The broad beam of light swept over her legs, then arched up the wall and the ceiling before repeating the circuit all over again. Katie came up on her elbows, heart pounding. Ellie was still asleep; that was a good thing. She crawled out of bed and knelt at the window. At first she could see nothing; then Samuel removed his hat and the moon caught the crown of his bright hair. Taking a deep breath, Katie slipped into her clothes and hurried out to meet him.

He was waiting with the flashlight, which he turned off the minute he saw her framed in the doorway. Once Katie walked outside, he caught her in his arms and pressed his lips against hers, hard. It made Katie freeze-he’d never moved this fast before-and she wedged her hands up between them to set her distance. “Samuel!” she said, and immediately he stepped back.

“I’m sorry,” Samuel murmured. “I am. It’s just that I feel like you’re slipping away.”

Katie lifted her eyes. She knew Samuel’s face as well as her own; they’d grown up as family, as friends. He’d chased her into a tree once when she was eleven. He’d kissed her for the first time when she was sixteen, behind Joseph Yoder’s calf shed. On the small of her back, she felt Samuel’s hands move restlessly.

Sometimes when she pictured her life, it was like the telephone poles that marched along the length of Route 340-year after year after year, stretching out all the way to the horizon. And when she saw herself like that, it was always with Samuel standing beside her. He was everything that was right for her; everything that was expected of her. He was her safety net. The thing was, most Plain folks never lifted their faces from the straight and narrow ground, to know that high above was the most wondrous tightrope you could ever have the chance to walk.

Samuel tipped his forehead against Katie’s. She could feel his breath, his words, falling onto her, and she opened her lips to receive them. “That baby wasn’t yours,” he said urgently.

“No,” she whispered.

He tilted his face so that their mouths came together, wide and sweet as the sea. Their kiss tasted of salt, and Katie knew there were tears on both of their cheeks, but she did not recall which of them had passed the sorrow to the other. She opened herself to Samuel as she had never done before, understanding that this was a debt he had come to collect.

Then Samuel drew away from her and kissed her eyelids. He held her face between his hands and murmured, “I’ve sinned.”

She raised her palms to cover his. “You haven’t,” she insisted.

“Yes. Let me finish.” Samuel swallowed. “That baby. That baby, it wasn’t ours.” He gathered Katie closer, burying his face in her hair. “It wasn’t ours, Katie. But I have been wishing it was.”

“Have you ever touched one?”

Adam looked up from the desk, smiling at the sight of Katie bent over one of his logbooks. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, sort of. You can’t grab them, you just sort of feel them come over you.”

“Like a wind?”

Adam set down his pen. “More like a shiver.”

Katie nodded, and very seriously turned back to her reading. This was the second time she’d visited Jacob this week-an unprecedented occurrence, appar ently-and she’d scheduled the visit on a day when she knew that Jacob was working at the college until the afternoon. When Adam sat down beside her, Katie smiled. “Tell me what it was like.”

“I was at an old hotel in Nantucket. I woke up in the middle of the night and found a woman looking out the window. She was wearing an old-fashioned dress, and the air was filled with this perfume-a scent I’d never smelled before, or since. I sat up and asked who she was, but she didn’t answer. And then I realized that I could see the windowsill and the wooden mullions right through her body. She completely ignored me, then walked right past the window, through me. It felt . . . chilly. Made the hair rise on the back of my neck.”

“Were you frightened?”

“Not really. She didn’t seem to know I was there. The next morning, I asked the proprietor, who told me that the hotel had been the home of a sea captain that drowned. It was supposedly haunted by his widow, who was still waiting for her husband to come home.”

“That’s so sad,” Katie said.

“Most ghost stories are.”

For a moment, Adam thought she was going to cry. He reached out and touched Katie’s head. “Her hair, it was like yours. Thick and straight and longer than I’d ever seen.” As she blushed, he sat back and crossed his arms over his bent knees. “Can I ask you a question now?”

“All right.”

“It’s not that I’m not incredibly flattered you’re so fascinated by my re search . . . but you’re the last person I would have expected to find it interesting.”

“Because I’m Plain, you mean?”

“Well, yeah.”

Katie touched her fingers to the words that Adam had typed out. “I know these ghosts,” she said. “I know what it’s like to move around in the world, but not really be a part of it. And I know what it’s like to have people stare right through you, and not believe what they are seeing.” Setting aside the book of research, Katie looked at Adam. “If I exist, why can’t they?”

Adam had once interviewed an entire bus of tourists who’d seen a battlefield at Gettysburg erupt with a battalion of soldiers who were not there. He’d recorded on infrared cameras the colder pockets of energy that surrounded a ghost. He had heard ghosts move crates in attics, slam doors, ring phones. Yet for all the years he had been doing his doctoral research, he’d had to fight for credibility.

Humbled, Adam reached for Katie’s hand. He squeezed it gently, and then raised it to his lips to kiss the inside of her wrist. “You are not a ghost,” he said.

