In the quiet of her hotel room, with Lissa asleep in the bed next to hers, Hannah ended the phone call with Dr. Lehman. Sleep had been impossible, but his opinion was in line with Hannah’s thoughts—Mary’s pains were due to pressure and stress on the round ligaments. He was off Monday and said it was time for another visit to Lancaster to see his mom anyway, so he didn’t mind going the forty miles out of the way to see Mary. He said he was actually glad for the invitation since he’d been wanting to see Hannah’s Owl’s Perch and meet some of the people from her past.

His willingness to always support her still managed to catch her by surprise. She sat back against the pillows, the Bible in her lap still open. Her damp hair continued to air dry from the shower she’d taken a couple of hours ago. In all the time she’d known him, Dr. Lehman had never let her down. He constantly trained her to take on more responsibilities at his clinic as a nurse, and sometimes he seemed to expect more from her than from his nurses with four-year degrees, but in many ways he was more like a dad to her than her own father.

Lissa sat up, rubbing her eyes. Without a word spoken, she crawled into the bed with Hannah and snuggled. So grateful for the love Kevin and Lissa brought into her life, Hannah stroked the little girl’s hair and kissed her head. “How are you this morning?”

“Hungry.”

Hannah rubbed her small back, enjoying the few minutes of having a child in her arms. “Well, then we’ll need to take care of that first thing, won’t we?” Hannah closed the Bible.

Lissa put her hand on it. “What it’d say this morning?”

“That if someone sins against me and asks for forgiveness, I’m to give it to them.”

“Did someone sinned against you?”

Hannah placed her hand on Lissa’s head. “I thought they did, and I’ve not been nice to them, but now I’m not so sure they did what I thought.”

“You were mad at somebody who didn’t do nothing wrong?”

Hannah slid out of bed, wishing she’d controlled herself rather than screamed at Paul. “Seems so.”

“You gotta ask for forgiveness now?”

That uncomfortable idea made Hannah’s insides shiver. “Right now I’m going to help you get dressed, and then we’ll get you some breakfast.”

After Lissa ate fruit, yogurt, half a bagel, and even some cereal at the continental breakfast the hotel provided, they went to the car and headed for Mary’s. Sarah should have been released from the Better Path about an hour ago and should be at Luke and Mary’s by now. Hannah needed to tell Mary what Dr. Lehman had said, and then she wanted to spend as much time with Sarah this weekend as possible, because when Hannah left this time, she hoped not to return for several months.

The scenery changed from city life to Amish country as Hannah drove out of the Harrisburg area and into Owl’s Perch. As she traveled on, Gram’s home came into view. She’d once loved this place above all others. Taking note of how beautifully the house and acreage were kept, she spotted Paul mending a fence.

Instead of stopping, she pressed the accelerator.

She didn’t owe him an apology. He owed her one.

Her conscience pricked, making her skin tingle like dull pins were poking her. He’d given an apology, several actually, and his words couldn’t have seemed more sincere. She’d hidden things from him and then blamed him when he reacted. She clicked her tongue and huffed.

Lissa mimicked her and giggled. Hannah looked in the child-view mirror. Lissa’s innocent smile brought a landslide of conviction. What advice would she give to Lissa if she acted as Hannah had—regardless of how justified the reaction may have felt?

Notching the blinker into place, Hannah slowed the vehicle, turned around in a stranger’s driveway, and headed back to Gram’s. “Lissa, I need to speak to Paul for a minute, okay?”

“Think he needs another sandwich?”

“No, but there’s a bridge over a small creek near where he’s fixing a fence. You can play on that and toss pebbles into the water while I speak to him for a minute, okay?”

Her little face lit up. “A covered bridge?”

“Well, it’s surrounded by trees.”

Her head bobbed up and down as if she’d just been given an extravagant new toy. Hannah pulled into Gram’s driveway, hoping Dorcas wasn’t here today. In the side yard, not far from the house, Paul wrestled with a fence post.

She got out of the car and helped Lissa unbuckle, and they walked across the yard. With each step, Hannah questioned herself. Memories of their past caught her. Of course they did. What had she been thinking to come here? Except for a few extremely short visits, she’d never seen him anywhere but here. This was where they first met. Where they worked together. Where they became friends. Where she’d fallen in—

Stop it, Hannah.

But the memories didn’t stop. A weird feeling crept over her when she caught a glimpse of the bridge through the turning shadows of its surrounding trees. As if in those woods she could again see Paul standing in front of her—broad shoulders, hair the color of ripe hay, blue eyes that used to haunt her dreams.

