“He hit you with the shovel, and he’s going to help me get rid of your body,” Alma said. “That makes him guilty.”
Fear made Rachel’s mouth dry. “Alma, please. You don’t have to kill me,” she begged. “I found a lawyer for Moses. I can convince her to defend Lemuel. So long as you don’t hurt me, they’d never put him in prison.”
“Don’t lie to me. I know about the places Englishers send their children. I may be uneducated, but I’m not stupid. Juvenile detention centers.” Those three words came out in English, rather than Deitsch. “We’ll give you a little while to make your peace with God. Pray for your soul and ask forgiveness for your sins. You’ll go to heaven when this business is all said and done, Rachel. Even though you left the Amish church, you’re a good person. God will understand.”
“You don’t want to do this,” Rachel managed, fighting tears. “Daniel was an evil man. You had to protect your children. But all I’ve tried to do was help your family. I shouldn’t die for it.”
Alma shook her head. “They’ll be looking for you. We don’t have much time to think of the best place to put your body. But giving you time to pray is the decent thing to do. Be at peace. This world is a place of sorrow and pain, and you’re better out of it.”
“Please,” Rachel begged. “Think of what this will do to Lemuel.”
“It’s Lemuel I’m thinking of,” Alma insisted, turning away. “Come, boy. We need to do some praying of our own.”
The two of them exited the barn and Rachel was left on the floor wondering why she’d ever left the warmth and safety of her own home.
Chapter 20
Lying there on the barn floor, Rachel refused to wallow in self-pity or sink into a stupor of paralyzing fear as she contemplated her own death. She knew she didn’t have much time. Lemuel would do whatever his mother asked of him, and Alma seemed beyond reason.
Frantically, Rachel struggled to free her hands tied in front of her, but the jute twine cut into her wrists. She didn’t want to die like this, but worse than the idea of dying was knowing that Evan would be waiting for her at the church. Everyone would stare at him and whisper behind their hands and pity him. They would believe that, as predicted by many, she’d stood him up at the altar.
It would break his heart.
She relaxed for a moment, trying to think. Think her way out of this; it was how she’d managed to get out of situations like this before. The pain in her head brought on waves of nausea, but she couldn’t let herself be sick. Think! she told herself. Only she couldn’t think clearly. The pain was awful, and she was so cold. All she wanted to do was to close her eyes and sleep. If she slept, though, she might never wake. Instead, she concentrated on the twine wrapped around her wrists, working at the knots with her teeth.
If she could get to her phone, she could call for help. But it seemed as if it was a long way away. She’d left her cell in the Jeep, as she always did when she was visiting an Amish home. Out of respect. She hadn’t wanted to disturb Alma’s house with a ringing telephone. And she would probably pay for that mistake with her life.
Alma.
Why had she never suspected Alma?
It all made sense now that she knew Alma was ill. Daniel and Mary Rose would have inherited the farm when Alma passed, but Daniel would have been in control. He would have had all the power. Who knows what he would have done to his infant daughter or to Lemuel?
If Rachel had known what was going on under Alma’s roof, she could have gone to the authorities. “God forgive me,” she prayed.
Part of this was her own fault. Vanity. She’d believed that she could learn the truth and free Moses. Now she might die for her stubborn insistence on interfering where she shouldn’t have. She didn’t fear death the way many Englishers did because she had faith there was a hereafter. But she didn’t want to die yet, not before she and Evan had a chance to marry, to make a life together. She wanted children and the opportunity to grow old with the man she loved. She had to think of a way to get out of this. There had to be some way to convince Alma to spare her, if only for Lemuel’s sake.
A surge of hope washed over Rachel as she managed to loosen the first knot at her wrists. Warm, sticky blood ran down her neck, coming from where, she wasn’t sure. Her head wound? Tied up this way, her shoulders ached and her feet were going numb. She tried to wiggle her toes and only succeeded in causing a cramp in her right calf.
She sucked in a deep breath and tried to hold back a sense of rising panic.
Her mind raced. Odd images rose, becoming vivid flashes of memory . . . the midwife’s hearth with its crackling fire . . . a section of cordwood at the instant Moses’s ax split through it . . . Chuck’s tea mugs and his medal . . . and the red cardinal rising out of the snow in her father’s barnyard the day of Daniel’s funeral.
“Things are not always what they appear to be,” she murmured.
The midwife was no storybook witch. The strange man on the mountain with the barricades and knife was no murderer. The child’s lost mitten in the barnyard that day was a bird. And the mother was a murderer.
Rachel’s eyelids drifted shut and her head slumped as she lost consciousness to the image of dozens of red mittens swirling through the air like so many crimson snowflakes.
* * *
Sometime later a horse whinnied, and Rachel jerked
