A Plain Disappearance (28 page)

She buried her face into her hands and began to cry. “I feel awful. How could I treat him so badly? He is a good man and deserves someone who will love him and enjoy the life he wants to lead.”

I perched next to her on the couch and rubbed her back. “I think you did the right thing.”

Her head whipped around. “You do?”

I nodded. “Aaron is happy being Amish. No matter how much he loves you, he would be heartbroken if the district shunned him.”

She fingered her short hair and whispered something under her breath that I couldn’t make out.

I leaned closer. “What?”

She cleared her throat. “I didn’t do this because of his chair.” She dropped her head. “I hate that he thinks that.”

“I know you didn’t.”

She lifted her head. “He won’t be the only one who will think that, will he?”

“Probably not. You can’t worry what others will think. You did what was best for yourself.” I paused. “And for Aaron. Focus on that.”

“What am I supposed to do now?”

“Take it one day at a time. You are only nineteen. You don’t have to figure it all out today. God has a plan for your life.”

“Do you think me leaving home was part of that plan?” she whispered.

I swiped her bangs out of her eyes. “I do. This wasn’t a moral decision of right or wrong. There is no correct answer. You chose to let Aaron live the life he was most suited for. There is nothing wrong with that.”

“Then why do I feel so awful?”

I gave her a sad smile. “Because Aaron wanted you to make a different choice and you feel guilty. I have my black belt in guilt. I recognize it when I see it.”

She wiped at her cheeks. “This is something I should have done months ago. I knew this before he got so attached to me. I saw him seek me out each day here at the restaurant. I know he started working here to be closer to me. I ignored the warning bells in my head because I’ve had a crush on him since I was a schoolgirl and he was my brother’s friend. He is so strong and solid—how could I not fall in love with him?” She paused. “Despite everything that has happened to him, he is happy. I couldn’t be the cause of his unhappiness, but it seems I am that anyway.”

I patted her arm. “He will recover.”

“But will I?” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and stood. A sigh escaped her. “I should help in the kitchen. I hope you’re right about Aaron.” Then she left the room.

My cell phone rang. Chief Rose’s number came up on the readout. “We let Catcher go. He’s still a person of interest and had a seriously unhealthy obsession with Katie Lambright, but I don’t believe he’s the one who did it.”

“Why not?”

“I asked him to describe what he knew about the scene of Katie’s death, and he got it completely wrong. He said she was inside the barn under a car battery. He probably heard that theory while working in the market. There is a lot of gossip floating around. Sadly, lots of them are even more morbid.”

I grimaced. The scene Timothy and I found was bad enough. “Because he didn’t know, you concluded he wasn’t there.”

“It’s an old cop trick.”

“Could he have been playing dumb?”

“It’s always possible, but I don’t think he’s smart enough to play dumb that well.” She clicked her tongue. “I will keep my eye on him though. I have a feeling that I’m going to have trouble from that boy in the future. Sometimes you have a feeling that a person isn’t thinking just right.”

I shivered.

“What else do you have as far as leads go?”

“There are still the two Amish suitors. Jason seemed to think that Caleb King did it. He said that Katie was in an abusive relationship with Caleb until she dumped him for Nathan . . .”

“He told us that same thing and he might be right. Talk to both of them and report to me.”

“You want me back on the case?”

“I’ve decided to forgive you.”

“Um, thanks.”

“Don’t make me regret it, Humphrey.” And she hung up.

B
efore I spoke with Katie’s suitors, I wanted to talk to Anna again to see what she knew about them. Timothy texted that he was going to Newark to pick up a part for the pavilion and wouldn’t be back until late afternoon. I smiled. Apparently he remembered how scared I was when I couldn’t find him, so he decided to keep me in the loop. A blush rose on my cheeks as I remembered him saying that he was in love with me. The happy tickle in my heart was followed by a thud of guilt as I remembered how I had not been able to say the words back to Timothy. As I had told Becky, I had my black belt in guilt.

