Her face went blank.

  “You might know her better as Emily Esh.”

  A light dawned in her eyes, and she looked down for just a moment before making eye contact with me again. Then she glanced at the floor again. “Is Emily with you?”

  I shook my head and started to wonder what kept grabbing her attention at her feet. “Do you know why Rosemary was visiting the pretzel shop? Did it have something to do with Emily?”

  She wrung the towel in her hands. “It was about Hannah. My cousin wanted Hannah to meet her mother. Rosemary is the only mother that Hannah has ever known, but Rosemary thought it was important that the child knew she had another mother, especially because . . .” She trailed off and looked at the floor again.

  I peered over the counter to see what she was looking at. I gasped. There was a young girl on the floor, flipping through a picture book. Her honey-colored hair was twisted in a long braid that hung over her shoulder.

  “Oh hello,” I said to the girl, but she didn’t look up.

  “She can’t hear you,” Dinah said. “She can’t hear anything.”

  “She’s deaf?” Charlotte asked, looking over the counter, too.

  Dinah nodded. “She’s been that way since birth. She’s never even heard Rosemary’s voice and never will.” She stepped toward the child and touched her shoulder.

  Hannah looked up in surprise. Dinah pointed at us, and the child closed her book and scrambled to her feet. When she made eye contact, I gasped. It was like looking into a younger version of Emily’s face. I could see Emily everywhere, from the large, blue Disney-princess eyes to the pert nose and the honey-colored hair that I knew would sparkle in the sunshine, just like Emily’s.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I guessed that Charlotte also saw the resemblance to Emily in Hannah’s face because she gasped. I’d guessed that Rosemary had adopted Emily’s daughter—that had been my suspicion from the start, but I had not expected to come face-to-face with the child so soon.

  Dinah shook her head. “You can understand my distress. I don’t know what to do with Hannah. She was Rosemary’s daughter and now has no one in the world.”

  “Wait, didn’t Rosemary have any other family? Was she married?” I asked.

  Dinah’s expression was pained. “She was technically still married when she died, but her husband, Isaac, will have no interest in an Amish child. He had no interest in anything Amish at all.”

  “But if they are married, isn’t he Amish?” Charlotte asked. “I’ve never heard of an Amish person marrying a non-Amish person and remaining Amish.”

  “They are separated and have been for many years.” She glanced at Hannah again. “Perhaps you can help me.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Dinah sighed. “Let’s sit.” She folded the dish towel and set it back on the counter. “If you are friends with the Esh family, perhaps you can help me with the problem of Hannah.”

  I glanced at the beautiful young girl. How could anyone think a child was a problem?

  Dinah came around the counter, and Hannah followed her. Charlotte glanced at me and then touched the child’s arm. Hannah looked up at her, and Charlotte reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of lemon-colored ribbon. I recognized the yellow ribbon from Emily’s baby shower. She handed it to the girl. Hannah’s eyes lit up, and then Charlotte took her by the hand, walking her to a quiet corner of the bakery. Charlotte sat cross-legged on the floor, and Hannah sat with her. Charlotte began to tie a bow with the ribbon, slowly showing Hannah how to do it. Then she gave the ribbon back to the child.

  I let out a breath, grateful for the compassion of my young cousin. I needed to speak to Dinah about Hannah, but I didn’t want to talk about her mother’s death in front of her. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but it still felt wrong.

  Dinah gestured for me to sit at one of the café tables in the front of the shop. The tables and chairs were so similar to the ones in Swissmen Sweets, I almost thought I was back in my shop. However, I knew I wasn’t. I was surrounded by baked goods, not candy, on all sides.

  Dinah didn’t sit but went back to the counter. She lifted one of the domes off a plate of chocolate chip cookies. Each cookie was the size of my hand. She selected four cookies and divided them between the two plates. She handed one plate to Charlotte, and the other she set in the middle of the table where I sat, but I had lost my appetite.

