Return to Grace

by Karen Harper

  She had been certain Seth was going to propose to her that sweet spring evening at the pond. He was so nervous, the big six-footer, one of the tallest men in the Home Valley. One of the handsomest, too, with his blond hair and sky-blue eyes, his square chin. Then came the words that had turned her well-planned life upside down.

  “Hannah, I—I don’t know how it happened. I mean, I know how but not why,” he’d faltered. “I realize you and I have been waiting for each other—waiting to join the church, to bed together, to build a life, start a family, but I… It only happened once, but—I hope you and the Lord and the brethren can forgive me—but Lena Miller’s going to have my child. She’s sure—and I’m going to have to…to marry her.”

  She had just gaped at him. The words didn’t register at first, but his stark, stunned expression did. She’d wanted to drown herself in the pond—she wanted to drown him!

  “I—I will always love you,” he’d stammered, “and I hope you can forgive me....”

  She had become so hysterical she was never certain what she’d said to him that night. She’d hit him, too, pounded on his big, broad shoulders when violence was not their way. But this was brutality. He might as well have beaten or killed her. Running back home across the fields, past the Kauffman farm to her own, blinded by tears of pain and fury, she’d wished the fresh-plowed earth would simply swallow her. Then that argument with her father, the bishop, no less.

  “No, I can’t forgive him—never will!” she’d shouted. “Even if I could forgive, I could never forget! Don’t tell me I have to accept that and go on, see them together, see their children over the years, Lena in his house, in his buggy—poor Hannah, the castoff. He’s the one who should be sent away, but I’m the one who’s going! I’m going to sing for a career, I don’t care if you say I can’t. At least I won’t be shunned, because I’ve never joined the church, never been baptized, never been betrayed like this, either. I don’t care if both of them admit their sin before the church or the entire world, because I won’t be there. I won’t be anywhere around here!”

  Her mother’s pleading, her sister’s tears, nothing stopped her. In her deepest, darkest dreams, she could still hear her father’s calm voice calling after her as she charged up the stairs to pack. “Hannah! Hannah Esh, you come back here!”

  “Hannah. Hannah,” a voice called now, pulling her from heavy, sodden sleep. With great difficulty, Hannah slitted one eye open. Her mother, wearing a black bonnet and cape, was sitting by her bed. A hospital room. Hannah saw she was tied to tubes and monitors.

  Her mother stood and leaned close over her, putting a warm palm on Hannah’s cheek. She spoke in their German dialect. “I thought you were waking up, dear girl. You lost a lot of blood, but they operated to patch you up and put some metal pins in your wrist. They say with physical therapy, you’ll recover most of the use of your hand, but it will take months. At least it’s your left one and not your right. I was praying you’d come back to us, back to life and come home to your family now. The police, even a government FBI man, are going to find out who shot at you and—and your friends. I’ll stay with you, stay right here in your room, and then you come home with me, oh, ya.”

  Hannah tried to say, “Danki, Mamm,” but her throat felt raw, and nothing came out. What a mess she’d made of things. It all came back in a rush: Kevin dead, Tiffany and her shot while they were defiling the graveyard with their boos and booze. She’d lived through it, but whatever life she’d once had among her Amish family and former friends was surely dead, too.

  Hannah floated in and out of strange sleep—pain pills, that was causing her problems, she told herself. When her thoughts settled, she wished she could take medicine to mute her mental pain, as well.

  Once Daad was even here. They didn’t talk, even though they had so much to say. He mostly paced the floor, frowning, muttering to himself, even hitting his forehead with his hand now and then, as if he was blaming himself for the state she was in. But he’d also lifted a glass of water to her lips, and the strangest scrap of scripture had popped into her head: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head. Would all she’d said, all she’d done, make her father turn against her? He was an upright, stern man. Would he believe she had caused not only her own punishment but the harm that came to Tiffany and Kevin? Tiffany was recovering in a Cleveland hospital, Mamm had said, and Kevin’s body had been autopsied and would be released by the authorities and buried in a few days. Liz and Mike had gone home to their families.

