A moth circled in the beam from her flashlight. The shed housed only the phone, the stool, and a narrow telephone table upon which rested a spiral-bound notebook. She shoved the card into her pocket and opened the book. Every call was meticulously logged: Stoltzfus. King. Yoder. Lapp. Rishel. She traced a finger over Jonas’s tidy lettering. He had an architect’s hand, square and regular.

An ear-splitting ding-a-ling rang like a phantom phone calling from 1975.

She jumped and grabbed the receiver. It thudded her jaw hard enough to leave a mark.

He finished a muffled conversation with a laugh. “Dr. Bruce.”

Resolve weakening, she clutched the stool with rigid fingers. “Richard?”

The line went silent.

“Richard, are you there?”

“What do you want?”

What she wanted was escape—to go back in time to lemon-scented bathwater and blueberry pie in the hours before Nora came home. What did she want? Where to begin? “I…I know I have no right to call—”

“I’m rather in the middle of something.”

His voice was steel. She’d need a blowtorch to melt him. Still, she had to try. “Please. I need your help.”

“Why didn’t you call my cell? Are you all right?” He fired questions without waiting for a reply.

“I’m fine. It’s a little girl.” Rebecca’s face, sunken and sallow, flashed in her mind. Her throat tightened. “She’s sick—something’s very wrong, and I don’t know how to help. Could you possibly come see her?”

“Are you serious, Tessa?”

His tone was so weighted with disgust she almost dropped the phone. She grabbed the spiral cord and pulled it against her belly.

“I’m not a pediatrician. Have the kid’s mom take her to the ER if she’s concerned.”

How do you rebuild a bridge and cross it at the same time? She coiled the cord around one finger until the tip went white. One board at a time and without looking down. “The girl’s Amish. Her mother won’t leave the house.” Richard’s breath rasped in her ear, quick and tight. She licked dry lips and pressed on. “She refuses to take her daughter to the hospital.”

The line went silent. She could almost feel the battle Richard waged in his heart—his pride versus his responsibility. Please let the physician win.

He gave a sharp sniff. “What are her symptoms?”

He spoke in his clinical voice, not his angry voice. She had a chance. “She has an incredibly high fever—”

“How high?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have a thermometer—”

“Anything else? Give her ibuprofen.”

Her pulse throbbed in her fingertip, and she loosened the cord. “Richard, her skin is on fire. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

“Any other symptoms?”

Dr. Bruce didn’t respond to hyperbole. He needed facts. She shut off the valve of emotion and concentrated, ticking off Rebecca’s symptoms. “She vomited—twice. Her head hurts, and she’s confused. It’s weird—she keeps covering her eyes with her hands, and she thought she saw her father but he—”

“Is anyone in the house sick?”