Free Assaulted Pretzel by Laura Bradford

four-year-old boy. “I can’t imagine what that would be likeat that age—not having pictures to look at to remind you of your loved one.”
    “The picture is in here,” Jakob said, touching his heart as he did. “And Mary gave my mother letters to share with Isaac as he reached different stages—his baptism, courting, marriage, fatherhood, et cetera. Knowing he had those to look forward to was enough for him.”
    She opened her mouth to speak but closed it as Jakob continued, his words veering off and taking them down a very different path. “One way or the other, Isaac will have to be a part of my investigation. His work with Daniel Lapp alone sets up a connection between him and Karble. And now, with what Benjamin said about the picture of Isaac’s roller track plans, it’s even stronger.”
    “So you ask the questions you need to ask and you move on.” But even as she uttered the thought aloud, she knew it wasn’t that simple. Because for Jakob to ask the questions, it meant he had to have verbal contact with his brother—something Jakob longed for, yet lost the right to have the day he walked away from his Amish life.
    “Talking to the police is not something the Amish relish. Talking to
me
is even worse,” Jakob shared from behind the relative protection of the hand that he’d draped across his eyes. “When I came back here to take this job, I saw it as a way to be close to my family even if I knew the dynamic could never be the same. Yet since I’ve been back, all my presence has done is put my family in a really bad position. First, with having to question my niece when Walter Snow was murdered. And second—”
    “If you could see the look on Esther’s face whenever you walk down the street, you’d know that she respects you,” she blurted out, anxious to put an end to at least a smidgen of Jakob’s self-inflicted browbeating. “And when you stopoutside the shop and wave to her, she looks like a kid on Christmas morning.”
    Jakob’s hand slid down his face to reveal a raw pain that made Claire ache from head to toe for the man standing mere inches away. “But she can never know me, not without risk of being shunned. My coming here, my desire to be in her life if even from a distance, has put her in that position.”
    “You’re wrong, Jakob.”
    “What is wrong is my being here. My presence puts Martha, and Esther, and, now, Isaac in an awkward position. It was selfish of me to do that to them.” He pushed off the counter and gathered the items he’d brought. “I think it’s best for everyone if I look at taking this job as the mistake it was and resign.”
    Claire drew back. “Resign? No! You can’t just give up and walk away…”
    Her sentence trailed off as the telltale jingle above the shop’s front door alerted them to the arrival of a customer—the normally welcome sound instantly setting her on edge. Exhaling in frustration, she walked around the counter and Jakob only to freeze in place as she cleared both. For there, standing just inside the door, was Esther’s virtual carbon copy save for the two decades that separated them in birth and gave Jakob both a sister and a niece.
    Martha King was dressed in a dark burgundy dress with a black apron, her hair pulled into a tight bun and secured beneath the white head cap that failed to shield the worry in the woman’s face. “Claire. I need help. I need to find my brother. I need to find Jakob.”
    She heard the gasp from just over her shoulder and knew it was an echo of her own. “Y-you want to talk to Jakob?”
    Martha’s hazel eyes—so like her eldest daughter’s—remained trained on Claire’s face without so much as missing a beat. “I must. He is the only one who can help.”
    And, just like that, the moment she’d been praying for since meeting Jakob was at her hands for the taking.
    Jakob’s
taking.
    Noiselessly, Claire stepped to the side to reveal Jakob, who was already placing the gloves and camera back on