Unable to dismiss the recollections, she couldn’t take another step. Deciding this was a really bad idea and she needed to leave before she was noticed, she reached for Lissa’s hand. “Come on, Lis—”

Lissa dodged Hannah’s grasp. “Hey,” she hollered in Paul’s direction.

Paul looked up.

He stood straight and pulled the rawhide work gloves off his hands before wiping his brow. The early October air had a nip, and Hannah and Lissa had on thick cardigan sweaters, but Paul appeared to have beads of sweat on his face.

Lissa came to a halt right in front of him. “You need some help?”

“Well, good morning, Lissa.” Paul lifted his eyes to Hannah, looking quizzical.

She drew a shallow breath, unable to get a deep one. “I…we…need to talk.”

“Sure. We never had a chance to discuss Sarah’s progress or some of the suggestions I have that might help her.”

Hannah knew professional distancing when she heard it. “This isn’t about Sarah. I was hoping to cover some things that…” She lowered her eyes to Lissa. “Look right through those trees.” Kneeling, Hannah pointed at the bridge. “Do you see it?”

Lissa nodded.

“You can gather some pebbles and drop them into the water, but you can’t go down to the water’s edge, okay?”

Lissa turned and squeezed her neck, almost knocking her over with her enthusiasm, and took off running into the wooded area.

Hannah’s splayed hand against the ground kept her from losing her balance altogether. Paul offered his hand, and she took it.

After helping her stand, he motioned toward the house. “Give me just a minute, and I’ll get us a couple of chairs from the backyard.”

Hannah stood where she could see Lissa, who was singing joyously to the creek and trees. A minute later Paul put two resin chairs near her. A sense of dishonor covered her, and she was too antsy to sit.

It was time to say her piece and leave. That sounded matter-of-fact enough, but her head spun, and her insides trembled. Worse, she could feel the edge of tears sting her eyes, which really angered her, but she had to get this over with. “It was never my intention to deceive you, Paul. Never. But it did turn out that way. Much of what I’m going to say you’ve pieced together already, but I need to say it anyway, okay?”

Standing just a few feet from her, he stared across the huge pasture behind Gram’s place to the dirt road. “I understand. I’m sure it will help both of us.”

Lissa’s voice rang through the air, singing. Feeling the weight of the two worlds in which she lived, the one that had reason to sing and the one that continued to cause sadness, Hannah sat.

She tried to swallow but couldn’t. “The day you asked me to marry you, while walking home on the dirt road, a man about your age pulled up beside me, stopped his car, and asked for directions. It didn’t take long to realize I needed to get out of there, but when I tried to run…” She closed her eyes, trying desperately not to relive those few minutes. “That’s when I got the scars on the palms of my hands, the ones you noticed the next time we saw each other a couple of months later. Remember?”

“Yes.” His gentle voice was barely audible.

“Afterward…he tried to run over me with his car, but somehow I avoided it and ran home.” Hannah stared at the ground, remembering how arriving home had only added to her trouble. “I wanted to call you, wanted you to make sense of it and say we still had a future…” Tears eased down her cheeks. “Even though they didn’t know about you, Mamm and Daed said that no one would ever want to marry me if word of the attack got out and that I shouldn’t tell anyone—not even my own siblings.” She raised her eyes, seeing the grief etched on Paul’s face. “And that’s when I made the choice to hide the rape. I couldn’t even say the word until…” She let the sentence drop. “The weeks that followed were all but unbearable. You didn’t write. I wasn’t allowed to return to Gram’s. And I wondered if you’d really asked me to marry you. Now I know I was dealing with shock, then posttraumatic shock, and depression.”

As he moved his gaze to hers, she saw his eyes were rimmed with tears as well.

He set the empty chair directly across from her and took a seat. “I know we talked of this before, but I did write. I promise. The letter never arrived at Gram’s, and then she began feeling that it was wrong to allow us to communicate through her mailbox when your Daed didn’t know about me. There I was at school, longing to be in Owl’s Perch with you…as if some part of me knew you needed me, but I made myself stay focused on our future.”

Understanding that she wasn’t the only one with a list of what should have been done, she began to see the person she’d once believed him to be. One who hadn’t lied or stolen or even abandoned her, one who’d made a mistake and paid dearly for it. “I held on to one hope. It was the only thing that got me through everything else—that you wouldn’t find out and I wouldn’t lose you. But then, in late November, I learned I was pregnant.”

