Colton Destiny Page 5

  He didn’t know what he’d do without her.

  He shifted his gaze to the two heads bent over the table, Katie reading intently, Ruthie scribbling words with a speed that had him thinking he’d be needing to check that paper before she handed it in.

  His girls. He loved them dearly, not just for their own sakes, but because they were all he had left of Annie. And he realized with thudding finality that he would never leave Paradise Ridge. He would never start over somewhere else, because it would mean ripping his children away from their only remaining solace, the loving support of the community. Every female in the village pitched in to help him with the girls. And if some of them, as Mrs. Yoder had warned, had eyes on filling Annie’s shoes, well, that just wasn’t going to happen.

  No, he would not be going anywhere. Even if he could tolerate the change himself, it would be too cruel to uproot the girls, whose lives had already been turned upside down, just because he wished he could escape.

  There would be no escape.

  * * *

  Emma stopped on the path to Caleb Troyer’s house. Even in the fading light of dusk, the details were clear: the stone foundation, the covered porch that ran the width of the house, the evenly spaced windows. Smoke curled out of the chimney, a homey touch she hadn’t realized she’d missed until she saw it now. It was a simple house, as were all Amish homes, but it looked solid and well built. But she supposed a carpenter as skillful as Caleb would settle for nothing less.

  One of those windows by the front door glowed with light, and as she walked up the steps to the porch, she could see into the front room of the house. She paused on the top step. She could see the woodstove on one wall, obviously in use in this brisk almost-winter weather. But what caught her eye was the table before it, where two young girls sat in the surprisingly bright light of what appeared to be a gas lamp. Their heads were bent, one over a book she was reading intently, the other over papers spread on the table, one of which she was writing on with a tightly clutched pencil.

  Something about the simple tableau tightened her throat. She felt a yearning that startled her with its power, especially since she couldn’t even put a name to what she was yearning for.

  She was happy enough in Cleveland. Her work was rewarding, if a bit routine, something that would surprise most whose idea of the FBI came from film or television.

  Caleb wouldn’t have those ideas, she thought suddenly. Because he wouldn’t have been influenced by either of those things. Most times when she thought of life without the technology everyone relied on, it was with a wondering shake of her head. When people learned she had grown up in Amish country, they were often full of questions, mostly about how some people could stand to live like that. Her standard answer had always been that you don’t miss what you’ve never had.

  But now she wasn’t so sure they weren’t better off without the pervasive hammering of popular culture and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. The idea of simply unplugging held a lot more appeal than it once had.

  She gave herself a mental shake. She’d expected to feel at home here in this countryside she’d grown up in, but she hadn’t expected this wave of...what was it, homesickness? How could you feel homesick when you were, essentially, at home?

  “Because you know you’re not staying,” she muttered as she took that last step onto the porch. It was as solidly built as the rest of the house, the boards beneath her feet feeling even and level. In size and layout, it appeared to match most of the houses here in Paradise Ridge, yet it was different, because instead of the traditional and ubiquitous white paint, it was finished with a clear coat of some kind—

  The front door swung open. Caleb Troyer stood there, limned from behind in golden light. She was struck again by how tall he was. Struck by how lean he was. Struck by the strength of his jaw, the structure of his face.

  Struck dumb, apparently, she thought when she realized he’d been looking at her in polite inquiry for several seconds.

  “Miss Colton?” he finally said.

  She said the first thing that popped into her head. “Your house isn’t white.”

  His brows rose. “You came here to tell me this?”

  She felt beyond foolish. She’d interviewed terrorists, serial killers, kidnappers, yet she couldn’t seem to get her mind and her mouth in sync around this man.

  “I was just wondering why.”

  “My father built this house. It’s what he did, build houses. Not just here, but for outsiders, as well. He kept this house this way, with no paint to disguise any flaws, as an advertisement.”

  “That’s allowed?”

  His mouth quirked, and she wondered if she were going to get some kind of lecture about asking impertinent or intrusive questions that had nothing to do with why she was here. She told herself that was part of the job, too, to build a rapport of sorts, but she wasn’t convincing herself.

  “Many things are allowed,” he said, in a tone she guessed he probably used to explain things to his children, “if they can be shown to have a good purpose and not to be harmful to the community.”

  “It’s...beautiful,” she said, somehow stung by that tone, although she thought she hid it well enough.

  “I believe what sold the bishop was my father’s argument that showing the natural state of the wood, which is God’s design, could hardly be a bad thing.”

  Emma blinked. His tone had changed completely, was now warmer, as if sharing a confidence. As, perhaps, he was. It seemed to her a very clever argument.

  “Your father was a smart man.”

  “He was.” She thought he smothered a sigh. “Smarter than I, certainly.”

  “Are you going to invite her inside out of the cold, Father?”

