Shunned and Dangerous (An Amish Mystery) (19 page)

D
espite her bleary eyes and sleep-deprived brain, Claire knew something was off with Esther the second she reported for work Thursday morning.

The first glance at her Amish friend told Claire the basics—no discernible smile, fidgety fingers, and red-rimmed eyes that hinted at recently shed tears. The second glance revealed nothing additional except a general sense of foreboding deep inside Claire’s heart.

“Good morning, Esther.” She stepped through the doorway between the back hall and the shop and hung her keys on a hook underneath the register. “You can certainly tell the colder weather is coming. I actually had to button up on the way here just now.”

Button by button she worked her way out of her autumn jacket and then draped it over her arm. “Did Eli bring you by this morning?”

It was a simple question. One she asked virtually every morning Esther arrived at Heavenly Treasures. But something about the way she asked it or, perhaps, the morning itself, netted a far different reaction than the usual face-splitting smile and emphatic head nod that was the norm.

“No.”

Claire waited for her normally chatty friend to say more, but nothing else came. Just the one no, followed by a sinking of Esther’s narrow shoulders and two distinct sniffles.

But it was enough for Claire to go on even if she didn’t like the direction in which her thoughts were already beginning to travel.

“Esther? Are you okay, sweetie?” She transferred her coat from her arm to the counter and then patted the pair of stools with her hand.

When Esther shook her head and remained standing, Claire bypassed the stools completely and came around the counter to stand beside Esther near the front window. “Talk to me, Esther. What’s wrong? Did you and Eli have a fight?”

“Eli and I, we do not fight.” Esther reached up and carefully adjusted her white head cap. “But he is not happy with my suggestion.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Slowly, Esther shifted her focus outside, to the cars and buggies that passed the shop on their way to wherever it was they were going at that particular moment. Seconds turned to minutes, yet still Claire’s question went unanswered.

At least in a verbal way, anyway.

“I think it’s best if I leave you alone for a while.” She reached out, squeezed Esther’s shoulder quickly, and then retraced her steps back to the counter and the coat that needed to be stowed in her office for the duration of the workday. “I’m here, though, if you want to talk, okay? Just say the word and—”

Esther spun around on the soles of her simple black lace-up boots and held up her hands. “It is not that I don’t want to marry Eli! I do! But to do it now . . . at a time when so much is wrong . . . would only make things worse on everyone.”

“You called off the wedding?” Claire heard the shock in her voice and saw the pain it stirred on Esther’s face just before being covered from view by two trembling hands.

“I did not call the wedding off. I will marry Eli. I . . . I”—Esther gulped for air between sobs—“just said maybe we should w-wait. Until there is n-not so much s-sadness and worry.”

“You mean with Harley Zook’s murder and the possible connection to your grandfather?”

Esther sniffled, nodded, then sniffled some more. “Y-yes. We do not want to burden my mamm and dat at a time when their hearts are heavy with worry. Eli tried to ask Benjamin his thoughts, but Benjamin, too, thinks of other things.”

Benjamin.

Just the mere mention of Eli’s older brother brought an ache to Claire’s heart. She missed Benjamin. Missed their talks. Missed his smile. Missed the way he listened. Missed the hope he’d helped bring back to her life . . .

“Hope . . .” Yes, she needed to find some more hope. Hope that she could find a new job after the shop, something to fill the void she knew would forever be in her heart in the wake of her failure.

“Claire?”

Esther’s voice, shaky and confused, broke through Claire’s woolgathering and brought her back to the moment—a moment that included Esther, not Benjamin or Heavenly Treasures’ impending demise. Claire forced herself to focus.

Esther’s wedding . . .

“So what’s the worst that would happen if you postpone the wedding?” she finally asked. “You wait, what? Three, maybe four months? Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing in light of everything that’s going on.”

“It would be a year. There is far too much to do in the fields once spring comes. There would be no time for a wedding until November. It is this that upsets Eli.”

“And you?” It was a rhetorical question, really, because she already knew the answer. All she had to do was look at her friend’s tear-swollen eyes to know how the notion of waiting even a day longer than they’d planned hurt Esther deeply.

“I do not want to wait, but there would be some good, too.”

“Like what?”

“I could stay here and work with you even longer.”

Claire closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment to imagine twelve more months working alongside her best friend. But just as she felt the smile creeping across her mouth, reality came knocking.

Pretty soon there would be no shop for Esther to work in, no shop for Claire to own. No, it was better for Esther to marry as previously planned.

Better for Esther.

Better for Eli.

And better for Claire in the long run, too . . .

Squaring her shoulders, Claire reached out, tucked a stray strand of hair back into place beneath Esther’s kapp, and then nudged the young woman’s chin upward until their eyes met. “One way or the other, you and Eli will be married this month just as you planned. You have my word on that.”

\•\ \•\ \•

B
y the time six o’clock rolled around, all Claire wanted to do was go back to the inn, grab a pair of headache relievers, and disappear under her covers until morning. Yet when she pulled onto Lighted Way and turned east instead of west, she knew Esther’s words from earlier that morning had taken control of her evening.

Sure, on some level, she’d been keenly aware of Benjamin’s absence over the past few days, but she’d managed to stuff it to the side in lieu of things like helping Diane and worrying about Jakob. All legitimate concerns on their own, but none big enough to remove the handsome Amish man from her thoughts completely.