  Dinah sat across from me at the café table. “You will have to excuse me; if a customer comes in, I’ll need to get up.”

  I nodded. “I understand. I have a shop of my own.”

  “That’s right. I had already forgotten. Ever since I heard the news about my cousin, I haven’t been thinking straight.”

  “Rosemary was your cousin?”

  “Distant cousin. Our grandmothers were first cousins, but that still made us family. When she called and asked me for help, I had to try. That’s what family does.”

  “I think you’ll have to start at the beginning for me to understand,” I said.

  She picked up one of the cookies, took a big bite, and set the rest of it on a napkin in front of her. After she swallowed the bite, she said, “I always tend to eat more when I’m under stress. I’m sure you can tell this from my appearance, but I have been stressed most of my life. I can’t say I’ve lived up to the Amish teaching of a peaceful spirit.”

  Perhaps Dinah was a little overweight, but it hurt me that she would talk about herself like this to a stranger. “I think everyone has to deal with stress and anxiety. If someone says they don’t have any, they’re lying. I eat the candy in my shop when I’m stressed,” I admitted. “Chocolate is my weakness. I never tire of it.”

  She picked up the cookie and took another bite as if she was trying to gather her courage and the cookie was in some way helping. After she swallowed, she said, “Any time someone tells me that they don’t like chocolate, I wonder if they have ever eaten a proper chocolate chip cookie. How could you not like a cookie? I can understand maybe not liking cake, but a cookie?” She shook her head as if this was beyond comprehension.

  To be polite, I broke off a piece of my cookie and put it in my mouth. The cookie melted on my tongue. “Oh, wow, that cookie is amazing.”

  She smiled. “My chocolate chip cookies are the very best. I have customers that come here every day for one cookie and a cup of coffee, and students from the College of Wooster are frequent visitors, too.”

  “I can see why,” I said and broke off another piece. “Now, tell me why Hannah is alone. You said that she has no family, but Rosemary’s husband is alive. Wouldn’t he be her adopted father then?”

  She pushed her cookie around the plate with her finger. “I think I need to go further back in the story.”

  I nodded, unsure of what I was about to hear.

  “Rosemary and Isaac married young. I believe my cousin was seventeen when they married. They were from the same community in Indiana. They had courted ever since they were old enough to do so. Everyone thought they were the perfect Amish couple. Attractive, hardworking, and active in the church. There was just one problem: they couldn’t have children. For fifteen years, they tried to have a baby. Rosemary got pregnant so many times.” Dinah’s face fell. “Each time, she lost the child. She thought that was her punishment from Gott.”

  “Punishment for what?” I asked.

  Dinah shook her head. “In that time, Isaac grew restless. He had always toyed with the idea of leaving the Amish way but was baptized into the faith so that he and Rosemary could marry. As the years went on and Rosemary struggled with losing her babies, he became more discontent. He told Rosemary he wanted to leave. She believed the only way to convince him to stay was to have a child.”

  Then I remembered that Emily had been sent by her sister to live with an English family while she was pregnant. She had been sent outside the Amish community so that the pregnancy would remain secret. I realized now that I had never asked Emily who that English family was. Could they somehow be involved in the murder, too?

  “Rosemary cleaned houses for wealthy Englisch families who lived near her home to make extra money. One of the families she cared for had a pregnant Amish teenager living with them.”

  “Emily,” I said.

  She nodded. “Emily.”

  “Do you know the English family’s name?”

  She shook head. “Nee. I never thought to ask. It was so long ago.”

  It might be long ago, but it could still be important. I couldn’t go to Indiana to interview the family, but Aiden could send someone or call the police department in that area for support. Dinah might not know, but I was certain both Emily and Esther would.

  “Rosemary thought if she and Isaac had a child, that would fix everything, so she spoke with the family about the Amish girl and what was to happen to the baby. They told her that she was going to give the child up for adoption. Rosemary said she wanted the child.”

