Page 20 of Sworn to Silence
I almost smile at the mention of the tractor. My father used only horse-drawn plows. Jacob, considered a liberal by many of the old order, bought a steel-wheeled tractor just last year.
“Would you like me to fetch him for you?”
“I’ll meet him out there.” I want to ask about my nephews, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I tell myself I don’t have time, but the truth of the matter is I don’t know how to reach out.
Straightening her apron, Irene starts toward the kitchen. “I was just making rhubarb pies. Would you like a piece, Katie? Would you like a cup of hot tea?”
“No.” My stomach burns with hunger, but I have no appetite as I enter the kitchen. The room is hot from the stove. The walls are a different color than the last time I was here. New floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with canning jars and dried beans line the wall to my right. But none of the cosmetic changes can erase the memories that haunt this room.
Those memories press into me like rude, insistent fingers as I walk toward the back door. My chest tightens as I pass by the sink. In my mind’s eye I see blood, stark and red against the white porcelain. More on the floor. On my hands. Sticky between my fingers...
I try to draw a breath, but can’t. My lips and cheeks begin to tingle. Vaguely, I’m aware of Irene speaking, but I’m so immersed in my thoughts I don’t respond. I fumble with the knob, yank open the door. The cold snaps me from the dark tunnel of my past. The memories recede as I make my way down the sidewalk. By the time I reach the barn, the shakes are gone. I’m thankful because I’m going to need every scrap of strength I can muster to deal with my brother.
The barn door opens to a clean and well-maintained workshop. My brother’s booted feet protrude from beneath the undercarriage of a tractor, which is supported by two old-fashioned hand jacks.
“Jacob?”
He slides out and sits up. His eyes meet mine as he rises and brushes the dirt from his trousers and coat. He’s surprised to see me. His expression isn’t hostile, but it’s not friendly.
“Katie. Hello.”
At the age of thirty-six, my brother’s full beard is already shot with gray. A mouth that had once smiled at me with genuine affection is now permanently lined and turned down into a perpetual frown.
“What are you doing here?” Removing his work gloves, he tosses them onto the tractor seat.
In the back of my mind I wonder if he already knows about the murder. The Amish strive to believe they are a separate society from the English, but I know that isn’t wholly true. My sister works in the Carriage Stop Country Store in town. Most of the customers are English tourists and townspeople. A healthy grapevine runs the length of this town. If you have ears, you hear things. Even if you’re Amish.
Shoving my hands into my pockets, I walk deeper into the shadows of the barn, taking a moment to get my thoughts in order. The earthy smells of animal dung and hay remind me of childhood days spent in this barn. Ahead, four jersey cows, their pink udders swollen with milk, stand head-in. To my right, a dozen red and white mailboxes fashioned to look like farmhouses line shelves built from pine and cinder block. I see intricately built birdhouses and rocking horses with genuine horsehair manes, and I realize Jacob is as good with his hands as our father was.
I hear Jacob behind me and turn to him. “A girl was murdered in Painters Mill last night,” I begin.
He stands a few feet away, his head cocked, his expression circumspect. “Murdered? Who?”
“A young woman by the name of Amanda Horner.”
“Is she Amish?”
It annoys me that it matters to him. But I don’t voice my feelings. There are too many boiling inside me. Once I open that Pandora’s box, I’m afraid I won’t be able to close it. “No.”
“What does this murder have to do with me and my family?”
I give my brother a hard look. “The woman was murdered exactly the same way those girls were killed in the early 1990s.”
His quick intake of breath is but a whisper in the silence of the barn. He stares at me as if I’m some outsider who’s come here to wreck his world.
“How can that be?” he says after a moment.
The same question roils inside me like a storm. Because I have no answer, I stare back at him and try desperately not to tremble. “I think it might be the same guy.”
I see Jacob’s mind dragging him back to that terrible day. A day that devastated everyone in our family, but most of all me. He shakes his head. “That’s impossible. Daniel Lapp is dead.”
I close my eyes against words I’ve believed for sixteen years. Words that have caused me insurmountable pain and guilt for half of my life. When I open my eyes and meet my brother’s gaze, I can tell he knows what I’m thinking. “I have to be sure,” I say. “I need to see the body.”
He looks at me as if I’ve asked him to renounce God.
It wasn’t until weeks after the incident that I found out Jacob and my father buried the body. Horrific nightmares had been plaguing me. One night I woke screaming in my bed, certain the man who’d tried to kill me was in my bedroom. But my big brother came to my side. Jacob held me, and in the warm comfort of his arms, he revealed thatDatthad buried the body in a defunct grain elevator in the next county, and he would never hurt anyone again.
“You know where he is buried,” Jacob says. “I told you.”
