Search the Dark. Marta Perry

her little Mandy by way of compensation.

      “I thought I did.” Meredith shook her head. No point in evading the truth. “Yes, I loved him. I just didn’t have the courage to go with him.”

      “Maybe you did the best thing.” Rachel’s voice was gentle.

      “I doubt that Zach saw it that way. He ended up branded a thief because of me.” She sucked in a breath. “Now he’s back, and he’s...” She hesitated, trying to find the word to express what she’d sensed from him. “...bitter, I guess. I can’t blame him. I just wish I knew what to say to him.”

      “Maybe you need to tell him how sorry you are. For your sake, if not for his.” Rachel had a way of going to the emotional heart of the matter.

      “I’m not sure he’d want to hear it.” She saw again the dark intensity of his gaze.

      “If he’s not willing to forgive you, then that’s his right.” Rachel still had a typically Amish attitude toward right and wrong. “But you’ll have cleared the slate, and you can move on.”

      Meredith stared down into the amber liquid in her cup, as if she’d see an answer in its depths. “Suppose...suppose I find I don’t want to move on. What if I still have feelings for him?”

      Rachel didn’t speak for a moment. “Either way, isn’t it better to know the truth?”

      The truth. The words were an echo of what Sarah had said to her earlier. Life seemed easier, somehow, if you could settle for a polite fiction that glossed over the difficult facts. But some people would only be satisfied by the truth, and she had an uncomfortable feeling that she might be one of them.

      Rachel leaned back, sipping her tea, ready to talk or listen or forget, whatever Meredith needed. A wave of gratitude went through her. Maybe that was really the definition of a friend... Someone who could hear all the bad stuff, empathize and then let it slip away.

      She took a gulp of her tea, letting the hot liquid dissolve the lump that had formed in her throat.

      “I met with my cousin Sarah this afternoon,” she said, abruptly changing the subject. “Apparently rumors are going around that Aaron Mast killed himself.”

      Rachel’s clear blue eyes clouded. “Oh, no. We tried to be so careful not to let anyone know what we’d found.”

      “I’m beginning to think there’s no such thing as a secret in Deer Run,” Meredith said. “Sarah’s so upset about it. And Aaron’s parents, as well. She asked me to find out if it’s really true.”

      “I can understand how they feel. Suicide goes against everything the Amish believe. But how are we supposed to come up with something new after all this time?”

      Meredith appreciated the we. Rachel wouldn’t let her deal with the problem alone. “At this point, I don’t have a single idea. But I’d like to go through the scrapbook we kept that summer again. Would you mind if I picked it up?”

      She, Rachel and their friend Lainey Colton had kept a scrapbook of their imaginary world that summer, filled with their observations and the illustrations Lainey had drawn. Meredith had already been through it several dozen times, but perhaps there was something she’d missed.

      “I’ll drop it off for you,” Rachel said, still looking concerned. She glanced at her watch. “I didn’t realize how late it was getting. I hate to cut this short, but I told Mamm to send Mandy home at four-thirty.”

      “No problem. At the moment, I don’t have any idea of how to do what Sarah wants.” She rose, putting the mugs in the sink.

      “Maybe if we both think about it, we’ll come up with something.” Rachel touched her arm in silent sympathy. “As for the other...well, try not to worry too much about Zach. He’s not a boy any longer. He’s responsible for his own happiness.”

      Or unhappiness, Meredith added silently. Still, Zach hadn’t seemed unhappy. Just bitter.

      “Say hi to Mandy and your folks for me.” Meredith walked with her to the back porch. The breach between Rachel and her family over her leaving the Amish faith had healed, and Rachel considered herself fortunate to live only a stone’s throw from her parents’ farm on the far side of the covered bridge over the creek.

      Meredith stood for a moment on the back stoop, watching as Rachel cut across the intervening backyard. All of the backyards on this side of the road ended at the creek, which formed a boundary between the village on this side and the Amish farms on the other. Meredith kept her backyard mowed to just beyond the garage, as her father always had. A little farther on, a tangled border of raspberry bushes spanned the space to the trees that crowded along the creek banks.

      If she went down the path behind the garage, it would lead her to the small dam that emptied into a wide, inviting pool. The pool where Aaron Mast died.

      A breeze touched her and set the branches moving, a few leaves detaching themselves to flutter to the ground. The sun was just beginning to slip behind the mountain, but the shadows already lay deep under the trees around the pond.

      She rubbed her arms, unaccountably chilled. She hadn’t liked going to the dam since that summer. It had figured in too many bad dreams.

      She didn’t believe it was haunted by ghosts. That was nonsense. But it certainly was haunted by memories.

      CHAPTER TWO

      MARGO SLIPPED AWAY from the kitchen door, her terry-cloth slippers making no sound at all. But she wouldn’t be heard in any event. Meredith had gone out on the back porch with her friend. She’d never know her mother had been out of bed at all.

      A lady doesn’t eavesdrop. It wasn’t polite. But what was she to do when her own daughter kept secrets from her?

      Margo’s anger flickered as she made her way up the stairs, her hand on the railing for support. Really, Meredith should have better sense, but it certainly wasn’t her fault. No one could say that Margo hadn’t done her best to raise her only daughter properly.

      It was a mother’s duty to protect her child, even when that child was an unmarried woman of thirty. She winced, Meredith’s age reminding her uncomfortably of just how old she was. Still, her friends assured her she didn’t look a day over fifty.

      Margo padded into her bedroom, sending a satisfied glance at her image in the mirror. Like a Dresden doll, her father had said of her the evening she’d gone to her first dance. Certainly the boys had agreed. She’d had her pick of boyfriends. If only she hadn’t imagined herself in love with John King....

      She fluffed up her pillows and settled back against them, frowning a little. The issue now was Meredith, and how she could be protected from her weakness where Zachary Randal was concerned.

      Good riddance to bad rubbish—that was what people had said when he’d left town all those years ago. Margo had bathed in a glow of righteousness for weeks over her role in making his departure come about. Zach had left, and Meredith had been protected from him. Goodness only knew what might have happened if Margo hadn’t intervened when she did.

      She’d been so sure the incident was closed after all these years. Who could have imagined that Randal boy would dare to show his face in Deer Run again?

      Her breath came too quickly, and Margo forced herself to relax. She mustn’t upset herself or she’d bring on one of her attacks, and then she wouldn’t be able to do anything to save Meredith from herself.

      Meredith was still in danger of succumbing to Randal’s dubious attractions. Margo didn’t doubt that for a minute. There was simply something about one’s first love that blinded one.

      She glanced at the silver-framed photo of John that stood on the bedside table. John hadn’t liked having it taken—some silly hangover from his Amish upbringing. But she’d had no patience with that foolishness and had insisted.

      Enough of thinking about the past. She