New York City
“Where are those boys,” Rebekah muttered. She shielded her eyes from the sun, but it didn’t do much good. The sun glinted off the water and made an equally bright, if not brighter, reflection. To make it feasible to shield her eyes, she would need two hands, one to shield the top, one to shield the bottom. She stifled a quiet laugh. My, wouldn’t that look funny. To walk about with one hand over your eyes, and one hand under.
She turned her back to the ocean, which helped a bit in scanning the dockside road for Joseph and Peter. There, down at the far end of the street, a black felt hat came into view. She raised one arm and waved over her head, the black-hatted figure did the same.
Joseph!
A bright smile pushed her lips wide. Though the brief agony over missing Katie hurt almost tangibly, the knowledge that they would be safely bound back for Indiana by nightfall lit something inside of her with an excited glow. Like the sun rising through the rain, after a night of black thunderstorms.
She would be home.
With Thomas and her mother.
She could stop and check on her father in the English clinic.
Now, with a finished, uniquely Rebekah dress, she could marry without fear.
She and Joseph would be married in less than a month.
Katie made her choice, and though she was positive God had shown her that Katie would be coming home with them, perhaps her revelation meant Katie would come home after the trip around the world, with exciting stories. Still, something inside of her felt that she and her brother would end up together, in the end. After all, Peter was Katie’s love, whether she wanted to admit it or not. And not even the entire world could break the bonds of true love.
Excited, Rebekah started gimping along toward Joseph, who was still waving at her. A niggling thought forced its way into the back of her mind, almost as a rogue afterthought she didn’t want to think.
We Amish leave it better than we found it.
She’s said those very words so many times this trip.
“Are you truly leaving it better than you found it, here? In New York City?” Rebekah asked herself in whisper speak. She didn’t have to answer that question, it would be silly to do so. Not because she was talking to herself again, but because of the stark severity of the glaring answer, almost as glaring as the sea staring back at her from the mid-morning sun.
No.
No, none of you are leaving this bitter place better than you found it.
Rebekah stopped and scratched her knee. Something itched. When she pulled back her fingers, they were bloody.
“Oh drat. I should have asked Mrs. Cheng for a bandage of some sort. Seems my walking has aggravated my injury.”
Before she could stand up, somebody grabbed her. Hard, and from behind. One hand over her mouth and another across her middle, blocking her arms and completely immobilized her.
“Help!” Her word was muffled by a bony, foul-smelling hand. He jerked her head hard. The muscle in her neck that Joseph had cured with his massaging on the train knotted again with a sharp stab. A whimper escaped her lips and her bag fumbled from her hands. Whoever grabbed her kicked it hard.
My dress, it will be wrinkled.
A frightened thought pushed the tamer of the two out of the way. Thinking of your dress? Think of your life!
“Don’t cry out,” her attacker rasped into her ear. He pinched her nose shut and tightened his grip across her middle as he pulled her backward between the tar-paper shacks and out of the view of anyone—even Joseph or Peter—on the docks.
***
The world was hazy and sounds were meeting her ears, but she didn’t know if they were real or imagined.
“Let her go,” one demanded.
“Or else,” shouted another.
Let me go! Rebekah fought back as hard as she could.
A disembodied voice shouted from somewhere. “Better hope I don’t catch you!”
Sounds swirled in her mind, real, imagined, or both, and Rebekah’s neck ached with a stabbing, catching, righteous ache. She wasn’t entirely sure that whoever grabbed her hadn’t broken it. Then, the world, already fuzzy, started to go black. Something jolted her from behind, and the man finally released her. Air burned into her lungs, but he wasn’t done with her yet. Whoever had grabbed her pushed her, hard, and sent her flying into the side of one of the ramshackle tar-paper shacks. With her arms guarding her head, one hand ripped clean through the tar paper, right into the little dockside house.
The pounding of footsteps, hitting the earth hard and fast, met her ears, but she didn’t dare look up. She couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Instead, she kept her head down and covered as she gulped cool air into her burning lungs.
