Her gaze jerks to mine. I see knowledge in her eyes; she knows where I’m going with this. Fresh tears shimmer in their depths.

“You know Rachel had recently been with child before she died,” I tell her.

She glances past me at the lone customer, as if wishing he’d call her over and ask for something. But he hasn’t moved from his place in the booth or taken his eyes off the iPad.

When Mary finally speaks, her voice is so low I have to lean closer to hear. “Rachel and Marie were such pretty little girls. Sweet and funny and … exuberant.” She closes her eyes for a moment. “It broke my heart when Schrock took notice of them.

“Rachel was still a child. She’d just turned fifteen.” Pressing her hand to her chest, she lowers her voice. “A few weeks … after. She came to me one night, crying. Hysterical because she was ime familye weg.” In the family way.

“Schrock was the father?” I ask.

Mary looks away, drops the sponge in the sink. A shudder runs through her. She shakes her head. “Not Schrock.”

“Who?”

She lowers her voice. “The policeman. The big man with red hair.”

Suggs.

For the first time, the sheriff’s suicide makes sense. “He molested a fifteen-year-old girl.”

“Yes.”

I have no way of knowing exactly what happened. Suggs told me he was involved because of the sex. I wonder if Schrock knew about the sheriff’s weakness and offered up Rachel Esh to keep Suggs happy. To keep the sheriff quiet. But I know sometimes lines can be blurred.

I look at Mary. “Why did Rachel come to you?”

“She was going to run away. I offered to help her. So I gave her money, helped her plan it.”

“What else?”

Mary closes her eyes tightly. Tears squeeze between her lashes. “She didn’t want the baby. She asked me to … make it go away. She knew I used to be a midwife. I knew how to make her bleed.”

“You aborted the pregnancy?”

She nods. “She wasn’t so far along, you know. Just a few weeks. I thought it would be like a regular monthly episode for her.” She shrugs. “She was young enough so that she’d forget the pain of what we’d done and move on with her life. I wanted her to be happy. I wanted her to be away from here. Away from Schrock and Suggs and the rest of them.

“She left the next morning and I never saw her sweet face again.” She puts her hand over her mouth to smother a sob.