When George Callahan stood up and roared his objection, I had to stop myself from seconding his motion. God, what on earth was I thinking? I came to East Paradise burned out; taking on this girl’s case was the last thing I wanted to do-and now I had volunteered myself to be Katie Fisher’s warden. Through a haze of disbelief I heard the judge rule against the prosecutor; set bail at $20,000 with provisions, and put me into a prison I’d created for myself.

Suddenly Frank and Leda were standing in front of me, Leda smiling through her tears and Frank staring at me with his solemn dark eyes. “You sure you’re all right with this, Ellie?” he asked.

Leda answered for me. “Of course she is. Why, she’s saving Katie for us.”

I glanced down at the girl beside me, still huddled in her chair. Since our brief interlude in the supply room, she hadn’t said a word. She flicked her gaze at me-I saw the bright blaze of resentment. Immediately, my hackles rose. Did she think I was doing this for my own health?

I narrowed my eyes, prepared to give a piece of my mind, but was stopped by a soft touch on my arm. An older, worn version of Katie decked out in full Amish costume waited for my attention. “My daughter thanks you,” she said haltingly. “I thank you. But my husband will not want an Englischer staying with us.”

Leda turned on her. “If Bishop Ephram said it’s all right to talk to an English lawyer, he’s going to say it’s all right for that same lawyer to meet the bail conditions. And if the whole community is willing to bend the rules for Katie’s welfare, Sarah, couldn’t you just once stand with them instead of by your stubborn husband’s side?”

In my whole life, I’d never heard Leda raise her voice. Yet here she was, practically yelling at her sister, until the other woman was cowering beneath the words. Leda slipped her arm through mine. “Come along, Ellie,” she said. “You’ll want to be packing up your things.” She started out of the courthouse, stopping once to look over her shoulder at Sarah and her daughter. “You heard the judge. Katie must be with Ellie at all times. So let’s go.”

I let Leda drag me out of the district court, and felt the heat of Katie Fisher’s stare burning into my back.

The road to the Fisher farm ran parallel to a creek, which then cut behind their land to form the rear edge of their hundred acres. This world was a kaleidoscope of color: kelly green corn, red silos, and above it all, a sky as wide and as blue as a robin’s egg. But what struck me the most was the smell, a mixture of notes as distinctive as any city perfume: the sweat of horses, honeysuckle, the rich tang of overturned earth. If I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, magic happened: I was eleven again and here to spend the summer.

We had dropped off Frank and picked up my suitcases, and now, an hour later, Leda was turning up the long driveway that led to the Fishers’ home. Staring out the window, I saw a pair of men driving a team of mules across a field. The animals hauled a tremendous, old-fashioned piece of equipment-God only knew what it was. It seemed to be tossing up tufts of hay that were already lying on the ground. At the sound of the car on the gravel, the bigger man looked up, hauled on the reins, and then took off his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He shaded his eyes and glanced toward Leda’s car, then handed the reins to the smaller fellow beside him and took off at a dead run for the farmhouse.

He got there ten seconds after the car rolled to a stop. Leda and I stepped out first, then let Katie and Sarah out of the backseat. The man, broad and blond, began speaking words that made no sense to me-the first time I considered that the English Katie had so carefully put before the judge was not her first language, nor that of the people I was going to be moving in with. Sarah answered back, equally unintelligible.

My high heels wobbled on the gravel. I stripped off my suit jacket, uncomfortable in the heat, and studied the man who had come to greet us.

He was too young to be the Father from Hell who had been introduced in absentia in the courtroom. A brother, maybe. But then I caught him staring at Katie with a look that was anything but brotherly. I glanced at Katie, and noticed she was not looking at him the same way.

All of a sudden, in the run of language, there came a word I knew-my own name. Sarah gestured to me, smiled uncomfortably, and then nodded to the blond man. He took my suitcase from the trunk and set it down beside him, then offered me his hand to shake. “I am Samuel Stoltzfus,” he said. “Thank you for taking care of my Katie.”

Did he notice the way Katie stiffened at the possessive claim? Did anyone but me?

Hearing the metallic clop of hooves and harness behind me, I turned to see someone leading a horse into the barn. Wiry and muscular, the man had a thick red beard just beginning to sport streaks of gray. Beneath his black trousers he wore a pale blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He glanced at us, briefly frowning at the sight of Leda’s car. Then he continued into the barn, only to reappear a moment later.