Once, Samuel brought home a mule from the English auction in Montgomery when he went to sell his handmade wheels. The mule was as wild as rice and did not like anyone to look at him. If you did, he laid his ears back and charged. Rebekah liked the look of the mule and believed that, somewhere, he had a good heart hidden inside him. All he needed was a little love. So every day she went out to not look at the mule, but stand by his pen. The mule got used to her and even let her stand in the pen. As long as Rebekah didn’t look at him, he was fine. Well, after about a week of this standing together, Rebekah got the bright idea to try and ride him.
She stood by him, and when he wasn’t paying her any mind, she ran and jumped, landing longways across his back. This was the ugliest mistake she’d made. The mule, all trust broken, crow hopped, bucked, and reared—anything to get Rebekah off his back. And he did. When she was on the ground, the mule did all he could to snuff her out, like a candle. Instinct took over and she curled into a little ball, guarding her tucked head with her arms, until her father pulled her to safety.
In the alley, she kept her head tucked down and her arms over her head. Just as she had with the mule.
“Get back here you scoundrel!” Peter’s voice came from somewhere.
“Get him, Peter,” Joseph, always the slower of the two, shouted.
Neither stopped to check on Rebekah, if indeed that was them thundering by like wild horses, and not some figment of her oxygen-starved imagination.
“Rebekah?” Katie’s voice was so quiet, she was unsure if she was dreaming or if she was dead. “Rebekah Stoll?”
Rebekah tightened her arms over her head and said nothing. If she was dreaming, she didn’t particularly want to wake up, because the bad guy who grabbed her might be there. If she was dead, and she was hearing Katie’s voice, that must mean Katie was dead too, and she didn’t particularly want to see Katie in Heaven.
Not because she figured she would go right to Heaven, or that Katie wouldn’t make it to the Pearly Gates. The fact was, that if she was dead and Katie was too, then a heartbroken Joseph and heartbroken Peter would have two bodies to haul back across the country, from the English world to the Amish, and bury. The thought of Katie’s parents and sister, heartbroken, standing at their gravesides, flanked by her parents and all of her little brothers...little Beanie cooing and chewing his fist and Thomas...oh Thomas...
“Rebekah, Rebekah you’re crying; wake up Rebekah!”
Someone jostled her shoulder. “Rebekah, Rebekah Elnora Stoll! Wake up this instant!”
A shooting pain in her ankle, coupled with a well-placed pinch from some faceless fingers shocked her awake.
Rebekah opened her eyes. Nobody was there. Only a heap of rubbish and some wooden crates. “Am I dead?” she asked the empty alleyway. “This doesn’t look like Heaven.”
She paused for a moment. “If this isn’t Heaven...oh no...” She covered her face with her hands.
“Rebekah!” Katie’s disembodied voice filled the void around her. “Rebekah, sit up.” Through the rip in the tar-paper shack, an arm pushed her, trying to get leverage to sit her up. “Here, I’ve got you. I won’t let you go.”
Rebekah followed the arm. Sure enough, there inside the shack, was the face belonging to Katie Knepp. Rebekah reached up and grabbed the hand. “Oh Katie! Katie, thank God you’re alive!” Rebekah sat upright with inhumane precision, though her head hung at an odd angle. “I mean, you are alive, right? We aren’t dead...are we?”
“No.” There was no laughter behind Katie’s word. “We are not dead. I think we were both closer than we’d ever come, though. Well, maybe not you, but definitely me.”
Still, Rebekah held onto her hand. And one of them, either she or Katie, was trembling.
“You’ve lived through barn fires, and getting all your hair burned off, and mule attacks. And—” Katie snorted. “Remember that time we found Old Man Marley’s honey box? You were dead set on eating some fresh honey, but you didn’t account for the swarm of bees that came out of his box.” Katie dissolved into a fit of laughter.
“Katie?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t ever say dead set again.”
“Okay.” Katie eked out one more chuckle. “Okay.” She sucked in a breath. “Dead set. Oh, I’m sorry! Never again, never again.”
Rebekah couldn’t help herself. With Katie’s musical laughter coming from the other side of the tar paper, she joined in.
“Are you steady enough that I can let go of you and come on out now and greet you proper?”
“Yes, hey, what are you doing inside—” Rebekah stopped talking as Katie, clad in a brown robe just as Father Plant said she would be, and a woman with paint over her eyes and lips, wearing a slight dress, no bigger than Sadie’s had been, came out and around the corner.
