He thinks of his daughter Eva’s fiancé, who had come for supper and hadn’t left until nearly nine o’clock, ignoring Levi’s yawns and the gentle hints of his wife, Anna. Being up so late had made it difficult to rise for prayer at the alarm clock’s jangle.
Lantern light spills from the big red barn on a knoll behind the house. All five of his sons are already working there, including ten-year-old Jacob, who’d fractured his arm earlier in the week and now wears a sling. After feeding and watering the horses, the young men had hitched Dandy, his favorite standardbred, to the single-seat buggy. They’d loaded the back with jugs, jars, and tins—pressed cider, a fresh batch of Anna’s apple butter, and the girls’ pies and dumplings.
Levi climbs on board, sets the lantern at his feet, takes the reins, and instructs Dandy to be on his way.
They enter Cortland Hollow Road at a brisk clip, heading toward the fruit stand to get the crates of apples the boys had picked. He’s meeting two of his sons at the Apple Harvest Festival over in Ithaca. Yesterday’s rain had dampened business there, and he’s hoping to make up for it today.
Until recent years, the family had just sold their goods at their own stand. But he can no longer support the growing brood by relying on word of mouth, longtime customers, and folks out for a scenic Sunday drive to sustain the business. Now they compete with electronic advertising, entire supermarket chains devoted to wholesome produce and baked goods, and of course, the internet. While computer technology may not be the devil as Levi’s elderly parents believe, and some Amish have even begun to utilize it, he has no intention of doing so. Such English temptations allow the outside world to permeate their own and may lead the young generations astray.
Shadows cling to the woods and fields along the road. There are no headlights at this hour, just woodland creatures that bolt from the buggy’s path, and not a hint of pink in the eastern sky. Morning—as opposed to night, and Levi’s future son-in-law—tends to lag, much like his first grandchild, due any day now.
“The baby will be born soon enough. We’re enjoying these last few quiet days before everything changes,” his eldest daughter had said yesterday, twinkling a shy smile at her husband, still captivated by the romance of it all.
“Das ist gut,” Anna had later told Levi, and he’d agreed. The romance will fade when parenthood arrives, and nothing will ever be the same for the young couple, though their lives will be enriched with every child who comes along.
Levi and Anna have been blessed with nine. Now the next generation is upon them, and there will be two daughters’ weddings to celebrate in November, after the harvest season. Both girls will go to live with their husbands’ families, making the women’s work a looming challenge for Anna and their youngest daughter. Levi, however, has enough hands to help with the men’s work—minus one of Jacob’s.
This time, his son had been hurt falling from the hayloft ladder; last time, he’d sprained an ankle trying to hitch a ride on the wagon as one of his brothers was driving away. That boy has managed to get himself into trouble all his life. As an infant, he’d swallowed a whole cherry and turned blue. As a toddler, he’d wandered into the woods and been lost for hours.
The memory brings to mind another child, the one Levi had found at the orchard. Yesterday morning in town, he’d seen the child’s face plastered on fliers. Someone had mentioned that Sergeant Hanson and his wife have taken him in until his parents can be located.
He senses a slight resistance in Dandy when he pulls the reins to turn off the road into the fruit stand’s dirt parking area. The horse is picking up on his own tension.
Levi takes a deep, calming breath, reluctant to dwell on the reasons a child might have been wandering alone in these parts. He’ll see what he can learn about the situation when he gets to town. Surely one of his English acquaintances will have heard updates on the television or radio or internet. Surely the boy’s family has come for him by now.
He disembarks and ties Dandy to a post. Noting an anxious equine twitch, he looks around, wondering whether a black bear might lurk beyond the lantern’s yellow glow.
It illuminates the wooden stand and the crates of apples his sons had stacked, but he sees nothing menacing in the fringe of trees. Leaving the lantern in the buggy, he begins loading in the heavy boxes, each labeled with the variety and the designated drop-off spot on the Ithaca Commons.
His back aches already with fatigue, and he again regrets his future son-in-law’s extended visit, and the lost sleep. There is considerable work to be done today, despite Jacob’s injury, Abigail’s late pregnancy, and Anna coming down with a cold. All three will persevere as much as possible, and the others will pick up the slack.
As he returns to the dwindling stack to lift another crate, the light dims behind him, and the horse spooks. He turns back.
So much for the modern convenience of batteries—there’s no way of knowing how much longer they’ll last. At least with an oil lantern, you can see—
He hears a rustling in the dark and spots a large shadow looming. It isn’t a bear.
“Don’t move,” a voice commands in English. “I have a gun. Where is he?”
A gun. Levi’s heart slams his ribs.
The man steps closer. He’s cloaked in a dark jacket, hood up, and he is, indeed, pointing a pistol at Levi.
“What did he tell you?”
He?
The man is clearly deranged. Levi stares in horror and confusion, stammers, “I don’t know . . .”
“The kid!”
“The . . .”
Oh. The truth dawns, more terrible than he can fathom. This armed man has come for the little lost boy.
“He said nothing. I don’t believe he was able.”
A pause.
“Where is he now?”