George Callahan frowned at Lizzie’s plate. “Don’t you ever eat anything? You’re gonna blow over in a wind.”

The detective took a bite of the bagel in front of her. “How come you’re only happy when everyone around you is devouring something?”

“Must have something to do with being a lawyer.” He blotted his mouth with his napkin, then leaned back in his chair. “You’re going to need your energy today. You ever tried to get unsolicited information from the Amish?”

Lizzie let her mind spiral back. “Once,” she said. “That case with Crazy Charlie Lapp.”

“Oh, yeah-the schizophrenic kid who went off his meds and drove a stolen car down to Georgia. Well, take that case, and multiply the degree of difficulty by about a hundred.”

“George, why don’t you let me do my job? I don’t tell you how to try cases.”

“Sure you do. I just don’t listen.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table. “Most neonaticides don’t even make it to trial-they get plea-bargained. If the mother does get convicted, it’s on a minimal charge. You know why that is?”

“Because no one on a jury wants to believe a mother’s capable of killing her baby?”

“In part. But more often because the prosecution can’t pin a motive on the crime, which makes it seem less like murder.”

Lizzie stirred her coffee. “Ellie Hathaway might notice up an insanity defense.”

“She hasn’t yet.” George shrugged. “Look. I think this case is going to blow big, because of the Amish angle. It’s a chance to make the county attorney’s office shine.”

“It doesn’t hurt, of course, that this is an upcoming election year for you,” Lizzie said.

George narrowed his eyes. “It has nothing to do with me. This wasn’t Mary coming into the barn to deliver the infant Jesus. Katie Fisher went there intending to have a baby, kill it, and hide it.” He smiled at the detective. “Go prove me right.”

Ellie, Sarah, and Katie were in the kitchen pickling cucumbers when the car drove into the front yard. “Oh,” Sarah said, moving the curtains aside for a better look. “It’s that detective coming around again.”

Ellie’s hands froze in the middle of skinning a cucumber. “She’s here to question you all. Katie, go up to your room and don’t come back until I tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s the enemy, okay?” As Katie hurried upstairs, Ellie turned to Sarah. “You have to talk to her. Just tell her what you feel comfortable saying.”

“You won’t be here?”

“I’ll be keeping her away from Katie. That’s more important.”

Sarah nodded just as there was a knock from outside. Waiting for Ellie to leave the room, she crossed the kitchen and opened the door.

“Hello, Mrs. Fisher. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m-”

“I remember you,” Sarah said. “Would you like to come in?”

Lizzie nodded. “I’d like that very much. I’d also like to ask you a few questions.” She surveyed the kitchen, with the bottles sealing on the stove and the piles of cucumbers heaped upon the table. “Would that be all right?” When Sarah nodded stiffly, Lizzie took her notebook from her coat pocket. “Can you tell me a little about your daughter?”

“Katie’s a good girl. She is humble and giving and kind and she serves the Lord.”

Lizzie tapped her pencil against the paper, writing nothing at all. “She sounds like an angel, Mrs. Fisher.”

“No, just a good, Plain girl.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

Sarah twisted her hands beneath her apron. “There have been a few, since Katie came into her running-around years. But the most serious has been Samuel. He works the farm with my husband.”

“Yes, we’ve met. How serious is serious?”

“It’s not for me to say,” Sarah ventured, smiling shyly. “That would be Katie’s private business. And if they were thinking of marriage, it would be up to Samuel to go to the Schtecklimann, the go-between who’d come and ask Katie what her wishes are.”

Lizzie leaned forward. “So Katie doesn’t tell you everything about her personal life.”

“Of course not.”

“Did she tell you she was pregnant?”

Sarah looked down at the floor. “I don’t know.”

“At the risk of being rude, Mrs. Fisher, either she told you, or she didn’t.”

“She didn’t tell me right out, but she wouldn’t have volunteered that information, either. It’s a very personal thing.”

Lizzie bit back her retort. “You never noticed that her dresses were getting bigger? That she wasn’t menstruating?”

“I have had babies, Detective. I know the signs of pregnancy.”

“But would you have recognized them if they were intentionally being hidden?”

“I guess the answer is no,” Sarah softly conceded. “Still, it is possible that Katie didn’t know what was happening herself.”

“She grew up on a farm. And she watched you through your other pregnancy, right?” As Sarah bent her head, nodding, something sparked in Lizzie’s mind. “Has Katie ever exhibited a violent streak?”

“No. If anything, she was the opposite-always bringing in stray squirrels and birds, and feeding the calves whose mothers died birthing. Taking care of whoever needed caring.”

“Did she watch her little sister often?”

“Yes. Hannah was her shadow.”

“How did your youngest die, again?”

Sarah’s eyes shuttered as she stepped back from herself. “She drowned in a skating accident when she was seven.”

“I’m so sorry. Were you there at the time?”

“No, she and Katie were out at the pond by themselves.” When Lizzie did not ask another question, Sarah looked up at the detective, at the conclusion written across her face. “You cannot be thinking that Katie had anything to do with her own sister’s death!”

