Page 39 of Fallen

When he raises his gaze to mine, I see anger in his eyes. “Dich sinn mei shveshtah.” You’re my sister. “Dich du net halda glawva.” You do not hold the faith. “I’ll not speak of it.”

Irritation snaps through me, but I tamp it down. “I’m not here as your sister, Jacob. I’m here as a cop with a job to do. If something happened between you and Rachael Schwartz, you need to tell me. Right now.”

“You think I did that to her?” he asks incredulously.

“No,” I say, meaning it. My brother may be a lot of things, but being capable of beating a woman to death is not one of them. “But sometimes there are … patterns in a person’s life. The more I know about Rachael Schwartz, the more likely I’ll find her killer.”

After a moment, he rounds the workbench, brushes past me, and goes to the door of the workshop. He glances out as if to make sure there’s no one there, closes the door, and returns to the workbench. There, he sets both hands against the surface, and shakes his head.

“Rachael Schwartz was…” He looks around as if he’s lost something, as if his surroundings will somehow help him find the right word. “Narrisch.” Insane.

I wait, let the silence work.

After a moment, he straightens, slides his hands into his pockets. “It happened right before she left. I was in the buggy, driving home. It was dark, nine or ten o’clock, I think. A summer storm had swept in.” He shrugs. “I didn’t see her. Almost ran over her. Out by the Tuscarawas Bridge. She was walking in the middle of the road, soaking wet. I knew Rhonda and Dan, so I stopped. I knew they wouldn’t want their daughter walking in the dark and rain all by herself, so I asked her if she needed a ride home.”

Jacob would have been twenty-eight years old and married. Rachael Schwartz left when she was seventeen.

“She got into the buggy … soaked to the skin and crying, shivering with cold.” Shaking his head, he turns away from me, pretends to look at something on the shelf behind him. “I didn’t know it at the time, but she was … ksoffa.” Intoxicated. “During the drive to her parents’ farm, she…” He ducks his head, struggles to find the words, fails. “One minute she was sitting there, crying. The next she … I don’t know what happened. She became unshiklich.” Improper.

It’s the last thing I expected my brother to say. The last kind of situation I would ever suspect him of getting caught up in. “She made a pass at you?” I ask.

My brother looks at me, but doesn’t hold my gaze. I see shame in his eyes. A hint of ruddiness in his cheeks. “She was … iemeschwarm.” Like a swarm of bees. “It was … unfitting. For a girl to act that way. It was crazy.”

Only then do I realize there’s more to the story. Jacob won’t meet my gaze. His discomfort—his shame—is tangible.

“I … was young. Weak. For a moment, the devil got ahold of me.” He sighs. “I pushed her out of the buggy. She … fell down. On the road. She was … furious and screaming. It was as if the devil had crawled into her head. I didn’t know this girl.”

Grimacing, he shakes his head. “I left her there. In the rain and dark. I went home. I told no one.” He sighs. “Only later did I find out she went to the bishop and told him … things that were not true.”

“What did she tell him?” I ask.

The ruddiness in his cheeks blooms. “She told the bishop that we were of one flesh.”

“Did you?”

“No.” He forces his gaze to mine, his mouth pulled into a hard line. “Katie, I was married. I would not—” He cuts the sentence short, as if the final word is too forbidden to be spoken aloud. “She lied. To the bishop. To anyone who would listen. Caused many problems.”

“What did the bishop do?”

“He came to me. I told him the truth.” The color in his cheeks darkens and spreads. “I confessed to him. For … what I did. What I felt.”

“He believed you?”

He gives a barely discernable nod. “He did not believe her, and rightfully so.”

“Who else knows what happened?”

“No one.”

I think about that a moment. “Do you know why she was upset and out walking so late and in the rain?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Do you know if there were any other incidents? With anyone else? Other men?”

“All I can tell you is that I never looked at her again. I never spoke to her. And I never, ever let myself be alone with her.” He shakes his head. “A few months later, she was gone.”

CHAPTER 18