A Christmas Mourning Read online

  “That’s because, for me, Mamm’s spoon is forever intertwined with my memory of that year’s program.” Stepping away from the window, he made his way back to the couch and to Claire. “A few days later, when Mamm went to get the spoon on Christmas morning, I realized what I’d done. I excused myself to check on the horses and, instead, walked all the way to the schoolhouse. But the spoon wasn’t there.”

  She waited for him to sit, but when he didn’t, she stood and faced him. “Was your mom angry?”

  “No. Mamm never got angry.” He cupped his hand over his mouth, only to let it slowly drift down his chin. “She didn’t punish me, either. But she didn’t have to. I saw the pain in her eyes and I knew I was the one who’d put it there.”

  “And it never turned up when you went back to school after the holidays?” she asked.

  “We never went back to that school. When the holidays were over, we moved into the new school that was closer to our homes. The old one was sold to the town to be used as the museum you’ll be visiting tomorrow.”

  Closing the miniscule gap between them, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a hug. “That was a long time ago, Jakob.”

  “In terms of years, yes. In terms of the anger I have for myself, no. In fact, now that I’m older, I think I’m even more upset with myself, if that’s possible. That Christmas spoon was a link to Mamm’s childhood. And I lost it.”

  Unsure of what to say to lessen the pain he couldn’t hide, she simply held him until he stepped back and cleared his throat. “If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll drive you home now. I’m feeling kind of tired and probably should call it a night.”

  • • •

  Diane slipped the car into Park and cut the engine, the smile on her face one of triumph. “Can you believe we got a shady spot? In the middle of the day?” Without waiting for a reply, the sixty-three-year-old innkeeper plucked the key from the ignition, opened her door to the mid-June sun, and then glanced back at Claire. “Well? Shall we, dear?”

  “We shall.” Claire rescued her leftover lemonade from the cup holder between their seats and took a quick sip before joining her father’s oldest sister in the parking lot. “Lunch was really great, Aunt Diane. Thank you. Though I wish you’d have let me pay.”

  “Today is my treat. I’ve been looking forward to this time with you for days.” Diane pushed a strand of gray-streaked hair away from her eyes and tucked her hand around Claire’s forearm for the walk to Heavenly Tours’ main building.

  “So have I,” she protested. “But what does that have to do with you not letting me pay?”

  “Now, now, dear, I may be getting up in years but I’m not senile.”

  Claire stopped and turned to study her aunt’s heart-shaped face. “What does that mean?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I had a wonderful time with you at lunch. But the moment I brought up a certain handsome detective, I lost you for a few minutes. And when you did re-engage, you were distracted at best.”

  She opened her mouth to argue but closed it around a truth she couldn’t deny. Diane was right. The moment Jakob had come into the conversation, she’d rewound to the previous evening and the sadness she’d been unable to kiss away as he dropped her off at the inn.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Diane. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Now, before you start thinking you ruined our lunch, you didn’t. It was delightful.” Diane patted the top of Claire’s hand. “I just know you, dear. That’s all. And I’m hoping you know that when you’re ready to tell me what’s wrong, I’m ready to listen. Fights happen, Claire. It’s normal.”

  “We didn’t have a fight.”

  Diane’s left eyebrow rose. “No?”

  Shaking her head, Claire put them back on the path toward the tour building and the one-room schoolhouse tucked beneath a large maple tree in the distance. “I’m not upset with Jakob, Aunt Diane. I’m worried about him.”

  Again, they stopped. Only this time it was Diane’s doing, not Claire’s. “Is he sick?”

  “No.”

  “A problem at the department?”

  “No.” She considered steering them toward a nearby bench for the purpose of filling in the blanks for her aunt, but she opted not to divert from their course. They were certainly capable of walking and talking at the same time. “He’s hurting right now. And it’s because of me.”

  “Because of you?” Diane echoed. “Why? How?”

