“No, wait.” Claire stilled Ruth’s hand with her own, then pointed inside the open drawer. “That last one, just above the stamps—it’s not like the other envelopes.”
“Oh . . . that does not matter,” Ruth said, shoving the drawer closed. “I . . . I am sure Mary just ran out of white ones. It happens. Do you know, when I worked at Shoo Fly each day, I had to use different napkins—plain ones—when I ran out of the special ones? I did not like to do it, but sometimes it could not be helped. Soon, it did not bother me so much. Perhaps that is why I did not notice that envelope until now.”
“Ruth? Are you in the house?”
“That is Samuel! He must have finished in his workshop.” Gently, Ruth lowered the wooden holder onto the desk and hooked her thumb in the direction of the door. “He told me this morning that he wanted to show me the chair he’s been working on when he finished. So I will go see that now and then come back.”
Claire was pretty sure she nodded, maybe even eked out a yes as Ruth headed toward the hallway, but the pull to inspect the one lone yellow envelope in a pile of pristine white counterparts was too strong and too all-consuming to be one hundred percent certain. Glancing back at the letter holder, she opened the second drawer, reached inside, and pulled out the last envelope, the sight of Ruth’s name scrawled across the top pushing her back a step.
Confused, she studied the uneven, almost stop-and-go writing style her late grandmother had adopted during the final years of her life, her thoughts darting from birthday cards and just-because notes to Christmas cards and the occasional full-fledged letter. The memory, while good, left her blinking back tears and rushing to clear her throat.
Like her grandmother, Mary Esch had been in her mid to upper eighties. Clearly writing had become an effort for her, as well. But just as Claire had hung on to each and every tangible link to her grandmother, she suspected Ruth, too, would forever treasure whatever sweet sentiment Mary had painstakingly written for—
Snapping her full attention back to the envelope, she took in the solitary name scrawled across the front, its expected mate nowhere to be seen. Odd, considering it was a wedding gift, but maybe it was simply a part of the Amish culture she’d yet to learn, some tradition or way of doing things she could ask Jakob about over lunch or after work.
Work . . .
Uh-oh.
She glanced down at her watch, noted her rapidly closing pre-work window, and then froze as her shifting fingers caught something on the underside of the envelope. Glancing toward the door and then back at the envelope, she flipped it over, her ensuing gasp echoing against the walls of the sparsely furnished room.
For a moment, she just stared at the unsealed opening, her thoughts, her feelings, too scattered to nail down over the roar in her head. But soon, they bowed to one—one voice, one sentence: Perhaps that is why I did not notice that envelope until now.
Ruth had lied.
The only question now was why.
Chapter 13
Claire leaned against the door frame and stared out at the faces making their way up and down Lighted Way on what had to be her busiest day of the season to date. From the moment she’d let herself in through the back door and mad-dashed her way across the shop to unlock the front door, she’d been going nonstop.
She’d helped a few men decide on gifts for their wives . . .
She’d held up more than a few Amish quilts for potential buyers wanting to find just the right shade of blue or yellow or green . . .
She’d answered the near-daily question as to why the handmade dolls didn’t have faces . . .
She’d offered her opinion on the lunch options at Taste of Heaven(ly) . . .
She’d engaged in a lively discussion about the book a particular customer had sticking out of her tote . . .
She’d bagged postcards and napkin rings and place mats and a little bit of just about everything else she had in the store . . .
She’d gift-wrapped a few items . . .
She’d counted back change and tucked receipts into shopping bags . . .
She’d encouraged people to come to next week’s One Heavenly Night if they were in the area . . .
And more than a few times, while standing behind the register, she’d glanced longingly at the empty shelf where Annie’s lunch pail would have been if the Amish teen had been able to keep her shift.
It was a good problem to have—a busy shop. Especially when the holidays would soon give way to Lighted Way’s biggest nemesis: January. But try as she had to be in the moment all morning long, the persistent churning in her stomach had made it difficult to forget her visit with Ruth. In fact, more than a few customers had asked if she was okay when, according to one woman from Chicago, she’d looked as if she was going to cry. She’d covered, of course, by claiming she’d gotten something in her eye, but the second the lie was uttered, her thoughts had gone racing right back to the mysterious letter and her own decision not to confront Ruth about it when she’d returned from the barn.
“Busy day?”
Startled into a full stand, Claire turned toward the back of the shop and the somber-faced teenager looking around the room, wide-eyed. “Annie! I didn’t hear you come in!” Then, leaving her view of Lighted Way completely, she met her part-time employee in the middle of the room. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the viewing for Mary and . . .” She paused, sniffed the air, and then peeked around Annie into the back hallway. “Um, sweetie? Did you leave the back door open by any chance?”
“It is closed.”
Again, she sniffed the air, the answering aroma kicking off a very different churning inside her stomach. “Then why am I smelling cinnamon as if it’s under my nose?”
“Because it is.” Annie pulled her hand from behind her back and held up a covered plate. “When Dat and I returned from the viewing a little while ago, I asked if I could bring you a slice of my cinnamon bread. I made a loaf for Dat with his breakfast this morning, and there are many pieces left.”
