She slipped into her chair and bowed her head, still averting her eyes from him. He watched her as he settled into his chair, impressed that she was going to even eat with him. But then, Izzy never missed a meal. She liked to eat, and he admired a healthy appetite in a girl. He lowered his head, offering thanks, and by the time he lifted his head, she was already spooning out some green beans onto her plate.
So cool was the air between them, Luke figured they’d spend the entire meal in punishing silence. It was so quiet that he could hear himself chewing. This was ridiculous. He should do something.
“Izzy, I’m sorry that I offered you a beer. It was foolish of me, and I regret it. Hugely. Enormously. But there’s a reason I did it. It was because I was trying to get you to talk to me.”
A shadow passed over Izzy’s face, disappearing as quickly as Luke had marked it.
She didn’t respond.
“I’ll never put you in a situation like that again. Never. I give you my word.”
She glanced at him briefly and shrugged her shoulders. What did that mean? That she didn’t believe him? Or more likely, that she didn’t care what he did.
“Can we start over? I’m Luke Schrock.” When she still didn’t answer, he said, “Why can’t we be friends? Just friends. Nothing more.”
She eyed him. “You don’t seem like the type of guy who has friends who are girls. Just girlfriends.”
“I don’t deny that. But it would be good for me, I know that much. And it might be good for you too. To have a friend who’s a guy. No strings attached. No expectations. Just friends.”
“Somehow I doubt you’d be a good friend. I’ve heard stories about you.”
There it was again. His reputation kept returning to interfere with his new life. Tricky, that. “Fair enough.” Luke steepled his fingers together, the way David would when he was thinking something over. “Have you ever heard Fern use this saying? ‘Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.’”
“No. I’ve heard plenty of her sayings, but not that one. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Luke sighed. “Izzy, why not take a chance on me? At least, let me prove to you that I can be a good friend.”
Before she could respond, a horse whinnied in the distance, and another answered. It meant a buggy would soon be rolling up the driveway. Luke got up from his chair to meet the buggy and relieve Amos, so he and Fern could come in and get started on supper.
He unhooked Bob and walked him to the barn. Inside, he hooked the horse to cross-ties, checked his hooves for stones, brushed him down, and then led him into his stall for his waiting hay. By the time Luke rejoined everyone at the kitchen table, they were nearly done with supper. Izzy never did give him an answer. Actually, he was getting to know her well enough to realize that silence was her no.
seven
Fern took Izzy along to her monthly comfort quilt gathering, held this June at Edith Lapp’s house. Today they were making a pinwheel pattern, complex and multicornered. A year ago, that difficult quilt block would have sent Izzy spiraling into a silent panic. Not so, today. It amazed her how much she’d learned in the last year, mostly through oh-so-careful observation. She watched everyone, noticed everything. It pleased her that the women spoke Penn Dutch around her as they worked on their blocks, as if she were one of them. Amazing.
She wished Jenny were here. Ever since she’d started nannying for that English family, she couldn’t get away during the day to join in on gatherings. She missed her. Unlike awful Luke Schrock, Jenny didn’t probe or pry—she was much like Fern in that way. In many ways, in fact. Amos said Jenny moved to Stoney Ridge when she was young enough that Fern had a strong influence on her. They walked alike, talked alike, cooked and baked alike. Even the way they wore their aprons was similar—doubled around their small waists and pinned in the front, not the back.
As the women finished the blocks, they set them on the Ping-Pong table in the basement for Edith to arrange. This was always Edith’s self-appointed job, whether the gathering was held at her home or not. Edith Lapp was a solid-looking woman, with broad shoulders and big, capable hands. There was nothing soft about her, especially not her personality. Yet for all her prickliness, she had an eye for color. She was the one who, last spring, had shown Izzy how to display flowers, fruits, and vegetables in an eye-catching way. That was the very day that the bus driver stopped for peonies for his wife, and the farm stand’s sales took a decided upturn.
Edith would inspect the blocks, narrow a few down to the very best, turn them over to examine their backside, then choose the best block as the centerpiece. All others would fan out from that centerpiece. Same thing, every month.
