eh!” Katie screamed, kicking out at the paramedic who was trying to load her into the ambulance. “Ich will net gay!”

Lizzie watched the girl fight. The bottom of her dress, a rich green, was by now stained black with blood. In a tight, shocked semicircle stood the Fishers, Samuel, and Levi. The big blond man stepped forward, his jaw set. “Let her down,” he said in clear English.

The paramedic turned. “Buddy, I’m only trying to help her.” He managed to haul Katie into the rear of the ambulance. “Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, you’re welcome to ride along.”

Sarah Fisher sobbed, clutching at her husband’s shirt and pleading with him in a language Lizzie could not understand. He shook his head, then turned and walked away, calling for the men to join him. Sarah gingerly climbed into the ambulance and held her daughter’s hand, whispering until Katie calmed. The paramedics closed the double doors; the ambulance began to rumble down the long driveway, kicking up pebbles and clouds of dust.

Lizzie knew she had to get to the hospital and speak to the doctors who would examine Katie, but she didn’t move just yet. Instead she watched Samuel-who had not followed Aaron Fisher, but remained rooted to the spot, watching the ambulance disappear from his sight.

The world was rushing by. Overhead, the line of fluorescent lights looked like the dashes in the middle of a paved road, running quick as they did when seen from the back of a buggy. The stretcher she was on came to an abrupt stop and a voice at her head called, “On my count-one, two, three!” Then Katie was being spirited through the air, floating down to a cold, shining table.

The paramedic was telling everyone her name and, for goodness sake, that she’d been bleeding down there. A woman’s face loomed over hers, assessing. “Katie? Do you speak English?”

“Ja,” she murmured.

“Katie, are you pregnant?”

“No!”

“Can you tell us when your last period was?”

Katie’s cheeks went scarlet, and she turned away in silence.

She could not help but notice the lights and the noises of this strange hospital. Bright screens were filled with undulating waves; beeps and whirrs framed her on all sides; scattered voices called out in an odd synchronicity that reminded her of church hymns sung in the round. “BP is eighty over forty,” a nurse said.

“Heart rate one-thirty.”

“Respiratory rate?”

“It’s twenty-eight.”

The doctor turned to Katie’s mother. “Mrs. Fisher? Was your daughter pregnant?” Stunned by the commotion, Sarah stared mutely at the man. “Christ,” the doctor muttered. “Just get the skirt off her.”

Katie felt their hands tugging at her clothes, pulling at her privacy. “It’s part of a dress, and I can’t find the buttons,” a nurse complained.

“There are none. It’s pinned. What the-”

“Cut it off, if you have to. I want a BSU, a urine hCG, a CBC, and send a type and screen to the blood bank, all stat.” The doctor’s face floated before Katie again. “Katie, I’m going to examine your uterus now. Do you understand? Just relax, I’m going to be touching you between your legs-”

At the first gentle probe, Katie lashed out with her foot. “Hold her,” the doctor commanded, and two nurses secured her ankles in the stirrups. “Just relax, now. I won’t hurt you.” Tears began to roll down Katie’s cheeks as the doctor dictated to a nurse with a clipboard. “In addition to what might be lochia rubia, we’ve got a boggy, uncontracted uterus, about twenty-four weeks’ size. Looks like an open cervical os. Let’s get an ultrasound now to see what we’re dealing with. How’s the bleeding?”

“Still a steady flow.”

“Get an OB/GYN down here now.”

A nurse wrapped a wad of ice in cotton and placed it between Katie’s legs. “This’ll make it feel better, honey,” she whispered.

Katie tried to focus on the nurse’s face, but by now her vision was shaking as badly as her jellied arms and legs. The nurse, noticing, draped her with another blanket. Katie wished she had the words to thank her, wished she had the words to tell her that what she really needed was someone to hold her together before she broke apart right there on the table, but her thoughts were coming in the language with which she’d grown up.

“You’re gonna be okay,” the nurse soothed.

After one sidelong glance at her mother, Katie closed her eyes and blacked out, believing that this might be so.

On the train platform, her mother pressed five twenty-dollar bills into her hand. “You remember what station you change at?” Katie nodded. “And if he isn’t there to meet you, you call him.” Her mother touched Katie’s cheek. “This time, it’s okay to use the telephone if you have to.”

It went without saying that using a telephone would be the least of her sins. For the first time since her brother Jacob had moved out, Katie-only twelve years old-was going to visit him. All the way in State College, where he was going to university.

Her mother looked nervously around at the other passengers waiting to board, hoping to keep out of the sight of other Plain people, who might report back to Aaron that his wife and his daughter had lied to him.

The long, sleek Amtrak ribboned into the station, and Katie hugged her mother tightly. “You could come with me,” she whispered fiercely.

“You don’t need me. You’re a big girl.”

It wasn’t what Katie meant, and they both knew it. If Sarah went with her daughter to State College, she’d be disobeying her husband, and that wasn’t done. As it was, sending Katie as an envoy of her love was walking the very fine tightrope of insubordination. Plus, Katie hadn’t been baptized yet in the church. By the rules of the Ordnung, Sarah would not be able to ride in a car with her excommunicated son; would not be allowed to eat at the same table. “You go,” she said, smiling hard at her daughter. “You come back and tell me all about him.”

On the train Katie sat by herself, closing her eyes against the curious looks and the people who pointed at her clothing and head covering. She folded her hands in her lap and thought of the last time she had seen Jacob, the sun bright as a halo on his copper hair, when he walked out of their house for good.

As the train pulled into State College, Katie pressed her face to the window, searching the sea of English faces for her brother. She was used to folks who were not Plain, of course, but even on the most busy thoroughfares in East Paradise she would see at least one or two others dressed like her, speaking her language. The people waiting on the platform were dressed in a dizzying splash of colors. Some of the women were wearing tiny tops and shorts that left almost all of their bodies bare. With horror, she noticed one young man with a ring in his nose and one in his ear and a chain connecting the two.

