The Letters (3 page)

But would the bishop let tourists stay at the farm? Maybe there was a rule about this kind of thing. Maybe that’s why there weren’t any bed-and-breakfasts in Stoney Ridge. But then, she thought, maybe it’s better not to ask. It was always easier to apologize later. Besides, Bishop Elmo seemed like a kind man. Surely, he would understand a mother’s plight. The church had been good to them, generous and gracious, but she needed to find a way to take care of her family.

Would an inn bring in enough cash to solve her ongoing cash shortfall? She doubted it. But it would certainly help.

She paid for the groceries with the wad of bills wrapped in a rubber band that she kept in her dress pocket. As she picked up the bags, her heart felt lighter than it had in months. The best cure for sadness was doing something. Her eyes searched the skies, finding a small opening where the clouds parted and blue sky showed through. “Thank you,” she said, grinning ear to ear. “Thank you for Plan B.”

She ran over to the car where the man and the lady were loading groceries and invited them to stay at the farm.

2

T
he kitchen smelled as sweet and spicy as Christmas Day. Bethany Schrock took the cake out of the hot oven and set it on the counter to cool. She saw her younger brothers, Luke and Sammy, cut eyes at each other, sniffing the air like foxes. Those boys could eat any time of the day, any day of the week. They crowed with happiness as she mixed butter and powdered sugar to make icing for the cake. Then they hollered when Bethany told them they had to wait until after supper to sample it. Finally, fed up with them underfoot, she shooed them upstairs to clean their room.

Bethany was still reeling over her stepmother’s big news. Rose had met her at the door as she walked in from work. She told her that there were English strangers staying for the night. In Bethany’s very room! Rose had a new business idea: to turn the farm’s basement into an inn. Bethany knew Rose was under pressure, but now it appeared she had gone raving mad. Yes, clearly too much pressure.

Rose had seemed so excited about this idea that Bethany didn’t have the heart to tell her all the reasons it wouldn’t work—how awful it would be to have strangers poke around
their property, how easily influenced her little brothers could be by English visitors, how impossible English folks were to please. She knew that from personal experience, but that information was best to keep private.

Most importantly, having Rose so excited about this venture would delay the inevitable—they needed to return to York County, where they belonged. Where Bethany belonged. Where her sweetheart, Jake Hertzler, lived.

A sound of pounding footsteps came from far above her. Those brothers were either just coming or just going. It was hard for them to ever settle.

Then Luke came tearing down the stairs like a scalded cat, with Sammy following on his heels, threatening to hang him out of a window. About halfway down, Luke tripped and went nose over like a barrel down the rest of the stairs. He landed at the bottom with a thud and sprawled, unmoving.

Bethany watched in horror and flew to his side. “Luke?” Sammy galloped down the stairs and stood over his brother.

Luke opened one eye. “Sammy wants to throw me out the window.”

Sammy stamped his foot. “I knew you were just playing possum! You rat!”

“No name-calling,” Bethany said, helping Luke to his feet. She was sure she’d be worried into an early grave for trying to keep these little brothers out of
theirs
. “What’s gotten into you two?”

Sammy pointed at Luke. “He said there’s a ghost on the third floor. He said he saw a lady with bright red hair and lips. And she called him ‘honey.’ He said that, Bethany. He’s a liar.”

This was such a typical scenario. Sammy and Luke were
barely two years apart, but Luke was taller, faster, smarter, more clever. He was constantly tricking or baiting Sammy and it drove Sammy crazy. But Bethany wasn’t worried about Sammy. He may not be quick or fast, but he had his own talents. “He’s no liar, but he’s only half right. There is a couple up there, staying in my room. Rose invited some people she met at the Bent N’ Dent to stay here.”

“Why’d she do that?” Sammy said.

In walked Rose through the kitchen door, carrying a basket of eggs from the henhouse, with Mim trailing behind her. “I met them at the store,” Rose said after she hurried to close the door to Mammi Vera’s room. “They needed a place to stay and we are people who try to help others in need.” She set the basket on the table.

Mim looked shocked. Bethany realized that Rose hadn’t told her the news about the inn. Mim’s eyebrows knit together in a frown. It was a look Bethany knew well. Mim was the logical, practical one in the family. Rose often said that if an idea could get past Mim, it was probably a pretty good idea.

“Boys, go bring the sheep into the pen for the night,” Rose said. “The goat too. And lock those latches! We don’t want them wandering over to the neighbor’s again. The girls and I are going to get dinner ready.” Luke and Sammy went outside, whooping and hollering about how fast they could run. She watched them through the window. “Everything’s a contest with those two.”

Mim set the table and Bethany mixed up some biscuit dough, while Rose topped the casserole with some cheese and melted it under the broiler. Bethany remained silent, spooning biscuit dough onto an oven tray and putting it in the oven, as Rose explained the inn idea to Mim. Bethany
chanced a look at Mim out of the corner of her eyes, watching her absorb the news. Mim’s eyes had widened behind her large round glasses, and she was blinking rapidly, a sign that she was listening hard. Bethany had repeatedly told her to stop blinking like that—she looked like a newborn owl. But Mim could be the one to set Rose straight. She could be the leader of the campaign to pop the balloon of this harebrained scheme. Yes, she was the one.

Rose took the casserole out of the oven. “Bethany, would you please take this tray up to Lois and Tony? I invited them to join us for dinner, but Lois has a headache.” She began heaping two plates with spoonfuls of casserole.