“Rebekah, this is Molly Sue Shannon.” Rebekah took Molly Sue’s hand and consented to be pulled to her feet. “Molly Sue Shannon, this is Rebekah Elnora Stoll. My oldest friend in the world, besides my twin sister, who’s older than me and always will be.”
Katie beamed. “You know, you were out cold for a minute there. I was worried that you were...”
Molly Sue shook Rebekah’s hand gently before letting go. “I was about to go get a bucket of cold water to bring you to.” She slipped under Rebekah’s arm and helped ease her down onto an overturned wooden crate. “There now, you look a wee bit shaky. Let’s sit you down.”
“I was afraid I was dead, and that you were too, Katie. I pictured our parents, and Joseph and Peter at our gravesides...”
“Hush up now and look down that alleyway.” Katie pointed down the alley at a righteous scuffle. “Looks like Peter and Joseph caught him.”
Never had Rebekah seen Joseph, or Peter, hit another living thing. Only Peter had shown fire in his temper, never Joseph. Now, that was all changed. Both men were swinging wildly at something on the ground.
“They’re like to kill him,” Molly Sue observed. “And I for one won’t be sad of it.”
“Murder is a sin,” Katie and Rebekah said together.
Rebekah looked at Katie and they shared a smile.
Molly Sue crossed her arms. “And what do you do to a murderer? Just let him walk free? Don’t you know who that is?”
“No,” Katie started. “Look, they’re dragging him off.”
Sure enough, Joseph appeared to carry the man’s arms, and Peter, his legs. They disappeared in an alleyway.
“Who is he?” Rebekah asked. “ And what happened?”
Molly Sue moved around beside Rebekah as she began to tell the story. Like Joseph had done, she placed her hands on her neck and began to rub, hard. “He came in from Whitechapel, London. The East End. I heard him talking, to himself of course—”
Rebekah knotted her hands in her lap. I’ve talked to myself a time or three since coming into the English world.
“He confessed to murder. And he called himself by another name. What did he introduce himself as to you, Katie? I know you told me you talked to him?”
“Aaron. Kosminski? Perhaps?”
Molly Sue nodded and pushed hard on Rebekah’s knotted neck. A resounding pop freed her neck to move again. “There, all better.”
“Thank you, Molly Sue.”
Molly Sue wiped her hands on her dress and moved back around in front of the pair of Amish girls. “Cricks in the neck. They’re the worst.”
Rebekah offered her a smile and rotated her head this way and that.
“That man,” Molly Sue continued, “he called himself something else. Something sinister. Something horrible.”
Rebekah leaned forward. “What?”
Molly Sue looked at her with big, blue eyes. “He said he had killed many working girls in London and he was eluding London police, and that he’d outsmarted them by coming here.”
Molly Sue paused to let the news that a murderer had been among them sink in.
“He went on to say that London police had many suspects—he of course, was one. And that they coined the name of the killer. Jack. Jack the Ripper.”
Rebekah wrinkled up her nose and Katie shook her head in disgust. “That’s...” Katie began. “That’s disturbing.”
“I heard him call himself that when I saw him eating out of the trash barrel by the docks. Something about at least this food won’t be poisoned.” She shook her head. Her brown hair flounced around her bare shoulders. “That’s when I saw him grab you, Katie.”
Katie smiled dejectedly at Rebekah. “I thought I was dead too, Rebekah.”
Molly Sue shrugged and pursed her lips. “That’s when I asked my roommate, Bessie, for her cast iron skillet. She let me use it of course, she’s a great roommate. But it was heavy and I’m not a good aim. That’s why it was just a glancing blow off his head.” She knotted her fingers together. “Got him to let you go though, didn’t it?”
“I certainly didn’t complain.” Katie reached out to Molly Sue and took her hand. “You saved my life when you pulled me inside your home.” Katie flickered a glance at Rebekah. “But it’s probably my fault that he grabbed you, Rebekah.”
“Your fault?” Rebekah cocked her head to the side. “Why would it be your fault?”