She did not see Jacob.

When she stepped off the train, she pivoted in a slow circle, frightened of being swallowed up by so much movement. Suddenly she felt a tap on her shoulder. “Katie?”

She turned to see her brother, and flushed with surprise. Of course she had overlooked him. She’d been expecting Jacob in his wide-brimmed straw hat, his black trousers with suspenders. This Jacob was clean-shaven, wearing a short- sleeved plaid shirt and khaki pants.

Then she was in his arms, hugging him so tightly that she only now realized how lonely she had been at home without him. “Mam misses you,” Katie said breathlessly. “She says I have to tell her every last thing.”

“I miss her too.” Jacob draped his arm around her shoulders and steered Katie through the crowd. “I think you’ve grown a foot.” He led his sister to a parking lot, to a small blue car. Katie stopped behind it and stared. “It’s mine,” Jacob said softly. “Katie, what did you expect?”

The truth is, she hadn’t expected anything. Except that the brother she had loved, the one who had turned his back on his religion so that he could study at college, might be living the same life he’d left . . . only somewhere other than East Paradise. This-the strange clothing, the tiny vehicle-made her wonder if her father had not been right all along to believe that Jacob could not continue his schooling and still be Plain in his heart.

Jacob opened the door for her and then got into the car himself. “Where does Dat think you are today?”

The day that Jacob had been excommunicated by the Amish church was the same day he’d died, in his father’s unforgiving eyes. Aaron Fisher would not coun tenance Katie visiting Jacob any more than he would approve of the letters her mother wrote Jacob and had Katie secretly post. “Aunt Leda’s.”

“Very smart. There’s no way he’ll stomach talking to her long enough to find out it’s a lie.” Jacob smiled wryly. “We shunned have to stick together, I guess.”

Katie folded her hands in her lap. “Is it worth it?” she asked quietly. “Is college everything you wanted?”

Jacob studied her for a long moment. “It’s not everything, because you all aren’t here.”

“You could come back, you know. You could come back anytime and make a confession.”

“I could, but I won’t.” At Katie’s frown, Jacob reached across the console and tugged at the long strings of her kapp. “Hey. I’m still the guy who pushed you into the pond when we went fishing. Who put a frog in your bed.”

Katie smiled. “I guess I wouldn’t mind if you changed, come to think of it.”

“That’s my girl,” Jacob laughed. “I have something for you.” He reached into the backseat and withdrew a bundle wrapped in butcher paper and tied with red ribbon. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but when you come here, I want it to be a holiday for you. An escape. So that maybe you don’t have to make the same all-or-nothing choice that I did.” He watched her fingers pick at the bow and open the package to reveal a pair of soft leggings, a bright yellow T-shirt, and a cotton cardigan embroidered with a festival of flowers.

“Oh,” Katie said, drawn in spite of herself. Her fingers traced the fine needle work on the collar of the sweater. “But I-”

“For while you’re here. Walking around in your regular clothes is only going to make it harder on you. Wearing these-well, no one’s ever gonna know, Katie. I thought maybe you could pretend for a while, when you visit. Be like me. Here.” He flipped down the visor in front of Katie to reveal a small mirror, then held the cardigan up so that she could see the reflection.

She blushed. “Jacob, it’s beautiful.”

Even Jacob was astounded at how that one awed admission seemed to make his sister look like someone else, like the kind of person he had grown up keeping at a distance. “Yes,” he said. “You are.”

Lizzie called the county attorney’s office on her car phone, en route to the hospital. “George Callahan,” the voice on the other end announced brusquely.

“Imagine that. I got the head honcho himself. Where’s your secretary?”

George laughed, recognizing her voice. “I don’t know, Lizzie. Taking a powder, I guess. You want to come take over her job?”

“Can’t. I’m too busy busting people for the DA to prosecute.”

“Ah, I have you to thank for that. My own little feeder source for job security.”

“Well, consider yourself secure: we found a dead baby in an Amish barn here, and things aren’t adding up. I’m on my way to the hospital to check out a possible suspect-but I wanted to let you know there may be an arraignment in your near future.”

“How old and where was it found?” George asked, all business now.

“Hours old, a newborn. It was underneath a pile of blankets,” Lizzie said. “And according to everyone we interviewed at the scene, no one had given birth recently.”

“Was the baby stillborn?”

“The ME doesn’t think so.”

“Then I’m assuming the mother dropped the kid and left,” George deduced. “You said you have a lead?”

Lizzie hesitated. “This is going to sound crazy, George, but the eighteen-year-old Amish girl who lives on the farm, who swore up one side and down another that she wasn’t pregnant, is in the hospital right now bleeding out vaginally.”

There was a stunned silence. “Lizzie, when was the last time you booked an Amish person for a crime?”

“I know, but the physical evidence points to her.”

“So you have proof?”

“Well, I haven’t-”

“Get some,” George said flatly. “And then call me back.”

The physician stood near the triage desk, explaining to the newly arrived OB/GYN what she was likely to find in the ER.

“Sounds like uterine atony, and retained products of conception,” the obstetrician said, glancing at the patient’s chart. “I’ll do an exam, and we’ll get her up to the OR for a D&C. What’s the status of the baby?”

The ER doctor lowered his voice. “According to the paramedics who brought her in, it didn’t survive.”

The obstetrician nodded, then disappeared behind the curtain where Katie Fisher still lay.

From her vantage point in a bank of lackluster plastic chairs, Lizzie came to her feet. If George wanted proof, then she’d get it. She thanked God for plainclothes detectives-no uniformed officer had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting confidential information out of a doctor without a subpoena-and approached the physician. “Excuse me,” she said, worrying her hands in the folds of her shirt. “Do you know how Katie Fisher’s doing?”

