Joel met her gaze. "Not all that much."

Annie peered at a wooden birdhouse with a single hole in the front. "I wonder if one of the boys made that."

"Might have."

"I guess everybody has heard about Karl Kramer."

"I don't pay much attention to him," Joel said. "His fuse is too quick."

Now why would Joel be talking about a fuse? Annie heard the bell on the door jangle and Mark's soft voice, his words indistinguishable.

"I'll get the rest," Joel said.

As he turned away, Annie wondered how it was he had time for mundane errands for the Stutzmans when undoubtedly he had chores of his own. It was the middle of the morning, at the height of spring. On a farm. Annie found it hard to believe he did not have work waiting for him at his father's side. Surely the Stutzman boys could have brought their own buggy into town.

Joel returned, his arms full.

Annie smiled, daring him to keep looking so glum. "I'll make more room." She pushed a mostly empty oversized box out of the way.

"This is the last of it."

"I hope Mrs. Stutzman appreciates your help. I'm sure you have a lot of other things you could be doing."

"My morning was fairly clear." Joel brushed his palms against each other, spewing dust. "It is our way to be helpful."

"Yes, of course. I of all people understand Beiler hospitality."

He looked at her, and the corners of his mouth went up, but the gesture did not convince Annie.

"Is everything all right, Joel?" She spoke before she meant to, laying a hand on his forearm.

"Of course. Why should it not be?" He moved out of her touch.

Was that irritation in his tone? Defensiveness? Simple fatigue? Slow and subtle was not going to work. Annie changed tactics.

"What do you know about Karl Kramer's missing fertilizer? Or what do your friends have to do with it?"

"I'd better go."

Joel touched the brim of his hat in a way that made clear Annie would get no further reaction from him.

"Joel, if the boys are getting themselves into trouble-"

"Good-bye, Annalise."

Rufus stood at the end of Annalise's short front walk and tipped his head back far enough that even the brim of his hat did not filter the streaming sun. Annalise sat on her front stoop, her legs stretched out, eyes closed, face raised. Her hair, hanging loose today, draped her shoulders. He was certain that she had not cut it since the day he met her.

And the thought of what that meant made him smile.

She opened her eyes just then, and he saw the joy chase through them before she composed herself.

"I couldn't remember if you were working only half a day," he said.

"I'm off until Thursday. Where's Dolly? I didn't hear you coming."

"I left her grazing. I'm working nearby."

"Are you sure it's safe to leave her unattended?"

"Karl Kramer and I have come to an understanding, if that's what you mean," Rufus said. "But my crew is there."

"Just in case. Okay." Annalise scooted to one side of the step and reached for a plastic container behind her. "I have sandwiches. Ham and cheese?"

Rufus lowered himself to the stoop beside her and accepted a hefty half sandwich. He could not ask for a much more public place than her front yard. Tongues might wag about how much time they spent together, but no one could accuse them of being secretive.

"Tom and I are going to Colorado Springs tomorrow." Rufus rotated the sandwich in his hands, planning his assault on its girth. "I think you should come."

"Really?"

Rufus nodded. "You should see your mother more often."

"Oh."

The sag of her shoulders told him he had said the wrong thing. "Annalise, she is still very anxious about what you are doing here. She needs to know you are not turning your back on her."

"Of course I'm not." Annalise picked at the crust of her own sandwich, the other half of his. "I just don't know what else I can say to explain things to her."

"Just be with her. Let her see that she raised a wonderful, capable woman with strong values. That she isn't losing you."

He heard the edge of hesitation in her breath.

"I'm going to shop for tools, and Tom is going to visit his mother in the nursing home," he said. "We would be back by suppertime."

"How about seeing Ruth?"

"Your mother, Annalise. You need to see your mother. Call her from the shop."

She took a big bite, purposely occupying her mouth, he thought. When she swallowed hard, he knew he had persuaded her.

Lauren was there on the sofa when Ruth entered the suite. Ruth dropped her backpack beside Lauren and plopped into the chair opposite the sofa.

"You should have let me pick you up from work." Lauren peered over the top of her laptop and her glasses at Ruth.

"It seemed like a lot of trouble. You're in the middle of a paper."

Lauren scoffed. "I suspect my professor is a closet pacifist. No offense. I know you're the real thing."

"No offense taken."

"My professor keeps making me tweak my subject, thesis, sources-the whole thing. He won't admit he just doesn't want to read a paper about incendiary devices and military munitions."

Ruth laughed. "He doesn't want to admit that you know more about it than he does."

"You got that right."

Ruth put her head back, closed her eyes, and breathed out her fatigue. Finding Lauren in the suite always heartened her. Their other suitemates, rarely there, kept to their own rooms. Without Lauren's encouragement, Ruth would do the same. More than once, though, as she lay alone in her bed she grinned at the unlikely friendship between an Amish girl and a self-taught munitions specialist. Ruth understood most of what Lauren talked about now. An entire new vocabulary sorted itself out in Ruth's mind, finding categories and relationships in a peculiar grammar. Weapon numbers and abbreviated names and schematics inserted themselves into conversations about study groups and coins for the laundry. Ruth still was reluctant to believe she would ever have much use for this particular set of words.

