Katie turned slowly. “No, Jacob, I don’t. And I don’t know how much they cost if you just rent them for the day. I don’t know how much a case of beer costs, either, come to think of it. And for sure I don’t know why I come out all the way on this train to visit you!”

She tried to move past him, but the boots were too big and heavy for her to get far enough away before he caught her. “You’re right,” he said softly. “I’m with them every day, and you’re the one I never get to see.”

Katie sank back down on the picnic table bench and propped her chin on her fists. “How come you took me here today?”

“I wanted to show you something.” As Katie looked down, he held out his hand. “Give it one more try. With me. Up the chairlift.”

“Oh, no.”

“I’ll be right with you. I promise.”

She let him lead her outside, where he strapped on her skis and then towed her to the lift line. He made jokes and teased her and acted so much like the brother she remembered that she wondered which personality of his was real now, and which was the act. Then the lift climbed so high Katie could see the tops of all the trees, the roads that led away from the ski hill, even the far edge of the university. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

“This is what I wanted you to see,” Jacob said quietly. “That Paradise is just a tiny dot on a map.”

Katie did not answer. She allowed Jacob to help her off the chairlift and fol lowed his directions to slowly make her way down the hill, but she could not get the image of the world from that mountaintop out of her mind, nor shake the sense that she would feel far safer when she was once again standing blind at the bottom.

• • •

If this were any other Sunday, Ellie thought, she and Stephen would be reading the New York Times in bed, eating bagels and letting the crumbs fall onto the covers, maybe even putting on a jazz CD and making love. Instead, she was sandwiched between two Amish girls, sitting through her first Amish worship service.

Katie was right; they did manage to pack ’em in. Furniture had been moved to make room for the the long, backless church benches, which arrived by wagon and could be transported from home to home. The wide doors and folding room partitions made it possible for nearly everyone to see the center of the house from his or her seat-the center being where the ordained men would stand. Women and men sat in the same room, but on different sides, with the elderly and the married up front. In the kitchen, mothers coddled babies as young as a few weeks; small children sat patiently beside their same-sex parent. Ellie cringed as Rebecca shifted, wedging her closer to Katie. She could smell sweat, soap, and the faint traces of livestock.

Finally, it seemed as though not another person could have been squeezed inside. Ellie waited in the pointed silence for the service to begin. And waited. There was no hurry to start; apparently, she was the only one even remotely concerned by the fact that nothing was happening. She glanced around as a current of whispers volleyed: “You do it.” “You . . . no, you.” Finally, an elderly man stood and announced a number. In unison, hundreds of books opened. Katie, who held the Ausband on her lap, moved it slightly so that Ellie could see the printed words of the hymnal.

Ellie sighed. When in Rome-or so she had figured. No pun intended, but she didn’t have a prayer of sight-reading a musical score that wasn’t printed on the page. Only the lyrics were there, and she didn’t know the tunes for Amish hymns. Actually, she didn’t know the tunes for any hymns. One old man began singing in a slow, measured falsetto, and others picked up on his lead. Ellie noticed the ordained men-Bishop Ephram, and the two ministers, and another fellow she had not seen before-leaving their seats to go upstairs. Lucky bastards, she thought.

She thought so, still, thirty minutes later when they finished the first hymn, sat in silence for several minutes, and then launched into the second hymn, the Loblied. Ellie closed her eyes, marveling at the stamina of these people who managed to remain upright on the backless benches. She could not recall the last time she attended a church service, but surely that one had finished long before these Amish preachers and the bishop came downstairs again to deliver the introductory sermon.

“Liebe Bruder und Schwestern . . .” Dear Brothers and Sisters.

“Gelobet sei Gott und der Vater unssers Herrn Jesu Christi . . .” Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Ellie was nodding off when she felt Katie’s soft explanation at her ear. “He’s apologizing for his weakness as a preacher. He doesn’t wish to take time away from the Brother who’ll bring the main sermon.”

“If he’s so bad at this,” Ellie whispered back, “how come he’s a preacher?”

“He’s not really bad. He’s just showing how he’s not proud.”

Ellie nodded, eyeing the older man in a new light. “Und wann dir einig sin lasset uns bede,” he said, and as a unit, every single person in the room-except Ellie-fell to their knees.

She glanced at Katie’s bowed head, at the bowed heads of the ordained men and the sea of kapps and neatly trimmed hair, and very slowly she got down on the floor.

In the middle of the night, Katie’s room filled with light. With a rush of anticipation, she sat up in bed, then dressed quickly. Most of the boys kept high-powered flashlights in their courting buggies that they’d shine in a girl’s window when they wanted her to sneak down to see them on a Saturday night. She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders-it was February, and freezing outside-and tiptoed down the stairs thinking of John Beiler’s eyes, the same warm gold as the leaves on a beech tree in the autumn.

She would scold him, she thought, for dragging her out on a night as cold as this one, but then she’d walk with him and maybe let her shoulder bump up against his now and then to know that she didn’t mean it. Her best friend Mary Esch had already let Curly Joe Yoder kiss her on the cheek. She eased the side door open and stepped onto the landing. Katie’s eyes were bright, her palms damp. She turned, a smile skimming her lips, and came face to face with her brother.

“Jacob!” she gasped. “What are you doing here?” Immediately she glanced up at the window of her parents’ bedroom. Being found with a beau would be bad enough; but if her father discovered Jacob back in his house, there was no telling what might happen. Putting a finger up to her lips, Jacob reached for his sister’s hand and pulled her off the porch, running silently toward the creek.

He stopped at the edge of the pond and used the sleeve of his down jacket to wipe the snow from the small bench there. Then, seeing Katie shiver, he took off the jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. They both stared at the black ice, smooth as silk, so clear that tangles of marshy grass could be seen frozen beneath it. “Have you been here yet today?” he asked.

“What do you think?” She had come early this morning, to mark the five years that had passed. Katie held her hands up to her cheeks, blushing to realize that she’d been so full of herself she’d been thinking of John Beiler, when her thoughts should have centered on Hannah. “I can’t believe you came here.”

He scowled at her. “I come every year. I just never called on you before.”

Stunned, Katie turned to him. “You come back? Every year?”

“On the day she died.” They both stared toward the pond again, watching the willow branches scratch its surface with each bite of the wind. “Mam? How’s she?”

“Same as every year. She got feeling a little grenklich, went to bed early.”

Jacob leaned back and stared at the sky, cracked open wide and carved with stars. “I used to hear her crying outside on the porch swing, underneath my window. And I’d think that if I hadn’t been so chairminded, it wouldn’t have happened.”