Free Suspendered Sentence (An Amish Mystery) by Laura Bradford

shelf.”
    She blinked away a new set of tears, the presence of her gift in such a prominent spot touching her deeply. “Eli is right.”
    “Claire? Are you okay? You seem sad.”
    “I’m not sad, Esther. I’m happy you and Eli have each other and this beautiful home.”
    “As you will have with Jakob one day.” Esther ducked her head then peered back up at Claire with a sweet smile. “Mamm says I should not say such things to you. That I should wait for my uncle to decide, but I am sure. Mamm is, too.”
    She staggered to the table and dropped onto the bench closest to the entryway, her friend’s words more than she could process at that moment. “Esther, it’s too soon. We’re really still trying to figure out what’s going on between us, if anything.”
    “Oh, there is something going on. It is plain as day every time I see my uncle look at you.” Esther crossed to the oven and opened it, her nose lifting into the air in perfect time with Claire’s. “We shall eat soon.”
    Claire listened for Eli’s footsteps on the floor above but heard nothing. “Where is Eli? He will be joining us, won’t he?”
    “Of course. But he must check the cows first.” Esther closed the oven door and then began adding butter to something in a large pot. “It is good that he is busy in the barn. It quiets his worry about Ben.”
    She sat up tall, her curiosity aroused. “Eli is worried about Ben? Why?”
    Esther covered the pot, stepped to the left, and grabbed the threesome of dishes stacked on the counter. “Ben has been quiet since Sadie’s body was found. He keeps to himself in the field and does not say much when Eli stops by their dat’s farm. He says it is as if Elizabeth has passed all over again.”
    Claire stood and took the plates and utensils from Esther’s hands. “Please, let me set the table. You tend to the meal.” Then, as she moved around the table, setting each place, she brought the conversation back to Ben, curious as to what Esther might know. “I would imagine it would be hard, at times, for Ben to be around Elizabeth’s friends and family just in the course of a regular day, let alone in the wake of one of their deaths.”
    “That does make sense. I know I cannot stop thinking of Waneta and how she must be feeling now that she knows she will never see Sadie again. There is comfort in knowing it was God’s will, but it is still sad.”
    “It is.” She set a cup beside each plate and then reclaimed her spot at the end of the wooden bench as Esther put bread in a basket and carried it to the table. There was so much she wanted to know about Elizabeth’s friends—people who’d been on Rumspringa when Esther had been just an infant, yet very likely remained in the same district today. “Do you know a Miriam? A Miriam Hoster-something?”
    Esther shook her head at Claire, laughing as she did. “You mean Hochstetler?”
    Claire rewound her thoughts to the night of the fire and did her best to recall the name her aunt had mentioned. “Yes, I think that’s right. It sounds right.”
    “I don’t really remember her as Miriam Hochstetler at all. I was a baby when she was still with her mamm and dat. But I know her well as Miriam Stoltzfus.”
    She felt her mouth gape and worked to recover it quickly. “Stoltzfus?”
    “Yah. She is married to Jeremiah.”
    “Stoltzfus?” she repeated. “As in the owner of the barn that burned to the ground the other night?”
    “Yah. But the new barn has been raised.”
    Wrapping her left hand around the edge of the table, she stared, unseeingly, at the basket of bread and the accompanying slab of butter, Esther’s response barely registering before the next rhetorical question made its way past her lips. “And Stoltzfus is also the owner of the land where Sadie’s body was found?”
    “The current owner, yes. But the land was first owned by Sadie’s dat. He sold it to Jeremiah when it became too much for him to farm.” Esther returned to the