Forsaken (17 page)

“It is impossible.” Her voice cracked and tears fell.

“All things are possible…are they not?”

Her nod was slow and compliant. Was it her will or his? But then she whispered, “Will you tell me of him? Of Jacob?”

“Yes.”

A constriction in her chest loosened and she could once again breathe.

“But you must come with me.”

She swirled away from him, breaking the light hold he had on her.

He raised one eyebrow in a mocking question. “If you want to know more about Jacob, then you will come with me. Tomorrow night.”

When she finally nodded her agreement, he smiled—a smile that carried a wallop, and she felt the repercussion deep, deep inside.

She was screaming.

That's what Roc had heard over the cell phone—her screams. It was Emma's custom to call him as she headed out of the hospital after her late shift in the ER and walked toward her car in the parking garage.

“How's your night going?”

“Same ol', same ol'. You?”

“Slow actually. Ready to soak in the tub.”

“Think of me.”

Inane conversation. Nothing important. No way to know it would be the last time they'd ever speak to each other. How many times had he wondered: if they'd only known, what would they have said? What do you say to someone who holds your heart in the moments, seconds, before they vanish forever? And before your heart turns into a pillar of salt? Even now, he wasn't sure he had an answer. A moment was too short. So was a lifetime.

“Hold on,” she'd told him.

He was on duty in another part of New Orleans, a good fifteen minutes away. He'd been typing into his squad car's computer about the traffic stop he'd just made. Over the cell phone, pressed between his shoulder and ear, he heard the murmurings of someone speaking to her.

“What?” Emma asked. “I'm sorry but—”

Then there was a clatter, a crunching noise. He realized later that Emma's cell phone hit the pavement.

“Stop!” Her voice came through muted but audible. “Let go!”

And then the screaming had started. And it continued rebounding in his head even now in his sleep.

He jerked straight up in bed, his arms flailing as if he could fight off her attacker, as if he could save her. His arm flailed wide, and he knocked a book he'd borrowed from the red-headed teen at the B&B onto the floor. The room was dark, the television flickering in the corner, the news scrolling along the bottom of the screen. Sweat poured off him. He shoved his fingers through his hair, clutched his skull, and squeezed—a poor attempt to stop the screams.

In reality, her screaming hadn't lasted long. He'd shouted into the phone for her and then radioed for an assault in progress at Children's Hospital. He was on the other side of Tulane University on Canal Street, but he spun his car in her direction and was there in less than ten.

Blue and red emergency vehicle lights were already slicing through the darkness, and doctors and nurses on duty at the hospital were standing around the parking garage. The police tried to hold him back, grabbing at his arms, restraining him. But he fought through them. They couldn't hold him. He ran for the center of everyone's attention.

Emma.

She was lying with her back against a wall, feet splayed, one toe of a tennis shoe angled inward. Her head tilted at an odd angle. Her hand on the concrete floor was palm up. And Roc knew. Before he slid to his knees beside her, he knew.

Her eyes were open, the gaze blank. Empty. As if the levy of all she had been, known, loved had broken, and everything drained out of her.

Blood splotched the front of her scrubs. Was it hers? A patient's? And then he saw the gaping hole at the side of her neck. Blood should be pouring out of her, pooling around her. He'd seen enough wounds in his life to know the major artery in her neck had been severed. But there wasn't much blood, even the tissue looked pale. Only the dark stains on her shirt gave vivid evidence of what should have been.

And her screams still resonating in his head became deeper, hoarse…his own.

Hannah watched Levi from the kitchen window as he hitched horse to buggy. She hadn't realized how accustomed she'd become to Levi's gaze brushing over her, settling on her like a gentle hand, until she felt the chill of his purposeful disinterest. In the days following her rejection of him, sending him away when he'd followed her to the cemetery, an unobservable and yet definite change had come over Levi.

A memory of Levi helping a barn cat deliver a kitten came back to her. The momma cat panted and strained, wedging herself between the wall and a milking can. Levi pulled her out, cradled her in his arms, and eased the kitten from her body with such a tenderness and awe that the moment had creased Hannah's heart. The tiny kitten mewed and the momma cat began licking her baby. Levi had grinned a mixture of happiness and relief, and Hannah smiled through tears at the miracle of life. But had there been more of a miracle in that moment than she'd been aware of?

Now, outside the window, Levi gave Mamm a hand as she climbed into the buggy, her scarf flapping in the stiff breeze, then he offered a smile to Katie who was accompanying Mamm on her trip to the Huffstetlers'. Mary was expecting a baby later in the month, and Levi handed Katie the basket of bread loaves and a cherry pie for the Huffstetlers' growing family. Seeing the creases in Levi's face, the warmth and kindness in his gestures toward her little sister, gave Hannah a pinch in her chest.