The doctor glanced up. “And you are?”

“I was at the house when she started bleeding.” It wasn’t a lie, really. “I just wanted to know if she’s going to be all right.”

The physician nodded, frowning. “I imagine she’ll be just fine-but it would have been considerably safer for her if she’d come to the hospital to have her baby.”

“Doctor,” Lizzie said, smiling, “I can’t tell you what it means to hear you say that.”

Leda pushed open the door to her niece’s hospital room. Katie lay still and sleeping on the raised bed. In the corner, motionless and quiet, sat Sarah. As she saw her sister enter the room, Sarah ran into Leda’s arms. “Thank goodness you came,” she cried, hugging Leda tightly.

Leda glanced down at the top of Sarah’s head. Years of parting her hair in the middle, pulling it tight, and securing her kapp with a straight pin had left a part that widened like a sea with each passing year, a furrow as pink and vulnerable as the scalp of a newborn. Leda kissed the little bald spot, then drew back from Sarah.

Sarah spoke quickly, as if the words had been rising inside her like steam. “The doctors think that Katie had a baby. She needed medicine to help stop the bleeding. They took her up to operate.”

Leda covered her hand with her mouth. “Just like you, after you had Hannah.”

“Ja, but Katie was wonderful lucky. She’ll still be able to have children, not like me.”

“Did you tell the doctor about your hysterectomy?”

Sarah shook her head. “I did not like this doctor. She wouldn’t believe Katie when she said she didn’t have a baby.”

“Sarah, these English doctors. . . they have scientific tests for pregnancy. Scientific tests don’t lie-but Katie might have.” Leda hesitated, treading gingerly. “You never noticed her figure changing?”

“No!”

But, Leda knew, that did not mean much. Some women, especially tall ones like Katie, carried in such a way that it could be months before you noticed a pregnancy. Katie would have had her privacy undressing, and underneath the bell of her apron, a swelling stomach would be hard to see. Any thickening of a waistline would go undetected, since the women’s garments of the Old Order Amish were held together with straight pins that could easily be adjusted.

“If she got into trouble, she would have told me,” Sarah insisted.

“And what do you think would have happened the minute she did?”

Sarah looked away. “It would have killed Aaron.”

“Trust me, Aaron’s not going to blow over in a strong wind. And he better start dealing with it, because this is only the beginning.”

Sarah sighed. “Once Katie gets home, she’ll have the bishop coming around, that’s for sure.” Glancing up at Leda, she added, “Maybe you could talk to her. About the Meidung.”

Dumbfounded, Leda sank down onto a chair beside the hospital bed. “Shunning? Sarah, I’m not talking about punishment within the church. The police found a dead baby this morning, a dead baby that Katie already lied about having. They’re going to think that she’s lied about other things, too.”

“It’s a crime, to these English, to have a baby out of wedlock?” Sarah asked indignantly.

“It is if you leave it to die. If the police prove that the baby was born alive, Katie is going to be in a lot of trouble.”

Sarah stiffened her spine. “The Lord will make this work out. And if He doesn’t, then we will accept His will.”

“Are you talking about God’s will, or Aaron’s? If Katie is arrested, if you listen to Aaron and turn the other cheek and don’t get someone to stick up for her in court, then they’re going to put her in jail. For years. Maybe forever.” Leda touched her sister’s arm. “How many children are you going to let the world take away from you?”

Sarah sat down on the edge of the bed. She laced Katie’s lax fingers through her own and squeezed. Like this, in her hospital gown with her hair loose about her shoulders, Katie did not look Plain. Like this, she looked just like any other young girl.

“Leda,” Sarah whispered, “I don’t know how to move in this world.”

Leda put her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “I do.”

“Detective Munro, you got a minute?”

She didn’t, but she nodded at the policeman from the Major Crimes Unit of the state police, which had been scouring the property all afternoon. Once Lizzie had determined that Katie Fisher was going to be hospitalized at least overnight, she had gone to the district judge to secure warrants to search the house and grounds, as well as to get blood from Katie for a DNA match. Her mind buzzing with the million and one things she had left to do, Lizzie tried to turn her attention to the state trooper. “What have you got?”

“Actually, the scene’s fairly clean,” he said.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Lizzie said dryly. “We may be town cops, but we all graduated from high school.” She hadn’t been thrilled about calling in the MCU, because they tended to look down their noses at local law enforcement and had a nasty habit of wresting control of the investigation from the detective in charge. However, the state police’s investigative skills were far more advanced than those of the East Paradise police, simply because they’d done it more often. “Has the father given you any trouble?”

The trooper shrugged. “Actually, I haven’t even seen him. He took the mules out into the fields about two hours ago.” He handed Lizzie a white cotton nightgown, bloodstained at the bottom, sealed in a plastic evidence bag. “It was under the girl’s bed, all balled up. We also found traces of blood by the pond behind the house.”

“She had the baby, washed off in the pond, hid the nightgown, and went back to bed.”

“Hey, you guys are smart. Come over here, I want you to see this.” He led Lizzie into the tack room where the infant’s corpse had been found. Crouching, he pointed out what looked like a ripple on the floor, but on closer inspection turned out to be the outline of a footprint. “It’s fresh manure, which means the print wasn’t made too long ago.”

“Is it possible to figure out whose it is, the way you do with fingerprints?”

The state trooper shook his head. “No, but we can determine the size of the foot. That’s a women’s seven, double E width.” He gestured to a colleague, who handed over another evidence bag containing a pair of unattractive tennis shoes. Slipping on gloves, the trooper withdrew the left one. He lifted the tongue so that Lizzie could read the tag. “Size seven women’s sneakers, extra wide,” he said. “Found in Katie Fisher’s closet.”

