A Heart Made New (2 page)

How could Annie forget? Mrs. Johnson had given her instructions
five times. She glanced again toward the young man. He sidled closer to the display case, seeming intent on the selection of cookies. The
schtinkich
of cigarette smoke he brought with him threatened to drown out the scent of cinnamon wafting in the air.

“Are you ready to order, sir?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look up. All right, not ready yet. After a quick tug to straighten her kapp, Annie washed her hands. Wiping them on her clean apron, she went to the kerosene-powered refrigerator and pulled out the butter and a carton of eggs. Time to make gingersnaps. She’d let the ingredients come to room temperature while she looked for that recipe for Miriam.

“Annie, did you get Mrs. Rankin’s order for the birthday cake?” Sadie trudged from the backroom, carrying a twenty-five-pound bag of flour over her shoulder. “It should be next on the list.”

“Let me do that.” Annie rushed to help her. “The doctor said no heavy lifting for you.”

“You’re so skinny; the bag weighs more than you do.” Sadie dropped it to the floor with a grunt and straightened, one hand on her back and a grimace on her wrinkle-lined face. “Mrs. Rankin wants it by five o’clock. David will be here by then—he can deliver it.”

David had a treatment today. He tried to act like it was nothing so his mother wouldn’t worry so much, but Annie knew different. She saw how hard he tried to hide his discomfort. “He doesn’t have to do that. Josiah and I can deliver it on the way home. The cake is ready—”

“Ma’am.” The man’s hoarse voice had a soft Southern twang to it.

Annie turned to face him and smiled. “How can I help you today?”

The young man didn’t smile back. He didn’t even make eye contact. He shoved his black hair from his eyes with a hand that had grease under its fingernails. He had the bluest eyes Annie had ever seen. She tried again. “I have cinnamon rolls in the oven. They’ll be ready in about two seconds—”

“I’m really sorry about this.”

His voice cracked. He stopped, the corners of his mouth twitching. A pulse pounded in his temple.

Annie tried to catch his gaze. “Sorry about what?”

“My kid’s gotta eat.”

He drew his hand out from the pocket of his denim jacket. A silver gun appeared.

Sadie’s gasp told Annie she’d seen it too. Out of the corner of her eye, Annie saw Miriam stand. Annie wanted to scream for her friend to run, but she knew better.
Stay there. Stay there
. Annie backed toward Sadie without taking her gaze from the gun. She’d seen plenty of hunting rifles, but this was a handgun. A gun made for shooting people. She clasped both hands in front of her to quiet their trembling.

“You can have whatever you want.” Annie crowded Sadie, who grabbed her arm and held on tight. The woman’s touch steadied her. She swallowed her fear and lifted her chin. “You don’t need a gun. We’ll share what we have with you.”

The man waved the gun toward Miriam. “Get over there with them.”

Panting as if she had run a race, Miriam scurried toward Annie and Sadie. They grabbed hands, holding on tight. Whatever happened, they were together. “It’s all right,” Annie whispered.
No it’s not. God, please.

“Put the money in a paper bag.” The man pointed the gun at the cash register. “Then lay it on the counter.”

Annie moved toward it. Sadie and Miriam didn’t let go. They stayed together.
One step, two steps, three steps.

The sounds of ragged breathing and the dragging of their shoes on the wooden floor filled the bakery. No one spoke. Annie forced herself to let go of the two women so she could open the drawer. Miriam nodded in encouragement. “It’s all right.”

It was strange to have her own words of encouragement repeated back to her. They sounded just as silly coming from Miriam’s mouth. Annie’s hands shook so hard she dropped the bag and had to retrieve it from the floor. Sadie grabbed her arm and helped her straighten.

“Hurry up!”

The note of hysteria in the man’s voice frightened her more than the gun. Tugging free of Sadie’s grip, Annie stuffed the bills into the bag.
The smell of singed bread wafted through the air. The rolls were burning. She almost laughed. Burned cinnamon rolls—surely the least of her problems right now.

