Nathaniel reached out his hand and took Elmer by the shoulder. "I am sorry you had to hear the news this way."

Before Nathaniel had time to react, Elmer shot out a fist and pounded it solidly into his mouth. The blow sent Nathaniel tumbling to the ground in utter astonishment.

Many in the crowd cried out in dismay. Sarah screamed and tried to run to Nathaniel, but he motioned for her to stay away.

He touched his lip. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth. He wondered if he should have felt some violent emotion at being mistreated like this, but he didn't. Even sitting in the dirt with a throbbing jaw and a bloody lip, he couldn't feel any worse about things than he already did.

"Elmer, stop this!" Dodging bystanders, Elmer's dat ran from the pavilion and grabbed his son by the collar. "You forget yourself."

Elmer wasn't contrite. He pointed an accusing finger at Nathaniel. "Do you know what he's been telling people?"

Ignoring his son, Solomon reached out a hand. Nathaniel took it. "Forgive Elmer for his bad behavior," he said coldly, pulling Nathaniel to his feet. "He has shamed the Weaver family."

Nathaniel grimaced at the man's aloof tone. He obviously didn't approve of how Nathaniel had handled things with Kate. But what could he do? Kate had made her own choices. Both she and Nathaniel had suffered the heartbreaking consequences of those choices.

Solomon pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Nathaniel.

"Thank you," Nathaniel said. He dabbed his throbbing lip, soaking up the plentiful blood. Elmer had hit him hard.

"But, Dat, he told Aaron that Kate got pregnant and now she has a baby."

With jaw tight and body rigid, Solomon studied Nathaniel's face as if to discover the truth of his son's words. "Why would you say this?"

Nathaniel spit the blood from his mouth and wiped his chin. Unexpected despair washed over him as he thought of Kate and what he had lost. "It is time to tell the truth."

"And what do you think the truth is?" Solomon said through gritted teeth.

Nathaniel kneaded his forehead. The pain of remembrance saturated his senses. "Kate had a boyfriend in Milwaukee, and she has a child by him. A beautiful brown baby like his father."

Upon hearing this, some of the onlookers gasped, while others seemed unsurprised.

"I was deceived above everyone else," Nathaniel said. "But how could any of us have guessed her true character? She seemed so modest and pure."

Solomon altered his expression slightly and stared at Nathaniel. "Who told you this?"

"I went to Milwaukee. I saw them with my own eyes."

Elmer pinned him with a ferocious glare. "You saw nothing."

Solomon's hands began to shake uncontrollably. He turned slowly in a wide circle, surveying the faces of his closest neighbors and friends. "And none of you thought to come to me for the truth?"

Some of the men hung their heads.

Solomon turned to face Nathaniel in the way a convicted man confronts his accuser. "My daughter...," Solomon said, voice trembling, "my daughter is as pure as the driven snow. The baby is Maria Trujillo's. Jared, the man who beat Kate, was the father of Maria's baby."

"I saw her with a dark-skinned man and the baby."

"Carlos," Solomon said. "Maria's brother. He and Kate are friends. They took care of the baby when Maria worked."

"People saw them hugging," Nathaniel said, grasping for anything to justify himself.

"The Englisch are different from us that way. But you have made something ugly out of nothing at all. My Kate has done nothing to defile herself." He pulled a small wallet out of his pocket and retrieved a wrinkled photograph. "Here is Maria and her baby. Her baby. Not Kate's."

Struck dumb, Nathaniel barely looked at the picture. His mind couldn't even wrap itself around what he had heard. Where was the truth?

"You knew her the whole summer and you still believed she was capable of such a thing?" Elmer said.

Solomon wiped his hand across his mouth and lowered his voice so only Nathaniel could hear. "Because of you, our family has lost her. She's not coming back." He swallowed his next words and turned away.

Elmer jabbed his finger into Nathaniel's chest, fire blazing in his countenance. "Do you have any idea what you have done to her? I saw her. I know. She trusted you, and you crushed her. You crushed her."

Aaron stood frozen with his arm around Ada. Solomon had words for them too. "My son, I have kept away from you for three days. I have prayed for guidance before I acted. Now I ask you to examine your soul. There is no end to the damage you have done with your lies. You will proclaim your sins before the church or I will do it for you. Make all things right, or you are no longer my son."

Whatever his offense, Aaron showed no contrition. His father turned from him.

