Return to Grace. Karen Harper

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СКАЧАТЬ old friend Sarah Kauffman, who had gone to the world, been shunned, but planned to wed the arson investigator who had solved the barn fires. Sarah had followed her heart, not only with Nate MacKenzie but by becoming an artist who painted scenes from Amish life—with faces on the people. But Sarah was living in Columbus.

      This close to the earth, near the grass of Lena’s grave, Hannah could see that the edges of the replaced sod had not yet evened out or grown into the other grass. At funerals here, she’d seen the shaved-off sod the grave diggers had set aside so it could be replaced after they refilled the grave by hand. Had Linc and his investigators dug up the edges of the grass blanket over Lena’s grave, looking for bullets or digging for more blood spots?

      “Okay, please vault the fence just like you said!” Linc’s loud voice nearby startled her, and she turned her head to see Seth, one hand on the fence with the yellow tape, clear it easily and land on his feet.

      “Hannah, however it happened, I’m so glad you’ve come home!”

      Later that afternoon, her first Amish caller was her close childhood friend Ella Lantz, Seth’s sister. Ella was a year younger than Seth and Hannah, the middle child in their family of five children. They shared a hug, and, as ever, Ella smelled wonderful.

      Hannah had always thought Ella looked like an angel with her white-blond hair and pale blue eyes. As a girl, she had nearly drowned in the pond at the juncture of the three farms. Sarah and Hannah had saved her and it had bonded them all closer. But from that time on, Ella had changed. She’d buried deep her daredevil streak, become timid, even rigid and judgmental of those who didn’t toe the line—and that was Hannah and Sarah now, for sure.

      But maybe, Hannah hoped, Ella had learned that people make mistakes that should not only be forgiven but forgotten. Naomi had told Hannah that Ella had recently broken up with her serious come-calling friend, Eli Detweiler, because he hadn’t given up alcohol after his rumspringa years.

      “I brought you some lavender,” Ella said, and held out a basket of sachets and soaps which perfumed the air. On a large lot near the Lantz farmhouse, Ella grew and harvested the fragrant herb. Then in a little workshop Seth had built for her out the back of their family’s farm, she packaged her precious plants she sold locally. Each hand-lettered label read Lavender Plain Products, Homestead, Ohio.

      “How thoughtful of you!” Hannah said, and inhaled deeply as Ella took a chair at the card table laid out with a half-finished family jigsaw puzzle of the Grand Canyon. “They smell delicious and look lovely,” she added, admiring the printed cotton packets that made each sachet look like a small quilt square.

      “Some say the scent is good for the heart,” Ella said. “I mean, not to cure a damaged heart, like what happened to Lena, but to lift your mood. Oh, Hannah, it was awful that she just fell over like that in their kitchen with the baby there but Seth out on a job. Such a tragedy. But then, you’ve had one, too. And I … believe me, I remember how it feels to … to almost die.”

      “I was sorry to hear about you and Eli parting, but at least it was before you got betrothed or married.”

      “I just couldn’t take a chance on him, trust him not to drink,” she said, gripping her hands in her lap. Ella’s feelings and moods were always transparent. She looked instantly grieved. “Every time he said he was done with drinking, he wasn’t. He looked bleary-eyed and was always tired, too, cutting back his work hours. I could smell it on him day or night. I just— I could not trust him to be the father of my children. I guess all of us—you, Sarah and I—had disappointments with men. Though Sarah’s gone the wrong way with a worldly man after that mess with Jacob, I’ll find someone to build a life with here, I know I will!”

      “Meanwhile, you have a sweet future!” Hannah said, forcing a smile and picking up a cotton-wrapped and ribboned bar of soap to inhale the scent. Ella didn’t make the soap at home but provided the dried leaves and flowers for it, then wrapped the bars herself.

      “Both bed-and-breakfasts in town use my products now as well as the Amish gift shops and Mrs. Logan’s restaurant, so that gets me more business. I just came from Mrs. Stutzman’s B and B, and she said to tell you that if you want a job you could do one-handed, she needs a half-time housekeeper—dusting, laundry, ironing. She does the cooking and makes the beds. Her half-time girl just quit.”

      “People have been so kind to offer jobs. They must know it’s hard for me to have come home like this.”

      “I know it, too,” Ella said, and reached out to lightly grasp Hannah’s good wrist. “At the B and B, you wouldn’t have to face a lot of our people yet, since Amanda Stutzman and her husband are Mennonite and their guests are ausländers. Oh, and guess who just moved in there for a spell?”

      “Not the FBI agent?”

      “No. Can you see him with all those ruffled curtains and quilts and teatime? Sheriff Freeman’s wife—former wife, like the moderns say—is back in town. I met her there when I delivered the new sachets and soaps I arrange in each room. She’s pretty but wears a lot of makeup. She says she’s here to stay. I think she’s come home, like you.”

      Hannah remembered how much Ella loved to gossip, almost as much as her best friend, Naomi. Ella was to be one of Naomi’s attendants, or sidesitters, in the coming wedding. Would that be hard for her to face since she’d broken up with Eli? But Hannah kept thinking about poor Ray-Lynn Logan. It had been pretty obvious from the sheriff’s visit to Hannah’s hospital room that he and Ray-Lynn were getting close, and months ago Sarah had told her the same.

      “Ella, that job offer sounds good to tide me over, but I don’t know if I’ll be staying after the investigation of the shooting is finished.”

      “Oh, but we want you to. Seth does, I can tell!”

      “Now don’t you go playing matchmaker for us, or for Sheriff Freeman, either. But the fact that the former Mrs. Freeman is living at the Plain and Fancy means she’s a five-minute walk from Ray-Lynn’s house.”

      “That’s right. But here’s the thing,” Ella plunged on, leaning forward and lowering her voice, although they were alone in the living room. “Lillian Freeman’s been living in Las Vegas!”

      She’d said those words, Hannah thought, as if the woman had just come from the very gates of hell. “But that doesn’t mean she was boozing it up, gambling day and night or dancing in a chorus line,” Hannah protested.

      “A chorus line? Did she try to be a singer, like you? No, she was a hostess in some fancy casino restaurant, I think.”

      Hannah wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. She’d actually forgotten how much she’d learned in the outside world that she’d never known about here in the shelter of Home Valley.

      Hannah knew the November sunset would be early, so late afternoon, when she heard Seth come into the house to wash up and get Marlena, she decided to slip outside. However comforting it was to be near her family again, she felt cooped up. She’d even helped, one-handed, with dusting, as if preparing for the job at Amanda Stutzman’s B and B she was considering taking. She had to do something other than sit around waiting for Linc to think of some new clue or lead.

      Hannah had been racking her brain trying to come up with the who or why of the shooting. And she’d shed tears again, writing condolence letters to her goth friends’ families. Worst of all, if she let her thoughts drift a bit or woke up at night, she saw the shootings all over again in her head. Her doctor had told her she might have such spells, like those who’d СКАЧАТЬ