aron hurried into the kitchen and sat down at the table, Sarah turning in perfect choreography to set a cup of coffee in front of him. “Where is Katie?” he asked, frowning.

“She’s asleep, still,” Sarah said. “I didn’t think to wake her yet.”

“Yet? It’s Gemeesunndaag. We have to leave, or we’ll be late.”

Sarah flattened her hands on the counter, as if she might be able to smooth the Formica even further. She squared her shoulders and prepared to contradict Aaron, something she had done so infrequently in her marriage she could count the occasions on a single hand. “I don’t think Katie should be going to church today.”

Aaron set down his mug. “Of course she’ll go to church.”

“She’s feeling grenklich, Aaron. You saw the look on her face all day yesterday.”

“She’s not sick.”

Sarah sank down into the chair across from him. “People will have heard by now about this baby. And the Englischer.”

“The bishop knows what Katie said, and he believes her. If Ephram decides there is a need for Katie to make a confession, he’ll come and talk to her here first.”

Sarah bit her lip. “Ephram believes Katie when she says she didn’t kill that baby. But does he believe her when she says it isn’t hers?” When Aaron didn’t answer, she reached across the table and touched his hand. “Do you?”

He was silent for a moment. “I saw it, Sarah, and I touched it. I don’t know how it got there.” Grimacing, he admitted, “I also know that Katie and Samuel would not be the first to get ahead of their wedding vows.”

Blinking back tears, Sarah shook her head. “That’ll mean the Meidung, for sure,” she said. “Even if she confesses and says she’s sorry for it, she’ll still be under the bann for a while.”

“Yes, but then she’ll be forgiven and welcomed back.”

“Sometimes,” Sarah said, her mouth tightening, “that’s not the way it goes.” The memory of their oldest son, Jacob, suddenly flared between them, crowding the table so that Aaron pushed back his chair. She had not said Jacob’s name, but she had brought up his specter in a household where he was supposed to be long dead. Afraid of Aaron’s reaction, Sarah turned away, surprised when her husband’s voice came back soft and broken.

“If Katie stays at home today,” he said, “if she acts sick and don’t show her face, people are going to talk. People are going to think she’s not coming because she’s got something to hide. It’ll go better for her, if she makes like it’s any other Sunday.”

Overcome with relief, Sarah nodded, only to stiffen as she heard Aaron speak quietly again. “But if she’s put under the bann, I’ll side with my church before I side with my child.”

Shortly before eight o’clock, Aaron hitched the horse to the buggy. Katie climbed into the back, and then his wife sat down on the wide bench seat beside him. Aaron picked up the reins just as the Englischer came running out of the house, into the yard.

She was a sight. Her hair stuck up in little tufts around her head, and the skin of her cheek was still creased with the mark of a pillowcase. At least she was wearing a long cotton dress, though, Aaron thought, instead of the revealing clothes she’d had on yesterday afternoon.

“Hey,” she yelled, frantically waving her arms to keep him from leaving. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To church,” Aaron said flatly.

Ellie crossed her arms. “You can’t. Well, that is, you can. But your daughter can’t.”

“My daughter will, just like she has all her life.”

“According to the state of Pennsylvania, Katie’s been remanded into my custody. And she’s not going anywhere without me.”

Aaron looked at his wife and shrugged.

There were many misconceptions Ellie had had about the Amish buggies, but the biggest one by far was that they were uncomfortable. There was a sweet, gentle gait to the horse that lulled her senses, and the heat of the July sun was relieved by the wind streaming through the open front and rear window. Tourists in their cars sidled up to the rear of the buggy, then passed with a roar of gears and a racing engine.

A horse moved along at just twelve miles per hour-slow enough that Ellie was able to count the number of calves grazing in a field, to notice the Queen Anne’s lace rioting along the edge of the road. The world didn’t whiz by; it unrolled. Ellie, who had spent most of her life in a hurry, found herself watching in wonder.

She kept a lookout for the church building. To her surprise, Aaron turned the buggy down a residential driveway. Suddenly they were part of a long line of buggies, a somber parade. There was no chapel, no bell tower, no spire-just a barn and a farmhouse. He pulled to a stop, and Sarah dismounted. Katie nudged her shoulder. “Let’s go,” she whispered. Ellie stumbled from the wagon and then drew herself up short.

She was completely surrounded by the Amish. Numbering well over a hundred, they spilled from their buggies and crossed the yard and gathered to quietly speak and shake hands. Children darted behind their mothers’ skirts and around their fathers’ legs; a wagon filled with hay became a temporary feed trough for the many horses that had transported the families to church. As soon as Ellie became visible, curious eyes turned in her direction. There was whispering, pointing, a giggle.