Ignoring everyone else, he went straight to Sarah and began to speak quietly but firmly to her in their language. Sarah bowed her head, a willow branch under a wind. But Leda took a step forward and began talking back to him. She pointed to Katie, and to me, and shook her fists. Her eyes snapping with frustration, she set her hands on my shoulders and shoved me forward, into Aaron Fisher’s scrutiny.

I had watched men step apart from themselves at the moment they were sentenced to life in prison; I had seen the blankness in a witness’s eyes when she recounted the night she was attacked; but never had I seen a detachment like I saw on that man’s face. He held himself in check, as if admitting to his pain might crack him into a thousand pieces; as if we were age-old adversaries; as if he knew, deep down, that he’d already been beaten.

I held out my hand. “It is a pleasure.”

Aaron turned away without touching me. He approached his daughter, and the world fell away, so that when he tipped his forehead against Katie’s and whispered to her with tears in his eyes, I ducked my head to offer them privacy. Katie nodded, starting for the house with her father’s arm locked around her shoulders.

In a tight knot, Samuel, Sarah, and Leda followed, talking heatedly in their dialect. I stood alone in the driveway, the breeze blowing my silk shell against my back, the sun sugaring new freckles on my shoulders. From the barn came the stamp and whinny of a horse.

I sat down on one suitcase and stared in the direction of the house. “Yeah,” I said softly. “It’s nice to meet you too.”

To my amazement, the Fisher home was not that much different from the one I’d grown up in. Braided rag rugs were scattered across the hardwood floors, a bright quilt sat folded over the back of a rocking chair, an intricately carved hutch held an assortment of delft china bowls and teacups. I think, in a way, I’d been expecting to step back into Little House on the Prairie-these were people, after all, who willingly set aside modern conveniences. But there was an oven, a refrigerator, even a washing machine that looked like one my grandmother had had in the 1950s. My confusion must have shown, because Leda materialized by my elbow. “They all run on gas. It’s not the appliances they don’t want; it’s the electricity. Getting power from public utility lines-well, it means you’re linked to the outside world.” She pointed to a lamp, showing me the thin tubing that piped in the propane from a tank hidden beneath its base. “Aaron will let you stay here. He doesn’t like it, but he’s going to do it.”

I grimaced. “Marvelous.”

“It will be,” Leda said, smiling. “I think you’re going to be surprised.”

The others had remained in the kitchen, leaving me alone with Leda in a living room of sorts. Bookshelves were filled with titles I could not make out-German, I assumed, from the lettering. On the wall was a carefully printed family tree, Leda’s name listed just above Sarah’s.

No television, no phone, no VCR. No Wall Street Journal sprawled across the couch, no jazz CD humming in the background. The house smelled of lemon wax and was warm to the point of suffocation. My heart began to pound in my chest. What had I gotten myself into?

“Leda,” I said firmly, “I can’t do this.”

Without responding, she sat down on the couch, a nondescript brown corduroy with lace antimacassars. When had I last seen those?

“You have to take me back with you. We’ll figure something out. I can come here from your place every morning. Or I can have an ex parte meeting with the judge to find an alternative.”

Leda folded her hands in her lap. “Are you really so afraid of them,” she asked, “or is it just that you’re afraid of yourself?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Am I? Ellie, you’re a perfectionist. You’re used to taking charge and turning things to your own advantage. But all of a sudden you’re stuck in a place that’s as foreign to you as a Calcutta bazaar.”

I sank down beside her and buried my face in my hands. “At least I’ve read about Calcutta.”

Leda patted my back. “Honey, you’ve dealt with Mafia bosses, even though you aren’t part of the Mob.”

“I didn’t move in with Jimmy ‘the Boar’ Pisano while I was defending him, Leda.”

Well, she had nothing to say to that. After a moment she sighed. “It’s just a case, Ellie. And you’ve always been willing to do anything to win a case.”

We both looked into the kitchen, where Katie and Sarah-relatives of mine, once removed-stood side by side at the sink. “If it was just a case, I wouldn’t be here.”

Leda nodded, conceding that I’d gone out of my way-and realizing that she should go out of hers. “All right. I’ll give you some ground rules. Help without being asked; Plain folks put lots of store in what you do, and less in what you say. It won’t matter to them that you don’t know anything about farming or dairying-what counts is that you’re trying to lend a hand.”