  Later, Hannah wasn’t certain when Mamm told her that Sheriff Freeman had come to see her. “You sure you’re strong enough to talk to him?”

  “Yes. I want to help any way I can. To know who would do such a thing and why.”

  “Perhaps God only knows. I’ll sit in the chair in the corner, and you tell the sheriff or me if you get too tired or too upset to answer his questions. He’s been keeping some folks away from you, so we are grateful.”

  “What folks?” Hannah asked, wondering if Seth had tried to see her.

  “Newspaper and TV reporters. Don’t you fret, because there is a police officer outside your door to keep them away.”

  If that was meant to be comforting, it only made Hannah more nervous. This was a double nightmare: not only had people’s lives been ruined because of her, but she was evidently in some danger. Surely a policeman wasn’t just to keep reporters away. Did the police think she could identify someone? Her people lived private, plain lives and now look what she’d done by bringing trouble to them.

  Tall and straight, Eden County’s sheriff was an imposing man in his crisp black uniform. The Amish didn’t trust government officials much or even vote in worldly elections. But Jack Freeman, who was elected, got along with them just fine, although the Amish did not approve of his divorce. Still, word was, his wife had left him when he didn’t want her to, so maybe that wasn’t all his fault.

  His brown eyes assessed Hannah, then took in the room as he thanked Mamm for her help. He pulled up the chair next to the bed and put his big-brimmed hat on the floor and a white bakery box on the bedside table.

  “From Ray-Lynn Logan,” he said, referring to the worldly woman who ran the Dutch Farm Table Restaurant in Homestead, the biggest town in the Home Valley area, though that wasn’t saying much. “She remembers you liked whipped pies.”

  “Oh, you mean whoopie pies. They’re more like cookies, like Amish Oreos with filling.” She couldn’t believe they were making small talk when she feared what was coming. “Please thank her for me—you, too, for bringing them.”

  “She said she hopes you’re coming back home. Your family and friends want you to.”

  She still had friends at home? The Amish might be great at forgiving sinners, but could they ever forget the things she had done and now had caused? Her dearest friend, Sarah Kauffman, had remained close, but she’d left for Columbus and was going to marry an outsider. Sarah had said that Hannah’s other once-upon-a-time good friend Ella Lantz, Seth’s sister, had been very critical of Hannah’s worldly life. Or could the sheriff possibly mean Seth had said he was still her friend? He must have also interviewed Seth about the shooting.

  “Still, I can’t wait around for you to come home to get your statement,” he was saying as his voice tightened and his face became more intent. “Hannah, we got us a cold-blooded murder on our hands, and you two women shot. We don’t need any of this, not after the media mess with those barn burnings last spring.”

  “I know. I’m sorry I brought my friends here—there, I mean. I just thought it would be a private picnic.”

  Frowning, he took out a small notebook and flipped it open. “How ’bout you tell me everything you remember happened at the graveyard?”

  She went through things, step-by-step—why they came, their arrival, the loud deathrock music…

  “Deathrock?” he interrupted, looking up from his scribbling. “That’
s its name?”

  “Yes, it’s very popular with goths.”

  “Yeah, I been researching that. Black clothes is about the only thing you goths have in common with the Amish, far’s I can tell. Go on.”

  You goths, he’d said. She’d rebelled against her people by casting her lot with something shocking, something even more verboten than going to the world. Now she’d brought deadly violence, which the Plain People avoided and abhorred, to them.

  “The music must have covered any sounds until the gunshots,” she admitted. “I don’t know what kind of gun.”

  “Not your worry. A high-speed rifle, like some folks hunt game with. You could have been killed. Your wrist would have been completely shattered if the bullet that hit you hadn’t been partly slowed and deflected by a gravestone that was busted up instead.”