Lizzie raised her eyebrows. “Mrs. Fisher,” she murmured, “I never said I did.”

In a perfect world, Lizzie thought, Samuel Stoltzfus would be gracing the pages of magazines dressed in nothing but Calvin Klein underwear. Tall, strong, and blond, he was so classically lovely that a woman of any faith would have had trouble turning him away-but Lizzie had been questioning the young man for twenty minutes, and knew that even if he looked like a Greek god, he sure as hell didn’t have the smarts of Socrates. So far, although she’d verbally held up every single piece of medical evidence of his girlfriend’s pregnancy, Samuel wouldn’t budge from saying Katie hadn’t had a baby.

Maybe denial was catching, like the flu.

Exhaling heavily, Lizzie backed off. “Let’s try another tack. Tell me about your boss.”

“Aaron?” Samuel seemed surprised, and with good reason; all the other questions had been about his relationship with Katie. “He’s a good man. A very simple man.”

“He seemed sort of stubborn to me.”

Samuel shrugged. “He is used to doing things his way,” he said, then hastened to add, “but of course he should, since this is his farm.”

“And after you’re a member of the family? Won’t it be your farm, then, too?”

Samuel ducked his head, clearly uncomfortable. “That would be his decision.”

“Who else is going to take over the farm, especially once Katie marries? Unless he’s got a son waiting in the wings that no one’s mentioned.”

Without meeting her eye, Samuel said, “He has no sons anymore.”

Lizzie turned. “Was there another child that died? I was under the impression it was a little girl.”

“Yes, Hannah.” Samuel swallowed. “No one else died. I meant that he has no sons. Sometimes, with the English, I forget how to say it.”

Lizzie eyed the blond man. Samuel stood to inherit the farm-as long as he managed to claim Katie Fisher. Having Aaron Fisher’s grandchild would cement that deal. Had Katie killed the infant because she didn’t want to be tied to Samuel? Because she didn’t want him to inherit?

“Before the baby was found,” Lizzie asked, “were you and Katie having any fights?”

He hesitated. “I don’t think I have to tell you this.”

“Actually, Samuel, you do. Because your girlfriend’s on trial for murder here, and if you had any part in it you could be charged as an accessory. So-the fights?”

Samuel blushed. It made Lizzie stare; she’d never seen shame sprawled across the face of such a large man. “Just small things.”

“Such as?”

“Sometimes she didn’t want to kiss me good night.”

Lizzie grinned. “That’s a little like locking the barn door after the horse has run out.”

Samuel blinked at her. “I don’t understand.”

Now it was Lizzie’s turn to blush. “I just meant that a kiss seems fairly inconsequential once you’ve gotten her pregnant.”

His cheeks flamed brighter. “Katie did not have a baby.”

Back to square one. “Samuel, we’ve been over this. She had a baby. There’s medical proof.”

“I don’t know these English doctors, but I know my Katie,” he said. “She says she didn’t have that baby, and it’s true; she couldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” Samuel turned away.

“Because isn’t good enough, Samuel,” Lizzie said.

He turned around, his voice rising. “Because we have never made love!”

Lizzie was silent for a moment. “Just because she’s never slept with you,” the detective gently pointed out, “doesn’t mean she hasn’t slept with someone else.”

She waited for the words to sink in, the awful battering ram that knocked down the last of Samuel’s defenses. The big man curled into himself, the brim of his hat touching his knees, his arms folded tight around his middle.

Lizzie remembered a case she’d worked on years ago, where the girlfriend of a jewelry store manager had cheated on her boyfriend and gotten pregnant. Rather than admitting to it, she saved face by claiming the guy had raped her and going to court. This newborn’s murder might not hinge on an argument between Katie and Samuel, but the very opposite. Instead of admitting that she had slept with another man, going against her religious principles, hurting her family, and ruining her prospects with Samuel, Katie had simply gotten rid of the evidence of her transgression. Literally.

Lizzie watched Samuel’s shoulders shake with emotion. Patting him once on the back, she left him to come to terms with the truth: It was not that he didn’t believe Katie had had a baby; it was that he didn’t want to.

“Would she do that?” Samuel whispered, holding onto Ellie’s hands like a lifeline. “Would she do that to me?”

She had never believed that you could see a heart break, yet here she was watching it. And it was much like the time she’d watched a skyscraper demolished in Philly, floor crumbling into floor until there was nothing but a memory hanging in the air. “Samuel, I’m sorry. I barely know her well enough to make that judgment.”

“But did she say anything to you? Did she tell you his name?”

“We don’t know there was another ‘he,’” Ellie said. “The detective wants you to jump to conclusions, in the hope that you’ll slip up and tell her something the prosecution can use.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Samuel insisted.

“Of course not,” Ellie said dryly. “I’m sure they have plenty to work with right now.” In fact, just the thought of it sent her head spinning: in a nutshell, here was the prosecution’s motive-Katie committed murder to cover up an indiscretion.