Levi thinks of Sergeant Hanson. He lives in Ithaca, has a wife, children. He comes to the local farmer’s market some Saturdays, always stopping to greet Levi and buy baked goods, with a chuckled warning not to mention it to his wife. Sometimes she joins him, a vibrant, friendly woman.
“I said, where is the kid?”
Sergeant Hanson has a son. He’s far more reserved than his parents, and enamored with Dandy, asking countless questions about the horse’s harness-racing past.
Levi thinks of his own sons—of Jacob, with his fractured arm. Last summer, he’d had a black eye courtesy of an English bully who’d jumped him while he’d been walking home from school, knowing Jacob would not fight back.
Matthew, 5:39. “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
“Tell me where he is,” the man says in accented English, “or I will shoot you dead right here, right now.”
Levi swallows hard, knowing what he must do.
It is God’s will.
He can’t bear to think of this dangerous man bringing violence to Sergeant Hanson’s home and family.
He thinks of his own as he kneels, pressing his forehead to the earth, arms outstretched in submission.
And so, after all these years trying to find her real parents, it turns out Amelia had had them all along.
Bettina Crenshaw, the woman she’d twice lost, twice grieved, on that shocking long-ago night, has come roaring back to betray her yet again, along with Calvin.
She’s spent a sleepless night listening to the rain falling on shingles a floor above her, the occasional splash of tires on the street below, the kitten scratching litter in his carrier beside the bed, the echo of her father’s voice.
“Back then, folks didn’t ask nosy personal questions like they do now. Pregnancy and childbirth were nobody’s business but the parents’.”
“So that’s why it was okay to lie.”
“Ain’t nobody went tellin’ no lies.”
But he had.
He’d turned her entire life into a lie once again.
How could he—why would he—have made up the story about find
ing her in the church?
No wonder he’d said they’d never even tried to find out who’d left her, nor sought medical attention, nor called the police.
She’d accepted his rationale. Yes, the country had been gripped by racial tension in 1968. A close friend of Calvin’s had been murdered in cold blood by a gang of wealthy white kids the very week Amelia had been found, and the police and the media hadn’t seemed to care. She could believe that an impoverished black couple had been reluctant to entrust the authorities with a precious, helpless infant.
But this new scenario? Nothing about it makes sense.
Why would a God-fearing, terminally ill Bettina, upon being admitted to Morningside Memorial Hospital, have given a false medical history? According to the records, she’d only carried one child—her dead son—to term. She could not have anticipated that an errant nurse would leave her file behind at her bedside after she’d slipped into a coma, and that Amelia would be there and sneak a peek at it.
And what about Marceline LeBlanc?
Had she, too, been part of an elaborate conspiracy to convince Amelia that she wasn’t the Crenshaws’ biological child?
Amelia can think of no logical reason for that, yet nor can she deny the truth. People might lie, but DNA does not.
She looks at the clock, willing the night to recede so that she can liberate Clancy, and absorb the shocking truth in broad daylight, maybe talk it over with . . . someone.
Her first instinct last night had been to tell Jessie, but when she’d started downstairs to do so, she’d heard her talking to the social worker. And then Billy and Theodore had returned, and she’d heard the three of them arguing.
She couldn’t bring herself to burden her friend with one more thing—especially one that might dredge up Jessie’s own wrenching past, on a night like this.
She rolls onto her back, eyes wide open. In the dark hush of an unfamiliar household, she hears the absence of sirens, people walking overhead, Aaron’s even breathing.
Though he was the last person with whom she wanted to discuss what had happened, she’d made an impulsive attempt to call him at around midnight. He hadn’t picked up, giving her more to fret about.
Was he punishing her?
Was he still out?
Was he asleep?
Was he alone?
After a sleepless night spent mulling all of that, and her own past, she feels as if she’s dumped out a jigsaw puzzle, only to find that none of the pieces connect with each other or can possibly connect to create the image depicted on the box, except . . .
One piece, in all of this, has fallen into place.
When she was growing up, people had often commented that she reminded them of Bettina—not just her mannerisms, but the pitch of her voice, her facial features, some intangible evidence that had seemed to link them as mother and daughter long before she learned—or was led to believe—that wasn’t the case.
Even now, she occasionally spots traces of her mother in the mirror but has chalked it up to missing her and longing to see her face again. Plus, women of a certain age tend to share certain physical characteristics. And sometimes, unrelated people who share a household do start to look alike or are at least perceived to. That phenomenon, she’d learned through her work, is surprisingly common among adoptees and parents.
Now it turns out that isn’t the case for her. She looks like Bettina for the same straightforward reason most people resemble each other. They share DNA. They really are mother and daughter, unless . . .
A new idea pops into her head, so startling that she sits up in bed. What if—
A rooster’s crow pierces the thought, so loud it sounds as if it’s in the next room.
Espinoza. Now there’s something you don’t hear in Manhattan, or—
On its heels comes a child’s terrified scream.
“Barnes!”
He opens his eyes.
The room is dark. Rob is standing over him. He looks fuzzy and sounds muffled, as though Barnes is underwater trying to see and hear someone above the surface.
He sits up, swiping his palms hard against his face, head throbbing.
