Anathema by Colleen Coble Page A

Nora weeping in the living room and the soft sounds of comfort Sarah made.
    It should have been her job, but Sarah thought Aunt Nora didn’t need something else to upset her, and Hannah had agreed. Once the weeping stopped, she planned to bring in tea and reveal herself to her aunt.
    Asia was getting cream from the propane refrigerator. “This milk looks funny.” She gave the pitcher a suspicious sniff.
    “It’s raw, straight from the cow. The cream rises to the top. You just skim some off for the tea.”
    Asia’s brows raised, but she used a coffee cup to skim some liquid, then poured it into a creamer. Hannah turned from the stove to find two sets of big eyes on her.
    The oldest little girl, Naomi, was the first to speak, and the familiar German-Swiss dialect sounded strange. “Are you really our cousin?”
    Hannah nodded and smiled. She answered in German, but the words rolled awkwardly across her lips. “ Ja. You are not in school yet?” Amish children spoke German until they went to school, where they learned English for the first time.
    “Next year,” Naomi said. “I’m six. Sharon is five.”
    Asia had that frozen smile on her face that people wear when they don’t understand anything. Hannah held up a finger to signal she ’d switch back to English in a minute.
    Naomi crept closer and put her hand in Hannah’s. “Your hair is pretty. Mamm says beauty doesn’t matter, but I wish mine looked like yours.”
    Hannah squeezed her cousin’s hand but didn’t answer. She wished for a prayer bonnet to cover her bright hair. Her rich auburn locks had singled her out for attention from the Englisch when she was growing up, and she didn’t want to experience that again.
    The sobs were tapering off in the gathering room. Hannah transferred the tea to a teapot, then arranged it on a tray with cups, sugar, cream, and spoons. Just as she lifted the tray, she realized none of them would receive it from her. She ’d forgotten in the grief of the moment.
    “Can you take this in?” she asked Asia. “I’ll stay here with the children.”
    “Why can I go but not you?”
    “They aren’t allowed to accept a favor from someone under the ban. I’d forgotten.” Her eyes stung. She so badly wanted to help. Asia lifted the tray from her hands and disappeared through the door with it.
    There was still some tea in the pot. “Want some tea?” she asked the girls. They both nodded, so she spooned sugar into cups and added the pale yellow liquid of meadow tea. She sipped her own, and the spearmint flavor brought all the familiarity of home to her: the horses neighing outside, the homey welcome of the farmhouse kitchen, the fresh herbs growing on the windowsill. She ’d missed it all, and only now did she realize just how much.
    The sound of a buggy crunching along the gravel outside caught her attention. She rose from the table and peered out the window. The sun caught the strong face under the wide brim of the black hat.
    Bishop Samuel Kirchhofer.
    THE OLD QUILT was getting threadbare. Matt tucked it around his daughter and kissed her sleeping cheek. He left the door partway open and went down the hall to join his sister in the living room. Ajax stayed behind to keep watch. He passed the computer room. The steady blue glow lit the dark office and beckoned to him.
    He sat in front of the monitor and clicked the Firefox icon, then typed in the URL of a forum where people searching for missing persons gathered. The ad he ’d put on the bulletin board hadn’t brought a response in the year it had been up, but every time he sat down here, he hoped and prayed for a lead, anything.
    A figure blocked the light from the hall fixture behind him. Gina pulled up a chair. “Aren’t you ever going to give up?”
    “No.” He studied the screen displaying the old photo he ’d uploaded. She was probably twenty-six in the picture. His eight-year-old self gazed up at her with naked love. Two weeks later she ’d left him and Gina