Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight …

He shook his head in amazement at the nursery rhyme that had popped into his head. He hadn't experienced a sense of wonder in a long, long time. For months now he'd felt as aged and cynical as the world itself—until Sarah had come into his life. In her quiet way she had awakened in him an appreciation for the simple beauty of the world around him. Now she was gone and all the joy of that beauty had gone with her.

Blossom came trotting across the yard, nose to the ground. She made a beeline to him, sniffed his shoes, and plopped down in front of him. Her somber, woebegone expression was clear to him thanks to the faint silver glow of the yard light that stood between the house and the barn.

“I feel worse than you look,” he murmured.

The hound whined and lay her head on her paws in apparent sympathy.

Ingrid emerged from the shadows of the house and came to sit beside him on the bench with his leather jacket draped across her lap.

“You shouldn't let yourself get a chill, Dr. Thome,” she said with absolutely no censure in her voice.

Matt didn't take the jacket, nor did he say anything for a long while. He just sat there absorbing his sister's silent comfort, staring out at the night and marveling at the quiet of it.

“Do you think she'll make them understand?” he asked.

“I don't know. They'll forgive her if she asks for it. They're very forgiving people.”

“What about that thing you told me, that mide thing.”

“The Meidung. Shunning is serious business for the unrepentant. It might not come to that. Like I said, they're gentle, forgiving people.”

Matt gave a harsh laugh. “Her father doesn't seem very forgiving.”

“Isaac is a hard man, almost bitter for some reason. He's very strong in the Unserem weg, the old ways. Very strict.”

“I could have killed him for hitting her.”

“I know”

They sat in silence for another few minutes. Ingrid leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. She took one of his hands in hers and squeezed it tight. “I'm sorry, Matt.”

So am I, he thought, hurting in a way no drug could ease.

“Is there anything I can do to help her?” he asked.

“Stay out of it. They won't tolerate interference, especially not from you. Make a clean break. Get on with your life.”

What life? a lonely voice asked inside him.

Realistically, he knew he would take In-grid's advice. Realistically, he knew he would go back to work, and in a few months his brief stay here and his brief affair with a young Amish woman would be a memory, the awful pain dulled by the anesthetic effects of time. Realistically, he knew all of these things, but in his heart he couldn't accept any of it at the moment. In his heart he knew only that he'd found something bright and pure that had lighted his life when everything had seemed bleak and dingy, and now that special something had been snatched away from him, wrenched from his grasp even sooner than he had feared. In his heart he knew only that he felt more alone than he had ever felt before.

He wondered if Sarah was feeling the same way.

He looked out at the starlit sky and listened to the breeze rattle the skeletal cornstalks and the dried leaves in the trees. He felt the autumn chill bite into his bones, and he thought about Sarah in the house down the road.

Dorit be sorry you loved me.…


As if her love for Matt were an illness she could recuperate from given some time in a sterile environment, Sarah thought bitterly. They sat at her mothers round oak kitchen table, Isaac and Anna Maust and herself. The rest of the family had been sent to bed with no explanation of what was going on or why Sarah was home. It seemed quite clear to one and all it was not a joyous occasion. The talk going on in the kitchen by the light of the kerosene lamps was serious stuff.