  It was Katie who’d spoken. The girl had moved so quietly even her father seemed startled when she spoke practically from beside his elbow. Emma, facing the room, had seen the movement but said nothing. Watching the natural interaction of a family involved in a crisis like this one was often very illuminating.

  To her amazement, Caleb flushed slightly. “Of course,” he said, his voice gruff but not angry. Embarrassed, perhaps, at being reminded of his manners by his eleven-year-old daughter? “Come in,” he said, backing up and holding the door open.

  She stepped inside. The room was as warm and cozy as it had looked through the window. As with all Amish homes, it was simply furnished. Yet each wood chair, the storage pieces along the walls and the table the girls had been sitting at bore the signs of that fine craftsmanship she’d seen in his shopwindow earlier. The lines were simple, unadorned in the Amish way, but the quality shone through. She guessed those chairs would be as solid in twenty years as they were now.

  Ruthie abandoned any pretense at concentrating on what appeared to be schoolwork on the table before her, got up and approached them.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be looking for Aunt Hannah?”

  “Ruth,” Caleb said sternly, “don’t be rude.”

  Emma couldn’t help smiling. “I don’t blame her for asking. But let me ask you something, Ruthie. If I told you I’d lost something outside and asked you to help me find it, what would you do?”

  “I would help you. That’s what people do.”

  Emma felt a small jab. If that were always true, life would be so much simpler. But then, that’s what the Amish were all about, wasn’t it—a simpler life?

  “So, we go outside, and then what?”

  “We would look,” the girl said, brows furrowing. Emma had the distinct impression she was thinking something about how silly this grown-up was.

  “Where?”

  “Where you were when you lost it,” the girl said with an air of strained patience.

  “And how would you know where that was?”

  Ruthie sighed, as if her patience had run out. “I’d ask you.”

  Emma sensed she was a very bright girl, and so she simply waited, saying nothing more. For an instant her gaze flicked to Caleb, who had subsided int
o silence and was watching intently.

  It didn’t take the girl long. Her furrowed brow was cleared by dawning realization.

  “You mean that’s what you’re doing? Finding out where to look?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Oh.”

  The child appeared satisfied, and Katie smiled at her. Caleb said nothing to her, but directed Ruthie to finish her schoolwork and spoke to Katie about putting away clothing.

  “Mrs. Stoltzfus’s daughter was kind enough to wash them. You should honor that by taking proper care.”

  Something flashed in the girl’s blue eyes, but she only said “Yes, Father” and disappeared through a doorway at the back of the room.

  The girl knew, Emma realized.

  If there was one thing Emma had learned today in her preliminary interviews with a few of the residents of the village and the surrounding farms, it was that Caleb Troyer was on the figurative radar of every unmarried woman around.

  It might well be that it was that sense of intense community that Amish life fostered brought on much of the generous help he was given, help with the girls and with the chores commonly relegated to the female domain, but it hadn’t taken Emma long to figure out that many of those women also had an eye on stepping into his late wife’s shoes.

  Not that she didn’t understand perfectly. She was, after all, the one who had gone all wobbly the moment she’d spotted him standing in the back of his shop.

  But Caleb seemed oblivious to their interest, much to their sorrow.

  And to her own relief.

  Chapter 7

  “Thank you for your patience with my daughter.” Caleb sounded formal, almost stiff.

  “She reminds me of me, at that age,” Emma said.

  She saw a touch of alarm flash through his eyes at her words. It stung, a lot more than it should have. He was, after all, only part of this case. He was the brother of one of the victims, no more.

  That he was also the first man in aeons who sent her pulse racing didn’t matter. Couldn’t be allowed to matter. He was Amish, for God’s sake.

  The irony of her own thoughts made her laugh inwardly, and the sting vanished in a rush of awareness of the absurdity of it all. She might long to return to the quiet life at the ranch—a realization that had surprised her with its power the moment they’d gone through the gates—but Amish life was something else again. She might long for some simplicity and quiet, but that would require sacrifice, dedication and change she didn’t think she was capable of.

  “Don’t worry,” she said wryly. “I’m sure she’ll get over it.”

  He had the grace to look abashed. “I did not mean—”

  “It’s all right. I’ve spent the day talking to many of the women in the community, and I understand perfectly what you mean. A woman like me would never fit in here,” she said as she took the seat he indicated, a simple upholstered chair that, while not the big, overstuffed style in the ranch house great room, was surprisingly comfortable.

  She took a quick glance around the room, observing in the way she had been trained to. Ironic that this simple, plain house was furnished with pieces, all showing that same fine hand, that would bring high prices in the outside world, yet here they were merely functional.

  Against the wall beside her was a bookshelf, and she saw it was full of a varied collection—history, biographies, classic novels—and on the lower shelves children’s classics, including the Little House books she’d known in her own childhood. No modern thrillers or ripped-from-the-headlines stuff, but she wouldn’t have expected that, not here in this world that until now was so removed from outside cares and fears.

