by Ruth Price
They followed the gaggle of children into the Miller's home. Their home was even more sprawling than Abram's two story home, but the bustle of women and men, children and teens filled the home with an energy that seemed cozy and alive. Inside the main living room sat ten teens. They were basically dressed in Amish style, though one of the boys had a hole in his left ear pierced, and another of the girls' hair was clearly died blond. They looked to range in age from about sixteen to their early twenties. The boys and girls mingled, speaking to each other in low tones with animated hand gestures.
As her gaze lingered, Abram explained, "Rumspringa. It means running around time. This is when a young man or woman has a chance to experience the outside world, should they wish. It's also when they find the person they will marry. After that, they will chose whether or not to be baptized and join the Amish church."
"What happens if they don't?"
"Then they are shunned and must make their way outside of the community. There are many temptations to the modern world, but most of us chose to remain here and live a life of faith."
"Did you do rumspringa too?"
"Yes, Rebekah and I both, though I was a good deal wilder than Rebekah. If it wasn't for her, I might have chosen differently."
The door opened and another pair of young men came in. The first was tall and thin, reminiscent of a scarecrow with blond-brown hair combed into barely manageable tufts behind his ears. He wore narrow glasses and smiled with a chip in his front tooth. His friend, who seemed to be college age, if not older, was classically handsome: broad shouldered ad dark haired with green eyes reminiscent of pine needles. His grin was almost perfect, excepting a slight crookedness to his top teeth which seemed more endearing than problematic. Both men were clean shaven. "Mamm," the dark haired man said, "We're here for the circle. And who is this?" He approached the stranger and held out his hand. His grin demanded attention, and the stranger found herself smiling back. He said, "It's lovely to meet you. Are you here for the circle as well?"
"She's and Englischer, here to use the phone, Samuel," Abram said, taking a step closer to her side. "She won't be staying."
"I believe the lady can speak for herself," Samuel said. "Might I have the privilege of your name?"
"She doesn't know. Stop interrogating her."
"Grace," Samuel said.
"Excuse me?"
Samuel took her hand. "It's only by the Grace of God then that we have met."
"Samuel." Abram's voice was harsh. "Manners."
Samuel's grip was brief, her hand barely resting in his, but the warmth in his eyes was genuine and exciting as their gazes met. "Until you remember your true name, I will call you Grace. I meant no offense."
"Grace," the Englischer woman rolled the word on her tongue. She liked it. Maybe it had been real name, though she sensed no familiarity in it.
"Come along, the telephone is in the hallway," Abram said. "We'll need to get you back to your people."
"Yes, of course." Of course she should want to go to her own home, wherever or whatever that was. Yet the largest part of her wanted to stay here, immerse herself in the warm community of family and friends that had gathered here. Glancing over at Abram, his features seemed set, and there was a tightness to his shoulders. Of course, she had been a trouble to him. And he didn't seem the sort to like large groups of people, considering the quietness of his home and life that she had disturbed. She had imposed enough, taking his wife's clothes, forcing him to come here out of a sense of charity.
"Abram!" Mrs. Miller ran out from the kitchen, her son Emmanuel following behind. "I'm so glad you came. It's good to see you out and about, not cooped up in that large house all to yourself." She was a round woman, not fat, but round in the face and arms, with two thick, dark brown braids framing her apple cheeks. Her brown eyes widened as she saw the Englischer woman. "You! You're the one the Englischer police were looking for!" Her gaze rested on the bruise on the woman's temple. "Oh dear, what happened to your head?"
"I don't know," the woman said.
"She doesn't know anything about herself," Abram explained. "Not even her name."
"You forgot your own name!" Emmanuel exclaimed.
"Shhh! You'll be frightening our guest. The officer left me a phone number to contact him at in case one of us found you," Mrs. Miller wiped the flour on her hands onto her apron. "Your mamm and daed are quite worried, the officer said."