“Forget farming-I know nothing about being Amish.”

“They won’t expect you to. And there’s nothing you need to know. They’re folks like you and me. Good ones and bad ones, easygoing ones and ones with tempers, some quick to help you out and others who’ll turn the other way when they see you coming. Tourists, they see the Amish as saints or as a sideshow. If you want this family to accept you, you just treat them like regular people.”

As if the recollection had hurt her, she stood suddenly. “I’m going to go,” Leda said. “As much as Aaron Fisher dislikes having you here, he dislikes having me here even more.”

“You can’t leave yet!”

“Ellie,” Leda said gently, “you’ll be fine. I survived, didn’t I?”

I narrowed my eyes. “You left.”

“Well, one day you will too. Just keep remembering that, and the day will be here sooner than you think.” She tugged me into the kitchen, where the conversation abruptly stopped. Everyone glanced up, slightly puzzled, it seemed, to find me still there. “I’m going to take off now,” Leda said. “Katie, maybe you could show Ellie your room?”

It struck me: this is what children do. When relatives come to visit, when friends of their own arrive, they take them into their own territory. Show off the dollhouse, the baseball card collection. Reluctantly, Katie forced a smile. “This way,” she said, starting for the stairs.

I gave Leda a quick, tight hug, and then turned toward Katie. I squared my shoulders and followed her. And no matter how much I wanted to, I did not let myself look back.

As I walked behind Katie, I noticed how heavily she leaned on the banister. She’d just had a baby, after all-most women were still hospitalized, yet here Katie was playing hostess. At the top of the landing, I touched her shoulder. “Are you . . . feeling okay?”

She stared at me blankly. “I am fine, thank you.” Turning, she led me to her bedroom. It was clean and neat, but hardly the room of a teenager. No Leonardo posters, no Beanie Babies scattered about, no collection of lip gloss jars littering the dresser. There was nothing, in fact, on the walls; the only individuality in the room came from the rainbow of quilts that covered the two twin beds.

“You can have that bed,” Katie said, and I went to sit down on it before her words registered. She expected me to stay in this room, her room, while I was living on the farm.

Hell, no. It was bad enough that I had to be here at all; if I couldn’t even have my privacy at night, all bets were off. I took a deep breath, fighting for a polite way to tell Katie that I would not, under any circumstances, be sharing a bedroom with her. But Katie was wandering around the room, touching the tall neck of the ladderback chair and smoothing her quilt, and then getting down on her hands and knees to look underneath the bed. Finally, she sat back on her heels. “They took my things,” she said, her voice small.

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. Someone came in here and took my things. My night-gown. My shoes.”

“I’m sure that-”

She turned on me. “You’re sure of nothing,” she challenged.

Suddenly I realized that if I stayed in this room, sleeping beside Katie, I wouldn’t be the only one incapable of keeping secrets. “I was going to say that I’m sure the police searched your room. They must have found something to make them feel confident enough to charge you.” Katie sat down on her own bed, her shoulders slumped. “Look. Why don’t we start by having you tell me what happened yesterday morning?”

“I didn’t kill any baby. I didn’t even have a baby.”

“So you’ve said.” I sighed. “Okay. You may not like me being here, and I certainly could find a thousand other things I’d rather be doing, but thanks to Judge Gorman, you and I are going to be stuck with each other for some time. I have a deal with my clients: I won’t ask you if you committed the crime, not ever. And in return, you tell me the truth whenever I ask you anything else.” Leaning forward, I caught her gaze. “You want to tell me you didn’t kill that baby? Go right ahead. I couldn’t care less if you did or didn’t, because I’ll still stand up for you in court no matter what and not make a personal judgment. But lying about having the baby-something that’s been proven a fact-well, Katie, that just makes me angry.”

“I’m not lying.”

“I can count at least three medical experts who’ve already gone on record saying that your body shows signs of recent delivery. I can wave a blood test in your face that proves the same thing. So how can you sit here and tell me you didn’t have the baby?”

As a defense attorney, I already knew the answer-she could sit there and tell me because she believed it, one hundred percent. But before I even contemplated running with an insanity defense, I needed to make sure Katie Fisher wasn’t taking me for a ride. Katie didn’t act crazy, and she functioned normally. If this kid was insane, then I was Marcia Clark.