Then, with one grief-stricken look at Nathaniel, Solomon trudged away with Elmer close behind.

Nathaniel forgot how to breathe. He stood like a statue and watched Solomon and Elmer walk away. The crowd of spectators dispersed.

"Well," Ada said, puffing air into her cheeks and straightening her shoulders, "that was the biggest overreaction I have ever seen. All I did was tell a few friends-something I thought was true, mind you-and Elmer goes around smacking people."

"Gossip is a grievous sin," murmured Nathaniel.

Ada flicked her wrist in the direction Solomon had gone. "It's not gossip if it's true. Don't you think so, Sarah? If you think a story is true, then you're not gossiping by retelling it. Gossip is when you say something false about somebody to ruin their reputation."

The irony of Ada's words buzzed in Nathaniel's head like an angry wasp. He did not reply to her absurd logic. All he could hear was Elmer's voice echoing in his head. "You crushed her. She trusted you, and you crushed her."

Sarah offered her lacy handkerchief to Nathaniel, as if Solomon's was somehow not good enough. "Oh, sis yusht! Look at your mouth. You need some ice." She touched his jaw, and he recoiled as if she had burned him.

She pretended not to notice and stuffed the handkerchief into her apron. "Where could we get ice, do you think?"

Aaron patted Nathaniel on the shoulder. "Give them time to calm down. In a few days we will all apologize to each other and get over it. Elmer is childish and deerich. I think we can all forgive someone so young."

"Jah, he has always been Kate's champion," Ada said. "Even when she didn't deserve it sometimes. It is good he isn't baptized. That kind of behavior could get him excommunicated."

Nathaniel searched for something, anything, to justify his conclusions about Kate. Nothing came to mind. He pictured Kate as he had last seen her.

Maria has a baby.

Faces, buildings, noises-everything around Nathaniel vanished. Solomon Weaver's words spiraled around him in slow motion, filling his mouth and nostrils, suffocating him. He couldn't tell how long he stood there, not blinking, not breathing, not knowing whether he was dead or alive. It was her friend's baby? It was her friend's sin?

With perfect clarity, Nathaniel recalled Kate's voice on the phone.

"I want you to hear the whole story about Jared."

"I know about what happened with the boyfriend."

"But I want you to understand."

He staggered as the weight of the world flattened him. Did Kate think he had rejected her because of Jared's death? Because she had defended herself and saved a life?

She had phoned him. She had tried to explain, to make things right, and he had washed his hands of her before she could even speak. His reaction had been swift and cruel.

Why, after everything he'd done to her, would Kate choose baptism?

The answer charged at Nathaniel like a wild bull. The buggy accident. He had been helping Elmer with the injured horse when Kate's gaze had compelled him to look up. His heart raced at the memory. Light had surrounded her entire being. He recalled her glowing countenance with vivid, bright clarity. Her lips formed the words "I love you," and he had never experienced such elation in the midst of chaos. She had received an answer to her prayers. And he had crushed her very will.

Nathaniel felt his soul crack. "Kate, oh my Kate, what have I done?"

His mouth formed the words, but no sound came out.

Aaron glanced at him. "Did you say something?"

Ada and Sarah fussed over Nathaniel's bloody lip without touching him. They wrung their hands and wondered if he would need stitches and did their best to convince him that he should retreat indoors where it was warm and he could elevate his feet. He brushed them aside and strode away with long, purposeful steps.

"Is this the thanks I get?" he heard Sarah say behind him-but he no longer had words for her.

He panted as if he ran a long, tortuous race. Not caring which way he went, he trudged on, aching for a place to hide, to flee where the iron hand of guilt could not seize and smother him. When he came to the edge of an empty field, he quickened his pace. A single drop of water slapped the back of his neck. Still he pressed forward. Soon the icy rain speckled his royal-blue shirt and began dripping off the brim of his hat.

He halted and looked around. With the rain falling sharply, the pavilions became blurs in the distance, and he remained the only human being as far as his eye could see. He bowed his head as despair overpowered him. Then he looked up into the sky and wept bitterly.

Chapter Forty-Five.

"Three weeks. Three whole weeks you've been in Millersburg, and you haven't gone to one singing," Hannah said, clearing the plates from the table like a seasoned busboy.

"Sit, relax," Kate said. "I'll do the dishes."

"I'm pregnant, not crippled."

