I opened Becky’s bedroom door. In the streetlamp’s light, which streamed through the window, she lay sprawled across the bed. Her sheets and blankets were twisted around her legs so tightly I feared they might cut off her circulation.
She thrashed back and forth, her eyes squeezed shut, and moaned to herself.
“Becky!”
“I’m sorry, Isaac!”
I crossed the room and touched her shoulder. “Becky! Becky! Wake up! You’re having another nightmare.”
She sat straight up in the bed, smacking me in the chin with her forehead. I bit down on my tongue. “Ow!” I stomped on Gig’s tail, and he yowled so loudly the neighbors surely heard. The cat bolted out of the room. “Sorry, Gig,” I called after him.
Becky held her forehead and panted. “I have a headache.”
“I have a chin ache.” I rubbed the sore spot.
She blew air in and out of her mouth, trying to control her breathing. “What happened?”
“You were screaming.”
In the dim light given off by the night-light across the room, I saw tears glistening in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Becky? Did you have the nightmare again?”
She closed her eyes. “I saw the buggy at the bottom of the hill. I saw his face.”
“It was a dream. It wasn’t real.” I wrapped my blanket more closely around my body.
She shook her head, her face ghostly white. “No, it was real. I hit him again.”
“Try to forget.”
“I can never forget it. Never.”
I took her hand and sat on the edge of the bed. “Then let’s pray you remember less often.” I bowed my head. “Lord, please help Becky as she deals with this terrible memory. Make it possible that she may find peace in her dreams. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” I opened my eyes. “Did that help?”
“Nothing can help.”
“Don’t say that.”
Becky lay back down and rolled on her side. “You don’t know what it’s like to live with guilt. It weighs me down every night. No matter what gut I accomplished during the day, it means nothing when I close my eyes.”
“I do know what it is like, Becky. I know better than anyone. My father blamed me for my mother’s death when I was only fourteen.” She had been on her way to pick me up from a friend’s sleepover on an icy night in January, lost control of her car on a patch of black ice, and crashed into a tree. What relationship my father and I had also died that night. I untwisted Becky’s sheets and blankets away from her and covered her slender body.
She rolled over to face me. “This is different than your mother. That was a long time ago.”
Her words stung, and I stepped back from the bed. Time had not healed the tension between my father and me since my mother’s accident. I turned to go.
“Chloe?”
I closed my eyes for a brief moment before facing her again. I didn’t want her to know how much her words hurt me. She was suffering. She didn’t mean what she said.
“Do you think Chief Rose is right?” Chloe asked. “Do you think Curt and Brock will come looking for us?”
“No, not if they’re smart. If anything happened to us, they would be the first people anyone would suspect. It would only land them back in prison, and I doubt they want to go back there.”
“I’m afraid they aren’t very smart, like the chief said.”
I was afraid of the same thing but didn’t say so.
As I walked to Harshberger early the next morning, I remembered the conversation I’d overhead between the two women in the church’s cloakroom. I had meant to ask Timothy about it, but thoughts of Curt and Brock and the Hiltys pushed the memory aside.
Typically, because of the traffic, I avoided walking through the square on the way to work. When I say traffic, I mean Appleseed Creek traffic that consists of eight or nine cars and twelve Amish buggies. The memory of the Mennonite women’s conversation in the cloakroom caused me to walk in that direction this morning.
I paused beside the front window of Amish Bread Bakery. Behind the counter, Esther Yoder’s maple-colored hair shimmered like a halo around her white prayer cap. She handed a shopping bag to a man in a business suit.
There was no sign of the bishop’s daughter, Sadie Hooley, who usually worked alongside Esther. After church, Becky had not spoken about Hannah’s announcement of Esther’s upcoming wedding to Isaac Glick.
Esther gave the businessman his change and spotted me peering through the window. She glared at me until I slunk away. I shuffled down the street. Was the bishop’s daughter, Sadie, the one whom the women at church spoke of? It had to be. She was the only one of Bishop Hooley’s daughters who worked at the bakery.
I frowned. How was Sadie attacked? Was she hurt? Enough to miss work? I didn’t know Sadie well, but she had helped me during the summer when she didn’t have to. She was a sweet, unassuming girl.
I was lost in thought when an Amish teenaged girl in a long, black cloak came around the corner and bumped me in the shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” Her voice was breathless. A black bonnet covered her face.
I recognized the voice. “Sadie?”
She looked up. Her brown eyes were red-rimmed behind her glasses. She blinked at me.
“I’m Chloe Humphrey. We met a few months ago.”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I remember.”
“Is something wrong?”
Her expression crumbled. “I have to go. I’m terribly late for work. Esther must be angry.”
“Is everything all right?”
“I’m late.” Her eyes darted in every direction except for my face.
“I . . . I heard you were attacked.”
She spun around. “Who told you that?”
That was tricky to answer. Did I admit I heard women gossiping about it at church? “Are you hurt?”
