She dreamed of that night. Even after all this time, and so many years spent trying to forget, it was as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. The absolute dark of an Amish farm. A drug-fueled plot that had gone horribly wrong. The spill of innocent blood. It was a night in which a series of bad decisions had led to more bad decisions and culminated in a nightmare. People she thought she’d known turned into strangers she wished she’d never met.
Six people had died because of them. An Amish mother and father. Four innocent children. A teenaged boy had been left alone, to fend for himself. But those weren’t the only tragedies that night. Four other lives had been irrevocably changed. Promising young lives wrecked by unfathomable guilt and secrets they would have to live with forever.
Those secrets had destroyed her life, stolen her innocence, and any semblance of happiness or hope for the future. In the weeks that followed, she’d even found herself questioning whether she wanted to remain on this earth. But somehow she’d gotten through those dark days. She’d graduated from high school. Gone to college. Gotten married and had children. After the divorce and with the kids grown, she’d thrown herself into her art and opened the gallery. Through it all, Jules had never found happiness. She knew something about herself she couldn’t live with. It was like living with a person you hated—someone you could never trust nor leave.
Murderer.
Jules woke with a start, the word a whisper in her ear, her heart pounding, her body slicked with sweat. Sitting up, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and put her face in her hands. “Damn you,” she muttered, not exactly sure whom she was cursing. Herself. Or maybe the others.
She grabbed her robe off the foot of the bed and worked it over her shoulders as she padded to the kitchen. Like so many nights before, she went to the refrigerator for the bottle of chardonnay she kept in the door for such occasions. Mild annoyance rippled through her when the fridge light didn’t come on, but she knew by heart where to find the bottle. The wine didn’t kill the pain; nothing could do that. But it would get her through the night.
In the murky light coming through the window above the sink, she uncorked the wine, snagged a stemmed glass from the cupboard, and poured. She stood at the counter and drank it down without stopping. She poured a second glass and recorked the bottle. A glance at the wall clock told her the electricity had gone out at 3 A.M. Vaguely, she wondered if any of the others were awake. If they were as frightened and tortured as she was. If they ever considered doing anything about it.
Goddamn them.
Back at the refrigerator, she tugged open the door and replaced the bottle. Quickly, she drained her glass, then turned to take it to the sink. Ice slinked through her body when she noticed that the window was open. She stood there, frozen in place, trying to make sense of it even as she realized the screen had been removed. It was the only window she ever opened. It faced the pretty backyard and sometimes in the morning, she’d stand at the sink drinking coffee and watch the squirrels and the birds and think about all the things that might have been.
A faint sound—a shoe against tile—spun her around. Adrenaline burst in her midsection when she saw the woman standing in the kitchen doorway. She discerned the silhouette of an Amish dress. A winter head covering shadowed her face. Still, Jules thought she recognized her. That image of her had been burned into her memory for thirty-five years.
“But … how can it be you?” she whispered in a voice that was bizarrely calm, considering the circumstances. “I saw you die.”
Even in the meager light she could see that the woman’s expression was devoid of emotion. Eyes as dead and blank as a mannequin’s. Dead like me, she thought vaguely.
Her eyes never left Jules as she entered the kitchen. “You remember me.”
“Every day of my life.” Jules knew it was crazy, but she wanted to throw herself at the woman and beg her for forgiveness. “If I could change what happened, I would.”
The woman stared at her.
Jules told herself this couldn’t be happening. Prolonged stress could do strange things to one’s mental health, after all. But as impossible as it was, she knew this was no hallucination.
“I’m sorry for what they did,” she said.
“For what they did?” There was something cruel in the twist of her mouth. “Or for what you didn’t do?”
“I’m so sorry.” Jules didn’t realize she was crying until her voice revealed it. She’d never believed in ghosts, but knew she was seeing one now. Deep inside, she knew she wouldn’t survive the encounter. “What do you want? Why are you here?”
“You know why I’m here. Dale Michaels knew.”
A landslide of fear tumbled through Jules at the mention of Dale. Then she spotted the knife the Amish woman held at her side—the butcher knife from Jules’s own kitchen—and her heart went wild in her chest. She thought of her ex-husband’s pistol on the night table beside her bed, but she knew she wouldn’t reach it before that blade found its mark in her back.
“I’m sorry!” she cried. “All of us are sorry. Please don’t hurt me!”