IN PLAIN View

by Olivia Newport

  “All right,” Ruth said. “Just give me a couple minutes to freshen up.”

  Lauren closed the door on her way out. Ruth went to the dresser, unpinned her hair, brushed it, and pinned it up again in a matter of seconds. From her bottom desk drawer she took the required documents then fished in her backpack for her small wallet.

  She flinched when her phone buzzed yet again, but she ignored it. A moment later, though, she heard the notification that someone had left a message.

  Elijah would no sooner leave a message on a phone than he would drive a car.

  But he had. Something was wrong. She just knew it. She lifted the phone to look at the screen. Four unanswered calls. A rock formed in the pit of her stomach.

  Finally Ruth accessed her voice mail. The rock turned hot. “Lauren!”

  Joel was not there for supper. Annie heard the sigh in Eli’s voice after the silent prayer at the beginning of the meal.

  “He’ll come around,” Franey said softly in Pennsylvania Dutch. “He must.”

  Eli scowled into the bowl of peas and carrots.

  Rufus was missing as well. As much as she loved Franey— and the whole Beiler family—Annie could not help but be disappointed.

  “He went with Tom to see Karl.” Franey seemed to read Annie’s mind as she passed the mashed potatoes. “They’ve been gone most of the day.”

  Annie nodded and held the bowl of potatoes while Jacob served himself.

  “Don’t take more than you’ll eat,” Franey cautioned her youngest.

  After supper, Sophie and Lydia were clearing the table, having refused Annie’s offer of help, so Annie took her unfinished note card to the living room. Determined to tell her parents the truth about what happened, she did not want to be dramatic. Just the facts. She was still chewing on the top of her pen with the note in her lap when she heard Tom’s truck. With a glance toward the empty dining room, Annie crossed to the front door and met Rufus on the porch.

  On Saturday he kissed her, after months of holding back. On Sunday he drove her home with murmurs of assurance that Beth Stutzman meant nothing to him. Yesterday he held her hand in the ambulance and all the way home in Tom’s truck. It all felt so long ago. She wished she could run into his arms now, feel his heartbeat, his hand at the back of her neck. Perhaps he would take her home again. He could let Dolly slow her pace, as he held the reins with one hand and her fingers with the other.

  He gave her a tired smile. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Annie said. “How is Karl?”

  “Okay. It won’t be long till he’s released. The burns looked worse than they are.” Rufus leaned against the house, next to the door. The porch light spilled over him. “At least that’s what the nurse said when she came in to change the dressings. I doubt she was supposed to tell us even that much.”

  “Did he say what happened? Why he was there?”

  Rufus shook his head. “The nurse said someone from the sheriff ’s office had been there, but Karl was asleep from the pain medication.”

  “He sounded really angry yesterday,” Annie said.

  Rufus nodded. “He still is, when he’s awake. He’s not going to let go of this.”

  “Can you blame him? Somebody put him in the hospital. He has a right to know what happened.”

  Her words hung in the air, and she regretted them. This was Rufus. Last year somebody put Rufus in the hospital—probably Karl Kramer—and Rufus had let it go. Only pride, hochmut, demanded rights. Humility, demut, did not.

  Annie stifled a groan. She was never going to learn to be Amish at this rate.

  Rufus closed a hand over the fist that held her pen. “What are you writing?”

  “A note to my parents. I have to tell them, but I am not ready for a phone call.”

  “I understand. Just be sure to sign the note.”

  She tilted her head, questioning.

  “I suppose I will have to tell the police about the note I received.” Rufus scratched the back of one ear.

  Annie’s pulse pounded. “What note?”

  He squeezed her fingers. “One that I suspect is very similar to the one that prompted Karl to go out to the rock.”

  “Rufus! Why didn’t you say something last night?”

  “Too much was going on. And I don’t have the note. It blew out of the buggy on my way out to the rock—before I realized it could be important.”