At the last Sunday service, she'd seen Naomi Zeller offering Levi more iced tea during the noon meal. Naomi had been baptized last year and had been baking pies for the available men in their district in hopes of getting one to pay attention to her. She was already twenty-two. Could Levi be interested in Naomi? Or someone else? The pinch in Hannah's chest compressed.

As Mamm flicked the reins and the buggy went off down the lane, Levi's gaze swerved sharply past the house where Hannah watched him and then cast sideways toward the barn. Was it purposeful in its hurry, not to seek her out, not to pursue her now? That concern for Levi pressed harder and tightened into a weighty nugget of guilt.

Even though Hannah stuck to the house all morning, busying herself with chores—both regular and invented—her mind wandered toward the barn. Finally, even though she could think of plenty of excuses not to go, she carried a thermos of coffee to warm the men working in the chilly, late November weather.

The air was crisp like a red, delicious apple. A cold, hard push by the wind tried to drive her back to the house, but she angled her head down and strove forward, feeling an icy bite on her cheeks. The sky was a pale gray, the threat of rain or even snow and ice sincere. The thermos warmed her hands as she traversed the hard-packed ground, a trail worn smooth by years and generations, from Dat and his father and his father's father going about their chores and responsibilities. There was a comfort and security in walking the same, solid path. What had made her so resistant to what she'd always longed for?

“Dat?” she called inside the doorway of the barn. The scent of hay was strong and made her nose twitch. It was warm and cozy with the shuffling and other movements of sheep and horses and milk cows. “I have coffee for you.”

“Your father isn't here now.” Levi appeared at the opening of a stall. With his coat off and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he looked to be hard at work and not a bit chilled. Bits of hay and straw dotted his forearms and neck.

“Oh, he left?”

Levi's gaze, the intensity of those blue eyes, made her skin tingle.

When he didn't answer but just continued to watch her, Hannah lifted the thermos toward him. “Would you like some coffee then? Or I could bring something else?”

He nodded, set the rake against the stall door, and walked toward her, his ease of movements only emphasized her nervousness. Unscrewing the thermos cap, her hand trembled, and some of the dark liquid spilled onto the dirt floor. A tiny jab in the back of her leg startled her, and she jumped. Scalding coffee slopped onto the back of her hand, and she sucked in a breath. A gangly kitten, sharp claws now retracted, skittered away.

“Are you all right, Hannah?”

She nodded. The tears that sprang to her eyes were more of embarrassment than pain from the burn. But she knew she was not all right, and it had nothing to do with the rising red welt on the back of her hand.

Levi took the thermos and set it on a hay bale nearby, and his large hands cupped hers. Warmth spread through her, and she couldn't look up at him but stared at their joined hands. Slowly, he turned hers over and rubbed his thumb around the angry red welt.

“I'm sorry, Levi.”

“You're the one hurt. Let me get some salve.” When he started to move away, she clutched his hand tighter and met his solid, questioning gaze.

“I am sorry, Levi, about what I said the other night.”

“
Ach
.” He stepped closer, his hands folding over hers in a comforting way that made her belly quiver. “It is all right, Hannah. It was my fault. I pressed too soon. You are not ready, and maybe you will never be.”

Was that a statement or a question? She searched his solid gaze and wanted to lean her head against his broad shoulder and release the tears that clogged her throat. Did he really understand? Could he?

Then he patted her hand, careful not to touch her burned flesh. “You don't have to say anything, Hannah. I will wait.”

“And if I'm never ready, Levi?”

He took a long, slow breath, and on its release he cupped her jaw and turned her face toward him when she would have avoided his probing gaze. But she could not. His blue eyes magnetized her gaze. “Grief is for a season, not a lifetime.”

His gaze dipped to her mouth, and her lips parted, stirring a yearning deep inside. Was he thinking of kissing her? Even after her rejection of him? And yet, that was where her thoughts lingered. Her gaze fastened onto his squared chin, solid and sure, his mouth, and the sensuous curve of his lower lip. Her heart fluttered, and her breath sounded shallow.

“Come here.” He tugged on her hand and led her to the hay bale where he had set the thermos, settling her on it like a chair. He poured a cup of coffee then placed it tenderly in her hands. “I'll get you some salve for that burn.”

She knew in that instant that she would not go to meet Akiva.

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

Akiva watched Hannah and Levi, sharing a cup of coffee, and a burning sensation spread through his limbs, firing his blood, until it throbbed in his ears, blocking out the softness of their conversation.

