Finding Rose

Book 2: Amish Rose

by Dana Becker

Genres: Amish & Mennonite; Christian Fiction; Christian Romance

Synopsis

In this captivating follow-up to Searching for Rose, author Dana Becker tells the tale of a young woman who finds refuge from a dark past in Pennsylvania Amish country. But as she strives to create a new life, and possibly a new love, she finds her escape from danger has only just begun . . .

In a bucolic cabin in Pennsylvania Amish country, Rose lives with her older sister, April, and
brother-in-law, Joseph. It’s a blessedly quiet life, far from the trauma of Rose’s past, a nightmare that began with a mob kidnapping and ended with Rose becoming brainwashed by a cult—until April tracked her down and rescued her. Now, the daily rhythms of Joseph’s Amish community have become part of Rose’s healing process, as has her growing attachment to charismatic, protective Micah. But as Rose struggles to trust again, there are new developments in the search for her kidnapper . . .
 
As far as Rose is concerned, she’s told the authorities all she knows and she wants, needs, to be left alone. But when the police reveal a shocking new lead in the case, it flips a switch within Rose. Her experiences in captivity triggered a clairvoyant ability—a gift she finds terrifying, but that the police are determined to use in their investigation. Despite her own fears and her family’s wishes, Rose joins the search for a madman. Now she will risk finding out if the ghosts of the past will shut her down forever—or give her new strength and the faith to forge a new future . . .  

“The combination of Amish romance and suspense feels fresh.”
—Publishers Weekly on Searching for Rose

 

Release date: May 24, 2022

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

Rose lay in bed, perfectly still. Sometimes at night, at the end of a long, exhausting day on the farm, her body would sink into a grateful sleep, but her eyes remained wide open. There would be images and voices so vivid, they could only be real. Images whose undeniable realness, however, evaporated the moment she found herself waking up. Only to realize it was all a dream.

But this time it wasn’t. She lay in bed, eyes wide open, and truly awake. These sounds were real. They had to be. They were coming from outside her window. The dog was barking. There was a train in the distance. This wasn’t a dream.

She rolled out of bed, crouched by the window, and peeked out from the bottom corner of the window, careful to keep her head outside the frame. Across the way, she saw the two small windows of the barn squinting back at her like dark, empty eyes. The buggy stood next to the barn door, in its usual spot. But the barn door was half-open, which was not usual. In front of the barn, the yard was empty. But it was a shimmering, charged emptiness, a vibrating darkness.

Something ran by. Rose heard the rapid footsteps. She saw a blur. Now the dog was barking even louder. She raised her head a bit. She needed both eyes. She was barely breathing or blinking. She didn’t want to miss it, whatever it was. Something was out there. Someone. There were nights, and even times during the day, when she was certain he was near. Sometimes, in the fields, she was certain that she was being watched. She could feel it in her body. In her joints. In the little hairs on the back of her neck.

She’d moved out to this farm in the middle of Amish country, west of Lancaster, with April and Joseph, her sister and her brother-in-law, to heal. She would learn the farm life. She would live on country time. She would help April open her new restaurant. She would build a new world away from her old life in Philly. And slowly it was working. But there were moments of backsliding, of relapse. Of utter fear. The healing was slow, but the backsliding . . . that happened rapidly, and without warning, like an ambush. One moment the slow comforts of health buoyed her, and the next, she was suddenly thrown into the middle of a foaming, frigid sea, thrashing about, choking on salt water, drowning. At other times, the experience was something else altogether, something beyond even fear.

She saw the boot first. For one brief second it flashed next to the barn door, and then was gone. But she saw it. Her heart raced. Someone was in there.

The feelings suddenly took over. The feelings she never told anyone about. The feelings she barely admitted to herself.

It’s him, she thought.

And the feeling that came with that thought wasn’t fear or dread or horror. Rather, it was the feeling that lurked on the other side of fear; it was where fear leaves you when it is done with you. It was agitation and excitement. It was the painful pleasure of anticipation. And with it, a spiral of irrational thoughts. He’s come for me. He promised he would, and now he’s making good on it. They say he’s evil. But I know the truth. He’s special. He sees me for who I am. He’ll bring me back to the compound. Back to the Community. Back home.

For a moment Rose savored these secret thoughts, savored this moment, allowed her heart to clench with anticipation at the thought that she would be restored to the good graces of Whitey. She stood up and set herself squarely in the middle of the window, to see better. Who cared if he saw her? Rose wanted to be seen. She stared out the window. She bored her eyes into that barn door, trying to will it open, to reveal herself to him.

I’m here, she whispered in the dark.

She considered turning around, running downstairs, and flying out the front door. Running to him and taking nothing with her. Begging for his forgiveness, begging to be brought back home.

“Rose.”

She jumped and bumped her head against the window frame.

“Didn’t mean to startle you, hon,” April said, standing behind her, leaning against the doorpost.

“It’s okay,” Rose said over her shoulder, but still looking outside.