  “Who would want to hurt both Karl and you?” Not Joel. Certainly not Joel. Holes like Joel made swiss cheese of Annie’s flimsy theory.

  She savored the sensation of his hand around hers. If someone was trying to hurt Rufus, her investigation was far from over.

  Thirty-Two

  March 1778

  We never clear this part of Grossmuder’s garden. Why are we doing it this year?”

  Jacob looked at his son. At thirteen, the boy had recently announced he no longer wanted to be Jacob Franklin, but simply Franklin. The decision amused Jacob and Katie, but they made the transition with surprising ease. Franklin hoarded pamphlets published by Benjamin Franklin no matter what the topic. Over the winter he seemed to grow four inches in his arms and legs and now was almost as tall as Jacob.

  Jacob reached down with a broad hand and pulled out a tangle of withered bindweed from summers past. “It’s too overgrown. We should have done this years ago.” He filled both arms with weeds and heaped them on a pile he would burn later.

  “Are we going to plant this part?” Franklin wanted to know.

  “Maybe. When I was a boy we used to grow beets in this section.” Maria’s beets. That was what it had been. Jacob made no effort to hide from his children that he had a sister who disappeared decades ago, but rarely did anyone speak her name.

  “I don’t much like beets.” Franklin yanked on a vine that was as long as he was tall.

  “We don’t have to plant beets. It’s up to Grossmuder. Even if she does not want to plant anything, we should clean it up.”

  Franklin straightened and gestured down the hill. “Were you really born in that old cabin?”

  “Yes, I was. My parents felt fortunate to have that shelter in the homesteading days.” Jacob used the structure to store assorted farm tools now.

  “And now we’re a new country!” Franklin wrapped a thick, thorny, knee-high weed with a rag then gripped it with both hands and pulled. The weed surrendered its existence. He held it up. “I got the whole root.” Franklin tossed it on the burn pile.

  Jacob smiled and nodded.

  “That’s what we have to do with the British,” Franklin said. “We have to get rid of the whole lot of them. As soon as I’m old enough, I’m going to fight.”

  Jacob sincerely hoped the fighting would be over long before Franklin could enlist, though he had heard of boys as young as fifteen finding a place in the militia. Franklin’s voice had already deepened, and he had the height of a man.

  “Do not glamorize war,” Jacob said. “It is ugly business.”

  “But it’s your business, isn’t it?” Franklin yanked another weed. “It seems to me, it’s the business of all red-blooded American men some way or another.”

  “Men,” Jacob said, “not boys. You are thirteen and needed on the farm.”

  “I won’t always be thirteen.”

  “And I hope there won’t always be a war.”

  “We have to win, Daed. We can’t stop until we win.”

  Jacob knelt and raked his fingers through the earth of a square yard cleared of weeds. Enough talk of war. “It’s warm enough and the soil is soft enough. We should turn the earth once we get it cleared.”

  “Today?”

  Jacob heard the implicit moan in his son’s question, but he ignored it. “Go on down to the old cabin and get rakes and shovels.”

  “Yes, sir.” As reluctant as he sounded, Franklin did as he was told.

  Jacob let dirt sift through the fingers of both hands. The weeds were coming out easily enough. Whether or not he had really seen Maria on that ra
iny afternoon nearly four years ago, it was time to reclaim the plot of land where she talked to her beets whenever she felt anxious.

  “Daed!”

  The cry startled Jacob to his feet. This was not the timbre of a boy calling information to his father over a field. Jacob sprinted across the clearing and crashed down the hill to the cabin. Jacob saw what had caused his son to halt about ten yards short of the cabin. Wrapped in a man’s wool coat and beaver fur hat, a form slumped against the door.

  “We’d better see who it is,” Jacob said.

  The form moved and slowly stood. The hat dropped away in the process, and the coat fell open.

  She was thin and pale and thirty years older, but her black curls tumbled as they always had. Her visage lacked the fullness of the image in Jacob’s memory. If her face looked this thin, he hated to think how lean the rest of her must be. The baggy men’s breeches made it hard to tell.

