The Imposter (9 page)

Those unexpected bellows of Hank offended Jesse's sensibilities, as well as his eardrums. “Right in front of you. Hanging on the wall. It would bite your nose if you were any closer.” Jesse pointed to the tidy row of tools, something he was rather proud of, though it had not received any mention by Hank or Fern. Not a word of thanks. “I put the wrenches in graduating sizes, left to right. Any apprentice worth his weight in gold would do the same.”

Hank growled and grabbed a wrench off the pegboard. Straightening himself to new heights of white cowlick, he frowned fiercely down at him. “No shortage of opinions, I see.”

“A man has to make a living, you know.”

“I DO KNOW.” He scratched his head as if digging out a thought. “The problem is, my income and my outgo run past each other in baffling ways.” As he walked past his desk, overflowing with paper, he made an abrupt halt. Turning from the desk to face Jesse, he shook his head. “Jesse”—there was a dip of doubt in his tone as he spoke it—“how are you at 'rithmetic?”

“My greatest strength. Sums come to me,” he snapped
his fingers, “like that.” Sums of money left him with similar speed.

Hank dropped into his desk chair, visibly brightening. “So you've had experience with money?”

He tapped his head. “I'm faster than Dad's calculator at the store.” Usually.

Hank yanked open drawers in his desk and pulled out handfuls of scraps and bits of papers. He dropped them all in an empty nail box and handed it to Jesse. “Here. They all got to be sorted out.”

“I think I can manage that task.” How hard could it be?

Hank settled into his chair. “I'm a little short of funds to put you on the payroll right now, seeing as how I'm a tad behind with my collections. If you can figure out my system—” he fixed his good eye on Jesse—“well then, whatever you collect, you can keep five percent.”

“Fifteen.”

“Ten.”

“You drive a hard bargain.” Jesse smiled, satisfied. “Hank Lapp, it's a deal.”

He tapped on the box and smiled. “They're all yours now, Jesse.”

And with that, Hank Lapp departed and Jesse was left with the onerous task of bill collecting.

The days fell into a pattern very quickly. Thelma and Katrina walked to the top of the hill and back each morning, regardless of foul weather. Some days, Thelma walked more slowly than others, some days she relied more heavily on her cane for balance than on other days. But she rarely missed that morning walk.

As they walked the dirt path that wound up the hill, Thelma would share stories of her life, and usually add a thought-provoking insight or two, something Katrina started to think of as coming across a blooming flower in the midst of a cornfield. “No one grows old by living, only by losing interest in living,” or “Keep the past in the past.”

She couldn't imagine Thelma Beiler ever being hearty and young the way, of course, she once had. The thought made her very sad. When she died, all this valuable knowledge would be lost.

In the mornings, Katrina worked in the vegetable garden, or cleaned house for Thelma, and also helped Andy out when he brought sacks of moss from the hillside down
to the greenhouse. He taught her how to lay the moss on a moist substrate, so that it had all the conditions it wanted to spread. Once she got the hang of it, he would just hand off a sack to her. It allowed him to spend more time on the hill.

Each day, she tried to spend some time on the administrative side of Moss Hill—returning telephone messages, completing orders, coordinating deliveries. To her surprise, she enjoyed the work. Who would have thought? The most thought she'd ever given to moss was that it was soft to walk on in her bare feet.

Today was a sunny morning promising to be hot later in the day, an Indian summer, as Katrina walked through Thelma's vegetable garden, watching the bees gather pollen and nectar from the last tomato blossoms of the season. Bees were so certain of their place and purpose. Katrina envied them, then felt foolish for feeling envy for a bee.

She stopped by the phone shanty, just to double-check and see if John might—
might
—have left a message. Lo and behold . . . there was a message waiting and it was from John! She listened to John's message, then replayed it again and again, stunned.

“Katrina, it's John. Look, I'm sorry, but I can't sell my dogs to you. It just wouldn't be fair to Susie. She thinks you're trying to finagle a way for us to get back together. I told her that you weren't that kind of girl, and assured her that it's completely over between us, but she's still freaking out. I shouldn't even be calling you. Look, I gotta go. Sorry about not being able to get you a dog. I'm sure you'll find one.”

