Her Last Breath: A Kate Burkholder Novel (16 page)

When he looks up from his hat, I’m surprised to see a flash of something ugly. It’s so incongruous with everything I know about the Amish culture that I’m taken aback.

“Mattie told me the buggy accident wasn’t an accident,” he says.

Only then do I identify the emotion I see in his eyes as rage. He’s entitled, but it’s not a good fit. I choose my words carefully because the last thing I want to do is fan the flames. “I don’t know that for a fact, but it’s something we’re looking into.” I hold his gaze, trying to get a feel for his frame of mind. “Do you know something about that, Mr. Erb?”

“Paul was a deacon,” he tells me.

“I’m aware of that.”

“Mattie sent me here. To speak with you. She reminded me that Enos Wengerd was excommunicated a few weeks ago. She thought I should let you know about it.”

I don’t know Wengerd personally; our paths never crossed when I was Amish, and I’ve never had cause to speak to him since I’ve been back. But I keep my thumb on the Amish grapevine. I know he has a reputation for being Amish when it’s convenient and breaking the rules when it suits him. He raises sheep on a small farm between Painters Mill and Millersburg.

I open my desk drawer and remove a pad of paper. “Do you know why he was excommunicated?”

“He bought a truck. He attended
Mennischt
church services.
Er is en maulgrischt.
”
He is a pretend Christian.

The mention of his buying a truck makes my antennae go up. “Do you think his being excommunicated is somehow related to what happened to Paul and the children?”

Erb leans forward, his expression intensifying. “When I went to the horse auction in Millersburg last weekend, I saw him arguing with Paul.
Der siffer hot zu viel geleppert.” The drunkard had sipped too much.

“Wengerd was drinking alcohol?”

“Ja.”

“What were they arguing about?”

“I don’t know, but Enos was in a state. He was angry about being placed under the
bann.
His family would no longer take meals with him. His parents refused to let him into their home. He blamed Paul when it was his own doing.”

“Do you know what kind of truck he purchased?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know anything about English vehicles.”

“Did Enos threaten Paul?”

“I do not know.”

“Did the confrontation get physical?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Did anyone else witness the argument?” I ask.

“I don’t know. They were out where they park the buggies.” He looks down at his hat. “I wish I had done something. Talked to them.”

“I’ll talk to Enos,” I tell him.

Andy rises with the arthritic slowness of a man twice his age and I know the anguish of the last two days has taken a toll.

“Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Mr. Erb.”

He leaves without responding.

*   *   *

It’s too early for an official visit from the police department—even for the Amish, who rise early—so I decide to swing by my brother’s farm before talking to Enos Wengerd. It’s been months since I spoke to Jacob, and like so many visits in the past, I suspect it’s going to be tense at best, unpleasant if I want to be honest about it. Jacob and I excel at both.

The old farm had once been owned by my parents and was passed down to Jacob—the eldest male child—after the death of our mother three years ago. I drive by the place several times a week when I’m on patrol. Every time, I envision myself stopping in to say hello to Jacob or sharing a cup of coffee with my sister-in-law, Irene. I envision myself getting to know my two young nephews, becoming part of their lives. But I always find an excuse to keep going.

When we were kids, Jacob, Sarah, and I were tight. We worked as much as we played and somehow we always managed to have fun. Jacob and I were particularly close. He was my big brother and I looked up to him the way only a little sister can. He could run faster, throw farther, and jump higher than anyone else in the world. If an Amish girl could have had a superhero, Jacob was mine. I could always count on him to watch my back, even if whatever trouble I’d found was my own doing, which was often the case. All of that changed when I was fourteen years old and Daniel Lapp came into our house and introduced me to the dark side of human nature. All of us lost our innocence that day.

I pull into the long gravel lane and speed toward the old farmhouse, white dust billowing in my wake. I steel myself against the familiarity of the place, but the memories encroach. To my right lies the apple orchard planted by my grandfather over fifty years ago, a place where Jacob, Sarah, and I spent many an afternoon picking McIntosh apples to sell at the fruit stand down the road. I see the cherry tree upon which Sarah and Jacob and I gorged ourselves every summer. The sapling maple tree I helped my
datt
plant is now tall enough to shade the house.