Samuel looked at Ellie seriously. “I would do anything for Katie.”

“I know.” And Ellie did. The question was, just how far did Samuel’s promise extend? Could he simply be a very good actor, and have known all along about his girlfriend’s pregnancy? Even if Sarah hadn’t noticed, Samuel would have easily discovered physical differences in Katie during a simple embrace-and would naturally have known if he wasn’t the father. Without any Fisher sons, Samuel stood to inherit the farm-as long as he managed to claim Katie. A Lancaster County farm was a tremendous boon, the real estate value of some of these properties reaching into the millions. If Katie had given birth and then married the father of the child, Samuel would be left out in the cold. It was a clear motive for murder-but pointed at a very different suspect.

“I think you need to speak to Katie,” Ellie said gently. “I’m not the one who’s going to be able to give you the answers.”

“We were going to be together. She told me so.” Samuel’s voice was shaking; although no tears had fallen, they were shining in his eyes. Another thing about heartbreaks-you could not watch one without feeling your own heart suffer a hairline fracture as well. Samuel turned away from Ellie, his shoulders rounded. “I know that it’s the Lord’s way to forgive her, but I can’t do that right now. Right now, all I want to know is who she was with.”

Ellie nodded, and silently thought, You’re not the only one.

Vines twined around the footing of the railroad bridge, stretching toward the high water mark and the rivets that anchored steel to concrete. Katie rolled up the legs of her jeans and took off her shoes and socks, following Adam into the shallow water. Pebbles bit at the arches of her feet; on the slick, smoother stones, her heels slipped. As she reached for the pillar to steady herself, she felt Adam’s hands grasp her shoulders. “It’s December, 1878,” he whispered. “An ice storm. The Pennsylvania Line’s carrying two hundred and three passengers headed toward New York City for Christmas. The train derails there, just at the edge of the bridge, and the cars tumble over into the icy water. One hundred and eighty-six people die.”

His breath fanned against the side of her neck, and then just as suddenly, he stepped away from her. “Why aren’t there a hundred and eighty-six ghosts, then?” Katie asked.

“For all we know, there are. But the only one that’s been seen by a number of different people has been Edye Fitzgerald.” Adam walked back to the bank of the river and sat down to fiddle with a long, flat mahogany box. “Edye and John Fitzgerald were newlyweds, on their way to New York City for their honeymoon. John survived the crash, and supposedly kept going into the wreckage with the relief workers, calling out for his wife. After identifying her body, he went to New York City alone, took the honeymoon suite in some fancy hotel, and killed himself.”

“That’s a sin,” Katie said flatly.

“Is it? Maybe he was just trying to get back to Edye again.” Adam smiled faintly. “I’d like to check out that suite, though, and see if he’s haunting it.” He opened the cover of the wooden case. “Anyway, there are over twenty accounts of people who’ve seen Edye walking around in the water here, people who’ve heard her calling John’s name.”

He withdrew two long L-shaped rods from the box and twirled them in his hands like a sharpshooter. Katie watched, wide-eyed. “What can you do with those?”

“Catch a ghost.” At her shocked expression, he grinned. “You ever use dowsing rods? I guess not. People play around with these to find water, or even gold. But they’ll pick up on energy, too. Instead of pointing down, you’ll see them start to quiver.”

He began to walk around the cement pylon so soundlessly that the water barely whispered over his legs. His hands curved around the rods, his head bowed to his task.

She could not imagine her parents doing what John and Edye had done in the extremes of love. No, if a spouse died, that was the natural course of things, and the widow or widower went on with his business. Come to think of it, she’d never seen her Dat even give her Mam a quick kiss. But she could remember the way he kept his arm around her the whole day of Hannah’s funeral; the way he’d some times finish his meal and beam at Mam like she’d just hung the moon. Katie had always been taught that it was similar values and a simple life that kept a hus band and wife together-and after that, passion came privately. But who was to say it didn’t come before? That sigh pressing up from the inside of your chest; the ball of fire in the pit of your stomach when he brushed your arm; the sound of his voice curling around your heart-couldn’t those things bind a man and a woman forever, too?

Suddenly Adam stilled. His hands were shaking slightly as the rods jumped up and down. “There’s something . . . right here.”

Katie smiled. “A cement pillar.”

A dark shadow of disappointment passed over Adam’s face so quickly she wondered if she had imagined it. The rods began to jerk more forcefully. Adam wrenched away from the spot. “You think I’m making this up.”

“I don’t-”

“You don’t have to lie to me. I can see it on your face.”

“You don’t understand,” Katie began.

Adam thrust the rods at her. “Take these,” he challenged. “Feel it.”

Katie curled her hands over the warm spots his own hands had left. She stepped gingerly toward the place where Adam had been standing.

