The Hallowed Ones

But most of all, I was intrigued by the idea of her purity. Wonder Woman was certainly not Plain, and not even any stripe of Christian. She followed the ancient Greek gods, who occasionally appeared in the stories.

But she retained her virtue. To my knowledge, Diana remained virginally pure. Despite her seemingly overt sexuality, there was a certain innocence about her. Power and innocence. It flummoxed me.

I was also easily stymied by the threats she faced: crime, hatred, war. In my peaceful life, I had never known any of these things.

But comic books were considered children’s things. Though Elijah shared in my teenage rebellions now, I wondered if he would feel the same way if I was married to him. Would he still turn a blind eye to me when I picked up a comic or paged uncomprehendingly through Cosmopolitan? Would he hold me to a different standard, once we were adults?

“Katie, come on,” Elijah called from the next aisle over.

“Ja. Coming.” I tucked the comic under my arm and followed him.

He glanced back at me. “What?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing.” I was embarrassed to admit I was searching for comics when we should be looking for the boys.

“It’s something,” he said. “You only get that look in your eyes when you’re thinking.”

I blew out my breath. He knew me well. Better than I wanted to admit.

“I . . . wondered what would happen when we do as the Bible says. When we leave childish things behind.” I looked down at the comic.

Elijah shrugged. “That’s on the other side.”

“The other side of what?”

“Rumspringa. I figured everything would sort itself out then.”

I clutched Wonder Woman to my chest, refusing to give her up. I paused before the case of pop, opened it, and reached in for a Coca-Cola. I had a weakness for Coca-Cola—the bite and the sweetness were unlike anything at home. Maybe Rumspringa would dim that desire out of me. But not yet.

I walked up to the cash register, reaching for money in my apron pocket.

But Mr. Schmidt wasn't there. I peered over the counter, festooned in ribbons of lottery tickets. The clerk’s stool stood empty, and the cash register was closed. Fear prickled along the back of my neck.

Elijah’s arm reached around me to ring the bell on the counter. “Maybe he’s in the bathroom.”

I gestured with my chin at the open lavatory door. “No.”

“But his car’s out there,” Elijah insisted. It was as if he was refusing to believe what we saw.

“He’s not here,” I said. “And neither are Seth or Joseph.”

Elijah rang the bell again, out of frustration, before he walked to the back exit of the store to fetch the buggy.

I looked down at the pop and comic book in my hands. For an instant, I considered walking out with them. The thought gave me a rush that crept up to my cheeks in a flush of power.

But I put my money down on the counter, calculating the exact sales tax in my head and counting out the change to the penny. I left it in a neat pile beside the cash register before I walked out.

I might have been rebellious. Maybe a bit sinful. Maybe a lot sinful.

But I wasn’t a thief.

The furniture store was a two-story building built to resemble a barn, the front porch crowded with rocking chairs. Connected to the store was a sheet-metal warehouse where furniture was constructed and finished by Amish men. Elijah guided the buggy down the gravel drive and stopped to tie up Star on a hitching post beside the building.

We climbed two short steps to the porch and wove around the rocking chairs for sale. I paused before the front window. The store usually displayed hope chests, china cupboards, and bedsteads in the large window. These things were still here, but the glass was broken out. A few shards were on the porch, but it seemed as if most of the damage reached within the display window. Glass sparkled like ice on a bedstead with a red-and-white quilt spread on it.

“Stay with the buggy,” Elijah whispered.

I shook my head and followed him across the porch. The floorboards creaked under our shoes as we reached the front door, which still had its Closed sign turned out. It dangled slightly askew. Above the door frame, a carved wooden placard bade visitors “Welcome.”

Elijah grabbed the door handle and pulled. It opened, and the bell jangled.

“Seth? Joseph?” he called into the darkness.

Only the echo of the bell answered him.

My fingers gripped the sleeve of Elijah’s shirt as we crossed the threshold. The air felt cooler inside, as if the shadow of the building still held some of the darkness of night that it was unwilling to release into the day. Elijah turned on the light switch beside the entrance.

The fluorescent overhead lights flickered to life, casting harsh blue light into the show room. If there were shadows in my imagination, they scuttled away under that blisteringly clear light.

“Joseph!” Elijah yelled.

I pursed my mouth. If Herr Miller and Mrs. Parsall hadn’t found the boys, then they weren’t here. But I understood Elijah’s need to see what had driven them straight to the Elders.

Glass from the store window crunched underfoot as we wove our way through the displays that smelled like cedar and sawdust. I’d never seen the store empty before. There were usually at least a half-dozen English stroking the grain of the wood or filling out custom orders for kitchen cabinets. It was a lucrative business. But not today.

Today a chest of drawers was upturned on the floor, drawers spilled out. As a credit to the workmanship, none of the wood had split.

Elijah’s face paled.

“They might not have been here when this happened,” I said. “They may have been robbed, run away . . .”

“They were here.” He walked to a pair of bedsteads pressed up against the wall. The Amish quilts spread over mattresses for decoration, to help shoppers envision the pieces in their homes, were rumpled. Rumpled as if someone had slept in them.

I swallowed, said nothing. What I’d said still held true. Maybe.

Elijah walked back through the store. I paused before the cash register. It was one of the old-fashioned ones that didn’t run on electricity, so that Amish employees could use it. The drawer was still neatly tucked beneath it, undisturbed, so it seemed they hadn’t been robbed.

Elijah reached behind the counter for the telephone. He punched “911” on the buttons and waited. After a few moments, he shook his head. “No answer. Just a recording.”

“What does it say?”

He stood close beside me so that we could both listen to the receiver. A female voice said: “County Sheriff’s Office. Due to an emergency, all personnel are temporarily unavailable. For motorist assistance, call the State Highway Patrol at . . .”

Elijah put the phone down. “An emergency,” he repeated, shaking his head. His breath disturbed a tendril of hair that had escaped my bonnet.

The knowledge seemed to race through him. I watched as his jaw hardened. He turned around, headed for the back door.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To find out what happened to my brothers.”

Elijah and I searched the back storeroom, stacked high with finished chairs and special orders with yellow tickets taped to them. We made our way through a maze of furniture to the workshop in the back. The door to the workshop was ajar and pushed open easily.

One could tell that Plain folk worked here. All the tools were hand tools, not powered by electricity. Hammers and saws were hung neatly on pegs, nails and screws captured tidily in Mason jars. Half-finished