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scarcely remember the days when a headache pinned her down and time had seemed long and hung heavily around her, waiting for it to lift. Now there weren’t enough hours in the week for all that had to be done.
    But when the postman arrived and she bolted to meet him before her brother, hoping he wouldn’t notice how terribly interested she was in the mail, or when Bethany spoke of Tobe and dropped hints that she thought Naomi was sweet on him—those were the times when her stomach tightened into knots of stress and she had to chew Tums like they were M&Ms.
    She sighed and wondered how much longer this was going to last. She wasn’t cut out for living a secret life. It was all wrong.
    But it was so right too.

3

    N ow and then, Mim Schrock would stop by the Sisters’ House on her way home from school to help her older sister Bethany with the endless task of organizing the elderly sisters’ home. Bethany was quicker, but Mim was the one who hung about, who found excuses to have meaningless little conversations with the sisters, to try to find out more about the life they led in the white clapboard house with the lilac bushes and the tall hollyhocks that guarded the fence. It was a house filled with true stories from another time.
    Her favorite sister was Ella, the eldest, who had good days in which she remembered all kinds of interesting details about her childhood and told her amusing stories about the people of Stoney Ridge, and bad days when she lived in a fog and got questions all mixed up. Last week, Mim had asked Ella if the gout in her big toe had eased up at all.
    “Not bad,” Ella replied. “Though it got away after I tried to wring its neck.”
    Mim tilted her head, puzzled. “Wring whose neck?”
    Ella gave Mim a look as if she might be sun touched. “The chicken’s!”
    The sisters didn’t have any chickens.
    That was a bad day for Ella. Today, though, was a good day. Bethany had already finished organizing for the day and hurried home, but Mim stayed anyway to have a visit with Ella. She had all kinds of stories to report about the fourteenth cousin twice removed, who was soon to arrive and was, according to Ella, quite dashing and worldly and exciting. Mim often wondered if Ella had ever loved a man, if any of the five sisters had ever known the kind of love she felt for Danny Riehl.
    The afternoon was cold as Mim set off for the Bent N’ Dent to pick up a few things for her mother before she went home. The March sun shone weak in a pale sky, trying to break through the gray clouds to warm the air, then it would disappear again and Mim would feel a chill. “Come on, spring, hurry up,” she whispered aloud. For a while she walked behind an Amish couple she recognized from church. The woman walked serenely at her husband’s side, nodding to those he nodded to along the road, smiling at those he smiled at, head cocked to hear his every word. Even the sun seemed to cooperate and shone down on them, scattering and dispersing the clouds left over from the morning’s storm.
    That could be me with Danny Riehl , Mim thought with envy. And she watched until they crossed the street and disappeared down a long lane. Walking backward, still thinking about Danny Riehl, Mim tripped over something and fell hard onto her rump. The something proved itself to be the long legs of a red-haired boy of fourteen, fifteen tops, who sat with his back against a fence post, eyes closed, soaking in the sun.
    The boy’s eyes popped wide open, eyes that were as roundand brown as currant buns. Mim peered up at the boy: hair orange as a carrot peeping from beneath his black felt hat; a big smile that showed more spaces than teeth, and a face beslobbered with freckles, forehead to chin, ear to ear.
    The irritation, the sting of her bottom, and the red-hot scrapes on her palms loosened Mim’s tongue. “How dare you trip me!” she said as she picked herself up and brushed muck off her skirts. She gave the bow of her bonnet a