Love Finds You in Sugarcreek, Ohio (24 page)

Joe thought over Aaron’s suggestion. Asking couldn’t hurt. “Bobby? Come here. Daddy needs to talk to you.”

Bobby’s reluctance to come to his father was evident. He had the Lincoln Log project to complete. New puppies wriggled and whined in a basket in the corner. And there was a small homemade playground out back that he and his new friend had run to and from all morning. Aaron’s place was packed with wonderful things for a child to enjoy, and Bobby was having the time of his life.

“What, Daddy?” He glanced back over his shoulder at his playmate.

“I’m thinking about going back to Sugarcreek for a few days. Do you want to come with me?”

“Right now?” he whined.

“Yes. Right now.”

“Can’t I play with Davey some more, Daddy, please?”

“You can if you want to. Would you like to stay here a few more days? Sleep in Davey’s room? I need to leave and take care of some things.”

That got Bobby’s attention. “What things?”

“I’m going to try to make it so we can go back home and live in Sugarcreek forever.”

“Will those people go away?”

“I’m going to talk to them and ask them not to do that anymore.”

“Can Davey and his mommy and daddy come visit us?”

“Absolutely. And we’ll come here.” He glanced at his old friend. “Often.”

“It’s only a three-hour drive,” Aaron said. “If he gets upset, we’ll bring him to you.”

“I’ll call you every night, son.”

“’kay.” Bobby’s attention was already wandering back to his little playmate and the litter of pups.

“I think that’s a yes,” Deborah commented and smiled.

“He’ll regret it tonight when he realizes I’m gone.”

“Aaron and I will deal with it,” she said.

“I appreciate it,” Joe said. “Things might get pretty intense in Sugarcreek for a while. I’d rather Bobby not be in the middle of it.”

“He’ll be safe here.” Deborah put her arm around Aaron’s waist. “You go do what you need to do, Joe.”

“You’ve done so much for us already, my friends. I needed a place to rest and pray and think things through, and you gave me that.”

“Brook Cherith,” Aaron said.

“Excuse me?”

“My grandfather always called his hunting cabin ‘Brook Cherith,’ after the place where the prophet Elijah rested,” Aaron said. “After which Elijah called upon the name of the Lord and overcame four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal.”

“Prophets of Baal, huh? That’s an encouraging thought,” Joe said. “Pray for me, Aaron. If what I’m planning doesn’t work, I’m all out of options.”

“We made Joe sleep outside in that one-room cabin,” Bertha said. “With him used to mansions and fancy hotels. Goodness’ sakes.”

“He didn’t mind,” Rachel said for the hundredth time. “He was grateful for everything you did.”

Her head was pounding with one of the worst headaches of her life. She was also just about as depressed as it was possible for her to get. It had been a week, and Joe had only made one quick call from a friend’s house to let her know that he and Bobby were safe.

The press had left. Strangely enough, she had the distinct feeling they weren’t upset in the least by Joe’s sudden disappearance. It was his very elusiveness that made him such desirable prey.

She missed him. She missed Bobby. She missed her car. She even missed Stephanie.

Drained, she left her aunts to their never-ending speculations about Joe and his former life.

When she arrived home, she went into the bathroom to take some aspirin. Placing both hands on either side of the sink, she looked at herself in the mirror. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her cheeks looked hollow. She had barely slept since Joe and Bobby left.

Pictures of Joe’s haunted eyes from the first night she met him kept pouring through her mind. She winced every time she remembered the belligerent attitude she gave him when he was new to town.

She also remembered watching Joe jump with feigned terror each time Anna played her little “boo” joke on him, recalled his never-ending patience with her aunts and his extraordinary love for his son. She replayed how they had sat together at church and how surprised she had been the first time she had heard him singing the old hymns with conviction and enjoyment.

Her favorite memory of all was of sitting beside Joe as they had laughed together at that bug movie—Bobby snuggled in her lap, Joe holding the popcorn. It had been one of the best evenings of her life.

Against her will, she had fallen head over heels in love with the man
and
his son even before she knew what the rest of the world did. Now she didn’t know if he would ever come back to Sugarcreek. He couldn’t keep running forever, could he?

