up the afternoon so she could take Anna. Her heart lurched as the reason behind rearranging her schedule hit Rachel afresh. Anna had to be okay. Nothing could happen to Anna.
“Anna’s not all I wanted to talk to you about, Rachel. We need to discuss you and…”
Bertha’s voice took on the same tone it always did right before she gave Rachel a good talking-to. This past year she had strongly advised Rachel to quit her job and stay home with Bobby at least a half-dozen times. Rachel argued that Bobby was in the first grade and did not need her all day, every day, but it fell on deaf ears. Rachel’s other argument—that she actually liked her job and felt her training and skill contributed to the well-being of the community—didn’t make a dent on Bertha’s opinions, either.
This morning Rachel was in no mood to hear it, and she definitely wasn’t ready to explain to Bertha that Joe had lost his fortune and hers was the only income they had now.
“Can this wait?” Rachel interrupted, glancing at her watch. “I really need to get back home.”
Without waiting for an answer, she bustled out the door. She would let Bertha chastise her another time—preferably when she’d had more sleep. She loved her aunts deeply, but sometimes Bertha was just a little hard to take.
Chapter 8
The parole-board hearing was supposed to happen directly after breakfast. Carl assumed it would not take long, but he was wrong. Carl and several others were kept under guard in a small waiting room while one prisoner after another was interviewed. Carl had no problem with waiting—he’d waited for twenty years.
But as the time dragged on, he began to worry about Beauty being stuck in her cage back at his cell. That was part of the training discipline, to leave a dog in their cage for housebreaking purposes. A dog would not foul its own nest—unlike a lot of people Carl had known—and to leave Beauty there for too long meant she would soon be in pain.
“Are we boring you?” a lady parole board member interrupted when it was finally his turn and he began to haltingly answer their questions. She wore glasses on the end of her nose, and with her hair pulled straight back, she looked as severe as his third-grade teacher, who had terrified him as a child. “You seem to be having trouble concentrating.”
“No, ma’am,” Carl answered. “You are not boring me.”
“Then what is the issue?” the woman asked. “You seem to be quite distracted.”
“I’m worried about my dog,” Carl blurted out.
“Your dog?” She made a note on a pad in front of her. “Why?”
“She isn’t used to being caged for such a long time. I didn’t realize all this would take so long, and she needs to be let out.”
The woman tilted her head to one side. “Why do you think she needs to be let out?”
“Because it’s cruel to leave her for so long with no chance to relieve herself.”
“You’re worried about your dog’s bladder?”
“She was badly abused when I got her, ma’am. She’s starting to trust me. I don’t want to break that trust by leaving her alone for too long.”
“What if I told you that you could leave right now to care for your dog,” she said, “but that you would be forfeiting your chances of parole if you chose to leave without taking the time to answer all our questions?”
“I apologize to the board,” Carl said as he stood, “but that dog is my responsibility, and I can’t bear to hurt her.”
And then he left.
When he arrived at his cell, to his surprise, he found that one of the other inmates who had known of Carl’s parole hearing had already gotten permission to let Beauty out. His sacrifice for his dog had been unnecessary, and he’d blown his chance of parole for no better reason than he was worried about his dog’s need to pee.
The irony of it kept him awake long into the night. Unfortunately, he discovered that he had begun to allow himself to hope for freedom after all. Fool that he was, he’d destroyed that chance. Beauty sensed his unhappiness and quietly rested her nose on his hand until he began stroke her silky fur.
Maybe it was for the best. Someone like him had no business being on the outside anyway.
Chapter 9
“What did the doctor say?” A worried Bertha was waiting on the porch when Rachel pulled up with Anna after their visit with the doctor.
Anna pulled a lollypop out of her mouth and held it up. “I was goot. See?”
Bertha ignored Anna’s announcement and looked to Rachel for answers.
“He changed her meds.” Rachel handed over the new prescription she had filled at the pharmacy. “He said that her heart is not strong and she shouldn’t overdo but she’ll be okay if she takes her medication and rests more.”
“How are we supposed to make that happen?” Bertha fussed. “You know how Anna likes to be part of everything, especially the cooking.”
“I cook goot!” Anna offered.
“Yes, you do cook goot,” Bertha said. “But you must rest more.”
Anna seemed confused by the idea of resting.
Rachel wasn’t surprised. “Now you know how I felt when I tried to get you and Lydia to shu
t down the inn a couple of years ago.”
Bertha waved a dismissive hand. “That was different.”
“It wasn’t,” Rachel argued. “You’ll work until you drop regardless of what I say, so I’ve stopped talking about it.”
“It is true that we are not idle like so many of the Englisch,” Bertha said. “But we do not know what to do with ourselves if we do not work.”
“I know, but don’t expect me to tell you what to do with Anna. She comes by her inability to rest honestly.”
“I’m a goot worker!” Anna took the sucker out of her mouth and beamed at them again.
Rachel sighed. “I need to get to work myself. Are you expecting any guests tonight, or will Aunt Lydia have just you and Anna to cook for tomorrow morning?”
“We have one couple from out of state and one woman traveling alone from Canada.” Bertha glanced at the medication Rachel had handed her and then put it into her apron pocket. “The woman from Canada called and asked if it was dangerous to come to Sugarcreek.”
“Dangerous?” Rachel said. “Sugarcreek?”
“She seemed quite worried about something she’d seen on television. Something about an Amish…mafia? I do not know exactly what that is supposed to be, but I told her I am pretty sure we don’t have one.”
Rachel had watched only part of one episode of that program before turning it off. The last thing she wanted to do was describe it to her aunt.
“Don’t worry about it, Bertha. If she has any other questions, tell her to talk to me.”
“I will be happy to do that,” Bertha said. “By the way, are you taking any vitamins?”
“Why?”
“You look a little pale. Do you feel okay?”
“Yes.”
“Because if you aren’t, my cousin Martha is using some supplements that she says are wonderful.”
“Does she also happen to be selling that product?”
“Well…yes. She offered to bring over some samples.”
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