Although it wasn’t even eight in the morning yet, I knew everyone in the Troyer household had been up for hours. As I drove down the country road to the family’s farm, I was reminded of the first time I visited there a few short months ago. The family didn’t know what to make of me then, and I thought Mr. Troyer still wondered—although he had come a long way in accepting me. The person that welcomed me immediately was Grandfather Zook, and I would always be grateful to the elderly man for that.

When I pulled into the driveway, Thomas was clearing freshly fallen snow from the doorway to the house. His face broke into a grin, and he dropped his shovel. Thomas had found any excuse to abandon his chores. “Chloe! What are you doing here? Is Timothy coming?”

“Not today. He had to run to Newark for a part for the pavilion.”

“I can’t wait until the pavilion is done. I’m telling everyone at school that my
bruder
made it. They are jealous they don’t have such important
bruders
.”

“Your father would say that was boasting.”

He puffed out his chest. “I am not boasting about myself! It is about my
bruder
, so that is much different.”

I patted the stocking cap on top of his head. “I agree. You don’t have school today?”

“
Nee
. It is still the Christmas holiday.
Grossdaddi
said teacher gave us the whole week off because I wear her out.”

I chuckled. Thomas wore out just about everyone, me included.

“We had breakfast ages ago, but
Mamm
will make you something if you are hungry.”

“Maybe later. Where’s Ruth?”

“Ruth is in the barn. Do you want to come inside?”

“I will in a minute. I want to talk to Ruth first.”

“Okay!” The seven-year-old ran into the house to announce my arrival as I followed the hard-packed snow path to the large barn behind the house.

Although snow covered the ground, most of the Troyers’ cows were in the field. A large metal container held a fresh hay bale, and the cows gathered around it, removing pieces with their blunt, square teeth. They then ground them with their molars over and over again.

When I entered the barn, Sparky kicked the dirt floor of his stall. “I’m sorry, Spark, I didn’t bring any carrots for you today.”

His ears pointed down in disgust. A barn cat balanced on the stall door and strolled by Sparky, wiggling her tail in his face.

Ruth was in the barn shoveling feed into the cows’ troughs. “Miss Kitty, don’t tease Sparky like that.” She shook her head at me. “She is determined to drive him crazy.”

Sparky snapped at the cat’s tail, but she flicked it away in the nick of time with a devilish grin on her face.

“It seems to be working. I’ve seen her expression on Gig’s face more times than I can count.”

“She’s not as bad as your cat is. He’s the one ruling your house.”

I didn’t argue with her because it was true.

“Need some help?” I asked.

She nodded.

I picked up the second bucket of feed. “How much in each trough?” I started at the other end of the troughs, so that we would meet in the middle.

“Three big scoops. Does my family know that you are here?”

I smiled. “I’m sure they know by now. Thomas saw me arrive.”

“Then they know. There is no way to keep secrets in this family with Thomas around. He is a blabbermouth.”

“Blabbermouth?”

“I heard Becky say it about him once.”

I grinned. “I’m sure she learned it from television.”

Ruth nodded.

I bit the inside of my cheek wondering if I should tell Ruth about Becky’s hair. I decided against it. Just as it was Becky’s place to tell Aaron about her hair, it was also her place to tell her family. I winced thinking of her father’s reaction and hoped he wouldn’t blame me.

“You are here to talk about Katie?”

“Yes. Have you seen Anna lately?”

“
Nee
. Her father won’t let her out of his sight.” Her voice was sad. “I took a basket
Mamm
made up as a gift, and he wouldn’t even accept it. I left it on the family’s porch, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he threw it away right after I left.”

“I’m sorry, Ruth.”

“I’m afraid he won’t let Anna come back to school when the new term begins.”

“Has he ever done that before?”

“
Nee.
But this is so much worse than anything else that has ever happened to the family.”

I had to agree with her there. “Anna mentioned him at the holiday program. Do you know the English boy named Jason Catcher at all? Did you ever see him with Katie?”

“
Nee
. Is he the one?”

I shook my head. “Chief Rose doesn’t think so, but he was definitely infatuated with Katie.”

“Infatuwhat?”

“Infatuated. It means that he really liked her.”

