Read Seeds of Deception: A Kate Burkholder Short Story for Free Online Page B

and for a moment she thought she might actually be sick.
    “Katie?” He stopped a few feet away and quickly climbed down. “What happened to you? What—”
    She stood her ground as he ran over to her. He stopped a foot away from her, his eyes taking in her bloody knees and torn dress. Reaching for her hands, he looked at her palms, his expression anguished.
    “Who did this to you?” he asked.
    All Katie could think was that he hadn’t so much as looked at the bike, even though it lay completely demolished a few feet away. He didn’t care about the bike, she realized—he cared about her . She didn’t like crying in front of others. Overt demonstrations of emotion weren’t the Amish way. But after the argument with Mattie and the incident with Billy Marquart, her emotions boiled over.
    When she didn’t answer, he sighed. “Did someone hurt you?”
    She shook her head.
    They both knew someone had. She could tell by her brother’s expression that he knew the most serious wounds were on the inside where they couldn’t be seen.
    “Who did this?” he asked again.
    She swallowed the knot in her throat. “Billy Marquart.”
    Her brother looked at the bicycle lying in pieces on its side, and for the first time in recent memory, she saw anger in his eyes. “What happened?”
    She told him. When she finished the sobs came and she burst into tears. “I’ll pay for it,” she said. “I’ll … get a job. Get it fixed for you. I had no right to take it. I’m sorry.”
    Jacob knelt beside the bike. “Help me load it in the buggy, and then we’ll go home.”
    *   *   *
    By the time they arrived at the farm, Katie had reined in her emotions. When Mamm arrived home, she sat Katie in a kitchen chair and cleaned the bits of gravel from her scraped palms and knees. When Mamm asked what happened, Jacob told her the truth—Billy Marquart had pushed her off the bicycle. He didn’t go into detail, and Katie didn’t elaborate. Later, while Datt and Jacob repaired the bike, Katie asked her father if they should report Billy to the police. Datt didn’t even look away from his work as he uttered the phrase she’d heard so many times. This is an Amish matter.
    Katie wanted to think it was over. She could put her encounter with Billy Marquart and her involvement in the barn fire behind her. But she knew that wasn’t true. The argument she’d had with Mattie hurt so much more than the scrapes and bruises. She couldn’t bear to let things stand the way they’d left them, angry and unsettled. The problem was, she wouldn’t see Mattie again until worship in two weeks. How was she going to wait that long to set things straight?
    But the sense of urgency goading her wasn’t confined to her need to make things right with her friend. There was another facet to the situation she had yet to acknowledge—a problem she hadn’t yet fully defined in her own mind: Billy Marquart’s reaction to the lighter.
    That ain’t my damn lighter. Pink? Are you shitting me?
    Katie knew all too well that Billy was a bully and a liar and, as the Amish preferred to say, a druvvel-machah . But she also knew that sometimes, even liars told the truth. When she’d presented him with the lighter, he hadn’t hesitated or minced words when he’d told her it wasn’t his. In fact, he’d looked as surprised to see it as she’d been when she found it in the pocket of Mattie’s sweater. Katie had even offered it to him—a potential piece of evidence related to a crime for which he’d been arrested and charged—and yet he’d shown no interest. Not even to destroy it.
    She was plenty angry with Billy for what he’d done to her brother’s bike; if he was guilty of setting the fire, she had no problem seeing him punished for it. But Katie wasn’t so sure he was the guilty party. That left her with an even more troubling problem—and possibly threatened her friendship with Mattie.
    She didn’t want to believe Mattie had lied to her—lied to