At first it was a shiver that ran up her spine. Then came an unspeakable sor row, falling over her like a fisherman’s net. Katie felt the rods tugging, as if some one was standing at the other end and grabbing onto them like a lifeline. She bit her lower lip, fighting to hold on, understanding that this restlessness, this unseen energy, this pain-this was a ghost.

Adam touched her shoulder, and Katie burst into tears. It was too much-the knowledge that the dead might still be here on earth; that all those years, all those times she’d seen Hannah, Katie hadn’t been losing her mind. She felt Adam’s arms close around her, and she tried to hold herself at a distance, embarrassed to find herself sobbing into his shirt. “Ssh,” he said, the way one would approach a wild, wary animal. “It’s all right.”

But it wasn’t all right. Was Hannah carrying around the same despair that Katie had sensed in Edye Fitzgerald? Was she still calling out for Katie to save her?

Adam’s lips were warm against Katie’s ear. “You felt her,” he whispered with awe, and Katie nodded against his palm.

Katie felt the quivering again, but this time it was coming from inside her. Adam’s eyes were bright, the blue you see when you twirl in a cornfield and fall dizzy onto your back to gaze up at the sky. With her heart pounding and her head spinning, she thought of Edye and John Fitzgerald. She thought of someone who would love her so, he’d spend eternity calling her name. “Katie,” Adam whispered, and bent his head.

She had been kissed before; dry, hard busses that felt like a bruise. Adam rubbed his mouth gently over hers, so that her lips tingled and her throat ached. She found herself leaning into him. He tasted of coffee and peppermint gum; he held her as if she was going to break.

Adam drew back suddenly. “My God,” he said, taking a step back. “Oh, my God.”

Katie tucked her hair behind her ear and blushed, staring at the ground. What had gotten into her? This was not the way for a Plain girl to carry on. But then, she wasn’t Plain now, was she? Wearing these clothes Jacob had gotten her; with her hair English-styled loose and free, she felt like someone entirely different. Someone who might believe in ghosts. Someone who might believe in love at first sight, in love that lasts forever.

Finally, gathering her courage, Katie looked up. “I’m sorry.”

Slowly, Adam shook his head. His mouth, his beautiful mouth, quirked at the corner. He lifted her palm and kissed the center of it, a token to hold tight and slip into her pocket as a keepsake. “Don’t be,” he said, and took her into his arms again.

Ellie stormed into the bedroom she shared with Katie, slamming the door behind her.

“Did she leave?”

The question stopped Ellie in her tracks. “Who?”

“The detective. The woman who drove up before.”

God, she had completely forgotten about Lizzie Munro roaming the farm. “As far as I know she’s out interviewing the goddamned herd,” Ellie snapped. “Sit up. You and I, Katie Fisher, are going to have a talk.”

Startled, Katie curled from her bed into a sitting position. “What-what’s the matter?”

“This is what’s the matter: The investigator for the prosecution is downstairs getting a precious commodity-facts-from your friends and relatives. And me, I’ve been cooling my heels here for a week, and can’t even get a straight answer out of you.” Katie opened her mouth, but Ellie silenced her by raising her hand. “Don’t. Don’t even think about saying that you’ve already told me the truth. You know that baby you didn’t have? Your boyfriend Samuel just told me that you didn’t sleep with him to conceive it.”

Katie’s eyes went wide, so that a ring of white shone around the blue irises. “Well, no. I wouldn’t do that before taking marriage vows.”

“Of course not,” Ellie said sarcastically. “So now we have a virgin birth.”

“I didn’t-”

“You didn’t have a baby! You didn’t have sex!” Ellie’s voice rose, shaking. “God, Katie, how do you expect me to defend you?” She stood above Katie, her anger flowing over the girl like heat. “You have a guy walking around out there devastated to find out that he’s not your one and only. You duck your head and yes, yes the bishop when he suggests that you might have had intercourse. But you sit here like some damn block of cement, unwilling to budge the tiniest bit to give me something to work with!”

Katie bent back under the force of Ellie’s wrath. She crossed her arms over her stomach and turned away from Ellie. “I love Samuel, I do.”

“And who else, Katie? Who else?”

“I don’t know.” By now she was sobbing. Her hands crept up to cover her face; her kapp became unpinned and fell to the floor. “I don’t know. I don’t know who it was!”

“We’re talking about a sexual partner, for God’s sake-not what cereal you had for breakfast a week ago. It’s not something that you typically forget!”

Katie wound herself into a fetal position on the bed, crying and rocking her body back and forth. “What aren’t you telling me?” Ellie asked. “Were you drunk?”

“No.”

“High?”

“No!” Katie buried her face in the pillow. “I don’t remember who touched me!”

Katie’s cries wound around Ellie’s chest, squeezing so tightly she could barely find the strength to breathe. With a groan of surrender, she sat down on the mattress and gathered the girl close, stroking her hair and whispering words of comfort.

Katie felt like a child in her arms. An overgrown toddler who’d knocked over a vase with a ball, never knowing that she’d done something that would make the rest of the world rear up and roar. A big child, but one just as lost, just as needy, just as desperate for forgiveness.