That was the problem. As long as he felt he needed to go underground to protect Bobby, he might.

The thing she most wanted to do was climb back into bed, pull the covers over her head, and coast into oblivion—but she was pulling a double shift tonight. She hoped there was plenty of coffee at the station. She would need it.

As she drove to the station, a bottle green truck with jacked-up tires roared past. The Keim twins were at it again—still living their rumspringa to the fullest. She was sick to death of dealing with them and that ridiculous truck.

Flipping on her squad lights, she gave chase through town, hoping to pull them over before they left the township limits—her jurisdiction. Unfortunately, they gunned the truck and tried to outrun her, hurtling down Route 93.

She was not in the mood for this. Those boys needed to be taught a lesson. Her worry about Joe and Bobby morphed into anger at the boys as she flipped the switch into a chattering siren.

They sped up.

She gritted her teeth and stomped on the accelerator, hoping there would be no buggies on the road.

Of course, in and around Sugarcreek, there were
always
buggies on the road. The boys knew this as well as she did. They had driven their share of buggies until they had gotten jobs at the Belden Brick Company and sunk their paycheck into the truck they were presently using to outrun her.

Surely
they would know to watch for buggies.

Their truck was swerving back and forth on the road, and she began to suspect that whichever twin was driving was drunk. Her decision to chase them was looking less and less wise. At the speeds they were driving…

The slow-moving buggy didn’t stand a chance.

The truck plowed into it, crushing it like a cardboard box. She saw a body fly out. The horse, locked into its traces and whinnying in alarm, fell into the ditch.

Before she could even completely stop her car, the truck had backed off the wreckage and was roaring down the highway again, swerving around the crumpled body in the road.

She jerked the radio mic to her mouth. “Accident on State Route 93, just south of town. I need an ambulance.”

The familiar-looking horse was badly hurt, flailing its legs in the air—but she couldn’t deal with that now. She had to find out if the person from the buggy was alive. Hopefully no traffic would come. The squad car with its flashing lights would be some protection. She didn’t have time to set up flares until she found out…

Her legs buckled when she got close enough to identify the driver of the buggy.

“Dear God, no!” She fell to her knees beside him.

It was Eli, who had been like a second father to her.

He didn’t respond. His legs lay at an unnatural angle. His face was gray. And there was blood seeping from a head wound.

She wanted to howl in fury, to shake her fists at the sky at the unfairness of yet another lethal confrontation between a buggy and a motorized vehicle.

But she neither howled nor shook her fist. Her training immediately kicked in. She pressed two fingers to Eli’s throat while begging for his life.

“Father, please—not this man—please, Father…”

A faint, thready pulse quivered beneath her fingers. If the EMTs would get here fast enough, there was hope!

“Hold on, Eli,” she sobbed. “Please hold on. Your family needs you. I need you.”

Tears dripped down her cheeks and off her chin, wetting the black cloth of the old man’s coat. She staunched the blood from the cut on his head the best she could while waiting for the life-saving siren of the ambulance, praying that no other cars would come around the curve and be going too fast to stop.

The ambulance arrived. Hands lifted her up and away from the old man—the old man who had comforted her the day she buried her father. A gurney appeared, and Eli was strapped in and rolled into the awaiting ambulance.

As though from a long distance, she heard a gunshot. Someone had put the broken and dying horse out of its misery. She glanced over and saw Ed shaking his head in regret as he holstered his gun.

Too many horses had died because of impatient drivers. Too many Amish people had been hurt for no other reason than trying to hold their families and churches together by using the slow-moving vehicles.

The crisis, for now, had been taken out of her hands. As though her body knew that nothing more was needed from it for now, it began to shake. Not from the cold of the overcast late October weather, but from nerves and regret and grief. The very marrow of her bones felt chilled.

Then she felt a broad chest behind her and arms that warmed hers, and she looked up, wondering who would dare to be holding her. Surely not Ed or one of the other police officers. They would never be that unprofessional.

At first she didn’t recognize who the tall man was. His eyes were a startling cobalt blue, he was clean-shaven, and his hair was short and wavy. She had never seen this man before—except…

Except in pictures.

“Joe!” She clung to him, all reservations gone. “You came back!”

“Of course I came back,” he said. “How could I not? This is my home.”

