Keys of Heaven (3 page)

E
xcept for cleaning toilets, which she didn't like doing at home, either, Priscilla enjoyed her job at the Rose Arbor Inn. Ginny was not only nice to work for, but also fair about extra wages for extra work, and flexible about things like time off. Pris could see now that, had she gone to work on the retail floor at the Hex Barn in order to be close to Simon, she would have gone crazy in the first week. The disappointment of incurring her father's wrath in order to be near him, only to have him leave within a few days, would have been bad enough, but to add the tourists and the strangeness of having to tell people that the made-in-China things they bought were Amish-made would have made it worse.

There were plenty of tourists at the Inn, but at least she could say with perfect truth that
ja
, the quilt on their bed had been made by a local Amish or Mennonite woman. In fact, the Kentucky Storm in the Peace Room had been made by Evie Troyer, and Priscilla herself had helped with the quilting before it went to the auction last September.

She'd spent the morning stripping beds and scrubbing bathrooms. The other
Maud
, Kate Schrock, a Mennonite girl from the church Ginny used to go to, worked Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays while Priscilla worked Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Kate wore a lace doily on her coiled-up hair, held on by a couple of bobby pins, which were discouraged by the
Ordnung
for any Amish woman. Kate was older than Priscilla, and getting married the following year.

“Anytime you want to take a few days off, you just let me know,” she'd told Priscilla not long ago. “I want to get in as many hours as I can and save as much as possible so we can put a down payment on a house.”

Ginny wanted all the guest rooms made up, the dishes done, and the public rooms tidied and dusted by two o'clock each day so that when guests checked in at three, there were no buckets lurking in the upstairs hall or glasses left over from the night before sitting on the coffee table.

Kate usually vanished the moment her chores were completed, to go and do bride-to-be things, but Priscilla liked to linger a little. When she brought in a bouquet of flowers for the entry hall where the registration book lay open, Ginny had been delighted and the job of doing a few things “just for pretty” had become hers.

Ginny wasn't back yet from wherever she'd gone all dolled up in yellow pants with birds in her ears, and when the doorbell rang at two forty-five, Priscilla jumped and put down the bowl of snowball flowers on the dining room table so abruptly it was a good thing the water didn't slosh out onto the gleaming wood.

What should she do? She wasn't supposed to be seen—she was the
Maud
. Ginny was the public face of the Rose Arbor Inn. If Dat found out she was putting herself on public view, he'd be upset, since he had pretty strong feelings about a woman's place.

The doorbell rang again.

She couldn't very well leave them standing on the step with their luggage, now, could she? What kind of a welcome would that be at a bed-and-breakfast with a reputation for hospitality?

Priscilla touched the three straight pins in her
Kapp
, smoothed down her apron, and opened the door. “Hello,” she said. “Welcome to the Rose Arbor Inn.”

The man in the business suit smiled and his wife dragged her gaze off the riot of climbing roses over her head. “There really is a rose arbor,” she said, following her husband in.

“It'd be false advertising if there wasn't, Mom.”

Priscilla turned at the sound of a younger voice and looked straight into the greenest, liveliest eyes she'd ever seen.

“Hey,” the young man said. “Wow, are you for real?”

She couldn't have replied if her life depended on it. She'd never seen anyone so handsome—better looking than Simon, even, and that was saying something. His hair was the color of dark chocolate, and was shaggy, like it hadn't seen scissors in a few months. It hung in those eyes and emphasized the clean angle of his jaw.

“Don't be rude, Justin,” his mother told him, then said to Priscilla, “We're the Parkers from Connecticut. I booked the Peace and the Sonya Rooms for two weeks. No cell phones, no computers, no video games. We're going to have an unplugged family vacation—right, boys?”

Silence greeted what Priscilla thought was a perfectly reasonable plan.

“J-Just let me make sure,” she finally whispered, when it was clear no one was going to speak, and slipped past Justin to look at the reservation. Sure enough, there they were, booked almost to the end of June. “
Ja
—I mean, yes, it's right. Let me show you upstairs.”

