"Annalise-"

"Please, let me finish." She moistened her lips. "Last summer, when we met, I was running from my intellectual property attorney because he betrayed me and was trying to steal my business."

"I remember."

"He was also my boyfriend, and he often stayed the night. At some level, I knew it was wrong, but everybody was doing it. The box my faith was in was up on a shelf by then."

Rufus was silent, and Annie lifted her eyes to his at last.

"I don't know what assumptions you've had about my past," she added. "But I wanted you to know the truth. My faith is off the shelf now. I want to follow Jesus and be a new creation. But I can't change the past."

Those violet-blue eyes bore into her.

"If you'd rather find an Amish woman who has always had strong faith," Annie said, "I understand. You probably want someone who hasn't...I don't want to be in your way." Annie laughed nervously. "In case you haven't noticed, you're what the English would call a great catch. You could have any Amish woman you wanted."

Say you want me. Say you want me. Say you want me.

Rufus turned his head at the sound of his name, and Annie startled. Karl Kramer appeared from around a clump of bushes at the side of the road. How long had he been there? Annie wondered.

"Rufus, we can't have this party without you," Karl said. "People are asking for you."

"I'll be right there."

"You'd better be." Karl turned and began to climb the hill.

Voices and children's squeals wafted down. Annie realized she was holding her breath.

"Annalise," Rufus said, glancing up the hill.

She could see in his eyes that he wanted to say more. Dread rose up. "You'd better go," she said softly.

On the way up the hill he did not hold her hand. A thickness came over her chest, squeezing her throat.

Forty-Seven.

June 1780 Jacob climbed the hill in the afternoon sun hoping he would not regret leaving his horse behind. At a brisk clip, the familiar walk from his home to the big house took barely twenty minutes.

While Maria was staying at the big house, Jacob felt less pressure to check on his mother frequently. After the gunpowder explosion threw Maria against the tannery six months ago she had no choice but to remain in Berks County while she waited for the leg to heal. Jacob had heard the bone snap. A slight limp now reminded Maria of one careless gesture, but her determination was undeterred. But Maria was gone now, and Jacob was never sure what he would find when he arrived at the clearing his parents had carved out forty years ago. His mother had not been on a horse in years, but he kept one stabled near her house just in case someone else might need it.

Maria agreed to stay with Sarah in Philadelphia, rather than chase the front lines of battle. At least there she could seek out the remnants of her own old network of subterfuge and perhaps uncover word of her missing husband.

No encouraging information had come through yet, but Jacob understood why Maria held on to hope. He had not heard from any of his brothers in almost a year. The most he could do was follow news of the battles and suppose that Joseph, John, and David were enmeshed in the fighting or working the supply lines. Jacob still manufactured gunpowder when he could find the saltpeter to keep the mill going. If he could get a load to Philadelphia, Sarah seemed to be able to feed it into channels effectively and sometimes even produce a fair price for it. He found comfort in imagining his own brothers loading their muskets with powder from his mill.

His mother was in the garden. He and Franklin helped her with the planting eight weeks ago. No doubt she was inspecting the shoots that carried the promise of bushels of vegetables. She looked unsteady to Jacob-more unsteady every day. she stumbled, and his heart lurched. He was still yards away.

Elizabeth fell. Jacob broke into a sprint.

"Mamm!" Jacob had his arms under her before she could sink into the soft soil.

Hours later, while his mother rested in her own bed, Jacob and Katie murmured in the kitchen.

"She should not be on her own. She should come stay with us." Katie put her hand on top of Jacob's as they sat at the table where he had eaten the meals of his boyhood.

"She has lived in this clearing since she married. She will not have it any other way."

Katie nodded. "I'll talk to Joseph's wife, and John's as well. We can all drop by more often. Some of the grandchildren are old enough to help, too."

Jacob exhaled. "I wish my brothers could make it home, even for a visit. She has not been the same since David and John decided to enlist."

"Age and heartbreak are not a productive combination."

Jacob disentangled his fingers from Katie's. "I can at least send a message to Christian, and we should let Sarah and Maria know."

Katie straightened. "What are you saying?"

"She's weaker all the time. We cannot deceive ourselves about what is coming."

"What does it say, Daed?"

Christian handed the letter to Magdalena, who scanned it quickly.

Magdalena held the page with thumb and forefinger on each side. "Elizabeth is failing. Jacob says she hardly gets out of bed anymore." Elizabeth was the one who gave Magdalena her first reading lesson using an old primer of Maria's.

Anxiety filled Christian's chest, the pressure building until he lifted his shoulders in three quick breaths.

"Daed?"

"I'm all right," he said. He could not manage more words at that moment.

Elizabeth Kallen had come into their lives through the will of his widowed father. She was not Amish and had no thought to become Amish. For years, Christian held that against her. But Christian could not imagine his boyhood without her. she had opened her heart to five motherless children. Never had she suggested he try the ways of the English. Except for not being baptized and joining the church-and the colorful fabrics she dressed Sarah in-Elizabeth lived as plain as any of their Amish neighbors.

Christian was only eight when his own mother died. The truth was he had far more memories of Elizabeth caring for him in maternal ways than he did of Verona Yoder Byler. He was not yet prepared to mourn Elizabeth Kallen Byler, but if Jacob's note was an accurate assessment, he had little time to ready himself for the coming reality.