“How can you sit there,” Katie said, “and tell me you’re not judging me?”

Her words slapped me with surprise. I, the suave defense attorney, the one with a winning record and a list of credentials as long as my arm, had made the cardinal mistake of mentally convicting a client before the right to a fair trial. A fair trial in which I was supposed to represent her. She had lied about having the baby, and I couldn’t push that aside without wondering what else she might be lying about-a mindset that placed me more in line with a prosecutor than a defense attorney.

I had coolly defended the rights of rapists, murderers, and pedophiles. But because this girl had killed her own newborn, an act I simply could not get my head around, I wanted her to be locked away.

I closed my eyes. Allegedly killed, I reminded myself.

“Is it that you can’t remember?” I asked, deliberately softening my voice.

Katie’s eyes met mine, wide and sea blue. “I went to sleep on Thursday night. I woke up Friday morning and came down to make breakfast. That’s all there is to it.”

“You don’t remember going into labor. You don’t remember walking out to the barn.”

“No.”

“Is there anyone who saw you sleeping all night?” I pressed.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t awake to see.”

Sighing, I rapped my hands on the mattress I was sitting on. “What about the person who sleeps here?”

Katie’s face drained of color; she seemed far more upset by that question than by anything else I’d asked her. “No one sleeps there.”

“You don’t remember feeling that baby come out of you,” I said, my voice growing thick with frustration. “You don’t remember holding it close, and wrapping it in that shirt.” We both glanced down, where I was cradling an imaginary infant in my arms.

For a long minute, Katie stared at me. “Have you ever had a baby?”

“This isn’t about me,” I said. But one look at her face told me she knew I wasn’t telling the truth, either.

There were pegs on the walls, but no closets. Katie’s dresses took up three of them, another three were empty on the opposite wall. My suitcase lay open on the bed, stuffed to the gills with jeans and blouses and sundresses. After a moment’s consideration, I pulled out a single dress, hung it on the peg, and then zipped the suitcase shut again.

A knock came on the door as I was hauling my luggage to the corner of the room, behind a rocking chair. “Come on in.”

Sarah Fisher entered, carrying a stack of towels that nearly obliterated her face. She set them down on a dresser. “You have found everything you need?”

“Yes, thank you. Katie showed me around.”

Sarah nodded stiffly. “Dinner’s at six,” she said, and she turned her back on me.

“Mrs. Fisher,” I called out before I could stop myself, “I know this isn’t easy for you.”

The woman stopped in the doorway, her hand braced on the frame. “My name is Sarah.”

“Sarah, then.” I smiled, a forced smile, but at least one of us was trying. “If there’s anything you’d like to ask me about your daughter’s case, please feel free.”

“I do have a question.” She crossed her arms and stared at me. “Are you secure in your faith?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you Episcopalian? Catholic?”

Speechless, I shook my head. “How does my religion have anything to do with the fact that I’m representing Katie?”

“We get a lot of people coming through here who think they want to be Plain. As if that’s the answer to all the problems in their lives,” Sarah scoffed.

Amazed at her audacity, I said, “I’m not here to become Amish. In fact, I wouldn’t be here at all, except for the fact that I’m keeping your daughter out of jail.”

We stared at each other, a standoff. Finally, Sarah turned away, picking up a quilt on the end of one twin bed and refolding it. “If you aren’t Episcopalian or Catholic, what do you believe in?”

I shrugged. “Nothing.”

Sarah hugged the quilt to her chest, surprised by my answer. She didn’t say a word, but she didn’t have to: she was wondering how on earth I could possibly think that it was Katie who needed help.

After my confrontation with Sarah, I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, and then Katie came upstairs for a rest-something, I could tell, that was unprecedented in the household. To give Katie her privacy, I decided to explore the grounds. I stopped in the kitchen, where Sarah was already beginning to cook dinner, to tell her my plans.

The woman couldn’t have heard a word I said. She was staring at my arms and legs as if I were walking around naked. Which to her, I guess, I was. Blushing, she whipped back to face the counter. “Yes,” she said. “You go on.”

I walked along the raspberry patch, behind the silo, out toward the fields. I ventured into the barn, meeting the lazy eyes of the cows chained at their milking stalls. I gingerly touched the bright crime-scene tape, scouting for clues. And then I wandered until finding the creek, where I’d been ever since.