"Did he say anything else?" the woman asked.
"He said you were from Philadelphia and gave us a description of you. He said your name was Sofia Angelis, I wrote it down with the number, here, come with me."
"Sofia." She said it aloud, trying out the feel of it in her mouth. The name was no more familiar than Grace had been. Two names, and both of them strange.
Emanuel’s outburst brought the attention of the other youths to the stranger, and some of the teens and young men and women gathered for the singing circle began to come over to them. "Mamm," a girl who looked to be about seventeen asked, "Who is this?"
"An Englischer in need of help," "Come with me, miss." Mrs. Miller took Grace by the arm and lead her to the hallway where a black telephone was mounted against the wall. It was a simple touch tone, with no caller ID. On a cork board above the phone was a smattering of coupons with phone numbers. One handwritten note was pinned on the far left corner, away from the others. It read, "Officer Maglione and a phone number that began with a 267 area code."
Mrs. Miller dialed the number and held the phone up to her ear. The voice on the other side was muffled. Mrs. Miller nodded once, and again. "Ja, ja," she said. "In twenty minutes, that sounds good. Yes, the poor girl looks like she suffered a pretty sharp knock on the head and doesn't seem to remember anything about herself. Ja. We'll see you soon, Officer. Ja. Thank you."
Mrs. Miller hung up the phone. "Best you join with the others for the Singing Circle. I bet you're hungry. Abram lives off of canned food and whatever baking his sister manages to hustle over to him. You must be starving."
"I am." the woman, no, she had a name now, Sofia, swallowed down a painful lump in her throat. Soon, she would find out who she was and maybe what had happened to her. Soon she would be safe.
"Oh!" Mrs. Miller took her arm. "It must be such a relief, I can't even imagine."
Relief, yes, it had to be. But the thread of fear that had faded in the warm sunshine of Abram's home and the quiet strength of his presence now wove cold tendrils through her guts. It was irrational, as irrational as being a stranger in her own body. She, no her name was Sofia, forced a smile. "If you don't mind, I'd love something to eat, and thank you Mrs. Miller."
"Annie," Mrs. Miller said, their arms still tightly interlaced. "Call me Annie."
Chapter 5
The accident had totaled the car, fracturing Carl's hip and causing a shard of metal to puncture a hole in his large bowel, the second requiring immediate surgery in order to prevent sepsis from killing him. Mike had left the nurse with instruction to have Carl call him back when he was able to use his phone. Then there was the problem of what to do about the girl.
"We should run," Mike said. "Before they let Carl out. Go West."
"I have a girlfriend. I can't leave her. Who knows what Carl will do to her?"
Mike knew exactly what Carl would do, unfortunately. "Take her with you."
"You've never seen Janine pack. Takes her the whole night for a weekend in the Poconos. No way I'm getting her to pack up her life in that same time. No way."
None of which was Mike's problem, except now that he'd made the suggestion to go to West, D knew about it and would certainly relay that information to Carl either in an attempt to bargain for his life or with the assistance of hot metal slivers under the fingernails.
"Hmm..." Mike murmured. Canada was also an option. Or maybe the Dakotas, as much as he hated the cold.
"Besides, we don't have any money."
"Hmm..."
"I mean, we could pawn that girl
's ring and split the profits, but I'm sure it's a custom job, and if the cops are looking for her, which they must be, or they will when they find the body at least, they'll use that and the video from the pawn shop to track us down and then we'll be on the block for murder." D sighed.
For a second, Mike was furious. "How'd you know about the ring?"
"Oh, she tried to give it to me so I'd let her go, but you'd have to be an idiot. Everyone knows the cops track that kind of stuff."