Ellie could remember feeling like this only once-years ago, when she’d spent a summer in Africa building a village as part of a college inservice project, she’d never been more aware of the differences between herself and others. She started as someone slipped an arm through hers. “Come,” Katie said, drawing her across the yard as if nothing was amiss, as if she walked around every day with an Englischer by her side.

She was stopped by a tall man with a bushy white beard and eyes as bright as a hawk’s. “Katie,” he said, clasping her hands.

“Bishop Ephram.” Ellie, who was standing close enough to notice, realized that Katie was trembling.

“You must be the lawyer,” he said in English, in a voice loud enough to carry to all the people who were still straining to hear. “The one who brought Katie home to us.” He extended a hand to Ellie. “Wilkom.” Then he moved off toward the barn, where the men were gathering.

“That’s a wonderful good thing he did,” Katie whispered. “Now the people won’t all be wondering about you while we worship.”

“Where do you worship?” Ellie asked, puzzled. “Outside?”

“In the house. A different family holds the services every other Sunday.”

Ellie dubiously eyed the small, clapboard farmhouse. “There’s no way all these people are going to fit inside that tiny building.”

Before Katie could answer, she was approached by a pair of girls who held her hands and chattered urgently, concerned about the rumors they’d heard. Katie shook her head and soothed them, and then noticed Ellie standing off to the side, looking distinctly out of place. “I want you to meet someone,” she said. “Mary Esch, Rebecca Lapp, this is Ellie Hathaway, my . . .”

Ellie smiled wryly at Katie’s hesitation. “Attorney,” she supplied. “A pleasure.”

“Attorney?” Rebecca gasped the word, as if Ellie had sworn a blue streak instead of just announcing her profession. “What would you need with an attorney?”

By now, the women were organizing themselves into a loose line and filing into the house. The young single women walked at the front of the line, but having Ellie there clearly presented a problem. “They don’t know what to do with you,” Katie explained. “You’re a visitor, so you ought to follow the lead person. But you’re not baptized.”

“Let me solve this for everyone.” Ellie stepped firmly between Katie and Rebecca. “There.” An older woman frowned and shook her finger at Ellie, upset at having a nonmember so far up front in the procession. “Relax,” Ellie muttered. “Rules were made to be broken.”

She looked up to find Katie staring at her solemnly. “Not here.”

It was not until Katie began to visit Jacob on a regular basis that she truly understood how people could be seduced by the devil. How easy it was, when Lucifer wielded things like compact disc players and Levi’s 501s. It was not that she thought her brother fallen-she just suddenly began to see how one archangel tum bling from heaven might have easily reached out a hand and tugged down another, and another, and another.

One day when she was fifteen, Jacob told her he had a surprise for her. He brought her change of clothes to the train station and waited for her to put them on in the ladies’ room, then led her to the parking lot. But instead of approaching his own car, he took her to a big station wagon filled with college kids. “Hey, Jake,” one of the boys shouted, unrolling the window. “You didn’t tell us your sister was a hottie!”

Automatically, Katie patted her sweatshirt. Warm, maybe . . . Jacob interrupted her thoughts. “She’s fifteen,” he said firmly.

“Jailbait,” called another girl. Then she dragged the boy backward and kissed him full on the mouth.

Katie had never been this close to people kissing in public; she stared until Jacob tugged at her hand. He climbed into the car and shoved aside the others so that there would be room for his sister. He tossed a hurricane of names at her that she forgot the moment she tried to remember them. And then they were off, the car shimmying with the heavy beat of a Stones tape and the muffled movements of two people making out in the back.

Sometime later, the car pulled into a parking lot, and Katie glanced up at the mountain and the ski lodge at its base. “Surprised?” Jacob asked. “What do you think?”

Katie swallowed. “That I’ll have a hard time explaining a broken leg to Mam and Dat.”

“You won’t break your leg. I’ll teach you.”

And he did-for about ten minutes. Then he left Katie on the bunny slope with a ski school full of seven-year-olds and raced up to the top of the mountain with his college buddies. Katie wedged her skis into a triangle and snowplowed down the gentle hill, then let the J-bar tug her up to start all over again. At the bottom, each time, she shaded her eyes and looked for Jacob, who never came. The whole world was unfamiliar-slick and white, dotted with people who cut her a wide berth. This was what it was like, she thought, to be put under the bann for ever. You’d lose everyone who was important to you; you’d be all alone.

She glanced up at the chairlift. Unless, of course, you could do what Jacob had done: turn into someone else entirely. She didn’t know how he could do it so seamlessly, as if he had never had another life in another place.

As if this new life was the only one that mattered.

