A Killer Carol

by Laura Bradford

  “Because I was.”

  Transferring the popcorn bowl from her lap to the tray, he gathered her hands in his own and brought them to his lips. “I thank God I heard you calling my name, because I’d be lost without you.”

  A week ago, it was the kind of statement that would have melted her heart. But it wasn’t a week ago . . . It was now.

  And now she knew differently.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Callie?” she asked, reclaiming her hands.

  He froze in place. “Callie?”

  “Callie Granger. The woman whose calls you haven’t wanted me to see or hear . . . The woman you were heading out to see last night but pretended you weren’t . . .”

  Covering his face with his hand, he tilted his chin until his head was practically parallel with the ceiling, his silence thwarted only by the slow thud of her heart.

  “Jakob?”

  “Oh, Claire . . .”

  “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

  “It’s all I can say. For now.”

  “Can or will?”

  “Please, Claire, I need you to be patient.”

  She looked beyond him to the window, the snow falling steadily outside showing no sign of letting up. But she had her feet and she had boots. That was enough to get her where she needed to go—where she’d be welcomed with outstretched arms.

  Rising to her feet, she headed toward the door, the sadness she felt overwhelming but not insurmountable. “I’m going home now.”

  “Home?” he echoed, pushing off the couch. “Claire, you can’t leave now. It’s still snowing, remember? And we need to talk about this.”

  “You’re going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “No, I can’t. I . . . I just can’t. Not yet. Not this way.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, to point out there was no right time or right way to break a person’s heart, but instead, she yanked open the door and stepped outside.

  “Claire, please. I don’t want you out in this.”

  “I’ll be fine.” And she would. She’d come back from heartbreak before, and one way or the other, she’d do it again. “I’m glad you’re okay, I’m glad your case is closed. And I’m glad you came into my life when you did. You helped me become stronger and to have faith in my worth. That’s why I know I’ll get through this. In time. I just wish, with all my heart, I didn’t have to.”

  Chapter 24

  It didn’t matter where Claire stood, or in what direction she looked. Lighted Way’s first annual One Heavenly Night was everything she’d dared to imagine and a whole lot more.

  To her right, standing inside the gazebo, singing their hearts out for the crowd who’d assembled around them, were Annie and Henry and their fellow youth group members. It was hard to know, exactly, if their rosy cheeks were from the cold or from the pleasure of sharing their songs with so many people, but if she had to guess, she’d say both.

  Beyond the gazebo, at the western end of Lighted Way, couples—both young and old—were eagerly awaiting their turn on the horse-drawn sleigh that looked as if it had come straight from the pages of a storybook.

  Across the street, but closer to where she stood, she marveled at the crowd beginning to form for the next Living Nativity. Already they’d shared the story of Christ’s birth twice, with the smiles and laughter the animals stirred giving way, both times, to the quiet oohs and ahhs when Joseph (Eli) and Mary (Esther) held the Christ child (a bundled-up Sarah) inside the manger. Maybe, if she was in the right place at the right time, she could sneak in a cuddle with Sarah before the night was over.

  To her left, just past Glick’s Tools ’n More, families and teenagers sat around the bonfire, roasting chestnuts and cooking s’mores while Al shared facts about various Christmas celebrations around the world. When the stories were funny, there was laughter; when they weren’t, there was mesmerized silence.

  Inside the otherwise vacant building to the left of the police station, Santa held court in his elaborate red cushioned chair, listening to the wishes of each and every English child who’d witnessed his arrival atop the town’s shiny new red firetruck several hours earlier. Beside him, she knew, was the large red basket Esther’s mother, Martha, had made at Claire’s request. Inside the basket were the Christmas cookies Ruth had made and Claire had replenished three times already—the “North Pole” treats almost as big a hit as Santa himself.

  Almost.

  But the best part of all was that everywhere she looked, people were smiling and laughing, speaking and listening, and learning about one another. Amish spoke to Amish, English spoke to English, and in some cases they came together—to listen, to marvel, to smile, to laugh, to make a memory—their commonality in that moment a shared faith and a shared home base.

  Sweeping her gaze back through the various stations, she spotted Aunt Diane and Bill. They were standing, arm in arm, at the gazebo steps, singing along with Annie and her friends. She rose up on tiptoe as she looked back toward the nativity, spotting Ben’s cows, Eli’s sheep, and even Samuel’s goat, Gussy. As the laughter turned to quiet gasps, she rose up even higher and grinned at the sight of her best friend gazing down at Sarah with such love it was impossible to look away. One day she’d have that. And if she didn’t, she was grateful God had guided her to a place where she could know Esther and Eli, Ruth and Samuel, Ben and—

  She darted her gaze back toward the bonfire, across to the storefront where she could just make out Santa with his big bulging stomach, and back to the alley where Benjamin so often parked. Somewhere, tucked away in a quiet corner, her sweet friend was daring to love again by asking for Rebeccah’s hand in marriage. She didn’t need to see him or hear her response to know what it would be. Benjamin Miller was a keeper, plain and simple. And Rebeccah complemented him perfectly.

  Somewhere, too, she hoped Ruth was telling a more relaxed Samuel about the baby they would soon have, the knowledge that he’d be doing some contract work with Esch Custom Woodworking on the Breeze Point project surely enabling him to embrace the news and his sweet wife.

  “Claire?”

