Her Amish Suitor's Secret

by Carrie Lighte

  Chapter Seven

  “I can take the bobbel now, Rose,” Sadie offered after the deacon said grace.

  “That’s okay. You probably never get to use both of your hands during your meal.” Rose sniffed the dark, wispy hair on the chubby baby’s head. “She’s so sweet. If she were mine I don’t think I’d ever put her down.”

  “You would if you knew how much her windel schtinke,” eight-year-old David said, plugging his nose and waving his hand in front of his face.

  “Mind your manners, suh,” Levi reminded the child gently, but everyone else cracked up.

  “Talk about schtinke, the other night I had a familye of skunks on my front porch.” Rose delved into the story of how the creatures had blocked her from entering the house. She left out the parts that might be scary, such as why the back door was locked. And the parts that might not reflect well on her and Caleb, merely saying she had to wait a long time until the animals left.

  Elizabeth’s eyes were big. “Did they ever kumme back?”

  “Neh. Not yet anyway. Caleb put citrus rinds around the haus. Skunks don’t like the smell of citrus.”

  “What hypocrites,” Irene joked, and everyone laughed again.

  And that was how they passed the evening—with laughter, pleasant conversation and good food. They also squeezed in a game of horseshoes between supper and dessert. Rose was on Caleb’s team, and although they didn’t win, she found she preferred being on his side instead of competing against him, the way she’d done when they’d raced blindfolded.

  “You and Caleb ought to pair up for the canoe race in August,” Jaala suggested as she helped Rose serve pie afterward. Sadie and Irene quickly echoed the idea.

  “Neh, absolutely not. It wouldn’t be right,” Abram interjected, nearly causing Rose to upset the tray of dessert. Why would he forbid us to pair up?

  His wife asked him the same question. “What’s wrong with them being a team?”

  “With the lake in their front yard, they have an unfair advantage. They can practice paddling together all the time,” he said.

  “Ach! When do they have time? The work here at the camp keeps them running ragged and on Suundaag, the one day when they actually could spend a little leisure time on the lake, you show up to go fishing,” Jaala lectured Abram sternly. But Rose noticed a twinkle in his eye; he’d been teasing. She giggled and glanced at Caleb to see his reaction, but he seemed too preoccupied with his pie to look up.

  “I promise I won’t kumme here to fish next week, so you two can practice paddling to your hearts’ content,” Abram said with a wink at Rose.

  Relieved the deacon didn’t appear fazed by the idea of Rose and Caleb canoeing together, Rose said, “That’s okay. You’re wilkom anytime. You all are.” She meant it, too. The leit in Serenity Ridge were so warm she already felt as if they were close friends.

  In the week that followed, the first blueberries began to ripen, so Rose made haste to pick as many raspberries as she could before she started harvesting the blueberries, too. Because her aunt and uncle didn’t have enough land or the right soil for growing wild, or lowbush, blueberries—the kind Maine was famous for—they grew cultivated, or highbush, blueberries. As with the raspberries, Rose would have to pick the blueberries by hand instead of using a rake.

  While she hardly had a free moment, she was glad things had returned to normal between Caleb and her, and she couldn’t wait to go hiking with him the following Sunday. But as it turned out, the day dawned with a severe thunderstorm, and a steady rain persisted into the evening hours.

  Nearly another week passed in the blink of an eye, and Rose was astounded on Friday morning when Hope reminded her at breakfast the blueberry festival was only eight days away.

  Rose was incredulous—and frantic. “I thought the blueberry festival wasn’t until the last weekend in July?”

  “Jah, it’s on July 30 and 31 this year. That’s next Saturday and Sunday.”

  “What’s the blueberry festival?” Caleb asked. He must have forgotten to put his hat on again because his face was nearly as bronzed as his arms, which in turn made his eyes appear nearly as blue as...as blueberries. Rose glanced away.

  Charity explained the festival was an Englisch celebration to kick off the blueberry season. A lot of Maine communities hosted a blueberry festival later in the summer, but Serenity Ridge held theirs early to avoid the competition. Every year women in the district pitched in to rent a tent on the festival grounds so they could sell their goods to locals and tourists. “It’s not just baked goods, either. Some women sell blueberry candles or dishcloths with blueberries embroidered onto them. This year Jaala is selling quilts. As long as they’re blue or have berries on them, they’re fair game.”

