Sarah was still as slim and active as she’d been when she was a young girl. He had a sudden vivid image of her chasing after him in some game they’d been playing, her braids coming loose and trailing out behind her. Her fair hair was smoothed back from a center part now, fastened in a thick bun under her snowy-white prayer covering. No one outside family or a spouse would see it loose again, and he found himself wondering how it would look.
“What are folks in town saying about the fires?” Eli caught his daughter’s hand when she would have gone past them to the porch.
Sarah’s normally serene expression sobered. “Same as you two have been saying, I’d guess. That there’s a firebug loose. That maybe it’s the same person it was the last time, since the police never caught him. Poor Mac is looking harassed already, I think. Nick told us he’s reported it to the regional fire marshal. Why should anyone blame Mac for the fact that they didn’t catch the arsonist before? He was just a boy then.”
“Some folks are only happy when they have someone to blame for their troubles,” Eli said.
Aaron’s thoughts had headed a different direction. “It doesn’t seem likely it’s the same person. That must have been—what? Close to twenty years ago.”
Sarah shrugged. “I know, but that’s what some people are saying.” She focused on him, her blue eyes filled with concern. “Are you all right? I heard you had trouble with your gear today.”
Her caring touched him. “Nothing serious.” Though he had to admit it could have been, if he’d been any closer to the fire when his mask failed. “Some of our equipment is nearly as old as I am.”
“That’s terrible. Didn’t we make enough at the spring sale to buy new equipment?”
The community spring festival in town raised money each year for the volunteer fire company, and Sarah, one of the hardest workers, would feel responsible.
“Ja, well, the money was put to gut use, but the trouble is that there’s too much needs replacing. We’ll have to rely on the neighboring companies for help in future emergencies, that’s certain sure.”
“You shouldn’t have to take risks.” Sarah’s smooth forehead wrinkled. “We need to do something.”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“There’s always something.” Her sweet oval face was troubled. “There must be.”
Sarah had a big heart—he’d always known that. She was a gut friend. He’d never been able to understand why she and Mary Ann hadn’t been closer. They’d been neighborly, but never really friendly.
Still, women were unaccountable. As usual, thinking of his late wife made him feel vaguely uncomfortable and more than a little guilty. Logic said he hadn’t failed Mary Ann, but his conscience seemed to declare otherwise.
Seeing that Sarah still looked troubled, he managed a smile. “Don’t worry so much. We won’t take any needless risks. We all look out for one another.”
His words did bring a responding smile to her face. “Don’t bother telling me you’re cautious. You all get so excited when the siren goes off that you don’t think about a thing except getting to the fire, and you might as well admit it.”
“Maybe there’s a little truth to that,” he said, relieved to see her expression relax. Sarah knew him too well for him to deny it. When you’d been friends with someone since childhood, there wasn’t much you didn’t know about the person.
That was probably why he enjoyed being around Sarah. Any other single Amish woman would be wondering why he hadn’t remarried before this, with his wife gone for over two years. Maybe even flirting a little. And since he couldn’t look at anybody in a romantic way since Mary Ann’s death, they always made him uncomfortable.
But Sarah was different. He could be at ease with her because she didn’t have any such notions. She was a friend, a good friend, and that friendship was all they needed from each other.
* * *
SARAH MOVED ALONG the rack of quilting fabrics in the shop the next day, sorting and straightening. Several women had come in earlier to choose fabrics for new projects, and that had entailed pulling out dozens of bolts to compare. They’d gone away happy, though, purchases under their arms, and that was what counted.
The shop was quiet now, with Allison having gone upstairs to her office. In fact, all of Blackburn House seemed still after yesterday’s alarms. Too quiet? Sarah had begun to feel as if she were holding her breath, waiting for the siren to wail again.
Thank the Lord there’d been nothing more last night or today. Perhaps yesterday’s fires had been simply a coincidence. She pulled out a bolt of cotton and restored it to its proper place among the green prints, running her hand along the smooth surface. Still, two unexplained blazes within hours of each other seemed to stretch chance a bit too far.
It was odd, surely, that both incidents had happened during the day. She’d think that an arsonist would be more likely to set about his misdeeds after dark, when there was less chance of being seen. She’d intended to mention that to Daad yesterday to see what he thought, but Aaron had been there when she got home, driving every other idea from her brain, it seemed.
Foolishness, that was what it was. Most people would consider her a sensible woman, but on that one subject, she was ferhoodled. Nowadays young girls, even Amish ones, seemed to fall in and out of love a half dozen times before settling down. Why couldn’t she have done the same?
Sarah paused, cradling a bolt of material in her arms, a memory slipping to the surface of her mind for reasons of its own. She’d been the only girl in their small group of childhood playmates—Nick and Mac Whiting on one side of her house, Aaron on the other. During the school year they’d been separated, of course, with her and Aaron going to the Amish school, while Nick and Mac went to the Englisch one, but in the summers, she’d tagged along after the boys wherever they went.
Mac, lively and heedless, had usually been the one to dare the others into some foolish act—such as racing across the field where the bad-tempered bull was kept. No one would say no to a dare, even when they should have.
“If we all run at the same time, that stupid bull won’t know which one to chase,” Mac had insisted, and even at eight or nine Sarah had thought there was a fallacy somewhere in that argument. But she’d gone, running with the boys, hearing the bull snort with displeasure.
The pasture was uneven beneath her feet, and fear seemed to make her clumsy. She tripped, stumbled, and by the time she regained her balance, the boys were well ahead of her and the bull so close she could almost feel his hot breath. She wasn’t going to make it—the boys had already reached the fence, but she’d never get there in time—
Then Aaron was running back toward her. He grabbed her hand, yanking her along—not toward the fence, but to the old apple tree in the pasture. The bull was almost on them when he’d boosted her up into the branches.
“Climb! Go!”
She scrambled up and then turned back, convinced she’d see Aaron flattened on the ground. But he grabbed a limb, swinging himself up and out of range just as the bull thundered past, and she’d never been so relieved before or since.
Funny. She still dreamed of that sometimes, hearing the bull thudding behind her, getting closer and closer. Sometimes in the dream Aaron reached her in time. Sometimes he didn’t. She wasn’t sure what that meant, if anything.
In any event, she feared she’d fallen in love with Aaron that day, and her stubborn heart refused to fall back out again, even when he’d married someone else.
The bell on the door jingled, so Sarah looked toward it, smiling in welcome. The smile faded when she saw Gus Hill slouched in the doorway. In his tattered overalls and stained T-shirt, he didn’t look much like the typical quilt