An Unlikely Amish Inheritance
Autore
Jo Ann Brown
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Chapter One
“Abe, komm see! There’s a robot in the yard!”
At his youngest sister’s excited voice, Abe Bontranger looked up from where he’d been hooking the portable milking machine to the last of the twenty cows he was tending in the barn. He glanced out the door, but couldn’t see anything other than the barn’s long shadow across the Maryland morning’s dewy grass. He frowned when Zoe, with her twin brother, Zeke, zipped past the cows who turned their heads to see what the commotion was. The five-year-olds, his youngest siblings, didn’t recognize the concept of moderation.
Which was a gut thing, he told himself. Kids should run around and have fun. They shouldn’t worry about the future.
Unlike his childhood. As the oldest of eleven children, he’d been responsible for his siblings since he was the twins’ age. His parents worked long hours at Barnwood Mills, building their business at the same time they’d built their family. His only escape—then and now—had been visiting Dinah Shetler’s farm. The woman, who was old enough to be his grossmammi, had taught him about animals and crops and how to run a farm after he’d told her he wanted to be a farmer instead of building sheds and playsets as his daed did.
“Abe! Abe! Abe!” called both twins. Their bare feet slapped the barn floor.
Putting out his arms to cut off the wild run of the dark-haired kinder, he caught one against each side. They wiggled, but he didn’t let them escape.
“You know better than to run and shout in the barn when the cows are being milked,” he chided.
“There’s a robot in the yard!” Zoe’s eyes held excitement.
“With a dog. Big as a horse,” added her twin. His name was Ezekiel, like their daed’s, but nobody had ever called him anything other than Zeke.
“Remember what I said.” Abe used a stern tone. “Remember what I said about exaggerating.”
The twins exchanged a disgusted glance, then Zoe said, “No eggs-arating, Abe. There’s a robot. I saw her with my own eyes!”
“And a big, big dog,” Zeke insisted.
Abe tried not to shudder. He didn’t trust dogs, especially large ones.
“Really big,” Zeke went on when Abe didn’t answer. “Big as a horse.” When Abe frowned at him, his voice dropped. “Maybe as big as a miniature horse. With three legs.”
Sliding the milker away from the cow, so he could get right to work after he calmed the twins, he took them by the hand. He was surprised when their steps faltered as they neared the open door. What had they seen? Not a robot and giant three-legged dog, but they’d seen something.
“It’s okay.” He gave their hands a squeeze.
“Stay with us.” Zoe didn’t make it a question.
“Ja.” He raised his chin so they didn’t see his grimace while he led them through the door. Why didn’t his parents realize how much they were missing while focused on their business?
“There!” Zoe pointed toward where a white pickup was parked.
Whose was it?
Abe stopped in midstep and stared at an Englisch woman coming around the truck. With her was a German shepherd missing its right rear leg. The dog was otherwise a handsome animal with a black snout and patches of the same color in its chestnut coat. It leaned against the blonde woman. Did it have trouble standing on its own or was it trying to comfort the woman, whose face was hidden in her hands as she bent forward? Her shoulders were shaking, bouncing the curls that hung over her shoulders. Was she crying?
So many, including him, had cried when Dinah died last month. Doing Dinah’s chores for the past four years had been his way of thanking her for helping him learn to be a farmer. At her funeral in the big white farmhouse, he’d told her he’d make sure her land and animals were taken care of. Once her will was probated, her heirs, who lived on the neighboring farm, had promised he could buy Dinah’s property.
“Abe,” whispered Zeke. “Who’s that?”
He shook away his grief and looked at the woman again. His gaze riveted on her lush blond curls. He’d never seen hair like that...except on Jenna Rose Shetler.
Could the woman be a grown-up Jenna Rose Shetler, Dinah’s kins-kind? She wasn’t the gangly Englisch girl he remembered from her annual visits with her plain grossmammi. She was a beautiful woman dressed in a soft brown leather jacket and denims. One thing hadn’t changed. Her blond hair, a natural shade the color of young corn, was wildly untamed.
When they’d been kinder, she’d reminded him of a sparkler, burning hot and glittering for a brief moment and then gone until next summer. Abe knew he couldn’t blame her, but he hadn’t wanted to have to watch over another kid. He’d told himself at summer’s end how glad he was when she left her grossmammi’s farm in Sweetwater, Maryland, to go off to some faraway place. Atlanta. Chicago. Seattle. Boston. Other places. He’d lost track, and he wouldn’t have admitted how envious he’d been of her carefree life.
“Who’s that, Abe?” asked his five-year-old brother again.
From somewhere, he pulled out a smile and plastered it on his face. “I’m going to find out.”