Mike was tempted to ask D how someone with such a deep and abiding fear and respect for the law had turned to a life of crime, but that would be getting personal, and Mike didn't mix personal with business. Not unless it would get him something, preferably laid. He did have a point about the ring though. Rich people marked their stuff, and for something that special, they'd have it in every database. Even if Mike tried to sell it, even to the jewel guy he knew on fifth, it'd come up for sure. Without the money from the ring, Mike had about fifty dollars in his bank account, and maybe another ten dollars change in his couch. With that, he'd be lucky to get a bus ticket to Ohio. Panic seeping into his skin, Mike asked, "What are we going to do?"
"That's what I was asking you."
The option were pretty straightforward. Lie to Carl and die horribly when he found out or tell Carl the truth and hope enough begging would keep Carl to mercifully only beating them within inches of their lives. Mike said, "We hate to tell Carl she escaped and got herself killed. And bury the body, at least enough to keep the cops from finding her straightaway. And throw her ring in the woods, but nowhere near the gun."
"Where's the body?"
"Up the hill and keep walking. There's a sharp drop off on the other side. Did you see any shovels around this place?"
"Let's look." Mike put the phone down on the kitchen table and they went through the house, one dim flashlight between them, until they found a rusted coal shovel in the basement. When they'd gotten back up, the message light was blinking on Mike's phone. Mike held the phone to his ear. Of course, it was Carl. His voice was as strong as ever as he said, "They're keeping me in this godforsaken hole until Monday morning. There's a general store about three miles away on foot." Carl gave directions to that and to where he'd hidden a container full of money to pay for essentials, as he'd put it. He finished with, "Anything happens to the package, and I'm taking it out of your flesh. With interest."
Mike listened to the message twice, and then ended the phone connection. "We're going to have to run," Mike said. "Carl left some money in the house."
"What about the body."
"Forget the body. Carl's gonna kill us when he finds out we lost the girl. Do you want to be here for that?"
"Are you sure she's dead? It's more difficult to feel for a pulse than how they do it in the movies."
"I didn't feel for any pulse," Mike said.
"Then how do you know she's dead?"
"She was caught in a rock slide and dropped like fifteen feet onto some rocks. She wasn't moving. I think I heard her neck snap." The last was an exaggeration, but Mike knew what a dead body looked like. There'd been his grandmother at the home, and that one drug addict who had frozen to death scrunched against the dumpster behind his apartment three winters back.
"But you didn't check?"
"I wasn't going to get my footprints and DNA all over there as well," Mike added, hoping he'd managed to keep most of the sarcasm from his tone, "Cops can track that stuff."
"Still, we should look," D said, his face lighting up in a relieved smile. "If she isn't dead, then we'll just drag her back and put her in the room again."
"Where she can finish up dying here instead of where we left her?" Mike didn't wait for a response. "We should find the money first. And go first thing in the morning, so there's some light. Otherwise one or the both of us may be joining her." Not to mention the rain, which had gotten heavier, beating against the roof and dripping through the holes in it down onto the floor
"If she's alive, we can't just leave her out there. It's not right," D said. His narrow face was damp, and he pinched at his forearm as though trying to wake himself. "I didn't sign on to actually kill anyone. We're just supposed to watch the door."
"And if the parents or boyfriend didn't pay up, what do you think would happen to her then?"
"Have you ever killed anyone?"
"Today," Mike took a breath as he remembered Sofia, the body, crumpled against that tree. "But it wasn't my fault. She's the one that ran."
D clapped a hand on Mike's bicep. "Don't worry man, she could be alive. Let's just go look for her, and bring her back here okay?"
"Fine." Tramping out into the woods in the rain to bury a body was not how Mike had planned to spend his evening. But now he wondered. What if she was alive? What would his grandmother say if he left her out there in the rain? Truthfully, his grandmother would have approved of few of his activities. Then again, she hadn't approved of any of his girlfriends either, even the ones who hadn't been strippers.
A ferocious crack of thunder sounded above. Then the sky outside the window lit to white, and the television shut off. Outside, the rain fell even more strongly.
"But not now," Mike added. "No point in having three bodies up in these woods."
