The Lesson (5 page)

Jimmy frowned at her. “I am conducting research.”

M.K. snorted and started up the hill again. “Research for pony races, you mean.”

Jimmy caught up with her again. “I’ll ignore that insult because you’re having a bad day. But since we’re discussing my future, I’d like to ask for your help in a very delicate matter.”

M.K. stopped, intrigued. “What do you need help with?”

“I’ve found the one.”

“The one what? A horse?”

“No! A woman. I’m in love.” He covered his heart. “A deep, enduring love.”

“Really?” That was a very strange thought for M.K. She often wondered what it felt like to be in love. Being in love, she imagined, would make all the colors in the world more vivid, all the stars shine more brightly, all the moments of her life dance and crackle with excitement like flames leaping in a bonfire.

“I met my future bride. Someone whom I am sure you know. After all, you know everybody.”

She smiled. Finally, someone appreciated her. “Who is that?”

“Emily Esh.”

“Emily Esh? Oh Jimmy, she’s . . .” She paused, trying to find the right words to say. It was easy to see why Emily Esh had attracted Jimmy’s attention. She had huge, dinner-plate-sized eyes, an enigmatic, slightly-turned-up-at-the-corners smile, and a figure that curved in all the right places.

“What?”

“She’s . . .” How to say this? “She’s super brainy.”

“So?” His face clouded over. “What’s your point?”

“It might be hard to impress a girl like Emily. Not to mention that she has plenty of guys fluttering around her.”

Jimmy kicked a dirt clod with his boot. “You think I’m not smart enough for her?”

M.K. looked at Jimmy. “You’re enough for any girl, Jimmy.” That wasn’t the problem. She might be a little hard on Jimmy—he was spoiled and impulsive and insensitive and egotistical—but there was a good heart somewhere under that handsome exterior.

“Will you help me, then? Will you arrange an introduction for me with Emily Esh?”

M.K. let out a puff of air.

“Please? I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Anything.” He gave her a sly look. “Besides teach at Twin Creeks School.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Help me solve the murder of the sheep farmer.”

“What murder?”

M.K. closed her eyes, thoroughly exasperated. Did she have to do everything around here? “Yesterday afternoon, a sheep farmer was shot to death in his field. Orin Stoltzfus told me this morning that the police can’t find any clues. That means the culprit is still on the loose.”

Jimmy looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.

The sound of a clanging dinner bell floated down the hill. M.K. hadn’t eaten much for breakfast and she was starving. “That’s the deal. As soon as we solve the crime, I will introduce you to Emily Esh.” She hurried up the hill. When she got to the top, she heard Jimmy call her name. She spun around.

“OK!” He grinned. “It’s a deal!”

The first thing Chris did when he got home from work was to take a shower. Cutting alfalfa hay all day made his entire body feel scratchy and itchy. But he did a good day’s work, Amos Lapp had said, and told him to come back tomorrow. And he paid him generously too before he left for the day. Cash. Enough to buy new shoes for his sister to start school in a few days. And maybe enough to splurge on an ice cream cone afterward.

When he told Jenny that they were heading into town tonight to go school shopping, she balked. “We should go back to Ohio, so Mom knows where we are.”

“We’ve been over this, Jenny. If we stayed in Ohio, Child Protective Services would step in and put you in a foster home. And Mom doesn’t need to know where we are. All that matters is we know where she is.”

Jenny scowled. But then, she was always scowling. Her face was going to be set in a permanent scowl. “She’s going to get out soon. Then things will go back to normal.”

Normal? What was normal? Their mother was a part-time house cleaner and a full-time drug addict. Old Deborah had been a godsend to them. She was an older Amish woman who became connected to the Ohio Reformatory for Women by fostering prisoners’ children—an informal arrangement, outside of Child Protective Services but blessed by them, that suited everyone. Chris and Jenny had been living with Old Deborah, off and on, since Chris was eight and Jenny was one.