She was suddenly flushed with anger, that she and her Mam should work so hard to keep Jacob tucked under their hearts, while he was off drinking beer and barreling down ski slopes. She snapped off her rental skis and, leaving them in the snow, marched back to the lodge.

Katie didn’t know how long she sat there, staring out the window. The sun had surely wriggled lower in the sky by the time Jacob stomped in, his hands clamped around her skis. “Himmel, Katie!” he shouted, slipping back into Dietsch. “You don’t just leave skis lying around. Do you know how much these things cost if you lose them?”

Katie turned slowly. “No, Jacob, I don’t. And I don’t know how much they cost if you just rent them for the day. I don’t know how much a case of beer costs, either, come to think of it. And for sure I don’t know why I come out all the way on this train to visit you!”

She tried to move past him, but the boots were too big and heavy for her to get far enough away before he caught her. “You’re right,” he said softly. “I’m with them every day, and you’re the one I never get to see.”

Katie sank back down on the picnic table bench and propped her chin on her fists. “How come you took me here today?”

“I wanted to show you something.” As Katie looked down, he held out his hand. “Give it one more try. With me. Up the chairlift.”

“Oh, no.”

“I’ll be right with you. I promise.”

She let him lead her outside, where he strapped on her skis and then towed her to the lift line. He made jokes and teased her and acted so much like the brother she remembered that she wondered which personality of his was real now, and which was the act. Then the lift climbed so high Katie could see the tops of all the trees, the roads that led away from the ski hill, even the far edge of the university. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

“This is what I wanted you to see,” Jacob said quietly. “That Paradise is just a tiny dot on a map.”

Katie did not answer. She allowed Jacob to help her off the chairlift and fol lowed his directions to slowly make her way down the hill, but she could not get the image of the world from that mountaintop out of her mind, nor shake the sense that she would feel far safer when she was once again standing blind at the bottom.

If this were any other Sunday, Ellie thought, she and Stephen would be reading the New York Times in bed, eating bagels and letting the crumbs fall onto the covers, maybe even putting on a jazz CD and making love. Instead, she was sandwiched between two Amish girls, sitting through her first Amish worship service.

Katie was right; they did manage to pack ’em in. Furniture had been moved to make room for the the long, backless church benches, which arrived by wagon and could be transported from home to home. The wide doors and folding room partitions made it possible for nearly everyone to see the center of the house from his or her seat-the center being where the ordained men would stand. Women and men sat in the same room, but on different sides, with the elderly and the married up front. In the kitchen, mothers coddled babies as young as a few weeks; small children sat patiently beside their same-sex parent. Ellie cringed as Rebecca shifted, wedging her closer to Katie. She could smell sweat, soap, and the faint traces of livestock.

Finally, it seemed as though not another person could have been squeezed inside. Ellie waited in the pointed silence for the service to begin. And waited. There was no hurry to start; apparently, she was the only one even remotely concerned by the fact that nothing was happening. She glanced around as a current of whispers volleyed: “You do it.” “You . . . no, you.” Finally, an elderly man stood and announced a number. In unison, hundreds of books opened. Katie, who held the Ausband on her lap, moved it slightly so that Ellie could see the printed words of the hymnal.

Ellie sighed. When in Rome-or so she had figured. No pun intended, but she didn’t have a prayer of sight-reading a musical score that wasn’t printed on the page. Only the lyrics were there, and she didn’t know the tunes for Amish hymns. Actually, she didn’t know the tunes for any hymns. One old man began singing in a slow, measured falsetto, and others picked up on his lead. Ellie noticed the ordained men-Bishop Ephram, and the two ministers, and another fellow she had not seen before-leaving their seats to go upstairs. Lucky bastards, she thought.

She thought so, still, thirty minutes later when they finished the first hymn, sat in silence for several minutes, and then launched into the second hymn, the Loblied. Ellie closed her eyes, marveling at the stamina of these people who managed to remain upright on the backless benches. She could not recall the last time she attended a church service, but surely that one had finished long before these Amish preachers and the bishop came downstairs again to deliver the introductory sermon.

“Liebe Bruder und Schwestern . . .” Dear Brothers and Sisters.

“Gelobet sei Gott und der Vater unssers Herrn Jesu Christi . . .” Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ellie was nodding off when she felt Katie’s soft explanation at her ear. “He’s apologizing for his weakness as a preacher. He doesn’t wish to take time away from the Brother who’ll bring the main sermon.”

“If he’s so bad at this,” Ellie whispered back, “how come he’s a preacher?”

“He’s not really bad. He’s just showing how he’s not proud.”

Ellie nodded, eyeing the older man in a new light. “Und wann dir einig sin lasset uns bede,” he said, and as a unit, every single person in the room-except Ellie-fell to their knees.

