Kate Burkholder: Her Last Breath Part 23

I hear laughter and look past her to see a young girl running toward us, a black lab-mix puppy running alongside her, nipping at the hem of her dress. The sight warms me unexpectedly. I smile when I notice the torn fabric.

The woman looks over her shoulder and frowns. "Sarah, your dress."

"He won't stop." The girl is laughing uncontrollably now, and the puppy is attached to the hem. "Mamm!"

"You'll be taking a needle and thread to that hem this evening," the woman scolds, but her lips twitch.

The girl collapses onto the gra.s.s a few feet from her mother and begins to play with the puppy, lifting its face to hers and giggling as it licks her cheeks.

I cross to them and kneel. "What's his name?"

"Sammy. Ouch! He bites."

"He's teething, like babies do," I tell her. "He needs something to chew on. An old doll might keep those little teeth busy."

Martha Schlabach continues with her ch.o.r.e, but I feel her eyes on me as I reach for the puppy and bring its snout to mine. I get a whiff of puppy breath an instant before he bites the end of my nose and I'm reminded that my face is still sore. "He's a feisty one."

"Datt says he's going to be a good hunting dog some day."

"And a good friend, too." I pa.s.s the puppy back to her and rise. Brus.h.i.+ng the gra.s.s from my knees, I make my way back to Martha. I'm wary now of saying something inappropriate in front of the children, but I need to know if she called the tip line. If she did, I need to know exactly who saw what.

Martha is a no-nonsense woman, a busy mother of seven whose days are filled with work from the crack of dawn until her head hits the pillow at night. Neither of us has the time or the patience for a polite Q & A session so I decide to take the direct approach.

"I know you called the tip line," I say quietly.

She doesn't look at me as she pins an ap.r.o.n to the line. "My husband wouldn't approve of such a thing. My getting involved in someone else's affairs."

"All information that comes in is confidential," I tell her.

"As if you can be trusted, Katie Burkholder." Her laugh grinds from her throat like a sludged-up engine on a cold morning. "I don't partake in idle gossip about my neighbors."

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Martha didn't have a problem blathering about Mattie or me when we were teenagers. Not only was she a gossipmonger, but half of what she pa.s.sed along came from her own imagination. For an instant I'm tempted to remind her of that. Instead, I move closer to her and lower my voice. "If there was an argument or confrontation between Mattie Borntrager and someone else, I need to know about it."

She turns her attention back to her laundry, snapping open a work s.h.i.+rt, pinning it to the line, biting down on another clothespin.

"The buggy accident that killed Paul wasn't an accident," I tell her.

The Amish woman's hands go still on the trousers she's holding. "I don't want to get involved."

"You already are."

Sighing, she looks down at the trousers and lets them drop into the basket, as if what she's about to tell me requires all of her concentration. "I called," she admits.

"Thank you."

"I know it was G.o.d's will, but my heart is broken about what happened to Paul and those precious children. If someone did this thing..."

"Someone did," I say. "If you know something, you need to tell me about it."

The woman stares at me, a.s.sessing me, trying to decide if I'm worthy of whatever information she's safeguarding. I hold her gaze, willing her to open up.

In Pennsylvania Dutch, she orders the youngsters to the house to wash their hands. When the girl with the puppy rises to go with the others, Martha stops her. "Sarah, put that puppy down and come here."

Reluctantly, the girl sets the puppy on the gra.s.s and starts toward us. Big hazel eyes go from her mamm to me and back to her mamm. The puppy continues to bite at the hem of her dress, but she doesn't seem to notice now. She's looking at us as if she's done something wrong. I want to rea.s.sure her, but I defer to her mother and wait.

When the younger children are out of earshot, Martha turns her attention to the girl. "Sarah, do you remember when Sally had that bay colt?"

"Ja. I got to stay up past my bedtime to help datt."

The woman smiles. "That colt is almost as much trouble as that puppy of yours."

"Datt says he's going to be a good trotter." The girl looks down at the puppy growling and tugging at the hem of her dress and giggles.

Martha glances toward the house, watching the children, and addresses me. "Sarah and I have discussed gossip and we know it's wrong to speak badly of our neighbors, don't we, Sarah?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'm going to ask you to make an exception, Sarah, and tell Chief Burkholder what you saw that night you went out to the pasture to get Sally and bring her in."

The girl looks down at her bare feet, drags her toes through gra.s.s and dandelions. "Datt sent me to the pasture with the halter to get Sally while he put straw in her stall. He knew she was going to have her colt and it was time to bring her in."

Sarah looks nervous about retelling the story to me, an outsider, so I do my best to put her at ease. "What did you name your colt?"

"Jim."

"How old is he?"

"Six months now."

I nod. "So this happened six months ago?"

The girl nods. "When I walked into the pasture, Sally was grazing by the road, where the gra.s.s is thick and there's lots of clover. I walked over to her and when I was putting the halter on her, I saw Mattie Borntrager standing on the road, talking to a stranger."

