The house phone rang and Rachel checked the caller ID. She grimaced. It was the bridal shop. They were anxious for her to make another appointment to have the last fitting on her gown, but she didn’t want to commit to a particular time because what if she couldn’t make that one, either? The dress had seemed to fit well enough the first time she’d tried it on. Okay, so it needed a little letting out in the waist. Just a little. Bridal gowns all seemed to come in size 6 or 4, and she was definitely an 8 . . . or maybe more of a 10. But she wasn’t vain. And she was no one’s idea of a fairy-tale princess. Making her look like someone she wasn’t for one day didn’t seem as important right now as trying to help Moses Studer save his life.
Rachel let the call go to voicemail; she’d call the bridal shop back later. “I don’t think he did it,” she told Mary Aaron.
Mary Aaron got up and put her kapp on the bookcase near the door. “But he confessed,” she said. She glanced at her reflection in the oval antique mirror that hung on the wall. “I think I should dye it back to its original color,” she said. “The streaking looks silly.”
“I don’t think it looks silly, but if you ask me, your hair doesn’t need streaking. It’s lovely as it is,” Rachel remarked. She heard her cell phone, lying on a table, vibrating. She ignored it and glanced at Mary Aaron.
Her cousin’s hair was wheat-colored, thick and shining. In the summer, the sun tinted it with golden highlights, and in winter, it darkened a little and became a rich honey hue. With her rosy complexion, even features, sparkling eyes with their thick lashes, and a faint scattering of freckles across her nose and cheekbones, Mary Aaron’s face was fresh and charming. Personally, Rachel had always thought that Mary Aaron had a classic girl-next-door face, and that she was someone who would retain her natural beauty into her eighties. Rachel would have said so, but she knew that Mary Aaron would be embarrassed by the compliment. It would be too English. Not Amish.
Mary Aaron looked into the mirror again and grimaced. “I wish my hair was either strawberry blond or butter yellow or as dark as Evan’s.”
Rachel chuckled. “If wishes were horses.” Though younger, Mary Aaron was as close to her as any of her sisters—closer. She was her dearest friend and usually had better sense than most women twice her age. But her cousin’s venture into rumspringa was sometimes trying. At least she hadn’t taken up smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol like some Amish young people did during their running around time. And it was Mary Aaron’s common sense and her rock-solid faith that Rachel was certain would set her right eventually.
“Do you think Moses is the type of person who could point a gun at someone and shoot him?” Rachel asked, bringing the subject back to what was troubling her.
Mary Aaron shook her head. “Ne, but I’ve been wrong before, haven’t I?” She dropped onto the bed again. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
“Do you think I should?”
“I don’t want to talk you into something that will cause you trouble. Have you prayed on it?”
Rachel nodded. “On my knees. But I’m not sure He heard me because I haven’t . . .”
Mary Aaron’s eyes widened with concern. “He always hears us, but we don’t always hear Him when He speaks to us. What does your conscience tell you to do?”
Rachel didn’t hesitate. “To do something. To ask questions. To see that Moses has legal representation that will look out for his best interests.”
Her cousin sighed. “Then that’s what you have to do . . . what we have to do. It won’t hurt anything if we talk to his family and to men who might have been out hunting in that area that day. People who might have seen or heard something.”
“That’s what I thought.” She got up out of the chair and crossed the room to her desk. Mounted on the wall beside it was a large whiteboard. Using an eraser, she wiped clean the list of chores she’d planned for the B&B that week.
She took several dry erase markers from a pottery cup on her desk. Picking out a teal marker, she printed Daniel Fisher’s name at the top center of the board in all caps and underlined it in red. Beside his name, she wrote deceased in cursive, lowercase. Then, a few inches below, on the left side, she printed FAMILY in caps and underlined the word. She listed all the members of Daniel’s immediate family: Mary Rose Fisher, Baby Eliza Fisher, Alma Studer, and Lemuel Studer.
Below, boxed in red, she printed Moses’s name. And beside it, in cursive, lowercase, she wrote confessed.
“Moses didn’t actually live with Daniel,” Mary Aaron pointed out.
“Right, but he’s family.”
Directly below Daniel Fisher’s name and to the right of family, Rachel printed HUNTERS in caps. And then, to the right of HUNTERS, she printed ENEMIES. She glanced over at Mary Aaron, who was now on her feet and standing an arm’s length away. “I don’t need to tell you that anything you see here is just between the two of us.”
Mary Aaron rolled her eyes.