The thirteen-year-old shivered. “I never saw him. If it’s not him, who can it be?” She added another scoop of feed to the trough in front of her.

“Do you think I will be able to talk to Anna again?”

Ruth chewed on her lip. “I don’t know. I wasn’t even able to talk to her when I took that basket over.”

I added two more scoops to the trough in front of me and moved to the next one. “You know my friend, Tanisha?”

“
Ya. Grossdaddi
brought her to the farm. She was so loud she scared the dairy cows. She’s funny.”

I smiled. “She is, and she went home yesterday. Tee and I grew up together, and she’s been my friend since we were about Thomas’s age. Any time we wanted to see each other we had a code or signal to meet at a certain place. Do you and Anna have something like that?”

Ruth dropped her pail of cow feed onto the floor. “How did you know?”

“I was a little girl once with a best friend who I wasn’t allowed to see.”

“Tanisha’s parents wouldn’t let you see her?”

“No. Tanisha’s parents are wonderful people. In fact, when my father and his new wife moved to California, her family invited me to live with them.”

She picked up her pail. “I didn’t know that.”

I smiled. “My father was the one who wanted to keep Tanisha and me apart.”

“Why?”

That was a loaded question, and one I wasn’t completely certain that I could answer. Because Ruth needed an answer to help her understand Mr. Lambright, I tried. “He was scared, overprotective. He lost my mother and was afraid he would lose me too.”

“Then, why did he leave you behind when he moved to California?”

The question hung in the air because it’s one that I had asked myself a thousand times over the last ten years. Didn’t my father want me? Why didn’t he ask me to go with them? Shouldn’t I, as his child, have been more important to him than his new wife? “I don’t know.”

“Did you ever ask him? Did you ask if you could go with him?”

I loosened my grip on the full feed scoop in my hand and all the grain poured out onto the dirt floor.

“Chloe, did I say something wrong?”

To cover my expression, I bent over to pick up the scoop. “What a mess.”

“I’ll grab a rake and pan to clean it up.” She hurried to Mr. Troyer’s workshop to collect a dustpan.

“But I wasted all of the cow food.”

She pulled a metal waste can over to the mess and lifted a rake that hung from the wall. “It’s no trouble. It was an accident.” She made short work of raking the feed into the pan that I held. As I dumped the pan into the waste pail, I admitted to myself for the first time that I never asked. I never asked my father why he made that decision, why he didn’t argue with Sabrina more to let me be a part of the family. It would have been hard to move to California and leave my friends, especially Tanisha, but how different would my life look? Would I have a father now? Would I know who my half brother and half sister really were instead of just reading about them in e-mail updates that Sabrina sent just to remind me how superior her children were to me? I could give myself a pass and say that I didn’t ask then because I was a hurt child who still grieved for her mother, but what about now?

Ruth hung the rake back onto the wall. “You can’t tell anyone, even Timothy.”

I blinked at her, preoccupied in my own family drama that was a decade old. “What?”

She examined my face. “Where Anna and I meet. You can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t tell,” I said quickly.

She picked up her bonnet from the hay bale and twirled the black ribbon around her index finger. The barn cat, which pestered Sparky, appeared on top of the hay and watched Ruth twirl and untwirl the ribbon with studied fascination. “If I want to see Anna I tie a green ribbon on a spruce tree in the woods behind her house. She goes out often enough to look for the ribbon.”

“A green ribbon? Isn’t that hard to spy in the tree?”

She dropped the bonnet on the hay bale and the cat dashed away. “That’s the idea. You can only see it if you know what you are looking for. The last thing we want is her
daed
or stepmother finding it.” She picked up her feed bucket and scooped again. “Then I hide a note that says the date and time to meet. Not every time, but most of the time she is able to slip away and meet me there. When she doesn’t make it, I know that she has tried.”

I picked up my feed pail. My wrist gave a little under its weight. How could such a small girl like Ruth move such a heavy pail around the barn so easily? There wasn’t a bit of strain in her demeanor. “Where is your meeting spot?”

Ruth looked away and filled two more troughs with grain.

The metal pail handle dug into my curled fingers. I set it down. “Ruth?”