"Three bodies?" D said. "Bet there's already more than three bodies out there now." But he didn't argue. Together, as one, they searched the house by flashlight to find the tin of dollar bills that Carl had hidden in a loose floorboard under the sofa. It took almost until dawn for the rain to slow. Mike and Carl shared a tin of beans and then, shovel in hand, trekked on up the hill.
The girl was gone.
"This is good, isn't it?" D asked, clapping Mike just above the small of his back. "You didn't kill her. You must be so glad!"
"Oh, yes," Mike said, his teeth grit. "That's a load off the mind. Now all we have to do is find out where she went and get her back before she tells the cops what happened. Not to mention when Carl finds out. It's much better this way."
In the corner of Mike's vision, D nodded. Mike had a few ideas of what he might have done in his life to deserve this, what he couldn't figure was how D had managed to live this long without developing any sense for sarcasm at all.
Chapter 6
Seeing that Samuel had decided to stop disgracing himself by imposing familiarity upon this stranger in the eyes of the Lord, and that he had put the Englischer woman safely into Annie's arms, Abram went back to the buggy to retrieve the tattered clothes Sofia had been wearing when she stumbled onto his doorstep, mere hours ago. It was settled then. Sofia would return to her people, and Abram to his home. Had there been any other outcome?
In truth, Abram had no reason to stay any longer. Annie would see that his wife's clothes were returned to him, at some point. It wasn't as though Rebekah needed them any longer. Truthfully, he should offer them to the community at the next Church meeting. Rebekah wouldn't appreciate his hoarding her things. It was wasteful and Rebekah had abhorred waste. Yes, once he had returned the Englischer woman's clothes, it would make the most sense for him to be on his way before dark. Not that he feared the roads in the dark any more than he would in the day. But tomorrow morning he had to wake early to take his furniture to the auction. There would be many Englischer and Amish customers who might buy the set of four chairs he had finished yesterday.
When he returned, Sofia was sitting at the edge of the group who had gathered for the singing circle. Samuel had taken a seat next to her, his friend on his opposite side. The boys had yet to take their vows to the Church and marry, and as such they were all clean-shaven, even Samuel, thought at a week before his 24th birthday, he was past time to have decided whether he would marry and join the church or leave the community forever. Though Abram would never speak his thoughts on the subject out-loud, he found Samuel's waiting to be a sign of frivolity rather than thoughtfulness. With a foot in each world, he enjoyed the best of both, and he was far too handsome by half.
Shocked at th
e rancor of his thoughts, Abram closed his eyes briefly and prayed, Dear Lord, protect me from the sin of envy, that I might better serve you and my fellow man. Taking a calming breath through his nose, he started towards Sofia. He should bid her farewell. It was the least he could do. And tell her not to worry for the clothing. Rebekah, in the grace and beauty of heaven, would certainly understand.
The youths were already singing in the main living room. It was large enough to seat the twenty youths who were seated on the sofas and wooden stools that had been brought out for the occasion. Singing circles at the Millers were more spontaneous than most, Abram remembered. Sometimes the youths would sing for fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch, one starting a song immediately where the others left off, punctuated by laughter, jokes and applause. Other times, as much as a quarter hour could pass between songs as the youths socialized, formed community bonds, and preferably settled on someone as a mate. After an hour or so, Annie and the other women would come in with large trays of food: sweet breads, sliced tomatoes, potato salad, and moon pies for the young men and women to devour, calling an official end to the singing. Most were homeward bound soon thereafter, though Annie usually ended up opening her guest rooms for a smattering that were too far flung or too tired to take the long journey home.
Sofia had been given a place of honor on one of the sofas, sharing with one of Annie's oldest daughters, a sixteen year old named Miriam. Samuel had pulled up a stool on Sofia's other side, just far enough away to stay in the bounds of propriety. Barely. He sang quietly, his attention clearly split between the proceedings and the pretty Englischer girl.