When I used to stay at Leda and Frank’s as a young girl, I’d spend hours lying belly-flat on the shores of their creek, watching the stick bugs skitter over the surface of the water, while pairs of dragonflies gossiped to each other. I’d dip my finger in and watch the water carve a path around it, meeting up on the other side. Time would spin out like sugar, so that I’d be thinking about how I’d just arrived, and in the blink of an eye, it was already sunset.

The Fishers’ creek was narrower than the one I’d grown up with. At one end was a tiny waterfall, bogged at the bottom with so many spores and sprigs of hay that I knew it had served as a source of fascination for their children. The other end of the creek widened into a small natural pond, shaded by willow and oak trees.

I dangled a forked twig over the water as if I could dowse for defense strategies. There was always sleepwalking-Katie admitted to not knowing what had happened between the time she went to bed and the time she awakened. It was a designer defense, certainly, but those had had success in recent years-and in a case as sensational as this one was sure to be, it might be my best shot.

Other than that, there were two options. Either Katie did it, or she didn’t. Although I hadn’t seen discovery from the prosecutor yet, I knew they wouldn’t have charged her without evidence to the former. Which meant that I needed to determine whether she was in her right mind at the moment she killed the baby. If she wasn’t, I’d have to go with an insanity defense-only a handful of which had ever been acquitted in the state of Pennsylvania.

I sighed. I’d have a better chance proving that the baby had died by itself.

Dropping my twig, I considered that. For any ME the state could put on the stand to say that the baby had been murdered, I could probably find a dueling expert who’d say it had died of exposure, or prematurity, or whatever medical excuses there were for these sorts of things. It was a tragedy that could be pinned on Katie’s inexperience and neglect, rather than her intent. A passive involvement in the newborn’s death-well, that was something even I could forgive.

I patted my shorts, silently cursing my lack of foresight to bring along a scrap of paper and a pen. I’d have to contact a pathologist, first, and see how reliable the ME’s report was likely to be. Maybe I could even put a good OB up on the stand-there was one fellow who’d done wonders for a client of mine during a previous trial. Finally, I’d have to get Katie on the stand, looking suitably distressed about what had accidentally happened.

Which, of course, would require her to admit that it had happened at all.

Groaning, I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes against the sun. Then again, maybe I’d just wait for the discovery, and see what I had to go with.

There was a faint rustling in the distance, and a snippet of song carried on the wind. Frowning, I got to my feet and starting walking along the creek. It was coming from the pond, or somewhere near the pond. “Hey,” I called out, rounding the bend. “Who’s there?”

There was a flash of black, which disappeared into the cornfield behind the pond before I could see who had vanished. I ran to the edge of the stalks, parting them with my hands, hoping to find the culprit. But all I managed to stir up were field mice, which ran past my sneakers and into the cattails that edged the pond.

I shrugged. I wasn’t looking for company anyway. I started back toward the house, but stopped at the sight of a handful of wildflowers, left at the northernmost edge of the pond. Resting just out of reach of the graceful arms of a willow tree, they were neatly tied into a bouquet. Kneeling, I touched the Queen Anne’s lace, the lady’s slippers, the black-eyed Susans. Then I glanced at the field of corn, wondering for whom they had been left.

“While you’re here,” Sarah said, handing me a bowl of peas, “you’ll help out.”

I looked up from the kitchen table and bit back the retort that I was already helping, just by being here. Thanks to my sacrifice, Katie was here with her own bowl of peas, which she was shelling with remarkable industry. I watched her for a moment, then slid my thumbnail into the pod, watching it crack open as neat as a nut, just as it had for her.

“Neh . . . Englische Leit . . . Lus mich gay!”

Aaron’s voice, quiet but firm, snaked through the open kitchen window. Wiping her hands on her apron, Sarah glanced out. Drawing in her breath, she hurried toward the door.

Then I heard English being spoken.

Immediately, I turned to Katie. “You stay here,” I ordered, and walked out. Aaron and Sarah were holding their hands over their faces, cringing away from the small crowd of cameramen and reporters who’d descended on the farm. One news van had the audacity to park right beside the Fisher buggy. There were dozens of questions being shouted out, ranging from queries about Katie’s pregnancy to the sex of the dead baby.