Once a month, year in and year out, Old Deborah took them by bus to Marysville to visit their mother. The program Old Deborah participated in wasn’t trying to convert children to become Amish. Its goal was to keep incarcerated mothers involved in the lives of their children. Studies showed that there was less recidivism if mothers felt like they were continuing to parent their children. The Marysville warden had created all kinds of programs to enhance the bond with mothers and children. But Chris and Jenny had stayed with Old Deborah longer than they had lived with their mother. They couldn’t help but look Amish, act Amish, talk Amish, and mostly, think Amish. For Chris, for the first time, the whole of his life really began to be transformed into something other than what it had ever been, something leaning toward normal.

It rankled their mother. She made sharply pointed comments about the Amish, but what could she really do about
it? Old Deborah was raising her children for her. And doing a wonderful job with it too. She was grandmother, counselor, mentor . . . all wrapped into one warm, loving package. She fed them, washed their clothes, combed out Jenny’s tangled hair, took them to the dentist or doctor if they needed medical attention. Old Deborah and her church family were loving toward them. Chris had no doubt they wanted them there. Life was stable at Old Deborah’s. No one was on edge—waiting for his mother’s dip into addiction. Chris knew what to expect each day at Old Deborah’s. It was peaceful and safe and good.

On some level, Chris’s mother must have known that her children were better off with Old Deborah than with CPS. Or maybe she just liked having the visits. She never registered any formal complaints about the Amish school or Amish church Chris and Jenny attended, though she gave Old Deborah plenty of informal complaints. But when Chris became baptized in the church last fall, she blew her top. It still chilled Chris to think of his mother’s outburst, filled with horrible accusations. He just stood there, taking it, not answering back, just like he always had, but he hadn’t been back to see her since.

Jenny didn’t remember what it was like before Old Deborah’s, but Chris did. And he would do everything in his power to make sure he and Jenny never went back to that. After that scene his mother had made about his baptism, Old Deborah quietly took him aside. She told Chris that his grandfather had sent her some legal papers, right before he died. He was leaving a house in trust for Chris and Jenny, and property taxes were paid out of the trust each year. When Chris turned twenty-one, he would inherit the house and land. When Jenny turned twenty-one, half of the house would belong to her.
Old Deborah gave Chris a package with all of the legal paperwork, including a key to the house. “There’s just one little hitch. Your mother is the executor of this trust.” Old Deborah took a deep breath and closed her eyes, scrunching up her wrinkled face. “I might not have shared that piece of knowledge with her.”

“What? Mom doesn’t know? Why not?” It wasn’t in Old Deborah’s nature to deceive anyone.

Old Deborah opened her eyes. “Your grandfather put a condition in the will—as long as your mother wasn’t using drugs, wasn’t in jail, the house could go to her first. That was the condition until you turned twenty-one. Your grandfather asked me to use my judgment about when your mother should be informed about the will. So I kept waiting for the right moment to share it with her. I wanted to make sure she was truly freed from her drug habit . . .”

“But she never has been.”

“No, not for long.” She offered up a smile, but it didn’t travel to her eyes. “Not yet, anyway.”

Not ever, Chris thought. His grandfather must have thought so too. Why else would he create such a will? He knew that Grace Mitchell would spend her life skirting in and out of jail or rehab. Or both.

“I think it’s time to go back to Stoney Ridge. This winter, you’ll be twenty-one. Your mother is . . . indisposed. The house was meant for you and Jenny.”

Chris fingered the cold metal key. A simple little door key that unlocked so many memories. “Stoney Ridge? Go back to my grandfather’s house?”

“Yes. This is your chance to start a life of your own.” She covered his hand with hers. Her hand was so small and fragile compared to his work-roughened one, but it was powerful
in its own way. Like the rudder of a ship. “Chris, one thing I have learned over the years—your mother may not be able to be a good mother, but she does love you and your sister. Her problems get in the way of that love. Lord only knows I wish your upbringing had been different, but maybe you had an extraordinary upbringing, because it has made you an extraordinary young man.”