Whirling away, he hid in the dark recesses of the shadows and nursed his wounds—not the physical one in his chest, which had easily healed. No, this one pierced his heart like a stake through the center of his chest.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on her thoughts, but a barrier had risen between them. He gritted his teeth and fought back the anger that surged inside him. Was it love that locked him out of her head…her heart? Or was it the anger throbbing inside him?

It didn't matter. He had been patient with her. He had waited too long. But no more.

And I water'd it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with my smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

William Blake must have loved and lost too, for he knew of what he wrote. Akiva fisted his hands and pressed them against the wall of the barn until he felt the wood begin to give, the fibers popping, the wood pulp pressing into his flesh. But no pain could overtake the sting in his heart at the sound of Hannah's laughter. She was laughing with
him
. Levi. For
him
.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright.

And my foe beheld its shine,

And he knew that it was mine.

With a quick, hard thrust, Akiva punched the wall, splintering the wood. The horse behind him shied and whinnied. Akiva heard her laughter die.

“What was that?” Hannah whispered, fear etched in her voice.

“Rusty,” came Levi's answer. No fear was detectable in his tone, but Akiva would see to it that fear saturated his voice soon enough. Very soon. “He's been restless all morning,” Levi continued. “I'll go check on him.”

Akiva moved back into the shadows and crumpled in on himself, fluttering up to the rafters where he peered down at Levi walking down the pathway between the stalls and entering the one where he had been. Levi spoke soothingly to the gelding, rubbed his hands along its flanks and down to its back hoof.

“What have you done?” Levi looked at the back wall and the hole Akiva had made. “That's a good way to hurt yourself. And end up cold for the winter.”

Akiva tensed, every muscle ready to spring into action. It would be easy, so easy, to swoop down and take a bite. And he would, if Hannah weren't so close. But soon…. Soon Levi would be dead, and Hannah would be his. Forever.

And into my garden stole,

When the night had veil'd the pole;

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

The warm scents of ginger and cinnamon swirled about the bakery, stirring a hunger in the customers the way Levi seemed to affect Hannah. She barely listened to Grace yammering away about a movie she'd seen at the picture show in Lancaster, her fingers not moving half as fast as her friend's mouth as she worked up a new batch of cinnamon rolls.

Grace scooped snickerdoodle batter onto the baking sheets and kept talking. “It was a silly movie really, but the men were hot.”

“Hot?”

“Oh,
ja
.” Grace's head bobbed, making the ties of her bonnet dance. “Come with us next time. Please, Hannah.”

She shook her head. “It is of no interest to me.”

“Then come tonight. No movie. Just fun. There will be others from outside our district. It will be fun. I promise.” Her eyes were alight with promise. “Really there's no harm.”

Hannah turned away and began mixing the pie filling.

“Please come.”

“I will see.” It was a promise she regretted, one she would not live up to. But how could she tell her friend she was afraid? Afraid of going out in the dark? Or afraid of the darkness within herself?

“Hannah,” Marnie Raber called, “Beth Ann needs help at the register.”

She nodded, wiping her hands on her apron, and walked out of the kitchen area and into the store, which seemed crammed with customers already holiday shopping. She wove through the crowd and display cases of Amish crafts and candies toward the front.

A cold blast of air hit her as the door opened once again, but this tourist was different than the ones bundled up, fascinated with sampling Amish treats and buying Amish crafts. This one drew attention like a siren. Heads turned in her direction. The woman wore no coat, just a simple outfit that accentuated her large bosom, tiny waist, and slim boyish hips. But something else caught Hannah's eye: the woman's sleek, black hair, long and straight, which had a sheen to it that reflected the light and shimmered down the woman's back like a dark waterfall, her glory on display for all to see. The woman raised her sunglasses to the crown of her head. Her gaze had a worldly quality, and it wasn't the heavy eye makeup she wore, but something in the depths of those black eyes.

“Welcome,” Beth Ann chirped without looking up as she punched the register keys. She told the customer standing before her the amount and took his credit card. When she finished the transaction, she folded the paper bag and handed the receipt to the man. “Thanks for coming in.” Her gaze shifted to Hannah then. “Can you take over for a minute, Hannah?”

“Sure.” She waited for Beth Ann to scoot around the end of the counter.

Before she could step behind the register, a cool hand touched Hannah's arm and stopped her. In that instant, the whispers assaulted her, spun her thoughts around, and disoriented her. The whispers she'd heard before, but these were somehow different, indistinguishable in their many voices; they simply called her name, murmured softly in her ears, and yet she could not understand them.