Rob repeats himself, the words mingling with the sound of birds chirping beyond the window screen. Barnes concentrates, and comprehends, though he doesn’t know the answer to Rob’s question.
Has he seen Kurtis?
“I don’t . . . I . . . What time is it?”
“A quarter after seven.”
“In the morning?”
“Yeah. You were out cold when I got home around midnight. How much rum did you drink?”
Rum . . .
He thinks back. Dinner. Miguel. Perry Wayland.
“No rum. Just . . . dinner and a couple of beers at that paladar you recommended. Came back . . . went right to bed . . .”
He doesn’t really recall the coming back or going to bed part.
He remembers finishing that final beer, paying his bill . . . thinking he should stroll around, keep an eye out for Wayland . . .
But when he’d gotten to his feet, it had hit him—the alcohol, the heat, the dehydration . . .
He’d fumbled home through dark, foreign streets, feeling as though he might pass out. He supposes he had, when he’d reached his bed.
“. . . Kurtis?” Rob is asking again, and he shakes his head.
“I haven’t seen him since . . .” He thinks back. “He went out to get lunch yesterday. And then I went out myself before he came back, so . . .”
“And he wasn’t here when you got home?”
“No.” He hesitates. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” Rob peers at him. “You sure you didn’t have any rum? Man, you look even worse than you did yesterday morning.”
“I feel worse, too.”
“What did you eat?”
“Arroz con pollo, but I barely touched it. Oh, but I did have some chicharrones, and I bought cucurucho on the street. Maybe it made me sick.”
Rob waves a hand in dismissal. “No, that stuff’s fine. Just don’t tell me you drank the water at the restaurant.”
“All I drank was beer. They didn’t have bottled water.”
“That’s your problem. You were sick as a dog yesterday, dehydrated, with an empty stomach. You just need water. Here, finish this and I’ll get you another one.” Rob hands him a nearly empty bottle of water.
“Where did it come from?”
Rob points to the floor beside the bed. “Must be yours. There are a couple of empties, too,” he adds, stooping to pick them up.
“But . . .” Barnes has a fuzzy memory of drinking water in the night. “Where did I get them?”
“There’s a case in the fridge. You didn’t buy it?”
“I don’t think so.” He’s lucky he’d dragged himself home in that condition. No way he could have lugged a case of water, too. “Kurtis must have gotten it.”
“But you didn’t see him?”
“I don’t know. I guess I could have, since I don’t remember drinking that water, either.”
“This is one hell of a beer hangover, Barnes.”
Beer hangover? Yeah, no. He’s experienced his share of those, and this is different. His bones have wilted, and his head doesn’t just ache, it feels dense, as though his eyes and ears have been swaddled in a thick layer of foam.
Rob is gazing out the window, preoccupied with his son.
“Hey, he’s a grown man. I’m sure he’s fine. He’s young, on vacation . . . he probably went out drinking, dancing, met a woman . . .”
“Probably. That’s what I figured you’d be doing. I didn’t expect to find you here when I got back. I tried to wake you up, but . . .” He shakes his head. “Like I said, you were out cold.”
But not because he’d had too much to drink. Granted, he hadn’t wanted that last one Miguel had brought over, but it would have seemed rude to turn it down, and anyway . . .
It would take more than three, or even four be
ers over a couple of hours to render a man his size unconscious. A lot more . . .
Like what?
It’s almost as if he’d been drugged.
Perry Wayland hadn’t been close enough to slip something into his drink without Barnes noticing, and anyway, it’s not as though he’d have come prepared, expecting to run into Barnes there last night . . . or anywhere, ever again.
He hadn’t started to feel woozy until after Perry had left, though not immediately after.
Barnes is streetwise, a New York City detective. He pays attention to details when he’s in public, even when he’s not on the job. He notices what’s going on around him, who’s in close proximity. He’s well aware that a tourist, alone in a foreign country, is an easy mark for thieves.
Thank goodness he’d left his wallet, phone, and passport behind. He reaches down and finds that he’s still wearing the shorts he’d had on yesterday, pesos still in his pocket. A quick count reveals that he’s missing only what he must have paid for his dinner—not that he remembers how much it had been, or much of anything at that point.
At least no one had drugged and robbed him.
But had someone simply drugged him?
There had been other patrons. None had come near his table, other than . . .
He closes his eyes, seeing Miguel Perez senior holding two open beers.
“It is on the house, acere.”
What if . . .
But that’s ridiculous.
The man owns the restaurant. He’s Rob’s friend. He’d have no reason to spike a customer’s drink.
Rob goes to get him more water while Barnes sips the last warm bit in his bottle, feeling it splash into his empty gut. The fog is beginning to lift. He hears tropical bugs humming along with the bird chorus outside and is mildly surprised they’re not singing “Guantanamera.”
His ears pick up distant voices speaking rapid-fire Spanish, the rev of a far-off engine, a clanging school bell, and . . . a footstep?
It sounded like one, rustling just beyond the screen.
Barnes leans toward the window, surveying the yard—trees, grassy spikes poking through sandy dirt, garbage cans propped on cinder blocks. But there . . .
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