She glanced at Katie’s bowed head, at the bowed heads of the ordained men and the sea of kapps and neatly trimmed hair, and very slowly she got down on the floor.

In the middle of the night, Katie’s room filled with light. With a rush of anticipation, she sat up in bed, then dressed quickly. Most of the boys kept high-powered flashlights in their courting buggies that they’d shine in a girl’s window when they wanted her to sneak down to see them on a Saturday night. She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders-it was February, and freezing outside-and tiptoed down the stairs thinking of John Beiler’s eyes, the same warm gold as the leaves on a beech tree in the autumn.

She would scold him, she thought, for dragging her out on a night as cold as this one, but then she’d walk with him and maybe let her shoulder bump up against his now and then to know that she didn’t mean it. Her best friend Mary Esch had already let Curly Joe Yoder kiss her on the cheek. She eased the side door open and stepped onto the landing. Katie’s eyes were bright, her palms damp. She turned, a smile skimming her lips, and came face to face with her brother.

“Jacob!” she gasped. “What are you doing here?” Immediately she glanced up at the window of her parents’ bedroom. Being found with a beau would be bad enough; but if her father discovered Jacob back in his house, there was no telling what might happen. Putting a finger up to her lips, Jacob reached for his sister’s hand and pulled her off the porch, running silently toward the creek.

He stopped at the edge of the pond and used the sleeve of his down jacket to wipe the snow from the small bench there. Then, seeing Katie shiver, he took off the jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. They both stared at the black ice, smooth as silk, so clear that tangles of marshy grass could be seen frozen beneath it. “Have you been here yet today?” he asked.

“What do you think?” She had come early this morning, to mark the five years that had passed. Katie held her hands up to her cheeks, blushing to realize that she’d been so full of herself she’d been thinking of John Beiler, when her thoughts should have centered on Hannah. “I can’t believe you came here.”

He scowled at her. “I come every year. I just never called on you before.”

Stunned, Katie turned to him. “You come back? Every year?”

“On the day she died.” They both stared toward the pond again, watching the willow branches scratch its surface with each bite of the wind. “Mam? How’s she?”

“Same as every year. She got feeling a little grenklich, went to bed early.”

Jacob leaned back and stared at the sky, cracked open wide and carved with stars. “I used to hear her crying outside on the porch swing, underneath my window. And I’d think that if I hadn’t been so chairminded, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“Mam said it was the Lord’s will. It would have happened whether or not you’d been off reading your books, instead of skating with us.”

“That’s the only time, you know, I ever thought twice about wanting so badly to keep up my schooling. As if Hannah drowning was some kind of punishment for that.”

“Why would you be the one punished?” Katie swallowed hard. “I’m the one Mam told to watch her that day.”

“You were eleven. You couldn’t have known what to do.”

Katie closed her eyes and heard the great groan that came from the ice so many years ago, the sound of tectonic plates shifting and deep monsters bellowing at tres pass. She saw Hannah, so proud to have tied her skates all alone for the first time, taking off in a streak across the pond, silver blades winking from beneath her green skirts. Watch me, watch me! Hannah had cried, but Katie never heard, too busy daydreaming of the fancy, glittering costume of an Olympic figure skater that she had seen in the newspaper at the market checkout stand. There was a shriek and a crash. By the time Katie turned, Hannah was already sliding beneath the ice.

“She was trying to hold on,” Katie said softly. “I kept telling her to hold on, while I got a long branch the way Dat taught us to. But I couldn’t reach the branch to break it off, and she kept crying, and every time I turned my back her mittens slipped a little more. And then she was gone. Just like that.” She lifted her face to Jacob’s, too embarrassed to admit to her brother that her thoughts on that day had been worldly, and just as worthy of censure as anything he had done. “She would be older now than I was when she died.”

“I miss her too, Katie.”

“It’s not the same.” Fighting tears, she looked into her lap. “First Hannah, and then you. How come the people I love the most keep leaving me?”

Jacob’s hand crept across the bench to cover hers, and Katie thought that for the first time in many months, she recognized her brother. She could look at him in his puffy red coat, with his clean-shaven face and his short copper hair, and see instead Jacob in his shirt and suspenders, his hat tossed aside, his head bent over a high school English textbook in the hayloft, trying to hide his wildest dreams. Then she felt a stirring in her chest, and her hair stood up on the back of her neck. Lifting her eyes to the pond, she saw a slight figure skimming over it, whistling across the ice and kicking up small clouds of snow. A skater, which would not have been remarkable, except for the fact that Katie could see the cornfield and the willow’s greedy arms right through the girl’s shawl and skirt and face.