She licked her lips. “Did the police put you up to this?”
I stepped back. “The police? No.”
Tears gathered in her eyes. “I have to go.” She hurried in the direction of the bakery.
I chewed on my lip. If the police were involved, that could only mean Chief Rose was too.
Chapter Seven
On campus, students crisscrossed the grounds making their way to eight a.m. classes. The mood in the air was light as it was only a two-day school week. The college would close Tuesday evening for Thanksgiving. As much as I looked forward to the time off, I didn’t dwell on the holiday. This would be the first year I wouldn’t spend Thanksgiving with my father.
I surprised myself by missing it. I never looked forward to spending Thanksgiving with him and his new family. During the visit, my stepmother Sabrina only spoke to me when she found something lacking, which was often. My father didn’t speak to me at all. This year, my father, my stepmother, and my half brother and half sister were on a cruise off the western coast of Mexico. Their ship may have already left port.
Going home to Cleveland didn’t seem right either. After my father and stepmother moved to California when I fifteen, I lived with my best friend, Tanisha, and her family through the rest of high school. The Greens became the stable family I never had. However, Tanisha was in Milan, Italy, and would be for the next two years teaching English as a second language. Her parents and younger brother invited me to spend Thanksgiving with Mrs. Green’s family in Georgia, but I said I’d rather stay in Appleseed Creek and get some work done. As much as I loved Tee’s family, it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without her there.
I didn’t know how the Troyers celebrated Thanksgiving or what their plans were. I tried to work up the courage to ask. How pathetic would it be to invite myself to their Thanksgiving gathering? I didn’t even know if, not being Amish, I could be included. What if it was some kind of church-re
lated holiday for the Amish? If that were the case, Timothy and Becky would also be excluded.
Then there was the issue of Isaac Glick’s wedding, which would be held on Thanksgiving Day. Would the Troyers attend? I doubted Becky would go. She wouldn’t want to, nor would she be welcomed.
I stepped into the computer services office. My media specialist, Jonathan Clark, an African-American with the build of a former athlete, sat across the conference table from Darren Miller, the department’s scrawny, constantly fidgeting programmer in his early twenties. Miller reminded me of a mouse as he scurried around the department from task to task.
Miller fumbled with his computer parts more than usual. The programmer looked like he was receiving electroshock treatment.
I turned to Clark, who rocked back in his office chair. He clicked his mouse on the tabletop as he moved it around his computer screen. “Have you seen the Mount Vernon newspaper?”
“No.”
He pointed to it, neatly folded on the edge of the conference table and as far away from Miller as possible without actually being on the floor. Mount Vernon was the Knox’s county seat and the only town to boast a newspaper. The front page headline read, Appleseed Creek Amish Community Terrorized by Shears.
I arched an eyebrow at Clark.
He moved his mouse around the tabletop and clicked. “Keep reading.”
The article went on to say that four young Amish women had been attacked in the last week. They were jumped from behind and held down by their assailants while someone cut off their long hair. Except for a few minor scrapes and bruises during the attack, there were no other injuries.
Chloe read on.
Haircutting is a serious offense in the Amish community. The Amish believe a woman’s hair is her crown jewel and should not be cut. Appleseed Creek Chief of Police, Greta Rose, says she’s taking this case extremely seriously. Rose said, “For religious reasons, Amish women don’t cut their hair. If anyone attacks them and cuts their hair that can be considered a form of religious persecution and a religiously-motivated hate crime in the court of law.”
I placed the paper back onto the table. “This is awful.” Sadie Hooley came to mind. Had her hair been cut? Is that what the ladies meant when they said she had been attacked?
Miller dropped his wireless mouse on the floor and the battery popped out. He leaned over to pick it up and smacked his head on the edge of the table.
I winced. “Are you okay?”
Tears sprang to the programmer’s eyes, and he jumped up from the table, dropping the mouse onto it and fleeing the office. The mouse sat in pieces on the tabletop.
Clark covered the mouse pieces with his large hand and pulled them toward him like a bear collecting pinecones.
“What’s wrong with Miller? Is he upset by the story?”
Clark snapped the AA battery back into the mouse and replaced the cover. “His cousin was one of the victims.”
I fell into a chair. “His cousin? Miller’s Amish?”
Clark set the mouse beside Miller’s abandoned laptop. “No, but his uncle married an Amish woman. He’s Amish and all of his children are.”
“What’s the name of Miller’s cousin?”
“Leah. He’s spoken of her before, so I think the two are pretty close. You know for Miller to speak about anything other than SQL or C++ is a big deal.”
Now that Clark mentioned it, I’d never heard Miller talk about his family or anything unrelated to Harshberger or computers. I tapped the cover story with my nail. “I understand why he’s so upset by it. This is awful. I’m glad the police are investigating.”
“They are to some extent, but Miller is the only one who will talk to Chief Rose and her crew. The Amish won’t talk to her at all. The powers that be want to settle this within the district.”
