Plain Refuge

“You can’t do this to me.”

She crossed her arms. “What exactly am I doing to you?”

“You’re holding them over my head.” He shook his head, baffled. “Why? You’re the one who left me. I loved you.”

The fury she’d been suppressing swelled inside her. “So much so that I felt like a ghost in your house. One of the few times I tried to make you really see me, talk to me, you shoved me into the kitchen cabinet. I had to hide for days after that so nobody would see the bruises. But you weren’t around to notice. You were never around.”

“I told you I was sorry!” he yelled back.

“Sorry isn’t good enough!” Rebecca struggled to calm herself. She had forgiven him, hadn’t she? She wasn’t acting like it. “Tim, whatever you believe, my taking Steven’s wallet and ring had nothing to do with our history. I just...couldn’t let you keep fooling the police. It’s wrong. Whatever you did or didn’t have to do with Steven’s death—”

“I told you. I didn’t have anything to do with it. And it was an accident, anyway. We just...” He swallowed. “Him dying would have complicated everything. He took the money, he ran. That’s all anyone has to know.”

Hating what was staring her in the face, Rebecca whispered, “Why?”

“You don’t need to know. You need to quit interfering with something you don’t understand!” Teeth showing, the muscles in his shoulders bunching, he leaned in. “Give me back everything you took.”

Rebecca took a prudent step back. “No.” Groping behind herself, she found the knob and opened the front door. “You need to leave. I’ll make your excuses to Matthew.”

He didn’t move. “You’re blackmailing me.”

“No!”

“It’s the custody issue, isn’t it?” He gave an incredulous laugh. “You’ve got me over a barrel, and you know it. If I back off, you’ll give me what I need.”

The possibility had never crossed her mind. She wasn’t devious enough. But now that he’d laid it out...heaven help her, she was tempted. Her pulse raced. Matthew would stay with her, and he’d be safe from his critical, domineering grandfather.

What she was contemplating was a lousy way to protect her son, but she’d use anything or anyone for him.

“No,” she heard herself say. “I won’t give it back. But you have my promise that I’ll keep quiet. No one else will ever see what I found.”

Her pulse raced as she waited. His eyes narrowed in a way that told her he was thinking, and hard.

Finally he grunted, said a foul word and agreed.

* * *

THREE WEEKS LATER, she had her divorce and primary custody of Matthew, subject to the usual visitation schedule and swapping of holidays.

Detective Estevez might still be watching her, but, thank heavens, he hadn’t been back. She hated the idea of lying to his face.

Rebecca already felt tainted enough by a decision she knew wasn’t morally defensible. She imagined her mother shaking her head and chiding Rebecca with a gentleness that could still sting.

Yet, her mother had never shed her discomfiture regarding law enforcement. A fear of authority was bred into any Amish man’s or woman’s very bones by their bloody heritage. Throughout their history, the Amish had been driven out of one place after another by men in uniforms. Burned at the stake, tortured, imprisoned.

To go to the police about a family member’s behavior? No, Mamm would never have chosen that path. She would help that person see the error of his ways, guide him back to making godly choices. Punishing a wrongdoer wasn’t the aim of the Amish, and they never willingly went to the law.

Rebecca shook her head.

Her mother wasn’t here anymore. Rebecca was willing to live with a stain on her character if that was the only way to save Matthew from a life of being alternately shamed and molded by his grandfather.

* * *

THE DEAL HELD, although Matthew noticed the coolness between his parents. Worse, a couple of months after the divorce, he returned puffy eyed from a weekend with his father. Lower lip protruding, he stayed stiff when Tim hugged him.

Tim gave her an angry look, as if whatever had happened was her fault, then left. Rebecca followed Matthew to his bedroom and coaxed the story out of him.

Grandfather Gregory said some bad things about Mommy, and when Matthew objected, he had spanked him. Hard. And Daddy let him!

Furious, Rebecca hugged him. “Did he use his hand, or a belt, or...?”

Her little boy gaped at her. “A belt? Don’t people always spank with their hand?”

Well, that was something. “Is your bottom sore?”

He wriggled on his bed. “Uh-huh.”