  There was nothing here that would be in the least out of place in any Amish home, nothing to indicate any break with the constraints of the community.

  “A woman like you are now,” he amended her words, surprising her.

  “You really think a person could change? That much?”

  “With God’s help, all things are possible.”

  She had the oddest feeling the words were spoken by rote. They were what was supposed to be said to such questions, so he said them.

  “What about when God doesn’t help?”

  He stiffened. “It is not for us to question his will.”

  He said it like a mantra, and she wondered how many times he’d chanted it after the death of his wife. By all accounts—and the women had made it clear, by implication and in so many words—he had loved his wife dearly. Childhood sweethearts since they had been Katie’s age. Emma was more than a little in awe of that kind of bond. Her own romantic life had been scattered, often falling victim to her career and her drive to succeed, to prove herself so that nobody could ever again accuse her of having made it on the Colton name.

  “What is it you wished to ask?”

  “I need to speak to the girls.”

  “You mean about their aunt.”

  She wondered if he called Hannah their aunt because it was somehow less painful than saying “my sister.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve already spoken to them. They know nothing about her disappearance. They were not at the barn party.”

  Emma nodded. She knew this; the barn party Hannah and her friends Miriam and Rebecca were taken from had been part of the rumspringa and not for younger children.

  “I understand,” she said. “But I still need to speak to them. I know their aunt was very close to them. Perhaps she said something that might help the investigation. Or they may have heard something.”

  “They would have told me.”

  “They may not realize they’ve heard something important. They’re children, and sometimes people say things around them they ordinarily wouldn’t, because they mistakenly think they are too young to understand.”

  Caleb’s gaze flicked to Ruthie, and Emma guessed her words had proven true with the clever girl more than once.

  “You may speak to them,” he finally agreed.

  Emma braced herself. “Alone,” she said.

  Again he stiffened. “No. I will be there.”

  “Sometimes,” Emma said, trying to pick her words carefully, “children don’t speak as freely if a parent is in the room.”

  “My daughters answer whatever questions I ask them.”

  “I don’t doubt that. But there’s a difference between answering questions and volunteering information.”

  He frowned. “You believe they know something they haven’t told?”

  “I only know that, in my experience, children often do.”

  “But if they were not there—”

  Emma drew on her dwindling store of patience; in a strange way this was like dealing with a gang-related crime. Maybe even worse, because nobody knew how to close ranks like the Amish.

  “Hannah may have said something to one of them. Something that might give us a clue.”

  She saw realization dawn in his eyes. Caleb Troyer was no slouch, either.

  “Do you believe she was not taken? That she left of her own will?”

  “That is a possibility we have to consider.”

  Slowly, Caleb shook his head. “Why would she sneak away? It was her rumspringa. She was free to leave if she wished.”

  “Perhaps she was afraid people would try to talk her out of it.”

  “Our children are given great leeway during this time. Of course, we do not support doing anything against our basic beliefs, but exploration is expected. She would have no reason to hide it.”

  “I understand but—”

  “And she most assuredly would not leave without talking to the girls. They are very close.”

  “Exactly,” Emma said softly.

  She didn’t push, didn’t press, sensing that this man would make up his mind in his own good time, and trusting that he would see the reason in what she’d said, and the conclusion he himself had reached.

  After a moment he gave a sharp nod. “You may speak to them.”

  Together, the girls appe
ared touchingly innocent to her. Even the feisty Ruthie seemed calmer in the presence of her quietly lovely older sister. She spoke to them together, then separately, and when she was done she was as certain as she could be that they knew nothing about their aunt’s disappearance.

  She watched as, after a single announcement of “Time, girls” from Caleb, the two gathered their things and put them neatly away, and went about preparing for bed obediently. She smothered a wry smile as she remembered the battles at home getting Piper and Sawyer to go to bed. Perhaps these people were onto something here.

  “They’re very...cooperative,” she said.

  “They know they must get up early. There are many chores before school.”

  While she and her siblings all had had their assigned

  duties at the ranch, they were generally expected after school. She should have been more thankful, she thought now, remembering her own struggles to get up and get moving in the mornings back then. Now, with frequent early callouts to deal with some incident that occurred during the night, it was as if her body clock had been reset, and rising early had become the norm.

  Well, not quite as early as this morning, when her brother’s call had blasted her awake, she thought with a grimace.

  “You think we are too hard on our children?” he asked.

  Startled, she shifted her gaze to him. “No. In fact, I think we on the outside could learn a thing or two from you. Our kids get into a lot more trouble than yours.”

  “Your world invites it,” he said.

  “Relatively speaking, I can’t deny that.”

  He seemed surprised by her admission.

  “Don’t you hear that a lot, from the tourists? That they admire your simple life?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Some even wish to join us. They are looking for something here that they should be looking for within themselves. This is why we call them seekers.”

  “Seekers?”

  He nodded. “The problem is that they do not realize that simple does not necessarily mean easy.”