Shadows of Lancaster County (39 page)

Kindly, Reed suggested that Melody could man the guest register near the door, saying that way she could greet people and make sure they signed the book while staying clearly out of the way of her daughter or ex-husband.

“Thank you, Reed!” Melody cried, letting go of my hand to kiss his cheek. “You always were the brilliant one in the bunch.”

At that, Melody floated across the room to her new post, the eyes of several male guests noticeably turning to watch as she passed by.

“Boy, even at fifty-something, she’s still the best-looking gal in the room,” I said.

“Present company excluded, of course,” Reed wisely replied.

Once I forced myself to stop thinking about the file with my name on it that was hidden back at the farm, the next two hours passed quickly. I was surprised at how many people I recognized. Some of our old friends from high school had come, as had various friends of Haley’s family I had met over the years. Doug’s parents were also there, of course, though they were even less sociable at their son’s wake than they had been at his trial.

The biggest surprise was how many Amish people had turned out for this, despite the fact that many of them had had to hire drivers to get here because it was a little far to come via horse and buggy. I saw a lot of old Amish friends, the same ones who had rallied around us in the wake of the fire. Near the end of the afternoon, I was even more surprised to see Nathaniel, Grete, Caleb, Rebecca, Ezra, and even Tresa all come filing in. Seeing them there, I realized I should have known they would be coming—and offered them a ride. As the surviving children of the couple Doug helped to kill in the fire eleven years ago, their presence spoke volumes about forgiveness and faith in action.

At one point, I simply stood to the side of the room and scanned all of the faces around me. As I did, I couldn’t help but wonder if we would ever know who pushed Doug Brown to his death. In truth, it could have been almost anyone, even someone in this room.

The bigger question, to my mind anyway, was if whoever killed Doug had succeeded in killing Bobby as well.

“Have you seen the ladies’ room in this joint? It’s humongous,” Haley said to me once the crowd had dwindled down.

Grabbing my arm, she pulled me toward a side door as I gave Reed a look of general helplessness. There was an empty sitting area in the front half of the bathroom, so Haley and I sat on two overstuffed chairs in the corner and talked. Soon, she lit up a cigarette, even though there were No Smoking signs everywhere. She always had been a rebel.

Except for the smoke, it actually was a pleasure just to sit for a bit and catch up with each other in private. Haley still had a wicked sense of humor and a way of blurting out exactly what was on her mind. She told me a bit about her life and how unhappy she and Doug had been. Now that he was dead, she said, all she could do was lament that she hadn’t tried harder to be a good wife and to make the marriage work.

She asked about Bobby and where I thought he had gone and what I had been able to figure out, but I kept the conversation vague, not wanting to divulge too much at that point about my investigation. I had her describe for me their strange encounter the night he took the motorcycle, but from the way she talked, it sounded to me that she had been pretty
drunk at the time—and that the story had become embellished in the retelling.

Eventually she asked about Reed and me, as I had known she would. I told her we were spending a lot of time together trying to find Bobby, but that we were just friends now and always would be just friends.

“Well, poo, that’s no fun. He’s still so hot and totally loaded. He has, like, tripled his family’s wealth in the last few years just by wise investing. Did you know that?”

I shook my head and tried to think of a tactful way to say that Reed’s money had never been a big selling point for me. Rich or poor, I loved who he was on the inside.

“Daddy said he’s got a lot of WYI in his portfolio.”

“WYI?”

“Stock. Wynn Industries stock.”

I sat up straight, a chill racing down my spine.

“Reed owns stock in Wynn Industries?”

“A boatload.”

“How? I mean, isn’t he on some big DNA ethics board? How can he serve on that if he’s invested in a company that deals with DNA?”

She shrugged.

Our conversation ended there as a female employee of the funeral home stuck her head in the door and told us they were closing up for the evening.

“And there is no smoking in here,
ever.
”

“I’m so sorry,” Haley replied with a catch in her voice. “It’s just that I miss my late husband so much…”

As her eyes grew wide and full of tears, the woman backed off, the door bouncing shut with a quiet thud.

“You’re worse than ever,” I said, shaking my head, remembering the drama that Haley loved to create everywhere she went.

“Not really,” she replied calmly, tucking away her cigarettes. “I’m just older than ever and skinnier than ever and uglier than ever.”

“Haley…”

“Oh, come on. I saw your face when you came in. You never could lie.”

“All right. You don’t look healthy to me.”

With that, Haley reached up, grabbed the top of her hair, and pulled off what turned out to be not a pricey haircut but an expensive wig. Underneath, her head was completely bald.

“Yeah, well, chemo does that to a person.”

Haley and I parted ways at the front door of the funeral home, her wig secured back on her head, the knowledge that she would likely follow her husband to the grave within the year almost too much for me to bear. According to her, she was enduring the chemo for her father’s sake, as he refused to let her give up, but she felt sure it wasn’t going to make much difference in the long run. At her request, no one outside of the immediately family even knew she was sick, and she asked me to please keep it that way.

“What about your drinking?” I asked, knowing the time for being delicate had passed. “Doesn’t that interfere with your treatments?”