“Do you see the dog?” his sister asked.
“I do.”
“Can I pet her?”
“It’s a boy dog.” His smile became more genuine, but he grew somber again. “Let’s see if it’s okay. Some dogs like to bite. Remember?”
The kids looked at his right hand and nodded. He clenched his fingers, though he was too familiar with how inflexible his ring finger and pinkie had become after a dog had attacked him.
“Go and play on the tire swing while I check.” Abe released the twins’ hands and strode toward where the woman stood next to the mailbox. His youngest siblings raced to the old tire swing in the side yard. “Can I help you?”
“Abe?” the woman asked as she tightened her hold on the dog’s leash.
It wasn’t a massive dog, but he could see muscles beneath its fur. He expected the German shepherd to growl but it remained silent. That stillness was almost more threatening, and he stopped, not wanting to come within range of the dog’s teeth.
“Jenna Rose?” He asked the question burning his lips since he’d seen her corkscrew curls. “What are you doing here after all these years?”
Grossmammi Dinah had warned her to be careful what she prayed for because she might just get it.
Jenna Shetler should have listened, but she’d ignored that warning as she had other advice her Amish grandmother had offered. Every summer, Jenna had explored the house, delighting in a staircase that went nowhere and doors that no longer opened. She checked out the fields and the Pocomoke River that ran along the rear of the property and south toward Chesapeake Bay. She’d spent every summer with her grandmother until she was fifteen. She’d visited occasionally in the ensuing fifteen years. Living three hours away in Philadelphia, she could have made the trip south—as she had yesterday—to visit. She hadn’t, spending her time focused on achieving her goals as a police officer. Now her grandmother was dead, and her career hung by a very slender thread.
She’d tried praying for a new purpose in her life, and an answer had come, though she wasn’t sure God had heard her prayers. Because the response had come through her late grandmother’s attorney. He’d explained that Grossmammi Dinah had asked for her to serve as the estate’s executor. So she was at the farm outside the sleepy town of Sweetwater on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
She hadn’t guessed the first person she’d meet would be Abe Bontranger. Born and raised Amish, he wore a straw hat as well as black suspenders over his light green shirt. The same type of plain clothing he’d worn when he’d been her partner in crime during their youth. She’d almost caught up with him in height when they were eleven, but by the time she returned the next summer, he was more than five inches taller. He’d kept growing—his head must top out at least three inches over six feet. He needed a haircut because several wayward locks dropped over his wire-rimmed glasses and into his gray eyes.
“Jenna Rose?” Abe asked again, yanking her thoughts out of the past. She was grateful because it was far too easy to get sucked into the moment she’d let her guard down and almost killed herself and her canine partner.
“I go by Jenna now.” She glanced at the dog by her side and tilted her head so her right ear was toward Abe. Since she’d been too close to the detonation, the hearing in her left ear had been weak, almost as if she were listening through a tissue curtain. “This is Buddy. My partner.”
“Partner?”
“We worked together in Philadelphia. K-9.”
Abe’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “Dinah mentioned you’re a cop.”
“You look surprised. Why? I wasn’t raised plain.”
“I know, but your grossmammi was Old Order Amish, and none of us would ever use a gun except when hunting to put food on the table.”
“I’m a cop, and so was Buddy.”
She smiled at the stunning German shepherd. He gave her his goofy doggy grin, and she patted his head. It amazed her as much now as the first time she’d met him how the dog who acted like a spoiled pet while off duty was all business when they searched for a bomb. For Buddy, catching the scent of explosive materials was a prelude to playtime. When he’d found the source, whether in training or on the job, his reward had been fifteen minutes of playing with his favorite chewy toy, a hard rubber squirrel.
When he nuzzled her arm with his cool nose, she knew he wanted training time so he could gnaw on the squirrel. In the past three months, now that she was steady on her feet, she’d been helping him learn to track the odors left on clothing or shoes or on the ground. He approached the task with the enthusiasm he’d once had for bomb-sniffing. Had he forgotten how a bomb had gone off in a shopping mall and they’d been caught in the blast because she’d been distracted by a dress in a window that looked like one she’d seen her estranged half sister wear a few years ago? She’d pondered—for a minute or two—if there was any way she could bridge the chasm between her and Susan. The minute or two had been too long. The bomb had exploded, leaving her and her K-9 partner injured.
A low whine came from Buddy, and Jenna forced another smile. The dog was aware of every iota of her body language. Buddy didn’t like it when she was downhearted. The whine was his way of pleading with her to pay attention to him.