"Are you going to go see her?" Magdalena asked.

"I suspect I will be sorry if I do not." Christian lowered himself into a chair. "She was always so kind."

"May I come with you?"

Christian was at a loss to know what to do with this stubborn daughter. Magdalena should have been married six months or more by now. She ought to have been busy on Jonas Glick's farm, making the place her home, perhaps waiting for a child to quicken within her.

Instead she had called off her engagement. If she could not be wife to Nathanael Buerki, she said, she would be no wife at all. Christian could barely bring himself to look Jonas Glick in the face. What was he supposed to do with a daughter unwilling to become a wife?

When Christian spoke to Babsi later that evening, she confessed she suspected she was with child again. A wagon ride over through the countryside with a passel of children had no appeal. The next day he rode out to the farms where his older sisters thrived. Although they burst into tears at the news of Elizabeth's decline, both had family pressures that would make the trip with him impossible.

"All right," Christian said that night to Magdalena, "if you still want to go, we'll leave in the morning."

They took a small wagon and a team, rather than just two mounts. Her father had seemed to want to fill the wagon with gifts but in the end settled for a dozen jugs of apple cider. He said he remembered that Elizabeth had always liked cider. Daed would not let Magdalena drive, however. So she opted to spend part of the journey drowsing in sun-drenched hay in the wagon's bed with the jugs.

When they crested the final hill before the Irish Creek settlement, Daed halted the team. Magdalena peered at the view, searching her mind for the memories of the little girl she had been on Irish Creek. She watched her father now as his face creased in longing and memory as well. He finally raised the reins again, and the team lumbered down the soft slope.

At the back door, her father knocked softly, and a moment later, Katie opened the door. Behind her, Maria and Sarah stood up from the table.

Jacob was out in the barn. Magdalena followed her daed into Elizabeth's bedroom and stood quietly while he watched her labored breathing.

"I need to go find Jacob," he said softly. "Will you stay with her? If she wakes, she should not be alone."

Magdalena nodded and settled into a rocker where she could watch Elizabeth. A few minutes later, Maria slipped into the room.

Magdalena stifled a sigh at the sight of the Patriot spy. Why had she even wanted to come on this trip? Her onkel made gunpowder, and her aunts spied on the British. She should have realized she was walking into a den of the enemy.

She bit her lip. She was not supposed to have enemies. No one knew what she had done for Patrick. And she was not sorry.

"I heard you were getting married," Maria said, her voice low and even and soothing. "Then I heard that you did not."

"He was a good man, but not the right man." Magdalena made no effort to explain that Nathanael was the right man but she could never have him.

"Then you made the right decision," Maria said.

Magdalena lifted her eyebrows slightly. No one at home thought she made the right decision.

"My family would not have understood the husband I chose," Maria said, "but I have no regret. I'm only sorry that we have been separated for two years because of this war."

Magdalena said nothing, but her throat thickened.

"Is there someone else who is the right man?" Maria asked.

Magdalena nodded. "The war has taken him away from me as well."

Maria nodded. "Then you know my heart."

They settled into silence, Magdalena considering her aunt's words. Oddly, Maria was the one who understood her best.

Elizabeth's breath grew jagged, and Maria and Magdalena leaned forward in tandem.

"Does she do that often?" Magdalena asked.

Maria shook her head. "This is different. I think you should go get your father and Jacob."

"Daed hoped to see her awake."

Maria pulled her lips back in a grimace. "Go get them, Magdalena. Look in the barn or the stables."

"Someone has to be with her all the time," Jacob told Christian. "Ever since she fell in the garden, we've been watching her, but every day she grew weaker."

"You've cared for her well all these years, Jacob."

"I could never approach how well she cared for all of us." Jacob rubbed his temples with both hands.

"I hope to tell her how grateful I am for the early years. I should have done it long ago instead of harboring judgment. I was a grown man with a family of my own before I could see what Daed saw when he married her. She never spoke against the Amish and always let me be the man I was destined to be."

A knock made them both turn to look behind them at the stable door. Magdalena stepped in. Jacob was struck afresh with how much she resembled Maria.

"Maria says you should come," Magdalena said softly.

"Elizabeth?" Christian said. Jacob watched the color drain from his brother's face.

"Just come."

Forty-Eight.

October 1781 Will you give up gunpowder now?"

Jacob looked at the upturned face of his wife as she reclined in their bed. Her hands rested on the familiar swell of her midsection.

"The war will end soon," Katie said. "Cornwallis surrendered. It's only a matter of time before the British come to terms with their defeat."

"That's all true." Jacob sat on the side of the bed and yanked off one boot. "But soldiers are not the only ones who need gunpowder. Farmers need it for blasting rock out of new fields. Hunters need ammunition for their rifles. It may still be a profitable business."

"At least you can sell it freely instead of sneaking around."

Jacob removed his other boot then sprawled across the bed in his clothes. Squalling from the loft above them made him sigh.

"It's Lisbetli," Katie said. "She's been fussy all day. She will settle down on her own."

"But if she wakes up the others, we'll have a riot on our hands." He put his hand on her belly. "Where are we going to put this babe once he doesn't need to be with you all night?"

"We always seem to manage."

"Maybe we should move to the big house."

The house at the top of the hill stood empty since Elizabeth's death. But it had once housed ten children. Jacob well remembered the spacious upstairs bedrooms.