  Claire shrugged. “You know how I am. I can push sometimes.”

  “A trait you come by honestly thanks to me, no doubt.” Diane’s laugh was short-lived as she turned and studied Claire. “What did you push him about?”

  “Coming here today. With us.”

  “Inviting him to spend the day with us is pushing?” Diane waved the notion aside like a pesky gnat. “That makes no sense.”

  “It wasn’t the spending time with us part that was pushing. It was the coming here, to this schoolhouse, that was pushing.” When they were no more than a few feet shy of their first destination, Claire stepped off the sidewalk, pulling Diane with her. “Jakob actually went to school in the very building we’re going to tour. Did you know that?”

  Diane’s eyes rose above the rim of her glasses as she pondered Claire’s statement. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but now that you mention it, yes, I think I knew that.”

  “Until he was nine, as a matter of fact,” Claire added.

  “That’s wonderful, dear, but why would he get upset about you asking him to come along? He’s surrounded by reminders of his past all the time now that he’s back in Heavenly. He handles that beautifully.”

  “He does. But his last experience in this actual schoolhouse wasn’t a good one. And my pushing him to come here apparently raked that memory right up to the surface all over again.” Claire released a long, deep breath and then gestured toward the building behind them. “Actually, you know what? I need to keep moving. It helps me process. So let’s get our tour tickets and I’ll fill you in as we make our way over to the schoolhouse.”

  For a moment, she thought Diane was going to protest, but, in the end, she followed Claire into the building and over to the counter. Five minutes later they were heading back outside, tickets in hand. As they walked toward the old one-room schoolhouse with its white clapboard siding, and the colorful array of scooters lined up alongside its front porch, Claire filled Diane in on the missing Christmas spoon.

  “He still blames himself even after all these years,” she said in conclusion. “I mean, you should have seen the pain in his eyes, Aunt Diane. It broke my heart.”

  Diane paused as they reached the schoolhouse and slid her hand out from beneath Claire’s arm. “Give it time, dear. That memory will ease as new ones take its place. Once you and Jakob are married and start making your own Christmas traditions, it won’t hurt him quite so much.”

  It felt good to laugh, even if it was accompanied by an eye roll. “Let’s not put the cart so far in front of the horse, shall we? Jakob and I haven’t been dating all that long, as you well know, so any talk of marriage might be a wee bit premature.”

  “It’ll happen. My bones don’t lie.” Diane directed Claire’s attention toward the schoolhouse and the elderly Amish woman smiling warmly back at them from its open doorway. “Mary, hello! How are you?”

  The woman Claire judged to be about sixty waved them onto the narrow porch that separated them from each other. “Surely you have been here before.”

  “I have. But she has not,” Diane said, wrapping her arm around Claire’s shoulders. “Mary Yoder, I’m not sure if you’ve ever met my niece, Claire? She owns the gift store that’s just a few doors down from your grandson’s furniture shop.”

  Claire extended her hand to the woman and smiled as it was accepted. “It’s lovely to meet you, Mary.”

  “You as well.” Grace turned inside the open doorway and then glanced back at Claire and Diane. “Come. See. My dat helped build this sch
ool many years ago.”

  And so it began. For the next thirty minutes, Claire made her way around the tiny room, asking questions and soaking up every detail Mary shared about the Amish school day. A few times, she even found herself trying to guess which desks Jakob had sat in as he moved up through the grades, from a brand-new student to the nine-year-old he’d been when he and his classmates switched to their new building.

  “Before I married, I taught in this school.”

  “Was that hard?” Claire asked as she looked from Mary to the varying desk sizes and back again. “To teach different levels in one room?”

  “I did not think of it as hard. It was the way I learned as a young child, too.” Mary swept her hand toward the front of the room and the lone desk turned to face those of the students. “My favorite part of the year was the Christmas program. The children were so excited to share the joy of the holiday with their families. Some were shy, of course, but even the shy ones had a good time on the big day.”