As humble as Amish women could be, and should be, and were expected to be, and mostly were, they all held their breath as Edith flipped through the blocks, one after the other. When Edith finally plucked the best from the rest, the maker of that block would sputter in surprise, blushing furiously as she insisted her block didn’t belong in that center spot. Edith paid no mind. Same scenario, every month.
The funny thing was that Izzy had quickly figured out that each woman was vying to get her block chosen for that centerpiece. They competed with each other, they just did so quietly.
As she pondered those thoughts, she realized that the room had grown quiet. Everyone had turned to look at her. Everyone except Edith. She was focused on laying out the quilt top. Izzy’s gaze swept the circle of Plain faces, all eyes fixed on her. Her heart started thumping. What happened? What had she done wrong?
Fern tugged her sleeve forward toward the Ping-Pong table to see the chosen center block for the quilt. She pointed to it. “I do believe that one is yours, Izzy.”
It was a moonless night, so dark there were no shadows. Something startled Luke out of a sound sleep. He blinked a few times, slowly emerging out of the fog of sleep, until he realized someone was in the room with him, breathing heavily. He froze, as his mind tried to grasp and sort out the situation. Then he heard a snort, a familiar kind of snort, and got a blast of hay-breath on his face.
“Bob!” Luke jumped off the cot. “Bob, what’re you doing? How’d you get out of your stall?”
He grabbed a rope off the pegboard and tossed it over and around Bob’s neck, lasso-like. Now what? The tack room was tiny and narrow. “Okay, buddy, you’re going to have to back up the way you came in.” Slowly, he maneuvered Bob backward until he was out in the aisle of the barn again and could circle around to be led to his stall. The door was slid wide open. Had Luke not fastened the latch? He slid the door shut, fastened the latch, double-checked it to make sure it was tightly latched, then yawned and went back to bed.
Close to dawn, Luke woke with a gasp to find Bob standing over his cot again, breathing down on him. Again, he maneuvered the gentle horse backward, then to his stall, and fastened it shut. This time, he gave up on sleep and dressed for the day. He wiggled the stall’s latch a few times to see if it needed tightening, but the screws seemed snug. He milked the cows and led them out to the pasture for the day, opened the holding pen for Izzy’s sheep and herded them into the grazing pasture. The sky was full of low-lying gray clouds, so he wanted them to eat up while they could. If lightning and thunder started, the animals would all be herded back to the barn. Not all farmers had that policy, but Amos did. On Luke’s way to the house, he got a whiff of bacon sizzling in the frying pan. Best smell in the world, hands down.
Amos was on the porch, sipping coffee.
Luke opened his mouth to tell him about Bob, but Fern called to them to come in and eat while it was hot. His stomach rumbled with hunger. He sat down across from Izzy, who kept her eyes averted from him, as usual, and followed Amos’s lead to tuck his chin for a silent prayer. Tiredly, his eyes sagged shut and he basked in the scent of coffee and bacon. Amos often took a long time in those silent prayers; Luke prayed too but more efficiently than Amos. He usually finished and had a few minutes left to think over the day’s agenda. This morning,
he relaxed in the warmth of the kitchen, the comforting smells of bacon and coffee, and drifted off. He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but when he jerked awake, he opened his eyes to find Amos, Fern, and Izzy staring at him, a bit concerned.
Izzy broke the silence. “I figured you swallowed an olive pit or something and needed the Heimlich.” If she thought he was in grave danger, she made no effort to help him. Instead, she pointed to the plate beside him. “Pass the toast.”
“What’s the matter?” Fern said. “You look like you missed a night’s sleep.”
Luke frowned. “Just about. I woke up to find Bob breathing down on me. Twice.”
Amos looked stricken. “Bob? My Bob?”
“That’s the one.”
“You mean to tell me he was in the tack room? How’d he get out of his stall?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you forget to latch his stall? You must’ve.”
“That’s what I thought, the first time. I double-checked it after I led him back to his stall. But then it happened again. I woke up to a loud, nose-clearing snort from Bob. Right in my face.”
“Poor Bob,” Fern said.