A terrible suspicion began to rise in Ellie, filling her heart and lungs and mind with a powerful and sudden rage. She clamped it down, calming herself before she lifted Katie’s chin. “Did someone rape you?”

Katie stared at her, her swollen eyes drifting closed. “I don’t remember,” she whispered.

For the first time since meeting Katie, Ellie believed what she was saying.

“Oh, Christ.” Lizzie lifted her loafer and stared at the muck and manure stuck to the sole. They just weren’t paying her enough for this interrogation, and Aaron Fisher could go hang for all she cared. She raised her head and sighed, then started off across the field again. Fisher, seeing her approach, pulled his team of mules to a stop.

“If you are looking for the way home,” Fisher said in accented English, “it’s that way.” He pointed toward the main road.

Lizzie bared her teeth at him. Just her luck to find an Amishman who fancied himself a stand-up comic. “Thanks, but I’ve already found what I’ve been searching for.”

That brought him up short. Lizzie let him stew a minute, imagining all the grisly pieces of evidence that might turn up in a murder investigation. “What would that be, Detective?”

“You.” Lizzie shaded her eyes. “I wonder if you’ve got a minute.”

“I have many minutes, all of them used toward a common purpose.” He clucked to the horses, and Lizzie jogged beside them until the farmer stopped again.

“Care to share it with me?”

“To run my farm,” Aaron said. “If you will excuse-”

“I’d think you might be able to spare a few precious seconds to save your daughter from going to jail, Mr. Fisher.”

“My daughter is not going to jail,” he said stubbornly.

“It’s not for you to decide.”

The farmer took off his hat. He looked tired, suddenly, and much older than Lizzie had originally thought. “It’s not for you to decide either, but for the Lord. I trust in His judgment, as does my daughter. Good day, now.” He tapped the reins, and the mules jumped forward in unison, the plowing equipment groaning through the earth.

Lizzie watched him go. “Too bad God won’t be sitting on that jury,” she murmured, and then began the long walk back to the farmhouse.

Ellie finished wiping up the last of the pickling spices that dusted the kitchen table. It was beastly hot in the kitchen-God, what she’d do for air conditioning, or an electric fan-but she had promised Sarah she’d take care of the cleanup detail, since she’d missed a good portion of the actual canning work while she was consoling Katie.

And what was she to make of that last confrontation? Mysteries were beginning to fall into place in her mind, as neatly as tumblers in a lock-Katie’s selective amnesia, her denial of the pregnancy and the birth, Samuel’s stunned expression when they’d last spoken. For the first time since she’d arrived at the farm, Ellie did not feel revulsion at the thought of the neonaticide Katie had committed, but pity.

As a defense attorney she’d supported her share of clients who’d committed heinous crimes, but she instinctively worked harder when she could make herself understand what had brought them to that point. The woman who’d murdered her husband in his sleep was less of a monster when you factored in that the man had beaten her for thirty years. The rapist with a swastika tattoo across the bridge of his nose was far less intimidating when you thought of him as a boy being abused by his stepfather. And the Amish girl who killed her newborn couldn’t be forgiven, but certainly understood, if the father of the child had sexually assaulted her.

On the other hand, it was the final nail in Katie’s coffin. In terms of motive, it made very good sense for a young woman to want to kill the baby conceived in an act of rape. Which meant that-no matter how much Ellie might sympathize with Katie, no matter how much she hoped to get her counseling-no mention of rape would ever be made during her defense.

Ellie wrung out the sponge in the sink. She wondered if Katie would start to confide in her now. She wondered if she ought to go upstairs again, so that Katie would not awaken alone.

At the sound of the door opening behind her, Ellie shut off the faucet and wiped her hands on the voluminous apron she’d borrowed from Sarah. “I’m glad you’re back,” she said, facing away from the door.

“I must say, that’s a surprise.”

Ellie whirled around to find Lizzie Munro standing there instead of Sarah. The investigator’s gaze traveled from Ellie’s sweat-soaked hair to the hem of her apron.

Folding her arms across her waist, Ellie straightened, trying to look as commanding as possible given her attire. “You ought to get that crime scene tape down. There are people here trying to get on with their lives.”

“It’s not my tape. Call the state police.”

“Give me a break, Detective.”

Lizzie shrugged. “Far as I’m concerned, they should have taken it down days ago. We have everything we need.”

“You think you do.”

“This case will be won on forensic evidence, Ms. Hathaway. Clear away the smoke and mirrors, and there’s a dead baby left behind.”

Ellie smirked. “You sound like a prosecutor.”

“Professional hazard.”

“Interesting, then, that for such an open-and-shut case you’d feel the need to interview the Fishers.”

“Even here in the shadow of Philadelphia, we know how to cover our asses during an investigation.”

Ellie took a step forward. “Look, if you think this is about pitting a big-city legal operation against a small-town county attorney, you can tell George right now-”

“Tell George yourself. I’m not a courier.” Lizzie glanced up the stairs. “I’d like to speak to Katie.”