They’re strangers!
Bethany wanted to say but thought twice before saying it. She felt confident that the idea would fizzle out of its own accord. Still, if Bethany
were
to say something, this was what she would say:

Rose, you don’t know anything about them. Folks are always saying that the Amish are too naïve, too trusting, and you’ve just proved them right. You met these people at the Bent N’ Dent. All we know about them is that the lady uses very strong perfume and she’s stinking up my room with it. That’s probably the very reason she’s not feeling well. Her perfume is making her sick. You just watch and see—I’ll be sick too, all because of that heavy perfume poisoning the air in my room.

Rose topped each plate with a warm biscuit, added two slices of cake on the side, and handed her the tray. Bethany sighed a grievous sigh.

“Bethany, they’re very nice people,” Rose said, reading her mind. “Go!”

Bethany stole a look at her sister. Mim’s glasses had misted
over; that was always a sign that she was thinking deeply.
Come on, Mim, say it.
Don’t hold back,
Bethany thought.
List all the flaws with new ideas the way you usually do.
She could count on Mim. Her little half-sister did not like change.

Mim opened her gray eyes wide and took a deep breath. “I think it might just work.”

Bethany squeezed her eyes tight. As usual, she was going to have to be the one who righted the ship for this family. With Tobe gone missing, she was the eldest, and so the worries reached her first.

She looked at her stepmother, so hopeful and eager. She even looked young again. Her sparkle was coming back. It was a sad and sorrowful state of affairs that Bethany had to be the one to do this, to say this. But someone had to. “Rose, have you spoken to Mammi Vera about this? After all, it is her house.”

The next morning, Rose could hear her sons’ high-pitched voices carry from the barn all the way up to the porch. She hoped Vera couldn’t hear them. It had taken some finagling to make sure Vera didn’t catch on that there were English people staying in the house last night. It worked out surprisingly well. No lies were told and none were needed—may God forgive her for even thinking such a thing. Last night Lois had a headache and stayed upstairs. Vera had stayed in her room all evening and slept late this morning.

Luke and Sammy were giving Tony and Lois a tour of the farm and were finishing up by the horse pasture. “All I have to do is catch sight of Silver Girl and whistle, and she’ll come running,” Sammy was telling them. “That’s how good a horse
she is.” The way he said it, the way he looked at the horse with such admiration in his small face, gave Rose a deep, swift rush of love for her youngest. He was growing up so fast.

Silver Girl was a maiden mare, soon to deliver. Rose had bought her for a song from Galen King, her closest neighbor, a younger fellow who was known for his horse smarts. Two for the price of one, Galen had said. He was being kind. Flash, Vera’s buggy horse, was getting along in years, and he told Rose he would train the foal to take Flash’s place in a few years.

At first, just the name
Flash
raised a red flag to Rose. Her buggy skills were rusty. She needed a horse that wouldn’t break out and bolt. Galen told her the flash was for the streak of white down his forehead. Rose’s confidence in Flash and her driving skills was improving, but she still didn’t drive at night, though Galen assured her that Flash could drive the buggy himself. She hadn’t forgotten that she had once heard Galen tell her boys, “Es is em beschde Gaul net zu draue.”
Even the best horse is not to be trusted.

Tony lifted the suitcases into the trunk of the car as Lois continued the conversation with the boys. Rose wiped her hands on her apron and hurried out to relieve Lois of the ever-increasing complications of any conversation with Luke and Sammy.

“Now, who again is the oldest of you two?” Lois asked the boys.

“I am,” Luke answered quickly. “By almost two whole years. Taller, too.”

“Nuh-uh,” Sammy said, standing on his toes. “Look how them pants are short.”

“Those pants,” Rose corrected. He was right, though. His
skinny ankles showed clear. Something else to add to her to-do list—let down the hem in Sammy’s pants.

When Lois and Tony asked Rose how much she charged for a night’s lodging and two meals, she gave them a blank look. She hadn’t given any thought about what to charge guests. Tony handed her a one-hundred-dollar bill and called her an angel. She was glad to have it, sorry to take it, relieved to know she could pay some bills, and mortified to need it, all at the same time.

Tony said that after news of Rose’s fine, buttery blueberry cornbread leaked out, she had better batten down the hatches. “Folks will be beating a path to your door.”

Rose doubted that, but it was a nice thought. Lois gave Rose a hug and handed her a container of ground cinnamon. “A pretty little bird named Bethany told me you needed this.”

She waved goodbye to Lois and Tony as the car drove out of the driveway. It had turned out well, inviting those two to stay over. Rose had gone to bed feeling more right and quiet on the inside than she had in many, many a night.

She inhaled the scent of cinnamon. A little bird named Bethany? From the look on Bethany’s face as she headed upstairs to deliver the tray of food to Tony and Lois—like she was heading to the gallows—Rose would have thought she would be back downstairs in the blink of an eye. Not so. Bethany stayed upstairs talking to them until dinner was on the table.

Rose smiled. Mim was easier for her—what you saw, you got. She was still a little girl. The boys? They were easy to read. But with Bethany, Rose felt as if there were two trains of thinking going on and she wasn’t sure which track she was on. She could never predict what Bethany would think or do.

Take last night. Rose wasn’t sure why Bethany had objected so strongly to the idea of starting an inn at the farm. She would have thought Mim would list out objections, in her frank way. Mim was the pessimist of the family—so like Vera in that way. Every picnic was going to get rained on, every cup half empty. Vera was only sixty-four, but she’d been dying of old age since she was thirty-five. Mim and Vera should be closely aligned, good friends, because they saw things in the same way, but they weren’t. There was often a tension between them. Too much alike, perhaps? Bethany was a polar opposite to Vera—and yet she was the one who had a sweet way with Vera.