Claire held the camera close to her eye and pointed it in Megan’s direction. “If I zoom out a little, I can get a tiny part of that bulldozer over there in the frame, too.”
“Definitely. Bulldozers are always good with the male population.”
Shifting her position once or twice, she snapped a few decent pictures and then handed the camera back to Megan. “You’ve also got those brochures and stuff. Those will certainly help the boys picture their new home, too.”
“Actually, I gave those to you, remember?” Megan deposited the camera back in her purse, the last of the sun’s rays making her eyes shimmer. “But I want you to keep those. I’ll get new ones from the sales office before I head back to the inn, and you can hang on to yours in the event you want to be neighbors one day.”
“I’m thinking this place will be sold out long before I’m in a position to buy a home,” she quipped, intentionally bypassing the truth about her store. This was Megan’s moment, not hers. “Besides, the floor plans you showed me in the folder are way too big for one person.”
Megan draped her purse across her shoulder and laughed. “They wouldn’t be too big for you and that extremely handsome guy you were sitting on the front porch with the other night.”
“Guy?”
“I think Diane said his name is Jakob?”
She felt the instant flush to her face and turned away, moving her head from one side of the tree line to the other to buy herself some time. “Jakob is a friend, that’s all.”
“If my male friends looked at me the way that guy looks at you, Claire, my husband would go insane.”
There was no doubt there was a part of her that wanted to question Megan’s read on Jakob’s feelings the way she would have in her high school days. But she couldn’t. Somehow, hearing someone else back up what Benjamin, Diane, and Martha already believed was more than she could take. Instead, she did her best to laugh it off while searching for a ready-made conversation changer.
“I imagine they’ll keep these trees here, yes?” She pointed to the back of the property.
“They’ll have to replace that one there, of course.” Megan nudged her chin in the direction of the lone struggling tree and the gap its miniscule size offered between her future home and the farm. “But if a new one still doesn’t take, I’ll be okay with that. After all, it’s the chance to be closer to the Amish that made this spot so hard to ignore for me in the first place.”
“I wonder who will move in there now that Harley is . . .” Her inquiry vanished from her lips as a flash of movement on the gravel driveway in front of Harley’s farmhouse caught her attention. She moved her head to the left just in time to catch a glimpse of a dark blue flannel shirt and a crop of thick brown hair.
“Patrick?” she whispered.
“Patrick? Who’s Patrick?”
“Megan, I’ve got to go.” She took off in a half jog, half sprint toward the break in the trees, calling back over her shoulder as she did. “Congratulations on the new home! I hope it’s everything you want.”
When she reached the gap, she stopped, maneuvered her way between the branches, and stepped onto the edge of Harley’s driveway, her ears listening for anything her eyes failed to see. Yet, strain as she might, she heard nothing other than the faint hum of the bulldozer and a barking dog somewhere in the distance.
“Hello?” she called out. “Is anyone here?”
When the only response she got was silence, she moved farther across the driveway, the unsettling message on the side of Harley’s foundation propelling her feet away from the house and toward the barn, instead. As she walked, she couldn’t help but notice the empty metal trough and the ability to breathe through her nose without her eyes watering.
It was as her aunt had always said: the Amish pulled together in rough times. They helped one another raise a barn after a fire, collect money to offset the cost of a lengthy hospital stay, and, so it seemed, tidy a deceased brethren’s farm in order to prepare it for sale or auction.
Claire’s footsteps grew heavy as she neared the barn, and the reason wasn’t hard to pinpoint. Even though she hadn’t really known him beyond an occasional street passing, she identified with Harley Zook. Like Claire, the Amish man had only recently allowed himself to pursue a line of work that interested him in the way Heavenly Treasures did her. And just as Claire’s past life had made her connection and proximity to Diane all the more important, Harley’s had resulted in him developing a bond with the only other living creatures on his farm. Each cow had been given a name and each had obviously held a special place in his life from things Diane had said.
Aware of an invisible weight pushing down on her chest, she pressed her body against the main door of the barn and stepped inside, the sound of a hushed voice on the other side of the cow pens stopping her dead in her tracks.
“I promise you, Molly, I’ll stay close by until that family comes back and gets you, too. No one is going to hurt you on my watch.”
She ducked down beneath the railing line and peered past the back legs of the cow closest to the door, the same dark blue flannel pattern she’d seen through the tree line now in plain sight. Only this time, the odd sense she’d had as to the identity of its owner was confirmed mere seconds before the fear kicked in.
She tried to turn around, to quietly retrace her steps back to the door, but it was too late; he’d caught sight of her in her haste to leave.
“Hey! What are you doing here?” He was beside her and grabbing hold of her upper arm before she knew what was happening, the intensity of his grip making her howl in pain.
“Patrick, stop!”
He loosened his grip enough to allow himself an opportunity to step back and take her in from head to toe, the last of the sun’s rays through a back window providing sufficient light to shore up her identity. “Wait. I know you. You were at my house the other night . . . and again outside Ms. Weatherly’s place when that detective was badgering me.”