  “Maria!”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “Jacobli, is that you?”

  He folded her into his arms, breath to speak gone from him.

  “Daed?” she whispered in his ear.

  “Gone.”

  He felt her shoulders drop, even under the heavy coat.

  “How long ago?” she asked.

  “Nearly seven years.”

  She pulled back from him, shaking her head slowly, her curls jostling. “I never heard.”

  How could she have known? No one in the family knew where to find her—or whether she wanted to be found. Relief at seeing her alive flushed through him, but why had she come now?

  “The boy is yours?” Maria said.

  “My eldest. Jacob Franklin.”

  “Just Franklin.” The boy’s voice bore an irritated edge.

  “Franklin,” Jacob said, “meet your aunti Maria.”

  Maria laughed. “I like your name.”

  Jacob had always relished Maria’s laugh above all his siblings’. He grinned broadly.

  Franklin eyed the visitor cautiously. “She’s one of the Amish aunts, right?”

  Jacob looked toward Maria. “I guess not anymore.”

  “Not for a long time.” Maria’s eyes moved from Jacob to Franklin. “Someday I will introduce you to Mr. Benjamin Franklin, if you like.”

  Franklin gawked, making his father chuckle briefly. Jacob squinted as if to focus on the details of his sister’s presence.

  “Are you injured?” Jacob asked.

  She shook her head, curls floating free. “Just weary.”

  “Franklin,” Jacob said, “go up to the big house and get your grossmuder.”

  “Yes, sir.” Franklin turned and started up the hill.

  Maria’s face was a question.

  “Yes,” Jacob said. “Elizabeth still lives. You must see her.”

  Maria sucked in a breath. “After all this time, why would she want to see me?”

  “Because she loves you.”

  “I would understand if she never forgave me.”

  “If you think that, you have forgotten who she is.”

  “I thought I would find Christian here,” Maria said.

  “Ah. Forgiveness may not be as forthcoming from him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He moved to the Conestoga Valley years ago. Many of the Amish did. Their land here in Berks County was worth a considerable amount after they made real farms of the wilderness. They made enough money to start again in Lancaster County, farther from the frontier.”

  “Bar-bar and Anna? And Lisbetli?”

  “Barbara and Anna also have gone to Lancaster County with their husbands,” Jacob said. “As far as I know they are well. The names of their grandchildren make a long list. Even a few great-grandchildren have come along.”

  Jacob reached for Maria’s hand, and she gave it to him. He breathed several times as he gathered his words. “Lisbetli went on to eternity. She is buried beside your mother. And Daed.”

  “But she was the youngest!” Maria keened, sinking slowly to her knees as her wail let loose.

  Jacob weighted her shoulder with both of his hands, feeling the pulse of her sobs.

  Finally she looked up. “What happened?”

  “She birthed a child and did not recover.”

  “And the babe?”

  Jacob hated to dishearten Maria’s hope. He shook his head. “She fell ill when she was very young. She lies beside Lisbetli.”

  Maria stood up and wiped tears with the back of one hand, wandering a few paces from Jacob. “I’ve missed so much.”

  Jacob’s heart swelled in his chest in the midst of this stunning conversation. Maria was the lost piece in the Byler family. He had to ask the obvious question. “Why have you come now?”

  Maria met his gaze. Her voice, when it came, was small. “I am exhausted. I wanted to come home.”

  “And you have.” Jacob closed the few steps between them and wrapped his arms around Maria again. She had not gotten much taller than he remembered—though he had grown from a little boy. The top of her head against his chest did not even reach his chin.

  Footsteps disturbed their embrace. Jacob stepped back and turned his sister around. Elizabeth stood at the base of the hill, breathless with disbelieving eyes.

  Thirty-Three

  Are we almost finished?” Annie set her jaw and glared at the officer on Wednesday morning. “I have to work today.”

  “Just a few more questions.” The officer consulted his notes. “Did you see the note you say Karl Kramer received?”