They needed to talk. Or, at the very least,
she
needed to talk to
him
.

Her destination suddenly clear, she drove into the quiet countryside, passing one farm and then another before turning left, the midsize sedan making the winding climb with ease. The covered bridge at the top of the hill vibrated beneath her wheels as she entered and then exited out the other side. When she reached the point where the road narrowed and wound into the woods, she pulled off to the side and parked beside the familiar horse and buggy.

Instinct had told her he’d be there.

Need had made her come.

Yet, as she unlocked the door and stepped from the car, a wariness settled around her like a formfitting coat, rooting her feet to the ground and making her scrutinize everything about her decision to come to a place that was his and his alone.

Less than a month earlier, he’d proposed leaving the only life he’d ever known in favor of a life with her, and she’d turned him down. Her reasons had been far more noble than she truly was, and she still stood by them, her heart be damned, but she’d hurt him, nonetheless.

Did she really have a right to be there? To fight for a friendship she wasn’t sure he even wanted?

She took in a breath only to release it into the air as she spied him through the waist-high prairie grass that shielded their special rock from the virtually nonexistent passerby. Even in the gathering dusk, she could make out some of the features that took her breath away every time she saw Benjamin Miller—the erect posture, the hint of the high cheekbones visible in his side profile, the dark brown hair that escaped from underneath the black hat he proudly wore. What she couldn’t see, her mind filled in via the memory of his piercing blue eyes and the sensation of his strong, callused hand on hers.

“I can leave if you need time alone with your thoughts.” He slid to the edge of the rock and stood, turning to face her as he did.

She wondered if he heard her gasp but decided it didn’t matter. Instead, she let her mind wander back to the late summer night when they’d sat together on that very rock and looked up at the stars. It was an evening she’d never forget, with a man she didn’t ever want to lose from her life. “No. Please. I came here to find you.”

He stood ramrod straight as she picked her way across the prairie grass to the very rock where she’d first begun to realize there was hope for a future after Peter. Looking back, there wasn’t one specific thing Benjamin said that first night that gave her back that hope. In fact, it wasn’t anything he’d said at all. Rather, it had been the fact that he had listened to her dreams and made her feel as if they were interesting and exciting in a way her ex-husband had never done.

When she reached him, she rose up on her tiptoes and planted a friendly kiss on his cheek then followed it up with what she hoped was a friendly smile. “It’s good to see you, Benjamin. I’ve missed you around the shop these last few days.”

She found a spot on the top of the rock and positioned her body so as to afford the best view of his face. “I know you are upset with me over the things I said about Mose the other day, but I also think things have been strained between us since that day behind my shop earlier in the month.”

“It is for the best. I know that now.” Benjamin’s gaze dropped to his feet only to lift to meet hers once again. “But I would have left. For you.”

She could feel the tears forming and did her best to hold them off. What they needed now more than anything was dialogue, not emotion. Dialogue would move them forward; emotion would hold them back. “Knowing that means more than you could ever know, Benjamin. And I will always treasure you for that. But I treasure you for so much more, too.”

“Yah?”

“Your friendship—the way you listen, the way you encourage me, the way we laugh—that has made such a difference in my life. I don’t want that to ever stop, Benjamin. Not ever.” She glanced upward and pointed just over his head and to the right. “It’s not dark enough to see just yet, but right there? That’s where I saw that star I wished on with you the first time you brought me here.”

“Yah. And you wished for a simple life surrounded by love and family.”

Her mouth gaped open as she stared at him. “You remember that?”

“It is that wish I tried to give you.” The huskiness in his voice tugged at her heart and almost made her hope that things could be different—that her convictions hadn’t been so strong and that her feelings could have been stronger. But they had been and they weren’t.

“I could not enjoy that wish if it was at the expense of someone else. You would not be whole without Eli and Ruth and your family. It would have affected that love in the end.” She forced herself to look back at the sky, to remember that first night and the conversation that had led to her wish. “That’s the thing about wishes, Benjamin. Sometimes they come true just as you wished them, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they take a better, different form than you thought and sometimes they come true only to slip right out of your hands”—she took a deep breath in an effort to soften the emotion she heard building in her voice—“while you’re not really paying attention.”

She felt him studying her and made a point of averting his gaze. Benjamin was sharp. If she looked at him now, he’d see the tears in her eyes.

Finally, he spoke, his words bringing an instant lump to her throat. “You told me you wished for your store. That is one wish that came true.”

“For a while.” She swallowed once, twice. “Until I messed it up.”

She shivered at the feel of his hand as he lowered the angle of her head until she was looking at him. “I do not understand. You enjoy your shop, no?”

“I love my shop, Benjamin. It’s everything I ever wanted and a million times more.” Just like that, the affection she felt for her job came rushing through her mouth. “I love talking to people who come into the shop asking about the Amish. I love helping them select a special memento of their trip to Heavenly. I love sitting in the craft room Diane has set aside for me behind the kitchen. Some days, when I’m not working, I lose myself in that room as I make my candles and experiment with new frames and wall hangings. I love coming to work and seeing the gorgeous items Martha brings in for me to sell. I love working beside Esther most days . . .” She stopped talking, the pain too strong to get through without crying.