Amos nodded in agreement. “I’ll go down to the barn after breakfast and make sure he’s okay.”
“Bob? Bob? What about me?” Luke’s gaze jumped from Fern to Amos to Izzy and back again to Fern.
Izzy had been buttering her toast, listening to the conversation. To his outrage, he saw a look of mirth flit through her eyes. Here and then gone. This was not funny. “People. I would appreciate a little sympathy. It was a very weird way to wake up. It was like Bob was a doctor standing over a patient. If he could talk, I half expected to hear him say, ‘You okay?’”
With that last sentence, Izzy ducked her head down, and her shoulders started shaking. It was so strange that even Fern set her coffee cup down to watch her.
A giggle bubbled up into Izzy’s throat, then burst out. She started laughing so hard that she had to clasp her hands tight over her mouth, but still the giggles came. Fern’s eyebrows lifted with a smile. Slightly at first, because that was Fern’s way, but then her smile grew from ear to ear. She looked at Amos, and their eyes shared some kind of message, and then he, too, started to chuckle.
“Wait just one minute.” Luke looked at them, astounded. “Did you all set me up? Is this a prank? Some kind of rite of passage for Fern’s Home for Wayward Boys?”
A cackle burst out of Fern, like a rusty hinge opening, and Luke realized she was laughing. Fern Lapp was laughing. Amos’s belly jiggled with amusement, and Izzy had both hands clasped over her mouth, tears running down her face like a river.
“What is the matter with the three of you?”
Fern took in a deep breath, getting herself under control. “Oh Luke, that felt good. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long, long time. Not since Jimmy Fisher’s eyebrows got blown off and he walked around for a month with a surprised look on his face.” She took in one more deep breath. “No, nobody has set you up.”
“Is Bob a trick horse?”
That only got everyone laughing again. “Bob’s a little long in the tooth for tricks,” Amos said, wiping tears off his cheeks. “No, there’s got to be some other explanation.”
“What?”
Amos shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“If we don’t know why it happened, it’ll happen again.”
Fern slapped her palms on the table. “Now that, Luke Schrock, is the first wise thing that’s ever come out of your mouth.”
Amos nodded in agreement. “First one I can recall.” He gave her a broad smile and reached his coffee cup up for a refill. Fern jumped up to pour it and breakfast picked up where it had been before Luke had nodded off.
Izzy hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. As a favor to Fern, she’d taken a basket of ripe peaches from Amos’s orchard over to Edith Lapp. Edith’s grandparents had helped Amos’s grandparents plant those peach saplings, back when they were but children, and in remembrance, he always made sure Edith received the first fruits of the season. Izzy couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have lived in one place so long.
So she’d brought the basket over to Edith’s and was in the kitchen, emptying Fern’s basket into a bowl, trying to avoid Hank Lapp and his yelling, and that was when she heard Luke arrive. So frustrating! He was everywhere she was.
To leave meant she had to go out the way she came in, and that meant bumping into Luke. No thank you. She’d wait until he left if it took all day. She tried to remain utterly silent in the kitchen so that Luke wouldn’t hear her. Edith and Hank wouldn’t. She was pretty sure they’d already forgotten she was here.
She cocked an ear to the open door to find out when Luke would wrap it up and leave—whatever it was that brought him here, of all places. That was really all she wanted to know. Soon, she was engrossed.
“I came to apologize to you,” she heard him say. “A few years ago, I played that trick on your sister.”
What trick? Whose sister? Izzy crept closer to the door.
“It was a shocking thing,” Edith said.
“SHOCKING,” Hank echoed.
“Every day that summer,” Edith said. “Same time each day.”
“WHY WOULD YOU DO SUCH A FOOL THING?”
Izzy leaned closer to the door. What had Luke done?
“That summer, you see,” Luke said, “I was conditioning Galen King’s Thoroughbreds for traffic. I went past your house each afternoon, and saw an older woman sitting on the porch.”
“My sister, her health was poor,” Edith said. “She came to spend the summer with us. My brothers and I, we each took a turn having her live in our homes. She liked being with me in the summer. Every afternoon, she’d sit on the front porch and watch the world go by.”