  Lena Lantz’s tombstone, Hannah thought. She should have made everyone move away from her grave. Growing up, she’d known Lena Miller well and liked her. Lena had lived on the next farm to Seth and Ella, and they’d all gone to singings and frolics together. The Lantz and Miller children had gotten especially close after Lena’s parents were killed when a car hit their buggy. But she’d never suspected that Lena had her cap set for Seth—or he for her. It took two, oh, yes, she knew that, and in a culture where birth control was forbidden…

  “So, you strong enough to talk to Agent Armstrong now?” the sheriff was asking as he flipped his notebook closed. “I promised him I’d cut this short so as not to tire you out. I’ll do a follow-up later on whatever else you might remember.”

  “I—sorry, what did you ask?”

  “I know this is difficult, Hannah, but with this being a murder investigation, I called in the FBI, and they’re working with the state Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, the BCI. Ever since those young Amish girls got shot and killed in their schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, a couple of years back, the FBI like to swoop in real quick if there’s something like this—something that could smack of a hate crime against the Amish. From a distance, you all might have looked Amish with your long skirts, the guys in hats and such.”

  “I— Yes, I understand.”

  “So, FBI Special Agent Linc Armstrong would like a few words with you. Now, he stays too long or pushes too hard, you just tell him, but he’s a pretty take-charge guy. This is the third day I’ve kept him away from you. You okay with this?”

  “I want to do everything I can to help.”

  “Good girl. ’Preciate it. Oh, Ray-Lynn also said, if you’re coming back and—” he nodded to Mamm, who stood and came closer “—if you won’t be working in your mother’s Amish cap-making business, Ray-Lynn can always use a good hand in the restaurant kitchen or waiting tables.”

  “Tell her one good hand would be it for a while, Sheriff, and thanks for all you’re doing to unscramble the mess—the tragedy—I made.”

  “Not all your fault by a long shot,” he said. “Well, didn’t mean that about a long shot, but I tell you we’ll find whoever put bullets in some visitors to my bailiwick. Even though you were in the wrong to be carousing there, you didn’t force your friends to come along and you sure as heck didn’t fire a rifle at them.” He lowered his voice. “Now, don’t you let Linc Armstrong get you down,” he said, and made for the door.

  “I’m already down,” she whispered to her mother. “I guess I haven’t been myself since that night I argued with Daad.”

  “Ya, I know,” she said, bending over the bed. “You just be brave with this government man now, because he already gave Seth a good going-over, and he’s been prying into everyone’s past, especially yours.”

  Seth shoved his roofing hammer through a loop in his leather carpenter’s apron and heard the nails in it jingle as he scooted a bit higher on Bishop Esh’s farmhouse roof. The roof had been scarred by the Esh barn fire, set by an arsonist, and he was putting down new shingles. Seth was a timber framer, a barn builder, by trade. He’d overseen work crews erecting big buildings from churches to rustic state park lodges, but he picked up odd jobs between projects. Like everywhere in America, times were tough.

  He could see the hilly sweep of much of the Home Valley, where he’d lived all his life. The woodlots were every hue from scarlet to gold, the wheat harvest was in the big barns or silos. Shucked corn was in the Troyer grain elevator, waiting to be hauled out in boxcars. The stalks in the corn maze delighted both Amish and Englische kids and adults as they ran through it. The white farmhouses and smaller grossdaadi hauses, the big red or black barns—three of which he’d built—stood strong and tall in the autumn sun, punctuated by occasional silos and windmills. From this vantage point—he loved heights—he could see the pond where he used to swim with Hannah, a place he had never gone with Lena, and then the graveyard beyond....

  That brought his thoughts back to earth. When the authorities took away that bright yellow tape they’d strung along the fence there, he intended to replace Lena’s shattered stone grave marker. He’d been questioned by both Sheriff Freeman and that FBI go-getter, Lincoln Armstrong, interviews he’d expected and accepted. He’d even weathered Armstrong’s implications he might have had a motive to shoot at Hannah, and the fact he’d asked to see his gun to check his ammunition. What he hadn’t been prepared for was being called a hero for helping the wounded women.

