Her Last Breath: A Kate Burkholder Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

with a hint of color at her checks. Her eyes are an unusual shade of gray and fringed with thick, sooty lashes. All without the benefit of cosmetics.
    She doesn’t go to the gym or get her hair colored at some fancy salon. Her clothes are homemade, and she buys her shoes at the Walmart in Millersburg. But when Mattie Borntrager walks into a room, people stop what they’re doing to look at her. It’s as if a light shines from within her. A light that cannot be doused even by insurmountable grief.
    I buy two coffees at the vending machine and take them to Mattie and the bishop, who are sitting on the sofa in the waiting room. A television mounted on the wall is tuned to a sitcom I’ve never watched and turned up too loud, but neither seems to notice.
    “I’ll see what I can find out,” I tell them.
    At the nurse’s station, I’m told David is listed in critical condition. He was taken to surgery after his blood pressure dropped. The physician believed he was bleeding internally—from an organ or perhaps a blood vessel that had been damaged—and went in to repair it.
    Back in the waiting room, I relay the news to Mattie. Closing her eyes, she leans forward, bows her head, her elbows on her knees. It isn’t until I notice her lips moving that I realize she’s praying. When you’re Amish, grief is a private affair. Generally speaking, they are stoic; their faith bolsters them in the face of life’s trials. But they are also human and some emotions are too powerful to be contained, even by something as intrinsic as faith.
    Speaking in Pennsylvania Dutch, Mattie asks if this could be some kind of misunderstanding. If the Englischers had somehow gotten their information wrong. She asks if perhaps God made a mistake. I don’t respond, and the bishop doesn’t look at me as he assures her God doesn’t make mistakes and that it’s not her place to question Him, but to accept His will.
    Bishop Troyer knows how I feel about the tenet of acceptance. When I was Amish and fate was unjust, I raged against it. I still do; it’s the way I’m wired. My inability to accept without question was one of many reasons I didn’t fit in. Mattie’s life stands in sharp contrast to my own. We may have been raised Amish, but we’ve lived in different worlds most of our lives. In light of what happened tonight, I wouldn’t blame her if she railed against the unfairness of fate or cursed God for allowing it to happen. Of course, she doesn’t do either of those things.
    I didn’t reveal to her that the accident was a hit-and-run. She deserves to know, and I’ll fill her in once I have more information, hopefully before word gets around town—or the rumors start flying. But I don’t see any point in adding to her misery tonight, especially when I have so few details.
    By the time I’m ready to leave the hospital, Mattie has fallen silent. She sits quietly next to Bishop Troyer, her head bowed, staring at the floor, gripping a tissue as if it’s her lifeline to the world. I leave her like that.
    As I walk through the doors of the Emergency entrance and head toward my Explorer, the weight of my connection to Mattie presses down on me with an almost physical force. I know all too well that when you’re a cop, any personal connection to a case is almost always a bad thing. Emotions cloud perceptions and judgments and have no place in police work. But as chief in a small town where everyone knows everyone, I don’t have the luxury of passing the buck to someone else.
    And even as I vow not to let my past friendship with Mattie affect my job, I know I’m vulnerable to my own loyalties and a past I’ve never been able to escape.

 
    CHAPTER 3
    The house wasn’t anything special. In fact, it was probably one of the most unspectacular pieces of real estate John Tomasetti had ever laid eyes on. His Realtor had referred to it as a “Victorian fixer-upper, heavy on the fixer-upper.” He didn’t look very amused when Tomasetti had