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  "An inverter?"

  He turned to me. "Inverters convert twelve-volt current into one-hundred ten volt. Our businessmen use them to power cash registers. We can't use electric straight from a generator, but an inverter, it runs off a battery, which is okay by the Ordnung. Most families can't have inverters, because there's too much temptation. You see, the electric goes from diesel to generator to twelve-volt battery to inverter to any appliance--such as your computer."

  Aaron looked appalled. "Computers are forbidden by the Ordnung. And inverters--they're on probation," he said. "You could plug a lightbulb into one!"

  Ephram smiled. "You could ... but Aaron, you wouldn't. I will have someone bring Miss Hathaway an inverter today."

  Clearly miffed, Aaron looked away from the bishop. I was completely confounded by the bargain that had been struck, but grateful all the same. "This will certainly make a difference."

  The bishop's warm hands enveloped mine, and for a moment, I felt my whole self settle. "You have made adjustments for us, Miss Hathaway," Ephram said. "Did you think we would not make the same compromises for you?"

  I don't know why the thought of bringing electricity onto the Fishers' land made me feel a little queasy, as if I were Eve holding out that apple with a come-hither grin. It wasn't as if I was going to find Katie off in the barn playing Nintendo, for God's sake. The inverter would probably collect dust between the times I booted up my Thinkpad to do work. Still, I found myself wandering aimlessly away from the barn and the house after the bishop's decision.

  I heard Katie's voice before I even realized I'd walked to the pond. She sat among a high brace of cattails, almost hidden, her bare feet submerged in the water. "I'm watching," she said, her eyes fixed on a spot in the middle of the pond where there was absolutely nothing to see. She smiled and clapped, the single audience member for a show of her own making.

  Okay, so maybe she was crazy.

  "Katie," I said quietly, startling her. She jumped to her feet, splashing me.

  "Oh, I'm sorry!"

  "It's hot. I could use a little spray." I sat down on the bank. "Who were you talking to?"

  Her cheeks flamed. "No one. Just myself."

  "Your sister again?"

  Katie sighed, then nodded. "She skates."

  "She skates," I repeated, deadpan.

  "Ja, about six inches above where the water is now."

  "I see. Isn't she having a little trouble without any ice?"

  "No. She doesn't know it's summer; she's just doing what she was doing before she died." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "She doesn't seem to hear me, either."

  I looked at Katie for a long moment. Her kapp was slightly askew, a couple of loose tendrils curled about her ears. Her knees were drawn up, arms crossed loosely over them. She was not agitated or confused. She was just staring at the pond, at this alleged vision.

  I picked a cattail and twisted the stem. "What I don't understand is how you believe something you can't even see, but adamantly refuse to believe something that other people--doctors, and coroners, and my God, even your parents--all know for a fact happened."

  Katie lifted her face. "But I do see Hannah, clear as day, wearing her shawl and her green dress and the skates that got passed down to her from me. And I never saw that baby, until it was already in the barn, wrapped up and dead." Her brow furrowed. "Which would you believe?"

  Before I could answer, Ephram appeared with the deacon. "Miss Hathaway," the bishop said, "Lucas and I must speak to our young sister here, for a moment."

  Even with the distance between us, I could feel Katie trembling, and the sharp scent of fear rising from her skin. She was shivering in a way that she hadn't even when a charge of murder was being hung around her neck. Her hand scrabbled over the matted reeds to find mine and slip beneath it. "I would like my lawyer to be present, then," she said, her voice no more than a whisper.

  The bishop looked surprised. "Well, Katie, what for?"

  She could not even raise her eyes to the older man. "Please," she murmured, then swallowed hard.

  The deacon and the bishop looked at each other, and Ephram nodded. The trembling, submissive creature beside me was nothing like the girl who'd looked me in the eye and told me there was no baby. She was nothing like the girl who'd spoken to me minutes before about what was visible to one person not being crystal clear to another. But she did bear a striking resemblance to the child I'd seen in court the moment I first arrived, the child who had been ready to let the legal system steamroll her rather than mount a defense.

  "It's like this," Ephram said uncomfortably. "We know how hard things are, right now, and only bound to be getting more tangled. But there was a baby, Katie, and you being not married ... well, you need to come to church, and make your things right."

  It was slight, but Katie inclined her head.

  With a nod to me, the two men struck off across the field again. It took a full thirty seconds for Katie to get control of herself, and when she did, her face was as pale as a new moon. "What was that about?" I asked.

  "They want me to confess to my sin."

  "What sin?"

  "Having a baby out of wedlock." She started walking, and I hurried to keep up with her.

  "What will you do?"

  "Confess," Katie said quietly. "What else can I do?"

  Surprised, I turned and blocked her path. "You could start by telling them what you told me. That you didn't have a baby."

  Her eyes filled with tears. "I couldn't tell them that; I couldn't."

  "Why not?"

  Katie shook her head, her cheeks bright. She ran into the waving sea of corn.

  "Why not?" I yelled after her, my frustration rooting me to the ground.

  The men who brought the inverter set it up for me in the barn. Attached to the generator beside the calving pen, it gave me a lovely view of the police tape still securing the crime scene, just in case I needed any inspiration to fight Katie's charges. Shortly after four o'clock I carried my files and my laptop out to the barn and began to act like a lawyer.

  Levi, Samuel, and Aaron were milking the cows at their stanchions. Levi seemed resigned to the Amish equivalent of scut work--shoveling manure, scooping out grain--while the two older men wiped down the udders of the cows with what seemed to be the pages of a telephone book, and then hooked them up in pairs to a suction pump powered by the same generator that was indirectly running my computer. From time to time, Aaron would carry the container into the milk room and pour it into the bulk tank with an audible splash.

  I watched them for a while, taken by their graceful routine and the kindness of their hands as they stroked the side of a cow's belly or scratched behind her ears. Smiling, I gingerly plugged in my laptop, made a quick and fervent prayer that this wouldn't surge and destroy my hard drive, and booted it up.

  The screen rolled open in a wash of color, spotted with icons and toolbars. My screen saver came next, a computer graphic of sharks at the bottom of the ocean. I reached for one of the manila files I'd received from the prosecutor and spread it open on the hay. Leafing through its contents, I tried to formulate in my mind a motion for services other than counsel.

  When I glanced up, Levi was gaping at the laptop from across the barn, his shovel propped forgotten at his side until Samuel walked over and cuffed him. But then Samuel looked himself, eyes widening at the burst of color and the realism of the sharks. His hand twitched, as if he was trying hard not to reach out and touch what he saw.

  Aaron Fisher never even turned his head.

  A cow bawled at the far end of the stanchions. The sweet hay and even sweeter feed tickled the inside of my nose. The tug-suck, tug-suck of the milking pump became a backbeat. Closing out this world, I focused and began to type.

  SEVEN

  The broad beam of light swept over her legs, then arched up the wall and the ceiling before repeating the circuit all over again. Katie came up on her elbows, heart pounding. Ellie was still asleep; that was a good