She buried her face in his chest, remembered where she was, and let out a moan. “I don’t think Eli is going to make it.”

The daadi haus smelled musty and unwashed. Joe had departed in such a hurry that things had been left in disarray. It surprised him how much this bothered him as he walked through the rooms straightening bed linens, putting dirty clothes in the hamper, and opening windows.

This cottage didn’t belong to him, and yet after painting and scrubbing and making it into a home, he felt more ownership of it than any place he had ever lived—including the mansion Grace had chosen and bought.

He retrieved a pair of Bobby’s socks that were peeking out from beneath the bed. They were so small. He smoothed them out with his hand, feeling a tug in his heart at being separated from his little boy.

He hoped the reporters would come soon. He was anxious to put his new plan into place—a plan that involved never running again.

After he put the cottage into shape, he threw some tea bags into a pan of water and brought it to a boil. Then he stirred in some sugar.

He would not wait on someone like Stephanie to alert the media ever again. He would let them know exactly where he was, and when they arrived he would talk their ears off—hopefully until they were sick to death of him. He intended to talk until all the glamour and mystery had worn off. Until he had become, in their eyes, just an ordinary Joe, who was no longer newsworthy. He would talk to them nonstop until they and everyone else in the world was so bored with him that he could bring his son home to live in peace.

He was planning on becoming the most tedious ex-legendary baseball player on earth.

It was the one thing he had never tried.

While the tea cooled, he dialed a number on his cell phone. He needed to contact Henrietta. Now that he had decided to go public, there was no better person to put in charge of alerting the press.

“Henrietta Stiles.” Her voice was as rich and smooth as smoked honey. “Business manager to the stars,” she said with more drama than necessary. It was her trademark.

Her voice was enough to make a man pause. Her physical appearance was not. Henrietta had the tenacity of a pit bull and the appearance of a fifties-style housewife—complete with pastel shirtwaist dresses and pearls. He and Grace had often wondered how Henrietta could be so successful, rubbing elbows with people who considered themselves the elite, without some upgrade in fashion rubbing off.

They had come to the conclusion that she was astute enough to deliberately dress like June Cleaver—making her the ultimate mother figure as she dealt with some of the most insecure people in the world.

“How are you doing, Henrietta?”

He heard a quick intake of breath. “Micah!”

It felt strange hearing himself called by his real name. In the past few months, he had
become
Joe Matthews. Micah Mattias was someone he didn’t know anymore.

“Where are you?” Henrietta asked. “Are you and Bobby okay?”

“We are.”

“Why haven’t you called? It’s been months! I’ve been so worried. And then the press found you and you disappeared again.”

“I’m safe.” He looked around at Abraham’s cottage. “For now.”

“Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”

It was tempting. Henrietta was, hands down, the most competent woman he had ever known. His wife would have been lost without her—the two of them had been together for years. Soon after his marriage, he had allowed Grace to talk him into letting Henrietta handle his business affairs. He had never regretted it.

“There’s no need for you to come, Henrietta. I have a place to stay, and Bobby is fine. He has a kitty cat now.”

“Where
are
you?” Her voice was insistent. “Hiding away like this isn’t healthy.”

“I’m back in Sugarcreek. I’m not hiding anymore.” He let that sink in a moment. “But I want to go public again. I’d like to give some interviews. Can you arrange that for me?”

Henrietta lived and breathed public relations. Her ability as a publicist was famous.

He could almost hear the wheels spinning in her head. “Oh, absolutely.”

He could picture her pulling a notepad and pen toward her and making notes in that heavy, spiky handwriting of hers.

“How about if I set up a phone interview with your old coach first?” she said. “Under the circumstances, there’s a chance he’ll take you back.”

Joe flexed his right shoulder. It still hurt.

“Don’t contact him,” he said. “Just alert the media for now. Call whoever you want to contact. I’ll talk to anyone. The sooner the better.”

Henrietta’s voice was unsure. “If you say so. What’s going on, Micah?”

“Have there been any updates from the police on Grace’s murder?”

“No. Nothing.” Henrietta hesitated. “The news said you were working as a handyman for some Amish people?” Her voice rose in question as though she couldn’t believe what she was saying.