"We should do a driving lesson," Lauren said. "No point in having a car and letting it sit in the parking lot."

"Whenever you're ready."

"Admit it, you like driving." Lauren snapped her laptop shut. "Let's go now."

Ruth did not stifle her laugh. She had been lonely for so long after leaving the valley of her family's home. It was good to once again be with someone who knew her well.

"I'll get the key."

Tom Reynolds was cranky.

His mood rarely faltered this much, but Annie almost wished she were riding in the open bed of his truck instead of wedged between him and Rufus. Before they left Westcliffe, Annie toyed with seeking counsel from both men while the three of them were captive to the road. What if something were going on with the boys? Tom and Rufus could sort it out. In only minutes, though, Tom's disposition clamped her mouth shut.

Tom twisted the steering wheel in a sharp turn. "Carter has too much unsupervised time. When summer vacation comes, he'll have way too much free time."

"He's a good boy, Tom," Rufus said.

"When he was little, Trish and I could not leave him alone for a minute or he'd get into trouble." Tom accelerated. "Can't you keep him occupied on your crew, Rufus? You wouldn't even have to pay him."

Annie blocked out most of Tom's tirade, unwilling to offer Carter up for sacrifice at the moment. She gripped the seat when he took turns a little too fast. She glanced at Rufus every few minutes, admiring his calm responses.

But, no, this did not seem like the time to mention to Tom that his son might be building a bomb and that his Amish friends- including Rufus's brother-might be helping him. She could not be sure, and maybe she was wrong, and she did not want to make false accusations, so never mind. How do you know? he would ask. Because I'm nosy and jump to conclusions and I have no proof, she would have to say. She did not want the Amish to dub her Nosy Annalise.

They pulled up-finally-in front of Annie's parents' home. With Mrs. Weichert's permission, Annie had used the phone in the shop to alert her mother that she was coming and to make sure she would be home. When Annie got out of the truck, Myra Friesen was already standing in the front door frame.

"I'm not so sure about this," Annie muttered in that moment when she was wedged between the truck and Rufus standing at the open door.

"It's the right thing."

Visions of the red dress flashed through Annie's mind. She would only be home a few hours this time. Surely she could not get into trouble in one afternoon.

No. She wouldn't. She just wouldn't. In fact, she would put that dress in the trash herself.

Her arm brushed Rufus's as she moved past him, and his fingers fluttered for hers.

A rare gesture. He knew how much she needed it.

"When I come back, I will come in and say hello to your mother." As he spoke, Rufus waved at Myra, who returned the gesture with the delay of reluctance.

Twenty-Six.

I only wish you were staying longer." Annie's mother squeezed her tight. "I made brunch."

"Quiche Lorraine?" Just the thought triggered Annie's salivary glands. Her mother's quiche, a family weekend staple during Annie's childhood, was a dish she would like to learn to make now that she was determined to cook properly.

"With a fresh spinach-cranberry salad I still have to put together." Myra turned toward the kitchen.

"Almonds?" Annie followed her mother.

"Of course."

"I took all this for granted growing up." Annie perched on a stool at the breakfast bar, where she could smell the baking quiche and imagine it rimmed by a perfectly golden crust. Her mother would know precisely the moment to remove it from the oven. "The next time I come, maybe you can teach me to make your quiche."

"I'm glad to hear there will be a next time." Myra opened the refrigerator and rapidly transferred an array of ingredients to the counter.

"Of course there will be a next time, Mom. You're being dramatic."

"I might argue that you're the one with the flair for drama of late, but let's not quibble." Myra dumped a bag of spinach in a colander. "Oh, before I forget, there's some mail for you on the sideboard in the dining room. Some of it looks important."

Annie doubted important mail would be coming to her parents' home. She had been living in Westcliffe for eight months now, and mail came to her house. "Probably junk."

"I don't think so. You'd better look at it." Myra brushed her hands on a dish towel. "I'll get it."

"Mom-" Before Annie voiced her protest that she could fetch her own mail, Myra whizzed past her into the dining room and quickly returned.

"This does not look like junk." Myra tapped the envelope that sat atop a clothing catalog and a bank advertisement. "Isn't that the company you sold to?"

Annie picked up the flat manila envelope, imprinted with the logo of Liam-Ryder Industries. "Yes. It's probably some formality, a notification the government requires."

"I may not be a corporate executive, but that doesn't look like a form letter to me. Open it." Myra picked up a knife and let it drop through a cucumber in six quick taps.

Annie tore the envelope open. "Are you making dessert?"

"I have some Bosc pears. I was going to do something fancy, but I ran out of time."

"We can just eat them fresh." Annie slid a letter out of the envelope.

"I have caramel sauce."

"That would be good, too." Annie scanned the embossed page in her hand. How in the world had Liam-Ryder Industries tracked her down to her parents' address? And why? The sale of her software company, including its intellectual property assets, was final months ago. She let her breath out slowly as she read more carefully.

"What do they want?"