In order to escape her thoughts, Jenna opened the mailbox by the drive. Pulling out a stack of mail, she held it close to her heart. How she wished she could run inside as she used to do and present the mail to Grossmammi Dinah as if it were the most exciting gift in the world!
Reaching into the bag she’d left on the truck’s rear bumper, she found the keys she’d been given by her grandmother’s attorney. Keys for a house she couldn’t remember ever being locked.
“Nobody locks their houses in Sweetwater,” Grossmammi Dinah had remarked. “It’s not like in the cities where you’ve lived. There, you don’t know your neighbors. Not like we do here.”
Jenna couldn’t argue with that since her mother’s radio career had kept the family on the move, sometimes more than once in a year. Listeners around the country knew her mother, Evelyn, as Marla in the Morning, advice guru and upbeat best friend to share your morning coffee with while hearing the latest music and news updates. Her parents, as well as her sister and her sister’s family, lived in Las Vegas now, but they’d resided in many cities, big and small.
The one constant in her life had been this white house and Grossmammi Dinah. Now that had changed because her grandmother was gone.
Tears blurred the sight of well-used rocking chairs on the broad screened-in porch. Jenna had to handle the hideous task of parceling out her grandmother’s possessions. When she was done...
Throughout her life, she’d known what she wanted to do next.
Now she had no idea.
Abe had so many questions, but as he watched how fragile Jenna appeared as she held the pile of mail close, he reminded himself she’d just lost one of the most important people in her life.
“I didn’t expect to see you here now.” He wished he could retract the trite words as soon as he spoke them.
“I’m here to—” She glanced over her shoulder as a bright red pickup pulled into the drive and parked behind her truck. Her eyes narrowed as doors opened, and the Rickaboughs stepped out.
Daryl and Geneva, who were a generation older than Abe, were a foot shorter. Like Jenna’s daed, their parents had jumped the fence. The couple, who were related to Jenna somehow, were almost identical in height, breadth and coloring. Geneva had streaks of gray through her medium brown hair while Daryl’s was thinning.
Abe found Geneva caustic. Daryl was okay, though he followed his wife’s edicts. By helping Dinah with her chores, Abe had saved the Rickaboughs from having to take care of two properties. They owned a chicken farm about a half mile away. His agreement, in the wake of Dinah’s death, was that he’d continue to do the milking and other work until the will was settled. The Rickaboughs had assured him they would put the pay he should have gotten toward a down payment on the farm.
He looked from the couple to Jenna. She hadn’t told him what had brought her to Sweetwater. Was she here to get what she thought she’d inherited from Dinah? If so, she was wasting her time. Daryl and his wife were inheriting everything. Everyone in Sweetwater knew that.
Jenna isn’t from Sweetwater.
He almost gave his own thought a “duh.” Sweetwater had been nothing but a whistle-stop in her life.
As Abe opened his mouth, Daryl butted in with, “Is that you, Jenna Rose?”
“It is, and you are—?”
Abe was astonished for a moment, then remembered that Daryl hadn’t been in Sweetwater when Jenna had visited. As a teen, he’d lived in Delaware.
“I’m Daryl, your father’s cousin.” He grinned, but kept glancing at her dog. Unlike most farmers in the area, the Rickaboughs didn’t have a dog, and Abe had heard Geneva didn’t like them.
“I’ve heard of you,” she replied, her voice cautious. Abe wondered what exactly she’d heard about Daryl.
“Good to see you, Jenna Rose.” Daryl didn’t seem put off by her comment. “You should have visited before your grandmother died instead of afterwards. Or were you trying to avoid her matchmaking? The old girl was disappointed you’re still single.”
If the words hurt her, and Abe was sure they did, Jenna gave no sign. “I’m here to take care of Grossmammi Dinah’s estate.”
Daryl’s smile vanished. “Take care of it? How?”
Jenna’s poise cracked for a moment, and Abe couldn’t forget how she’d been crying by the road. She swallowed hard twice before she replied. “To be honest, I’m not sure. Instructions for what I’m to do are supposed to be here waiting for me.” She looked at the mail she carried. “In a letter that is supposed to arrive here this week. The first of six weekly letters with instructions I need to follow as my grandmother’s executor.”
“Dinah made you the executor?” Geneva asked.
Abe tensed. Was Geneva about to go on one of her verbal rampages? He’d witnessed her lambasting people with acidic words. When Buddy sniffed at her, she stepped away with a disdainful expression.
“I’m as surprised she named me executor as you are.” Jenna put her hand on the dog’s head.
“So when do we get the farm?” Daryl said, trying not to grin.
Abe held his breath. He had an interest in the will, too. The sooner the Rickaboughs could get the estate out of probate, the sooner Abe could make the farm his own. He’d already put in a lot of long hours of sweat equity, taking care of the animals and fixing the buildings and tending the fields.