Levi was silent during the buggy ride back to his home, something-Samuel knew-that was the result of considerable restraint. Finally, unable to hold it in any longer, Levi turned as the horses drew to a stop. “What do you think will happen?”

Samuel shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I hope she’s all right,” Levi said earnestly.

“I hope so too.” He heard the catch in his voice and coughed so that Levi would not notice it. The boy stared at his older cousin for a moment, then jumped from the buggy and ran into the house.

Samuel continued to drive down the road, but he did not make the turn that would lead to his own parents’ place. By now, they would have heard of Katie and would, of course, have questions for him. He drove into town and tethered his horse at Zimmermann’s Hardware. Instead of going into the store, he walked behind the building, into the cornfield that spread north. He ripped off his hat and held it in his hand as he began to run, the stalks chafing his face and torso. He ran until he could hear the roaring music of his own heart; until it was impossible to catch hold of a breath, much less his emotions.

Then he sank down in the field, lying on his back while he gasped. He stared up at the bruised blue of the evening sky and let the tears come.

Ellie was leafing through Good Housekeeping when her aunt returned home. “Everything all right? You took off like you were on fire.” Then she raised her eyes to see Leda-pinched, pale, distracted. “I guess everything’s not all right.”

Leda sank into a chair, her pocketbook slipping off her shoulder to thump on the floor. She closed her eyes, silent.

“You’re scaring me,” Ellie said with a nervous laugh. “What’s the matter?”

Visibly straightening her spine, Leda got up and began to rummage through the refrigerator. She pulled out cucumbers, lettuce, and carrots and set them on the counter. She washed her hands, withdrew a chopping knife, and began to cut the vegetables into precisely measured bits. “We’ll have salad with dinner,” she said. “What do you think of that?”

“I think it’s only three in the afternoon.” Ellie walked forward, took the knife from Leda’s hand, and waited until the older woman met her gaze. “Talk.”

“My niece is in the hospital.”

“You don’t have another-oh!” Understanding dawned as Ellie realized this was the family Leda did not speak of; the ones she left behind. “Is she . . . sick?”

“She almost died having a baby.”

Ellie didn’t know what to say to that. She could think of nothing more tragic than to give birth, and then not be able to enjoy the miracle.

“She’s only eighteen, Ellie.” Leda hesitated, spreading her fingers on the chopping block. “She isn’t married.”

A picture slowly revolved in Ellie’s head of a young, unwed girl, trying to rid herself of a fetus. “It was an abortion, then?”

“No, it was a baby.”

“Well, of course it was,” Ellie hastened to add, thinking that Leda’s background would not have made her pro-choice. “How far along was she?”

“Almost eight months,” Leda said.

Ellie blinked. “Eight months?”

“It turns out that the baby’s body was discovered before anyone even knew that Katie was pregnant.”

A small spark rubbed at the base of Ellie’s spine, one she told herself to ignore. This was not Philly, after all; this was no crack mother, but an Amish girl. “Stillborn, then,” Ellie said with sympathy. “What a shame.”

Leda turned her back on Ellie, silent for a moment. “I told myself during the drive home that I wasn’t going to do this, but I love Katie just as much as I love you.” She took a deep breath. “There is a chance that the baby wasn’t stillborn, Ellie.”

“No.” The word flushed itself from Ellie, low and hot. “I can’t. Don’t ask me to do this, Leda.”

“There isn’t anyone else. We aren’t talking about people comfortable with the law. If this were up to my sister, Katie would go to jail whether she was guilty or not, because it’s not in her nature to fight back.” Leda gazed at her, eyes burning. “They trust me; and I trust you.”

“First of all, she hasn’t been formally charged. Second of all, even if she were, Leda, I couldn’t defend her. I know nothing about her or her way of life.”

“Do you live on the streets like the drug dealers you’ve defended? Or in a big Main Line mansion, like that principal you got acquitted?”

“That’s different, and you know it.” It did not matter whether Leda’s niece had a right to sound legal counsel. It did not matter that Ellie had defended others charged with equally unpalatable crimes. Drugs and pedophilia and armed robbery did not hit as close to home.

“But she’s innocent, Ellie!”

It had been, long ago, the reason Ellie became a defense attorney-for the souls she was going to save. However, Ellie could count on one hand the number of clients she’d gotten acquitted who had truly been wrongfully accused. She now knew that most of her clients were guilty as charged-although every last one of them had an excuse they’d be shouting all the way to the grave. She might not have agreed with her clients’ criminal actions, but on some level, she always understood what made them do it. However, at this moment in her life, there was nothing that could make her understand a woman who killed her own child.

Not when there were other women out there who so desperately wanted one.

“I can’t take your niece’s case,” Ellie said quietly. “I’d be doing her a disservice.”

“Just promise me you’ll think about it.”

“I won’t think about it. And I’ll forget that you asked me to.” Ellie walked out of the kitchen, fighting her way free of Leda’s disappointment.

Samuel’s big body filled the doorway of the hospital room, reminding Katie of how she sometimes would stand beside him in an open field and still feel crowded for space. She smiled hesitantly. “Come in.”

He approached the bed, feeding the brim of his straw hat through his hands like a seam. Then he ducked his head, bright color staining his cheeks. “You all right?”

“I’m fine,” Katie answered. She bit her lip as Samuel pulled up a chair and sat down beside her.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She went home. Aunt Leda called her a taxi, since Mam didn’t feel right riding back in her car.”

Samuel nodded, understanding. Amish taxi services, run by local Mennonites, drove Plain folks longer distances, or on highways where buggies couldn’t go. As for riding in Leda’s car, well, he understood that too. Leda was under the bann, and he wouldn’t have felt comfortable taking a ride from her, either.

