Return to Grace. Karen Harper

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СКАЧАТЬ and wet and that her wrist was ripped open and slick with blood.

      Seth Lantz couldn’t believe someone was hunting after dark—or had a car misfired … more than once? It was rolling country here; maybe a car would come roaring over the next hill. No, a woman was screaming. A hunting accident? Maybe Englische kids were playing some sick Halloween prank on the Amish because they ignored this worldly holiday. It was the Sabbath, and he wouldn’t even have been hunting today if it didn’t help to keep meat on the table. In this far-reaching recession, big building jobs were hard to come by, and he’d been doing pickup repair work lately.

      He reined in his horse as he approached the fenced-in graveyard on Oakridge. His mare, Blaze, tossed her head, upset to be stopped in the middle of nowhere while heading home. That screaming and loud noise: it was from the graveyard.

      He giddyupped Blaze to the gate and saw a black car parked there, though this was an all-Amish graahof. His young wife was buried here, as were his grandparents, including his dear grossdaadi Gideon, who had taught him to build barns. He threw Blaze’s reins over a hitching post and, hunched low, went around the outside of the fence instead of through the gate.

      Some sort of loud-beat music thudded on. Amid other voices, the woman’s screams had turned to gasping sobs. He put one hand on the wooden fence and vaulted it sideways. No place to really hide in here, no tall monuments, trees or bushes like in English cemeteries, but at least the darkness hid him.

      Then, despite the noise, he picked out a voice he thought he knew, the one that sometimes still danced through his dreams. If it was Hannah Esh, who was she talking to in a one-way conversation?

      “Yes, in the head. He’s not moving, not breathing…. Pulse. I—I’m not sure…. Two others wounded—losing blood, a lot…. Her shoulder and my wrist…. Yes, just visiting…. I—yes, I said my name is Hannah Esh, and I used to live near here. I’m dizzy—faint…. Yes, thank you, please hurry because Kevin might be dead….”

      Seth rose to his full height and strode forward, nearly tripping over a prone body. A scarlet cape was splayed out under him, matching the blood that covered his face and white, ruffled shirt. He saw one woman, her arm and chest soaked in blood—a woman with dark-lined eyes. A horror movie he’d seen once in his rumspringa days darted through his mind: ghouls robbing graves and feeding on corpses.

      He saw another woman sobbing, bent over on the ground. And then the one he sought, though he hardly recognized her, hadn’t seen her for more than three years, had only heard what she’d done to herself after what he’d done to her.

      “Hannah,” he choked out, “it’s Seth. Are you hurt?”

      Tears streaming black lines down her ravaged face, the woman who had once been the love of his life looked up at him. “Seth? Sorry. I—we—I called for help. He’s dead, I think, and I just want to die from pain and shame.”

      She looked like something from the depths of hell, as he bent to rip the purple velvet ruffles off the bottom of her long skirt. Using his pocket knife to cut the material, he made a tourniquet for her arm and wrapped her bleeding wrist. He made a pressure pack for the other girl’s shoulder and told the unharmed girl to keep her hand on it, even though it hurt the one who had been shot. He put two fingers to the blood-slick side of the young man’s neck, then flipped up the edge of the blanket over the lifeless body.

      Striding back toward the huddled group, he asked the man who had not been shot, “What happened here? Did one of you do this?”

      That man’s eyes were wide, his face expressionless. He, too, wore dark-eyed makeup and was dressed fancy, old-fashioned. After a moment, as if it took time for the question to sink in, the man shook his head. “From out there,” he said, pointing up the slant of hill toward the back of the graveyard. “From the dark.”

      “Turn that music off,” Seth said. Looking dazed, the man fumbled with the MP3 player, and silence finally descended. Seth hurried up the hill, ran the entire fence line, seeing no one, though someone could be hiding, watching in the woods higher up. It made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

      He heard distant sirens and went back to hold the blood-soaked velvet to Hannah’s wrist. “Why are you all here? What in the world …?” he started to ask, then bit off the rest when he saw that Hannah lay almost on his wife’s grave and that her marker had been blasted to bits.

      Hannah’s pain got worse, worse. Cold waves, then sizzling hot in her wrist, hand, arm. Twirling now, floating. Seth could not really be here. Had her thoughts summoned him? Had he come to be with Lena? His handsome face sported a blond beard now. Well, of course it did … married man, even if widowed. And with a child, a girl, Lena’s child, must be two years old now, named Marlena. How it had hurt to hear all that, but she’d asked her friend Sarah to keep her informed, anyway.

      What in the world? Seth’s words kept revolving through Hannah’s head. She had gone to the world, left her people. Seth’s fault? Lena’s? Her own? Because of the terrible argument she’d had with her father? Forgive Seth? She could not. She’d jumped the fence, left the Plain People, tried to have a singing career, tried to fit in, but really didn’t.

      Bright blinking lights, a siren that went silent. People to help, medics. A little beam of light in each eye. Voices, words flying by she tried to grab. Seth’s voice, then these strangers’ words.

      “… Can’t transport him … deceased … bled out. Bullet to the head. Crime scene. Sheriff Freeman should be here soon. He can call the coroner.”

      “Wooster, E.R., we’re going to transport two females with gunshot wounds, shoulder, wrist … starting IVs … sending vitals …”

      “Did you see what happened here, Mr. Lantz?”

      Muffled words in and out of her head …

      Lifted onto a gurney, carried, made the pain worse. IV in her arm, wrist bandaged. Two emergency vehicles, bloodred lights piercing the night, but so bright inside where they lifted her, slid her in. The sound of a buggy, a single horse’s hoofbeats coming fast, a voice she knew. Daad! Mamm, too! Was she dreaming?

      “We saw the blinking lights from our house. Did a car hit a buggy? Can we help?” her father asked in English.

      In their German dialect, her mother said, “Seth, Naomi’s with Marlena, so don’t you worry for that. Ach, what happened here?”

      Before Hannah could hear an answer, with great difficulty, she lifted her head to look out past her feet. If she was going to die, to bleed out or never be allowed back here again, she was going to get a glimpse of her parents.

      “Bishop Esh,” Seth was saying, “Hannah was here with worldly friends. She’s been hurt—shot, and she’s inside that one, right there.”

      Her mother peered into the E.R. vehicle. It had been so long since Hannah had looked into her pale blue eyes. More wrinkles than Hannah remembered. Mamm looked grieved. Grieved for her.

      “Oh, Mamm,” Hannah got out before bursting into tears.

      Her father, white beard, intense stare, squinted into the brightness at her, and choked out his childhood nickname for her. “Hanni!”

      Mamm climbed right up, came in and bent over her, holding her other hand. “I’m going with her,” she called out to Daad with Seth standing so tall behind him, though СКАЧАТЬ