  She turned toward the voice she still dreamed about every night as she was drifting off to sleep and gave in to the smile she couldn’t hold back even if she tried. No matter what had happened between them, she still loved Jakob Fisher. Always would. After all, that’s what true love was—steadfast and never ending.

  “It came out pretty good, didn’t it?” she asked, grinning.

  “The festival? It’s incredible. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s almost perfect.”

  She felt her smile falter. “Almost?”

  He brought his eyes back on hers and held them there. “Almost.”

  “Is there an issue I don’t know about?”

  “It’s not an issue, exactly. It’s more of an explanation, followed by a question. Then, depending on the answer, this night will, in fact, jump all the way to perfect.”

  “Jakob, I don’t understand what—”

  He pointed to the bench just a few feet beyond Heavenly Treasures. “Can we sit?”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I’ve done everything I can to keep myself together to this point because I had to. For this festival and everyone here tonight. But Jakob? I’m holding on by a thread right now, and I can’t afford to let go until it’s—”

  “Please?”

  She looked back toward the bonfire, across to Santa, down toward the nativity, but there was nothing and no one that seemed to demand her attention at that moment. Shrugging, she let him guide her to the bench, her gaze falling on a thin manila folder. “Uh-oh, someone left something behind.”

  “No, it wasn’t left behind. It’s there because I put it there. For you. For us.”

  “For us?”

  Taking her hand, he gently walked her backward until she
had to sit. “You have no idea how many times I started to pick up the phone to call you these last few days. Or how badly I wanted to chase after you that night instead of staying in the shadows watching to make sure you made it back to the inn safely.”

  “You followed me home? In the snowstorm?”

  “I followed you as far as there”—he pointed to the building on the opposite side of the street—“and then I watched until you turned up your aunt’s driveway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was snowing. Because you were upset. Because I needed to know you were safe. Because . . .” He stopped, shook his head, and then squatted down on the ground in front of her. “Claire, there is no Callie.”

  Again, he shook his head. “I mean, there is a Callie, of course. But there is no Callie for me. Never has been, never will be. There’s only you.”

  She stared at him. “But I heard you, the other night, the things you said, the way you told me you had to go back inside to work even though you’d just told Callie you were coming out to see her.”

  “Remember Mary’s letter to Ruth? How it sounded one way because that’s what we took it to mean? But once we stepped back, without those preconceived notions, it sounded very different?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Well, I think that’s what happened the other night, when you heard me on the phone. Probably because I acted like a caught fool the few times she called when you were around.”

  She felt her knee begin to bounce and tried to stop it with her hand. “But you said you got her picture and that it was gorgeous,” she said, her voice shaking. “You said it was everything you both wanted and that it was a million times better than you’d imagined.”

  “Because the picture was gorgeous, it was a million times better than I could have imagined, and”—he grabbed her hand, and together, they stopped her shaking knee—“it is everything we—as in you and me, not me and Callie—both want.”

  Leaving her hand in place, he reached across the bench, plucked the folder from its resting spot, and set it atop her hand—opened.

  “All those evenings we started to watch a movie at my place only to shut it off and daydream about our future together? The kitchen you want, the workshop I’d like, the patio we need to entertain all our friends? It’s all right here.” He pointed at the picture of a cottage-style house that sparked a sense of familiarity she couldn’t place at the moment. “That’s why Callie was calling, why she was sending me pictures, why I was going out to see her that night . . . She does part-time work as a Realtor, and I asked her to keep a lookout for me—for us.”

  “For us?” she rasped, looking from the picture to Jakob and back again.

  “For us.”

  Her head was spinning so fast she didn’t know what to say, what to think.

  “This place was actually the old guest house for what is now Sleep Heavenly. It was sold off probably a decade before your aunt bought the inn.”

  Casting her eyes back down at the paper, she noted the similar windows, the similar porch railing, the similar gingerbread styling around the eaves. “This is behind the tree line in the back of Aunt Diane’s property, isn’t it?”

  His mouth spread wide in a smile. “It is. And I wanted to tell you the other night when you were at my place, but it wasn’t a done deal yet and you walked out so fast, I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to stop you, wanted to tell you about all of this right then and there, but I didn’t want to do it that way. I wanted to do it here . . . tonight. I wanted it to be special.”

  “I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

  His smile widened still farther, calling into play the dimples she so loved. “That’s okay because I haven’t gotten to the question part.”

  “The question part?”

  He held up his index finger, resituated his squat into a full-out bended-knee pose, and reached into his pocket to reveal a small brown leather jewelry box. Then, with hands that were both strong and a little shaky, he opened the box, removed the ring from inside, and gently coaxed her tear-splattered hand away from her mouth. “Claire Weatherly, would you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”

  “Your wife?” she echoed.

  “My wife.”

  “Oh yes, yes, yes—a million times yes!”

  Jumping to his feet, Jakob pulled her up and off the bench as applause broke out around them. She didn’t need to look to know her Heavenly family was there; she could feel their presence, their love, their happiness.

  He drew her close, his breath warm on her ear. “Now this night is perfect.”

  About the Author

  While spending a rainy afternoon at a friend's house as a child, Laura Bradford fell in love with writing over a stack of blank paper, a box of crayons, and a freshly sharpened number-two pencil. From that moment forward, she never wanted to do or be anything else. Today, Laura is the national bestselling author of the Amish Mysteries, including Just Plain Murder and A Churn for the Worse. She is also the author of the Emergency Desert Squad Mysteries, and, as Elizabeth Lynn Casey, she wrote the Southern Sewing Circle Mysteries.

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.