The Lesson (11 page)

Just as he was lathering a chunk of corn bread with a thick layer of butter, the kitchen door blew open and in walked Hank carrying a cardboard box, Doozy at his heels.

“AMOS! WE’VE GOT TROUBLE!” Hank set the box on the kitchen floor. In it were four yellow puppies, squirming and wiggling and trying to get out.

“Where in the world did those come from?” Amos asked, swallowing a bite of buttered corn bread as he noticed Fern’s buggy coming up the driveway.

“Edith Fisher sent them over with Jimmy. She included this note.” Hank pulled his glasses out of his pocket and unfolded the crinkled paper. “‘I have given you plenty of notice to find homes for these puppies and yet you continue to ignore me. So I am ignoring you. Until you find homes for these puppies, you are not welcome for Sunday dinners.’” He stuffed the paper back into his pocket. “She is spurning me!” He shook his head solemnly. “Doozy had a moment of reckless abandon, and look at the dire consequences.”

Doozy thumped his tail, pleased at his prowess, and Amos set down the bowl of chili. His appetite had just considerably diminished. “Well, I suppose that these things happen.”

“What are we going to do with them?” Hank blurted out.

Amos, who was in the middle of putting the butter back into the refrigerator, stopped what he was doing. “We?” he asked. Out the kitchen sink window, he saw the buggy come to a stop by the barn and Fern and M.K. climb out to unhook Cayenne’s traces from the buggy shafts. “I always thought of Doozy as your dog.”

“He spends most of his time following M.K. around! Why, he’s devoted to her.”

“I’m not sure about that. He only follows M.K. around when you’ve gone off to visit Edith.”

“He’s not wanted at Edith’s farm. She turns up her nose at him, you see. Particularly after this moment of indiscretion with her favorite poodle. Edith complains about Doozy an awful lot, mostly about his scent, which I just can’t understand. After all, he is a dog. Dogs should smell like dogs.” He crouched down to pat Doozy’s head. “She refuses to see beyond a few little flaws.”

“Think that she’ll change her mind about the two of you?”
Amos asked. “After all, you’ve been courting her for seven years now.”

Hank sighed, looking wistfully at the ceiling. “I don’t think there’s much of a chance there. She says Doozy has to go. Said she can’t deal with the both of us.”

Amos nodded. Hank would be task enough for any woman. Adding Doozy into the equation would put anyone over the edge.

“Maybe you could compromise,” Amos said. “Leave Doozy with us.”

Hank shook his head. “No deal.” A puppy was nearly escaping out of the box so he reached down and tenderly held it against his chest. “They sure are cute little buggers. It’d be a shame not to keep ’em.”

Amos rinsed out his bowl of chili in the sink and put it back in the cupboard, dripping wet. He tried to imagine what it would be like to have five dogs in one house, especially in Hank’s small apartment above his buggy shop. “Well, I don’t know what to say.”

The hinge on the kitchen door squeaked as Fern came in. She looked at Hank, at Amos, at Doozy, at the box of squirming puppies, and shook her head in exasperation. “I know exactly what to say. Find homes for your dog’s puppies, Hank Lapp.”

Hank looked at her, wounded. “We were just discussing the possibility of keeping them.”

“Absolutely not.” She brushed past him and went into the kitchen to wash her hands at the sink. As she dried her hands on the rag, she noticed the missing piece of corn bread in the pan and eyed Amos, who was trying to skooch the remainder of the buttered corn bread behind his back on the counter. She saw. But before she could start scolding him for not waiting for supper, Hank snagged her attention.

“It is clear to me, Fern Lapp,” Hank groused, “that you know nothing about the world of dogs.”

“I know plenty about dogs. And even more about men.” She took bowls out of the cupboard and frowned when she spotted the water drops in the top bowl. She pulled flatware from the utensil drawer and started to set the table, working around the box of puppies. They were curled into a pile in the corner of the box, sound asleep. “Both need very clear directions and expectations.” She resumed setting the table. “The puppies go.”

“Well, that answers that,” Hank huffed. “I come here for sympathy, and all that I’m getting is heartless advice.” He stopped. “Speaking of hearts, who’s got a bigger heart than Sadie? Why, she’s all heart. She might want one of Doozy’s pups. Maybe even two! One for each of her little ones!” His face brightened, like the sun coming out after a rainstorm. He placed the puppy back in the box, picked it up, and opened the kitchen door. “M.K.!” he shouted.

M.K. was leading Cayenne into the barn and stopped short at the sound of Hank’s loud voice.

“PUT THAT HORSE BACK IN ITS BUGGY SHAFTS! We’ve got ourselves an emergency errand!”

Fern came up behind Amos at the window. Together, they watched M.K. ooh and aah over the puppies in the box. “Poor Sadie,” Fern said. “She’d better brace herself.”

6

J
enny’s shoulders ached from painting the kitchen wall after Chris had finished fixing the drywall. For the first time in her life she didn’t feel like reading a book before bedtime. The problem with not reading, though, was that she couldn’t ignore all kinds of creepy, frightening noises as she lay there in the dark.

This old house was awful, truly horrible. It creaked and groaned like it was in pain. She heard mysterious scratching sounds in the walls and the pattering of feet above her head. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine her happiest day, her tenth birthday, when Old Deborah had taken her to the prison and her mother was in a good mood.

Her mother could be sweet and charming at times, but you never knew what you were getting. You always braced yourself for the first minute, as you sized up the expression on Mom’s face.