“Honey, I probably won’t make it to Easter,” she said as we pulled on our coats. “Do you really think it matters if I self-medicate now and then?”

On the drive back to the house, I closed my eyes and pretended to rest, though my mind was reeling from too many devastating things: the news that Haley had cancer, the discovery of a file with my name on it, the knowledge that Reed owned stock in Wynn Industries.

Once again, Reed Thornton had turned out not to be the man I thought he was at all. How many more times in life would I have to be burned before I got wise to the fact that he was bad news?

Twice during the drive home he asked me if I was okay, but I just
mumbled something about having a headache and being emotionally exhausted.

We drove the rest of the way in silence, and when he pulled to a stop in the driveway of the farmhouse, I jumped out of the car before he even had a chance to turn it off.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said, relieved to see that the whole family was just now getting home as well. A big twelve-passenger van pulled up behind us, and people began popping out, one by one. Further back, along the road, a coterie of paparazzi was lining up as well.

“Anna,” Reed said, calling to me in a low voice.

I wanted to pretend I hadn’t heard him, but it was kind of obvious that I had. I walked back to where he was standing in the open doorway of his car.

“What?”

“Did I do something to offend you?”

I looked at his face, at the gorgeous blue eyes, the chiseled jaw, the perfect mouth. Had I really made no progress in the past eleven years when it came to evaluating people? Or was my problem more specific than that, one of simply not being able to evaluate this particular man who stood in front of me?

“It’s all about the pedestal, Reed. Whenever I put you up on one, it topples over. I’m just trying to keep things from toppling too far.”

And I’m just praying the person who killed Doug and ran Bobby off the road wasn’t you,
I thought but did not say.

“Fine. Give me a call.” Reed obviously didn’t know all that I was thinking, but he could tell the subject was closed. With a resigned expression on his face, he got back in his car and pulled out of the driveway right behind the big van.

Swallowing hard, I turned my attention to the family, who seemed to be in very good spirits despite the fact they had just come from a wake. They filed into the house, but as they did, I reached out and grabbed Grete by the sleeve of her coat and asked her if we could talk.

“I should put dinner on,” she said, but I told her Lydia had already made dinner, a nice pot of potato soup that should be ready by now.

Grete then nodded at Nathaniel, who herded the kids inside and closed the door, leaving us out in the cold, alone. Glancing toward the photographers at the end of the drive, I led her around the corner of the house, behind the enclosed back porch, where we couldn’t be observed quite so easily.

“What is it, Anna? Is something wrong?”

She rubbed her hands together and blew on them as I nodded, all of my angst about Haley’s cancer and the genetics file and Reed’s stocks boiling up inside of me. With an anger I didn’t know I possessed, I demanded for Grete to tell me what she was hiding in the floor of the henhouse.

She took a step back and put a hand to her mouth.

“How do you know about that?” she whispered, looking back and forth as if to make sure I hadn’t been overheard by anyone else.

“I saw you, remember? I saw you hide something in the cookie jar yesterday and then take it out in the henhouse today. It didn’t take long to find your secret stash, but unfortunately Caleb showed up before I could look inside. I’m thinking now might be a good time to go take a look together. We can use your flashlight.”

“Why is this your concern?” she whispered. “What could this possibly have to do with you?”

“It has everything to do with me. Let’s go.”

Together, we walked toward the henhouse, me holding firmly to Grete’s elbow, her shining a flashlight on the ground in front of us. When we got there, I held the door as she stepped inside, quickly opened the floor, and pulled out the metal box. The chickens squawked furiously, and soon I could see Nathaniel standing at the back door with a flashlight, pointing our way.

“It’s okay, it’s just us,” I called to him. “Don’t worry about it.”

He hesitated and then went back inside, closing the door behind him.

Grete thrust the box in my hands, put the flashlight on top of it, spun on her heels, and marched away. I stayed where I was, daring to hope that I had my family’s priceless jewels in my possession at last. The best I could figure, Grete must have found them at the old homesite, probably
after the house had been moved away—though why she had taken them out of hiding yesterday, I wasn’t quite sure.

Carefully, I pointed the flashlight at the box and lifted the lid. I had expected to see a velvet case or perhaps a smaller wooden box inside. Instead, I found myself looking down at the square object I had seen Grete with yesterday.

It wasn’t a jewelry case; it was a camera.

Underneath the camera were photos, lots of photos, mostly of Tresa and Ezra when they were younger, but also candid shots around the house and the farm, pictures of the entire family. No one ever looked directly at the lens, and Nathaniel, especially, was seen only in profile or from the back. The only shot of his face was of him lying on the couch, sound asleep.

Confused, I swallowed hard, wondering what I had done.

Quickly, I stepped into the henhouse and put the box back where it belonged, under the floor. Once it was in hiding, I made my way to the house, shining the flashlight on the ground in front of me as I went. When I got there, I spotted Grete sitting on the steps of the back stoop, clutching at her stomach and crying.

Mortified, I knelt down in front of her.

“I am so sorry,” I whispered. “That’s not what I was expecting to find, Grete. You were right. That’s none of my business. Please, please let’s just forget this happened.”