A Churn for the Worse (17 page)

She was sitting on her aunt's front porch, looking out over the fields in the distance, when Jakob pulled up, the sound of his car, followed by the sight of him behind the wheel, igniting a nervous excitement in the pit of her stomach. Toeing the ground, she brought the swing to a stop and stood.

“Hey there, handsome.” Claire crossed the porch to the steps and ventured down to the walkway. “Don't turn off the engine just yet, okay?”

Jakob poked his head through the open window. “Is something wrong?”

“No. No. Nothing like that.” She came around the back of the car and then leaned in to look at him through the open passenger-side window. “I just thought maybe we could sit in here and talk for a few minutes. See if there's
something we could, um, maybe go and do instead of just hanging around here.”

Shrugging, he motioned her inside and then waited as she settled herself in her seat before leaning across the center console and kissing her gently on the lips. “Okay, yeah, that's what I needed.”

She started to laugh but stopped as she noticed the tense set of his shoulders, the uncharacteristic frown lines around his mouth, and the lack of any discernable sparkle in his amber-flecked eyes. “Wait a minute. Are you okay? You look super stressed right now.”

He pulled his hand from the back of her neck and leaned against the driver-side door. “So what you're telling me is that my plan to keep my foul mood back at the office is already showing signs of failing?” Resting his left forearm across the top of the steering wheel, he shook his head. “I'm sorry, Claire. I probably should have told you I couldn't come over when you called, but I had hoped being here, with you, could get my mind off things for a little while. Yet now that I'm here, I have a feeling I'm just going to end up ruining your evening if I stay.”

“You could never ruin my evening, Jakob.”

“Don't be so sure.” He let his gaze drift to the left and to the tree and the scenery beyond before coming back to Claire. “Look, maybe a rain check would be wise.”

She leaned forward, tugged his arm off the steering wheel, and entwined their fingers. “What's going on?”

For a moment, she wasn't sure he was going to answer, as his focus drifted through the windshield once again. But, eventually, he spoke, his words, his voice laced with agitation. “I know it happened yesterday. And I know she's
fine—I saw that with my own two eyes. But I just can't shake the notion that the man who murdered Wayne Stutzman was talking to my sister yesterday afternoon. It—it's making me nuts just
thinking
about it.”

“Hey . . . she's okay.”

“The regular guy side of me knows this. But the other side of me—the one that's paid to know there isn't always a rhyme or reason to crime—keeps thinking about all the things that could have happened.”

With the index finger of her free hand, she guided his chin until she was the center of his focus once again. “But they didn't, Jakob.
They
didn't.
”

He tried to smile but he fell short. Instead, he glanced down at her hand in his. “Okay, so distract me. How was your day? I didn't get to ask you about it when I stopped by the shop this afternoon.”

“It was good.”

“Tell me about it.”

Disengaging her hand from his, she reached across her right shoulder and secured the seat belt into place next to her left hip. “I'll tell you as we drive.”

He looked from Claire to the seat belt and back again. “Oh? Where are we going?”

“To see Esther.”

“Esther?”

“That's right.”

Slowly, he set his hand on the gearshift and moved it into reverse, the tension he'd been hard pressed to shake off suddenly cloaked in disappointment. “Is there something you need to pick up there? Or are you wanting me to just drop you off?”

“Jakob Fisher,” she admonished, “do you really think I'd invite you over this evening just so you could chauffeur me across town?”

He reversed the car, shifted into drive, and drove down the driveway toward the main road. “No, but—”

“There are no buts. I wouldn't do that.” At the end of the lane, she pointed to the left as if he didn't know where he was going.

If he noticed, though, he didn't let on. “So does Esther have some new inventory for the shop or something?”

“Nope.”

“Are you dropping off payment for things you've sold over the past week?”

“Nope.” She braced herself for the transition from blacktop to cobblestone that was no more than a car-length away now, but it was unnecessary. Jakob's speed adjustment as they approached the entrance to Lighted Way made it so the transition was nearly flawless.

“Are we picking up something Eli has made?”

“We've been invited for dessert. And to see the new horse.”

Jakob pulled the car to the right and slowed to a stop outside Heavenly Treasures. “Claire, what are you doing?”

“I'm not doing anything. This was Esther's idea.”

“Claire, I get that you're trying to help, that you're trying to find opportunities for me to spend time with my niece and her husband, but—”

“It wasn't my idea, Jakob. It was Esther's.”

He stared at her. “Esther's?”

“That's right.”

Inhaling deeply, he raked his hand through his hair. “They can't sit at the table with me, Claire. You know this.
And while I might be able to handle sitting at a different table with everyone's back to me on a different day, I'm just not up for that right now. I'm sorry.”

“We won't be sitting at the table.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Esther said we wouldn't sit at the table. And when she mentioned me coming for dessert, she specifically requested that I bring you.”

Jakob looked out the window, across the sidewalk, up at Claire's shop, and then finally back at Claire. “And Eli? He's okay with this, too?”

“You know Eli respects you.”

“Claire, he has to follow the Ordnung.”

“I won't tell if you won't tell . . .”

“It doesn't work like that, Claire.”

She leaned forward until her nose was almost touching his and smiled. “Look, all I know is that we—as in the two of us—were invited to come for dessert. Can we just play this by ear and see what happens?”

For several long moments he said nothing, his thoughts as much a mystery to her as the way the evening would play out in the end, but eventually he spoke, his words accompanying them back into the flow of traffic and onto the gravel road on the far side of Lighted Way. “It would be nice to see the two of them. Besides, it'll give me a chance to pull Eli aside and let him know about the incident at Martha's yesterday.”

