Lancaster County Reckoning

“His sacrifice was you. And your mother.”

“My mother? What do you know about my mother?” Darcy fell back into one of the upholstered chairs. None of this made her feel any better. Only more confused and sick inside.

Bishop Miller locked his sea-blue eyes on hers. “From what I was told, it all began when your father helped put a man in prison many years ago—a very bad man. Now that man has been released.”

The phone call. The voice. The man who was coming after her. The man who’d already viciously beaten Jesse. Darcy’s head was spinning. It felt as if all the blood had drained from her body. She tried to breathe and calm herself down, but it was like some invisible force had gripped her chest. “What did this man do? What has this got to do with my mother?”

“This man... He killed your mother.”

FIVE (#uf55d179d-41cb-5e84-b3b1-4a2675f1e67b)

“Why, Darcy, you’ve hardly touched your lunch,” said Nana Ruth as she cleared away the plates.

“I had a late breakfast,” she explained. Thomas watched Darcy stand and begin to help Nana and Hannah clean away the dishes. He knew the real reason she hadn’t touched her lunch. On the way from the cottage, when Darcy had stayed behind to talk to the bishop, Elijah had shared with Thomas what the Elders knew about Jesse Troyer’s past.

Thomas supposed he shouldn’t feel so mixed up about what he had learned. After the beating and the phone call to Darcy, he should have expected that Jesse had some dubious connections. Still, it created a cloud of mistrust to discover that Jesse had kept secrets for all these years. For Darcy those mixed emotions must have felt even heavier.

He glanced through the kitchen window. In his office in the stables, where he managed his business of raising and training horses, he’d stowed away Jesse’s Bible, which he’d taken from the cottage. He was going to take it to the hospital the next time he went to visit Jesse so he could read to him. But now, he felt compelled to share it with Darcy. She should be the one to take it to the hospital and share God’s word with her father. Maybe it would give her some peace in all of this confusion. By the look on her face, she could certainly use some.

“Your home is lovely.” Darcy brought him a cup of coffee that Nana had poured out.

“Danki.” Thomas felt a brief grin slide over his lips. He took the coffee from her hands, thinking how this woman was not quite what he had thought when he first saw her on Jesse’s front porch. Fancy and sharp-witted, yes. But there was something softer there, too, although Thomas guessed it wasn’t a side of her that she was comfortable revealing to many people, especially to a stranger like him.

“Well, if you like the old house, Miss Simmons, please allow me to show you the even older stables.” He glanced over to Elijah. “Eli and I were just heading there to look at the filly.”

Eli raised an eyebrow at the unexpected invitation, but followed Darcy and Thomas out of the white clapboard home toward the great red stable.

“So your grandmother lives on one side of the house and you on the other?” Darcy asked.

“When the house was more crowded, we definitely needed the space,” Thomas said, thinking back to a time not so long ago when his brother’s child and wife had lived there under his roof, dependent on his protection—protection he’d failed to give. “Now it’s just the two of us. Frankly, I don’t know how Nana keeps up the place all by herself.”

“That’s why Nana is always on the lookout for a new granddaughter-in-law.” Eli slapped him on the back.

Thomas clenched his teeth. He knew his friend meant no harm, but somehow the comment rubbed him wrong. To redirect the conversation, he started to explain to Darcy that Hannah—Elijah’s wife—used to live with him, along with her stepdaughter, Jessica, when Hannah was widowed by his older brother, who’d died in a buggy accident. And so it was really Eli’s fault that Nana had lost her helper, when he’d come back to town to investigate the case of Jessica’s murder and married Hannah. But the memory was so bittersweet. As happy as he was that his friend and his sister-in-law had found love together, the losses of his niece and brother weren’t happy topics. After all, the whole point of taking Darcy to the stable was to lift her spirits, not add to the weight of what she already carried.

Thomas led Darcy and Eli through the aisles. “These are the Morgan breeding mares. On the other side are the draft mares. I have two stallions, which are housed in a separate stable on the far side of the property. And this—this is Gilda. She was just born two weeks ago.”

Darcy looked over the stall door, down at the little bay filly, who tried to put her nose over the door to greet them.

“Oh, my, she’s so sweet.” Darcy smiled. And Thomas thought he saw at least a little of the weight from her shoulders lift. “Can I pet her?”

“Ja. Ja,” he said. “She’s very friendly. And already used to people. She’s going to make a great driver.”

He and Eli watched Darcy pet the playful filly, who snorted and nipped at Darcy’s hand. “I’ve never really been around animals much. My grandparents wouldn’t let me have a pet.”