I pass by the house and the chicken coop looms into view. Jacob has replaced the wire and added a few concrete blocks at the base, probably to keep out the foxes and coyotes that roam the area at night. When I was a kid, caring for the chickens was my responsibility. I’d spend twenty minutes collecting eggs, changing the water, feeding, and raking the shit into an old dustpan for the compost pile. On a freezing January morning when I was eight years old, I came out to find feathers everywhere and all twenty chickens dead. It horrified me to realize I’d left the gate open and an animal had gotten into the coop during the night and torn them to shreds. It was a silly thing, but I’d become attached to the chickens. I had even named them. Frivolous, English names like Lulu and Bella and Madonna. When I saw what had been done to them I ran to the house, crying. My
datt
came out to assess the damage and quietly informed me, “A lazy sheep thinks its wool is heavy.” I knew what that meant and the words devastated me. It was his way of telling me I was lazy and all of those pretty hens were dead because of me. He bought more chickens at the auction the following weekend, only this time he assigned their care to my sister. I wasn’t allowed near the coop.

Jacob is married to a nice Amish woman by the name of Irene, who’s little more than a stranger to me. She bore him two sons—Elam and James—who are six and seven years old, respectively. It pains me deeply that my nephews are strangers, too. I hate it that I don’t know my sister-in-law. That I’ve never laughed with her or helped her in the kitchen or listened while she grumbled about her husband. What I hate most is the chasm that exists between me and my brother. Not for the first time, I think of all the things Daniel Lapp stole from me that day. What he stole from all of us. And I hate him for it.

I park near the sidewalk between the gravel parking area and the back of the house and shut down the engine. I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want to speak to Irene or even my brother, actually. I don’t want to see my nephews because I know it will only remind me how much I’ve let slip by and how little I’ve done to rectify it.

“Katie?”

I turn to see Jacob coming up the sidewalk from the barn. For an instant, he looks like the brother I so admired all those years ago. A tall boy with a quick grin, a protective nature, and muscles I longed to possess myself. In that instant, I want to launch myself at him, throw my arms around him, tell him I’ve missed him, and beg him to love me the way he used to because I need him in my life.

Instead, I stand there and wait for him to reach me. Like all married Amish men, he wears a full beard. There’s more gray threaded through it than the last time I saw him. He’s wearing gray work trousers. A blue work shirt with black suspenders. Work boots. And a straw, flat-brimmed hat.

He stops a few feet away from me. “What are you doing here?”

I had almost expected him to greet me with a smile or good morning or a how-are-you. Instead, his eyes are hard and he’s looking at me as if I’m the tax man with my hand reaching for his mason jar.

“We have a problem,” I tell him. “Do you have a few minutes?”

I hear a noise behind me and turn to see my sister-in-law, Irene, standing on the back porch, shaking the dust from a rug. She makes eye contact with me and nods, but she doesn’t look happy to see me and makes no move to come over to greet me. I know my nephews won’t be coming out to bid their
Englischer
auntie hello. It isn’t the first time the Amish have let me know I’m a bad influence on their young.

“Has something happened?” he asks.

I didn’t expect him to invite me inside for coffee and pie. I don’t
want
to go inside, especially considering the conversation we’re about to have. Still, it hurts.

“They found Daniel Lapp’s bones,” I tell him. “In the grain elevator down in Coshocton County.”

Jacob is a stoic man. Even as a boy he rarely displayed his emotions. But some responses are too powerful to contain, and I see a ripple of shock go through his body.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“I’m sure.”

He looks toward the barn, then back at me. “It’s Daniel Lapp?”

I resist the urge to snap at him, ask him who else it could be. “The police haven’t identified the remains. I don’t know if they’ll be able to. If they do, you can bet they’ll come here to talk to you.”

The muscles in his jaws begin to work.

“Benjamin Lapp knows Daniel baled hay here the day he disappeared,” I add.