"Was the stranger a man or woman?"

"Man."

"Did you recognize him?"

Sarah shakes her head.

"Was it Mr. Borntrager maybe?" I ask.

"No. He was a lot taller than Mr. Borntrager."

"Was he Amish or English?"

"Amish, I think. He was wearing a hat. And he had a beard."

If the man was Amish, the beard indicates he was married. "Do you remember what time it was?" I ask.

"I don't know. The middle of the night, I think." The girl looks at her mother.

"The horse began her labor at about two A.M.," Martha tells me.

I turn my attention back to Sarah. "What were they doing on the road?"

"Arguing, I think."

"Their voices were raised?"

"Well, just the man. He sounded all mad and mean."

"Do you know what they were arguing about?"

"I'm not supposed to listen to grown-up talk, so I just put the halter on Sally and took her to the barn."

"Did the man touch Mrs. Borntrager?"

"I don't think so, but it was pretty dark. Mrs. Borntrager was all upset."

"How do you know?"

"She was crying."

By and large, Amish children's lives are more sheltered than their English counterparts. They're not exposed to movies or pop culture. There's no s.e.x education or social media or Internet. Most of the things kids learn come from within their own family circle. As they enter their teen years and make friends outside of their family, they begin to see other perspectives and, perhaps, learn things their parents may not want them to learn.

I suspect Sarah's witnessing an argument between two adults in the dead of night was discomfiting. "Did you see anything else unusual?" I ask.

The girl shakes her head. "That's it."

I put my hand on her shoulder. "Thank you for telling me, Sarah."

She looks at her mother. "Is Mrs. Borntrager in trouble?"

The Amish woman shakes her head. "Chief Burkholder is just investigating that terrible buggy accident."

"Oh." The girl nods solemnly. "I miss seeing Sam and Norah. I used to wave to them. They were sweet."

Martha licks her thumb and uses it to clean a smudge of dirt from her daughter's chin. "Now you just forget all about Mrs. Borntrager, you hear? It's time for the midday meal. Go make sure your brothers and sisters washed their hands. I'll be inside in a few minutes."

s.n.a.t.c.hing up the puppy, the girl hightails it toward the house.

I snag Martha's gaze. "Do you have any idea who Sarah saw that night?"

"No."

I try something open ended. "Is there anything else you'd like to add?"

She waits so long before answering that I think she's not going to respond. Then she bends and picks up the trousers and pins them to the clothesline. "I think the men like looking at Mattie Borntrager a little too much. Even Amish men. But that's men for you."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Katie. You know how it was with her when she was a girl. Well, it hasn't changed all that much."

I think about the rivalry between Martha and Mattie and the fact that, in the end, Paul Borntrager chose Mattie. I know it's cynical, but I can't help but wonder if that's what this is about, at least in part. Back when we were teens, Martha tolerated me and my antics. But she had no tolerance for Mattie. I wonder if her indictment of Mattie is the result of some long-standing jealousy that's festered into something ugly over the years. I wonder if this woman has an axe to grind.

"You mean with her being pretty?" I ask.

"Pretty. And she knows it, too, doesn't she?" She huffs, a sound of disgust that broadcasts something stronger than dislike for Mattie. "All I'm saying is that her being married in the eyes of G.o.d didn't change the way men look at her."

"And that's Mattie's fault somehow?" The question comes out sounding defensive, so I reel in the part of me that wants to defend her.

"That's not for me to say now, is it?"

"Are you talking about a particular man?"

"Take your pick. They all look at her with their tongues hanging out like a bunch of panting dogs. Fall all over themselves helping her when she doesn't need any help." The Amish woman grimaces as if she's bitten into the bitter pith of a lemon. "But then she's got that way about her."

"What way is that?"

She looks at me as if I'm dense. "One look from her and she's got them eating out of her hand, pecking like a bunch of chickens, that's what way."

"Are you saying this is something Mattie does on purpose, Martha?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Do you think Mattie and Paul were having marital problems?"

"Look, Katie, none of us is perfect. But when Sarah told me what she'd seen, I wasn't surprised."

"Was Paul aware of any of this?"

"The man was blind to it. Mattie could do no wrong in his eyes." She shakes her head, and for the first time I see pity in her expression. "She uses those children, too. For attention, you know. Always putting other people out to save herself some trouble, if you ask me."

I don't know what to say to that. I don't know what to think or feel about any of what's been said. The weight of the words that have pa.s.sed between us settle onto my shoulders like a boulder.

"You were always partial to her, though, weren't you?" Martha's lips curl, but her smile is cruel. "I've said my piece, Katie Burkholder. You do with it what you will and G.o.d will take care of the rest."

I hand her my card. "If you think of anything else, will you get in touch with me?"

She refuses the card and glances toward the house. "You'd best go. I've got children to feed."

She leaves me standing next to her empty laundry basket with the wet clothes flapping in the breeze and the turmoil of my thoughts.