Tessa shrugged in wordless agony. With the speed of continental drift, Nora revolved to face her brother.

For one excruciating moment, all three stood in a shocked standoff.

Jonas shifted on the stairs, and the board beneath him creaked.

Nora uttered something quick and quiet in their language.

Though Tessa didn’t understand a single syllable, she felt the malice in Nora’s tone like a gut punch.

Jonas’s eyes flashed, and he clenched the newel post with white fingers. “Tessa is a guest in my home. You will do us both the respect of speaking English.”

Nora stormed into the living room, screeching in Pennsylvania Dutch. With a gasping breath, she broke off and seized the armchair. At her feet, Die Botschaft lay open where Tessa dropped it just hours—and a lifetime—before.

Jonas stepped into the room, shook his head just once, and crossed his arms over his chest.

Compared to his sister, he was a mountain of a man. If anything, Nora looked smaller than the last time Tessa saw her, as if bitterness was literally eating away at her body.

Nora shoved aside the chair and advanced on her brother. Weeks of repressed rage spewed in guttural German. In a flash, she raised her arm as if to strike him.

Tessa drew in a sharp breath.

Lightning quick, Jonas caught his sister’s hand. “Think of your daughter,” he said through a rigid jaw. “If you raise your hand to me again, it is you I will ban from this house.”

Nora yanked away her arm and turned on Tessa. “She has shamed you and shamed the memory of your wife.”

Something hard glanced off Tessa’s ankle bone and bounced under the table. She cringed and jerked up her foot. The cherry pitter. She must have dropped it. She sank to her knees and groped for it beneath the kitchen table.

Nora resumed shrieking.

Whether in English or German, Tessa couldn’t tell. From below, the woman’s twisted face loomed horribly, raining spittle and hatred onto the floor. Tessa’s eyes burned. She’d done nothing wrong, yet Nora made her feel dirty. Would anyone notice if she just curled up under the table? Better yet, could she sneak out the door and flee into the woods?

She swung her gaze toward the front entrance, but her escape was blocked by Rebecca’s small form.

Like her mother, the girl was wrapped head to foot in traveling clothes. Standing just inside the doorway, she clutched a small suitcase in one hand.

But something was very wrong. Always bright and alert, Rebecca stared, dead-eyed and pinch-faced, unmoving but for a gentle sway side to side. The bag slipped from her grasp, and she raised limp arms to her head. Her body listed, as if at any moment she might topple under the weight of her garb.

She struggled to form a word. “Mamm…”