“Hannah,” Lissa called from the edge of the wood, “can I get a leaf and drop it into the water?”

A faint laugh escaped Hannah. “Yes, Lissa, you can.”

He intertwined his fingers, propped his forearms on his knees, leaned in, and whispered, “November?”

She nodded. “Between a lack of knowledge, denial, the depression, and then Mary nearly dying in that buggy accident, I just didn’t really put it all together. It wasn’t until after our last day to catch a visit that I learned I was pregnant.”

Paul straightened his interlocked fingers, staring at them. “The day before Thanksgiving.”

“Yes. We hadn’t seen each other in so long. My parents didn’t know why I wanted to go to Gram’s, but they knew I wanted it bad enough to do whatever it took to get here. They insisted I take a home pregnancy test. I took it and immediately left to come here. I spent that day with you, so sure I wouldn’t be pregnant, so convinced God wouldn’t let that happen because it’d ruin everything. You were right. I was naive. I caused a lot of the rumors you heard, but I never meant to flirt with anyone.”

Paul’s fingertips came within inches of hers before he pulled them back. “I know you were innocent, Hannah. My jealousy and confusion didn’t last but a few days. How could my fiancée, who wouldn’t even kiss me until months after we’d been engaged, be anything but innocent?”

“I wasn’t guiltless. I was selfish, wanting to hide the truth of being pregnant, and it may have cost Rachel her life. The night you came to Mary’s to talk to me? I didn’t know it then, but later I realized I was already in labor.”

Paul’s intense gaze tightened. “I thought my running out on you might have caused you to go into premature labor.”

Hannah’s breath caught. What had she done to him? “No, I’d taken something for pain and was in bed when you arrived at Mammi Annie’s. Remember?”

He nodded.

She ran her fingers through the side of her hair, pushing some fallen wisps back into place. For the first time she wondered what he thought of her Englischer look. He was the only one who hadn’t shown any disapproval. “I met with the church leaders the next morning. I needed them to believe me about the rape, or I wouldn’t be allowed to live with anyone within the community. They doubted me, and the bishop insisted I stay a night alone so I could rethink my story. I gave birth that night.” Hannah paused and willed herself to finish. “Matthew built a coffin, and we buried her. Daed wouldn’t let me come home. Mary’s parents said I couldn’t stay with them any longer. I…I didn’t think anyone would take me.” She closed her eyes, taking a moment to gather fresh strength. “When I called the bank, I learned that all the money had been removed from our account. I…I thought you’d taken it.”

“If we just could have talked…”

She shifted. “At that time everything was beyond talking about for me. I couldn’t voice to anyone what had happened. Besides, when I did manage to call your apartment, a girl answered, so with all those events combined, I convinced myself all hopes of us were gone, and I boarded the train.”

The anguish expressed on his face said more than words. “I roomed with three other guys, who always had girls around, but I never received any message that you’d called. And I never had anything to do with those girls. The night you stayed in Harrisburg with Naomi and Matthew, I came looking for you, even borrowed a friend’s cell and had people stationed to receive a call from you here, at my parents’, and at my apartment.”

Her gaze fixed on Paul, and she was unable to break it. The night before boarding the train she’d called his apartment. A girl answered, promising to give him the message. He never called her back. Nine months after leaving, she’d tried again to reach him by calling here to Gram’s home. The same young woman had answered the phone, probably someone from his family or friends. Possibly Dorcas.

Hannah wouldn’t point fingers or lay blame. Still, she was getting an uneasy feeling that Paul had never received either message. She forced a smile. Whoever she spoke to may have lied, but Hannah was the one who went into hiding. She was the one who didn’t push harder to reach him, only calling twice in nine months and then never calling again.

She inhaled deeply, sensing her burden becoming lighter in spite of the truth she was learning. “The thing is, even if we’d talked before I left, I needed to go. Luke questioned me about leaving, saying I hadn’t given you much of a chance to adjust to the shocking news. But, Paul,”—she tilted her head, making sure he was looking right at her—“I needed out of Owl’s Perch, and even if we’d connected before I boarded that train and you still thought you wanted me, I’d have felt like a charity case, not a cherished fiancée or wife. Can you understand that?”

He nodded. “I knew you needed time. I never wanted to take that from you, but I wanted you to know I believed you and I hadn’t taken the money and I was there if you needed me.”

