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a girl with a GPS, she quickly replied. She laughed, unable to help herself. Better to laugh than to weep senselessly.
    Then, since she was in texting mode again, she sent one back to Jim: Looks like I might be on a wild goose chase here.
    Quickly, Jim replied. How are you doing?
    I’m wiped out. But my Amish friend and I haven’t decided what to do yet. Doubt we’ll turn around and drive right back.
    Well, take it easy, he responded. Hope things work out there.
    Thanx.
    She waited, feeling a little surprised that she hoped he’d write again. But more than five minutes passed and his texts had ceased. Glancing back down the road, she estimated she’d already walked a good half mile from Susan Kempf’s farmhouse. Was Grace getting caught up on her mom’s whereabouts to her satisfaction? Heather hoped so... wanting something good to come of this trip. For Grace’s sake.
    Pushing her phone into her jeans pocket, she reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a hair binder. She gathered her thick hair into a ponytail and secured it, feeling nearly childlike as she relished the rolling landscape, utterly aware of the ticking of insects on all sides.
    Lettie stared at the floral psalm calendar and silently counted the days till the summer solstice – June twenty-first. Oh, so many hot and humid days ahead. As a girl, summertime had always seemed long, back when June and July lingered like a tomato slow to ripen.
    Now it was nearly Memorial Day, the official start of summer for most folk. And here she was in Nappanee, Indiana, at Cousin Hallie Troyer’s, still far from Bird-in-Hand. She’d heard Hallie’s jam or jelly customer leave by way of the wheezing screen door only a few minutes ago. Hallie’s strawberries had come on much earlier than usual. “A good thing for business,” Hallie had told her last evening, when Lettie first arrived.
    Having relaxed in her room following the noon meal, Lettie felt it was time to venture downstairs to visit some more. She stepped into the hallway, enjoying the feel of the well-worn runner against her bare feet. There was only one more important thing to accomplish before she could locate her daughter.
    One more necessary thing...
    In her letter to Lettie inviting her to come, Cousin Hallie had seemed rather elated at the prospect of a visit. That and full of questions. It was time to fess up, though not fully; Lettie was wiser than that. She would not share with Hallie the things she’d so openly told Susan while in Baltic. As fond as she was of sweet Hallie, Lettie felt sure it was best to keep mum about her search for her lost child. A faraway stranger-turned-friend was one thing, but revealing all of this to such a close cousin? That sort of connection had a way of divulging such news against one’s hopes... and better judgment, too.
    She closed her eyes and pondered a line from the Lord’s Prayer. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Indeed, Lettie had much to be forgiven for.
    Creeping down the long staircase, she was careful to grip the handrail. She’d slipped before – slipped and fallen – on steps this steep back in Kidron while she and Mamm were helping her father’s ailing aunt, when she was expecting her first baby. When my pregnancy was supposedly a secret. But her great-aunt, ill and elderly as she was, had put it together when Mamm insisted Lettie rest on the sofa, urging her to get off her feet “right quick.” Mamm had been worried – even seemingly convinced – that Lettie would miscarry after her fall.
    The secret... ended by a mere accident. Even Mamm had not wished for that. Sighing, Lettie dismissed the melancholy musings. She was plagued enough by nighttime worries without allowing such thoughts during the day.
    Downstairs, she made her way through the kitchen and found Hallie in the front room, sitting near the widest window, embroidering a pillowcase, her reading glasses perched halfway down the bridge of her nose. A rose-shaped