“Well...” Katie studied the ground. “Because if I’d been there for him to kill when he came back looking for me, he wouldn’t have grabbed you and...and...I’m sorry Reb—”
Katie didn’t have time to finish before Rebekah hobbled to her on incredibly unsteady feet. Before she fell, she flung her arms around Katie’s neck and held on for all she was worth. As though her very life depended on it. “Katie, don’t say such things. I came to find you and bring you home. I’ve been praying and praying for you. Peter and Joseph too.”
Rebekah pulled back and held Katie by her shoulders. “Will you come home with me, with Peter, Joseph, and me, to Indiana?”
Katie smiled a sad smile. “Do you think anyone wants me there? Have I gone too far this time, as Mama always warned I might?”
“You can’t go too far with folks who love you, Katie.” Rebekah meant the words with every fiber of her being. With all of her heart, and all of her soul. “We love you, Katie. All of us. Even me.”
Katie kept one arm around Rebekah, and turned them both to face Molly Sue. “Molly Sue, I have a gift for you.”
“For me?” Molly Sue uncrossed her arms and looked thoughtful. “I know, is it skillet swinging lessons?”
Katie sniggered. “No. It’s this.” From under the brown tunic, she produced the ornate, Renaissance styled English dress. “For you. For your new life, if you’d like one.”
Molly Sue’s face went from joking, to stoic. “Katie, I cannot accept that.”
Katie held out the dress. “You can’t go on doing this sort of work. You can’t live like this; I mean if Jack the Ripper had come in your shack with nobody to protect you...” Katie gave the dress a little shake. “Come on, go try it on. Please?”
Molly Sue looked at the dress, then at Katie and Rebekah. Her cream-complexioned face broke into a bright array of laugh lines. “Only for you, Katie Knepp.” She glanced at Rebekah. “And for you too, Rebekah Elnora Stoll.”
Molly Sue ducked into the shack.
When it was just the two of them, Rebekah gave Katie’s neck a squeeze. “I’m glad you’re coming home.” Rebekah dropped her voice to a soft whisper. “Especially since we already bought you a ticket home.”
“You look terrible, by the way.” Katie reached up with her free hand and felt Rebekah’s split lip. “Did all this happen when Peter kicked Aaron, or Jack, or whatever his name is, and he dropped you in the rubbish heap here?”
“Not all of it. We were running, well, trying to keep up with Peter, to catch the Augusta Victoria before it left with you on it. And I misstepped somewhere along the way and took a tumble. A sweet Chinese woman took care of me while Joseph and Peter looked for you.” She offered Katie a true smile. A smile borne of forgiveness, hope, and especially of love. “It will be my honor to introduce you to Mrs. Cheng when I go back. For some reason she asked me to go back by her shop before we left for Indiana.”
Katie didn’t say anything. “Well, I guess I have to go back. Otherwise, who will help you walk?” Mischief turned up the corners of her salmon-colored lips.
“Well, how do I look?” Molly Sue stepped out in the English dress, her arms spread wide. She did a little turn. “Do you think I’m ready for Paris? London? Amsterdam? The Orient?”
“Graceful,” Katie said. “You look graceful.”
“You can see your true heart in that dress,” Rebekah added. “You have a loving heart and a giving nature. It shows.”
Molly Sue stopped turning and the grin melted from her face. “Graceful? With a giving nature and loving heart?”
Rebekah and Katie exchanged a look.
“I expected beautiful, radiant, extraordinary.” She ducked her head.
“To speak of outward beauty is vanity,” Rebekah whispered.
“True beauty is on the inside,” Katie added.
Molly Sue was no longer smiling. Instead, it looked as though she might cry. “My mother used to call me graceful. She always told me I had a kind and loving heart, and a nature to give and help others.”
“Then go do it.” Katie’s voice was stern. “Nothing is holding you here. You have a whole lot of nothing to lose, and only everything to gain.”
“I’ve prayed for a way out of this mess. Certainly feels like He’s answering it now.” Molly Sue looked helpless. “But the holdup is me. I don’t know where to go.” Her shoulders sagged.
“I do.” Katie sounded as though she’d never been more sure of anything in her life. “Go to this place, The Church of Our Lady of the Scapular of Mount Carmel. East Twenty-Eight Street. Look for a man dressed like me.”