She gave him another squeeze. “I’ll talk to your dad. Sometimes I think he’s a little afraid of your grandfather. He may have thought a spanking wasn’t that terrible. Especially if you were rude.”

“I wasn’t rude!” he exclaimed. “I just said my mom wasn’t a—” He sneaked a peek up at her. “He said a word you told me I can’t.”

She could imagine what Robert had called her. What she wondered was why. How much did he know about Tim’s part in Steven’s disappearance? And the leverage she held over Tim?

“Never mind,” she said. “Remember, ‘sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.’” Even so, he shouldn’t have to listen to her being vilified.

Together, she and Matthew decided the best thing was for him to say with dignity, Grandfather, I don’t want to listen when you use bad words about my mom, and then walk out of the room.

Forehead crinkling, Matthew repeated the line several times, then nodded firmly. “That’s what I’ll say.”

As far as she knew, he wasn’t spanked again. Perhaps Tim had confronted his father when Matthew wasn’t there. She wanted to think so.

Two months after her confrontation with Tim over the ring, he attended Matthew’s graduation ceremony from kindergarten. The three of them even went out afterward for pizza and had fun. At least, she thought they had, but when Tim drove them back to the apartment, he insisted on walking them up, where he asked Matthew to go to his bedroom.

He did it nicely enough, and Matthew shrugged and obeyed. Six now, he was growing like a weed and occasionally giving her glimpses of what he’d look like a few years down the road. That shrug was almost teenage. Rebecca wondered if he’d learned it from his fifteen-year-old babysitter.

She quit wondering when she glanced back at her ex-husband and saw the way his expression had tightened.

Feeling a little wary, she said, “What did you want to talk about?”

“Rebecca, you have to give me Steven’s things.” Tim kept his voice low, but urgency threaded every word. “Josh is pissed about this arrangement. He feels threatened, too.”

“Too?” she echoed.

“You don’t know what it’s like.” Hostility darkened his eyes. “Josh is after me, and Dad is angry because I gave in and let you have my kid. Sometimes I feel like that guy in the movie. I’m walking a tightrope between two skyscrapers. The only way off is to fall. That’s a shitty way to live.”

He was right. It was.

“I’d...like to think I can trust you, but I don’t trust your father,” she admitted. “Or Josh. And I’ve kept my word. I haven’t told anyone.”

“You know Josh is my best friend.”

She did know. Josh and Tim had met during orientation for their freshman year of college and had been roommates. Steven Stowe had been a much later addition, needed for his financial acumen. Because Josh had spent his summers working construction, he supervised the job sites. Tim’s gift had been convincing clients to choose G, G & S over other contractors. It was because of Tim that half the architects in the city recommended G, G & S to their clients. And when the company needed financing, Tim worked his magic on bankers.

“He’s leaning hard on me. You need to bend a little, Bec.” He hadn’t called her that in a long time. But then he said, “I don’t know how long I can keep protecting you. Be smart and think about it.”

She was speechless, and he departed without saying anything else. Rebecca almost lunged to flip the dead bolt on the door. Had he been telling her she needed to be afraid?

She tried to reason through the cloud of fear. Even if she returned the ring and the wallet and cards, she knew about them—about Steven. Even if she gave Tim the benefit of the doubt, what if Josh had killed Steven during an argument? Would he kill again to protect his secret? But there was the chance she’d given them to someone else as insurance.

Whatever he said to the contrary, keeping that proof might be the only way she could protect herself.

She put her back to the door and shuddered.

* * *

A COUPLE OF weeks later, Rebecca lay sprawled on the sidewalk, grit stinging her cheek. Dazed, she knew only that she was the near victim of a drive-by shooting, and that some man had tackled her to the pavement right after the first crack of gunfire.

I would have stood there frozen, like an idiot, she thought.

She groaned and pushed herself to a sitting position. People all around were babbling in excitement and alarm. The middle-aged man who had knocked her down was picking himself up, too. She heard an approaching siren.

Her phone rang and she groped in her handbag for it. She had to be sure someone from Matthew’s day camp wasn’t calling. Rattled, she stared at the strange number displayed on the screen. Even the area code was unfamiliar.

“Hello?”

A metallic voice said, “Call that a warning. You have something we need. Return it, or next time we won’t miss. And if you go to the cops? Your son is dead.”

