the rift between Hannah and her father was apparent to anyone with eyes, it pained her to hear her mother talk about it.
“Mem, please, let’s talk about this another time. We’re all trying to come to terms with Ruthie.”
“Gott has a plan.”
Hannah’s body tensed. “I wish God’s plan was to leave Ruthie here on earth with us. With her daughters.”
Her mother’s lips quivered. “Life is hard. You have to make decisions that are gut for the family. You can’t be selfish.”
The sting of her mother’s comments wounded her. Had Hannah been selfish?
“One day at a time, okay?” Hannah hated throwing out a silly platitude, but she wasn’t ready to make life-altering decisions right now.
Will I ever be ready?
Hannah didn’t want to discuss Ruthie’s husband, but it couldn’t be avoided. Not with John running around out there, somewhere. “Did Ruth ever say anything negative to you about John?”
Her mother’s eyes flashed momentarily dark. “Neh.” She shook her head vehemently. “I don’t know how things work in the English world, but a woman does not speak ill of her husband. And if she does, she’s just being gossipy.”
“I’m not gossiping.” She placed her elbow on the table and rested her chin on the heel of her hand. “Was John ever mean to Ruth?”
“John Lapp is the bishop’s son.” Agitation shook her mother’s hands, and she refused to meet Hannah’s gaze.
“John left Apple Creek when he was a teenager. He was gone for a long time. Maybe he wasn’t the son the bishop had raised.”
Her mother lifted her chin. “John came back. Was baptized. Married. It was gut.” Which was more than Hannah had done. The accusation in her mother’s eyes made Hannah’s cheeks fiery. Couldn’t her mother see she was doing everything she could? Everything short of promising to be baptized Amish.
“You like John Lapp?”
“Your sister and her husband took care of me. I am grateful to them.”
Unease settled in Hannah’s belly. Learning Ruthie was murdered would kill her mother. Hannah pushed away from the table. The whole truth would wait for another day.
Hannah brushed a kiss across her mother’s soft cheek. Her mother pulled back and widened her eyes, startled by the display of affection. Hannah started to leave but turned back one last time. Her mother was holding her fingertips to her cheek, where Hannah had kissed her.
* * *
“Burning the midnight oil, huh?” Mrs. Greene, Spencer’s elderly landlady, sat in her wicker rocker on the front porch, nursing her tea.
The screen door slipped out of his hand and thwacked against the door frame. “Sorry about that. Didn’t see you sitting there.”
“Got no air-conditioning in there. Cooler out here. Can’t imagine how hot it’s gonna be later if it’s already this hot at—” She squinted up at him “—what time is it?”
“Early.” Too early, considering he hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. The red numbers on the digital clock by his bed read a blurry four-something by the time he left Miss Wittmer’s and climbed into bed. Despite assigning another officer to check in on the Lapp farm, he felt unsettled.
What was it about the brown-eyed beauty that had gotten under his skin? And what kind of danger was she in with John Lapp still out there?
Spencer eased down, balancing his coffee and sat on the top step. Mrs. Greene spoiled him. She brewed the best coffee and left a to-go mug on the hall table inside the front door every morning. She claimed she missed having her boys around. All of them had grown and moved on with their lives, leaving her to dote over the tenants of her two upstairs apartments, only one of which was occupied.
“You finally meeting some people in this town? Doing things besides work?” Mrs. Greene had a say-whatever’s-on-her-mind way of talking that didn’t always allow room for him to get a word in edgewise.
Smiling, Spencer lifted his coffee and inhaled its rich scent. “Last night was work.”
Mrs. Greene made a tsking noise. “How are you ever going to have a life if all you do is work?”
Spencer leaned back on the railing and shifted to look at Mrs. Greene. “I need to find you a hobby so you don’t pay so much attention to me.”
“Someone’s got to pay attention to a handsome man like you. You can’t tell me you haven’t found one pretty woman in Apple Creek who you’d like to take for a nice Friday fish fry.”
Spencer laughed, nearly choking on his coffee. “Is that what women like to do around here? Go to a fish fry?”
“That’s what they did in my day.” Mrs. Greene seemed to go somewhere for a minute before snapping out of it. “Nice crispy haddock and tartar sauce. Yum.”
Spencer watched the content expression on Mrs. Greene’s face. The look of a woman who had lived a good life and was now satisfied to sit back and watch the world go by—and to micromanage his.
“That girl you left behind in Buffalo hasn’t come to her senses yet?”
Why had he told Mrs. Greene about Vicki? Because she had a way of prying things out of people, that’s why. Spencer shook his head and rolled his eyes, feeling very much like a schoolboy under the inquisitive gaze of his grandmother, who always had an interest in everything he did. Unlike his parents, whose only interests involved all the things they required him to do.
“I’ve been here a year. I don’t think she’s suddenly going to show up at my door.”
Mrs. Greene thrummed the pads of her fingers on the arm of her wicker chair. “Country’s not her thing, you say?”
“Vicki was definitely a city girl.” And last he heard, she was engaged to a surgeon. So very Vicki. Looked like she was going to get everything she wanted out of life.
He and Victoria had both been in law school when they started dating. She told him she had signed up for one kind of life, and Spencer had turned the tables on her by signing up for the Buffalo police exam.
“Heard she’s engaged,” Spencer found himself saying.
“I’m sorry.”
He narrowed his gaze and stared at the long strands of grass growing up around the railing posts where the lawn service had forgotten to trim. “I’m not. Now I don’t have to feel guilty for stringing her along for so many years.”
Mrs. Greene made a disagreeable sound. “That’s not like you to string someone along. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
It was tough not to be hard on himself when even his own father claimed disappointment. His father had been a police officer, but he had wished something more for his son. Spencer was the first college