“You drove here just to bring me a piece of cinnamon bread?”
“Yah. It is one I think you will like.” Annie made a second visual pass of the room before pushing the plate closer. “Especially since I do not think you have had time to eat.”
“I haven’t. It’s been nonstop since I opened.” Reaching out, she peeled back a portion of the cover and squealed. “Oh. My. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I was imagining this right now.”
Annie giggled. “No. It’s real.”
“So this is really for me?” she asked, taking the plate and lifting the opening in line with her nose.
“Yah.”
“You, my dear, are far too good to me.”
“It is just a piece of cinnamon bread,” Annie protested.
“Nothing you bake is ever just.” Claire motioned toward the counter with her chin. “Can you stay for a few minutes, or do you have to get back to the viewing?”
“I have a few minutes.” Annie trailed Claire to the counter and the pair of stools housed on the other side. One tug pulled Claire’s out, the other, Annie’s.
“You do realize I’m going to become a food snob thanks to you, right?”
Annie paused, mid-sit. “A food snob?”
“That’s what you call someone who is so used to five-star dining, they refuse to eat anything less.” Claire peeled back the rest of the covering and helped herself to the generous slice. “And if this tastes even half as good as it looks and smells, I’ll be a goner. Especially after that banana bread this morning.”
“Banana bread?” Annie echoed, scrunching her nose. “I didn’t make you banana bread today.”
“I know, but Ruth did—from your recipe.” Then, anxious to correct the slump born on her own mention of the morning, Claire bit into the cinnamon bread. “Oh . . . wow . . . Annie . . . This—this is . . . amazing, in
credible”—she stole another bite—“insanely good. How on earth do you do this with every single thing you make?”
“Do what?”
Claire looked down at the bread and then back up at Annie. “Make everything taste like the best thing I’ve ever had in my life. Every. Single. Time. And that’s me saying this—the niece of an absolutely amazing cook in her own right.”
Annie’s cheeks glowed red with the praise before disappearing from view altogether with the help of two well-placed hands. “I just make food.”
“Trust me, kiddo, it’s way more than that.” She took another bite of the bread, only to pause mid-chew. “Wait, wait, wait! I have something for you!”
Slipping down off her stool, Claire reached into the first of two cubbies beneath the register, unzipped her purse, and rummaged around among the receipts and old shopping lists lining the interior until she found the paper she sought. “Here. I think you need to try this. Read it.”
Annie took the scrap of paper, scanned Claire’s hurried handwriting, and then looked back at Claire, confusion mingling with curiosity. “I do not understand.”
“It’s a contest—a baking contest! This man”—she pointed to Marty Linton’s name at the top of the paper—“has a baking show on TV. It’s really popular. He grew up here, in Heavenly, apparently, and he wants to do something to honor his roots. That’s why he’ll be doing a big bake-off here in the spring. For residents of Heavenly, aged sixteen and over! You enter with an original from-scratch recipe. If he likes your recipe more than anyone else’s, he’ll put you on his TV show and . . . wait. I’m such a dunce. You couldn’t do that part of the prize, but this part”—she pointed farther down the page—“you could. If you won, he’d feature your recipe in every Linton Bakery location in the country, and you’d get fifty percent of all the profits from the sale of your dessert!”
“Claire, I could not do this. My desserts are not special.”
She stared at the teen. “Annie, yes, they are. They’re incredible. You could win this thing, I know you could. You just need to enter. The deadline to put your hat in the ring for this is mid-February, but it doesn’t hurt to enter sooner. I could go online and enter you if you want.” Closing her hand over the top of Annie’s, she squeezed. “What do you say, kiddo? Can I?”
The flush was back in Annie’s cheeks. “I . . . I would have to ask Dat.”
“Will he let you?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“But you will ask him, right?” Claire squeezed the hand again until Annie’s eyes were back on hers. “You have to do this, Annie. You’re way too talented not to give this a go.”
“I do not want to be on TV. It is not the Amish way.”
“I know that. Though when I first wrote this stuff down for you, I’d forgotten about that part.” She glanced at the rules and details she’d written down in Heavenly Brews and narrowed in on the part in the middle. “But the money . . . You could win that. It would be no different than you getting a paycheck from me, right? Only with this, if you won, you’d be getting paid for the work you did in the kitchen.”
Annie scratched the tip of her nose, her eyes glazing over in thought. “I do like to help Dat as much as I can . . .”
“So you’ll give it a try?” Claire prodded, grinning.
“It is just like a job, yah?”
“If you win, it would be kind of like having one of your quilts here”—she motioned around the shop—“for sale. Only your dessert would be in lots of stores or, rather, kind-of-famous bakeries. But before that, in terms of the bake-off itself, you simply bake one of those amazing desserts you’ve come up with on your own. That’s it. Then, on the day of the bake-off, you drop it off at”—she dropped her eyes back to the paper—“town hall, like you might drop off a dessert at one of those mud sales the Amish do.”
Annie looked from the paper, to Claire, and back again, her initial hesitation quickly fading into excitement. “Do you really think I should?”
“I really do.”