Knowing the caller was gone, Rebecca began to shake.

CHAPTER TWO

DANIEL BYLER PULLED his squad car to the curb to let a bus pass. Having already noticed several buggies and horses lining the street, he assumed an Amish visitor was expected. Come to think of it, weren’t Roy and Nancy Schwartz supposed to be arriving about now from Iowa?

Roy was a cousin of his, although Daniel had lost track of whether they were second cousins or first once removed or... It didn’t matter. The Amish tended to have a lot of children, and family networks sprawled and frequently tangled. Daniel and Roy had played together as boys. Too much had passed for them to reconnect as friends, but he did hope his parents would invite him to dinner sometime during the visit so he could say hello.

The bus groaned to a stop in front of the general store. Daniel got out of his car, careful not to jostle the people exiting the bus. He didn’t see anyone from his direct family among those waiting on the sidewalk. Apparently, this wasn’t the day Roy and his wife and children would arrive. Emma and Samuel Graber, members of his parents’ church district and their contemporaries in age, stood in front of this group. Leaning a shoulder against the brick building, Daniel exchanged nods with them.

As usual, it was the Englisch passengers who got off first. They had a way of assuming it was their right. That wasn’t fair, Daniel realized, thinking of his good friends among the non-Amish in his county. There was no way around it, though—they had a different way of thinking.

And me? How do I think? he asked himself, as he did daily. Betwixt and between, that was him.

Finally a slender Amish woman wearing the usual black bonnet stepped off, reaching back to help a young boy down. Looking tired and shy, the boy pressed himself to his mother. The woman lifted her head to scan her surroundings, her gaze stopping on Daniel in what he thought was alarm.

He straightened on a jolt of anger, followed by curiosity. One side of her face was discolored and swollen. The eye on that side opened only a slit. Had she been in an accident? Or was she a victim of spousal abuse?

Her scan had been wary, and something about him triggered her fear. Was it because, like most Amish, she was unwilling to report the assault and thought he might press her to do so?

The driver unloaded the last piece of luggage from under the bus and got back on board. With a deep sigh, the bus started down the street. None of the buggy horses so much as flapped an ear. It took something much stranger than a noisy bus to bother them.

Daniel ambled forward, the picture of congeniality. After all, as county sheriff, he was an elected official. He greeted folks he knew and nodded at strangers while assessing them, until he reached the Grabers and a cluster of Yoders, all enveloping the two newcomers.

Looking him in the eye, Samuel Graber stepped away from the group.

Protecting the woman and child by distracting me? Daniel wondered.

“Sheriff.” Samuel’s greeting was pleasant, but he didn’t smile. The Amish trusted Daniel as a person, but they were wary of everything he represented. Behind Samuel, his wife was hugging the woman from the bus, while the blond boy gripped her skirts. His summer straw hat fell to the sidewalk. One of the many relatives picked it up.

“Family?” Daniel asked easily.

“Ja.” Samuel cleared his throat as he made a mental switch to English from the Deitsch language the Amish used among themselves. “Rebecca is the daughter of one of my sisters. Here for a visit.”

His gaze resting on the slim back clothed in a dark blue dress and apron, he said, “You know I’m only here to help.”

“You saw she has been injured.”

“I did.”

“She was hit by a car and thrown over the hood of another. A miracle it is she was not hurt worse.”

Daniel nodded. “I hope her little boy didn’t see it happen. That would have been frightening.”

“Ja, but I don’t think he did. She will tell us more once we get her home.” Without another word, Samuel returned to the group, his broad frame hiding the newcomers.

The message was not subtle: this is none of your business. But Daniel thought Samuel was wrong. The sight of a police uniform made many of the Amish wary, and accidents happened every day. But an accident did not leave a woman afraid of who might be waiting for her when she stepped off a bus.

Chances were that she was escaping trouble of one kind or another. In his experience, trouble had a way of following people, and the Amish were defenseless.

He often stopped to say hello to folks in his small county. He’d give the Grabers a day or two and then drive out to their farm, just to say he hoped their niece was recovering and enjoying her visit.