“How . . . how are things at home?”

“Busy,” Samuel said, carefully choosing his words. “We did the third cutting of hay today.” Hesitating, he added, “The police, they’re still around.” He stared at Katie’s fist, small and pink against the polyester blanket. Gently he took it between his own hands, and then slowly brought it up to his jaw.

Katie curved her palm against his cheek; Samuel turned into the caress. Her eyes shining, she opened her mouth to speak again, but Samuel stopped her by putting a finger over her lips. “Sssh,” he said. “Not now.”

“But you must have heard things,” Katie whispered. “I want-”

“I don’t listen to what I’ve heard. I’ll only listen to what you have to say.”

Katie swallowed. “Samuel, I did not have a baby.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then squeezed her hand. “All right, then.”

Katie’s eyes flew to his. “You believe me?”

Samuel smoothed the blanket over her legs, tucking her in like a child. He stared at the shining fall of her hair and realized that he had not seen it this way, bright and loose, since they were both small. “I have to,” he said.

The bishop in Elam Fisher’s church district happened to be his own cousin. Old Ephram Stoltzfus was such a part of everyday life that even when acting as the congregational leader, he was remarkably accessible-stopping his buggy by the side of the road for a chat, or hopping off his plow in the middle of the field to make a suggestion. When Elam had met him earlier that day with the story of what had happened at the farm, he listened carefully and then said that he needed to speak to some others. Elam had assumed Ephram meant the church district’s deacon, or two ministers, but the bishop had shaken his head. “The businessmen,” he’d said. “They’re the ones who’ll know how the English police work.”

Just after suppertime, when Sarah was clearing the table, Bishop Ephram’s buggy pulled up. Elam and Aaron glanced at each other, then walked outside to meet him.

“Ephram,” Aaron greeted, shaking the man’s hand after he’d tied up his horse.

“Aaron. How is Katie?”

It was slight, but Aaron stiffened visibly. “I hear she will be fine.”

“You did not go to the hospital?” Ephram asked.

Aaron looked away. “Neh.”

The bishop tipped his head, his white beard glowing in the setting sun. “Walk with me awhile?”

The three men headed toward Sarah’s vegetable garden. Elam sank down on a stone slab bench and gestured for Ephram to do the same. But the bishop shook his head and stared over the tall heads of the tomato plants and the climbing vines of beans, around which danced a spray of fireflies. They sparked and tumbled like a handful of stars that had been flung.

“I remember coming here once, years ago, and watching Jacob and Katie chase the lightning bugs,” Ephram said. “Catching ’em in a jar.” He laughed. “Jacob said he was making an Amish flashlight. You hear from Jacob these days?”

“No, which is the way I wish it to be,” Aaron said quietly.

Ephram shook his head. “He was banned from the church, Aaron. Not from your life.”

“They’re the same to me.”

“That’s the thing I don’t understand, you know. Since forgiveness is the very first rule.”

Aaron leveled his gaze on the bishop. “Did you come here to talk about Jacob?”

“Well, no,” Ephram admitted. “After you dropped by this morning, Elam, I went to see John Zimmermann and Martin Lapp. It’s their understanding that if the police were here all day, they must be thinking Katie’s a suspect. It will all hinge for sure on whether the baby was born alive. If it was, she’ll be blamed for its death.” He frowned at Aaron. “They suggested speaking to a lawyer, so that you won’t get caught unawares.”

“My Katie doesn’t need a lawyer.”

“So I hope,” the bishop said. “But if she does, the community will stand behind her.” He hesitated, then added, “She’ll have to put herself back, you understand, during this time.”

Elam looked up. “Just give up communion? She wouldn’t be put under the bann?”

“I will need to speak to Samuel, of course, and then think on it.” Ephram put his hand on Aaron’s shoulder. “This isn’t the first time a young couple has gotten ahead of their wedding night. It’s a tragedy, to be sure, that the baby died. But heartache can cement a marriage just as much as happiness. And as for Katie being blamed for the other-well, none of us believes it.”

Aaron turned, shrugging off the bishop’s hand. “Thank you. But we will not hire a lawyer for Katie, and go through the Englischer courts. It’s not our way.”

“What makes you always draw a line, and challenge people to cross it, Aaron?” Ephram sighed. “That’s not our way.”

“If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” Aaron nodded at the bishop and his father and struck off toward the barn.

The two older men watched him in silence. “You’ve had this conversation with him once before,” Elam Fisher pointed out.

The bishop smiled sadly. “Ja. And I was talking to a stone wall that time, too.”

Katie dreamed she was falling. Out of the sky, like a bird with a wounded wing, the earth rushing up to meet her. Her heart lodged in her throat, holding back the scream, and she realized at the very last second that she was heading toward the barn, the fields, her home. She closed her eyes and crashed, the scenery shattering like an eggshell at impact so that when she looked around, she recognized nothing at all.

Blinking into the darkness, Katie tried to sit up in the bed. Wires and plastic tubes grew from her body like roots. Her belly felt tender; her arms and legs heavy.

A comma of a moon split the sky, and a smattering of stars. Katie let her hands creep beneath the covers to rest on her stomach. “Ich hab ken Kind kaht,” she whispered. I did not have a baby.

Tears fell on the blanket. “Ich hab ken Kind kaht. Ich hab ken Kind kaht,” she murmured over and over, until the words became a stream running through her veins, an angel’s lullaby.

The fax machine in Lizzie’s house beeped on just after midnight, while she was running on her treadmill. Adrenaline had kept her awake, anyway, and perfectly suited for a workout that might make her tired enough to catch a few hours of sleep. She shut off the treadmill and walked to the fax, sweating as she waited for the pages to begin rolling out. At the cover page from the medical examiner’s office, her heart rate jumped another notch.