“Yes, well, I noticed her. And then I thought it would be amusing if she were to see me gallop past on Galen’s horse, riding backwards.”
“AMUSING? YOU COULD HAVE KILLED YOURSELF.”
“At the time, it seemed more funny than dangerous.” Silence fell. Luke cleared his throat and said, “So I wondered how that—well, hoax—might have seemed to your sister? Guessing it wasn’t so amusing to her.”
More silence. Awkward, awkward silence. Then Edith said, “My sister had Alzheimer’s disease. You galloping a horse while sitting backwards provoked great confusion and distress to her.”
“NO ONE BELIEVED HER.”
“Not at first.”
“NOT FOR A LONG WHILE, EDITH. We thought she was just plain CUCKOO. That made her even MORE distressed.”
“Then one day we saw it for ourselves,” Edith said. “The horse went flying by, with you hanging on backwards. But us seeing it too, that only made it worse for her.”
“Why?” Luke said.
“Gave her NIGHTMARES,” Hank said.
“Terrible nightmares. She feared it to be a premonition of her death.”
“SHE THOUGHT THE ANGEL OF DEATH WAS A-COMING FOR HER.”
“And she stopped sitting out front on the porch in the afternoons. Something she’d loved to do.”
Izzy heard Luke let out a discouraged sigh. Strange, how a sigh could say so much. “Could I speak to her?” she heard him say, his voice surprisingly tender. “To apologize.”
“She’s not here,” Edith said crisply.
“Maybe I could write to her. Try to explain.”
“SON, SHE’S GONE TO HER GLORY.”
Edith sucked in a deep breath. “Not long after.”
“You don’t think . . . I mean, that backwards riding, surely it couldn’t have . . . it didn’t scare her to death.” Luke’s voice rose an octave. “Did it?”
No one answered. Not even Hank.
eight
In the middle of the night, a loud crashing sound burst through the air. Woken from a deep sleep, Luke thought it was thunder and lightning at first, until he heard the sound of screeching tire wheels. He jumped out of bed, grabbed his pants, and put them on as
he ran outside to see what in the world had happened. He noticed a light go on up in the house, first one, then another. Everyone was awake, including every animal on the property. The horses were nickering, the cows were restless, the sheep were mewing.
Luke ran down the driveway, barefoot. He was almost to the bottom of the hill when he stopped in his tracks. He could see that a car had driven straight into the farm stand, then drove off. The stand was shattered, split into two pieces, right down the middle.
Amos joined him and let out a deep, defeated sigh.
“Who do you think did it?”
“Not sure. There’s a group of boys, one church over, who have a car hidden. Could’ve been them. They’ve been causing a lot of trouble this spring.” Pieces of splintered wood were scattered everywhere. Standing in the moonlight, with the shadows around him, Amos suddenly seemed utterly worn out. “Maggie, my first wife, she and I built that stand over thirty years ago. Later, my daughters used to sell fruit and vegetables there. Each one. I think of each one of them whenever I see it. Sweet, sweet memories. Gone, now.” He closed his eyes, looking tired and hurt.
Luke didn’t know what to do, what to say. He just wanted to make it all better. “I’ll get this taken care of tomorrow, Amos. I’ll clean everything up once it’s daylight.”
Fern and Izzy had walked down the driveway to join them. Fern said nothing, but tucked her arm through Amos’s elbow.
“Why’d they do it?” Izzy asked.
“For kicks,” Luke said. He knew, because he was once just like them.
Luke couldn’t get back to sleep for the rest of that night. A barn cat yowled, over and over, and as soon as the sky started to lighten with the coming of dawn, he got up and dressed, found his gloves and tools, and went down the hill. He walked around the farm stand, surveying the damage with the flashlight. It was thoroughly demolished, like it had been constructed of balsa wood. He yanked pieces of splintered wood from the wreck and tossed them into a wheelbarrow. Each time the wheelbarrow was full, he pushed it over to the far side of the barn, out of sight, and dumped it out in a pile. Later, he’d pull nails out of the wood and salvage those pieces that could be reused.
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