Lulled by the quiet and peace of a bucolic farm, I’d forgotten how quickly the media would pick up on the court record of an Amish girl being charged with murder in the first degree.

Suddenly I remembered the summer I fancied myself a photographer, and how I’d pointed my Kodak at an unsuspecting Amishman in a buggy. Leda had covered the camera lens, explaining that the Amish believed the Bible prohibited a graven image, and didn’t like to have their pictures taken. “I could do it anyway,” I had said, stung, and to my surprise Leda nodded-so sadly that I’d put my camera back in its case.

Aaron had given up trying to ask the reporters to go away. It wasn’t in his nature to cause a scene, and he’d wisely assumed that if he offered himself as a target, it would keep Katie safe from their prying eyes. Clearing my throat, I marched to the front of the fray. “Excuse me, you’re on private property.”

One of the reporters took in my shorts and top, in direct contrast to Aaron and Sarah’s clothes. “Who are you?”

“Their press secretary,” I said dryly. “I believe you all are in direct violation of criminal trespassing, which, as a misdemeanor of the third degree, could result in up to a year in jail and a twenty-five-hundred-dollar fine.”

A woman in a tailored pink suit frowned, trying to place me. “You’re the lawyer! The one from Philly!” I glanced at the call letters on her microphone; sure enough, she was from a city-based network affiliate.

“At this time, neither my client nor my client’s parents have any comment,” I said. “As for the incendiary nature of the charge, well”-I smirked, gesturing to the barn, the farmhouse, the quiet lay of the land-“all I’m going to say is that an Amish farm is no Philadelphia crack house, and that an Amish girl is no hard-core criminal. The rest, I’m afraid, you’ll have to hear on the steps of the courthouse at some later date.” I cast a measured look out over the crowd. “Now-a little free legal advice. I’m strongly recommending that you all leave.”

Reluctantly, they shuffled off in a pack, like the wolves I always pictured them to be. I walked to the end of the driveway, keeping watch until the last of their cars pulled away. Then I started back up the gravel incline, to find Aaron and Sarah standing side by side, waiting for me.

Aaron looked down at the ground as he spoke gruffly. “Perhaps you would like to see the milking sometime.”

It was the closest he would come to an admission of gratitude. “Yes,” I said. “I would.”

Sarah made enough food to feed the whole Amish community, much less her own small household plus one live-in guest. She brought bowl after bowl to the table, chicken with dumplings and vegetables swimming in sauces, and meat that had been cooked to the point where it broke apart at the touch of a fork. There were relishes and breads and spiced, stewed pears. In the center of the table was a blue pitcher of fresh milk. Looking at all the rich choices, I wondered how these people could eat this way, three times a day, and not grow obese.

In addition to the three Fishers I’d met, there was an older man, who did not bother to introduce himself but seemed to know who I was all the same. From his features, I assumed he was Aaron’s father, and that he most likely lived in the small apartment attached to the rear of the farmhouse. He bent his head, which caused all the others to bend their heads, a strange kinetic reaction, and began to pray silently over the food. Unsettled-when was the last time I’d said grace?-I waited until they looked up and began to ladle food onto their plates. Katie raised the pitcher of milk and poured some into her glass; then passed it to her right, to me.

I had never been a big fan of milk, but I figured that wasn’t the smartest thing to admit on a dairy farm. I poured myself some and handed the pitcher to Aaron Fisher.

The Fishers laughed and talked in their dialect, helping themselves to food when their plates were empty. Finally, Aaron leaned back in his chair and let out a phenomenal belch. My eyes widened at the breach of etiquette, but his wife beamed at him as if that was the grandest compliment he could ever give.

I suddenly saw a string of meals like this one, stretching out for months, with me prominently cast as the outsider. It took me a moment to realize that Aaron was asking me something. In Pennsylvania Dutch.

“The chowchow,” I said in slow, careful English, following his gaze to the particular bowl. “Is that what you want?”

His chin went up a notch. “Ja,” he answered.

I flattened my hands on the table. “In the future, I’d prefer it if you asked me questions in my own language, Mr. Fisher.”

“We don’t speak English at the supper table,” Katie answered.

My gaze never left Aaron Fisher’s face. “You do now,” I said.