  “What did Emily say?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know that they asked her. From my understanding, she was told that the baby went to an Amish family, and that was the end of it.”

  That fit with what Emily had told me, so I assumed it was true; the two stories matched. I wanted to ask about the legality of the arrangement, the protocol, and the paperwork. When I lived in New York, one of the chocolatiers in the shop had adopted a child. The process had cost the couple sleepless nights, thousands of dollars, and endless paperwork. In the end, it had been worth all the stress and heartache, but getting a child without jumping through all those necessary hoops had never been an option.

  I couldn’t imagine that it was legal to hand over a baby, even an Amish baby, without some kind of paper trail. Perhaps the Amish involved could claim that they didn’t know how the system worked, but the English family that had taken part in the secret adoption couldn’t make the same claim. It was very possible that they could still be in a great deal of trouble if the police could prove they were involved in an illegal adoption. It could even be considered human trafficking.

  A sour taste rose up in my throat. Emily was a victim. Her daughter was a victim. My heart ached at the thought of what had transpired, and when I glanced across the room at beautiful little Hannah, all I could think was, “Thank God, she has been loved. Thank God, she was safe.”

  I was breathless. “What happened after Rosemary took the baby?”

  Dinah sighed. “It seemed at first that things would be better with Isaac. He had always wanted to be a father.” She glanced at Hannah, who was quietly eating a cookie with Charlotte. “But when they learned of Hannah’s limitations, he became restless. He finally left for gut when Hannah was three.”

  I could not imagine how hard that must have been for Rosemary. She’d adopted a child to save her marriage, and it had failed. I guessed that it was always bound to fail. Saving a marriage wasn’t the best motivation to have children.

  “So Rosemary was living in Indiana. How did she end up here?”

  “She learned that Isaac had moved here to Wooster, where I was living. She thought if she could see Isaac again, she would be able to convince him to come back home and return to the Amish faith.”

  “He’s no longer Amish?” I tried not to look at the cookie plate. Just the thought of food at the moment made me feel ill.

  “He told Rosemary that Gott had turned his back on him, not letting him have a child, so he would turn his back on Gott.”

  Charlotte gasped behind us.

  “When Rosemary found out that her husband was here in Wooster,” Dinah said, “she wrote me a letter, asking if she and her daughter could come and work with me. At the time, I was in need of more help at the bakery, and I always like to work with family. I’m a widow, and my son had no interest in working here.” She swallowed. “He has other ideas for his career. It seemed like a perfect solution.”

  “Did Rosemary ever speak to her husband after moving here?” I asked.

  She eyed my cookie. “Several times over the last two years. He came here often, trying to talk to her as well.”

  I pushed the cookie plate closer to her. “Really?”

  She broke off a piece of the second cookie. “He wanted a divorce so that he could remarry another woman, an Englischer. Rosemary refused to sign the papers to make their divorce official. I suppose he’s free to marry now that she’s dead.”

  I shivered. That was a motive for murder if I had ever heard one. “What did she say when he asked?”

  “She always said nee. She loved him, blindly loved him. Have you ever cared for something for no logical reason? That was the way Rosemary was with Isaac.” She shook her head over the sad, sad tale.

  I bit my lip and couldn’t think of anyone or anything that I had loved that much in my life. However, my tendency was to question, and trust was not something that came easily to me.

  In any case, Isaac was a suspect, especially because Rosemary would not grant him a divorce and he was dating another woman. The other woman would not like the idea of the man she was dating being legally married to another woman. That made the girlfriend a suspect as well.

  “Do you know the name of Isaac’s girlfriend?”

  Dinah shook her head. “I do not.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  She chewed her lip. “I don’t think you want to. He’s a very unhappy man. In my opinion, Rosemary was better off without him. But she couldn’t shake the idea that as an Amish woman, it was her job to keep her marriage together no matter what. Even though she herself was not happy with Isaac, she made a commitment to stay married to him. That is our way.”