But Hannah knew if she’d stayed or even returned soon, she’d have made a mess of his life. His parents and community would not have accepted her, not with the reputation she carried—the scarlet letter she still wore in the eyes of most. And she would never have been able to make herself believe he actually loved her. At that time her self-esteem was gone, her spirit grievously wounded.

She rose. “The good news is that because I left, I met my aunt, a woman I’ll always be better for having known. She helped me find myself and a career. She placed seeds in me, assuring me that even a woman has the right to chase her own dream. She modeled forgiveness and hope. I don’t regret that time.”

Paul straightened his back, clearly relaxing a bit. “I…I always thought you’d return healed and successful.”

She scoffed. “Instead, I returned outspoken and difficult.”

A whispery laugh eased the rest of the concern lines across his forehead. “Well, I’d braced myself for that too.”

They shared a laugh, which brought an odd sense of wholeness to her. As if she hadn’t fully moved on until she found peace with others whose lives were ripped apart too.

“Hannah.” Lissa sang her name.

“Yes?”

“Can I throw a stick in the water?”

“Yes, and you have about five minutes, okay?”

“Okay.”

Being at Gram’s with Paul and Lissa caused a sense of wonder at life to dance around her, asking to be let inside.

Hannah drew a deep breath, able to finish with more strength than she’d begun with. “At the end I thought I was losing my mind, but with each little town the train stopped at and then left behind, hope began to stir. I seemed to leave behind more of that overwhelming powerlessness, and I could finally breathe again.”

“You wrote me the ‘nevertheless’ letter.”

She nodded. “I wanted to lift some of your burden the way leaving freed me, but then…” She resented that he seemed to have moved on and found someone else within no time of walking out on her. She swallowed hard. “But later on, I began to harbor resentment, blaming you for things that weren’t your fault. I’m sorry.”

He put one hand on her shoulder, waiting for her to look at him. “You’re forgiven.”

She shifted her body weight, wishing she’d covered everything and could just go. “In spite of how I’ve acted, I’m content and not given to bouts of anger. But one of the reasons I came by today is because I refuse to hide things again.”

Paul shook his head. “I…I don’t understand.”

“Within weeks of landing in Ohio, I changed my last name to Lawson.”

Lines creased his brow. “That’s not your married name?”

She shook her head. “I…I’m not married.”

He pointed at her left hand. “But you’re engaged?”

With her right hand, Hannah wrapped her fingers around the ring on her left hand, feeling the stones—a diamond and ruby—in her honorary mother’s gift. “He’s asked, but…”

He stood, turning his back to her.

Hannah blinked, feeling a bit startled. “I haven’t said yes, but I love him. We have Kevin and Lissa, and we make a good family.”

Paul turned, his eyes mirroring things she’d never be privy to. “She’s a sweet girl.”

“Yeah, she and Kevin seem to be unusually great children.” Hannah drew a cleansing breath. It was over. She’d done what she came to do, and now it was time to leave and pick back up with her life. “Lissa, it’s time to go.”

On the bridge, through the wooded area, Lissa crossed her arms. “Aw, not now.”

“Lissa Ann Palmer.”

The little girl hurried off the bridge. “I’m coming.” She left the edge of the wood, wiping her dirty hands down her sweater. “Don’t nobody start talking about taking my desserts away.”

Paul glanced at Hannah. “Hannah,” he chided teasingly.

She shrugged. “I need leverage. And you know how she responds to food.”

Paul agreed and slid his hands into his pockets. “I’m glad Sarah called you home. Wouldn’t prevent one outburst you’ve had to finally get to this point.”

Lissa sang while she ran right past them and toward the car.

Paul walked beside Hannah. “How are things with Mary?”

“I talked to her last night. I think she’ll be fine, but there are some steps that need to be taken to be certain.”

“I’m sure she’s better off just having you to talk to.”

Hannah leaned against her car, somewhat taken aback at the corner they’d turned. Paul was much the same as he’d been since she’d arrived, but the resentment she’d let simmer for so long was gone, leaving calmness in its place. “I’m thankful to have her in my life again too, but friendship won’t be enough for what’s going on with her.” She paused, trying to gauge how much to share. “Paul, I may need your help.”

“Sure. Anytime. What do you need from me?”

Suddenly feeling vulnerable again, Hannah opened her car door. “I…I’ll let you know later…by phone…or I may get Dr. Lehman to contact you.”