  “You’ll sell pies and jam, won’t you, Rose?” Caleb asked.

  “Jah.” Rose explained Jaala and Abram would pick up the items on Saturday morning and sell them for her, since she would be checking guests out and helping the girls prepare the cabins for the next group. “I’ll be so busy this week I won’t know if I’m coming or going.”

  “I can help pick berries,” Caleb volunteered.

  “Denki, but I’ll manage.” Rose hadn’t meant to complain; she was only thinking aloud.

  “Is there anything I can do to make the week more pleasant for you?”

  Warmed by his offer, Rose responded, “Jah, you can start it off by canoeing with me on the Sabbat.”

  “That would be a pleasure for me, too,” Caleb replied, and Rose thought she heard Eleanor snicker. Go ahead and tell the deacon you think we’re flirting. He won’t care!

  But on Sunday, a pair of families who were vacationing together took the canoes and rowboats out on the lake and didn’t return until evening. And since Hope and Charity were both feeling under the weather, they came straight home after church. The four of them hung out on the porch, chatting and working on a jigsaw puzzle, which was engaging in its own way, yet not quite the kind of afternoon Rose had hoped to share with Caleb.

  The following week Rose spent so much time picking raspberries and blueberries and making jam she gave up trying to remove the little prickles from her wrists or scrub the purple stains from her fingers. One morning she told the twins she’d even had a dream about making jam that was so real she could smell the sweetness in her sleep—only to wake and discover it was her own hands, tucked beneath her cheek, that she’d smelled. But her efforts paid off and by Saturday morning, she had two crates packed with blueberry and mixed-berry jam.

  She’d risen at three thirty to make an extra dozen pies for the festival, as well as those for Helen and the produce stand. Jaala and Abram were supposed to arrive at eight, but they still hadn’t shown by the time everyone finished breakfast. Checking out guests and cleaning the cabins was always a race against time and Rose didn’t have a moment to spare, so Caleb offered to jog to the phone shanty about half a mile down the road to check for a voice mail message.

  Some twenty minutes later he reported, “Abram said unfortunately they’re both sick. Jaala sends her apologies, but they won’t be able to take the pies and jam to the fair.”

  “Oh, neh!” Rose wailed. “Of all the days for this to happen, it had to be changeover day!”

  Caleb offered to deliver the goods to the fair himself, but Rose reminded him there was a picture window that needed patching in cabin five and a problem with the bathroom sink in cabin seven. Besides, she doubted he’d want to stick around the festival—he’d be the only man among the half-dozen Amish women selling their wares. And she didn’t feel right imposing on one of them to share their display space. “I’ll put the pies out on the stand with the others. At least some of them will sell. And the jam will, too, over time...”

  “I’ll go,” Charity volunteered. “You’ll be short one person cleaning the cabins and making supper, so it will be tough, but we’ve managed it before
.”

  Though Rose was skeptical, Caleb convinced her, saying, “I need to run to the hardware store to get screening for the window anyway. So I’ll drop Charity off and I can help her cart everything to the tent, too.” Hope agreed it was a good idea.

  Eleanor was the only one who voiced an objection. “If Hope and I are going to have to work twice as hard, will we get paid twice as much?” she asked, a sly glint in her eyes.

  With an equally impish smirk, Rose retorted, “Considering you usually work half as hard as you’re expected to, you’re already getting paid twice as much as you should.”

  “Hey! I was only teasing!” To Rose’s surprise, tears instantly replaced the glint in Eleanor’s eyes.

  “I was, too,” Rose said quickly, even though that was only half-true. “When you’re not chatting, you’re a gut worker. Otherwise, Nancy wouldn’t keep you on here.” Eleanor crossed her arms over her chest and looked away without acknowledging Rose had spoken.

