and up the stairs, leaving Miriam to wrap her arms tightly around her midriff and pull in a deep breath. She was determined to stand her ground against the tall and muscular man whose presence sucked the air from her lungs.
Serpent had warned her about other police officers working with him. He’d insisted that alerting law enforcement would cause Miriam more harm than good.
“I do not know what the sheriff told you,” she said, taking the offensive before Abram could accuse her. She spread her hands. “As I mentioned to you earlier, I have done nothing wrong.”
“You are quick to rationalize behavior about which I have not spoken.”
Gathering courage from deep within, she refused to lower her gaze. “I will leave as soon as possible,” she said through tight lips. “But I need my clothing and my phone. I also need transportation to Willkommen. As I mentioned earlier, I presume there is a bus that will take me to Atlanta.”
“Yah.” He nodded. “The bus runs at the end of the week.”
“Do you know the schedule?”
He shook his head. “But you can check when we are in town.”
“If you drop me at the bus station, I can—”
What would she do without money? Somewhere along the way, she’d lost her purse, although she kept an emergency stash of fifty-dollar bills in the glove compartment of her car. Hopefully the police wouldn’t flip through the pages of the vehicle maintenance book where she had hid the money.
Abram was staring at her.
“I’ll be safe with my sister, Hannah, in Atlanta,” she said, trying to pick up her train of thought.
“The person you hoped to call with your phone?”
Miriam nodded. “That’s right.”
“Still you do not remember her phone number?”
“The number is programmed in the contacts on my phone,” Miriam explained. “I told you all this earlier.”
He raised a brow. “Yet you told me nothing about your mother.”
She took a step back. “My mother?”
Miriam’s cheeks burned. She didn’t need a mirror to realize how hot and flushed she must look.
Abram pointed to the kitchen table. “It is time we talk freely.”
He indicated the bench where he wanted her to sit. She lowered herself onto the long wooden seat and remained silent as he sat across from her.
The table was smooth as silk and gleamed with shellac or polish or a mix of both. She glanced at his large hands, noting the scrapes and calluses, realizing he had probably made the table.
Serpent’s hands were soft with short, pudgy fingers. What he lacked in size, he made up for with brute force.
She cringed, remembering the strike to her forehead and the jab to her ribs. Without thinking, she touched the tender spot at the side of her brow.
Abram’s eyes followed her hand. “Who hurt you?”
She could no longer hide the truth. “A policeman who has a serpent tattooed on his neck.”
“You stayed with him?”
“Not willingly.”
Abram flattened his palms on the table. “Why do you hesitate telling me your story?”
“My story?” Did he think this was make-believe?
“What happened, Miriam? Why were you with him? Why do you have bruises on your wrists?”
Unwilling to relive the experience, she started to rise. Abram caught her hand. His touch was firm, yet gentle, and his gaze was filled with understanding.
She stared at him for a long moment, searching for any sign of aggression. All she saw was compassion and a concern for her well-being.
Pulling in a ragged breath, she lowered herself onto the bench. She had nowhere else to turn and no one, other than this Amish man, to help her. She would have to trust him with her story, as he called it. He had taken her in and he deserved to know the truth about what had happened on the mountain.
Her mouth was dry, her throat tight. She pulled her hand free from his hold and toyed with her fingers, weighing how to begin.
“I... I lived in Tennessee with my mother and younger sister, Sarah. My older sister moved to Atlanta a few years ago.”
“Hannah?” he asked.
“That’s right. She’s two years older than I am.” Miriam paused, struggling for a way to explain the reality of her life. “Our mother was a free spirit of sorts.”
She glanced at Abram. “Do you understand that term?”
The faintest hint of a smile curled his full lips. “Although the Amish end their formal education at the eighth grade, there is much that can be learned outside the schoolhouse.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t educated. I just wasn’t sure if you had heard of the expression.”
“You said your mother was a free spirit.” He brought her back to the subject at hand.
Miriam wiped her fingers over the tabletop, wishing her life had been as smooth. “Mother carted us across the United States. We rarely stayed for more than a few months in any one place.”
Thinking back to her youth, Miriam shook her head. “We were pulled out of so many schools. We longed for a normal life. We had anything but stability, living with our mother.”
“How did you get to Tennessee?”
“Friends invited Mother to visit. They had a small home for rent outside of Knoxville, and we moved in. Not long after that she started showing signs of dementia. I took her to a local doctor who diagnosed her with early onset Alzheimer’s. You’re aware of the condition?”
Abram nodded. “I am.”
“Her mind slowly deteriorated.”
“Yet you brought her to Georgia?” he asked.
“Which is what she wanted, although in hindsight we never should have left Knoxville.”
“But you always did what your mother wanted.”
“Which now sounds foolish and immature.” She hung her head, thinking of the real reason she had agreed to travel to Georgia. Abram didn’t need to know her motives. She’d made a horrific mistake, one that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
“A few months ago,” Miriam continued, “Mother started talking about an estranged sister with whom she hoped to reconnect.”
“This is the aunt who lives in Willkommen?”