Ellie laughed out loud. “I bet you would. Personally, I’d like a margarita and central air.” She shrugged. “You knew when you came here I wasn’t going to let you near my client. And I’m sure George will understand when you tell him you couldn’t get a statement from the defendant or her father.”

Lizzie’s eyes widened. “How did you-?”

“Inside advantage,” Ellie said smugly.

The detective started toward the door. “I can see how this place would start to wear on you,” she said, gesturing toward Ellie’s apron. “Sorry to interrupt your. . . uh, big-city legal operation.”

Ellie stared at the door as it closed after Lizzie. Then she took off the apron, folded it neatly over a chair, and went to check on her client.

Levi craned his neck one more time to make sure that Aaron and Samuel were still busy in the fields, then ran the flat of his hand along the curved hood of Lizzie Munro’s car. It was as red as the apples that grew beside his Aunt Frieda’s house, and as smooth as the tiny waterfall that ran over the dam in the Fishers’ creek. The metal was warm to the touch. Levi closed his eyes and imagined sitting behind the wheel, revving the gas, flying down the road.

“Ever seen one of these before?”

The voice nearly made him jump out of his skin. Levi turned, an apology trembling on his lips, and found himself staring at the lady detective who’d come the day they’d found the dead baby. “A sixty-six Mustang convertible, one of the last of a dying breed.” She set her hand just where his had been, patting it like it had feelings, like it was one of their own horses. “Want to look at the engine?”

She reached inside the car and turned the ignition, then suddenly the hood popped up. The detective released the latch and opened it to reveal its spinning, working insides. “A small-block V8, with a three-speed manual transmission. This sweetheart can fly.” She smiled at Levi. “You ever travel over a hundred miles an hour?”

Eyes wide, Levi shook his head.

“Well, if you see any state troopers-neither have I.” She winked at him, then reached inside again. The car immediately stilled, leaving behind the faintest trace of exhaust.

The detective grinned at Levi. “I know you’re not the chauffeur-so what do you do around here?”

Levi nodded toward the fields. “I work with Samuel.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“He’s my cousin.”

The detective raised her brows. “I guess you know Katie pretty well then, too.”

“Well, ja. Everyone knew they were gonna be getting married soon enough. They’ve been courting for a year, now.”

“What’s taking him so long to ask?”

Levi shrugged. “It’s not the wedding season yet, for one thing. That’s November, after the harvest. But even that’s only going to happen if Samuel can keep her from picking fights.”

“Katie?”

“She makes Samuel wonderful mad sometimes.” Levi gently reached out with his thumb, hoping the detective couldn’t see, and touched the side of the car again.

“Maybe they should just find other people to court,” the detective suggested.

“That would be even worse for Samuel. He’s been after Katie forever.”

The detective nodded solemnly. “I suppose that her parents are expecting to get Samuel as a son-in-law, too.”

“Sure.”

“Would they be disappointed if Samuel and Katie broke up?”

Levi squinted at her. “Broke up?”

“Split. Started seeing other people.” The detective sighed. “Found others to court.”

“Well, Sarah’s counting on a wedding come fall. And Aaron, he’d be sorry, for sure.”

“Seems like he might be angry, more than sorry. He comes off as a pretty strict dad.”

“You don’t know him,” Levi said. “Even if Katie wouldn’t marry Samuel, he wouldn’t cut her off like he did Jacob.”

“Jacob,” the detective repeated.

“Ja, you know. Katie’s brother.”

“Jacob. Of course.” She smiled at Levi and opened the driver’s door to the car, then revved the engine. To his surprise, she held out her hand to him. “Young man, you’ve been an unexpected delight.” They shook, and then Levi watched her drive off in the V8 Mustang, gradually picking up speed.

In the middle of the night, Katie felt a hand cover her nose and mouth. Thrashing at the pillows, forgetting where she was for a moment, she grabbed at the arm and bit at the fingers. She heard a muffled oath, and then the hand disappeared-only to be replaced by the soft, insistent pressure of a mouth against hers.

In that instant the sleep surrounding her melted away and she was in Jacob’s apartment, on his couch, Adam’s body spread over hers like a quilt. He drew back, touching his forehead to Katie’s. “I can’t believe you bit me like that.”

In the darkness, she smiled. “I can’t believe you scared me like that.” Katie rubbed her hand over his cheek, rough with a night’s beard. “I’m glad you decided to stay.”

She could see his teeth flash. “Me too,” Adam said.

He’d put off going to New Orleans for another week. And Katie had constructed an elaborate story about staying over at Mary Esch’s house, all the while planning to come to State College instead. Even her mother did not know this time that she was at Jacob’s.

Adam’s finger traced a path from her throat to her collarbone. “I’ve wanted to do this all day. Do you realize your brother didn’t even go to the bathroom between four and nine tonight?”

Katie giggled. “I’m sure he did.”

