“Oh thank you, thank you,” Juliet said. “The way you treat Jethro is just more proof that you will be an amazing mother. What a wonderful day that will be! I can’t wait to hold my grandbaby in my arms.” Her native Carolina accent grew thicker as it always did when she spoke with emotion.

  After Juliet left, Charlotte chuckled, “I’m sorry, Bailey, I shouldn’t laugh, but it seems to me that you always get stuck with that pig.”

  It seemed to me that was true too.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Before I left the shop and went back to the square to relieve Lois and Millie, I went over the very long to-do list that we had planned for the candy shop that day. Our other shop assistant, Emily Keim, a young Amish mother with the most gorgeous natural blond hair, arrived to help for the day. Maami and Emily would work in the back of the shop making candies for online orders and to sell in the shop over the holiday weekend while Charlotte would work up front. When she didn’t have customers, she would package candy and fill display cases.

  I looked up from the list. “I shouldn’t be on the square for too long. Maybe Margot will only be gone for an hour or two longer.”

  Maami patted my hand. “Do not worry. We will do very well just the three of us until you return.”

  I squeezed her hand. “I know you will.”

  She smiled. “Maybe next year business will calm down a bit. We have been working nonstop for too long.”

  I noticed the tiredness on her face and the beads of sweat across her brow. I bit the inside of my lip. My grandmother’s comment did not bode well for my plan to expand our candy business. I hadn’t even told her that I had been looking for places to convert into a candy factory. I bit my lip a little harder.

  My ambition to expand the business was for her too. With more space and more employees, she would be able to semi-retire. I knew that it would be impossible to convince her to retire completely, but it pained me to see how hard she pushed herself to keep the business going, especially when I was away filming in New York.

  Even if I found the perfect location, she still had to agree to it. That wasn’t going to be easy. I would do the research first and then talk to her about it. I promised myself I would.

  I said goodbye, gathered up Jethro, and left the shop. The little pig wasn’t too excited about being separated from his cat and rabbit friends, but I knew that if I left him behind, he would be just as much of a distraction to the workers in the candy shop as he had been to those at Juliet’s church.

  When I crossed Main Street to the square, I immediately noticed how much had been completed in the short time I had been gone. Lois stood on the steps leaning into the gazebo with Margot’s clipboard in her hands; she appeared to be completely in control.

  I looked down at Jethro, whom I had tucked under my arm. The little pig was about the size of a toaster, but weighed more than the giant frozen turkeys that were in the process of thawing in the church for the meal tomorrow. I set him on the ground. He looked up at me as if to ask whether it was all right to wander around the square.

  “Don’t leave the square,” I said. “Or eat any food that you might find sitting around. Just remember, it’s not there for you.”

  He wiggled his snout. I didn’t take that for affirmation that he would do what I asked. Jethro was a sweet, funny, and adorable little pig, but no one would say that he was obedient, not even Juliet.

  Lois waved to me and came down the steps. “I see you have been saddled again with the village pig.”

  I looked down at Jethro, who had his snout buried in the grass and was deeply inhaling all the wonderful scents. “Juliet said he was making things a little challenging in the church as the Thanksgiving meal was being prepared.”

  “I imagine that he was.” Lois handed me the clipboard. “While you were away, we got six items checked off the list. There are maybe five more tasks that you can get done today, but the rest will have to be left for tomorrow.”

  Millie Fisher walked over to join us. She was an older Amish woman with white hair and friendly eyes. She wore a navy-blue dress under a brown barn coat and a white prayer cap on her head.

  “Will Margot be here tomorrow to oversee final arrangements?” Millie asked.

  I accepted the clipboard from Lois. “I assume she will, but now that I think about it, maybe I should have asked her. I don’t honestly know when she plans to come back from the airport.” I bit my lip. “Had you heard something different?”

  She shrugged. “Nee. I was just so surprised when Lois told me that Margot left in the middle of settling everything for Thanksgiving. That’s not like her at all. Then again, I can’t remember the last time Zara came to the village.”

  “Me either,” Lois said. “I had just assumed she was dead.”

  “Lois!” Millie gasped. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

  “The woman is in her late eighties. It’s not unlikely that she might have passed, and as far as I know, Margot never speaks of her.”

  Millie shook her head.

  “I do want to thank you both for helping me out.” I glanced at Main Street, hoping to see Margot’s car even though I knew it was too early for that. The airport was almost an hour away. It would be at least two hours before she came back, and that assumed Zara’s flight was on time.

  Lois waved her hands. “No need. It was fun. Both Millie and I like to give orders.”

  “Speak for yourself, Lois,” Millie said in return.

  “I did.” Her friend grinned. “I just happened to speak for you too.”

  Millie rolled her eyes.

  I stifled a laugh at the image of an elderly Amish woman rolling her eyes.

  After the pair left the square, I spoke with several of the young Amish volunteers and found that everyone knew what they should be doing. Lois and Millie had done a great job of assigning and confirming everyone’s tasks. There wasn’t much left for me to do. I wondered if I could sneak away to the candy shop, which had just opened for the day. There was already a line outside. People were dropping in to buy candies for their Thanksgiving get-togethers. It wasn’t a long line, but I knew the ladies in the shop must have their hands full.