Words began to reach at her, tugging at her mind.

Male, 32 weeks. 39.2 cm crown-heel; 26 cm crown-rump.

Hydrostatic test . . . dilated alveolar ducts . . . mottled pink to dark red appearance . . . left and right lungs floated, excluding partial and irregular aeration. Air present in the middle ear.

Bruising on the upper lip; cotton fibers on gums.

“Good God,” she whispered, shivering. She had met murderers several times-the man who’d stabbed a convenience store owner for a pack of Camels; a boy who’d raped college girls and left them bleeding on the dormitory floor; once, a woman who had shot her abusive husband’s face off while he lay sleeping. There was something about these people, something that had always made Lizzie feel that if you cracked them open like Russian nesting dolls, you’d find a hot, smoking coal at their center.

Something that did not fit this Amish girl at all.

Lizzie stripped out of her workout clothes, heading for the shower. Before the girl was no longer free to leave, before she was read Miranda and formally charged, Lizzie wanted to look Katie Fisher in the eye and see what was at the heart of her.

It was four in the morning by the time Lizzie entered the hospital room, but Katie was awake and alone. She turned wide blue eyes to the detective, surprised to see her. “Hello.”

Lizzie smiled and sat down beside the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Katie said quietly. “Stronger.”

Lizzie glanced down at Katie’s lap, and saw the Bible she’d been reading. “Samuel brought it for me,” the girl said, confused by the frown on the other woman’s face. “Isn’t it allowed in here?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s allowed,” Lizzie said. She felt the tower of evidence she’d been neatly stacking for twenty-four hours now start to waver: ‘She’s Amish. Could that one excuse, that one glaring inconsistency, knock it down? “Katie, did the doctor tell you what happened to you?”

Katie glanced up. She set her finger in the Bible, closed the book around it with a rustle of pages, and nodded.

“When I saw you yesterday, you told me you hadn’t had a baby.” Lizzie took a deep breath. “I’m wondering why you said that.”

“Because I didn’t have a baby.”

Lizzie shook her head in disbelief. “Why are you bleeding, then?”

A red flush worked its way up from the neckline of Katie’s hospital johnny. “It’s my time of the month,” she said softly. She looked away, composing herself. “I may be Plain, Detective, but I’m not stupid. Don’t you think I’d know if I had a baby?”

The answer was so open, so earnest, that Lizzie mentally stepped back. What am I doing wrong? She’d questioned hundreds of people, hundreds of liars-yet Katie Fisher was the only one she could recall getting under her skin. She glanced out the window, at the simmering red of the horizon, and realized what the difference was: This was no act. Katie Fisher believed exactly what she was saying.

Lizzie cleared her throat, manning a different route of attack. “I’m going to ask you something awkward, Katie. . . . Have you ever had sexual relations?”

If at all possible, Katie’s cheeks glowed brighter. “No.”

“Would your blond friend tell me the same thing?”

“Go ask him,” she challenged.

“You saw that baby yesterday morning,” Lizzie said, her voice thick with frustration. “How did it get there?”

“I have no idea.”

“Right.” Lizzie rubbed her temples. “It isn’t yours.”

A wide smile broke over Katie’s face. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“She’s the only suspect,” Lizzie said, watching George stuff a forkful of hash browns into his mouth. They were meeting at a diner halfway between the county attorney’s office and East Paradise, one whose sole recommendation, as far as Lizzie could tell, was that they only served items guaranteed to double your cholesterol. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack if you keep eating like that,” she said, frowning.

George waved away her concern. “At the first sign of arrhythmia I’ll ask God for a continuance.”

Breaking off a small piece of her muffin, Lizzie looked down at her notes. “We’ve got a bloody nightgown, a footprint her size, a doctor’s statement saying she was primiparous, an ME saying the baby took a breath-plus her blood matches the blood found on the baby’s skin.” She popped a bite into her mouth. “I’ll put five hundred bucks down saying that when the DNA test comes back, it links her to the baby, too.”

George blotted his mouth with a napkin. “That’s substantial stuff, Lizzie, but I don’t know if it adds up to involuntary manslaughter.”

“I didn’t get to the clincher yet,” Lizzie said. “The ME found bruising on the baby’s lips and fibers on the gums and in the throat.”

“Fibers from what?”

“They matched the shirt it was wrapped in. He thinks that the two, together, suggest smothering.”

“Smothering? This isn’t some Jersey girl giving birth in the toilet at the Paramus Mall and then going off to finish shopping, Lizzie. The Amish don’t even kill flies, I’ll bet.”

“We made national headlines last year when two Amish kids were peddling cocaine,” Lizzie countered. “What’s 60 Minutes going to say to a murder?” She watched a spark come to George’s eyes as he weighed his personal feelings about charging an Amish girl against the promise of a high-profile murder case. “There’s a dead baby in an Amish barn, and an Amish kid who gave birth,” she said softly. “You do the math, George. I wasn’t the one who asked for this to happen, but even I can see that we’ve got to charge her, and we’ve got to do it soon. She’s being released today.”

He meticulously cut his sunny-side-up eggs into bite-size squares, then placed his knife and fork down on the edge of his plate without eating a single one. “If we can prove smothering, we might be able to charge Murder One. It’s willful, premeditated, and deliberate. She hid the pregnancy, had the baby, and did away with it.” George glanced up. “Did you question her?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

Lizzie grimaced. “She still doesn’t think she had a baby.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“She’s sticking to her story.”

George frowned. “Did she look crazy to you?”

There was a big difference between legally crazy and colloquially crazy, but in this case, Lizzie didn’t think George was making the distinction. “She looks like the girl next door. One who happens to read the Bible instead of V. C. Andrews.”

“Oh, yeah,” George sighed. “This one’s gonna go to trial.”