  Caleb broke the tension by announcing he’d go get a folding table for Charity to use and then hitch the horse. Eleanor skulked off to start cleaning, and Hope and Rose carried pies to the buggy while Charity wheeled the wagon full of jam behind them. As she was handing a crate off to Caleb in the back of the buggy, Charity let go before Caleb had it firmly gripped in his hands, so that his end tipped downward. He managed to right it, but the glass jars clinked hard against each other inside the wooden box.

  “Careful!” Rose barked. Maybe she should try to sell these at the stand after all.

  * * *

  Caleb was surprised at how harsh Rose sounded, especially considering he and Charity were doing their best to support her. Her comment to Eleanor hadn’t been very kind, either. But he knew how hard she’d labored to make the extra jam and pies this past week and how important earning extra money was to her, so he mumbled an apology before he and Charity took off for the festival.

  Within an hour, he was back. As he entered cabin five to patch the screen, he noticed the hinges on the door, as well as on the side window, were rusty. There wasn’t enough time to remove and replace them, so he sprayed them with oil and scrubbed them as clean as he could for now. As he worked, the rust brought to mind the verses in Matthew warning against storing treasures where rust or moths could ruin them, and Caleb silently said a prayer for his brother.

  Ryan seemed to be growing more despondent the longer the investigation dragged on without resolution and without him being reinstated to his position at the museum. After two weekends of not being able to use the canoe, Caleb was eager to get back on the lake and explore Paradise Point, and he intended to ask Rose to go with him after worship services on Sunday. Although Caleb highly doubted he’d find anything of significance, he at least wanted to be able to tell his brother he was exhausting every last possibility.

  It was nearly four o’clock when Caleb finished his other groundskeeper and maintenance duties, including repairing the sink in cabin seven. On his way to the barn he stopped at the dining hall to tell Rose there had been a big crowd at the festival so he was hopeful her pies and jam would sell out. He found her in the kitchen, bent over the sink. She was peeling potatoes so vigorously the skins were flying everywhere. When he entered the room, she turned toward him, glowering. She had a strip of potato in her hair.

  “Please don’t tell me something went wrong when you took Charity to the festival. I can’t take one more bad thing happening today.”

  “Neh, nothing went wrong. The tent is right near the entrance so it was getting a lot of foot traffic, and unloading the jam was a snap,” he assured her. “Why, what went wrong here?”

  “What didn’t?” Rose scooped the peels out of the sink and plopped them in the compost bin. Then she took out the cutting board and a knife and began quartering the potatoes as she recited a litany of mishaps. First, she hadn’t realized she’d run out of egg noodles until she began preparing supper. Hope had had to go to town to buy more. Meanwhile, Eleanor claimed to have a stomachache, so Rose didn’t want her handling the food and she sent her up to the main house to check in the late arrivals. There were three more familye who still weren’t there yet, and one of them was lost and kept calling to ask for directions. “I don’t know how I’m going to serve supper on time if I keep getting interrupted.”

  “I’m not familiar enough with Serenity Ridge to give directions, but I can run the phone up to Eleanor,” he volunteered. “And when Hope comes, I’ll take care of the buggy so she can hurry back here to help you.”

  “That would be wunderbaar.” Rose handed him the cell phone. “And if it seems like Eleanor is slacking off, send her back down. She might not be able to serve food, but she can empty the compost and sweep the floors. We’re not paying her to sit on the porch.”

  But Eleanor wasn’t on the porch when Caleb got to the house. He knocked loudly and opened the door just as she teetered down the hall. Her eyes were watery and her skin was pallid.

  “Are you okay?” Caleb asked.

  She shook her head. “I just, um...got sick in the bathroom.” Shaking, she sat down beside the desk.

  “You should go home,” he told her.

  “Neh. Rose needs my help checking guests in. She’s making supper alone because Hope had to go get noodles.”

  “Jah, she told me. Listen, I’ll go hitch your horse for you and then I’ll kumme back and check the guests in myself.”

  Eleanor leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. “Denki, Caleb,” she said feebly.

  When Caleb returned, Hope had the reservation book open on the desk and she pointed to the names of the guests who still hadn’t shown up and the numbers of the cabins they’d be staying in. “When they kumme, you put a single line through their names so we know they’ve arrived. If they pay by check, write ‘CH’ next to their names. If they pay by cash, make a dollar sign. Then initial the entry. I’ll show you where we store the money once they’ve paid.”