  Jethro was under the long Thanksgiving table that stretched from one end of the square to the other. That table alone could seat forty people. Other tables of varying size peppered the square. In all, there was outdoor seating for four hundred people, and inside of the church there was an additional four hundred seats in the fellowship hall for those who preferred to eat indoors.

  That was eight hundred at Thanksgiving. Harvest had a little over a thousand residents. Many of them were Amish and living outside of the village proper. Margot guessed that around two hundred residents would not come to the meal. People had been asked to sign up. Over six hundred did. Providing enough seating for eight hundred, Margot believed she’d covered all her bases, and knowing her, she had food for at least a thousand.

  “Bailey King, I need to talk to you.” A sharp voice broke into my thoughts.

  Now, there were only two people in Harvest who shouted at me like that. One of them was Margot, and I knew she was at the airport picking up her mother. The other was Ruth Yoder.

  Ruth Yoder was the bishop’s wife in my grandmother’s Amish district. It was the largest district in Harvest, and the majority of the Amish living in the village were members or related to a member. Ruth took pride in the district’s status in the village, and she didn’t stand for any threat to her community’s reputation.

  She and Margot were like oil and water.

  Ruth was a stocky woman with broad shoulders and steel-gray hair that was pulled back into a severe Amish bun at the nape of her neck. She marched over to me with anger and determination in every step.

  Quickly, I scanned my memory for what I might have done to offend her. The truth was it could have been anything. Ruth was one of the most easily offended people I had ever met. It was almost as if she sat at home thinking over what happened throughout her day and how upsetting it all was.

  “Bailey King, I need to talk to you.” Her tone was firm.

  Jethro ran down the length of the table and hid under a bush next to the gazebo. To be honest, I wished I could join him. I didn’t want to have this conversation with Ruth either.

  It wasn’t that I disliked Ruth. I knew she meant well, and no one cared more for her community, but the manner in which she went about showing that love could be off-putting to say the least.

  She stood in front of me and put her hands on her hips. “Is it true? Tell me. Is it true?” She waited.

  “Is what true?” I asked. I knew it was a dangerous question. Clearly, I should know exactly what had her so worked up, but I didn’t have an inkling.

  “Zara!” she practically shouted.

  Leon, who was unloading folding chairs from a box truck a few feet away, jumped.

  “Zara? You mean Margot’s mother?” I asked.

  “Ya, will she be here tomorrow for the Thanksgiving meal?”

  It seemed to me that this was a loaded question. I knew the answer, of course, but I guessed by the way Ruth said “Zara” like a four-letter word that it wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear.

  “I will take your silence as a yes. We will not stand for it. We will not.” Ruth stopped just short of stomping her feet. “When our district agreed to participate in this event, we didn’t know that woman would be here. I can’t sit at the same table with her. I can’t even be in the same place with this woman. Do you have any idea of the heartache she brought upon the Amish community in Harvest?

  I blinked. “No.”

  “That woman ruined countless lives with her harshness. You think Sheriff Marshall is hard on the Amish in Holmes County? He is nothing compared to her. I would take three Sheriff Marshalls over one of her.”

  I stared at Ruth, whose face was impossibly red by this point. That was a serious statement to throw around. Everyone in Holmes County knew of the sheriff’s dislike for the Amish. Aiden had stayed on as a deputy in the county for so long for that very reason. He wanted to be on hand to help his Amish friends.

  In the last election, no one ran against the sheriff. Even if someone had, he had been in the job for over fifteen years. It was unlikely that he would have lost. The people who would vote against him were Amish, but the Amish, with very few exceptions, didn’t vote.

  “What did Zara do?” I asked.

  “I don’t even have time to tell you everything she did. It would take a year to list it all, but in the time that she served as judge in this county, she unjustly sentenced dozens of Amish men and even a few women to prison.” She took a breath. “One of those men was my younger bruder. He never recovered from it. To this day, even though he is out of prison and has been out for over a decade, he won’t talk about what it was like for him during that terrible time. He never married because of it. He was the end of the male line for my family. How do you think that made my parents feel, to know that their name would end with my brother? She ruined lives, then retired to Florida as if the years she was a judge in our county meant nothing at all. It killed my maam. I know she died early of sadness at what happened to her son.”

  This was news. I had always gotten the impression that Ruth’s family was perfect. What had her brother done to have gone to prison? Had he been framed? Was that what Ruth thought, that he had been sentenced unfairly? “Why was your brother arrested?”

  Ruth narrowed her eyes at me and immediately I realized I’d stated my question incorrectly.

  “You think it was his fault?” she asked.

  I held up my hands. “I just wondered what he was charged with. I’m not making a judgment as to whether he was innocent or guilty.”

  “What he was arrested for is beside the point.”

  I didn’t think it was, but I knew better than to say that.

  “Now, will she be there or not?”

  “I believe she will.”

  She shook head. “I was afraid you were going to say that. Then I have no choice but to advise my husband to forbid the members of the church from attending tomorrow. We cannot be at the same table with that woman, not after all the trouble she has caused our community.”