She'd heard Ginny say this often enough. But she still felt awkward as she preceded them up the steep staircase, as though at any second, someone—like Justin—would discover she had no business taking over and would demand to speak to the real innkeeper. “Mind your heads,” she said as they passed under the lintel to the second floor. “It's low here because people were shorter in 1813.”

“Fascinating,” Mrs. Parker said. “I've been looking forward to this for weeks. Where's the nearest farm that sells quilts, miss?”

“My name is Priscilla,” she said shyly. “And I believe Ginny—that is, Mrs. Hochstetler—has a booklet on the table downstairs that shows all the places in the district where you can buy quilts. We get a lot of quilters here.”

“Do you make them, too?”

Priscilla opened the door of the Peace Room and showed her in. “I worked on that one.” She nodded at the bed and the woman made a beeline for it. “But our bishop's wife, Evie, she pieced it.”

“Kentucky Storm?”

“
Ja.
” Priscilla smiled at her. “You know the pattern?”

“I sure do. And I know how complex it is, especially when—”

“Whoa, Isabel, easy does it,” her husband said, coming through the door sideways with both rolling suitcases. “Let us get our bags in the room, at least, before you head off down the road like a racehorse, okay?”

Priscilla hovered in the doorway, unsure how extensive a tour of the room should be—or if she should even give one.

“Don't forget about us.”

She whirled to see Justin lounging against the banister. “Oh, I'm sorry, I haven't—”

“Let's go to our room.” He raised an eyebrow and grinned at her.

“Justin, stop teasing,” his mother called from inside the en suite bathroom. “You're in the Sonya. Where's Eric?”

“Here.” A younger boy wearing a hoodie and a sulky expression stepped out of the shadows behind his brother. Priscilla wondered how she'd managed to miss him when the registration book had plainly said there were four people in the Parker party.

Justin caught her eye. “Well?”

Blushing, and annoyed at herself for doing it, Priscilla pushed open the door to the Sonya Room. It held a pair of twin beds on either side of a three-light window that had a nice view of the old covered bridge. “This is yours.”

“Nice. Too bad it's pink.”

There was nothing pink about it. Wedgewood blue walls with cream drapes and pillows and—oh, the quilts. “That isn't pink. It's peach, like the Sonya rose. There's not very much of it, but it matches that picture, and it's why she calls this room the—”

“Sonya. I get it. What did you say your name was?”

“Priscilla.”

“Is there a Priscilla rose?”

She mustn't look at him. She could count on one hand the number of
Englisch
boys she'd ever spoken to, and none of them strung as many lines as this one. She definitely preferred the younger boy, who simply wheeled in his suitcase and occupied one of the beds without saying a word. “If there is, I've never seen one. Enjoy your stay.”

“Will I see you around?”

What did he mean? Why would he care? “Maybe. I work here.”

There was that wicked grin again. “So I will, then.”

“The guests don't usually see us. They're here to see the sights.”

“You're a sight. I'd like to see more of you.”

His brother sighed. “Justin, give it a rest.”

She had to get out of here. What did the
Englisch
say? “Have a nice day.”

And before any more outrageous things came out of his mouth, she fled down the stairs. Fortunately, Ginny had an open-door policy, and never minded guests coming and going or even being on their own in the house. Priscilla grabbed her handbag out of the hall closet, left the house, and emerged from under the rose-covered arch to the parking lot to see Ginny getting out of her car.

“Hi, Priscilla,” she said. “Is this the Parkers' car?”

“
Ja
, they just arrived. I got them settled in the Peace and the Sonya, like it said in the book.”

“Did you offer them tea?”

Priscilla clapped a hand to her mouth. “I forgot.”

“Never mind, not your job. Thanks for stepping in for me.” She came around the front of the car, her picnic basket in one hand. “I kidnapped Henry Byler and made him take an hour for lunch…and it turned into two.” She checked her watch. “Oops. Almost three.”

