Page 69 of The Hidden One

A minute quiver runs the length of him as my words register. I expected him to wave off the statement. Make some joke. Laugh it off. Chalk it up to inexperience and immaturity. But he doesn’t do any of those things. Maybe because we both know what happened that summer was as genuine and pure as it was wrong.

“It was a bittersweet time,” he says quietly. “For both of us. You were too young. I was—” He bites off the word. The smile that follows is sheepish and reluctant. “I wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming to get away from you.”

“You lost a lot.”

“You lost something, too, no?” He studies me with such scrutiny that I can barely hold his gaze, but I do. “We both did.”

“You paid a big price,” I tell him. “So did your family.”

“Bad timing, no?” He cocks his head, his eyes probing mine. “A few more years and things might’ve worked out differently.”

I’m not sure I agree, but I don’t say. He wanted to marry me. I was too young, too screwed up, to know what I wanted let alone make such an important life decision.

“The years teach a lot of lessons the days never know,” I tell him.

It was one of my mamm’s favorite sayings. As a fifteen-year-old Amish girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders and a duffel bag full of anger in her heart, I had little understanding of its meaning. As a grown woman, I’ve never appreciated it more.

The sound of shod hooves against gravel and the music of children’s voices come to us through the screen door, telling us Dorothy and the kids have arrived home.

And the moment is gone.

I call Deputy Vance on my way to the motel. I can tell by his tone he’s not happy to hear from me. I make a halfhearted attempt to soften him up with small talk and a not-so-funny joke. He doesn’t bite.

“I need your help,” I say.

“Nothing personal, Chief Burkholder, but I think I’ve done my share of helping.”

“I know this isn’t an ideal situation,” I begin, but he cuts me off.

“You’re going to get me fired.”

“There’s no one else,” I tell him. “I’m not getting much cooperation from your department.”

“Let it go through the channels.”

“Kris, you know as well as I do that Jonas Bowman didn’t murder Ananias Stoltzfus. He didn’t leave his muzzleloader at the scene. He didn’t cut off a dead man’s hands and toss them into his own well.”

“Murderers aren’t exactly the brightest bulbs in the pack.”

“Will you at least hear me out?”

Vance says nothing, so I trudge on. “I’ve discovered some things about Stoltzfus that don’t sit well. The more I uncover, the more convinced I am that he’s not who he claimed to be.”

“What are you talking about?” he asks irritably.

I give him the rundown of incongruities, starting with Mia’s suicide and her request for absolution and ending with the beating of Levi Schmucker. “I grew up Amish. I can tell you those are not the actions of an Amish bishop.”

“Maybe he was just an asshole.”

“You guys should have looked into it.”

He groans. “Look, I wasn’t exactly involved in the case, Chief Burkholder. What the hell do you want from me?”

I pause, close my eyes briefly. “I need a DNA sample from those remains.”

He has the gall to laugh. “You’ll have to talk to the sheriff about that. I’m not part of chain of custody,” he says. “I spend my time writing tickets and rounding up cows, for God’s sake.”

“Kris, if I can get my hands on that DNA, I’ll send it to the lab and have it run through some databases to see if we get a hit.”