Should she call out for help? Where were Evan and the wedding guests? Shouldn’t someone notice that the bride was lying on the floor with her hands and ankles tied? How could she and Evan exchange their vows in a barn?
She forced her eyes open and the pain in her head threatened to make her vomit. Her eyelids were so heavy that they closed again under their own weight, but in that brief second, she’d seen the shadowy light coming in the barn window and reasoned that it was still daytime.
“Evan?” she called weakly. “Evan, where are you? I . . . I need . . . you to . . .”
And then the thick snow came down around her, and she fell forward and drifted off into the darkness.
* * *
The next time Rachel became conscious, she heard voices and recognized them as Alma’s and Lemuel’s. She gasped as memories came rushing back. She’d come to the farm to question Lemuel about the police report and he’d turned violent. He’d hit her. He’d knocked her down. The boy had tied her up and left her in the Studer barn.
Lemuel was the killer.
Her head throbbed with pain, a headache like the worst migraine. She wanted to just lie down. Sleep it off, or even sleep into oblivion. Because it was reasonable to think if Lemuel could do this to her . . . if he could kill Daniel, he could kill her, too. But she refused to give up without a fight. She wouldn’t be his second victim. She had to find a way out of this before he murdered her to keep her quiet.
The hinges on the barn door squeaked. Then came the sound of footsteps.
After a moment, something nudged the sole of her boot. “Why did you hit her with the shovel?” Alma asked.
“I had to, Mam,” Lemuel whined. “She asked too many questions and she figured it out. I had to stop her from going to the police.”
Someone shoved her foot again. Alma?
“You hit her too hard,” Alma complained. “And now what do we do with her?”
“I’m sorry. I thought—”
“It was wrong. You should have waited and talked to me. I didn’t want you in this at all.”
“But you said she was asking Mary Rose questions the other day in the attic. Questions that could get us all in trouble.”
“I don’t care what I said. . . .”
“Alma. Help me,” Rachel said, speaking in Deitsch. “I need medical attention. I’m hurt. Don’t let Lemuel be responsible for two deaths.”
“See?” the boy said. “I didn’t kill her. She’s got a hard head.”
Fighting the blinding headache, Rachel tried to open her eyes. “Alma, please. Make him see that this is wrong. He’s only fourteen; he won’t be held fully responsible. Whatever he’s done, we can make this right.”
Alma knelt beside her and stroked Rachel’s face with a rough palm. “Ne. There’s no going back now. It’s done. You should have let this go.”
“But you asked me to—Alma, you asked me to help Moses.”
“I thought you were going to make them, make the police let him go. Because he didn’t kill Daniel.”
Rachel sucked in a breath, trying to ignore the pain and speak rationally. “Moses really didn’t shoot Daniel?”
“Of course not,” Lemuel said. He sounded like a ten-year-old, but Rachel knew now how dangerous he could be. “He wouldn’t do that,” he argued. “Moses couldn’t do such a thing. It goes against the teaching to strike back, even if it’s a bad person and they do evil. You return good for evil. The Book tells us that.”
Rachel opened her eyes. Lemuel was standing there in the light from the open door. Behind him, she could see snow falling. The teen looked small and sad, not like a murderer at all.
“Why didn’t you send Lemuel away, Alma? Somewhere Daniel couldn’t hurt him? Why didn’t you send him to Moses?”
“You don’t understand,” Alma said fiercely, pulling her hand away from Rachel. “It wasn’t just Lemuel, it was all of them. All of them to protect. How could I send Mary Rose away from her husband? Was I to tear the baby from her mother?”
“So you let Lemuel stay, and he was so desperate that he shot Daniel?” Rachel tried to lift her head, squinting to see her better. “How could you commit murder, Lemuel?” She tried to sound calm, but her voice rasped like an old woman’s.
“He couldn’t,” Alma said, her tone now flat. Resigned. “My Lemuel? None of my children could do such a thing.” She stood and dusted the loose hay from her skirt. “It was me. I had to be the one to make the sacrifice for them. I had to be the one to commit the unforgivable sin.”
“Mam, don’t say that,” Lemuel protested, his voice cracking again. “You can do what Daniel did. Repent and be forgiven.”
Alma made a small sound of disbelief. “Only if I was truly sorry. But I’m not. I’d do it again.”
Rachel coughed, trying to clear the dust from her throat. She rolled onto her side so that she could make out Alma in the shadows. The woman’s face was as pale as a ghost, and she looked frail despite her heavy barn coat. She was having a hard time following the conversation. Had Alma just admitted to having killed Daniel? “You . . . you killed him, Alma?”
The old woman’s sharp chin bobbed assent.
“Daniel was a bad man,” Lemuel said. “He hurt Mary Rose and me, and sometimes Moses, until he left the farm.”
“I couldn’t keep protecting them, you see,” Alma explained. “As mean as Daniel could be, as mean as a copperhead with a broken back, he was afraid of me. Afraid I wouldn’t pass the farm on to him and Mary Rose.”
The older woman wasn’t really making sense. Or maybe Rachel just couldn’t make sense of what she was saying.
“Did