“Perhaps”—Annie stopped, swallowed, and tried again—“perhaps I could keep it a surprise from Dat.”
“But if you win, he’d have to know.”
“That is a big if.”
Claire guided Annie’s eyes back to hers. “I don’t think it’s a big if at all. In fact, I think you not winning is the more appropriate if here.”
“Then I will try. If you are right, and I win, I will surprise Dat with such news.” Annie wiggled the paper between them. “May I keep this?”
“Of course. Just let me take a picture of it first. That way I have the website I need to go to in order to sign you up.” She reached into her purse, made a second pass through the papers and loose change, and then pulled out her phone.
“I could write it down for you,” Annie offered.
“Nah, this is just as easy, and there will be less chance of me misplacing it—a win-win right now with everything I’m trying to keep track of.” She took temporary custody of the paper again, set it on the counter, took a quick picture, and then went into her phone’s album to make sure the bake-off website was, in fact, visible. “Perfect. I’ll take care of that once I’m done here for the night.”
She closed out of the picture, its thumbnail-size version taking its place beside yet another piece of paper she’d felt the need to capture—a piece of paper she wished she’d never taken out of its envelope . . . never unfolded . . . never read.
“Claire? Are you okay? You look sad all of a sudden.”
It was an observation she couldn’t argue. Not unless it was to demand confused and scared be added as well. Instead, she stepped off the stool, pulled off another bite of cinnamon bread, and mustered up the closest thing to a smile she had. “It’s been a crazy day, kiddo. People were waiting outside when I opened this morning, and they’ve been coming and going nonstop ever since. That’s why, when you walked in, I didn’t hear you. The last customer had just left, and I think I was in shock over the sudden quiet.”
“I’m sorry I could not work yesterday or today, and I am sorry I am taking time away from what might be your only break all day. But soon, Mary and Daniel’s funeral will be over and I will be back to work. When I am, I can handle things in here so you can spend all of your time finishing plans for your festival. But if there are no customers for me to take care of and I have done all of the tasks on the clipboard, perhaps I can help you with some of those things.”
“Sounds good, kiddo.” She pulled Annie in for a quick hug and then motioned toward the clock on the back wall. “You better get going before your dat wonders what happened to you.”
“Yah.” Annie pushed in her own stool but remained standing where she was. “I know you are worried you will not get everything done, but I know you will and I know your festival will be very special. It is how you do everything.”
It was Claire’s turn to blush, and blush she did. “Thanks, kiddo. Your faith in me means a lot. Now . . . off with you. Go . . .”
Annie opened her mouth as if to say something else, but in the end, she made her way around the counter and over to the back hallway. At the doorway, she glanced back, her eyes pinning Claire’s. “When I started Rumspringa, I wanted to have a phone like you have. I wanted to send texts, and make calls, and take pictures the way I’d seen English girls do for so long. And the first few times I used one, I thought it was . . . cool. But I do not think so anymore.”
Intrigued, Claire leaned against the side of the counter and silently compared the confident girl in front of her now with the angry, boundary-pushing one who’d first walked into her shop ten months earlier.
The old Annie couldn’t get far enough away from her Amish ways. The new Annie embraced them . . .
The old Annie couldn’t wear enough makeup. The new, fresh-faced Annie glowed from the inside out . . .
T
he old Annie had worn anger as a cover for intense sadness. The new Annie sought to find lightness everywhere . . .
The old Annie had talked a good game about her abilities but hadn’t believed her own words. The new Annie was humbler, wiser . . .
“Why? What changed?” she finally asked.
“I see the distraction Dat speaks of. I see conversations that stop because a phone dings. I see smiles and waves that are not returned because someone is looking down at their phone instead of up at God’s people. I see animals and babies that are not seen because people are moving their fingers instead of their eyes. And today, I watched your smile disappear because of a picture you keep on your phone.”
Claire drew back, ready to protest, but the reality behind Annie’s words made it so she couldn’t. Instead, she dropped her gaze to the floor.
“I know you are busy with many things to do. But I also know there is more.”
Lifting her chin, Claire released the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “And you’re right. There is. Or at least, I think there is. But I’ll figure it out, Annie, and everything will be—” She stopped and looked away.
Everything would be what? Okay? Fine? Hunky-dory? She didn’t know that. How could she? Mary’s letter to Ruth changed everything.
For her, if not for Jakob.
“When I first came into this store many months ago, I didn’t think anything would ever be better. Mamm was gone, Dat was busy all the time, and I was always alone. I was angry at Dat because he did not have time for me, I was angry at Mamm for dying, I was angry at”—Annie’s voice faltered—“God for his will, and I was angry at you for smiling at me. I didn’t want you, or anyone else, to smile at me. I just wanted to make enough money to run away.
“I know you should not have hired me that day. But you did. And you made me work. You taught me things about this place, and you, and even me. And you taught me to share the things that upset me with the people I love. That is why Dat and I have dinner together every night now. It is why we talk about my day here with you, and his day in the fields or with someone in the district, and why we talk about Mamm sometimes, too. Dat could not help when he did not know what was wrong. You taught me that, Claire. But it seems you do not know these same things for yourself.”
A Killer Carol Page 13