Though it’s a workday, downtown Roaring Springs is deserted. A leaden sky presses down with the weight of some massive boulder. As I make my way along Main Street, with its vacant storefronts and cracked sidewalks, a plastic bag catches in a whirlwind at the entrance to an alley. The scene is postapocalyptic and leaves me feeling isolated and alone.

There are two cars and a pickup truck parked outside The Dutch Kitchen. I lean the scooter bike against a parking meter at the curb and head inside for coffee and hopefully some conversation with Mary Gingerich.

A skinny man with shoulder-length hair and a scruffy beard nurses a cup of coffee at the counter. Two women dressed in jeans and sweatshirts are having breakfast in one of the booths. I feel their eyes on me as I start toward the counter. I don’t miss their not-so-covert comments about my clothes as I pass, and I try not to shake my head. I’ve just taken a seat on a stool when Mary comes through the swinging double doors leading to the kitchen.

“Looks like we might be in for some snow later,” I say in Pennsylvania Dutch.

Instead of responding, she turns her back, plunges her hands into soapy water and begins to wash coffee cups. “We get that a lot this time of year.”

The sense that something is off—that something has changed since we last spoke—strikes me immediately. When Mary and I initially met, she was welcoming and friendly and open. Yesterday, and now this morning, she won’t so much as look me in the eye.

“And Wei bischt du heit?” I ask. How are you today?

“Busy.” She turns to me, her expression cool and unsmiling. “Witt du wennich eppes zu ess?” Would you like something to eat?

“Just coffee,” I tell her.

She sets a steaming cup in front of me, but she doesn’t linger. Something cold scrapes up my back when I notice the bruise below her left eye. Amish women do not wear makeup. Evidently, she made an exception and stopped by the drugstore for concealer; I can see where she tried to cover the bruise. I suspect her eye will be fully black by the end of the day. When she turns to refill the man’s cup, I notice an abrasion the size of a quarter glowing angry and red on the side of her neck.

My first thought is that Abe hit her. But I’m a decent judge of character; I don’t think her husband is a wife beater. But if not Abe, then who? And why?

When she passes by me again, I reach out and touch her arm. “Mary, are you okay?”

She slants me a look. “I’m a klutz, is what I am. Ran into a cabinet door last night.”