and a comfortable padded rocking chair. The handmade quilt that covered the bed was such a work of art that she had folded it carefully and placed it atop the blanket chest before she did anything else. The room had seemed somehow familiar, as if she’d slept here before, even though she knew she hadn’t.
After such an unpromising start, the Millers had done their best to make her feel welcome and comfortable. Rhoda had scurried over immediately behind her husband to show Marisa the room, and a teenage girl had followed in a few minutes with a tray containing a mug of hot chocolate and a plate of oatmeal cookies.
But despite their welcome, she still couldn’t feel at ease in their presence. Her grandmother’s words seemed to rattle around in the back of her mind.
They wouldn’t leave her alone. They didn’t want to let her go.
If she’d taken Link up on his offer, she’d be pacing the floor in some anonymous motel room. But little though she liked to admit it, he’d been right. If she was going to find out what happened to her mother, part of the answer must lie with the Amish people her mother had known here.
Not if. She would find out. She had to. She’d spent years trying to forget, trying to live without answers the way Dad seemed able to do, and she couldn’t. Not when there was a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in her psyche echoing with the same whisper, over and over. Your mother didn’t want you.
She forced herself to stop pacing. Gran would call these middle-of-the-night fears, treating them with a hot drink, a little comforting and the assurance that things would look better in the morning.
Gran might, as Link had hinted, have been prejudiced against the Amish, but she had devoted her life to taking care of Marisa, and she’d been the most stable force in Marisa’s life. She’d been gone nearly two years now, and Marisa still missed her.
This line of thought wasn’t helping, either. She might as well get out her drawing pad and look through the tentative sketches she’d made. See what else she needed for the current project. Maybe, as she’d told Jessica, she’d be able to do some work while she was here.
She picked up the duffel bag Link had carried in, setting it atop the suitcase rack in front of the window, and unzipped it. The shriek of the zipper broke the silence.
The old house was quiet—too quiet. She wasn’t used to this utter silence. Her townhouse in Baltimore was on a pleasant residential street, but even so, there was always noise—the distant thump of someone’s boom box, the sound of cars going past, the shouts of kids playing in the park across the street. Not so here.
Pad and pencil in hand, she paused, glancing out the window. She couldn’t even see any other lights. Link had been right—they did roll up the sidewalks.
She’d think that would seem natural to him. After all, he lived here, didn’t he? He must… She leaned close, shutting out the reflection from the bedside lamp with her hand. As her eyes adjusted to the faint moonlight, she could see the dark shadow beneath the huge weeping willow in the side yard. Had something moved?
A man-size shadow, moving out of the denser shadow of the willow, detaching itself as it took a step toward the house, the head seeming oddly misshapen until she realized it wore a black hat, the brim hiding the face. But he looked up, toward her window—
She bolted back, flattening herself against the wall, heart pounding as if it would leap out of her chest. The figure—a man, black clothes, black hair, a beard. Amish. Staring up at her window.
Memory stirred, someplace, sometime, she had looked out a window, had seen… The memory slid away, as elusive as the dream had been.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. Had she really seen someone out on the lawn? Or was it a figment of her imagination, stirred up by the dream?
She wouldn’t be a coward about it. She went quickly to the bedside table and switched off the lamp. In the dark, she could see without being seen.
She sidled to the window, grasped the edge of the curtain and peered around it cautiously.
The moon had come out from behind the clouds. It lit the side yard—faintly, but enough so that she could see. The lawn lay empty and unmarked, and nothing stood under the willow tree.
BREAKFAST WOULD BE served in a room at the rear of the first floor, Mrs. Miller had said. Marisa descended the stairs slowly. She had to find the approach that might make these people open up to her, but she hadn’t managed to think of one.
Lack of sleep had to be part of the problem. She’d already been tired, and then hadn’t been able to settle after her sighting. Or her overactive imagination, whichever it was. She’d gotten up several times to peer cautiously out the window. Nothing.
But she still couldn’t quite accept that she’d produced that staring figure out of her imagination, which left her…where, exactly?
She reached the downstairs hall. There was a closed door with a sign marked “Private,” which must lead to the Miller family’s side of the house. The aroma of fresh baking led her in the right direction. A long, sunny room stretched across the width of the house in the back, with an open kitchen on her left, divided from a bright dining room on the right by a long counter. Rhoda Miller was pulling something from the oven while the daughter she’d met briefly last night poured juice into glasses.
“Good morning.”
The pan Rhoda was lifting clattered onto the stove, as if the greeting had startled her.
“I hope I’m not too early,” Marisa began, but Rhoda smiled, shaking her head.
“Ach, no, not at all. We try to have everything ready by eight and it’s just that now. But I’m happy to serve breakfast earlier if need be.”
“Eight o’clock is fine.” She stifled a yawn. Should she mention the person she’d seen, or not?
“You didn’t sleep well?” Rhoda gestured to a long wooden table flanked by spindle-back chairs. A pink geranium bloomed vibrantly in an earthenware pot in the center of the table, and African violets lined glass shelves in one of the windows.
“Not the fault of the room,” she said quickly. “It was very comfortable. And this is lovely. You certainly have a gift with plants.” She sat down, setting her bag on the floor and nodding when the daughter—Mary, she thought the name was—gestured with a coffeepot.
“Ach, it’s nothing. I enjoy growing things already. But I am worried that you didn’t sleep well. Was it…was there some noise to keep you awake?”
Rhoda looked more concerned than seemed warranted. Was it only the feeling of any hostess, or did she know something about the man in the yard last night, assuming he actually existed?
“More like the quiet,” she said. “I’m used to city noises.”
Was that relief on Rhoda’s face? “I could never get used to that, that’s certain-sure.” She took a tray from her daughter. “Here is fruit cup to start and fresh-squeezed juice. The berries are ones I put up this summer, so they’re near as gut as fresh.”
“Thank you. It looks lovely.” She lifted a spoonful of huge blueberries, bigger than any she’d seen in the store. “I did wonder…”
Rhoda, turning away, seemed to freeze. “Ja?”
“Was your husband out in the yard during the night?”
She swung back around, her face closed. “Why would you think that?”
“I thought I saw someone out in the side yard when I got up to get something. Out by the willow tree. Maybe your husband had occasion to check something there?”
“I did not.”
The masculine voice startled her. Eli stood in the doorway, obviously having heard her. He moved into the kitchen, setting a pail he carried in the sink. Then he turned to face her.
“There was no one there.”