She shuddered. Whenever a logging truck barreled by on the highway, she gripped the wheel and hugged the berm. The idea of such a massive piece of machinery hitting a horse-drawn buggy from behind? A memory flashed of the mound on the Manhattan street. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. The scene was too brutal to imagine.

Through the lens of tragedy, the Rishel family portrait sharpened. She understood Nora’s bitterness and why a cloud sometimes shrouded Jonas’s features in sorrow. But what of everyone else? “Where was Samuel? And your other brothers? Couldn’t they…?”

He shook his head. “My father died suddenly, not long after Elizabeth and I were married. The farm should have gone to Micah as the youngest, but my mother took the boys and went to her sister in Ohio. They never came back. Neither is farming any more. Not enough land to be had. Micah makes hats, and Samuel does carpentry and woodworking.” He gave a sideways smile. “Gazebos. Now Nora stands market Wednesdays, and I build.”

She shifted closer, not quite daring to touch him. “You build beautifully.”

“The garden gate was a birthday gift for my wife.” He shrugged and sighed. “Nora disapproved of it even then. Too showy. Now, I think she hates it. These days she seems only to hate. She has withdrawn. The community is concerned but tolerant…for now. Sometimes, I think her life would be better if she left—if we all left.”

Would he really leave Green Ridge? Imagining never seeing him again sapped green from the grass and dulled the sky. She took the little, gray stone from the dam. On one side was a smooth, oval indentation that fit her thumb like she rubbed it there. “Where would you go?”

He forced a sigh and stood. “I don’t know.” In a rush, he clambered out of the water and threw himself onto the quilt.

She drove a car. She was part of the society that murdered his family. Stomach knotted, she followed and sat beside him. “I’m so sorry.”

“The apology isn’t yours to make.”

His tone was kind but firm. She worried the stone between her fingers. He was right. Guilt was easy. She pushed aside hers and tried to put herself in Nora’s shoes. Forgiveness was the real challenge.

“Like me, you cannot be asked to bear the burden of your community,” he went on.

“Is that how you feel?”