  “Ruth, Thanksgiving is tomorrow. You can’t make that decision so close to the event. There are so many people who are looking forward to it.” Margot came first and foremost to my mind. She was already hoping to impress her mother with everything she’d done in the village to build the community. If the Amish in the village didn’t show up for Thanksgiving, her goal would be ruined.

  Ruth pursed her lips.

  “Ruth, please don’t do that. So many of your church members have helped and been involved in the meal. They will be sorely disappointed not to be able to attend.”

  “I would have thought after all this time, Bailey King, you would finally realize how Holmes County works, but it is clear to me that you do not. I blame Clara for that. She should have taken a firmer hand with you.”

  ” A firmer hand? I’m over thirty years old. I moved here as an adult with an established life and career. I’m not a child to be disciplined.”

  “Precisely. Sometimes I wish that you had just stayed away,” Ruth spat. “Margot thinks she is the reason that Harvest has become such a ‘travel darling’ in the last several years, but we all know the truth. The Englischers aren’t coming for the quaint life or the Amish culture. They’re coming for you, the television celebrity.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. I know the show has made the village more visible, but Margot has worked tirelessly to bring in more tourists.”

  A car drove by, and a woman leaned out the passenger window. “That’s Bailey King from Bailey’s Amish Sweets! Oh! I can’t believe I see her. Slow down, so I can take a picture.” The woman hung out of her car with a cell phone and took photos of me.

  “Now do you understand what I mean?” Ruth asked with a raised brow. “You need to take a moment in prayer and ask yourself what you are doing for this community. Does your fame make it better? Do you think that’s what the people of Harvest want?” She smoothed the sleeve of her jacket. “Now, I must go talk to my husband about this matter with Zara. It’s his job to protect the district from hurt, and Zara brings hurt with her. As the wife of the bishop, it is my responsibility to tell him what is going on this community. He’s a busy man and can’t know of everything that is going on without me. It’s a wife’s duty to be an asset to her husband.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You will want to ask yourself, Bailey, if you ever plan to get married, whether you will be an asset to your husband.” She marched away, climbed into her buggy, and drove off.

  I sighed. I hoped Bishop Yoder’s common sense would prevail, and he would see that forbidding his district to attend the community Thanksgiving wasn’t a good idea. However, it was hard to tell what he would decide. It was well known that Ruth Yoder had a great amount of influence over her husband.

  Despite Ruth’s pronouncement, everyone was still working, and after checking with a few of the event staff, I walked over to the dessert table and tried to plan my tablescape for the next day. I made a list of all the desserts that Swissmen Sweets was providing, plus the thirty-some pies that were being made by both Amish and Englisch women in the district. I asked one of the Amish men to help me set up a second dessert table. The candy table would be “serve yourself,” but I thought it best if we had two or three people cutting and serving the pies. I was sure we’d be able to find some volunteers, but I added a note to the bottom of Margot’s list so that it wouldn’t be overlooked.

  I had just finished planning my tablescape when Margot’s small SUV pulled up next to the square. I gave a sigh of relief. Now I could leave and go back to the shop. It was close to noon and the line was no longer out the front door, but I knew the ladies could use my help.

  When Margot got out of the car, the expression on her face could only be described as defeated. In all the years I’d known her, I had never seen Margot with such a hopeless look about her, not even that one time when all those sheep broke loose.

  A fortyish man climbed out of the back seat and opened the front passenger door. An elderly woman took his hand as she exited the car. She had short, silver hair, and wore an expensive trench coat over a gray pantsuit. The skin of her face was tight and smooth, but her hands were wrinkled. She carried a large, patent leather bag with her. I guessed that it must be Zara. Who the man was remained a mystery.

  Margot’s eyes were the size of dinner plates when she walked up to me. I smiled, but she didn’t smile back.

  “Hi Margot,” I said. “We have everything well in hand for tomorrow. I made a couple of additions to the list.” I held up my hand. “Not to worry. Nothing major at all. It’s just for things we want to make sure we don’t overlook. The tables are in place and the bushes have been trimmed. Most everything else will have to wait until tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s very good news,” Margot said in a clipped voice.

  This surprised me. Usually there was nothing that Margot enjoyed more than going over a punch list. She got great pleasure in checking items off.

  I smiled at Zara and the man as they approached, walking arm in arm. Her high-heeled boots weren’t the most practical footwear for walking on grass.

  “Bailey,” Margot said. “I’d like to introduce you to my mother, Zara Bevan. Mother, this is Bailey King, she’s the chocolatier I was telling you about with her own show on Gourmet Television. She has brought so much interest to our little village.”

  Zara held out her hand to me. Her nails were perfectly manicured and painted a deep shade of maroon. She wore gold rings, and I was pretty sure a real diamond tennis bracelet. Zara had money and wasn’t afraid to subtly show it off.

  She squeezed my hand briefly in the same way someone would squeeze a piece of fruit in the supermarket to test its ripeness. “It’s so strange to me that someone with so much promise would give up a life in the city to live here. If you were doing well in New York, what use do you have for Harvest?”