Sarah Fisher pinned her daughter’s kapp into place. “There. Now you’re ready.”

Katie sank down on the bed, waiting for the candy-striper to appear with a wheelchair and take her down to the lobby. The doctor had discharged her minutes before, giving her mother some pills in case Katie had any more pain. She shifted, folding her arms across her stomach.

Aunt Leda put an arm around her. “You can stay with me if you’re not ready to be at home yet.”

Katie shook her head. “Denke. But I ought to get back. I want to get back.” She smiled softly. “I know that doesn’t make any sense.”

Leda squeezed her shoulders. “It makes more sense to me, probably, than to anyone else.”

As the door swung open, Katie jumped to her feet, eager to be on her way. But instead of the young volunteer she’d been expecting, two uniformed policemen entered. Sarah stepped back, falling into place beside Leda and Katie; a united, frightened front. “Katie Fisher?”

She could feel her knees shaking beneath her skirts. “That’s me.”

One policeman took her gently by the arm. “We have a warrant for your arrest. You’ve been charged with the murder of the baby found in your father’s barn.”

The second policeman came up beside her. Katie looked frantically over his shoulder, trying to reach her mother’s eyes. “You have the right to remain silent,” he said. “Everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to be represented by an attorney-”

“No!” Sarah screamed, reaching for her daughter as the policemen began to lead Katie through the doorway. She ran after them, ignoring the curious glances of the medical personnel and the cries of her own sister.

Leda finally caught up with Sarah at the entrance of the hospital. Katie was crying, arms stretched toward her mother as the policeman set a hand on her kapp and ducked her inside the squad car. “You can meet us at the district court, ma’am,” he said politely to Sarah, then got into the front seat.

As the car drove away, Leda put her arms around her sister. “They took my baby,” Sarah sobbed. “They took my baby.”

Leda knew how uncomfortable Sarah was riding in her car, but pressing circumstances called for compromises. Driving with someone under the bann was considerably less threatening than standing in court while one’s daughter was arraigned for murder, which Sarah was going to have to face next.

“You wait right here,” she said, pulling into her driveway. “Let me get Frank.” She left Sarah sitting in the passenger seat and ran into the house.

Frank was in the living room, watching a sitcom rerun. One look at his wife’s face had him out of his chair, running his hands over her arms. “You all right?”

“It’s Katie. She’s being taken to the district court. They’ve charged her with murder.” Leda could just manage the last before breaking down, letting go in her husband’s embrace as she hadn’t let herself go in front of Sarah. “Ephram Stoltzfus raised twenty thousand dollars from Amish businessmen for Katie’s legal defense, but Aaron won’t take a penny.”

“She’ll get a public defender, honey.”

“No-Aaron expects her to turn the other cheek. And after what he did to Jacob, Katie’s not going to disagree with him.” She buried her face in her husband’s shirt. “She can’t win this. She didn’t do it, and she’s going to be put in jail anyway.”

“Think of David and Goliath,” Frank said. With his thumb, he wiped away Leda’s tears. “Where’s Sarah?”

“In the car. Waiting.”

He slid an arm around her waist. “Let’s go, then.”

A moment after they left, Ellie walked into the living room, wearing her jogging shorts and tank top. She’d been in the adjoining mud room, lacing up her sneakers for a run, when Leda had come home-and she’d heard every word. Her face impassive, Ellie stepped up to the picture window and watched Leda’s car until it disappeared from view.

Katie had to hide her hands beneath the table so that no one would see how much they were trembling. Somehow she had lost the pin to her kapp in the police car, and it perched uneasily on her head, slipping whenever she shifted. But she would not take it off-not now, especially-since she was supposed to have her head covered whenever she prayed, and she’d been doing that constantly since the moment the car pulled away from the hospital’s entrance.

A man sat at a table just like hers, a little distance away. He looked at her, frowning, although Katie had no idea what she might have done to make him so upset. Another man sat in front of her behind a high desk. He wore a black cape and held a wooden hammer in his hand, which he banged at the moment Katie saw her mother and aunt and uncle slip into the courtroom.

The man with the hammer narrowed his eyes at her. “Do you speak English?”

“Ja,” Katie said, then blushed. “Yes.”

“You have been charged in the state of Pennsylvania with murder in the first degree, whereby you, Katie Fisher, on the eleventh of July 1998, against the arms and force of the State of Pennsylvania, did willfully, deliberately, and premeditatedly cause the death of Baby Fisher on the Fisher farm in the East Paradise Township of Lancaster County. You are also charged with the lesser included offense of murder in the third degree, whereby you . . .”

The words ran over her like a rain shower, too much English at once, all the syllables blending. Katie closed her eyes and swayed slightly.

“Do you understand these charges?”

She hadn’t understood the first sentence. But the man seemed to be waiting for an answer, and she had learned as a child that Englischers liked you to agree with them. “Yes.”

“Do you have an attorney?”

Katie knew that her parents, like all Amish, did not believe in instigating lawsuits. In rare cases, an Amishman would be subpoenaed and would testify. . . but never by his own choice. She glanced over her shoulder at her mother, sending her kapp askew. “I do not wish to have one,” she said softly.

“Do you know what that means, Miss Fisher? Is this on the advice of your parents?” Katie looked down at her lap. “This is a very serious charge, young lady, and I believe you should have counsel. If you qualify for a public defender-”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Like everyone else in the courtroom, Katie turned toward the confident voice coming from the doorway. A woman with hair as short as a man’s, wearing a neatly tailored blue suit and high heels, was briskly walking to her table. Without glancing at Katie, the woman set her briefcase down and nodded at the judge. “I’m Eleanor Hathaway, counsel for the defendant. Ms. Fisher has no need of a public defender. I apologize for being late, Judge Gorman. May I have five minutes with my client?”

