“I confessed.” He smiled again, that same sad smile.
The shadow of a beard showed on his thin cheeks. She’d have to remember to see that he had the means to shave if that was permitted. “I don’t believe you’re telling the truth, Moses,” she said softly. “I don’t think you killed Daniel.”
“Why do you say that? You don’t know me. Maybe I could have done that. Maybe I could have pointed a rifle at him and pulled the trigger.”
“Can you look me in the eye and tell me you did?” Rachel asked.
Moses blinked back tears. And then, slowly, he shook his head from side to side.
“So you’re telling me that you’re innocent?”
“If the police ask me, I will say I did it. I will.”
“Why? Who are you trying to protect?”
An insistent rap came at the door. It opened a crack. “We have to go now,” Evan said.
She looked back at Moses. He’d lowered his head to the table and was silently weeping. His arms hid most of his face, but she was touched by his trembling shoulders. “You have to have a lawyer,” she repeated. “Your mother wants you to have a lawyer. Don’t make this even harder on her.”
Moses said nothing.
“I’ll take that as a ya,” she said. “I’ll come again, if I can, and I’ll pray for you, Moses. I will pray for you.”
Moses said nothing more and Rachel allowed Evan to lead her out of the room. She said nothing as she followed Evan back through the metal doors and checkpoints. She didn’t speak as they walked to his SUV; he unlocked and opened the passenger’s door for her. She kept her silence as he drove away from the forbidding prison.
“Will he accept an attorney?” Evan asked as he pulled onto the highway and accelerated.
“I think so. He didn’t say that he wouldn’t.”
“What did he say?”
She looked at him. What had Moses said? What had he meant? “I don’t think he did it, Evan.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Not directly,” she answered.
“So you didn’t learn anything, and you’re not sure if he’ll agree to have a lawyer?”
She thought about what Moses had said about Daniel’s death not being an accident. Did he mean he knew who did it, or did he mean he had done it accidentally? She groaned inwardly. She’d believed that coming to see Moses would put her conscience to rest, but it hadn’t. She was more confused now than she had been before she’d entered the prison. “I think he was trying to tell me that he didn’t shoot his brother-in-law,” she said, not answering his question.
“But he gave a confession to the police.”
“Yes, he did.”
“And now he’s saying that he’s innocent.”
“Not exactly,” she admitted. “But that’s what he meant. At least, I think that’s what he meant.” She laid her hand on his arm. “It was a cry for help, Evan. I can’t just walk away from this. Not now.”
“The thing is . . .” Evan hesitated as if searching for the right way to explain his thoughts. “The thing is, Rachel, once someone makes a confession, justice takes a certain path. He said he did it, so they believe him. I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s more likely he’s lying now.”
“I know that.” She glanced at the window, watching the scenery go by but not really seeing it. “But I’m telling you,” she said softly, “Moses didn’t kill Daniel.”
Chapter 6
“Moses is definitely different,” Rachel said to Mary Aaron as she dropped into her recliner and pulled off her boots. “But he doesn’t seem like a killer to me. He seems . . . I don’t know, sweet.” She reached for her sheepskin slippers, her favorite winter footwear, at least when she was at home.
“Sweet?” Her cousin wrinkled her nose.
Rachel wasn’t certain what Mary Aaron meant by that observation. The two of them were shut away in Rachel’s suite on the third floor of Stone Mill House. Mary Aaron was perched on the corner of the bed, tossing a toy mouse for Bishop. The big Siamese would fetch for Mary Aaron but not for her. Odd, since Bishop was her cat. Sometimes, Rachel thought the animal only tolerated her, but to others he could be quite affectionate.
“You don’t think Moses is sweet?” Rachel asked, bringing her own thoughts back to the matter at hand. “Do you know him well?” She was familiar with most of the Amish families in the valley, but some she knew only by hearsay. “Are you friends with Mary Rose?” Rachel didn’t know any of the Studers well. She’d rarely seen Moses’s mother or sister in town, and of course, she didn’t attend Amish worship service anymore. She couldn’t remember Daniel at all, other than as another German face in a straw hat and suspenders.
Mary Aaron unpinned her kapp and shook out her bun. She placed the head covering on the quilt and combed out her hair with her fingers. “I don’t think anyone knows Moses well,” she said as she began to plait her hair into one thick braid. She was wearing her own jeans, new running shoes, and a pale-pink cotton sweater.
Mary Aaron had recently begun running seriously and was doing thirty miles a week. Rachel was glad to see her testing the bounds of her culture, but she hoped her cousin wasn’t running just because it was something Rachel did. Or at least, she hoped that Mary Aaron enjoyed running. Rachel had had little enough time for it the past year, and she was afraid that her endurance was slipping.
Rachel didn’t say anything about Mary Aaron’s attire. Some days her cousin wore traditional Amish dresses; others, casual English clothes; and often a mixture of the two. Rachel wished she would make up her mind because the suspense was worse than knowing—and because Timothy, Mary Aaron’s faithful admirer, kept asking her when Mary Aaron was returning to the fold. As if Rachel knew . . . anything.
Although Mary Aaron was at an age