Biting the inside of her lip until she tasted salty blood, Annie tried to hand the bag to the man.

He waved the gun at her. She fought the urge to shriek and plunge to the floor.

“The coins too.” His gaze met hers finally. He looked as scared as she felt. The realization startled her. “Everything. I need everything you’ve got.”

He had the gun, but he was scared. More than scared. He looked terrified. The thought steadied Annie, and her shaking stilled.

“You can have it all.” She slapped the rolls of coins they used to make change into the bag and turned to him. “What about food? You said you needed to feed your child. Let me give you some bread. Some cookies too. Do you have a son or a daughter?”

The man snatched the bag from the counter. He started to back away and then seemed to waver. “I…a girl…she’s three. She’d really like a cookie. I’d like to be able to give her a cookie. She ain’t eaten nothing but bread and cheese today.”

“Does she like peanut butter? I have peanut butter cookies. And I’m sure she’d like this banana bread. I just made it this morning.” Surprised that her voice hardly shook at all, Annie picked up another bag and started packing it with the cookies, a loaf of whole wheat bread, and a loaf of banana bread. She breathed.
God, help me. God, help him. He needs Your help. Show him a better way. Open a door for him. God, take care of his little girl.
“What’s her name?”

He shook his head. “Forget the food. There’s no time.”

“We have some raisins, bananas, and apples,” Sadie spoke up for the first time. Her voice sounded high and tight, but she looked determined. “Take them too. Fruit is good for her. For you too.”

“I have to go. Count to fifty before you call anyone.” He started backing toward the door. “Count to fifty. If you don’t, I might have to come back.”

His half-sob took the sting from the threat. Annie breathed in and out. In and out. “We won’t call anyone.”

“Sure you will.” The gun dipped and came back up. “The second I’m out the door, you’ll call the cops.”

Suddenly light-headed, Annie gripped the edge of the counter to steady herself. Purple spots danced at the periphery of her vision. Miriam’s hand touched her shoulder, rubbing in a comforting circular pattern. Annie swallowed bile that made her throat burn.

“No, we won’t. We don’t have a telephone.”

He snorted and backed toward the door. “Right.”

The vision of a little girl with dark hair and eyes the color of heaven pierced Annie’s heart. He had a little girl who needed to eat. “Take the food.” She rushed around the counter, the bag in her hand. “Please.”

“What are you?” His mouth open, face puzzled, he accepted her offering. “Nuns or something?”

Annie’s heart was banging hard against her rib cage. Surely he could hear it. “No. We’re…we’re Amish.”

“I’m sorry I had to scare you like this. Thank—”

The door opened. The bell dinged.

The man whirled, and a deafening blast filled the air all around Annie. She clapped her hands over her ears and sank to the floor. Someone screamed as more shots filled the air. The
bam-bam
made Annie jump each time as if it were a new, unexpected sound. Shattered glass rained down on her. Shards pricked the skin on the back of her fingers and pinged against her kapp.
God, ach, God. God.

Time slowed until the seconds lingered like syrup poured from a bottle held high over the plate. Unable to draw a breath, she gasped, the sound hollow and muffled by her fingers over her ears. An acrid smell that reminded her of her brothers’ hunting rifles filled the air. She didn’t dare look up.

Miriam? Sadie?
Were they hurt?
Look, just look.

Annie managed to raise her head a fraction of an inch. They were huddled behind a chair by the storage room door. Miriam had both arms around Sadie, covering her with her own body. Were they hit?
Annie couldn’t tell. She fought to make frozen muscles move. She dragged her hands from her ears and slapped them on the floor. The rough wood felt solid and dependable under her fingers.

Move.
She wanted to crawl toward her friends, but her leaden legs and arms refused to cooperate.
God, help me.

Footsteps pounded. The sound cracked the ice that immobilized Annie’s entire body. She looked back. The man shoved Gwendolyn Haag to the ground and fled through the shattered glass door.

Bliss Creek’s mayor scooted on her hands and knees until she reached the bench along the wall. She cowered there, her face contorted with terror. “I just came for my brother’s birthday cake,” she whimpered. “I can come back later.”

