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here any minute.”
    Tom had to raise his head slightly to see who had spoken. It was a familiar-looking young man sitting in a chair with a rosy-cheeked toddler on his lap. He thought there was the look of his brother, Matthew, in Levi’s features, but it hadbeen a long time since he’d seen his brother, and it wasn’t as though he had any photographs to keep the memories fresh.
    Not that he didn’t have clear memories of Matthew. The last night of Matthew’s life was emblazoned in his mind in ways that made him wish he could have stuffed it in a photo album and shoved it in a drawer somewhere, instead of having it lodged forever in his brain.
    “I am Levi Troyer,” the young man said. “We are pleased to see you come back to consciousness. My wife will be here, soon. She is a nurse practitioner and will know what to do with you.”
    “Thank you . . . Levi.”
    Tom knew exactly who Levi was. He had thought about that little boy ever since he had read about his existence in The Budget, the Amish newspaper printed in Sugarcreek, Ohio, which collected news from all over the world from various Amish and Mennonite church districts. Every now and then, a copy would catch up with him, and he would read every word. Each issue was a bittersweet experience, giving him a small window into what was going on back home. The Budget took the place of the letters from home that were never written or received.
    When he read about the birth of his brother’s child, he was surprised at first. Matthew had not mentioned a pregnancy to him. Chances were the pregnancy was still so new that even Matthew didn’t know. It was possible Claire also had not known then.
    For a long time after that, all he could think about was how hard it must have been for Claire to bear a child out of wedlock exactly nine months after a wedding that, thanks to him, had not taken place. Matthew had been killed around four o’clock on the morning of what was supposed to have been their wedding day. He and Claire would have said theirvows about noon. The girl had been only eight hours away from being a married woman.
    Pregnancy was tough on any woman. He remembered the morning sickness and swollen ankles his mother had endured with his little sister, Faye, but he hated to think about how hard an unwed pregnancy must have been on Claire, stranded as she was within the ultraconservative Swartzentruber sect. He hoped that, under the circumstances, their people had been understanding.
    Several years later, another copy of The Budget mentioned that she had married Abraham Shetler, who owned the farm next door to his father’s. This had been as great a surprise as the announcement that his brother had fathered a child.
    He had known Abraham, but he’d never particularly liked the man. It surprised him that Claire had chosen to marry him. Unless—and this thought made him feel half sick—she been offered no other marital option.
    He would have come home and married her himself if he’d had the slightest inkling that she would have considered it. The problem was, he knew she would never consent to live the life of a military wife, and there was no chance that he would ever go back to living the life of a Swartzentruber. He had loved Claire Keim as long as he could remember—but the thought of going back to being a Swartzentruber was unbearable. He’d seen and experienced too much in the intervening years. He could not possibly put himself back into that tightly closed box.
    After that, he didn’t read The Budget anymore.
    “Geili!” the little boy on Levi’s lap demanded. “Geili!”
    “You want another horsey ride already?” Levi chuckled. “You will give me leg cramps.”
    Levi sat the toddler astride his right leg and beganpretend-trotting as he sang a nursery rhyme that Tom had forgotten existed.
    Reide, reide Geili,
    halb Schtund de Meili,
    Geili schpringt da hivvel nuff
    Boomp—fallscht du nunner!
    Tom closed his eyes. It seemed like a hundred