Matt jerked her back out of Isaacs grasp, swearing viciously under his breath. He turned her to survey the damage her father had done, cradling her face gently in his trembling hands. He wiped a bead of blood from her lip with his thumb, fighting the urge to kiss it away.
“I'll be all right,” she whispered, her eyes huge with pleading. “Please, Matt, don't make it worse.”
“How the hell could I make it any worse than this?” he asked, his voice shaking. He looked up at Isaac with loathing. “You pack quite a punch for a pacifist. Get out of here. Nobody abuses women in front of me, no matter how righteous and pious they think they are. Leave. Now.”
“Come, Sarah,” Isaac commanded as if she were a dog to be ordered about. He showed no open remorse for what he'd done, but his expression had been wiped clean of anger and rage and was now blank.
Sarah started toward him, and again Matt held her back.
“Matt,” she said softly, glancing up at him. “It's all right.”
His eyes widened incredulously. “It s not all right! You're a grown woman. He can't come here and knock you around and drag you off by the hair! He doesn't have any say in your life.”
“He is my father.”
“That doesn't give him the right—”
“Matt.” Ingrid's voice drew his attention to the porch, where his sister had come to stand in the open doorway with her basset hound on her feet, and her arms crossed against the chill of the early evening. Her expression was both strained and guarded as she looked at him. “Let it go. Sarah knows what she's doing.”
He worked his jaw, fighting the urge to argue with her. Deep inside he couldn't escape the feeling that he was Sarah's protector, her knight in shining armor ready to slay any dragon for her. Some protector, he thought derisively. It was because of him her father had been driven to strike her. It was because of him she may be in serious trouble with her people. Once again he had managed to hurt her when his greatest desire was to love her and keep her from harm. Maybe she was right in saying he should go back to his world. It was becoming painfully clear that their separate worlds couldn't mix.
“Please, Matt,” she whispered tremulously, tears spilling past her lashes and down her cheeks. “Please.”
She was asking him to let her go. She'd told him she'd known all along their time together would be brief. He had fought the idea just as he had wanted to fight any threat to Sarah herself. He wanted to fight it still, but she was asking him to let go. If he followed his heart and fought for her, he would only end up destroying her. The selfish man inside him argued that they would still have each other and the love that had blossomed so quickly and so brilliantly between them. But he knew deep down that the cost would be too great. He couldn't force her to change, couldn't ask her to give up her family and her faith and her way of life. She wasn't willing to make that sacrifice for him and if he forced her to, how could their love possibly survive?
It took a terrible effort, but he pulledhis hand away from Sarah's arm and stepped back, conceding the battle to Isaac Maust. Sarah looked up at him with an expression that tore his heart in two.
“I'm sorry,” she said, the words barely audible. I'm so sony I hurt you.”
Matt felt the pressure of tears behind his own eyes as he looked at hen committing to memory her every feature. He reached out and brushed a drop of moisture from the crest of her cheek, “just don't be sorry you loved me,” he said, then turned and walked away, limping heavily and feeling old and beaten.
She was gone in a matter of minutes. Matt sat on a decorative iron bench beneath a maple tree on the far side of the yard and watched the black buggy pull out, white reflective tape glowing eerily in the dark as it made its way down the road. The last rays of the sunset had faded to black, a color appropriate for mourning, Matt thought. He looked out at the millions of stars that dotted the sky like fairy dust, his gaze fastening on the brightest.
Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight …
He shook his head in amazement at the nursery rhyme that had popped into his head. He hadn't experienced a sense of wonder in a long, long time. For months now he'd felt as aged and cynical as the world itself—until Sarah had come into his life. In her quiet way she had awakened in him an appreciation for the simple beauty of the world around him. Now she was gone and all the joy of that beauty had gone with her.
Blossom came trotting across the yard, nose to the ground. She made a beeline to him, sniffed his shoes, and plopped down in front of him. Her somber, woebegone expression was clear to him thanks to the faint silver glow of the yard light that stood between the house and the barn.
“I feel worse than you look,” he murmured.
The hound whined and lay her head on her paws in apparent sympathy.
Ingrid emerged from the shadows of the house and came to sit beside him on the bench with his leather jacket draped across her lap.
“You shouldn't let yourself get a chill, Dr. Thome,” she said with absolutely no censure in her voice.
Matt didn't take the jacket, nor did he say anything for a long while. He just sat there absorbing his sister's silent comfort, staring out at the night and marveling at the quiet of it.
“Do you think she'll make them understand?” he asked.
“I don't know. They'll forgive her if she asks for it. They're very forgiving people.”
“What about that thing you told me, that mide thing.”
“The Meidung. Shunning is serious business for the unrepentant. It might not come to that. Like I said, they're gentle, forgiving people.”
Matt gave a harsh laugh. “Her father doesn't seem very forgiving.”
“Isaac is a hard man, almost bitter for some reason. He's very strong in the Unserem weg, the old ways. Very strict.”
“I could have killed him for hitting her.”
“I know”
They sat in silence for another few minutes. Ingrid leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. She took one of his hands in hers and squeezed it tight. “I'm sorry, Matt.”
So am I, he thought, hurting in a way no drug could ease.
“Is there anything I can do to help her?” he asked.
“Stay out of it. They won't tolerate interference, especially not from you. Make a clean break. Get on with your life.”
What life? a lonely voice asked inside him.
Realistically, he knew he would take In-grid's advice. Realistically, he knew he would go back to work, and in a few months his brief stay here and his brief affair with a young Amish woman would be a memory, the awful pain dulled by the anesthetic effects of time. Realistically, he knew all of these things, but in his heart he couldn't accept any of it at the moment. In his heart he knew only that he'd found something bright and pure that had lighted his life when everything had seemed bleak and dingy, and now that special something had been snatched away from him, wrenched from his grasp even sooner than he had feared. In his heart he knew only that he felt more alone than he had ever felt before.
He wondered if Sarah was feeling the same way.
He looked out at the starlit sky and listened to the breeze rattle the skeletal cornstalks and the dried leaves in the trees. He felt the autumn chill bite into his bones, and he thought about Sarah in the house down the road.
Dorit be sorry you loved me.…
“Deacon Lapp suggested a visit to the Ohio relatives,” Isaac said. “A period for you to pray and reflect, to heal the soul.”