  “Claire, come see this display.”

  Grateful for the distraction from a mental path she didn’t want to follow at that moment, Claire meandered her way over to a long glass case that ran the length of the schoolroom. To her left were a number of simple drawings. Underneath each image was the English word for the object as well as its translation in Pennsylvania Dutch. Her focus fell on a picture near the end . . .

  “Lefly,” she mumbled.

  Mary moved in beside her, nodding as she did. “Yes, spoon. Very good. In our homes, we speak what is often called Pennsylvania German or Pennsylvania Dutch. It is in school that the children begin to really learn the language of the English.”

  “Would you look at this,” Diane whispered off to Claire’s right. “Do you see whose name is written on the top of this math paper?”

  Claire sidestepped her way over to her aunt and peered into the section of the case indicated by the woman’s outstretched finger. The writing was large and childlike, with several eraser marks present. At the top of the page, on the right-hand side, was the name that had caught her aunt’s attention.

  Benjamin Miller.

  She felt the smile as it exploded across her face. “Oh. Wow. I can’t believe that’s Ben’s actual paper!”

  “There are others, too,” Mary interjected. “See that paper on the other side of Benjamin’s? That belongs to my oldest grandchild, Hannah.”

  “Are there other things left over from the students as well? Maybe things that aren’t in this case?” Claire asked.

  “The desks are the same.”

  “I mean besides those and”—Claire gestured to Ben and Hannah’s papers, as well as the lunch pail and pencil at the far end of the case—“these.”

  “When the town bought this building, they also bought everything inside. Anything not displayed for museum purposes was sold to raise money for the grounds as a whole,” Diane explained. “This schoolhouse was really the start of the tourism traffic you see in Heavenly today.”

  “Interesting . . .”

  Mary stepped back and motioned them toward the door. “Would you like to step outside and see the pump the children used to get water? And where they kept their cups?”

  She wasn’t entirely sure she answered, but she trailed her aunt and Mary through the front door anyway. On the far end of the porch, built into a tiny alcove, was a series of wooden shelves. Five different handled cups were scattered about them for illustration purposes.

  “If the children grow thirsty during the day, they fill their cup from the pump and take a drink,” Mary explained. “When they are done, their cup is placed back on the shelf.”

  Diane rose up on her tiptoes for a closer look and then came back down on her heels, grinning.

  “I wish I had a mirror right now, Aunt Diane. You look like the proverbial cat that just swallowed the . . .” Her words drifted away as she followed her aunt’s mischievous twinkle back to the bottom cup and the name etched along the bottom edge.

  Jakob Fisher.

  • • •

  She rested her cheek against the inside of her arm and looked out over the fields in the distance. The post-dinner hour removed the human factor from her view and left her to imagine the goings-on inside the smattering of homes she could make out from Sleep Heavenly’s front porch swing.

  Thanks to her friendship with Jakob’s niece Esther, and Esther’s husband, Eli, Claire knew that dinner inside an Amish home was usually followed by more conversation or games. After a long day of work in the fields and the home, all members of the family enjoyed the opportunity to share details of their day with one another.

  Right now, in Esther and Eli’s house, it was just the two of them. But in a few months, when their first child was part of the mix, they’d have even more to talk about besides crops and animals.

  “Is everything okay, Claire?”

  Stopping the gentle sway of the swing with her bare toe, Claire swiveled on the seat just enough to catch a glimpse of her aunt standing in the doorway, dust cloth in hand. “Everything is great. It’s a beautiful evening. The humidity is backing down and there’s even a slight breeze rustling through the leaves every now and again.”

  Diane tucked the cloth inside the waistband of her apron and leaned against the doorjamb. “You were so quiet over dinner, dear. Did you enjoy it?”

  “Did I enjoy your pot roast? Are you kidding me? It was as good as ever. I just wish you hadn’t gone to so much effort on a day when all of the guests are otherwise occupied.” Claire slid over on the swing and patted the now vacant spot to her left. “Come. Sit. I’m quite sure dust hasn’t had a chance to settle on anything around here.”