She did not believe in ghosts. She believed, like the rest of her people, that working hard in this life might send you to your greater reward-a sort of wait- and-hope-for-the-best policy that left no room for errant spirits and tortured souls. Heart pounding, Katie got to her feet and inched across the ice to the spot where Hannah was skating. Jacob yelled out, but she could barely hear him. She, who had been taught to believe that God would answer your prayers, realized that it was true: at this moment, both her brother and her sister had come back to her.

She reached out and whispered, “Hannah?” But she was grabbing at nothing, shivering when Hannah’s transparent skirts swirled about her own booted feet.

A strong arm yanked her off the ice to the safety of the pond’s bank. “What the hell are you doing?” Jacob hissed. “Are you crazy?”

“Don’t you see it?” She prayed that he did, prayed that she wasn’t losing her mind.

“I don’t see anything,” Jacob said, squinting. “What?”

On the pond, Hannah lifted her arms to the night sky. “Nothing,” Katie said, her eyes shining. “It’s nothing at all.”

To say that the service lasted forever would not be much of an exaggeration. Ellie was stunned by the behavior of the children, who-having sat through the reading of the Scripture and two hours of the main sermon-barely made a peep. A small bowl of crackers and a glass of water had been passed from room to room for the parents who had little ones curled beside them. Ellie occupied herself by counting the number of times the preacher lifted his white handkerchief and wiped at his brow. In the aisle in front of Ellie, another handkerchief served as entertainment for a little girl, as her big sister folded it into mice and rag dolls.

She knew the service was drawing to a close because the general energy level in the room began to buzz again. The congregation rose for the benediction, and as the bishop mentioned Jesus’s name, they all fell again to their knees, leaving Ellie standing alone and aware. Sitting down beside Katie again, she felt the girl suddenly go stiff as a board. “What is it?” she whispered, but Katie shook her head, tight-lipped.

The deacon was speaking. Katie strained forward, listening, and then closed her eyes in relief. Several rows ahead, where Sarah was sitting, Ellie noticed her chin sag to her chest. Ellie put her hand on Katie’s knee and traced a question mark. “There will be no members’ meeting,” Katie murmured, the words laced with joy. “No disciplining to be done.”

Ellie regarded her thoughtfully. She must have nine lives, to have escaped the English legal system and the punitive channels of her own people too. After another hymn came the dismissal, three and a half hours after the service had begun. Katie ran off to the kitchen to set tables for the snack, Ellie trying to follow and getting woefully tangled between the greetings of others. Someone pushed her to a table where the ordained men were eating, inviting her to sit down. “No,” Ellie said, shaking her head. It was clear, even to her, that there was a pecking order, and that she shouldn’t be eating first.

“You are a visitor,” Bishop Ephram said, gesturing to the bench.

“I have to find Katie.”

She felt strong hands on her shoulders and looked up to find Aaron Fisher steering her back to the table. “It is an honor,” he said, meeting her eye, and without a sound Ellie sank onto the bench.

Graduation day at Penn State was like nothing Katie had ever seen-a pageant of color, punctuated by silver flashes of cameras that instinctively made her start. When Jacob marched up to receive his diploma in his stately black cap and gown, she clapped louder than anyone else around her. She was proud of him-a curiously un-Amish feeling, but valid all the same in this Englischer collegiate world. Impressively, it had only taken him five years-including the one he spent mastering the high school subjects he’d never learned. And although Katie herself didn’t see the purpose of going on past eighth grade with your schooling when you were going to grow up and manage a household anyway, she couldn’t deny that Jacob needed this. She had lain on the floor of his apartment and listened to him read aloud from his books, and before she could catch herself she’d been swept away by Hamlet’s doubts; by Holden Caulfield’s vision of his sister on that merry-go- round; by Mr. Gatsby’s lonely green light.

Suddenly the graduates tossed their hats in the air, like starlings scattering from the trees when the hammers rang out at a barn raising. Katie smiled as Jacob hurried toward her. “You did wonderful gut,” she said, and hugged him.

“Thanks for coming.” Lifting his head, Jacob suddenly called out a greeting to someone across the green. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

He drew her toward a man taller even than Jacob, wearing the same black robe, but with a blue sash over his shoulders. “Adam!”

The man turned around and grinned. “Hey, that’s Dr. Sinclair to you.”

He was a little older than Jacob, this she could see from the lines around his eyes, which made her think he laughed often, and well. He had hair the color of a honeycomb, and eyes that almost matched. But what made Katie unable to look away was the absolute peace that washed over her when she met his gaze, as if this one Englischer had a soul that was Plain.