“Ms. Weatherly is my aunt.” When he let go of her arm, she stepped closer to the door, rubbing the spot where his fingers had pressed against her skin. “I’m Claire. Claire Weatherly.”
“Sorry. I guess I thought maybe you were the one.”
She allowed her gaze to travel past him just long enough to take in their surroundings and the presence of only one cow. “Are the rest of Harley’s cows in the pasture?”
“No. They’re gone.”
“Gone?”
“Some Amish family has been bringing them over to their farm. Each day they come and get a few more. Yesterday, they came and got all the rest ’cept Molly. She’s going later today, I think.”
“And the milk cans with all that spoiled milk?”
Patrick nodded. “We took care of that day before yesterday.”
“We?” she echoed.
“Me and that kid . . . Luke something or other.”
“Luke Hochstetler.” She looked around again, her gaze falling on the matching patches of paint halfway up the wall just as a memory from the last time she saw Patrick surfaced in her thoughts. “I thought you said you’d never been out here before.”
He took a step back only to recover it just as quickly. “I never said either way. I just said that as a kid, I’d never been allowed to step foot on an Amish farm no matter what my grandparents said. That was the truth. But I ain’t a kid no more. I can see what’s true with my own two eyes now, and there ain’t a whole lot either of them can do about it.” He pointed toward the source of light near the back of the barn. “See that window right there? That’s where my father’s bullet came from. The one that killed Harley’s brother. He stood on a rock in my grandfather’s yard and took the shot. Only took one from what the papers said.”
She searched for something to say but came up short. Patrick’s manner of presentation had made it so she wasn’t entirely sure whether he was saddened by, or proud of, that fact.
“The papers said he fired that bullet out of ignorance a
nd they were right. My father spouted all this hatred against the Amish all the time, but he wasn’t right. I know that now.” Patrick’s gaze lingered on the window for a moment before finally turning back to hers. “I also know that hatred can wear a black hat just as easily as no hat at all.”
She shook her head in an attempt to make sense of what he was saying. “I’m sorry, Patrick, I don’t understand. What was that about hatred wearing a black hat?”
“Amish people. Some of them can hate just as much as some of us. And their hatred can do bad things, too.” Patrick slumped against the barn wall and raked his hand through his full head of hair. “Sometimes even to their own people.”
Something about his words, and the way in which he said them, rewound her ears back to the moment he released his death grip on her arm.
“What did you mean earlier? When you thought I was ‘the one’? What one?”
He jammed his hands into the front pockets of his pants and sighed. “I thought you were that one who used to lurk around here all the time. But when I stopped long enough to actually see you, I realized you were a girl . . . and that you weren’t wearing all that Amish stuff.”
“Amish stuff?”
“Yeah. That Amish guy was always letting Harley’s cows out and messing with our workday. And when he wasn’t, he was yelling at him or just hanging around.”
It was her turn to grab his arm. “Wait. You’ve seen an Amish man lurking around here?”
“I haven’t this past week, but before . . . when Harley was still alive . . . yeah.”
Steeling herself for an answer she didn’t want to hear, she asked the only question she could. “Do you know this man’s name?”
“Nah. Harley would just say it didn’t matter. That this guy lost someone special to him, too, and was acting out the way I used to before Harley came along.”
She knew she really didn’t need the confirmation. Harley’s description to Patrick virtually filled in the answer all on its own. But, still, she hoped she was wrong. Hoped she could spare Jakob the added pain of locking his father up behind bars.
“Would you know this Amish man if you saw him?”
“You bet I would.”
Chapter 26
Claire glanced across the center console and tried to imagine what was going through Patrick’s head now that they were in her aunt’s car and headed toward the main road.
“It’s hard to imagine this place actually being something one day,” he finally said as they bounced along with the car on the way out of Serenity Falls.
“Have you seen the brochures? It’s going to be a really nice something by the time this Trey Sampson fellow is done with it.” She winced as the left side of the car dropped lower than the right only to recover as they reached the development’s exit. “One of the guests staying at the inn right now is getting ready to build in here. She’s got two little boys and she’s beside herself over the playground and walking trails that will be part of the community when it’s finally done.”
“Think it’ll bother them living so close to the Amish?”
“That’s one of the reasons Megan wanted to build here in the first place. She envies their peaceful lifestyle.”
When Patrick said nothing, she peeked in his direction once again. “Are you okay?”
Pressing his forehead to the passenger side window, he shrugged ever so slightly. “I guess I’m just thinking what it would be like to be one of those kids.”
“One of Megan’s kids?”
Again, his shoulders lurched upward. “Yeah, the one you were just talking about. Sounds like she’s more open-minded than what I come from.”
She heard the hurt in his voice and wished there was something she could do to make it better. Unfortunately, short of having a time machine with redo capabilities, all she had to offer was a listening ear. “It’s been rough being without your dad all these years, hasn’t it?”