“I don’t know, Daryl,” Jenna said. “Grossmammi Dinah’s will has some odd provisions.”
“Like what?” Geneva’s voice was sharp.
Too sharp, he knew, when Buddy shifted between Geneva and Jenna, his movements a bit uneven because of his missing leg. Three-legged dogs weren’t that unusual in farming country where there was dangerous farm equipment. What had happened to him in the city?
“Six letters will be sent.” Jenna acted as if Geneva had been pleasant. “One a week. Each explains which bequests Grossmammi Dinah wants made that week.”
“That’s absurd!” Daryl spoke an octave above his normal voice. “What kind of prank are you trying to pull, Jenna Rose? We don’t have time for games.”
She remained calm. Abe wasn’t surprised. She was a cop, after all.
“It’s no game,” Jenna replied. “I couldn’t have come up with this bizarre idea. It’s Grossmammi Dinah’s doing.”
“Why six different bequests?” Geneva asked.
“I don’t know. Ken Geisinger, her attorney, doesn’t know, but he says the will is sound even though its provisions are the most unusual he’s ever seen.”
“Ken?” Abe turned to the Rickaboughs. “You know him. He’s honest.”
Jenna spoke before her cousins could answer. “He’s been as blindsided as we are. He knew about the envelopes, but not what they contain. He advised me to follow the steps as she requested.”
“Who gets the farm?” Daryl asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve got to assume the answer will be in one of the letters.”
“She promised us the farm!”
“Grossmammi Dinah never broke a promise.” Tears glittered in her eyes, reminding Abe this wasn’t just about the land and buildings.
“This is nonsense,” Daryl blustered.
“Absolute nonsense.” His wife glared at Jenna so fiercely Abe wouldn’t have been astonished to see two holes burned through her.
He shared Daryl and Geneva’s frustration. Six weeks. A month and a half. So many Bible verses urged patience and for them to wait on God’s time. It seemed like Grossmammi Dinah had been inspired to devise a lesson that would require them to do that.
Why?
Something else he couldn’t answer. When Daryl began to snarl at Jenna again, Abe interrupted, “Jenna is only the messenger.”
Geneva’s brows lowered, and Daryl put a hand on her arm. “You’re right, Abe. Sorry, Jenna Rose. This is a real shock.”
“For me, too,” Jenna said. “By the way, I go by Jenna now.”
“Got it.” Daryl tried to smile and failed. “Can you stay in Sweetwater for six weeks? Aren’t you a cop or something like that?”
“I’ve got the time.” She shrugged again. “Once I get the letter and read it over, I’ll let you know what it says. Okay?”
“Okay.” He eyed his wife. “Right, Geneva?”
Abe’s breath sifted out of him when Geneva nodded. Her lips straightened as she turned away and headed toward the red truck.
Daryl hesitated, then followed.
Abe realized he was alone with Jenna and her dog. Beating a hasty retreat to the barn would be his wisest move. “Jen—”
“Abe,” Jenna said at the same time.
“Go ahead,” he urged as they walked toward the house.
“Why are you here on the farm?”
“I’m milking. I’ve been doing the chores for about four years.”
“Oh.” Though he could sense her curiosity about why her grandmother had given him the task—or why he’d even asked to do it—she said, “I should get unpacked.”
“You’re really staying here?”
“The letters are coming to the farm. I need to be here to get them.” She turned to the steps and raised her right foot, leaning on the rail.
The ancient board gave a warning creak, which was swallowed by a shriek from Zoe and Zeke as she took another step, lifting her left foot.
“Told you! She’s a robot!” squealed Zoe.
He wasn’t sure if his little sister was thrilled or terrified. She ran toward them and clutched on to him, but her gaze was riveted on the metal rod where Jenna’s left leg should have been.
What had happened to Jenna’s leg?
He realized he’d said that aloud when Jenna looked at her left shoe. “It’s my prosthesis.”
“So you’re a robot?” asked Zoe.
“Afraid not.”
Disappointment filled Zoe’s voice. “It’d be so cool if you were a robot.”
Zeke piped up. “You’ve got a metal leg?”
“Yes.”
Abe waited for her to add more. When she didn’t, he knew he’d be smart to keep his mouth closed, too. He couldn’t. “What happened?”
“A bomb blew up.” She put her hand on Buddy’s head. “Don’t worry. Nothing else has changed.”
As he watched her climb the steps with more ease than he’d guessed she could, he knew she was wrong. Jenna Shetler, who had come to Sweetwater each summer when they were kids, was back.
That changed everything.