She turned toward the lady with the dark, glistening hair, who stood so close her perfume blotted out the baking scents in the store. Hannah wrinkled her nose and glanced down at the hand on her arm. The woman's fingers formed a bracelet around Hannah's wrist, her touch so cold Hannah wanted to pull away, and yet something inside warned her against it.
Of course the woman was chilled; she had been out in the freezing weather without a coat. Didn't the woman have any sense?
“May I help you?”

“Hannah?” It was an odd pronunciation of her name, the emphasis on the last instead of the first. But even more odd was how this woman knew her name. “You are Hannah, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me…” This strange woman leaned even closer, her peculiar scent wrapping around Hannah like tiny threads. Not a nose-holding or stomach-writhing smell, this aroma, but light and exotic, something Hannah had never experienced before, teased and lured her closer. “You work here, is this correct?”

“Were you looking for something?”

Those dark and intense eyes studied Hannah, her gaze scanning her features, clothes, and neck. Hannah's pulse leapt. She took an automatic step back.

Then the woman touched a delicate finger to her red-tinted lips. “Yes, I believe I am. And I may have found it.”

Another blast of frigid air burst through the doorway, knocking the door against the wall. Someone gasped. Someone else squealed.

“Oh my! What was that?”

The shouts swirled around Hannah, like the frigid air, but she felt trapped by the woman, frozen in her gaze, unable and unwilling to move. The woman with the never-blinking eyes didn't move either, and Hannah lost track of time and space.

She began walking toward the open door, unsure why except she felt a need to go outside. There was something there for her. Something—

“Hannah!” Suddenly Grace was beside her. “Shut the door.”

Hannah blinked and stared at her friend.

Grace brushed past her, their shoulders bumping, as her friend grabbed the door and closed it firmly, making the window next to it rattle in its frame.

Hannah felt the same rattling in her own bones, where a chill settled and made her shiver. She blinked and wrenched her arm free of the woman. “Excuse me.” The wind had knocked a stack of advertisements off the counter and scattered them over the floor, and she bent to pick them up. “What could have caused this?”

“Someone”—Grace stepped past Hannah and behind the register to help the next customer—“must not have closed the door good and tight.”

Hannah replaced the papers next to the register and glanced around for the strange woman. But she was gone. Hannah searched the faces throughout the shop. Maybe the woman had moved behind the turn-around display. She peered this way and that, searching, eager to avoid the woman with the cold hand and even colder eyes, but the tourist must have left.

“What's wrong?” Grace asked as she finished helping a customer.

“Nothing.” But Hannah's forehead folded downward like the crimped edges of a piecrust. “Nothing. I thought…” She rubbed her forehead and shook loose the peculiar feelings. “Nothing.”

***

Hannah.
The still, quiet voice called to her.

She resisted, rolled over, and buried herself further under the quilt, but she could not block out the whispered invitation.

Come to me
.

“No.” Her voice sounded loud in the stillness of the house. She heard the bed downstairs squeak and Dat's snoring resume. She blinked against the darkness, squeezed her eyes closed, and prayed for sleep. But it didn't come.

I'm waiting.

She threw back the covers and lit the lamp, no longer fearing if her parents woke. She wanted them to wake up, to ask her what was wrong, to quiet the voice. She put on her prayer
kapp
, opened her Bible, and started reading:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

By the time she'd read several chapters—from the forming of the world and Adam and then Eve, to the serpent twisting God's word, to the banishment from the Garden of Eden—she realized her mind had wandered to a place she didn't even recognize. She couldn't say what she was pondering as the words lost their meaning and significance. She went back and read again—
In the beginning
—but the same thing happened. She squeezed her eyes closed and prayed, pleaded with the Lord to help her, show her the way. Only the hum of the lamp filled the room and then…

Hannah
.

The voice persisted and caused her hands to shake. She closed her Bible and set it aside on the bedside table. This time when she crawled into bed, she covered even her ears with the quilt—a poor attempt to block the voice that pestered and prodded—until she finally threw off the covers. It wasn't a conscious decision to obey the voice. It simply called and suddenly her feet were on the floor. As if moving in a dream, she dressed, extinguished the lamp, and left her room.

A three-quarter moon cast pale light over the road, and an icy wind swirled around and bit into her. Clutching her wrap, Hannah buried her hands in the wool and walked toward the farm's entrance. To her left, a crunch of gravel and dirt alerted her. She stopped, her own shoes scuffing the tiny rocks covering the road. Slowly, she turned in the direction of the noise. Was Levi following her again? She searched the shadows, tried to ignore the way her heart quickened with anticipation, and whispered, “Levi?”