“Adam just got his Ph.D.,” Jacob explained. “He’s the one whose house I’m renting.”

Katie nodded. She knew that Jacob had moved out of undergraduate housing and into a small home in town, since he was staying on as a teaching assistant at Penn State. She knew that the man who owned the home was going away to do research. She knew there would be two weeks’ time when they were roommates, before the owner left on his trip. But she had not known his name. She had not known that you could stand this far away from a person and still feel as if you were pressed up tight against him, fighting to take a breath.

“Wie bist du heit,” she said, and then blushed, flustered that she had greeted him in Dietsch.

“You must be Katie,” he answered. “Jacob’s told me about you.” And then he held out his hand, an invitation.

Katie suddenly thought about Jacob’s stories of Hamlet and Holden Caulfield and Mr. Gatsby, and with perfect clarity understood how these studies of emotional conundrums might be just as useful in real life as learning how to plant a vegetable garden, or hanging out the laundry. She wondered what this man had mastered, to earn his Ph.D. With great deliberation, Katie took Adam Sinclair’s hand, and she smiled back.

After arriving home and having lunch, Aaron and Sarah went off to do what most Amish did on Sunday afternoons: visit relatives and neighbors. Ellie, having unearthed an entire set of Laura Ingalls’s Little House books, sat down to read. She was tired and irritable from the long morning, and the rhythmic clop of horses pulling buggies along the main road was beginning to bring on a migraine.

Katie, who had been cleaning the dishes, came into the living room and curled up in the chair beside Ellie. Eyes closed, she began to hum softly.

Ellie glared at her. “Do you mind?”

“Mind what?”

“Singing. While I’m reading.”

Katie scowled. “I’m not singing. If it’s bothering you, go somewhere else.”

“I was here first,” Ellie said, feeling like a seventh-grader. But she got to her feet and headed toward the door, only to find Katie following her. “For God’s sake, you have the entire living room now!”

“Can I ask you a question? Mam said you used to come visit Paradise in the summers, to stay on a farm like ours. Aunt Leda told her. Is it true?”

“Yes,” Ellie said slowly, wondering where this was leading. “Why?”

Katie shrugged. “It’s just that you don’t seem to like it much. The farm, I mean.”

“I like the farm just fine. I’m just not accustomed to having to baby-sit my clients.” At the wounded look that crossed Katie’s face, Ellie sighed inwardly. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled-for.”

Katie looked up. “You don’t like me.”

Ellie didn’t know what to say to that. “I don’t know you.”

“I don’t know you, either.” Katie scuffed the toe of her boot on the wooden floor. “On Sunday, we do things different here.”

“I’d noticed. No chores.”

“Well, we still have chores. But we also have time to relax.” Katie looked up at her. “I thought that maybe, it being Sunday, you and I could do things different, too.”

Ellie felt something tighten inside her. Was Katie going to suggest they skip town? Go find a pack of cigarettes? Give each other a few hours of no-holds-barred privacy?

“I was thinking that maybe we could be friends. Just for this afternoon. You could pretend that you met me coming to visit the farm you were at when you were a kid, instead of the way it really happened.”

Ellie put down her book. If she won Katie’s friendship and got the girl to open enough to spill out the truth, she might not need Coop to come evaluate her at all. “When I was a kid,” Ellie said slowly, “I used to be able to skip stones farther than any of my cousins.”

A smile blossomed over Katie’s face. “Think you still can?”

They jostled through the door and struck out across the field. At the edge of the pond, Ellie reached for a smooth, flat rock and tossed it, counting as it bounced five times over the water. She wiggled her fingers. “Haven’t lost the touch.”

Katie picked up her own stone. Four, five, six, seven skips. With a broad smile, she turned to Ellie. “Some touch,” she teased.

Ellie narrowed her eyes in concentration and tried again. A moment later, Katie did too. “Ha!” Ellie crowed. “I win!”

“You do not!”

“I beat you by a yard, fair and square!”

“That’s not what I saw,” Katie protested.

“Oh, right. And your eyewitness accounts these days are so accurate.” When Katie stiffened beside her, Ellie sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to separate from why I’m really here.”

“You’re supposed to be here because you believe me.”

“Not necessarily. A defense attorney is paid to make a jury believe whatever she says. Which may or may not be what her client has told her.” At Katie’s baffled expression, Ellie smiled. “It probably sounds very strange to you.”

“I don’t understand why the judge doesn’t just pick the person who’s telling the truth.”

Reaching for a piece of timothy grass, Ellie set it between her teeth. “It’s not quite as simple as that. It’s about defending people’s rights. And sometimes, even to a judge, things aren’t black and white.”