  “I didn’t say he got a note. He says he got a note. No, I did not see it.”

  “And the one Mr. Beiler received? Did you see that one?”

  Annie straightened in her chair. “No.”

  “But you were aware he received one?”

  “He told me last night. I didn’t know on Monday.”

  The officer twisted both lips to one side. “Do you have any knowledge of who wrote the notes?”

  “No, I do not.” Annie slumped. He was fishing. She was itching to get out of the sheriff ’s office and do some fishing of her own. If she turned up any proof, she would be back.

  The officer tapped his pen on his notepad.

  Annie opened her arms, palms up. “May I please have my bicycle? I’d like to be on my way.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re not finished with it. That’s why.” He barely looked up from his paperwork.

  “What exactly do you need the bike for?”

  “We found assorted tire tracks on the scene.”

  “The hill was too steep. I left the bike at the bottom. I told you all this.” Frustration brewed in her gut.

  “When we’re finished with the bicycle, you’ll be the first to know.”

  Annie spied the interlibrary loan volume in between a notepad and a file folder. “May I at least have my library book back? Do you have any idea what the fine is for losing an interlibrary loan? Surely you don’t think an old history book is complicit in the explosion.”

  “Sarcasm will get you nowhere, Ms. Friesen.”

  She scowled and met his gaze. Without taking his eyes off her, the officer reached to one side and extracted the book from the stack of paperwork.

  “We’ll be in touch,” he said.

  Annie grabbed the book before he could change his mind. “Find out who hurt Karl Kramer. It wasn’t me.”

  She pulled the note to her parents from her back pocket and marched down Main Street to the post office. With a groan she realized she had just missed the daily mail pickup.

  Annie shoved the note through the letter opening, scowled, and set her course for the shop.

  “You can’t let this go on, Rufus.”

  Rufus tapped the cabinet hinge with the rubber mallet. “Mo, I know the explosion rattled everyone. I cannot control the way people feel. Perhaps they just need time.”

  “Don’t be silly. People listen to you.”

 
; “I’m a simple Amish cabinetmaker.” He nudged the hinge once more.

  “Marv Hatfield said he wants to drop out. If we lose Marv, we lose both his sons.”

  Rufus dropped his mallet into his toolbox and wiped his hands on a rag. He was installing cabinets in a newly constructed home. Mo was not even supposed to be on the premises. Rufus glanced around, relieved that the general contractor was nowhere in sight.

  “Alicia Paxton is the environmental guru of the whole town,” Mo said, “and she thinks it’s dangerous to proceed.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “So do something before we lose every cent of funding along with all the donated labor.”

  “It only happened the day before yesterday,” Rufus said. “We have to wait for things to settle down. The sheriff will find whoever was behind it. Perhaps people will reconsider then.”

  “They think it’s because of the Amish, that they set the bomb.”

  Rufus raised an eyebrow under the brim of his hat. “It is not our way to make bombs out of fertilizer and a cell phone.”

  “People are saying it was a bad idea to join forces, that it’s better if the Amish and the English live separately.”

  “That is the Amish way, after all,” Rufus said.

  “How can you say that? You’ve been behind this joint project all along.”

  “I still am. But it is true that it has been our way to live separately for hundreds of years.”

  “Are you dropping out, too?” Mo widened her stance, a hand on her hip.

  “I promise to talk to them.” Rufus set aside the thought of Ike Stutzman’s vehement opposition. “But I am not going to move forward without Karl.”

  Mo groaned. “Oh, Rufus, why can’t you let that go? If we hadn’t involved Karl, maybe the explosion would not have happened in the first place.”

  “The man has burns all over his arms and neck.”

  “I know. And I feel bad for him, as rotten as he is. But we can’t risk the project for him.”

  “We have time,” Rufus said. “While Karl is healing, we’ll keep talking.”

  Mo sucked in her lips. “You don’t think Tom Reynolds will back out, do you?”