Silence throbbed around her. The stillness of winter hung as brittle as an icicle.
Oh, Levi, where are you?

Hope expanded like blown glass, growing thinner until it shattered, shards of disappointment stabbing her. She shouldn't expect him to follow her. Shouldn't want him to do so. Shouldn't want him…shouldn't want him at all. But she did.

Silence filled her ears with her own heartbeat. She must have imagined the sounds because no one was there. Nothing stirred. She was alone, all alone, with only the whisper of the wind in the dry, dormant grass for companionship. Not even God was here with her anymore—or so it seemed.

A snap of a twig on her other side made her jerk, whip around.

Akiva stood beside her. Close. Close enough to touch. Close enough to smell a sweet scent on his pale skin. In the moonlight, his eyes were shadowed, the angles of his face pronounced.

“Did I startle you?” His voice was silken and soothing to her fatigued nerves.

“A little. What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. You said you would meet me here, yet you never came.”

“I…” She cleared her throat. “I have been busy. And then I thought you might have left.”

“Without saying good-bye?” He touched her cheek. “I would not do that to you, sweet Hannah. Not after all you have done for me.”

Her skin warmed beneath his gaze. She shifted her foot, felt the heavy bump of the flashlight against her hip, then looked back toward the dark house. Dat and Mamm were sleeping, as was Katie, and Levi had long since left, leaving her alone—completely alone with this man, a man who was no longer wounded and in need of help, but a man apparently strong and capable and virile. Should she be afraid of him?

He'd known Jacob. Why should she fear him? She squared her shoulders toward the farm road and moved in that direction. Akiva kept in step with her.

“Are you going back to the cemetery? Back to Jacob's grave?”

His questions pricked her skin like a sharp quilting needle. “What does it matter to you?”

“Does he speak to you?”

His question startled her. How did he know? Did he hear Jacob's voice too? But she could not confess—not to herself and certainly not to this stranger—how she'd heard a voice on the wind. “Jacob is dead.”

He tilted his head, slanting a questioning gaze at her. “You believe in the spirit world, do you not? That souls move on from this life to another, to heaven? Some people…I'm not saying you…but some…believe spirits can return to the living.”

A quivering began in her heart. “He's dead.”

But was she trying to convince Akiva or herself?

“And you're sure of that?”

His question stopped her in the middle of the road where she faced him. Everything about this man drew her to him—his dark, good looks, his calm demeanor, his interest, his probing and prying. And everything about him should send her running. And yet, she stayed. “Are you saying Jacob
isn't
dead?”

He shrugged. “Are you open to possibilities, Hannah? Or do you see things only as you have been taught? Only as you are allowed?”

She wrestled with his questions and could not find an answer, so she began walking again. His footsteps stayed even with hers and she wondered why he was here, why he was walking beside her and hounding her with questions she couldn't answer. “I'm quite fine on my own. You do not need to accompany me.”

“Maybe you need protection.”

“From what?”

He leaned closer, his eyebrow rising, his mouth tugging into an off-kilter smile that pulled at her. “From whatever lurks in the night.”

His eyebrows arched up and down, up and down, and she laughed at his silliness, at the notion that there was something here in her own yard to fear. “I am not afraid.”

“Even of wild animals?”

“Deers and skunks?”

“Or worse.”

The image of Snowflake wavered in the back of her mind, then surged to the foreground, and a tingle of uncertainty rippled down her spine. “Is that what happened to our lamb?”

He took a step in the direction she had been heading. “How would I know?”

She drew a slow, steadying breath, then resumed her walk, matching Akiva's slower pace and their steps aligned once more with each other.

“What do you think Jacob would say to you if he could return?”

One shoulder lifted reluctantly, regretfully. “I don't know.”

But she did know and a smile played about her lips.

“What?” Akiva peered into her face as if he could read her thoughts. “What do you imagine?”

“He would probably quote some poem to me.”

Akiva smiled and nodded. “Ah, yes, Jacob the bard.”

“Bard?”

“Poet…writer. He had an ear for words, didn't he?”

She nodded, her throat thickening, and yet at the same time something inside loosened its hold. It felt good to speak with someone who knew Jacob. His name was so rarely mentioned by those in her district. Speaking of him with Akiva brought a sense of relief. Maybe if she'd been given the opportunity to speak of him openly then she would have been able to leave him in the grave. Maybe that's all she needed to be able to move beyond his death. Speaking of him would bring healing. And then she could return to her normal life, her regular activities…maybe then she could even turn to Levi.