He was opening the door to the café, where he’d been headed for lunch, when he glanced back to catch Rebecca watching him, her expression now unreadable. With her high forehead, fine bones and sharp chin, she’d be a pretty woman once the swelling subsided. Between the bonnet and the prayer kapp, he couldn’t tell what color hair she had, but she shared her son’s blue eyes.

He smiled. She looked startled and quickly climbed into one of the buggies. Her onkel Samuel closed the door, and she was lost from Daniel’s view. Thoughtful, he went into the café, taking a seat at the window.

As he watched the buggies drive away, he wondered how long the Grabers’ guest intended to stay.

* * *

THE DRONE OF the metal wheels on the paved road, the sway of the buggy and the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves would quickly make her drowsy, Rebecca feared. At least she didn’t have to strain to understand Deitsch, often called Pennsylvania Dutch, which was actually a Germanic dialect. Aenti Emma and the others had spoken English from the moment she stepped off the bus. Or maybe they were doing so for Matthew’s sake. Rebecca suspected the language would come back to her quickly. She had been reasonably fluent once upon a time—as a child, she had spent her summers with her Amish grandparents. She had loved those visits until she became a snotty thirteen-year-old with the same preoccupations as her other San Francisco friends. Boys, the right clothes, boys, how unfair their parents were, boys. The plain life had suddenly held no appeal. Her mother’s disappointment in her wasn’t enough to combat peer pressure.

That, she thought now, was when her foolishness had begun.

“Your aenti Mary gave you clothes, I see,” Aenti Emma said approvingly. Her round face was as cheerful as always, but she had become considerably stouter since Rebecca had last seen her.

“Yes.” Rebecca plucked at the fabric of her apron. They had gone first to her aenti Mary and onkel Abe’s farm to confuse anyone trying to find them. “It feels strange, I have to admit.” She kissed the top of her son’s head. “Matthew doesn’t know what to make of the suspenders.”

Sarah, the younger cousin she scarcely remembered, chuckled. “They suit him fine! We are so pleased to meet Matthew at last.”

Matthew buried his face against Rebecca. His hat fell off once again. The two other women laughed. Onkel Samuel, in the driver’s seat, either couldn’t hear or was ignoring the womenfolk.

Sarah said, “He will be less shy once he sees the horses and cows and chickens, ain’t so?”

Matthew sneaked a peek Sarah’s way.

Rebecca would have smiled if it hadn’t hurt. “He was fascinated by Onkel Abe’s horse. I don’t think he’s ever been close enough to pet one before. He went to a birthday party this spring that included pony rides, but that’s it.”

Aenti Emma beamed at Matthew. “He will like our horses.”

Rebecca let out a breath that seemed to drain her, mostly in a good way. She wouldn’t be able to stay here forever, but for now she and Matthew were safe. She couldn’t imagine Tim or Josh would think to look for her among the Amish, or succeed if they tried. She’d told Tim that her mother had grown up Amish, had mentioned summers with her grandparents, but would he remember? Would he know Mamm’s maiden name? Or that those summers had been spent in Missouri? He’d rolled his eyes at the idea she had been happy even temporarily in what he considered a backward, restricted life, and she doubted he’d really listened when she talked about family. Because of his lack of interest, she hadn’t mentioned her Amish roots in a very long time. And where the Amish were concerned, most people thought Pennsylvania or Ohio. An investigator could find her mother’s maiden name on her marriage certificate, but no one from her family had attended the wedding or signed as a witness.

Graber wasn’t quite as common a surname as some among the Amish, but there were Grabers in many settlements, so tracing her wouldn’t be easy. In many ways, the Amish lived off the grid. They weren’t in any phone directory unless their business was listed. They didn’t need driver’s licenses, and they didn’t contribute to federal social security or draw from it. Living on a cash basis, none of the Amish Grabers would be found in a credit-agency search, either. They did have Social Security numbers, or at least many of them did, because they paid federal income taxes and state and local taxes. Still, would a private investigator have access to income-tax records?

She had done her best to complicate any pursuit by initially flying to Chicago, then backtracking by bus to Des Moines, where she and Matthew had switched to various local buses, paying cash. They finally wended their way to Kalona, Iowa, where more of Rebecca’s relatives lived. Having received a note from Aenti Emma, Aenti Mary and Onkel Abe Yoder had kept her arrival and departure as quiet as possible. Their bishop and some members of their church district knew that their niece and her child had fled something bad and needed help. If an outsider came asking questions, she had confidence they’d pretend ignorance. Staying reserved was their way even when they had nothing to hide.

