Reason came back to him by degrees. “What’s the matter?”

“I can’t.” Ellie couldn’t even look at him. “I’m so sorry. I ought to just . . . go.”

His jaw tightened. “What’s the excuse this time?”

“I have to get back to Katie.”

“It’s not me you need to keep your distance from, it’s your little Amish client. You’re her lawyer, Ellie. Not her mother.” Coop snorted. “You’re not scared of some judge or bail contingency. You’re terrified that for once in your life you’ll start something, and you won’t get it right.”

“You don’t know anything about-”

“For Christ’s sake, Ellie, I know more about you than you do. Straight A’s, dean’s list, Phi Beta Kappa. You’ve turned cartwheels to get the toughest cases, and you’ve won nearly every one-even the ones that make you sick to think about. You never got married, just stayed in a relationship you should have gotten out of years ago, because you didn’t really care enough about it to give a shit if it got screwed up. You’re perfectly willing to leave me with blue balls as long as it means you don’t risk getting in over your head, because then you’d have a vested interest in the outcome, and frankly, we don’t have a successful track record. You’re a classic type-A perfectionist, and you’re unwilling to go out on a limb because it just might break underneath you.”

By the time Coop finished, he was yelling. Ellie stood and hobbled around, trying to find her heels. Her head hurt, nearly as much as her heart. “Don’t you psychoanalyze me.”

“You know what your problem is? If you never go out on that limb, you’re missing a hell of a view.”

Ellie managed to jam her feet into her shoes and find her purse. “You flatter yourself,” she said evenly.

“Is it just me, Ellie, or do you lead all guys on and then do a complete turnaround? What kind of power did Stephen have over you, to keep you from running away all those years?”

“He didn’t love me!” As the words exploded in the still room, Ellie turned her back on Coop. She had been many things to Stephen-a roommate, a legal sounding board, a sexual partner-but never the one to share his life. And because of that, she’d never felt suffocated. She’d never felt the way she’d felt twenty years earlier, with Coop. “There,” she said, her voice shaking. “Is that what you wanted to hear?” Stricken, Ellie made her way to the door. “Don’t bother getting up. I’ll find my own ride back.”

Coop stared at her, at the pain that seemed to flow from an untapped source, pain that filled the confines of his small apartment long after she’d gone.

Once, before Samuel had been baptized in the church, he’d driven an automobile. One of his friends, Lefty King, had bought one secondhand and kept it hidden behind his father’s tobacco shed, where the old man pretended it didn’t exist every time he came across it. Samuel had marveled at the fluid ride, at the amazing fact that you could idle in neutral without the car running toward the edge of the road to graze.

He was thinking of that car tonight, as he took Mary Esch home in his courting buggy. There was but a slice of moon, the kind Mam used to say looked like a cookie almost all eaten up, which gave him the perfect cover for what he had in mind.

Thing about Mary was, she didn’t stop talking. She was his third cousin, so it hadn’t seemed too strange when he’d come and asked her to go for an ice cream. And Samuel guessed she was pretty enough, with hair as dark and rich as a newly plowed field and a tiny ribboned bow of a mouth. But the reason Samuel had picked her, out of all the others, was that she was Katie’s best friend, and this was the closest he could come to her.

Himmel, she was chattering on now about her little brother Seth, who’d fallen into the pig trough that afternoon when he was trying to tightrope-walk on the fence that edged the pen. Samuel clucked to his horse and pulled gently on the reins, so that the buggy stopped at a small turnaround at the top of the hill.

Mary was talking so fast and furious it took her a minute to see that they weren’t moving. “Why did you stop?” she asked.

Samuel shrugged. “Thought it was a nice night.”

She looked at him a little strangely, and for good reason. The sky was a thick, cloudy soup, the only visible light coming from that tiny bite of moon. “Samuel,” she said, her gaze going all milky the way girls’ eyes sometimes could, “is it that you need someone to talk to?”

He felt his heart swelling like the blacksmith’s bellows, fit to burst from his chest. Do it now, he told himself, or you never will. “Mary,” he said, and then he hauled her into his arms, grinding his mouth hard against hers.

She wasn’t Katie, that was his only thought. She didn’t taste like Katie, like vanilla, and the size of her was all wrong in his arms, and when he pushed harder the enamel of their teeth scraped. He groped for her breast, aware that she was trying to shove him back and getting frightened, but also aware that at least once, someone had done this and more to his Katie.

“Samuel!” Mary broke away from him with a mighty effort and scrambled to the far end of the courting buggy. “What on earth has gotten into you?”

Her face was blotched, her eyes wide and terrified. Good God, had he done that to her? Was this what he’d been brought to?

“I’m . . . I’m sorry . . .” Samuel hunched around his shame, hugging his arms to his chest. “I didn’t mean . . .” He buried his face in his shirt and tried to keep the tears from coming. He was not a good Christian, not at all. Not only had he just attacked poor Mary Esch; he could not accept Katie’s confession. Forgive her? He couldn’t even get past the bare facts of it.

Mary’s soft hand lit on his shoulder. “Samuel, let’s just go home.” He felt the buggy jostle as she jumped down and switched places with him, so that she could drive.

Samuel wiped hastily at his eyes. “I’m not feeling so wonderful gut,” he admitted.

“No kidding,” Mary said with a little smile. She reached over and patted his hand. “You’ll see,” she said with sympathy. “Everything is going to be all right.”

Superior Court Judge Phil Ledbetter turned out to be female.

It took Ellie nearly a full thirty seconds to absorb that fact, as she sat in the judge’s chambers with George Callahan for the pretrial hearing. Phil-or Philomena, as her brass nameplate said-was a small woman with a tight red perm, a no-nonsense pinch to her mouth, and a voice with a chirp to it. Her broad desk was littered with photos of her children, all four of whom had the same trademark red hair. This was not, on the whole, good for Katie. Ellie had been banking on a male judge, a judge who would know nothing about childbirth, a judge who would feel vaguely uncomfortable skewering a young girl being tried for neonaticide. A female judge, on the other hand, who knew what it was like to carry a child and hold it in your arms the minute it came into the world, would be more likely to hate Katie at first sight.

“Ms. Hathaway, Mr. Callahan, why don’t we get started?” The judge opened the file on the desk in front of her. “Is discovery complete?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” said George.

“Do either of you have any motions to file? Ah, here’s one from you, Ms. Hathaway, about barring the press from the courtroom. Why don’t we deal with this one right now?”

Ellie cleared her throat. “It’s contrary to my client’s religion to be in court at all, Your Honor. But even out of the sphere of the courtroom, the Amish are averse to photography. It’s their way of taking the Bible to the letter,” she explained. “‘You shall not make for yourself a graven image or a likeness of anything.’ Exodus 20:4.”

George interrupted. “Your Honor, didn’t we separate church and state about two centuries ago?”

“It’s more than that,” Ellie continued. “The Amish think that if a photograph is taken of you, you might take yourself too seriously or try to make a name for yourself, which goes against their spirit of humility.” She looked hard at the judge. “My client is already compromising her religious principles to come to trial, Your Honor. If we have to go through this farce at all, we can at least make it comfortable for her.”