D
avid Plank swallowed back the lump that threatened to rise in his throat. Some days were better than others. This wasn’t one of them. He slapped his hat on his head and pushed through the door of Bliss Creek’s fancy new medical clinic. The air outside seemed cleaner and fresher, nothing like the stale, sterile room where they gave him his chemo.

On legs that felt like wet noodles underneath him he trudged down the sidewalk, each step away from the clinic a step in the right direction. Four more weeks and he’d be done—with this round. He tried not to think about what lay beyond that milestone. He’d been down that road before. No point in stewing over something he couldn’t control.

At the corner he turned right and clomped to Bliss Creek’s blacksmith shop. The owner, Caleb Shirack, waved from behind the window of a small room that served as the office. David waved back and headed toward the forge. Apparently oblivious to David’s entrance, Josiah Shirack smacked a molten horseshoe with a hammer several times, each blow shaping the shoe a little more. From the size of it, the shoe must be for a workhorse.

“Josiah. Josiah!” David hated to startle a man with a hot poker in his hand. “Hey!”

Josiah stuck the shoe in water until it stopped sizzling, then laid it on the anvil. “You look mighty green.”

“Funny, I feel more purple.” David adopted the same light tone he always used when talking about his health. Talking about chemo was boring, yet people seemed to want to have long conversations about it. “A little yellow, maybe.”

“You’re the funny man.” Josiah wiped sweat from his whiskerless face with a torn, semiclean towel. Josiah had been David’s closest friend since they’d been old enough to chase tadpoles with fishing nets and make mud houses in the shallow end of the pond on the Shiracks’ farm. He wouldn’t push. Not about the Hodgkin’s lymphoma, anyway. “So today is the day.”

Here we go.
David didn’t have the strength to spar with Josiah right now. His friend had spent too much time among the Englischers in his
rumspringa
. Their ways of talking everything to death had rubbed off on him. “What do you mean?”

“The day you’ll ask Annie to take a buggy ride with you.”

“Your sister rides with me all the time.”

“I’m not talking about making deliveries in the wagon.” Josiah growled, his brown eyes hot with irritation. With his dark curly hair poking wildly out from under his hat and his tall, solid frame, he looked just like his older brother, Luke. And a lot like his father. David considered telling him that, just to get him riled up, but Josiah didn’t give him a chance. “You know what I mean. Time to pony up.”

“I think you talk too much.” David adjusted his hat. Since the chemo, it was too big without any hair to hold it in place. One nice thing, though, about wearing a hat all the time—it covered up his bald head. “I saw Miriam at the tack shop yesterday. Now that school is out, she’ll work there every day. You’ll see a lot more of her.”

“It’s possible.” Josiah grinned. It was fairly common knowledge that Josiah and Miriam Yonkers, who had taken over as the school’s teacher after his sister Emma married in November, had left a few singings together at the end of the evening. “But this is about you and Annie, not Miriam and me.”

“Courting is private.”

“In other words, mind my own business?”

“Jah.”

“How long have we all been friends—you, me, Annie, Luke, Timothy, Jonathan, Emma—all of us?”

Josiah liked to ask questions to which he already knew the answers. The habit irritated David. “Since as long as I can remember.”

“So you know Annie well enough to know she doesn’t care about the cancer.”

The heat of the forge stoked David’s nausea. If he didn’t get his horse and leave soon, he’d lose his lunch on his friend’s boots. “Did you get Rosie taken care of? I need to hitch her up and get going.
Mudder
has some deliveries for me.”

“She’s ready.” Josiah’s tone was curt. He strode toward a row of stalls. “I just never took you for a coward.”

The unexpected word smacked David in the face. Anger whipped like the flames in the forge, sending heat coursing through him. Josiah didn’t know what he was talking about. Despite the doctor’s orders to the contrary, David went to his treatments on his own. He struggled through them alone so that his family didn’t have to see him like that. Annie didn’t have to see him puking and heaving until nothing came up anymore.