  She led Caleb to the bookshelf in the gathering room and showed him where the key was hidden beneath the clock and a lockbox was obscured behind tall volumes of encyclopedias. “There are only two more familye arriving, so hopefully they’ll kumme soon.”

  After Eleanor departed, Caleb took advantage of the opportunity to peruse the reservation book for information about who had stayed at the cabins in mid-to late May. He instantly understood why the FBI was frustrated with Nancy and Sol’s record keeping: all they’d recorded were dates, family names and cabin numbers—they didn’t even list how many people stayed in each cabin. The most suspicious entry he saw was the name Smith, simply because it was so common it could have been used as an alias. After so much anticipation, Caleb was disappointed. But not nearly as disappointed as Ryan will be when I call him tonight.

  Fortunately, the two families arrived within minutes of each other, and Hope returned shortly after they did. Caleb rushed to the barn to tell her not to unhitch the buggy, since he needed to pick up Charity anyway. He asked Hope to tell Rose that Eleanor needed to go home, but the last customers had arrived and he’d checked them in. At least that was one less interruption Rose would have to contend with while she was preparing supper.

  When Caleb got to the tent, Charity exuberantly informed him all of the pies and over half of the jam had sold. Furthermore, Gloria Eicher was staying until the festival ended at eight, so she offered to sell the remaining jars. “Rose will be so pleased, won’t she?” Charity exclaimed.

  I hope so, Caleb thought. Because I need her to be in a gut mood when I ask if she’ll go exploring at Paradise Point tomorrow.

  * * *

  When Caleb and Charity strolled in as Rose and Hope were clearing the guests’ dessert plates from the table, Rose was in a snit. What nerve for Eleanor and Caleb to take it upon themselves to decide Eleanor was going to leave and Caleb was going to check in guests!

  “Guess what, Rose? All
your boie sold—and more than half of the jam, too!” Charity said as she burst through the door.

  “Only half the jam?” That means half the money I was counting on bringing in.

  “Jah, but we left the rest with Gloria Eicher. I’m sure even more will sell this evening. The place was packed when we left.”

  “Oh, so that’s what kept you,” Rose said, thinking aloud. “Traffic must have been bad.”

  “Neh, we’re a few minutes late because on the way out I treated Charity to cotton candy, since one gut turn deserves another,” Caleb said. “I never saw blohbier cotton candy before.”

  “That was nice of you, but, as you know, Eleanor isn’t here, and Hope and I have had to serve supper and clean up ourselves. So now I’m running behind putting our meal on the table.” Rose saw the three others exchange glances, but what did they expect of her? She could only work so fast.

  After supper was over and the dishes were done, the girls took off with their friends and Caleb left, too. Usually Rose was glad to have the kitchen to herself, but tonight she was utterly exhausted. Since she wasn’t serving meals or baking pies the following day and she’d likely have jam left over from the festival to sell on Monday, she closed up and returned home.

  I hope Eleanor doesn’t miss work on Muundaag, too, she thought as she entered the gathering room. That’s the day I go to the bank, which always cuts into my time.

  After taking the key from its hiding place, she pulled the lockbox out to make sure Caleb had secured the rental payments. She counted the cash and added it to the amount of money they’d received by check. She came up short by one week’s worth of rent, so she recounted it. Again, she was short. There were three checks, which meant five families should have paid in cash. Yet when she tallied the cash a third time, she was still short one week’s worth of rent.

  She had checked in five familye. Three paid by check, two paid in cash. The three guests Eleanor or Caleb had checked in must also have paid in cash or by check. Rose opened the reservation book and discovered Eleanor’s initials and a dollar sign next to the Williams family name, which had a line drawn through it. Neither the Jackman nor the Garcia family names were scratched out or had any marking or initials beside them. Obviously Eleanor or Caleb had forgotten to put the payment for one of the familye in the lockbox, just like they’d forgotten to record it in the reservation book. Rose regretted ever sending Eleanor up to the house in the first place.