I choose my next words with care. “I met your eldest son earlier,” I tell her. “Levi.”

“Do not speak of him.” She raises her hand as if to prevent me from continuing, as if she already knows what I’m going to say.

I don’t stop. Instead, I take a step closer and lower my voice. “He’s the spitting image of Leroy Nolt. The eyes. His smile.”

“No…”

“Levi is Leroy’s son. You were pregnant with Leroy’s child when you married Jeramy.”

“That’s not true.” Turning away, she moves closer to the wide door at the back of the barn.

I follow, hoping she doesn’t intend to jump. She’s armed with a knife. I have my sidearm, but I know from experience her frame of mind is such that it won’t matter. You can’t threaten someone with deadly force when they want to die.

“Abigail,” I say softly, “Tell me what happened to Leroy.”

She stops at the door that looks out over the pens and the overgrown field beyond and takes a deep breath. My attention is honed on Abigail, but I’m ever aware of the hogs below. Several of the animals—the boars—are huge and probably weigh in at three or four hundred pounds. They have a feral, intelligent look about them. Some of the smaller animals are wallowing in a mudhole in the corner of the enclosure. Others, having noticed us, are standing below the door, their beady eyes trained on us as if expecting us to drop feed to them.

“Did Jeramy do something to him?” I ask. “Was he there the day Leroy was killed? Is that why you poisoned him?”

Her face screws up. “I can’t speak of it.”

“What about your parents? Were they involved? Do they know what happened? Is that why you tried to poison them?”

“They murdered him.” Her voice is so low, I have to lean close to make out the words.

“What did they do to him?”

“They hated him.” She sucks in air as if coming up for a breath after a long underwater dive. “Because of me. Because I loved him.”

“What happened to Leroy?”

“We were in love. The kind of love a young girl’s heart can barely contain. We’d been meeting secretly for weeks. We were going to run away and be married. Have children. A happy life together.” Her eyes glaze, and I know she’s riding her memories back to the past. “We planned it for weeks, and I was so happy. I wanted to tell everyone, but of course I couldn’t say a word. You see, Leroy was New Order Mennonite. We’re Swartzentruber.” She sighs. “My datt’s hatred for Leroy was an ugly thing. Monstrous. I think on some level, Datt knew I would choose Leroy over him. Over the church.”

“What did he do?”