He had trusted Old Deborah in every way, and though she was gone, he trusted her judgment even now. After her funeral, the very next morning, before news of Old Deborah’s passing had time to spread outside of the Amish community, he had quietly packed their few belongings, and he and Jenny set off for Stoney Ridge in Lancaster County to claim their inheritance. He felt bad that he hadn’t said goodbye to the friends who had been so kind to him and Jenny—the Troyers, especially—but the fewer people who knew where they were headed, the better. He didn’t want any news of Stoney Ridge to trickle to his mother. Not now. Not until late January, after his birthday.

What a crazy thing he had done! Traveling the back roads of Ohio and Pennsylvania with a horse and buggy. It took weeks! Many days, they only covered twenty to thirty miles, and on Sundays, they stayed put. It didn’t matter how long it took—Chris wasn’t going to jeopardize Samson’s well-being. And time was one thing he had plenty of.

Finally, the day came when they arrived in Stoney Ridge. The little town hadn’t changed much. The Sweet Tooth Bakery was still on the corner of Main Street, across from the post office and the brick bank. They walked down Main Street and he knew, instinctively, to turn right down Stone Leaf Drive, as if he’d never left. When he came to the lane that led to the house, he stopped and took a deep breath.

Jenny looked up at him. “Did you forget where it is? Has it been too long?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t forget.” From Ohio—a four-week trip. From his childhood—an eternity.

They walked up the lane and turned into a cracked and crumbling concrete driveway that led to the house. The property wasn’t large—it was surrounded by farmland.

“Here it is, Jenny.”

“Yuck.”

“Hello?” he called out softly.

All was quiet. The house was deserted and looked it. The clapboard frame of the house was just the way he remembered it—brownish gray with chipped, flaking paint, the trim painted white. The porch sagged on one side. A clothesline with bleached-out wooden clothespins was looped between the posts, just under the rafters. A memory wisped like a fast-moving cloud through Chris’s head. He remembered his mother hanging her underwear there and his grandfather raging at its impropriety. His grandfather cared about things like that. His mother didn’t.

Chris walked up to the front door. He tried the doorknob, expecting nothing, but when it turned in his hand, he let out a surprised gasp.

“What?” Jenny rushed to his side.

He pushed the door open, its hinges screaming a protest.

What he saw made him want to back right up and run. “I guess we’re home,” he whispered.

3

M
ary Kate woke early, after a restless night. Today was the first day of school, and she was the schoolteacher. She had absolutely no idea how to teach school. She slipped out of bed and dressed, then went downstairs. Last night, she had made up a batch of wheat bread dough and put it in the refrigerator. It was a special recipe that required a long kneading time.

She took the bowl out of the refrigerator and turned the dough onto a lightly floured surface. She deflated the dough—gently pressing down to let the air out. By gently squeezing out the excess carbon dioxide, the yeast would be more fully distributed throughout the dough. Then she started the kneading process: turn and fold, turn and fold, turn and fold. She knew she would need the task this morning—kneading bread could dispel a good deal of anxiety from even the most nervous heart.

And it did help. By the time her father woke to head outside and feed the livestock, she was almost calm. Almost. “There’s coffee started,” she said. Her voice sounded thin and wavery.

Amos poured himself a cup and peered at the bread she
was kneading. “Wheat. Hmmm. You must be feeling pretty fidgety.”

Panic rose up again inside of M.K. “I can’t do it, Dad.”

Amos put the coffee cup on the counter. “Of course you can. You’ve never failed yet at anything you tried to do, have you?”

“Well, no, but I have never tried to teach school.”

“You’ve tackled every job that ever came your way. You never shirked, and you always stuck to it till you did what you set out to do. Success gets to be a habit, like anything else a person keeps on doing.”