Home. It would take some getting used to. I wondered how many mornings I’d wake at 4:30 A.M., imagining the soft sounds of the men going to the barn for the milking. How many nights I’d forget to set an alarm, sure that the rooster would do the job.
I also wondered what it would be like to flip through the channels of a TV again. To sleep beside Coop every night, his arm slung over me like an anchor. I wondered who my next client would be, and if I would often think of Katie.
There was a soft knock at the door. “Come on in.”
Sarah moved into the room, her hands tucked beneath her apron. “I came to see if you need any help.” Looking at the empty pegs on the walls, she smiled. “Guess you’ve pretty much taken care of it.”
“The packing wasn’t so hard. It’s leaving that’s going to be a challenge.”
Sarah sank down onto Katie’s bed, smoothing the quilt with one hand. “I didn’t want you here,” she said quietly. “When Leda first suggested it in the courtroom that day, I told her no.” She lifted her face, eyes following me as I finished cleaning up. “Not just because of Aaron, neither. I thought you might be one of those folks we get every now and then, looking to pretend they’re one of us because they think peace is something a body can learn.”
Her hand picked at a small imperfection in the quilt. “I figured out quick enough that you weren’t like that at all. And I have to admit that we’ve learned more from you, I think, than you ever could have learned from us.”
Sitting down beside Sarah, I smiled. “That would be debatable.”
“You kept my Katie here with me. For that, you’ll always be special.”
Listening to this quiet, solemn woman, I felt a quick kinship. For a while, she had entrusted her daughter to me. More than ever, I understood that remarkable leap of faith.
“I lost Jacob, you see, and Hannah. I couldn’t lose Katie. You know how a mother would do anything, if it meant saving her child.”
My hand stole over my belly. “Yes, I do.” I touched her shoulder. “You did the right thing, having me defend Katie in court. No matter what Aaron or the bishop or anyone else told you, you shouldn’t doubt that.”
Sarah nodded, then pulled from beneath her apron a small packet wrapped in tissue paper. “I wanted to give you these.”
“You didn’t have to do this,” I said, embarrassed that I had not thought of giving a gift, too, in return for the Fishers’ hospitality. I tore at the paper, and it fell away to reveal a pair of scissors.
They were heavy and silver, with a marked notch in one blade. They were polished clean, but a small loop of twine tied to the handle was dark and stiff with dried blood. “I thought you could take these away,” Sarah said simply. “I can’t give them back to Aaron, now.”
My mind reeled back to the medical examiner’s testimony, to the autopsy photos of the dead infant’s umbilicus. “Oh, Sarah,” I whispered.
I had based an entire legal defense on the fact that an Amish woman would not, could not, commit murder. And yet here was an Amish woman, holding out to me the evidence that incriminated her.
The light had been left on in the barn, because Sarah knew her daughter was pregnant all along. The scissors used to cut the cord, covered with blood, had been hidden. The baby had disappeared when Katie was asleep-and the reason she didn’t remember wrapping and hiding his body was because she had not been the one to do it.
My mouth opened and closed around a question that never came.
“The sun, it came up so quick that morning. I had to get back to the house before Aaron woke for the milking. I thought I’d be able to come back later-but I had to go. I just had to.” Her eyes glistened with tears. “I was the one who sent her out to the English world in the first place-and I could see how she was changing. No one else noticed-not even Samuel-but once he did, well, I knew what would happen. I only wanted Katie to have the kind of life she’d always imagined having-one here, among all of us.
“But Aaron had sent Jacob away, and for much less than this. He would never have accepted that baby . . . and Katie would have been sent away, too.” Sarah’s eyes went to my abdomen, where my child lay safe. “You understand now, Ellie, don’t you? I couldn’t save Hannah, and I couldn’t save Jacob. . . . I had one last chance. No matter what, someone was going to leave me. So I chose. I did what I thought I had to do, to keep my daughter.” She bowed her head. “And I nearly lost her, all the same.”
Outside, a car horn sounded. I heard the door slam, and Coop’s voice tangling with Katie’s in the front yard. “Well.” Sarah wiped her eyes and got to her feet. “I don’t want you carrying that suitcase. Let me.” She smiled as she lifted it, testing its weight. “You bring that baby back so we can meet her, all right?” Sarah said, and setting down the suitcase, she put her arms around me.
I froze, unable to embrace her. I was an attorney; I was bound by the law. By duty, I needed to call the police, to tell the county attorney this information. And then Sarah would be tried for the same crime for which her daughter had been convicted.
Yet of their own volition, my hands came up to rest on Sarah’s back, my thumb brushing the edge of one of the straight pins that held her apron in place. “You take care,” I whispered, squeezing her tightly. Then I hurried down the stairs, outside to where the world was waiting.
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