We had dropped off Frank and picked up my suitcases, and now, an hour later, Leda was turning up the long driveway that led to the Fishers’ home. Staring out the window, I saw a pair of men driving a team of mules across a field. The animals hauled a tremendous, old-fashioned piece of equipment-God only knew what it was. It seemed to be tossing up tufts of hay that were already lying on the ground. At the sound of the car on the gravel, the bigger man looked up, hauled on the reins, and then took off his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He shaded his eyes and glanced toward Leda’s car, then handed the reins to the smaller fellow beside him and took off at a dead run for the farmhouse.

He got there ten seconds after the car rolled to a stop. Leda and I stepped out first, then let Katie and Sarah out of the backseat. The man, broad and blond, began speaking words that made no sense to me-the first time I considered that the English Katie had so carefully put before the judge was not her first language, nor that of the people I was going to be moving in with. Sarah answered back, equally unintelligible.

My high heels wobbled on the gravel. I stripped off my suit jacket, uncomfortable in the heat, and studied the man who had come to greet us.

He was too young to be the Father from Hell who had been introduced in absentia in the courtroom. A brother, maybe. But then I caught him staring at Katie with a look that was anything but brotherly. I glanced at Katie, and noticed she was not looking at him the same way.

All of a sudden, in the run of language, there came a word I knew-my own name. Sarah gestured to me, smiled uncomfortably, and then nodded to the blond man. He took my suitcase from the trunk and set it down beside him, then offered me his hand to shake. “I am Samuel Stoltzfus,” he said. “Thank you for taking care of my Katie.”

Did he notice the way Katie stiffened at the possessive claim? Did anyone but me?

Hearing the metallic clop of hooves and harness behind me, I turned to see someone leading a horse into the barn. Wiry and muscular, the man had a thick red beard just beginning to sport streaks of gray. Beneath his black trousers he wore a pale blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He glanced at us, briefly frowning at the sight of Leda’s car. Then he continued into the barn, only to reappear a moment later.

Ignoring everyone else, he went straight to Sarah and began to speak quietly but firmly to her in their language. Sarah bowed her head, a willow branch under a wind. But Leda took a step forward and began talking back to him. She pointed to Katie, and to me, and shook her fists. Her eyes snapping with frustration, she set her hands on my shoulders and shoved me forward, into Aaron Fisher’s scrutiny.

I had watched men step apart from themselves at the moment they were sentenced to life in prison; I had seen the blankness in a witness’s eyes when she recounted the night she was attacked; but never had I seen a detachment like I saw on that man’s face. He held himself in check, as if admitting to his pain might crack him into a thousand pieces; as if we were age-old adversaries; as if he knew, deep down, that he’d already been beaten.

I held out my hand. “It is a pleasure.”

Aaron turned away without touching me. He approached his daughter, and the world fell away, so that when he tipped his forehead against Katie’s and whispered to her with tears in his eyes, I ducked my head to offer them privacy. Katie nodded, starting for the house with her father’s arm locked around her shoulders.

In a tight knot, Samuel, Sarah, and Leda followed, talking heatedly in their dialect. I stood alone in the driveway, the breeze blowing my silk shell against my back, the sun sugaring new freckles on my shoulders. From the barn came the stamp and whinny of a horse.

I sat down on one suitcase and stared in the direction of the house. “Yeah,” I said softly. “It’s nice to meet you too.”

To my amazement, the Fisher home was not that much different from the one I’d grown up in. Braided rag rugs were scattered across the hardwood floors, a bright quilt sat folded over the back of a rocking chair, an intricately carved hutch held an assortment of delft china bowls and teacups. I think, in a way, I’d been expecting to step back into Little House on the Prairie-these were people, after all, who willingly set aside modern conveniences. But there was an oven, a refrigerator, even a washing machine that looked like one my grandmother had had in the 1950s. My confusion must have shown, because Leda materialized by my elbow. “They all run on gas. It’s not the appliances they don’t want; it’s the electricity. Getting power from public utility lines-well, it means you’re linked to the outside world.” She pointed to a lamp, showing me the thin tubing that piped in the propane from a tank hidden beneath its base. “Aaron will let you stay here. He doesn’t like it, but he’s going to do it.”

I grimaced. “Marvelous.”

“It will be,” Leda said, smiling. “I think you’re going to be surprised.”

The others had remained in the kitchen, leaving me alone with Leda in a living room of sorts. Bookshelves were filled with titles I could not make out-German, I assumed, from the lettering. On the wall was a carefully printed family tree, Leda’s name listed just above Sarah’s.

No television, no phone, no VCR. No Wall Street Journal sprawled across the couch, no jazz CD humming in the background. The house smelled of lemon wax and was warm to the point of suffocation. My heart began to pound in my chest. What had I gotten myself into?

“Leda,” I said firmly, “I can’t do this.”

Without responding, she sat down on the couch, a nondescript brown corduroy with lace antimacassars. When had I last seen those?

“You have to take me back with you. We’ll figure something out. I can come here from your place every morning. Or I can have an ex parte meeting with the judge to find an alternative.”

Leda folded her hands in her lap. “Are you really so afraid of them,” she asked, “or is it just that you’re afraid of yourself?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Am I? Ellie, you’re a perfectionist. You’re used to taking charge and turning things to your own advantage. But all of a sudden you’re stuck in a place that’s as foreign to you as a Calcutta bazaar.”

I sank down beside her and buried my face in my hands. “At least I’ve read about Calcutta.”

Leda patted my back. “Honey, you’ve dealt with Mafia bosses, even though you aren’t part of the Mob.”

“I didn’t move in with Jimmy ‘the Boar’ Pisano while I was defending him, Leda.”

Well, she had nothing to say to that. After a moment she sighed. “It’s just a case, Ellie. And you’ve always been willing to do anything to win a case.”

We both looked into the kitchen, where Katie and Sarah-relatives of mine, once removed-stood side by side at the sink. “If it was just a case, I wouldn’t be here.”

Leda nodded, conceding that I’d gone out of my way-and realizing that she should go out of hers. “All right. I’ll give you some ground rules. Help without being asked; Plain folks put lots of store in what you do, and less in what you say. It won’t matter to them that you don’t know anything about farming or dairying-what counts is that you’re trying to lend a hand.”

“Forget farming-I know nothing about being Amish.”

“They won’t expect you to. And there’s nothing you need to know. They’re folks like you and me. Good ones and bad ones, easygoing ones and ones with tempers, some quick to help you out and others who’ll turn the other way when they see you coming. Tourists, they see the Amish as saints or as a sideshow. If you want this family to accept you, you just treat them like regular people.”

As if the recollection had hurt her, she stood suddenly. “I’m going to go,” Leda said. “As much as Aaron Fisher dislikes having you here, he dislikes having me here even more.”