The unquestioning generosity still shook her. Even though Mamm had jumped the fence—left her faith—to marry Dad, the family considered Rebecca and now her son their own. She’d never even met the Iowa relatives, and yet they’d welcomed her with open arms.

Once she and Matthew were appropriately garbed, another cousin had driven them several towns away, where they caught yet another bus. They had meandered south into Missouri, changing buses frequently. By this time, Rebecca’s entire body ached until she could hardly pick out the new pains from the places that already hurt when they set out from San Francisco. But at last they were here.

Aenti Emma leaned forward and patted Rebecca’s knee with her work-worn hand. “Ach, here we are, talking and talking, when I can see you close to collapsing! Lunch and some sleep is what you need.”

“That sounds wonderful,” she admitted. A glance told her Matthew was nodding off already.

She was grateful when her aunt and cousin lapsed into silence and let her do the same.

She found herself thinking about the cop who had talked to Onkel Samuel just before they left town. A sudden certainty that someone was watching her had felt like icy fingertips brushing her nape. She’d known she should keep her head down so as not to draw attention, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself from looking around. If Tim was already here, waiting for her... But then she’d seen the uniformed police officer, instead, as broad-shouldered and strong as the farmers and woodworkers she knew among the Amish, men who labored hard. His face was too hard to be handsome, too inexpressive, his eyes too steely. His cold scrutiny reminded her of the way Detective Estevez had looked at her. She guessed this police officer to be older than she was, perhaps in his midthirties. His hair was a sun-streaked maple brown that probably darkened in the cold Missouri winters.

Rebecca looked down to see that her hands were clenched together hard enough to turn the tips of her fingers white. With an effort, she loosened her grip. Yes, that man made her anxious. Had he only been interested in her because he’d noticed the bruises? But why had he been leaning against the building watching people get off the bus in the first place? Did he check out new arrivals every time the bus stopped in Hadburg? Was that one of his duties? In this rural county, she wouldn’t have thought the local police force would have the personnel to be so vigilant—unless they were watching for someone in particular. Could Detective Estevez have figured out where she’d gone already?

A bump in her pulse rate left her light-headed. She was being stupid. Estevez hadn’t bothered her since their one interview. Tim shouldn’t notice her disappearance until tomorrow, after he arrived to pick up Matthew for his scheduled visit. And violating the custody agreement wasn’t an offense that would draw police attention, certainly not at first. Would Tim even dare file a missing-person’s report on her or accuse her of custodial interference?

No, the last thing he wanted was to attract more attention from the police. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t hire a private investigator to find her, if he didn’t set out to do so himself. She wondered what he’d tell his father. Tim wouldn’t want the man to know his grandson was out of his reach.

And Josh. What would Tim tell the partner who’d been pressuring him? Would he try to protect her, as she was protecting him?

She feared not, given the results after she had gone to him about the shooting and the phone threat.

Aenti Emma swayed gently with the motion of the carriage, her gaze resting on Rebecca and Matthew.

“I saw Onkel Samuel talking to that police officer,” Rebecca blurted, not sounding as casual as she wanted. “Does he know him?”

“We all know Sheriff Byler. His family moved here when he was, oh, sixteen or so, you see.” An odd hint of discomfiture in her voice caught Rebecca’s attention, but Aenti Emma continued, “He went away and nobody knew for a long time what he was up to, but he became a police officer, of all things! And in the big city.” She shook her head, scandalized by the mere idea. Aenti Emma had probably never been as far as St. Joseph, let alone Kansas City. Why would a local boy want to leave placid Henness County for a place that was all concrete and towers of glass and steel and noise? Sirens and car horns and people shouting. So much noise.

“What city?” Rebecca asked, as if it made any difference.

“I heard he went to St. Louis. I guess he didn’t like it, because he came back three years ago and got the Englisch to vote for him to be sheriff. That Gerald Warren, who was sheriff before, nobody liked him. He was lazy, and he looked down on the people.”