  “So that meant she would stay in a loveless marriage just because she agreed to it years ago?”

  Dinah shrugged. “If that was their marriage, ya. Marriage is not always easy. Much of it is very hard.” She said this as if she spoke from experience.

  I frowned. I had never been married. The closest I had ever gotten was with Aiden, and we were just beginning to toy with the idea of becoming engaged. Even so, if I was miserable with the person I’d married, I couldn’t imagine staying married. Especially if all attempts at reconciliation had been exhausted.

  “Now maybe you can help me with Hannah.” She leaned across the table.

  “Help you with Hannah how?” I glanced over my shoulder at the young girl.

  “I can’t care for a child with her special needs,” she said as if “special needs” was some sort of disease. “She should be with her family.”

  I frowned. “What are you proposing?”

  “Take her with you and give her to Emily. She is the child’s mother. She is the one Hannah should have been with since birth. I don’t believe that a child should ever be removed from her mother. I did not like the idea of Rosemary adopting the child in the first place, but her bishop allowed it. It was not my place to question the word of a bishop.”

  I could not believe what she was suggesting. “I can’t just take a child.”

  “You have to. The church elders don’t know what to do with her. She is not from our district. If you don’t take her, she will likely be given to another family in my district. It will be another family that is not hers. With her limitations, that will be challenging for both her and the family.”

  I pressed my lips together and stopped myself from saying that being deaf was not a limitation. There was no reason Hannah couldn’t have a full and happy life. However, I knew that might not be the general Amish view. “I—I can’t—”

  I was starting to tell her a second time that I couldn’t take Hannah when the front door smacked against the wall and a young Amish man stormed inside, his face a mask of anger.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Mason, I have customers,” Dinah said, and her face turned an even deeper shade of red.

  He glanced at Charlotte and me and then he said something in Pennsylvania Dutch. While he spoke, I studied him. He had, dark curly hair and a wide mouth. He was a handsome young man, and I guessed he was in his early twenties. To my surprise, instead of the standard black tennis shoes or work boots that most Amish men wore, he wore cowboy boots. They were simple in design with no embellishment, but I couldn’t think of any time that I had seen an Amish man in cowboy boots.

  Charlotte gasped at whatever he said to Dinah. I didn’t understand it, of course, but I could tell by the tone that it was not friendly.

  Hannah’s eyes went wide, and she scooted closer to Charlotte and ducked her head. It was as if she thought that if she couldn’t see Mason, he couldn’t see her either.

  “Mason, please,” Dinah said in English. She glanced at me. “These are friends of Rosemary’s. They are here to tell us how sorry they are for our loss.”

  That wasn’t technically true, but I didn’t bother to correct her. I stood, too.

  The young man seemed to relax and said in English, “I’m sorry for my outburst. It has been a difficult time for all of us.”

  “Because of Rosemary?” Charlotte piped up.

  I raised my eyebrows, thinking how far my young cousin had come in the last several years. Raised in a conservative Amish district, she’d been taught not to speak to a man, Amish or English, whom she didn’t know without being spoken to first.

  He glanced at her in surprise. “Ya, that is true, but it has been a difficult day at work.”

  “Where do you work?” I asked.

  “I work at the racetrack. I train horses.”

  “My son is the best Amish horse racer in Wayne County,” Dinah said with pride in her voice.

  He frowned at his mother and shifted his stance. “I was the best horse racer in Wayne County. I’m not anymore.”

  It was then that I noticed he seemed to take extra care with his left side, and his left foot dragged on the floor just a little bit. The weakness didn’t seem to hinder him too much, but it looked as if it must have been caused by a painful injury of some sort.

  Dinah noticed me looking at his leg, even though I did my best not to stare. “Mason was in a racing accident eighteen months ago. It was terrible, but he’s healing well. At first, the doctors didn’t think he’d walk again, but look at him now. He’s doing so well.” She smiled at her son.