“For the past sixteen years, I thought that, too.” He shifted his head from the window to the headrest and released a long, weighted sigh. “But then I met Harley and I started to realize the part before my dad went to jail wasn’t much of a picnic, either.”
“How so?” She slowed the car in an effort to buy them a little more time to talk. Somehow, the conversation unfolding between them was preferable to watching him point to Jakob’s father as the man behind the incidents at Harley’s farm.
“Little kids are supposed to be curious. It’s how they learn, ain’t it? But I didn’t get to be curious. I just had to take what was told to me and accept it as some sort of gospel truth even though it wasn’t.” Patrick’s jaw tightened noticeably. “Can’t really understand why people with so much hatred are given a kid to raise while a man who lived his life with an open mind had cows. Seems kinda backward, you know?”
How could she argue? It was something she’d pondered on her own many times over the years, especially when she considered her childless aunt Diane. But there were reasons for everything, even if they weren’t always obvious at first. She said as much to Patrick.
“If Harley had his own children, he might not have had time to reach out to you.” She let her gaze wander toward the Fisher farm, her worry about what Patrick might say when he finally saw Mose making it difficult to stay in the moment. Still, she tried, even going so far as to pivot her upper body toward the young man in the passenger seat. “And maybe you needed him more.”
Patrick studied her closely, his eyes taking on a misty quality that hinted at the tears he was trying valiantly not to shed. “I still do. But they can’t take away the things he taught me. Those things are inside me now.”
She reached across the console and squeezed his forearm. “You’re right. They are. And those things he taught you were his gift to you. It’s up to you what you do with them from here on out.”
For the first time since they’d met, a smile played at the corners of Patrick’s mouth just before a lone tear escaped down his cheek. “Making things with his hands made Harley awfully happy, and I think I’d like to do the same thing. For him.”
She pulled to the side to allow an approaching horse and buggy to pass then turned to look at Patrick once more. “I think Harley would be the first person to tell you to do what makes you happy. Life is too short to follow someone else’s dream.”
“Are you following yours?”
It was her turn to blink back tears as she gave the only answer she could. “Right now, I am. And it’s made me happier than I’ve ever been. But trying to keep your head afloat with a shop on Lighted Way isn’t always easy. Especially when you can’t pay the rent.”
He considered her words then peered out the windshield toward some distant point. “I liked painting the things Harley made.”
“Then maybe that’s your thing. Either way, you’ll figure it out.” She looked again toward the Fisher farm and knew the time had come to see what Patrick remembered. “So? Are you ready to take a walk?”
His answer came by way of a nod and the sound of his door unlocking. When they met up on her side of the car, he pointed toward the white farmhouse at the end of the next driveway. “Is that the place?”
“I don’t know. I guess that’ll depend on whether you recognize anyone you see as the man from Harley’s farm.”
Hooking her thumb in the direction they needed to go, she set off, Patrick falling into step in rapid fashion. Together they walked, the fine gravel of the main road making a soft crunching sound beneath their feet.
“You know the people who live here?”
“I do. And so do you.”
Patrick stopped mid-step. “I do?”
“You met Isaac, right? The other man Harley was bringing on to work with the two of you?”
“Oh. That guy.” Patrick resumed his previous pace with his hands jammed into his front pockets. “I never met him. He just started working with Harley about a week or so before the murder. Harley sent him out on different jobs than the ones we did.”
“Not really. ’Cept one time, when we drove out to fetch Mary, or maybe it was Molly . . . I can’t really remember. But I do know that Harley was saying something about Isaac’s dad wasting his life on anger.” Patrick’s feet slowed as they neared the barn. “Looking back, I guess he was trying to warn me not to do the same thing, but I can’t be sure. Next thing I knew, we got busy coaxing that cow back to the barn.”
They stopped and peeked inside, the last of the day’s natural light making it difficult to gauge the identity of the shadowy figures on the other side. “Hello?” she called. “Isaac? Mose? Are you in there? It’s Claire Weatherly.”
The taller of the two figures straightened just before a hand shot into the air in greeting. “Hello, Claire.” Isaac crossed the barn and stepped outside. “Is there something I can do for you?” Then, seeing Patrick, he nodded quickly. “I am Isaac. Isaac Fisher.”
Patrick shot out his hand and waited for Isaac to shake it. “I’m Patrick Duggan, Harley Zook’s apprentice.”
“Harley Zook has passed on!”
Claire held her breath as the second figure strode toward them with purpose if not anger, each step he took in their direction increasing the dread she felt growing in her heart. Somehow she knew Isaac’s suspicions about Mose were about to be confirmed by Patrick. Yet still, she hoped.
She hoped that Isaac was wrong about his father.
She hoped Patrick wouldn’t know Mose.
And she hoped with everything she had that Jakob would be able to cross his father off the suspect list once and for all.
“There is no need to speak of that man again.” Mose pushed past his youngest son to stand beside Claire with folded arms. “The Lord has called him home and he has been laid to rest—”
Shunned and Dangerous (An Amish Mystery) Page 19