“I know how hard this must be,” Ellie said. “But Katie never would have been charged if there wasn’t sufficient evidence for the police to believe she’d killed the baby.”

“She didn’t tell me she was pregnant,” Jacob confessed.

“I don’t think she admitted it to herself. Is there anyone you know of that she might have been intimate with?”

“Well, Samuel Stoltzfus-”

“Not here,” Ellie interrupted. “In State College.”

Jacob shook his head.

“Did she ever show any inclination to leave the Amish church like you did?”

“No. She wouldn’t have been able to stand it, being cut off from our Mam and Dat. From everyone. Katie’s not . . . how can I say this? She used to come visit me, you know, and go to parties and eat Chinese food and wear jeans. But you can take a fish out of the pond and dress it up in sheep fur, and that’s never going to make it a lamb. And sooner or later, without that water, it’s going to die.”

“You didn’t,” Ellie said.

“I’m not Katie. I made a decision to leave the church, and once I made that decision, it led to other choices. I grew up Plain, Ms. Hathaway, but I’ve thrown a punch. I’ve taken theology courses that question the Bible. I’ve owned a car. All things that I never would have believed I could do.”

“Wouldn’t the same hold true for Katie? Maybe she made a decision to stay Amish-and therefore found herself forced to do things you’d never believe she could do.”

“No, because of one fundamental fact. When you’re English, you make decisions. When you’re Plain, you yield to a decision that’s already been made. It’s called gelassenheit-submitting to a higher authority. You give yourself up for God’s will. You give yourself up for your parents, for your community, for the way it’s always been done.”

“That’s interesting, but it doesn’t stand up against the autopsy report of a dead infant.”

“It does,” Jacob said firmly. “Committing a murder is the most arrogant act there is! To decide you have the power of God, to take someone else’s life.” He stared at Ellie, his eyes bright as beacons. “People think Plain folks are stupid, that they let the world walk all over them. But Plain folks-they’re smart; they just don’t know how to be selfish. They’re not selfish enough to be greedy, or pushy, or proud. And they’re certainly not selfish enough to kill another human being with intent.”

“The Amish faith isn’t what’s on trial, here.”

“But it should be,” Jacob countered. “My sister could not commit murder, Ms. Hathaway, simply because she’s Amish through and through.”

Lizzie Munro narrowed her eyes behind her safety goggles, raised her arms, and blew ten rounds from her 9-millimeter Glock into the heart of the life-size target at the far end of the shooting range. As she reeled it forward to judge her marksmanship, George Callahan whistled and popped out his earplugs. “Glad to know you’re on our side, Lizzie. You’ve got a real gift.”

She ran a finger appreciatively over the hole that had been blown into the target’s paper chest. “Yeah. And to think, my grandmother only wanted me to take up embroidery.” She holstered her gun and then rolled the kinks out of her shoulders.

“Must say, I’m kind of surprised to see you here.”

Lizzie raised a brow. “How come?”

“Well, how many Amish do you plan to find armed and dangerous?”

“Hopefully none,” Lizzie answered, sliding into her suit jacket. “I do this for relaxation, George. Beats decoupage.”

He laughed. “We’ve got the pretrial hearing coming up next week.”

“Five weeks flies when you’re having fun, huh?”

“I wouldn’t call it fun,” George said. They walked out of the shooting range and began to stroll across the police academy’s lush grounds. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. I just wanted to be sure we’d covered the state’s collective ass before I go in.”

Lizzie shrugged. “I didn’t get squat from the brother, but I can go back and see if he’ll talk again. The evidence is fairly cut-and-dried. The only thing that’s missing is the donor of the sperm, but even that really doesn’t matter, since the motive’s there either way. If it was an Amish boy, then she killed the baby to keep from ruining her chances with the big blond boyfriend. If it was a regular kid from outside the community, then she killed the baby to keep from fessing up to a relationship with an outsider.”

“We seized on Katie Fisher as a suspect quickly,” George mused. “I wonder if we overlooked someone.”

“She was bleeding like a stuck pig; that’s why we seized on her,” Lizzie said. “She had that baby, and it was two months premature-so who else could have known it was her time? We already know she hid it from her parents, so they’re out of the picture. She wasn’t going to tell Samuel, since it wasn’t his baby. Even if she wanted to tell her brother or her aunt that the contractions had started, she couldn’t very well whip out her cell phone at two in the morning.”

“We can tie her conclusively to birth, but not to murder.”

“We’ve got motive and logic on our side. You know that ninety percent of murders are committed by someone with a personal relationship to the victim. Do you realize that number goes up to nearly a hundred percent when it’s a newborn involved?”

George stopped, and laughed down at her. “You angling to be second chair, Lizzie?”

“Conflict of interest. I’m already testifying for the state.”

“Well, that’s a shame, because I think you could single-handedly convince a jury of Katie Fisher’s guilt.”

Lizzie grinned up at him. “You’re right,” she said. “But everything I know I’ve learned from you.”

In the wee hours of the morning, one of the cows had given birth. Aaron had been up most of the night, because the calf hadn’t been turned right. His arms hurt from being inside the cow, from the contractions that squeezed and bruised him. But look at what he had to show for it: this little wonder, black tumbled with white, wavering on its clothespin legs beside the supportive wall of its mother.

He began to spread fresh hay in the pen as the calf suckled at its mother. In a day, the baby would be taken away and put on a bottle.

You see, a small voice needled. Babies get taken from their mothers all the time.

He managed to push the thought away just as Katie came in through the barn door. Fragrant steam rose from the mug of coffee she held out to him. “Oh, another calf,” she said, her eyes lighting. “Isn’t he a sweet one?”

Aaron could recall his daughter with nearly every calf that had been born on the farm, and that was a goodly number. She’d bottle-fed the babies since she was nearly as tiny as the calves she was caring for. Aaron could remember the first time he showed her how you could stick your finger in a calf’s mouth, where there were no upper teeth to bite. He could remember explaining how a calf’s tongue would curl around you and draw you in, sandpaper rough and powerfully strong. And he could remember the way her eyes widened when, that very first time, it was just as he’d said.

As the head of this family, it had been his responsibility to teach his offspring the Plain way of life-how to give themselves up to God, how to navigate a path between what was right and what was wrong. He watched Katie kneel in the fresh hay, rubbing the crazy whorls of hair that still stuck in damp spirals on the calf’s back. It reminded him too much of what had happened weeks ago. Closing his eyes, he turned away from her.

Katie stood slowly and spoke, her voice as wobbly as the newborn animal. “It’s been five days since the kneeling confession. Are you never gonna talk to me again, Dat?”

Aaron loved his daughter; he wanted nothing more than to take her onto his lap like he had when she was just a little thing, and the world had been no bigger for her than the span of his own arms. But he was to blame for Katie’s sin and Katie’s shame, simply because he had not been able to prevent it. And it was his job, too, to see through the consequences-however painful they might be.