“It is black and white, if you’re Plain,” Katie said. “If you follow the Ordnung, you are right. If you break the rules, you get shunned.”

“Well, in the English world, that’s communism.” Ellie hesitated. “What if you didn’t do it? What if you were accused of breaking a rule, but you were perfectly innocent?”

Katie blushed. “When there’s a members’ meeting for discipline, the accused member has a chance to tell his story too.”

“Yeah, but does anyone believe him?” Ellie shrugged. “That’s where a defense attorney comes in-we convince the jury that the client may not have committed the crime.”

“And if he did?”

“Then he still gets acquitted. That happens sometimes, too.”

Katie’s mouth dropped open. “That would be lying.”

“No, that would be acting as a spin doctor. There are many, many different ways of looking at what’s happened to bring someone to trial. It’s only considered lying if the client doesn’t tell the truth. Attorneys-well, we can say just about anything we want as an explanation.”

“So . . . you would lie for me?”

Ellie met her gaze. “Would I have to?”

“Everything I’ve told you is the truth.”

Sitting up, Ellie crossed her legs. “Well, then. What haven’t you told me?”

A sparrow took off in flight, casting a shadow across Katie’s face. “It’s not our way to lie,” she said stiffly. “It’s why a Plain person can stand up for himself in front of the congregation. It’s why defense attorneys don’t have a place in our world.”

To her surprise, Ellie laughed. “Tell me about it. I have never in my life stuck out like such a sore thumb.”

Katie’s gaze traveled from Ellie’s running shoes to her sundress to the small, dangling earrings she wore. Even the way Ellie sat-as if the grass was too scratchy to let the backs of her legs rest upon it-was slightly uncomfortable. Unlike the hordes of people who streamed into Lancaster County to get a glimpse of the Amish, Ellie had never asked for this. She had done Aunt Leda a favor, and it had mushroomed into an obligation.

Katie knew how she had felt, from her visits to Jacob. Putting on the costume of a wordly teenager had never made her one. Ellie might think she espoused individuality, but being yourself in a culture where other Englischers were busy being themselves was a far cry from being yourself in a culture where the people were all intent on being the same-but different from you.

A world that was crowded with people could still be a very lonely place.

“I can fix that,” Katie said aloud. With a big grin she reached into the lake, scooped up some water, and tossed it onto Ellie.

Sputtering, Ellie jumped up. “What did you do that for?”

“Wasser,” Katie said, splashing her again.

Ellie shielded herself with her hands. “What’s a what?”

“No, wasser. It’s Dietsch for water.”

After a moment, Ellie understood. She took this small gift and let it settle inside her. “Wasser,” she repeated. Then she pointed to the field. “Tobacco?”

“Duvach.”

Katie beamed when Ellie tried the word. “Gut! Die Koo,” she said, gesturing at a grazing Holstein.

“Die Koo.”

Katie held out her hand. “Wie bist du heit. It’s nice to meet you.”

Ellie slowly extended her own hand. She looked deeply into Katie’s eyes for the first time since she’d arrived at the district court yesterday. The lightness of the afternoon, of the Dietsch lesson, fell away until all the two women knew was the pressure of their palms against each other, the heady hum of the crickets, and the understanding that they were starting over. “Ich bin die Katie Fisher,” Katie said quietly.

“Ich bin die Ellie Hathaway,” Ellie answered. “Wie bist du heit.”

“I’m going to get the popcorn before the movie starts,” Jacob said, standing. When Katie began to rummage through her pockets for the money her Mam always sent along, Jacob shook his head. “My treat. Hey, Adam, keep an eye on her.”

Katie slouched in her seat, annoyed that her brother would think of her as a child. “I’m seventeen. Does he think I’m going to wander away?”

Beside her, Adam smiled. “He’s probably more worried that someone’s gonna steal his pretty little sister.”

Katie blushed to the roots of her hair. “I doubt it,” she said. She was unused to compliments that referred to her beauty, rather than a job well done. And she was uncomfortable being alone with Adam, who had been invited by Jacob to join them.

Katie did not wear a watch, and she wondered how long it would be until the film began. This would be her fourth movie, ever. It was supposed to be a love story-such a funny concept, for a two-hour movie. Love wasn’t supposed to be about a moment where you looked into a boy’s eyes and felt the world spin from beneath your feet; when you saw in his soul all the things that were missing in yours. Love came slow and surefooted and was made of equal measures of comfort and respect. A Plain girl wouldn’t fall in love, she’d sort of glance down and realize she was mired in it. A Plain girl knew she loved someone when she looked out ten years from now and saw that same boy standing beside her, his hand on the small of her back.

She was dragged from her thoughts by the sound of Adam’s voice. “So,” he said politely, “do you live in Lancaster?”