  “If only that were true.” Laughter peppered the woman’s words before she hoisted a finger in the air and then disappeared back into the house. Moments later, she reappeared sans apron and carrying a plate of cookies. “They’re fresh out of the oven!”

  Claire hated that her stomach growled on cue, especially when she knew darn well it was still full from dinner, but cookies changed everything. Especially Diane’s. “You really didn’t have to do that, Aunt Diane. Dinner was more than enough.”

  “But that was dinner. This is dessert.”

  “I like the way you think.” She held the swing as steady as she could to allow her aunt to sit and then helped herself to a still-warm chocolate chip cookie from the plate now housed between them. Popping a small piece into her mouth, she settled against the cushion at her back. “I really had a wonderful day with you today. We need to find a way to do that more often. It’s invigorating.”

  “I have to say, Claire, you’re not really exuding invigoration right now.”

  She broke off another piece of her cookie but refrained from eating it in favor of answering. “Nothing is wrong, if that’s what you’re asking. I was just . . . enjoying the night.”

  “You weren’t thinking about anything?” Diane prodded.

  “I was thinking about Esther and Eli when I realized you were standing in the door. In particular, I was imagining how their day-to-day life is going to change once September comes and the baby is born.”

  “Oh, it will change, that’s for sure, but knowing Esther and Eli, they’ll make the adjustment with ease.”

  She smiled at the thought. “They’re going to be such wonderful parents. And Jakob? He’s going to be a great uncle every chance he gets.”

  Diane’s smile faltered briefly. “You know he’s not supposed to be around the child, dear . . .”

  It was true. He wasn’t. Having left the Amish after baptism meant Jakob was excommunicated from his former community, including his own family. But Esther and Eli found roundabout ways to include Jakob in aspects of their lives whenever possible and she had no doubt the birth of their child would not change that.

  Popping another piece of cookie into her mouth, Claire contemplated various ways to change the conversation, settling, finally, on the subject that had been needling at her heart off and on throug
hout the day. “I wish there was something I could say to make him go a little easier on himself, you know?”

  “Jakob?”

  “I called him a little while ago just to say hi. And while I know he was glad to hear from me, his voice was missing its usual spark.”

  Diane adjusted her glasses across the bridge of her nose and then transferred the plate of cookies to the small table beside the swing. “Maybe he was just tired.”

  “I think it’s more than that.” And she did. Jakob could work unbelievable hours and still find a reserve tank of energy on which to operate. He’d proven that time and time again. “I think that memory I unknowingly raked up for him last night is still weighing on him.”

  “Give him time, dear. He’ll work through it. This is obviously something he’s carried with him for a very long time.”

  She stopped the swing with her foot and slowly rose to stand, her aunt’s words echoing in her head against a very different reality. “But that’s just it. I hate that he has to work through it. The only relationship he can have with his family is in his memories. And this thing with the Christmas spoon? It puts a damper on that for him.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Claire wandered over to the rail and peered out at the waning sun and the orange streaks it pulsed across the western sky. “I can’t do anything about a belief system that excommunicates a person for becoming a police officer—”

  “After baptism,” Diane reminded, not unkindly.

  “Whatever. I can’t change that. It is what it is, whether I understand and agree with it or not. But maybe I can do something to help him now . . . with this particular memory.”

  “I think your presence in his life helps with all the sad parts, Claire.”

  She turned and smiled at her aunt. “I hope that’s true. I certainly want it to be true. But you should have seen his face last night. He hasn’t forgiven himself for hurting his mother.”

  “Hurting his mother?”

  Leaning against the railing, she crossed her arms against her chest and peered up at the porch ceiling. “To Jakob, that spoon was a tangible link to his mother’s past—a reminder, if you will, of her childhood and the life she left behind.”