Dark Crossings Read Online Free PDF Page A

the time their mamms and grossmamms get done feeding him up at their tables, he sure will!”
    “And I bet you’ll be first in line, Clara Hershberger!” Ella
said with a pert grin. “But Abby used to know him, ’cause her sister went with
him for a couple of years. And did you see those not-just-for-pretty hope chests
he makes? I’m going to start saving for one, fill it with lavender and
linens.”
    “I think,” Barbara Yoder said with a smothered laugh and an
elbow to Ella’s ribs, “you two could go into business together—lavender sachets
sold in his carved boxes. I saw one with butterflies all over it and another
with tulips, so why not lavender outside—and in?”
    Barbara Metzler, who was a bit older, sighed and rolled her
brown eyes. She was the schoolteacher and always sounded like one. “Now, let’s
bow our heads and thank the good Lord for bringing Ben back, and hope he’ll
return to the fold. Then Abby can describe that old house he bought, since she’s
just a stone’s throw away.”
    “That’s right!” Clara said, looking up from her first attempt
to bow her head. “He’s really close to you.”
    “Living close,” Abby corrected. “But if he’s just a stone’s
throw,” she went on, her pulse pounding hard for no reason except they were
talking about her and Ben in the same breath, “it’s like one of those throws
where the stone just skips and skips over the water and doesn’t land where you
ever meant it to.”
    Ella frowned at her, and the others went silent. “Like what
does that mean?” Ella asked. “Never mind. Are you sure you’re not eating those
kinds of mushrooms that mess up your head? Now, I’m just teasing. You can tell
us how it was when he was close to your sister, and what you know about him
beating up that Englische guy that tried to—” she
dropped her voice to a whisper now, as if they were talking about a mass
murderer “—put his hands all over Ben’s sister. That’s the way my brother Seth
explained it. And then Ben refused to admit to the bishop and the elders he’d
done wrong, and got put under the bann .”
    As the waitress placed their rolls and salads on the table and
they finally bowed their heads for a moment of silent prayer, Abby admitted to
herself and to the Lord that she and her friends gossiped too much. She also
admitted—as she would never do to anyone else, ever—that she still cared for and
wanted Ben Kline, no matter what he’d done wrong in the past or even if he did
something bad now. That’s just how much she was slipping into sinful thoughts
about him again!
    * * *
    A BBY WAS STILL AGONIZING over Ben and that diamond she’d found when
she got home just before sunset and unpacked her few unsold goods. As daylight
faded, she unharnessed and fed Fern in the small barn she used for her gardening
tools. Next she went down into the cellar where she hid her extra cash in a
metal box, way back on the shelves. In front of it, she stacked the panes of
glass held together with duct tape that kept her mushroom spore prints ready to
be sown on prepared hosts.
    But her lantern light wavered, and she felt a sudden cold draft
down here. That was odd. The first thing she thought was that she didn’t need
her spores getting chilled or the buckets of water with spore slurry icing
over.
    She gasped. One of the cellar windows was lifted up—wide open,
when she had left it barely cracked! It couldn’t have slid up on its own! She
grabbed her lantern and swung the light around the crowded room. Shadows leaped
at her as the fungi growing on detached tree limbs seemed to sway.
    She noticed muddy footprints on the floor under the open
window. Someone had evidently jumped down into the basement. Her heart pounding,
she thudded up the stairs. She wanted to search the rest of her house to be sure
her spending money and that diamond she’d hidden under her stockings were still
there, but instead she simply grabbed her purse, not even locking the