Plain Peril. Alison Stone

       ONE

      The long shadows from the branches clacking against the bedroom window stretched across the two small lumps in the queen-size bed. Hannah tucked the hand-stitched quilt—the one her grandmother had made—under her six-year-old niece Emma’s chin and smiled. A pathetic smile. The poor child stared back, a cross between grief and contempt on her precious little face. On the other half of the bed, Sarah, Emma’s nine-year-old sister, had already lost the battle against the flood of tears, and sleep had taken her. Merciful sleep.

      Hannah blinked her gritty eyes a few times and drew in a deep breath, praying for wisdom.

      “I want Mem.” The plea in Emma’s tiny voice tore at Hannah’s heart.

      I want your mem, too. But Hannah kept those words locked in her heart along with her conflicting emotions. She kissed her niece’s cool forehead. “Sleep, little one. I’ll be here in the morning.”

      Emma pursed her lips, unimpressed with the promise of another day with Aunt Hannah.

      How many more mornings could Hannah maintain this routine? She had already been here for three days, and she only had two weeks before she had to return to her job as a bank teller in Buffalo. She tried to quiet her mind and prayed the young girls’ father would return home soon. Everyone had anticipated that her sister’s husband, John, would returned for his wife’s funeral.

      Everyone was wrong.

      Hannah’s chest tightened. The circumstances surrounding John Lapp’s disappearance were sketchy at best. Would leaving these two sweet girls with the father who had abandoned them at the most critical time in their lives be the best option—even if he did return?

      A little voice told Hannah John was not going to return.

      Emma crinkled her nose at Hannah. The familiarity of the gesture took Hannah’s breath away. How many times had she seen Ruth make that same face when she was a little girl? Poor Ruthie. Hannah smoothed her niece’s hair, and the child jerked away.

      Hannah’s heart broke a little bit more.

      “Guten nacht, Emma. I love you.” Hannah took a step toward the door. Every inch of her ached for her precious nieces who had lost their mother in a horrible farming accident, after which their father had apparently run off in grief upon finding her body partially buried in the grain silo.

      She shook her head, trying to dismiss the horrific image. She ran her hand along the smooth railing on the stairs. The swooshing of her long dress brushing against her legs felt strange yet familiar. She slowed at the bottom of the stairs, allowing her eyes to adjust to the gathering darkness. She hadn’t bothered to turn on the gas-powered lights before she had headed upstairs to tuck the children into bed.

      Now she didn’t mind lingering with the long shadows. It suited her mood. She wondered fleetingly what time it was, then realized it didn’t matter. The children and the chores on the farm dictated her day. Not a clock.

      Through the front window, she noticed the sun low on the horizon. Soon the entire house would be cast in darkness. Then she’d be left with nothing but her thoughts because sleep didn’t come for the guilt ridden. A chill skittered up her spine, and her neck and shoulders ached from exhaustion. She dreaded the long night in her childhood home in the middle of nowhere.

      She wished she had something mindless to occupy her time, like TV or her iPad, two things she had reluctantly given up when she stepped foot into her sister’s Amish home.

      Her dead sister’s home.

      Her eyes drifted to the far wall in the room, an empty spot where her sister’s simple pine casket had held her body as friends and neighbors came to give their final respects. She closed her eyes and felt the familiar tingling, the promise of more tears. How could it be that her younger sister was dead? She sighed heavily. Hannah had abandoned her Amish ways, but she hadn’t abandoned her faith. She’d get through this. For the sake of her nieces, she had to.

      Hannah found herself in the kitchen putting on the teakettle. She stared over the yard and daydreamed about the days she and her sister—two years younger—had run in and out of their mother’s fresh sheets hanging on the line. The scent of clean laundry and newly cut hay. Not a care in the world.

      A nostalgic unease wormed its way into her memory. No cares as long as Dat was busy working on the farm because as soon as his chores were done, he’d find a reason to scold Hannah while allowing Ruthie to play undisturbed with her dolls.

      Hannah never understood the favoritism. Now, more than a decade after she had slipped away from Apple Creek in the middle of the night, she felt the emptiness. An emptiness that had kept her away.

      Until now.