  His people knew better than to label him that, because such a thing was prideful, but two newspapers and three TV reporters had tried to interview him and take his picture. It was a blessing that the local paper had recently closed and had not been picked up by a new buyer, because it would have been all over this. But up here, he felt safe from his new, sudden fame. Bishop Esh, working in his barn below, had said he’d head off anyone else who came looking for the Amish Hero Saves 2 Lives, Finds Man Dead in Graveyard.

  Seth turned and gazed past the chimney, toward his boyhood home, the next farm to the northeast where his brother Abel helped their daad farm. The Miller farm beyond that, Lena’s childhood home, was owned by her only brother. At the far edge of his parents’ property, Seth saw his own small house, which he’d built, where he still lived with little Marlena and where Lena had died suddenly on their kitchen floor of a burst aortic aneurysm. She’d had the condition since birth, and no one knew it. He was grateful he didn’t have to add Marlena to the brood of kinder at his parents’ place as usual, but had brought her with him today, thanks to the Eshes’ kind offer to let her play here. Mrs. Esh was at the Wooster hospital with Hannah, but Naomi was keeping an eye on his girl.

  Again, though it was the last thing he wanted or needed, his thoughts turned to Hannah. When he’d first seen her in the graveyard, lying almost on Lena’s grave, her hair had looked so scarlet that for one split second he’d feared she’d been shot in the head, too, and was bleeding from her skull. Now why had a pretty woman like her done those things to herself? Black eye paint around those blue-green eyes and dark strokes covering her blond, arched eyebrows. Her beautiful hair, once long and honey-blond, hacked off, dyed the hue of martyr’s blood and stuck up in spikes. The clothes—well at least they covered her lithe, lovely body, so she wasn’t flaunting that to the world.

  He shifted his weight on the ridge line of the roof, the very roof where the Lantz and Kauffman kids used to play Andy Over, heaving a ball up and letting it roll down the other side of the roof, where your opponent had to run and catch it, wherever it suddenly appeared. How clearly he recalled once when they were fifteen that, with both of them looking up, Hannah had bounced into him. They both went down and rolled in the autumn leaves together, with him on top, pressing her down with his knee between her legs, touching her breast, laughing and then kissing for the first time before their friends ran back around and they’d jumped to their feet....

  He shook his head to shove that memory away. It really annoyed him how the mere thought of Hannah against him, in his arms, under him, made his body go tense with desire. He missed the pleasures of the marriage
bed, even with a woman he had not chosen. Now, he knew two willing Amish maidals who would make him a good wife, and he needed to decide which one to pursue and get to courting so Marlena could have a mother and so he could stop this stupid longing.

  “You coming down for noon meal?” Bishop Esh’s voice sliced through his agonizing. He stood below with his hands cupped around his mouth. “Your little girl’s waiting with Naomi. I see any more of those media folks, I’ll get rid of them for you, sure I will.”

  “Coming right down. Just taking a breather.”

  How long had the bishop watched him sitting up here? And how long before Hannah—if she returned at all—would be brought here, so he could at least see her again?

  3

  ALTHOUGH FBI SPECIAL Agent Linc Armstrong’s taut mouth smiled, Hannah noted that his sharp gray eyes did not as he assessed her. He was sinewy, angular and seemed tightly coiled. His brown hair was only about an inch long, short compared to Amish and goth men. His ears were so close to his head that his face seemed even longer than it was, a serious, angular face. He was dressed in black slacks, white shirt, striped tie and a dark blue jacket with FBI scripted in gold thread over the pocket. Though Hannah, who had just turned twenty-five, was not good at guessing people’s ages, she figured him to be in his mid- to late thirties.

  “I appreciate your time while you’re recovering,” he told her, then introduced himself. He even held out his badge to her, in a sort of wallet he opened. The badge flaunted an eagle holding arrows in his talons over a line which read Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice. Under that was Armstrong’s photo; his face had a serious, even pained look. When he still held the wallet open—perhaps he didn’t realize how fast an Amish woman could read—she reread the other words near his photo: “Lincoln Armstrong is a regularly appointed Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and as such is charged with the duty of investigating violations of the laws of the United States in cases in which the United States is a party of interest.”