On this day, though, her mother was in a happy mood. She braided Jenny’s hair, taming her long curls into two flat plaits down her back. She taught Jenny a dozen variations on cat-in-the-cradle. It was the happiest birthday Jenny ever had. To top it off, that day happened to be a Friday, a day
that Jenny had always enjoyed, although Saturday was her absolute favorite. She had the usual feelings about Monday, a day that she had never heard anybody speak up for, for obvious reasons.

The wind picked up. Somewhere outside, a door banged. A branch tapped at the window. Something whirred past Jenny’s face. Her eyes shot open to see a menacing dark shape flutter around her room. A bird? How had a bird gotten into her bedroom? She sat up in bed. It must have come in through the broken window. How many times had she complained to Chris about that broken window? Mosquitoes flew in every night, eager to torment her. It flew past again, swooping and dipping erratically. Wait. That was not a bird. It was a bat! She ran to Chris’s room, screaming as she flew down the hallway.

“Who’s there?” Chris sat bolt upright in bed. “What’s happened?”

“Chris! Th-there’s a bat flying around my room! It got in through the broken window pane!”

Chris signed and leaned back, closing his eyes. “It’ll probably fly back out the window.”

“But—”

“It’s more scared of you than you are of it. Get some sleep. I’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

Jenny crept back down the hall with the pillow over her head. She lifted the covers and checked every inch of her bed thoroughly before climbing in. As she lay there trying to sleep, she wasn’t sure if it would be better to actually see the bat flying around again and know for sure where it was, or not to see it and wonder.

She hated this house. She hated Stoney Ridge. She hated school. She hated the girls at school who never asked her to
eat lunch with them. Not one time. She especially hated the leader of the girls, Anna Mae Glick.

She wanted Old Deborah to be alive. She wanted everything to go back the way it used to be. She knew what to expect while she lived at Old Deborah’s. The same friends at school. Meals waiting for her at home. People who cared about her. Nobody cared about them in Stoney Ridge. Nobody.

She didn’t want to cry. Tears wouldn’t accomplish anything and would only make her pillow soggy. She bit on her lower lip to keep her eyes from filling with tears of self-pity. Once her tears started, they would never stop.

A floorboard creaked. The chimney moaned. Minutes ticked away. Everything went quiet. The bat must have flown out the window. It was okay, Jenny told herself, relieved. Everything was going to be okay.

No sooner were the words formed in her mind than the bat whooshed past her head, making squeaky bat noises, darting and diving and swooping and sailing as if it were putting on an acrobatic show for Jenny.

M.K. had a lot of time to think all that weekend, mostly because Sheriff Hoffman saw her at the post office and told her he would put a restraining order out on her if she got anywhere near that sheep farmer’s pasture. He patted the gun as he said it too. So rude! She had merely asked him a few questions about how the case was progressing, and if he had discovered any unusual footprints. “Plenty of hoofprints!” he had told her, cackling in that rusty way of his as he said it. He refused to tell her anything more. He looked annoyed when she expressed the tiniest bit of dismay that it was turning into a cold case and suggested he consider putting more
manpower into solving it—because that was when he brought up the restraining order. Outrageous!

At this rate, that poor sheep farmer was never going to have his murder solved. And what about the people of Stoney Ridge? They were all at grave risk with a murderer on the loose. Why wasn’t anyone else as concerned about it as she was? It was just one of the many complaints she had about living in a small town. People in Stoney Ridge were more concerned about the price of eggs at the farmer’s market than about random, senseless murders.

A plane left a long white trail across the sky, and she wondered where it was going. Maybe someplace like Buenos Aires. Or Tokyo. She wondered what it would be like to go somewhere like Moscow. Most of the people she knew were born and raised and died right in Stoney Ridge.

She was positive that the people who lived in big cities—Istanbul or London—
they
would be worried about random murders. Such a thought made her feel pleased that she had decided to pick up a second passport application at the post office today after losing the first one. She didn’t have any specific travel plans, but it seemed like a good idea to have a passport. Just in case. A person never knew when she might need to leave the country in a hurry. Even Canada and Mexico required passports, she reminded herself.

What really irked M.K. was that she needed to go by the sheep farmer’s field on her way home. It was her customary shortcut. But she wouldn’t give Sheriff Hoffman the satisfaction. So instead, she took the long way home.

Saturday morning, Chris was ready to do battle with the exterior of the house as soon as he and Jenny returned from
mowing Erma Yutzy’s lawn. Starting at the front door, he swept his way up and down the porch, knocking down spiderwebs, dessicated insect carcasses, a long-abandoned birds’ nest, and a forest of dead leaves. Jenny sloshed Pine-Sol all over the porch and attacked it with a mop. The water in the bucket grew grimy with the accumulated grunge. Four changes of water and two hours later, he decided the porch floor was done. He’d scrubbed the old boards so hard that he could see bare wood shining through the faded battleship-gray paint.

The windows were next. The panes were so caked with grime that he didn’t even attempt to start with Windex. Instead, he hooked up a garden hose and splashed water all over the old wavy glass, sending a dirty river seeping down over his previously pristine floorboards. Shoot. He’d have to give the porch another rinsing later. But for now, he washed and polished and spritzed the tall windows that ran across the front of the house until they sparkled like crystal in the afternoon sunshine.

Chris had saved the front door for last. He scrubbed away layer after layer of dirt and dust. He spent the next few hours working feverishly. Jenny worked hard too. They scoured and scrubbed until their back and legs ached, and their hands were rubbed raw from all the bleach and disinfectant.