Katrina hunched her shoulders, using an arm to cover her ribs. A hurricane of conflicting emotions sucked the air from her lungs. As she stood there, she couldn't stop the
tears from starting, then streaming down her face. Not noisy. Not dramatic. Just open faucets, pouring over her cheeks, dripping off her chin. She felt tears streaming, streaming, streaming down her face, and it suddenly made her furious. What had she done that was so wrong? Why had John stopped loving her?

Aware that Thelma would be wondering what had happened to her, she hurried up the hill to the house. She slipped in the door as quietly as she could and went straight to the bathroom where she washed her face with cold water—very, very cold water—to ease the red around her eyes and mouth. She looked at herself in the mirror. “What is
wrong
with you?”

Her sad eyes looked back at her.
They've deserted you.

John. Your mother.

God.

She squeezed her eyes tight. It all felt like death. It was all a tangle of loss.

She blew out a puff of breath, squared her shoulders, and pulled open the door. Dishes. The sink was still full of breakfast dishes. Glad for the task to do while Thelma was reading, she cleaned up the kitchen. Then she went to find Andy.

She practically bumped into him as he came out of the greenhouse. “I'm sorry, but the breeder doesn't have any dogs to sell right now. Puppies or trained or anything in between.”

Andy stood with his arms crossed against his narrow waist. His forearms corded with powerful muscle, and his hair gleamed in the sun. She didn't know what to make of someone like him. And she was having a hard time meeting his eyes, the way he stared at her. She felt he was look
ing straight through her, that he could see everything, knew everything.

“Then let's go find one,” he said, in a matter of fact tone. “Is there a shelter in town?”

She tilted her head. “In fact, there is. A new one.”

Twenty minutes later, they were heading toward town in Thelma's buggy. Andy glanced at her. “So, care to tell me why you run to the phone shanty ten times a day?”

She cringed. Was she that obvious? “I'd rather not, if you don't mind.”

“Tell me something else, then, why don't you?” he said, and bumped her arm with his. “I'd like to know a little more about you.”

“Well,” she started, “I . . .” She stopped. What was there to say? And where to even start? The last year of her life had been horrific, filled with pain and loss. It had brought love too, or so she had thought, but that ended up bringing even more confusion and sorrow.

He could see she was struggling. “Okay, let me make this a little easier. Do you like to ice skate?”

She laughed. “Yes. Do you?”

“Nope. I broke my arm in two places when I was ten. Haven't put on skates since. You ever break any bones?”

“My nose. My brother Jesse threw a baseball that hit me in the face when I was eight.”

“Oooh. Let me see.” He peered down at her, touched her chin to move her face side to side. “Can't tell at all. That's a very nice little nose you've got.”

She gave him a wry smile. He was flirting with her, but she found she didn't mind. Not so much.

Katrina directed Andy to the Wild Bird Rescue and Ani
mal Shelter on Main Street, across the street from the Sweet Tooth bakery. Will Stoltz, a vet, had started the Wild Bird Rescue Center a year or so ago. When he married, he and his wife, who was also a vet, expanded the center to include a no-kill animal shelter. Andy and Katrina wandered through the aisle of the animal shelter, holding their hands out to the different dogs. First was a terrier that barked incessantly, then a Shih Tzu, but Andy thought that would be too close to having a cat.

“So what kind of dog do you need?” Katrina asked.

“Wrong question,” Andy said, looking at each kennel. “We're looking for a dog who needs us.”

And it turned out to be a large yellow mutt with white spreading around its muzzle. It had the kind of sadness in its eyes that Katrina recognized clear to the bottom of her heart. “Andy, look at this one.”

Andy knelt and the dog just looked at him, sighed and hung its head showing that it'd given up all hope.

“He's a good dog,” Will Stoltz said, opening the kennel latch to let them in.

“We found him waiting patiently on the doorstep one morning. Left behind.”

Katrina's heart stopped. Left behind? Just like that. Over. Goodbye. Sometimes, she thought, the world seemed so harsh.

“Left behind,” Andy repeated, rubbing the dog's big head. “Any idea what breed he is?”

