She slowly opened her eyes. A small, rectangular piece of paper was staring back at her from the floor near the workbench. As she bent to pick it up, another flash of lightning struck, making the words on the front of the card clearly visible. SOCIAL SECURITY arched in capital letters across the top. The name on the paper was one she didn’t know, and underneath were nine numbers that were meaningless to her.
She had heard of several Englisch laws from which the Amish were exempt. Social security was one of them. Their Amish faith forbade insurance, which was what their bishops said the government program was. So if they weren’t going to benefit from it, they didn’t have to pay into it. She had never had a card that looked like that, and she was fairly certain that her bruder had never had a card like that either. So why was this little piece of paper here, in his woodworking shop?
Another crash of thunder shook the barn, but this time it was paired with a crash from within the barn, as well. Katie jumped back against the door, her fingers releasing the little bit of card. It fluttered to the floor, and she grabbed the knob, jerked the door open, and rushed to the exterior door. She grabbed her bicycle from the side porch of the house, unwilling to stick around and find out who was there.
The memory of the hunting cabin in the woods rose up in her mind as she pedaled hard down the asphalt road. She felt desperate to talk to her bruder, her abdomen clenching from the exertion and a fair dose of fear. The bishop was kind and caring, and Sarah was a gut friend. But there was nothing like family, and with both their parents gone, he was all she had. Perhaps he would be at the cabin they had played in as children. Sometimes Amish woodworkers harvested their own lumber for special projects. In the past, Timothy had also spent a fair share of time there sketching new furniture designs.
A few days ago, some of the Amish teens from her church district had told her that they had seen something suspicious in the woods, but whoever or whatever it had been had disappeared before they could catch up. They thought perhaps it had been hunters, but deer season didn’t start until November.
A fresh ache coursed through her with longing for her husband. If only he were here with her, he could talk to Timothy. Find out what was wrong. Help restore her brother’s relationship with Gott and with his sister and nieces. Of course he would have protected her, too. But she had been tougher than he had realized. Or had that toughness emerged out of necessity and desperation in these last two years since his death?
She pedaled hard into the afternoon’s yellow stillness, replaying the events of the past few months. Timothy had begun acting strangely not long after her husband was killed. A tear coursed down her cheek, and she removed a hand from the handlebars just long enough to swipe it away. Wasn’t life difficult enough already without her husband? That aloneness had been a new sensation and one to which she still hadn’t grown accustomed. But to also lose her bruder, her only remaining family apart from her girls, with his odd behavior? It seemed more than she could bear.
A dirt road veered off the pavement to the right, and with just a few more minutes of concentrated pedaling and praying, she came within view of the cabin. It seemed safer, somehow, to leave the bicycle propped against a tree, where it would be out of sight. From a position where she was concealed behind a bush, she surveyed the area. The eerie stillness had followed her from her bruder’s property, a yellowish haze of the impending storm permeating the clearing. But no one was in sight, and even the squirrels had ceased their chattering.
With a deep inhalation of the scent of pine trees and summer soil, she stepped into the clearing, keeping to the edge until the last moment. Eight paces brought her to the corner of the structure, where she grabbed a wooden crate and placed it in front of a window.
Gingerly she stepped up, clutching her full skirt in one hand and the window trim in the other. Through her shoes, her toes gripped the edge of the rickety crate. Desperation to stay upright and not teeter off sent a surge of adrenaline coursing through her as she swiped a hand across the grimy window of the hunter’s shack. The crate dipped, and Katie grasped the frame of the window again. A splinter of wood pierced her skin, the sting of penetration barely registering as she focused on the task at hand.
“Timothy?” she whispered to herself. “Where are you?”
The boys who lived on the other side of the woods had to be right. They had told her they had seen Timothy going into an old shack in the woods, their description matching this one exactly. It had been months since she had seen her brother, and many more months since that day that had made her a widow and changed the course of their family, but it hadn’t even been a week since she had cried herself to sleep. Even now the familiar tears threatened to blur her vision.
With the crate stabilized, she swiped over the glass again and squinted inside. But all that stared back at her was more grime. Ach, if only she weren’t so short! But at a mere five feet four inches, she knew she needed a step stool for nearly every endeavor, especially for an old cabin elevated on cement blocks and with tiny windows. A bee buzzed around her face, and she waved a hand to shoo it away. The crate tipped again, and she grabbed at the window trim before she could tumble off.
Movement inside snagged her attention, although she couldn’t make out figures. It was like looking through the bottom of a glass bottle, with only large blobs moving around. Voices filtered through the window, one louder than the other. What was going on in there? And was Timothy involved?
“Gott, help!” The whispered prayer flew from her lips heavenward. “Restore Timothy to the only family he has left!” He needed love and rest and plenty of good, nutritious food. He needed the strength within the Amish community, the salvation in Jesus Christ that the bishop preached and the productive life of a man of faith who worked with his hands. He needed family, a cornerstone of any Amish person’s life.
Her nose touched the glass in her efforts to see inside. A face suddenly appeared in the window. It was distorted by the cracks in the glass, but it appeared to be her bruder. A moment later, the face disappeared.
She jumped from the crate and headed toward the corner of the cabin. Now that he had seen her, he had to come out and explain himself and return with her, stopping whatever this clandestine meeting was all about. Yet despite the warm summer air, a chill crept up her arms as she rounded the corner. The sour scent of the humidity in the woods tingled her nose and seeped into her brain, beginning the light pulse of a coming headache. Was she relieved that she had found him? Or was she apprehensive of who he was with and what he was doing? The emotions warred within her.
A man dressed in plain clothing, homespun pants and a light blue shirt stepped out through the door.
“Timothy!” But the wild look in his eyes stopped her from speaking further.
And then she saw it. A gun was pressed into his back. But the man with the weapon didn’t step out.
“Katie! Run! Go!”
She jerked backward, an instinctual reaction to the presence of the deadly weapon. Panic gripped her throat, her mouth suddenly chalky. What should she do? Could she help him? But there was no way she was going to advance any closer to the door and that gun.
“Dabber schpring! Run quickly!”
She stepped backward, her gaze trained on the weapon. With another step, she saw her bruder pulled back inside the cabin. The gun reemerged, and she turned to run.
She was five steps away when the weapon fired, an explosive sound that hurt her ears. She pushed herself farther and faster, but her legs were burning. It seemed to take too many steps to reach the tree line. Voices sounded behind her, louder and harsher, as if they were exiting the cabin. She hiked up her skirt, desperately grabbing at the fabric with her sweaty palms, and crouched low as she continued to run.
Another explosion fired nearby, and a sapling