By nine o’clock, I was ready to climb the walls. I couldn’t run out to Blockbuster for a video, and even if I could have, there was no TV or VCR for me to watch it on. An entire shelf of books turned out to be written in German-a children’s primer, something called the Martyr’s Mirror, and a whole host of other titles I could not have pronounced without butchering. Finally I discovered a newspaper written in English-Die Botschaft-and settled down to read about horse auctions and grain threshing.

The Fishers filed into the room one by one, as if drawn by a silent bell. They sat and bowed their heads. Aaron looked at me, a question in his eyes. When I didn’t respond, he began to read out loud from a German Bible.

I’d never been very religious; and completely unawares, I’d been tossed into a household that literally structured itself on Christianity. Drawing in my breath, I stared at the newspaper and let the letters swim, trying not to feel like a heathen.

Less than two minutes later, Katie got up and walked over to me. “I’ll be going to bed now,” she announced.

I set aside the paper. “Then I will too.”

After coming out of the bathroom in my silk pajamas, I watched Katie sit on her bed in her long white nightgown and comb out her hair. Unpinned, it fell nearly to her waist and rippled with every stroke of the brush. I sat cross-legged on my own twin bed, my hand propped on my cheek. “My mother used to do that for me.”

“Truly?” Katie said, looking up.

“Yeah. Every single night, untangling all my knots. I hated it. I thought it was a form of torture.” I touched my short cap of hair. “As you can see, I got my revenge.”

Katie smiled. “We don’t have a choice. We don’t cut our hair.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

Granted, hers was lovely-but what if, like me, she’d had to suffer snarls every day of her life? “What if you wanted to?”

“Why would I? Then I’d be different from all the others.” Katie set down her brush, effectively ending the conversation, and crawled into bed. Leaning over, she extinguished the gas lamp, pitching the room into total darkness.

“Ellie?”

“Hmm?”

“What is it like where you live?”

I considered for a moment. “Noisy. There are more cars, and they seem to be right outside the window all night long, honking and screeching to a stop. There are more people, too-and I’d be hard pressed to find a cow or chicken, much less sweet corn, unless you count the kind in the freezer section. But I don’t really live in Philadelphia anymore. I’m sort of in between residences, just now.”

Katie was quiet for so long I thought she had fallen asleep. “No, you’re not,” she said. “Now you’re with us.”

When I woke up with a start, I thought I’d had the nightmare again, the one with the little girls from my last trial, but my sheets were still tucked neatly, and my heartbeat was slow and steady. I glanced at Katie’s bed, at the quilt tossed back to reveal her missing, and immediately got up. Padding downstairs barefoot, I checked in the kitchen and the living room before I heard the quiet click of a door and footsteps on the porch.

She went all the way to the pond where I’d been earlier that day. I stayed behind, hidden, just close enough to be able to see and hear her. She sat down on a small wrought-iron bench set before the big oak tree, and closed her eyes.

Was she sleepwalking again? Or was she meeting someone here?

Was this where Katie and Samuel had their trysts? Was this where a baby had been conceived?

“Where are you?” Katie’s whisper reached me, and I realized two things at once: that she was too lucid still to be asleep; and that I understood her words. “How come you’re hiding?”

Clearly, she knew I had followed her. Who else would she be talking to in English?

I stepped out from behind the willow and stood in front of her. “I’ll tell you why I’m hiding, if you tell me why you came out here in the first place.”

Katie scrambled to her feet, her cheeks flushed with color. She looked so startled that I took a step back-right into the edge of the pond, wetting the edge of my pajama bottoms. “Surprise,” I said flatly.

“Ellie! What are you doing up?”

“I think that’s my question, actually. In addition to the following: Who were you expecting to meet here? Samuel, maybe? You two planning to get your story straight, before I corner him for a little interview?”

“There is no story-”

“For God’s sake, Katie, give it up! You had a baby. You’ve been charged with murder. I’ve been appointed as your legal defense, and you’re still sneaking around behind my back, in the middle of the night. You know, I’ve done this a lot longer than you have, and people don’t sneak around unless they have something to hide. Coincidentally, they also don’t lie unless they have something to hide. Guess which one of us fails on both counts?” Tears were rolling down Katie’s cheeks. Steeling myself, I crossed my arms. “You’d better start talking.”

She shook her head. “It’s not Samuel. I’m not meeting him.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because I’m telling you the truth!”