He looks down at the ground, but not before I see the extent of his concern. He may not have killed Lapp, but he was complicit. It was he, after all, who helped our father transport the body and dump it into the boot pit of that abandoned grain elevator.

“This is terrible news,” he says.

The statement doesn’t require a response, so I say nothing. For the span of several minutes we stand there and watch the chickens scratch and peck the ground in the coop.

“Jacob, if the police come here, I want you to tell them Daniel left at the end of the day and you never saw him again. Just like you did seventeen years ago. Tell them he was fine when he left and you have no idea what happened to him.”

“Maybe they won’t come here.”

“They will. We have to get our stories straight.” I hear myself say the words, hating the way it sounds, then push on. “You have to be prepared.”

“I don’t like this, Katie. The lying. The secrets.”

“Neither do I, but we have to deal with it. We can’t change what happened.”

He looks away, studying something on the horizon. Or maybe he simply can’t bring himself to look at me.

“There’s a chance the police may not be able to identify the remains,” I tell him. “There may not be DNA or dental records. If that’s the case, you have nothing to worry about.”

“What happened that day … what we did … it has haunted me all these years.”

“It’s haunted all of us, Jacob. But I’m the one who pulled the trigger. The sin was mine, not yours. Not Sarah’s.”

His eyes find mine. “It is our sin, Katie.”

I want to say something to remind him that Lapp was no innocent bystander. He’d still be alive today if he hadn’t been a violent man to begin with. Even if I could find the words, I don’t know if they would matter.

“I’m going to talk to Sarah,” I tell him.

He looks at me in a way I don’t understand, then turns away and starts toward the house without saying good-bye.

*   *   *

I don’t believe either of my siblings will divulge the truth about what happened the day Daniel Lapp was killed. Our
datt
swore us to silence, and for years none of us questioned his decision. We never discussed it after that day, and any emotional trauma we suffered was rebuffed or downplayed or both. But you never forget an ordeal like that, and I know, perhaps more than most, that injuries to the psyche run deep. Sometimes those scars break open and bleed.

The farm where my sister lives with her husband, William, sits at the end of a dead-end road. A razor-straight row of blue spruce trees whiz by my window as I zip up the lane. The barn and house loom into view. Like the Amish, both buildings are plain, without the ornamentation of shutters or even landscaping. In the side yard, trousers and dresses pinned to a clothesline flap in the breeze, reminding me of all the times Sarah and I helped our own mother with laundry.

The barn’s sliding door stands open, telling me William is probably mucking stalls or feeding the livestock. I’m relieved. Like many of the Amish in my former church district, my brother-in-law believes I’ll be spending all of eternity burning in hell. He thinks I’m a bad influence on my sister, as if some decayed part of me will rub off.

Most of the time, I’m able to overlook that kind of narrow-minded thinking because I understand the Amish mindset and I have great respect for the culture. Still, I was once close to my sister; I used to be part of this tight-knit community. While the pain of being unofficially excommunicated is no longer the agony it once was, I still feel the losses.

I park on a patch of threadbare grass where the driveway meets the backyard and kill the engine. I get my thoughts in order as I slide out and start toward the house. A glance behind me tells me William is still in the barn. He knows nothing of what happened all those years ago and I prefer to keep it that way.

I ascend the concrete steps to the porch. Before I can knock, the door swings open and I find myself face-to-face with Sarah. She’s wearing a blue dress with a black apron. Her blond hair is pulled back and tucked into her
kapp.
She looks the same as the last time I saw her, pretty and plain, with an air of contentment I never seemed to find. Despite the reason for my visit, the sight of my niece in her arms makes me smile. The baby is swaddled in a blanket, a fat bundle of pink skin, colorless hair, and a bow mouth covered with spittle. Eyes the same color as mine stare back at me from within that round, perfect face.

“Katie! Hello!”

I look away from the baby. My sister seems genuinely pleased to see me. But I don’t miss the exaggerated enthusiasm of her voice, or the way her eyes flick toward the barn as if she’s concerned that William will notice my vehicle and come inside to scowl at me. While she may be happy to see me, she wants me in and out quickly, before he can pass judgment on both of us.