Page 58 of Fallen

“Fazayla see,” Ben snaps. Tell her.

I lean back in my chair, irritated that I’ve been misled, more than a little skeptical that I’m going to get the whole truth now.

“This deputy,” Loretta begins. “He thinks I know something about him. Something he doesn’t want me to talk about.”

“It has to do with Rachael Schwartz,” Ben cuts in, glaring at his wife. “Talk.”

Loretta takes a deep breath, like a child who doesn’t know how to swim contemplating a dive into a deep pool. “Fletcher did something bad to Rachael. A long time ago. When she was a teenager. She told me not to tell. Now…” She shrugs. “I think I need to tell you.”

I nod for her to continue.

“When Rachael was seventeen years old, right before she was baptized, she got a job as a stocker at Fox Pharmacy and bought a car with the money she earned. It was an old piece of junk that didn’t start half the time. But Rachael loved that car.” She catches herself smiling at the memory, ducks her head, embarrassed. “Leave it to Rachael to do something like that, right?”

The Amish woman sighs. “She never ‘officially’ got to have her rumspringa. Sometimes the girls don’t, you know. They sure didn’t want Rachael having that kind of freedom. That didn’t stop her. After she’d gone through die gemee nooch geh in preparation for her baptism, she was sneaking out almost every night. Drinking. Listening to music. Getting into trouble. My parents didn’t like me spending too much time with her.” Another smile, regretful and melancholy this time. “Maybe if I had…”

Her mouth tightens. “Toward the end of that summer, I didn’t see her for a while, which was odd. She was always coming over in that old car. To visit with me, you know. Then she stopped coming. A couple of weeks passed. When she finally came by …

“She took me out to the barn.” Loretta closes her eyes tightly, scrubs her hand over her face. “And she told me the most horrible story I ever heard.”

CHAPTER 25

Summer 2008

Rachael Schwartz was seventeen years old the night she learned how the world worked. When she understood that getting what you wanted boiled down to how much of yourself you were willing to betray.

She’d spent the day at the county fair with Loretta and what a blast it had been. At dusk, she’d ridden the Ferris wheel with the English boy she’d met last weekend. Later, she and Loretta had bought a six-pack of beer and she’d driven out to the Tuscarawas Bridge to hang out with the usual crew, a group of both English and Amish kids, and they spent the evening swimming and drinking beer.

It had been the most wonderful day of her life. No work. No worries. No one looking over her shoulder and telling her she was going to go to hell if she didn’t change her ways. She’d dropped Loretta off at ten and now Rachael was on her way home. She’d never felt so free. So alive. It was as if her heart couldn’t contain another ounce of happiness or else it would simply burst from her chest. How could God frown upon all the things that made life so wonderful?

Most Amish girls didn’t do much during their rumspringa. Not like the boys, anyway. Rachael had no intention of wasting what little time she had. The adults were pushing hard to get her baptized. Once that happened, she was sunk. Her parents didn’t approve of her running around. They didn’t approve of her friends or the choices she made. They didn’t approve of the job she’d taken at the drugstore in town. But it was the car that they simply couldn’t abide. Datt wouldn’t even let her drive it onto the property, forcing her to park it at the end of the lane. Rachael didn’t care. She wasn’t going to let that keep her from doing what she wanted to do. She was finally having fun. Why did they have to go and ruin it?

No one understood. Loretta tried, but she was a good girl through and through. Unlike Rachael, who’d never quite been able to follow the rules. Just yesterday Mrs. Yoder had called her hochmut. Who cared if she was prideful? When you were Amish, it seemed, no one approved of anything. Did God approve? She’d been wondering about that, too. Wondering if maybe the Amish had it all wrong. Maybe she’d just find her own way. If she had to leave the fold to do so, then so be it.

Tom Petty was belting out “Breakdown,” the music turned up loud enough to rattle the speakers. Rachael sang along, the windows down, the night air cool on her skin, her hair flying. How was it that she’d lived her entire life without rock and roll? And boys? And beer? Thinking about how that must seem to her Amish brethren, Rachael threw her head back and laughed out loud. She turned up the radio another notch, until the knob wouldn’t go any further, and she sang along with Petty, slapping her palms on the steering wheel. She was so embroiled in the music that she didn’t notice the headlights behind her until they were right on her tail. She was just a few miles from home when the red and blue lights flashed in her rearview mirror.

“Shit!”

She was still wearing her English clothes. A can of Budweiser sweating in the console. The empty one she’d finished before dropping off Loretta lay on the floor on the passenger side. She didn’t think she was drunk, but she’d heard about the local cops. If they caught a whiff of alcohol on your breath, they’d make you take the sobriety test. Even if you weren’t drunk, they’d haul you to jail.

Trying to remember if she had any gum, she slowed the car and pulled onto the shoulder. Quickly, she picked up the can of beer, looked around wildly, and shoved it into the opening between the console and seat, out of sight. A glance in the side-view mirror told her the cop had gotten out and was coming her way. Unfastening her seat belt, she lunged at the empty can on the floor and pushed it beneath the seat.

“Good evening.”

Gasping, Rachael turned in the seat to see a young Holmes County deputy standing outside her car, bent at the hip, looking in at her. “Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

“Can I see your driver’s license and proof of insurance please?” he asked.

He was young for a cop. Just a few years older than she was. Professional and clean shaven with buzz cut hair and the prettiest brown eyes she’d ever seen.

She dug into her bag for her driver’s license, then checked the glove compartment for her insurance card and handed both to him. “Was I speeding?”

He took her license and insurance card and studied both, taking his time answering. She’d turned down the radio and with half an ear listened to the Petty song end and Nirvana start in. Hopefully, he wouldn’t keep her too long.

“I clocked you going sixty-seven miles an hour,” he said. “Do you know what the speed limit is?”

She searched her mind for the right answer. Tell him the truth? That she knew the speed limit, but hadn’t been paying attention? Tell him she thought the speed limit was sixty-five? Maybe she could tell him she was late and rushing home so her parents wouldn’t be angry with her. Or that she badly had to use the restroom.

She looked up at him, saw that he was looking back at her, waiting for an answer, and she smiled. “I guess I didn’t realize I was going so fast.”