“No. I know, because the last time I touched you, it was just after lunch.” He lay on his side, sharing her pillow, so close that his breath fell into her own mouth.

She stretched forward, just enough to kiss him. It was new to her, being the leader. She still felt shy every time she kissed Adam, instead of letting him kiss her. But once, when she had done it, he’d raised her hand to his chest, and she felt the rapid tattoo of his heart. A strange thing, to think she had that power over him.

He pinned her on her back and leaned over her, his hair falling to tangle with her own. She let her mind run like a river, let her arms reach and grab hold. She felt Adam’s hands moving over her shoulders, sloping down her sides.

And then they were underneath her T-shirt. His palm burned like a brand on the skin of her breast. Her eyes flew open, and she began to shake her head. “Adam,” she whispered, tugging at his hair. “Adam! You can’t!”

Now her heart was hammering, and her stomach flipped with fear. Plain boys didn’t do this, at least not the ones she’d known. She thought of Samuel Stoltzfus, with his serious eyes and his slow smile-Samuel, who had driven her home from the singing last Sunday and had blushed when he held her hand to help her out of the courting buggy.

Adam spoke, a quiver against her own throat. “Please, Katie. If you just let me look at you, I’ll do whatever you want.”

Too frightened to move, she hesitated, then yielded. Adam inched her T-shirt up, exposing her navel, her ribs, the pink beads of her nipples. “You see,” he whis pered, “there’s nothing plain about you.”

He tugged the fabric back down and gathered her into his arms. “You’re shaking.”

Katie buried her face against his neck. “I . . . I’ve never done that before.”

Adam kissed her callused hand. It made her feel cherished, as if she were a princess instead of a farm girl. Then he sat up, untangling himself from her arms.

Katie frowned, thinking that she’d done something wrong; thinking that she hadn’t done enough. “Where are you going?”

“I made you a promise. I said I’d do whatever you wanted, if you let me see you. I’m guessing that right now, you want me to go away.”

She sat up, cross-legged, and reached for him. “That’s not what I want,” she said.

It had been a long, strenuous day for Samuel, working beside Aaron in the fields. The whole way home he’d watched Silver plodding along, and he’d been unaware of Levi’s chatter. He could not stop thinking about Katie, about what she might have done. What he wanted was a hot meal, a hotter shower, and the sweet oblivion that came with sleep.

At his parents’ home, he unhitched his buggy and led the horse into the barn. There was another buggy in the yard; someone visiting with his mother, maybe. Gritting his teeth at the thought of being polite, Samuel lumbered heavily onto the front porch, where he stood for a moment gathering his thoughts before heading inside.

He was staring at the main road, watching the cars cross with their bright headlights and throaty engines, when the front door opened behind him. His mother stood there, surrounded by the soft yellow light that spilled from inside the house. “Samuel! What are you doing out here?” She reached for his arm and dragged him into the kitchen, where Bishop Ephram and Lucas the deacon were sitting with steaming cups of coffee. “We’ve been waiting for you,” Samuel’s mother scolded. “Sometimes I think you come home via Philadelphia.”

Samuel smiled, a slow unraveling. “Ja, you can’t keep Silver from the entrance ramps to those fancy highways.”

He sat down, nodding at the two men, who couldn’t seem to look him in the eye. His mother excused herself, and a moment later Samuel heard her heavy footsteps treading up the stairs. Steepling his fingers in front of him, he tried to act calm, but inside his stomach was rolling like the tiller in the fields. He had heard of what it was like to be called to account for your sins, but never experienced it firsthand. From the looks of things, the bishop and the deacon didn’t like the prospect any more than Samuel himself.

The bishop cleared his throat. “We know what it’s like to be a young man,” Ephram began. “There are certain temptations . . .” The voice trailed off, unraveling at the edges like one of Samuel’s mother’s balls of yarn.

Samuel looked from Lucas to Ephram. He wondered what Katie had told them. He wondered if Katie had told them anything at all.

Katie, for whom he would have laid down his life; for whom he would have gladly been shunned for six weeks’ time; with whom he’d wanted to spend the rest of his days, filling a house with children and serving God. Katie, who had had a baby.

Samuel bowed his head. Any minute now, they’d ask him to come to church to make his things right, and if they asked him, he’d go, as was expected. You didn’t argue once the bishop laid a sin against you; it just wasn’t done. But suddenly Samuel realized that this awkward hesitation of Ephram’s was a gift. If Samuel spoke first, if Samuel spoke now-that sin might never be laid against him at all.

“Lucas, Ephram,” he said, in a voice so steady that it could not be his own, “I want to marry Katie Fisher. I will tell you and the preachers and all our brothers and sisters this if you wish next Gemeesunndaag.”

A broad smile split the white mass of Ephram’s beard. He turned to the deacon and nodded, satisfied.

Samuel tightened his fingers on his knees, almost to the point of pain. “I want to marry Katie Fisher,” he repeated. “And I will. But you should know something else right now-I was not the father of her baby.”