I snorted. “Right. You’re not meeting Samuel; you just decided you needed a little fresh air. Or is this some midnight Amish custom I need to learn?”

“I didn’t come out here because of Samuel.” She looked up at me. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“You were talking to someone. You thought he was hiding.”

Katie ducked her head. “She.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“She. The person I was looking for is a girl.”

“Nice try, Katie, but you’re out of luck. I don’t see a girl. And I don’t see a guy, either, but something tells me if I give it five minutes a big, blond fellow is going to show up.”

“I was looking for my sister. Hannah.” She hesitated. “You’re sleeping in her bed.”

Mentally, I counted everyone I’d met that day. There had been no other young girl; and I found it difficult to believe that Leda would never have mentioned Katie’s siblings to me. “How come Hannah wasn’t at dinner? Or praying with you tonight?”

“Because . . . she’s dead.”

This time when I stepped back, both feet landed squarely in the pond. “She’s dead.”

“Ja.” Katie raised her face to mine. “She drowned here when she was seven. I was eleven, and I was supposed to be watching her while we went skating, but she fell through the ice.” She wiped her eyes and her nose with the sleeve of her nightgown. “You . . . you wanted me to tell you everything, to tell you the truth. I come out here to talk to Hannah. Sometimes I see her, even. I didn’t tell anyone about her, because seeing ghosts, well, Mam and Dat would think I’m all ferhoodled. But she’s here, Ellie. She is, I swear it to you.”

“Like you swear you never had that baby?” I murmured.

Katie turned away from me. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. The only person who ever did was-”

“Was who?”

“Nobody,” she said stubbornly.

I spread my arms. “Well, then, call out for her. Hey, Hannah!” I shouted. “Come and play.” I waited a moment for good measure, and then shrugged. “Funny, I don’t see anything. Imagine that.”

“She won’t come with you here.”

“Isn’t that convenient,” I said.

Katie’s eyes were dark and militant, filled with conviction. “I am telling you that I’ve seen Hannah since she died. I hear her talking, when the wind comes. And I see her skating, right over the top of the pond. She’s real.”

“You expect me to fall for this? To think you came out here because you believe in ghosts?”

“I believe in Hannah,” Katie clarified.

I sighed. “It seems to me you believe a lot of things that may not necessarily be true. Come back to bed, Katie,” I said over my shoulder, and left without waiting to see if she’d follow.

Once Katie was asleep, I tiptoed out of the room with my purse. Outside, on the porch, I withdrew my cell phone. Ironically, you could get a decent signal in Lancaster County-some of the more progressive Amish farmers had agreed to allow cellular towers on their land, for a fee that negated the need to grow a winter crop. Punching in several numbers, I waited for a familiar, groggy voice.

“Yeah?”

“Coop, it’s me.”

I could almost see him sitting up in bed, the sheets falling away. “Ellie? Jesus! After-what? two years? . . . You call me at. . . good God, is it three in the morning?”

“Two-thirty.” I’d known John Joseph Cooper IV for nearly twenty years, when we were at Penn together. No matter what time it was, he’d growl-but he’d forgive me. “Look, I need your help.”

“Oh, this isn’t just a three A.M. social call?”

“You’re not going to believe this, but I’m at an Amish family’s home.”

“Ah, I knew it. You never really got over me, and you chucked it all for the simple life.”

I laughed. “Coop, I got over you a decade ago. Just about the time you got married, actually. I’m here as part of a bail provision for a client, who was charged with murdering her newborn. I want you to evaluate her.”

He exhaled slowly. “I’m not a forensic psychiatrist, Ellie. Just your run-of-the-mill suburban shrink.”

“I know, but. . . well, I trust you. And I need this off the record, a gut feeling, before I decide how I’m going to get her off.”

“You trust me?”

I drew in my breath, remembering. “Well. More or less. More, when the issue at hand doesn’t involve me.”

Coop hesitated. “Can you bring her in on Monday?”

“Uh, no. She isn’t supposed to leave the farm.”

“I’m making a house call?”

“You’re making a farm call, if it makes you feel any better.”

I could imagine him closing his eyes, flopping back down on his pillows. Just say yes, I urged silently. “I couldn’t juggle my schedule until Wednesday at the earliest,” Coop said.

“That’s good enough.”

“Think they’ll let me milk a cow?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I could feel his smile, even all these miles away. “Ellie,” he said, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”