She flipped open the cover. Only one blank check remained.

One check.

Jonas’s check.

She clutched the checkbook in rigid fingers. How much did she owe for the gazebo? He never quoted a price. Hours upon hours went into its construction and stacks upon stacks of beautiful wood. He deserved to be paid.

Unzipping a pocket in her backpack, she found a pen and scribbled the check for the balance of her radio winnings. She stuffed it in an envelope and shoved it into her backpack with her wallet and the pen. Grabbing her keys, she tore outside into the rain.

The motor whined and sputtered and finally turned over. Blindly, she reversed down the driveway—she had zero vision through the tiny back window—but she trusted her memory to get her safely on the road. Once on the street and pointed in the right direction, she could still only see a few yards ahead. She nudged the gas pedal and eased the clutch.

Even at a crawl, the van hydroplaned every mile of the way. She glided through the intersection of Route 45, narrowly missing an oncoming car shrouded in torrents. The unyielding steering wheel refused to cooperate. Battling to stay in her lane, she gritted her teeth and peered into the opaque night.

Her memory flashed to her first drive to the farm that golden June afternoon. How giddy and frightened she’d been. A lump of fear lodged in her chest now but for entirely different reasons too numerous to consider.

Rounding the bend by Esther King’s farm stand, she suddenly lost all vision in the high beams of an oncoming truck. Pulse racing, she clamped her bottom lip and tasted blood. The truck screamed by, dousing the windshield and jarring the world in its wake.

Seconds later, another driver laid on his horn and shot around from behind, taillights instantly snuffed by the storm.

She stepped on the brakes and leaned hard into the steering wheel, just barely managing the turn off the highway.

With every curve in the road, the trees leaned farther, and the rain pelted harder as the van wrested away her control. The headlights were pinpricks in a monstrous void. Where was the lane? Was she beyond the new Mennonite church and Stoltzfus’s quilt shop? Was she even on Old Cowan Road?

She was on the verge of giving up when her headlights caught the railing of the bridge over Buffalo Creek. Stomping on the brake pedal, she wrenched the wheel. The tires shrieked, and she swerved onto the shoulder. Branches lashed the windshield and gouged the sides of the van. She gasped and pulled the wheel in the other direction with all her might.