Her Last Breath: A Kate Burkholder Novel

McIntosh apples to sell at the fruit stand down the road. I see the cherry tree upon which Sarah and Jacob and I gorged ourselves every summer. The sapling maple tree I helped my datt plant is now tall enough to shade the house.
    I pass by the house and the chicken coop looms into view. Jacob has replaced the wire and added a few concrete blocks at the base, probably to keep out the foxes and coyotes that roam the area at night. When I was a kid, caring for the chickens was my responsibility. I’d spend twenty minutes collecting eggs, changing the water, feeding, and raking the shit into an old dustpan for the compost pile. On a freezing January morning when I was eight years old, I came out to find feathers everywhere and all twenty chickens dead. It horrified me to realize I’d left the gate open and an animal had gotten into the coop during the night and torn them to shreds. It was a silly thing, but I’d become attached to the chickens. I had even named them. Frivolous, English names like Lulu and Bella and Madonna. When I saw what had been done to them I ran to the house, crying. My datt came out to assess the damage and quietly informed me, “A lazy sheep thinks its wool is heavy.” I knew what that meant and the words devastated me. It was his way of telling me I was lazy and all of those pretty hens were dead because of me. He bought more chickens at the auction the following weekend, only this time he assigned their care to my sister. I wasn’t allowed near the coop.
    Jacob is married to a nice Amish woman by the name of Irene, who’s little more than a stranger to me. She bore him two sons—Elam and James—who are six and seven years old, respectively. It pains me deeply that my nephews are strangers, too. I hate it that I don’t know my sister-in-law. That I’ve never laughed with her or helped her in the kitchen or listened while she grumbled about her husband. What I hate most is the chasm that exists between me and my brother. Not for the first time, I think of all the things Daniel Lapp stole from me that day. What he stole from all of us. And I hate him for it.
    I park near the sidewalk between the gravel parking area and the back of the house and shut down the engine. I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want to speak to Irene or even my brother, actually. I don’t want to see my nephews because I know it will only remind me how much I’ve let slip by and how little I’ve done to rectify it.
    “Katie?”
    I turn to see Jacob coming up the sidewalk from the barn. For an instant, he looks like the brother I so admired all those years ago. A tall boy with a quick grin, a protective nature, and muscles I longed to possess myself. In that instant, I want to launch myself at him, throw my arms around him, tell him I’ve missed him, and beg him to love me the way he used to because I need him in my life.
    Instead, I stand there and wait for him to reach me. Like all married Amish men, he wears a full beard. There’s more gray threaded through it than the last time I saw him. He’s wearing gray work trousers. A blue work shirt with black suspenders. Work boots. And a straw, flat-brimmed hat.
    He stops a few feet away from me. “What are you doing here?”
    I had almost expected him to greet me with a smile or good morning or a how-are-you. Instead, his eyes are hard and he’s looking at me as if I’m the tax man with my hand reaching for his mason jar.
    “We have a problem,” I tell him. “Do you have a few minutes?”
    I hear a noise behind me and turn to see my sister-in-law, Irene, standing on the back porch, shaking the dust from a rug. She makes eye contact with me and nods, but she doesn’t look happy to see me and makes no move to come over to greet me. I know my nephews won’t be coming out to bid their Englischer auntie hello. It isn’t the first time the Amish have let me know I’m a bad influence on their young.
    “Has something happened?” he asks.
    I didn’t expect him to invite me inside for coffee and pie. I don’t want to go inside, especially considering the conversation we’re about to have. Still, it hurts.
    “They found Daniel Lapp’s bones,” I tell him. “In the grain elevator down in Coshocton County.”
    Jacob is a stoic man. Even as a boy he rarely displayed his emotions. But some responses are too powerful to contain, and I see a ripple of shock go through his body.
    “Are you sure?” he asks.
    “I’m sure.”
    He looks toward the barn,