The powers that be? The Amish bishop.
I wondered why the chief hadn’t mentioned the attacks Sunday morning when she told Timothy, Becky, and me about Curt and Brock being back in town. A knot formed in my stomach as another thought hit me. Could Curt and Brock be behind the attacks? They were the culprits behind vandalism in the district earlier in the year, which was one of the reasons they ended up in jail. Chief Rose implied they held a grudge against Becky and me. Perhaps they held a grudge against the entire Amish district. Curt, for one, had no use for the Amish.
“Actually,” Clark went on, “Miller called the paper about the attacks. He’s frustrated the Amish aren’t speaking out.”
I pursed my lips. I knew what that was like. During the summer when Becky had been falsely accused of a crime, it had been almost impossible to convince the Amish to tell the police what they knew.
“How did his uncle take Miller talking to the paper?”
Clark shrugged.
I circled the headline with my fingertip. “It says four Amish women were attacked. Who are the other three?”
“I don’t know. You can ask Miller, I guess, but I would give him a minute.” Clark rubbed his head covered in close-cut hair. “You seemed awfully interested. Are you planning to get involved?”
I took a step back. “Involved? Me? Why would I do that?”
A small smile played on his lips. “You were involved in that murder last summer. Almost got yourself killed, if I remember correctly.”
I placed my shoulder bag on the table and removed my coat, hanging it on the hook by the office door. “That situation was completely different. Becky had been involved.”
He shrugged. “If you say so.”
Clark knew me better than I knew myself. If I had no plans to snoop into the haircutting attacks, what had I been doing walking by the Amish Bread Bakery this morning?
I watched the door, counting the minutes until Miller came back into the office.
Chapter Eight
By sheer willpower, I waited until Clark went on his lunch hour before approaching Miller about the news story.
The programmer hunched over his computer and tapped away at the keys. He typed code in the command prompt line. I hated to interrupt him, but Clark would be back from the cafeteria soon. I didn’t have much time.
I sat across from him at the conference table in Clark’s usual spot. Miller didn’t even notice me. “Miller?”
Nothing.
“Miller?”
He raised his head and blinked owlish eyes at me.
“Can I talk to you about the newspaper story? About your cousin Leah?”
He gripped his mouse. “How do you know about Leah?”
“Clark told me. One of the girls who had their hair cut was your cousin?”
He tugged at his spiky blond hair. “Why do you want to know about it?”
I was almost certain that Sadie was another victim of the haircutting. “I have a friend.” I paused because that was a stretch. “I know an Amish girl, Sadie Hooley, she’s the bishop’s daughter.”
“I know that.”
“I think her hair was cut too. The article mentioned three other girls.”
“I don’t know about Sadie, but two of them are Leah’s friends.”
“What are their names?”
“I’m still not sure why you want to know,” he said, his face pinched.
Because I want to know if Curt and Brock are behind this, I thought. Instead, I told him, “You know my roommate Becky is Amish, or was. I don’t want something like this to happen to her.”
He licked his lips. “It’s a nightmare.”
“Who are her friends?” I asked again.
“Abby and Debbie. I don’t know their last names.”
“That’s all right.” I wondered if I should tell him about Curt and Brock. “Did the girls see their attacker?”
He shook his head. “No. Each time he came up from behind, covered
their head with a burlap bag, ripped off their bonnets, and cut off their hair. Each girl was alone when it happened.”
“He?” I picked up Clark’s pencil and tapped the eraser on the tabletop.
“They said they thought it was a man. Who else would be strong enough to do that?”
Good question. I shivered. “Other than their hair, were they hurt?” I was afraid to hear the answer.
Miller turned slightly green. “No. Thank goodness.”
“What did he use to cut their hair?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Leah said it all happened in a matter of seconds. She doesn’t know either. The guy was behind her.”
I dropped the pencil into a utensil cup. “There was only one man?”
“Leah thought so.”
Maybe it wasn’t Curt and Brock after all. They typically worked as a team. If they were the ones cutting off Leah’s hair, I couldn’t imagine they were quiet enough for her not to notice a second culprit.
He frowned. “I hope the police do something. Leah could have been seriously hurt or worse. Whatever the guy used to cut their hair had to be sharp. Leah’s hair is like rope. The person could have slipped and . . .”
“I’m sure Chief Rose is doing everything she can to find out who did this. She called it a hate crime in the article.”
“It doesn’t do any good if the Amish won’t talk to her about it.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why don’t they ask for help when they need it?”
It was a question I’d asked myself many times since moving to Knox County.
Clark ambled into the office carrying a half-eaten corn dog. “Corn dogs in the caf today. You two better hustle if you have any hope of snagging one. I just saw a freshman walk out with ten. He said they were for his classmates in his economics class, but I’m suspicious. What do corn dogs have to do with economics, anyway?”
A small smile played on Miller’s face. “Supply and demand.”
Appleseed Creek Trilogy, Books 1-3 Page 33