“In Paradise. Well, on the edge of it.”

Adam’s eyes lit up. “On the edge of Paradise,” he said, smiling. “Almost sounds like you’re in for a nasty fall.”

Katie bit her lower lip. She didn’t understand Adam’s jokes. Trying to change the conversation, she asked him if his degree was in English, like Jacob’s diploma.

“Actually, no,” Adam said. Was he blushing? “I work in paranormal science.”

“Para-”

“Ghosts. I study ghosts.”

If he’d taken off all his clothes at that moment, it couldn’t have shocked Katie more. “You study them?”

“I watch them. I write about them.” He shook his head. “You don’t have to say it. I’m sure you don’t believe in ghosts, like most of the free world. When I tell people what my doctorate is in, they think it’s from some TV correspondence course, with a minor in air-conditioning repair. But I came by it honestly. I started out as a physics major, theorizing about energy. Just think about it-energy can’t be destroyed, only converted into something different. So when a person dies, where does that energy go?”

Katie blinked at him. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly. It has to go somewhere. And that residue energy, every now and then, shows up as a ghost.”

She had to look into her lap, or else she was liable to confess to this man she hardly knew something she’d admitted to nobody. “Ah,” Adam said softly. “Now you think I’m crazy.”

“I don’t,” Katie said immediately. “I really don’t.”

“It makes sense, if you think about it,” he said defensively. “The emotional energy that comes from a tragedy impresses itself onto a scene-a rock, a house, a tree-just as if it’s leaving a memory. At the atomic level, all those things are moving, so they can store energy. And when living people see ghosts, they’re seeing the residue of energy that’s still trapped.” He shrugged. “There’s my thesis, in a nutshell.”

Suddenly Jacob reappeared, carrying a bucket of popcorn. He set it on Katie’s lap. “You telling her about your pseudo-academic pursuits?”

“Hey.” Adam grinned. “Your sister is a believer.”

“My sister is naïve,” Jacob corrected.

“That’s the other thing,” Adam said, ignoring him and turning to Katie. “You don’t bother trying to convince the disbelievers, because they’ll never under stand. On the other hand, if a person’s ever had a paranormal experience-well, they practically go out of their way to find someone like me, who wants to listen.” He looked into her eyes. “We all have things that come back to haunt us. Some of us just see them more clearly than others.”

In the middle of the night, Ellie awakened to a low moan. Pushing away the folds of sleep, she sat up and turned toward Katie, who was tossing softly beneath her covers. Ellie padded across the floor and touched the girl’s forehead.

“Es dut weh,” Katie murmured. She suddenly threw back her covers, revealing two spreading, circular stains on the front of her white night-gown. “It hurts,” she cried, running her hands over the damp spots on her gown and the bedding. “There’s something wrong with me!”

Ellie had friends-more and more of them, lately-who had gone through childbirth. They had joked about the day that their milk came in, turning them into torpedo-breasted comic book characters. “There’s nothing wrong. This is perfectly natural, after having a baby.”

“I didn’t have a baby!” Katie shrieked. “Neh!” She shoved Ellie away, sending her sprawling on the hard floor. “Ich hab ken Kind kaht . . . mein hatz ist fol!”

“I can’t understand you,” Ellie snapped.

“Mein hatz ist fol!”

It was clear to her that Katie wasn’t even really awake yet, just terrified. Deciding not to deal with this on her own, she started out the bedroom door, only to run into Sarah.

It was a shock to see Katie’s mother in her bedclothes, her cornsilk hair hanging past her hips. “What is it?” she asked, kneeling at her daughter’s bedside. Katie’s hands were clamped over her breasts; Sarah gently drew them down and unbuttoned the nightgown.

Ellie winced. Katie was swollen, so rock-hard that a thin blue map of veins stood out, with tiny rivers of milk leaking from her nipples. At Sarah’s urging, Katie passively followed her to the bathroom. Ellie watched as Sarah matter-of-factly massaged her daughter’s painful breasts, coaxing a stream of milk into the sink.

“This is proof,” Ellie said flatly, finally. “Katie, look at your body. You did have a baby. This is the milk, for that baby.”

“Neh, lus mich gay,” Katie cried, now sobbing on the toilet seat.

Ellie set her jaw and crouched down in front of her. “You live on a dairy farm, for God’s sake. You know what’s happening to you right now. You . . . had . . . a baby.”

Katie shook her head. “Mein hatz ist fol.”

Ellie turned to Sarah. “What is she saying?”

The older woman stroked her daughter’s hair. “That there’s no milk; and that there was no baby. Katie says this is happening,” Sarah translated, “because her heart’s too full.”