Rebekah turned, wide-eyed, toward Katie. “His name is Father Plant.”
Now it was Katie’s turn to look shocked. “How did you know?”
“He sent me to you when we went in there to pray.” Rebekah’s eyes widened further still. “I think you walked out as we were in the back row.”
Katie was speechless. The two friends stared at each other in silence, mouths agape, until Molly Sue spoke.
She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “Well, now that was a chill. Did anyone else feel it?”
Rebekah and Katie nodded, still staring at each other.
“That does it. I believe you just answered my prayers, ladies.”
Molly Sue stared at her ramshackle home. A man with a top hat and sheepish smile walked inside. A voice, presumably belonging to Bessie the roommate with the lifesaving skillet, sang out. “Well hello. What can I do for you this morning, sir?”
Molly Sue smiled and turned back to Katie and Rebekah. “What do I tell Father Plant when I get there?”
“Tell him Katie sent you. Katie Knepp. And that I’m doing as he asked, and going into the world and showing God’s love. So I sent you to him. And Him.”
Molly Sue nodded and gave a little wave. “Have a good trip home, girls,” she said as she turned to go. Then looked at something over their shoulders. “Looks like your men are almost as bloodied as you, Rebekah Elnora Stoll.” With a shy smile, she turned her back and began to walk away. This time, she didn’t look back.
“She looks like any other English lady,” Katie murmured.
Rebekah nodded. “Only more graceful.”
“And with a kinder, more giving heart.”
The pair shared a soft giggle as Joseph and Peter closed the space between them. For once, Joseph was in the lead. “Rebekah, oh Rebekah.” He held out his arms to her. “Thank you God, she’s okay.”
She unhooked her arm from over Katie’s shoulder and fell into Joseph, knowing that he spoke to God, and not to her in this moment. “Hello Katie,” Joseph added. “I hope Rebekah told you that we already bought your ticket home to Indiana, and it would be rude of you to turn it down.”
She giggled a terse giggle and looked over his shoulder to where Peter stood. “I’d know you anywhere, Peter. Tall Peter, broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip. Dressed in head-to-toe Amish clothing, but with an English fire burning behind his green eyes.”
He flickered her a smile. His eye was growing more and more purple and swollen, and a trickle of blood tracked from the corner of his lip.
“Katie,” he said, making no move toward her.
Rebekah couldn’t place his tone, and that scared her. She grasped Joseph tighter.
“Are you, um. Thank you for...” Katie’s voice began to tremble and her thoughts seemingly scatter. “What happened with Jack the Ripper?”
“With who?” Joseph’s voice was incredulous. “What kind of a name is that?”
“A bad man’s name,” Rebekah whispered.
“The one you two lit into.” Katie sucked in a breath and stilled the tremble in her voice. “What happened to him?”
“Well, he grabbed Rebekah, so we grabbed him back,” Joseph answered for Peter. His attempt to be jocular fell flat. Rebekah caught his hand and squeezed it. “Shush,” she whispered. “He got Katie before he got me,” Rebekah explained almost silently.
Joseph squeezed her fingers back.
Peter’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you all right, Katie girl? Did he...”
“No no, a good person, some sort of angel really, saved me with a well-placed skillet to the back of his head.” Katie smiled shyly. “Molly Sue Shannon. I’ll never forget the name.”
“Thank you God,” Peter mumbled. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“You didn’t...um...kill him, did you? Peter?” Katie’s words were halting and she didn’t look directly him or Joseph.
“No, murder is a sin.” Peter crammed his hat on his head and stuck his hands in his pockets. “So, we beat him to a bloody pulp and put him on the first boat we could find. One that was just pushing away from the dock. One that would be long out to sea before he woke up.”
Katie exhaled.
Rebekah did too.
“Going where?” Katie asked.
“London, I think,” Peter answered.
“Yeah, London,” Joseph added.
“Good. He’s wanted for murder there,” Katie said. “Maybe he will learn that you can’t run from your sins.” Katie quit talking and studied the ground.
“Well,” Peter said, breaking the all too awkward silence. “Who is ready to head for Indiana?”
“Me!” Rebekah and Joseph cried. If Katie’s voice joined in, it was much too soft to hear.