“Yeah. But why?” His voice cracked. “Why would anyone want to hurt these people? These are good people.”
My sister. Jenny. Saint Ainsley the Hero. Goodness was no shield.
“Ainsley, Ainsley, Ainsley,” I interrupted that line of thought. “What’s the rule?
“Rule?” He blinked, welcoming the chance to refocus his emotions before the tears dropped. “You mean about the camera? I left it on the tripod, running the whole time. Everything’s wide, but I checked it, Maddy. We’ve got some amazing stuff. Really.”
“Not that rule.”
“Huh?”
“The one that says you report the news.” I grabbed his closest hand and held it up between us. “You don’t become the news.”
He looked confused. “What do you mean? There were people in there. They could have died.”
“You could have died. You were there to do a job. Your uncle was counting on you. I was counting on you. By all means call for backup. Call fire. Call police. Call your mom-but I can’t have you rushing into burning buildings every time I send you out. My nerves can’t take it.”
“Your nerves? That old guy may still die.” He might look like spun sugar, but it was all grit now. “What about him?”
“The rule is you stay on your side of the camera, and they stay on the other. If you can’t handle that simple instruction, I can’t work with you.” My voice got loud enough to make some crows in the trees take flight. Nice Amish country people probably never shouted loud enough to scare birds.
“That how you handle it?” Ainsley leaned into my face.
“We aren’t talking about me, College Boy.”
“Right. Television is about entertainment, Ms. O’Hara. Even I know that.” His voice stiffened. He sounded older. “Nobody dies for entertainment.”
A mental flip chart of images appeared, one I was glad he couldn’t see. “People die for it all the time, kid,” I admitted. The smoky air surrounding us felt like a rasp down my throat. “
“Careful?” He took two big steps backward. “Careful? Right. Now explain to me how I live with myself the next day?”
“If you’re alive the next day, I’m good with that.” My vision was blurring and my nose was stinging. I blinked about a hundred times to keep the view cleared.
Ainsley shook his head in disgust and backed even farther away.
“I’ll get you back to the hospital as soon as the gear’s packed,” I told him.
“Don’t bother. I’d rather go with the ambulance.” He waved a club-like hand in dismissal, turned his back and stomped off.
Damn, I hate it when other people have a point. My phone rang and it gave me an excuse to put off chasing him down and apologizing.
“Miss O’Hara?” The voice was familiar-older, female.
The first person I thought of was the nurse who’d been helping Jenny and my heart stopped for a second. “Yes?”
“This is Grace Ott. We met the other day at my house. You recall?”
I pressed my shoulders back down, out of the hunch-of-dread. “Sure. What’d you need, Mrs. Ott?”
“Oh, nothing. No, I’m fine. I’m sorry to call so early but you seemed like the type that wouldn’t lay about come morning.”
“You didn’t wake me.”
“Good. I thought you should know, Rachel Jost is here with me.”
“With you? Where?” I blurted out the next thought as the light came on, “She’s left the community.”
“Yes. I think so. She’s going to stay with me a while anyway.”
“Mrs. Ott?” I closed my eyes, ostrich-style. “I have some bad news. There’s been a fire.”
“Yah. We know,” Grace replied, her accent coming through heavily. In a hushed voice, as if she were talking to herself, came the whispered words, “Patience. Patience.”
How long since I had stood on the porch talking to Jost? “When did she come to you, Mrs. Ott?”
“Yesterday. She and her father had a bit of a to-do.” She stopped all of a sudden. “Rachel wants to talk with you. I can’t convince her to wait. The only way I could get her to rest at all, was by promising you would come soon. Is that possible?”
“Um, that could be tricky. Maybe tomorrow?”
“I was hoping we might come and meet you.”
“I’m actually out at the Jost farm right now.” I did a full three-sixty, scanning the view-singed barn, ruined house, and resisted the urge to add the obvious,
“Goodness.” Grace laughed. “I will never get used to these phones.”
It seemed an odd thing to say, until I caught sight of a bundled gnome in the distance. She was near the road that led to the driveway, wearing one of those plastic rain hats old ladies always seem to have in their purses.
“Is that you?” I asked. My brain took a second to adjust. I had seen her image frozen on screen for hours yesterday. Here in this place, the real person was disconcertingly out of context.
“We’re parked across the road.” She pointed as she spoke. “I had to get out of the car to make this silly thing work. Now, what good is that?”
“Here I come.” I snapped my phone shut and walked toward the apparition of Grace at the end of the road.
She didn’t wait. At a surprisingly fast clip, she marched down the drive past the line of horse-powered vehicles parked along the country road, head down as she passed the buggies.
About a half mile up the road, an antique Ford Galaxie was parked on the shoulder. It was tan, of course, and more of a tank than a car-mostly hood and trunk, it must of packed enough steel to keep the Gary mills in business for a week. Grace got in on the driver’s side. Someone was sitting on the passenger side.
I knocked on the window.
Rachel.
She was sitting in the car. That’s why Ainsley had noticed no one was worried. Someone had seen her sitting in Grace’s car. They must have guessed that Rachel was leaving the community.
She popped the door latch and slid to the middle of the bench seat.
I climbed in beside her.
Grace didn’t speak. Rachel didn’t speak. We all sat shoulder to shoulder and stared straight out the front window.
Parochial school manners prompted my words. “Sorry for your trouble, Rachel.”
“I have something for you.”
Grace passed her the phone. Rachel passed it to me.
“A cell phone?”
“And this, too.” Rachel had wrapped herself in a giant triangle of black shawl. It covered her bonnet, her shoulders and the bulk of her plum-colored dress. She opened the shawl to reveal a pair of binoculars lying in her lap.
“Is this the phone I saw you holding that day in the bushes?”
She nodded.
“Where did you get these,” I asked gently, “the phone and the binoculars?”
“My father had them hidden in the barn. I found them both the day Thomas died.” She spoke without turning her head toward me. Her profile wore the stiff mask that covers heart-core panic.
“Do you know why he hid them?”
For a moment, her lip trembled. She reached out and took hold of Grace’s hand. “I was afraid to ask. The morning Thomas died, there was a call to the dairy. It was for my father. After that, he was gone a while. I found him in the barn,