The judge waved his assent, and before Katie could follow what was happening, this stranger Eleanor Hathaway dragged her to her feet. Clutching at her kapp, Katie hurried beside the attorney down the central aisle of the court. She saw Aunt Leda crying and waving to her, and she raised a hand in response before she realized that this big greeting was meant for Eleanor Hathaway, not for Katie herself.

The attorney steered Katie to a small room filled with office supplies. She closed the door behind her, leaned against it, and folded her arms. “Sorry for the impromptu introduction, but I’m Ellie Hathaway, and I sure as hell hope that you’re Katie. We’re going to have a lot of time to talk later, but right now I need to know why you turned down an attorney.”

Katie’s mouth opened and closed a few times before she could summon her voice. “My Dat wouldn’t want me to have one.”

Ellie rolled her eyes, clearly unimpressed. “You’ll plead not guilty today, and then we’ll chat. Now, looking at these charges, you’re not getting bail unless we can get around the ‘proof and presumption’ clause in the statute.”

“I . . . I don’t understand.”

Without glancing up from the sheaf of papers she was skimming, Ellie answered, “It means that if you’re charged with murder, and the proof is evident or the presumption great, you don’t get bail. You sit in jail for a year until your trial comes up. Get it?” Katie swallowed, nodded. “So we have to find a loophole here.”

Katie stared at this woman, who had come with her words sharpened like the point of a sword, planning to save her. “I didn’t have a baby.”

“I see. Even though two doctors and a whole hospital, not to mention the local cops, all say otherwise?”

“I didn’t have a baby.”

Ellie slowly looked up. “Well,” she said. “I see I’m going to be finding that loophole myself.”

Judge Gorman was clipping his fingernails when Ellie and Katie reentered the courtroom. He swept the shavings onto the floor. “I believe we were just getting to ‘How do you plead?’”

Ellie stood. “My client pleads not guilty, Your Honor.”

The judge turned. “Mr. Callahan, is there a bail recommendation from the state?”

George rose smoothly. “I believe, Your Honor, that the statute in Pennsylvania requires that bail be denied to defendants charged with first degree murder. In this case, the state would recommend this as well.”

“Your Honor,” Ellie argued, “with all due respect, if you read the wording of the statute it requires bail to be withheld only in the cases where ‘the proof is evident, or the presumption great.’ That isn’t a blanket statement. Particularly, in this case, the proof is not evident, and the presumption is not great, that this was an act of murder in the first degree. There’s some circumstantial evidence that the county attorney has gathered-specifically, medical testimony that Ms. Fisher’s given birth, and the fact of a dead infant found on the premises of her farm-but there are no eyewitnesses to what happened between the birth and the death of the infant. Until my client gets her fair trial, we aren’t going to know how or why this death occurred.”

She smiled tightly at the judge. “In fact, Your Honor, there are four main reasons bail should be allowed in this case. First, the girl is Amish and being charged with a violent crime, although violence in the Amish community historically does not exist. Second, because she’s Amish, she has a much stronger tie to this community than most other defendants. Her religion and her upbringing rule out any risk of flight. Third, she’s barely eighteen, and has no financial resources of her own to attempt an escape. And finally, she has no record-this is not only her first arraignment but the first time she’s encountered the legal system in any way, shape, or form. I’m proposing, Your Honor, that she be released on stringent bail conditions.”

Judge Gorman nodded thoughtfully. “Would you like to share those conditions with us?”

Ellie took a deep breath. She’d love to; she just hadn’t thought of them yet. She looked swiftly toward Leda and Frank and the Amish woman sitting between them, and suddenly it all came clear. “We respectfully request bail, Judge, with the following stipulations: that Katie Fisher not be allowed to leave East Paradise Township, but that she be allowed to live at home on her parents’ farm. In return, she must be under the supervision of a family member at all times. As for bail-I would think that twenty thousand dollars is a fair amount to ask.”

The prosecutor laughed. “Your Honor, that’s ludicrous. A bail statute is a bail statute; and Murder One is Murder One. It’s like that in fancy felony cases in Philadelphia, too, so Ms. Hathaway can’t plead ignorance. If the proof wasn’t evident we wouldn’t be charging it this way. Clearly Katie Fisher should not be released on any bail.”

The judge let his gaze touch upon the prosecutor, the defense attorney, and then Katie. “You know, coming in here this morning, I had no intention of doing what I’m about to do. But if I’m even going to consider your conditions, Ms. Hathaway, I need to know that someone agrees to be responsible for Katie Fisher. I want her father’s word that she’ll be supervised twenty-four/seven.” He turned to the gallery. “Mr. Fisher, would you make yourself known?”

Leda stood up and cleared her throat. “He’s not here, Your Honor.” She pulled hard at her sister’s arm, dragging her to a standing position as well. “This is Katie’s mother.”

“All right, Mrs. Fisher. Are you willing to accept total legal responsibility for your daughter?”

Sarah looked down at her feet, her words so soft the judge had to strain to hear them. “No,” she admitted.

Judge Gorman blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

Sarah raised her face, tears in her eyes. “I cannot.”

“I can, Your Honor,” Leda said.

“You live with the family?”

She hesitated. “I could move in.”

Sarah shook her head again, whispering furiously. “Aaron won’t let you!”

The judge impatiently rapped his fingers on the desk. “Is there any relative of Ms. Fisher’s here today willing to take responsibility for her round the clock, who doesn’t have a problem with the church or her father?”

“I’ll do it.”

Judge Gorman turned to Ellie, who seemed just as surprised to have uttered the words as he had been to hear them. “That’s certainly devoted of you, Counsel, but we’re looking for a family member.”

“I know,” Ellie said, swallowing hard. “I’m her cousin.”