*   *   *

She peeked at Jakob, rocking gently in the chair beside her, and allowed herself a moment to soak up the pure joy she saw on his face—a joy that had nothing to do with
the pair of cookies on his lap and everything to do with the young couple sitting side by side on the other end of the porch. To an outsider looking in, she suspected his smile might be attributed to the warm summer night and the presence of loved ones. And, in some ways, they'd be right. But to truly appreciate the lightness he exuded and the smile that reached far beyond his mouth to his very being, one had to understand the magnitude behind the seemingly simple scene.

While normal in just about every home in America, the notion of visiting with family had been relegated to pipe-dream status the moment Jakob walked away from his Amish roots to become a police officer. In the blink of an eye, he lost his parents, his siblings, his friends, and his community. It was a fate he'd known and accepted eighteen years earlier, and a fate he'd lived every day since.

Yet, by the grace of God and the assistance of Esther's pure heart, Jakob was being given a moment of normalcy Claire knew he'd remember for the rest of his life . . .

“There are more cookies to be eaten,” Esther said, rising to her feet. “Should I get them?”

Claire answered for Jakob by pointing to the cookies still in his hand. “Jakob is good, and I've had my fill, but thank you, Esther. They were delicious.”

“They were.” Jakob pitched his rocking chair forward to afford an uninhibited view of his pregnant niece. “If I'm not mistaken, I believe they were made from my mother's recipe?”

Esther's gaze dropped to the porch floor and then fluttered upward until it was trained on her husband's attentive face. “Yah.”

If it bothered Jakob that Esther was avoiding eye contact, he didn't let it show. “They are just like Mamm's. I've missed them.”

Unsure of what to say, Esther began to gather their plates and cups in her hands, only to set them back down at Eli's whispered direction. When she did as he asked, Eli turned back to Jakob and Claire. “Would you like to meet Carly?”

“Who's Carly?” Jakob asked.

“The new horse.” Eli rose to his feet and motioned to Claire for them to follow. Step by step they made their way down the porch stairs, across the gravel driveway, and into the same barn that had once housed Harley Zook's prized cows.

“Whatever happened to Harley's cows?” she asked as she and Jakob shadowed Eli and Esther into the barn.

“I kept some. Stutzman and Lapp took the others.”

Esther's finger guided their eyes to three cows lazily watching them from just outside the back door. “We still have Mary, Molly, and Maggie.”

Jakob veered off from their path long enough to single out the cow in the center. “Well hello there, Mary, it's nice to see you again. Are you behaving yourself and sticking close to home these days or are you still gallivanting around town like you were back in the fall?”

“How on earth do you know which one is Mary? They all look exactly alike.”

“They look nothing alike,” Jakob protested, shaking his head at Claire in mock disdain. “Mary's swirls—for lack of a better word—are black trimmed in brown. Molly's are brown trimmed in black. And Maggie”—he
stopped, craned his head over and around Mary—“she's got a little black mark halfway down the front of her chest that almost looks like a cat's paw print.”

She sidestepped a water trough to look more closely at the cows and the minute differences between them as outlined by Jakob. Sure enough, Mary's black spots were outlined by brown, Molly's brown spots were outlined by black, and the spot on Maggie's chest did, indeed, resemble a paw print. “Wow. I could have looked at nothing else for hours and still not have noticed those details.”

“That's because you didn't grow up on a farm.” Jakob took Claire's hand and led her back to the center aisle and the Amish couple smiling at her in amusement. “Sometimes it's something as small as Maggie's faint paw print that can tell one farmer's animal from another's.”

“Carly has such a spot on her chest, too. It is much harder to see on her, but it is there.” Eli led the way toward the opposite end of the barn and the wide-eyed gray horse looking at them from across a waist-high wall. “She is heeling faster than I had hoped.”

“What happened to her?” Jakob asked.

“Weaver did not know. Gingerich and Stutzman thought it was a mistake for me to buy an injured horse.”

Jakob nodded along with Eli's words. “Why
did
you buy her?”

“Esther and the baby need a good, solid horse to pull the buggy. Carly will be that solid horse when she is well.”

Looping her hand inside Claire's upper arm, Esther quickened their collective pace until they were standing directly in front of the half wall and Carly. “Hello, sweet
girl. We have brought new friends for you to meet. I would tell you to be nice, but that is all you know.”

Claire instinctively stepped back as the horse thrust her neck across the half wall and nuzzled her nose against Esther's forehead. Reaching around the base of the animal's neck, Esther's hands slid into the horse's coal black mane.

“Wow. They're really taken with each other, aren't they?” Claire whispered to Eli.

“Yah. I have been around horses my whole life and I have never seen such a thing.”

“It's like I wasn't even standing there.” Claire looked from the gray horse to Esther and back again. “All she saw was Esther.”

“It is that way every time Esther is near.”

“How long have you had her?” Jakob asked.

“It is ten days since I purchased her from Weaver.” Eli guided their attention over the wall and toward the bandage wrapped around the mare's front left leg.

Jakob looked back at Eli. “May I?”

Eli's answer came via a slow nod.

Reaching around the wall, Jakob flipped open the latch and stepped into the recently cleaned stall. For just a moment, the horse turned to eye Jakob as he dropped into a squat beside her bandaged leg, but once she determined he meant no harm, she was back to nuzzling Esther. “My father's horse sprained his ankle once. Happened on the way home from church one day when I was about twelve, maybe thirteen. Dat was sure the aging horse would not recover. Martha was determined she would be well again and convinced me to help her make it so.”