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Annie had never gotten over several things in her life—but she’d learned to live with them. Stay busy. Don’t look too hard at it. She still hurt when she thought about Cookie Crandall, her friend who had disappeared a few years back.
    â€œWhere will you be going?” Annie asked, upbeat. Stay focused on the exciting parts.
    â€œNew York City,” Hannah said with a wide grin.
    Annie gulped her coffee. Talk about throwing lambs to the wolves. She didn’t think this was a good idea at all. But it wasn’t her business, Annie reminded herself. She was Hannah’s friend, not her mother. But she supposed she’d always feel protective over Hannah. After-all, they had almost lost Hannah to the same man who killed her friends.
    â€œI’ve gotten an internship with a Mennonite magazine. I’ll be writing mostly for their Web site, but I was promised a couple of articles in print,” she said. Her eyes took on a spark that Annie hadn’t seen in her in a long time. Maybe this was a good thing.
    â€œI had no idea you wanted to write,” Annie said.
    â€œI write mostly poetry. But my teachers all thought I had promise as a journalist. Of course, it won’t matter if I’m the best journalist in the world. Soon after my internship, I’m expected home to marry and settle in.”
    â€œWhat if you don’t want to?”
    â€œIt’s a risk we all take when we leave. Some return and some don’t. But what does your faith mean if it’s never tested?”
    â€œAh, that’s true, I suppose,” Annie said. Once again, Annie was struck by the simplicity and the profundity of Hannah’s faith. When Annie had been in the hospital, Hannah came in and prayed for her. Normally, Annie would scoff. She was a secular Jew and jaded when it came to spiritual issues. But she could not scoff at Hannah and her faith. It seemed pure.
    She suddenly was thinking of her Jewishness and how she’d never thought deeply about it until moving to Cumberland Creek, where hers was the only Jewish family. She had been thinking about making the trek on Saturdays to the Charlottesville Synagogue to give her boys more of a sense of their heritage.
    Annie tapped her fingers on the Formica table and reached for her coffee. “What about this marriage business? Anybody you’re interested in?”
    â€œIt’s already planned. I’ll be marrying John Bowman,” Hannah said, and looked away.
    â€œHow can it already be planned when you are off to New York?”
    â€œMy family and his family are certain I’ll be back and that I’ll make him a good wife.”
    â€œWow. That’s different. How do you feel about this?”
    She shrugged. “What do my feelings have to do with it? My family knows what’s best for me, right? We believe that love comes after marriage.”
    Love comes after marriage? Annie felt like she had stepped back to the 1600s. Surely not!
    â€œHaven’t your feelings for your husband deepened over the years?” Hannah asked.
    â€œWell, yes. But I fell madly in love with Mike when we met and then we made a life together. Of course our feelings deepened,” Annie said, thinking that sounded a lot more romantic than it actually was. Sometimes it was easy in marriages. Sometimes not. Sometimes you had to work to keep it together. Adam Bryant’s face flashed in her mind’s eye. Thank the universe she had not impulsively acted on her attraction to him.
    â€œBut look, if this is the way you do things and are happy with it, who am I to say?” Annie said, and smiled. “I have to get going. If I don’t see you before you leave, be careful. Take my number and call me if you need me. I mean, if there’s a phone around. . . .”
    Hannah laughed again. “Don’t worry, Annie. I’ll be fine. I’ll write to you.”
    But as Annie walked out of the bakery, she could not shrug the