“One part Labrador Retriever, lots of parts of something else.”

Andy moved his hands on the dog in the way that told you
he was somebody who knew and loved dogs. “Any idea if he has a good bark? Does he have a prey instinct?”

Will grinned. “Excellent bark. As for the prey instinct, he does chase after balls.”

“How old is he, do you know?” He half grinned as the dog stretched his neck up so that he could scratch under the dog's chin.

“He's only nine,” Will said, and hurried to add, “but he doesn't have anything wrong with him.”

“Aside from being abandoned,” Katrina said. Her voice came out a little louder than she meant it to.

Will looked at her in surprise. “I guess that's true enough.”

Andy sat down and faced the dog. “I think you need us, and we need you.” He glanced up at Katrina and smiled, and she felt her cheeks grow warm. He looked back at the dog and, leaning closer, scratched him behind the ears. “Okay with you?”

The dog looked at him a long time, considering, his brown eyes searching Andy's face. Andy scratched him under the chin and the dog lifted his head, then put a paw on his forearm. He smiled up at Katrina. “All right, then. He says yes. Let's go home.”

After they filled out the paperwork, they headed to the buggy with their new old dog. Andy lifted the dog into the buggy. “What do you want to call him?”

“Me?” Katrina said. “You're the one who should name him. You're the one who needed a dog.”

“But you're the one who spotted him. The dog that needed us.”

“How about . . . Keeper?”

“I like that.” He laughed, a soft laugh that turned into a
cough. And then he looked surprised, as if he didn't really laugh all that often. It surprised her, as well, to hear him laugh, so that she blushed and looked away. As he turned onto the road that led to Moss Hill, he said, “Are you feeling better?”

The kindness, the way he looked at her with concern, made her eyes prickle. She ducked her head. “I guess.” She shrugged, tucking some stray hairs behind her ear. “The reason I run to the phone shanty ten times a day is because of someone named John. We've been broken up for two months. You'd think I'd be over it by now.”

“Or not,” he said. “It takes as long as it takes.”

She looked down at her hands folded in her lap. “I think this particular situation is going to take a long, long time.”

Rain had left the village of Stoney Ridge rinsed and clean, scented with freshly mown hay. The sky was bright, creamed with thin, swirling clouds. Jesse felt exultant, a song in his heart, until he realized he was late for work. Hank wouldn't notice but Fern certainly would.

Jesse found his working relationship with Hank to be ideal. Hank left him entirely alone and never followed up on anything. This particular morning had started as usual, with Hank drawling, “You know what needs doing, or at least should,” and disappearing off to somewhere undisclosed—most likely Edith Fisher's—while Jesse faced tabulating the chaos of his unpaid accounts, which were numerous.

Jesse's apprenticeship was now concentrated on learning the ins and outs of the buggy shop's finances. Trying to untangle Hank's curious methods, if you could call anything methodical about Hank Lapp. His style of bookkeeping had
been what one might call casual, if in a generous mood. If not, sloppy and careless.

In many ways, this sort of apprenticeship fit Jesse from head to toe. Each afternoon, when he knew farmers would be in the field and their wives near the house—a safer situation for the loathsome task of bill collecting—Jesse hit the road with his scooter and made his collection calls. So far, he had collected six outstanding bills without fuss or fanfare. Women were far more sensitive to the need to keep straight accounts than their husbands, he had quickly discovered.

And Jesse had some spare coinage jingling in his pockets. The bill collection division of the buggy repair shop was turning a tidy profit. True to his word, Hank gave him a percentage of what he brought in, but the wage, while steady enough, did not seem to be a swift path to riches. The buggy shop ledger was always going to be tipped in Hank's favor, not Jesse's. Besides, money did not stick to Jesse, which was why a more substantial supply seemed such a good idea. How he would get that large supply continued to elude him. A plan. He needed to make a plan.

Three mornings later, while in town, he rounded the corner and a boy, running at full speed, nearly slammed into him but swerved around him at the last second and bounded away.

Temptation knew how to find him, Jesse had to admit. The gambling spirit took another leap in him. As he watched the swiftest boy he'd ever seen, the buggy business looked a little less appealing.