Aha. So that was the reason for the bright outfit. “Did you have fun?”

Ginny's warm eyes seemed to darken. “
I
did. But I don't know if that man knows how to have fun. At least he can hold up his end of a conversation, so that's a plus. Do you know him very well?”

Pris shook her head. “He seems nice.” If Ginny didn't know about the hoedown fire, she wasn't about to tell her. The fewer adults besides Henry and the sheriff and her father who knew about that, the better.

Ginny gazed at the roses, nodding in the warm June breeze. “I don't know what it is about him,” she said, almost to herself. “Maybe I have a rescue complex.” Then, as Priscilla stared at her, wondering what on earth she was talking about, she gave herself a little shake. “Never mind. Are you off? Want a ride home?”

“No, thanks. Mrs. Parker probably needs that cup of tea more. Besides, it's not far to walk.”

“See you next time, then. It'll be busy this weekend—we have a full house, thank the good Lord.”

The shortest way home was by the path along Willow Creek, a path worn into the bank by the feet of many
Youngie
who didn't have access to their own buggies, hikers, and the occasional fisherman looking to pull a brook trout out of the riffles for his supper. The creek cut across lots, avoiding the busy corner where the highway intersected with the county road, which Priscilla would just as soon not have to negotiate, especially as tourist season was beginning to swell the traffic into a flood.

She'd barely gone fifty feet when someone behind her called her name.

A male someone. She turned to see Justin Parker coming along the path, and when he saw he had her attention, he lifted a negligent hand in a wave.

Oh, good grief. Just what she didn't need any more of.

Priscilla whirled and headed off down the uneven path at a healthy clip. If she could get around the first bend, she could dodge through the hanging branches of the big weeping willow and climb up to the road without him seeing where she'd gone. She'd take the traffic on the highway any day over more of his jokes and insinuations that she only half understood.

But she underestimated both his surefootedness on the creek bank, and what was clearly his determination to escape day one of the “unplugged” family holiday his mother had planned.

“Priscilla! Wait up!”

She wasn't going to make it, so with a sigh, she turned to see what he wanted.

“What's the hurry?” He wasn't even breathing hard. He jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and grinned, as if he'd caught her hanging around on purpose hoping to catch a glimpse of him. “Aren't you done for the day?”

“No.” She began to walk again. Maybe if she kept her replies short and her pace fast, he'd get the hint.

Unfortunately, his stride was longer than hers, and even though the path narrowed and widened depending on rocks and bends in the creek's course, he still kept up. “Do you have another job to go to?”

“
Ja.
”

“Where's that?”

“At home.”

“Your family have some kind of business there?”

Were all
Englisch
boys this nosy? “
I
have business there. I have chores to do.”

“What kind of chores?”

What a question! “The same kind your mother has, I suppose.”

“Oh, like picking up the dry cleaning and ordering takeout and telling the cleaner which rooms to do?”

That put a hitch in her thinking, but only for a second. “No, like sewing and mending and washing the clothes, and cooking the dinner, and cleaning the rooms myself.”

“Yourself? You do all that by yourself?”

“No, my two sisters help. And Mamm. She does the most of all of us.”

They passed under the willow, and bars of sunlight flickered over his face. He stopped and looked up, into the golden heart of the tree, and for a moment, thank goodness, stopped asking questions. The chuckling and endless whisper of the creek flooded in to fill the silence, and over in one of the Byler boys' fields, a three-note call sounded.

“What was that?”

“What, the bird? That was a bobwhite. He's probably calling for a mate.”

“Smart guy. So no takeout or dry cleaning, huh?”

She was finally goaded to look him in the eye. “How much do you know about our ways? Are you really asking me this because you want to learn, or are you just trying to get a rise out of me?”

He blinked at her for a moment before the smiling veneer flowed over his face again. That shield of “I've got this under control” that he seemed to wear as comfortably as he wore his gray T-shirt and black jeans. But just for a moment, she'd made it crack with her honesty. Maybe he wasn't used to being called out on all the silly things he said.