“It’s sort of a mandatory experience around here.” Eli laughed.

Darcy’s smile slipped a little.

“I have something for you,” Thomas said. “It’s in the office.”

“For me?” Darcy looked stunned as she followed him into his small office.

He lifted the Bible from his desk and placed it into her hands. “This is Jesse’s. I found it on the table when we first started cleaning. I was going to take it to the hospital and read it to Jesse. But then I thought that he would want you to do that.”

“Oh.” Darcy looked frozen for a moment, then she finally extended her hands to take the great book. “I’m afraid, like the animals, I don’t know much about the Bible, either.”

She held it delicately in her hands, as if it was made of glass. Thomas felt a lump form in his throat. Had he gone too far? He had only meant to make things better.

“What would I read to him?” she asked.

“Just trust your heart.” Thomas smiled.

She nodded. “Jesse did share some verses with me in a letter. I guess I could look those up.”

Eli reached for the Bible. “Really, you can’t go wrong with any part of it. For example, sometimes I’ll just flip it open...”

As Elijah turned the pages, a note fluttered out from the book and fell to the floor.

Thomas reached for it and unfolded the small letter, his eyes glancing quickly over the message. Then his heart sank to stomach. He looked up at Darcy. “We need to call the chief.”

* * *

Darcy pulled at the ends of her hair. How much more could she take? She wasn’t sure. The note had been addressed to her to give to Jesse. It had been meant to terrorize them both. The man who had left it wanted her to know that he was coming for what Jesse had stolen. And if they wanted to live, they wouldn’t get in his way. It had been signed W.W. She agreed with Thomas that they needed to call McClendon. She needed to tell the chief what Bishop Miller had told her about Jesse’s past, too. Hopefully once he had all the information, the police chief would be able to piece together what was going on and stop this W.W. from hurting anyone else.

Darcy hurried from the stable to her car, where she’d left her phone in her bag. Her hands were shaking. Another threat and in a Bible of all places and... Where was her phone?

She searched her clutch bag, which was sitting in the passenger seat. The phone wasn’t there. She looked under the seats. It wasn’t there, either. She knew it wasn’t in the Nolts’ home. She hadn’t taken her purse or the phone inside.

Darcy’s mind flashed back to her enlightening conversation with the bishop. She remembered how the shock of his words had caused her to fall back. She had dropped her bag into the chair. Her phone must have fallen out then. It was probably right in the seat where he’d delivered the news that her mother had been murdered and the killer was now out of prison and on her trail. Now, thanks to the note in the Bible, she had yet another reminder of just how close that killer was.

She looked around, reminded of the isolation of the Amish farm. The cottage was only a mile away. It wouldn’t take long to go back and get it.

She hopped into the driver’s seat, her mind still spinning with all new information. Her grandparents had always blamed her father for her mother’s death—for the car crash that Darcy had always believed killed both of her parents. They had lied about her father dying. But were they telling the truth when they said it was her father’s fault? Had they known their daughter was murdered? And that her father had helped send the killer to prison? Murder... Killer... The words made her cringe. What else had everyone lied about? Had she ever known the truth about anything? Darcy felt like she didn’t even know who or what she was anymore.

Darcy passed through the woods separating Jesse’s land from Thomas’s. The cottage looked desolate as it came into view. Jesse’s horse wasn’t even in the field. Probably taken to a neighbor’s while Jesse was in the hospital. The thought of others pitching in to help in different ways touched Darcy. Jesse’s friends and neighbors were so loyal and devoted. Darcy wasn’t even sure who her neighbors were. And she was certain that if she’d been the one in the hospital, there would not have been a constant flow of visitors like there had been for Jesse.

She pulled up in front of the cottage, leaving her car running. Grabbing her phone wouldn’t take a second. She jiggled the door open and headed over to the chair where she’d been sitting. The phone was nestled between the arm and the seat cushion. That was a relief.

She tucked the phone into her jacket pocket. But as she began to turn, the front door suddenly slammed behind her.

Darcy jumped at the sudden sound, but tried to calm her nerves as she reasoned that it was simply a drafty house and that a change in pressure had caused the door to shut.

But a change in pressure where? And why? She turned toward the kitchen. Was there a back door that had opened? She spun back around. Everything looked in place. She was worried over nothing. She just needed to get back to Thomas’s. The sooner the better.

As she stepped toward the front door, something fell in the kitchen. The clank of a tin pot hitting the hardwood floor reverberated through the house.

Her heart froze. Darcy couldn’t breathe. Someone else was in the house. She took a step back. She looked left. She looked right. She saw nothing.