HANNAH’S WORLD HAD gone dark even though sunlight streamed in the windows of her aunt’s home. Through unblinking eyes, Hannah lay on the bed looking up at a water stain on the ceiling.
Downstairs, Aunt Nora clanged pots. She could smell the aroma of coffee and shoofly pie, something that would normally have her scooting down the steps. No one made shoofly pie like Aunt Nora.
The upstairs felt quiet, almost as though it mourned with her. The Amish community had circled around the past week, trying to love the pain away. Their kindness wasn’t working.
A tap sounded on the door, and she tried to ignore it. She felt no hunger, felt nothing more than the slight weight of the blanket on her body and the beginning thump of a migraine in her left temple.
“Hannah? Are you awake?” called her best friend, Sarah, through the wood panel.
She struggled into a sitting position. “Come in, Sarah.” She’d thought Sarah would come this morning. She lived two farms over.
Her friend eased into the room as though she feared her footstep on the bare wood floorboards would cause a fresh spate of sobs. She carried a tray of steaming coffee and a sliver of shoofly pie on a saucer. “I brought you some breakfast.” Her dark blue dress and white apron were pressed and starched, and her hair wasn’t drawn back quite so tightly as usual under her kapp. Sarah had a crush on Luca, and Hannah wondered if he was downstairs too.
The aroma of the molasses pie filled the room, but Hannah turned away from it. “I’m not hungry.” She swung her legs over the edge of the mattress. She had to get up, face the day.
Sarah shut the door behind her with one foot. “Try to eat, Hannah. You can’t mope. God’s will be done.”
“If one more person says that to me, I will scream.” She swallowed against the constriction in her throat and composed herself. “I know God is sovereign, but it’s not fair, Sarah.” She rubbed at her temple.
“You have a headache?” Sarah moved to sit on the bed. She took Hannah’s hand and began to apply pressure to the fleshy pad between the thumb and the first finger.
Hannah’s headache began to ease almost immediately. “Thanks, Sarah. Why couldn’t God punish me instead of them?”
“How is it your fault? The poison was in the cookies Cyrus brought.”
“But it was my sin.” Confession trembled on her tongue. “God’s punishment is more than I can bear.”
“You haven’t . . . done something . . . with Noah, have you?”
If only it were that simple. She and Noah could kneel at the next meeting and confess. “No. He’s been a perfect gentleman.” She lifted her head. “I—I’ve been seeing someone else, someone Englisch.”
Sarah put her hand to her mouth. “Oh no, Hannah! You must turn away from him. Confess it to the bishop. It will all be forgiven. Who is it?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Hannah stood and went to grab her dress from the hook on the wall. “I’d better get dressed. The funeral begins in two hours.” She went down the hall to the bathroom and made herself presentable.
Hannah had lied. It did matter. She was lost, abandoned. How could she stay here among her people and be reminded daily that she’d caused something so bad? And what if God wasn’t finished? Maybe he would do more to harm her loved ones because of her sin. Besides, she longed for Reece, for his strength and take-charge attitude. He’d only been able to see her in his professional capacity, but when their eyes met, she knew he ached for her pain.
Sarah had gone by the time Hannah entered the kitchen, a big rectangular room occupied by cabinets along the far end and the table and chairs at the other. Aunt Nora stood by the sink. About five feet in height, she was nearly as big around as she was tall, and she turned to envelop Hannah in an embrace smelling of mint from the meadow tea she’d likely gathered minutes ago.
“My dear,” Nora crooned.
“I want them back, Aunt Nora,” she whispered.
Her aunt smoothed her hair. “I know, liebling. So do I.”
At least Aunt Nora wasn’t offering platitudes. “Why would Cyrus do this?”
Her aunt pulled away and turned to the refrigerator. She shook her head. “You must eat.”
Hannah stared at the older woman’s back. What was that brief expression of disagreement in her aunt’s eyes? “Aunt Nora, do you suspect someone other than Cyrus? He had the cookies in his hand. The clerk saw him make them in his bakery.”
Moe stuck his head in the door. “The buggy is ready. We need to go.”
Her aunt turned to the door. “Let’s go, Hannah. We’ll be late.” She snatched a wool cape off the hook and went out the back door.
Hannah followed, but her thoughts swirled. Did her aunt know Cyrus?
THREE
“Hannah, you’re going out to work in the world. Make sure you hold yourself separate. Always remember your traditions and your faith.”
PATRICIA SCHWARTZ
They were four lone survivors in an unfamiliar world. The heavy clop-clop of the horse’s hooves struck the pavement like a death bell clanging as Hannah huddled in the back of the buggy beside her aunt. Luca sat in front with Moe and guided the horse past bare winter fields whose only signs of life were the remains of cornstalks sticking through the muddy soil. The black horse-drawn hearses, two of them, in front of her cousin’s buggy crawled under a leaden sky. The dark seemed to press down with a heavy hand that she could not escape.The cemetery was on the edge of her father’s farm. Narrow wooden stakes bearing only the initials of the deceased dotted the hillside just past the tall maple trees that protected the grave sites. The grave diggers had left a trail of mud across the wet grass.
At over two weeks after death, the burials were long overdue, but they’d had to wait until the autopsies were completed and the bodies released. The funeral service itself was a long blur held at the church—a few hymns sung without instrumental accompaniment, some Scripture, and a sermon. The service was hardly different from any other Sunday gathering, yet it was not the same at all. Everything was changed now, as radically different as if Hannah had awakened in some strange world. Friends mouthed sympathy, but not a word penetrated.
For an instant she longed for a service like the Englisch had, a memorial where friends and family were allowed to speak their minds about their loved ones. The minister had mentioned her parents only in passing.
She spoke to her hands. “I couldn’t have survived this without you, Luca.”
He didn’t look at her. “Ja, they were like my own parents. I have no one now. No one but you.”
Luca turned his horses into the cemetery lane behind the hearses just as the first cold drops of rain began to strike Hannah’s face. He pulled back on the reins, and the horse slowed, then stopped. He clambered down and held up a hand to assist her. The serenity of his expression gave her pause. Wasn’t he just as tormented as she was?
The wind whipped her skirt and tugged tendrils of hair loose from her bonnet, but the chilly air wasn’t nearly as disquieting as the icy cold inside her body. Hanging on to his arm, she followed her cousin to the yawning graves. Hot moisture sprang to her eyes at the dark holes scarring the earth.
She couldn’t bear to see her parents put down into the black earth. Not them. She looked away, stumbling under the weight of her doubt. Had she absorbed so much of the Englisch way of thinking in her little contact with them? When her grandparents had died, she was able to accept it. They had lived good, long lives. But this loss left Hannah longing for the touch of her mother’s hand, for the sound of her father’s yodel as he walked from the greenhouse.
If anyone deserved to be in heaven, it was her parents. She knew that was true, but heavy mourning muffled her conviction that they were in a better place.
Aunt Nora embraced her, and they both nearly toppled, but Luca righted them with a steady hand.