Kate turned on the water and began to fill the sink. "You'll wear yourself out. We want to keep the little one in the oven a bit longer."

Hannah's husband, Vernon, had tucked in two thick pork chops and four helpings of corn before kissing his wife and trudging out to the barn to help his dat finish the milking.

Hannah eased herself into a chair to supervise while Kate scraped the plates. "Like as not, the small brush will work better," she said, pointing Kate to the bottom drawer. "I've got six more weeks yet and I already feel bigger than a house. I can't even turn over in bed without Vernon giving me a push."

"You look beautiful. You're practically glowing."

It seemed Hannah couldn't supervise the dish washing from the vast distance of five feet. She climbed from her seat and stood by Kate. "Like this," she said, showing Kate for the tenth time how she liked the sink filled. "Die youngie have their crowd tonight at Rabers'. Three or four boys have asked Vernon about you. They think you are pretty." Hannah went back to the table for the dirty silverware. "Vernon could ask one of the boys from the factory to take you."

"Dat made me promise not to go to any youth groups."

"He did not," Hannah said.

Kate sunk the plates into the soapy water. "He doesn't want me to marry a Holmes County boy who will keep me in Ohio for the rest of my life."

Hannah's eyes sparkled, and she shook her head in mock indignation. "That would not be so bad."

Kate's younger sister had fallen in love with an Ohio Amish boy-a great misfortune, according to Dat-and she now lived quite contently "back East somewhere," as Dat often reminded them. Hannah's residence was a small apartment connected to her in-laws' house and, with her expecting her first child, it was just right for a young family starting out.

"A pretty girl like you attracts attention. It's not fair to the boys to keep to this house like a hermit." Hannah brushed the crumbs off the table and into her hand. "Use the blue rag for the flatware. I'm sure Ben Hostetler would bring the buggy around for you. He is only seventeen, but he knows all the older boys."

Kate couldn't keep up the cheerful facade. She slumped her shoulders and sighed. "I'm not ready."

Hannah grabbed a dish towel from the drawer. "How long before you are ready?"

Kate shook her head.

"Oh," Hannah sidled over to give Kate a hug. "You need to try harder with the boys, that's all." Hannah set the dish towel on the counter and cupped Kate's chin in her hand. "I miss the old Katie who used to sing all the day and bury herself under the sheets and giggle with me late at night when we were supposed to be asleep. Or the girl who used to put on secret shows for me and Elmer and the puppies. Remember how we scrambled up to the loft and hid if we spied Aaron coming?"

Kate nodded. "I still do that."

"Like as not, the youth gathering would cheer you up. You have lost your spark. It is almost Christmas, and you have no Christmas cheer."

"Mrs. Crawford will give me more hours at the store if I want."

"You work plenty already, and you are a big help with the housework. You clean gute. Like as not, once you get married, you'll get better with the cooking."

Kate wiped the table and counters while Hannah put away the clean dishes. She wouldn't even entertain talk of marriage. With Nathaniel lost to her, finding another boy was out of the question. Who would measure up?

Tears stung her eyes as she vigorously wiped every surface in the kitchen. Why had she let Nathaniel wander into her thoughts? She could function perfectly well if he stayed locked away in her memories. Unfortunately, he escaped several times a day to torment her. She wished his life had never touched hers. Better to be ignorant of what might have been.

"I'll get it," Hannah said as she hurried to the front room.

Kate hadn't even heard a knock.

She rinsed her rag in the soapy water and wiped the windowsill above the sink. Hannah wouldn't find one speck of dirt in this kitchen.

"Kate, you have a visitor."

Kate turned. Standing there, as if he had materialized simply because she was thinking of him, was Nathaniel King. Hannah took one look at Kate's face and, without a word, tiptoed down the hall and into her bedroom.

For an eternal moment Kate and Nathaniel stared at each other, and Kate's heart disintegrated into a million pieces all over again. Turning her back on him, she covered her mouth with her hand to stop a sob that threatened to escape her lips. Why had he come?

"Please," he said, so softly she wasn't altogether sure she had heard it. "Please, Kate," he repeated. "Do anything but turn away from me."

Kate could never refuse anything Nathaniel asked of her. She slowly turned to face him, with tears spilling down her cheeks.

His glacier-blue eyes with his shaggier-than-usual hair and day's growth of dark beard pierced her defenses. He was even more handsome than she remembered.