Outside, the fullness of the dark had drained away. It no longer shimmered. Now it just seemed empty and quiet in the yard. And Rose’s secret thoughts evaporated, too. For a brief, lucid second, she felt guilty about her excitement to see Whitey again. But just as quickly the guilt was also gone—forgotten, as though it, and the thoughts that caused it, had never existed to begin with. It was as if she had just woken up and immediately forgotten the dream she was having. Seeing her sister’s tired, worried face brought her back. She smiled.

“Don’t worry, Ri,” Rose said. “Just having some trouble sleeping.”

She saw the skeptical, sad look on her sister’s face.

“I’m fine. Really. I’m okay. I’ll be asleep in a minute. You don’t need to tuck me in.”

“Joseph said he saw you looking out the window,” April said.

“Oh, that was him out there. Well, I’m allowed to look out the window, right?”

“He said you looked . . .” April didn’t finish the sentence and seemed to regret bringing it up.

“What?” said Rose. “That I looked what?”

April sighed.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m tired,” Rose said. “And anyway, I was looking out the window because your dude was creeping around in the middle of the night.”

April sighed again.

“You’re right. He shouldn’t do that.”

“What was he doing out there?”

“We—or I . . . tonight was my night—I forgot to secure the coop. Joe saw a coyote out there and ran over to get things right before there was trouble. Got there just in time.”

After they said their good nights, Rose climbed back into bed. And just as she drifted off to sleep, she heard voices. It was April and Joseph. She could hear their voices coming through the grate in the floor. They must have been in the kitchen, right below her room. Her body was heavy, and already succumbing to sleep. But her head guided itself to the edge of the bed. She flopped over, facedown, so that her ear was poised right at the edge.

“So,” she heard April say, “what was it?”

And then Joseph’s lower voice, muffled, said something.

“You sure?” April said. “It was him?”

Joseph coughed. He either didn’t answer, or he was pausing. Or Rose simply couldn’t hear him. She could feel herself drifting headlong into sleep.

“No,” she heard Joseph’s voice say finally. She was struggling to stay awake, to hear what he was saying. “But it was someone,” she thought she heard him say. And then sleep carried her away.

Rose barely needed a trigger to bring her back to That Day. And as soon as her mind was there, the whole scene returned to her as though it were still happening. Whitey had personally woken up Rose that day.

When he’d first kidnapped her, he’d treated her the way he treated all his captives. But he had taken a special liking to Rose. It seemed he was strangely drawn to her. He’d gotten into the habit of waking her up himself, quietly unlocking her door so he could crouch next to her bed, watching her as she pretended to sleep.

He wasted no opportunity to tell her, once again, that she resembled his sister Hefsibah. His beloved sister Hefsibah. The wronged Hefsibah. The greatest heartbreak of his life, Hefsibah.

He’d told her the stories so many times she could recite all the details. Hefsibah had been the second youngest of twelve siblings, originally from Wayne County. One afternoon, when Hefsibah was twelve or thirteen, she collapsed during her chores. No warning. She just fell to the ground. She’d been hauling a pail to the barn, to replenish the goats’ water supply. And the next second, she was lying flat on her face, with the overturned bucket beside her, spilling out its contents all over her dress.

Nothing would revive her. Not smelling salts, not cold water. As luck would have it, the family happened to know that a community doctor was nearby that day, making a house call at a neighbor’s. So one of the young men in the house jumped on a horse and went to fetch the doctor immediately.

But the doctor, too, could not revive poor Hefsibah. It wasn’t long before he determined that it was too late. There was no pulse. She was gone.

In those days, as Whitey explained to Rose, the Amish of this area rarely used the local hospitals. Usually they went to the hospital only for serious chronic illness or for surgeries. For most other cases, they used home remedies and their own doctors. In Hefsibah’s case, they might have rushed her to the hospital, but there was no need: the girl was dead.

Hefsibah was buried in the family plot, behind the barn of the original family farm, which was down Stony Creek Road, only a short ride from where Hefsibah had lived with her family. Her extended family was almost too shocked to mourn. And anyway, Christian modesty and decorum were tenets of their community—every member of the family, following the lead of the parents, was committed to accepting this terrible loss as the will of God. Everyone but Gabriel, the little boy who would grow up to become the notorious Whitey. Years later, when Whitey would tell Rose this story, he would always arrive at the same conclusion: his belief that Rose was somehow his sister.

He was the youngest of the family, the only sibling who was younger than Hefsibah. Only a shade over a year older, Hefsibah had been his best friend and closest ally in the world. Little Gabriel was inconsolable upon her death. He denounced, as a traitor, anyone who tried to console him. Worse, he cursed God. He would not accept the simple fact that his sister was gone forever. Someone was lying to him. And he wasn’t having it.

After Hefsibah was buried, Gabriel remained by her grave all afternoon, refusing to leave. And when, one by one, his family left the graveside, his rage deepened. He couldn’t believe that his family was just going to leave his sister outside, in the ground, as if she were an animal. Gabriel vowed, then and there, that he would never forgive his family for this betrayal of his sister. They told him that she was dead. Her soul was in heaven. Her mortal life was ended. But, in his mind, his sister was alive.

Gabriel kept his furious vigil into the night. It was a humid summer evening and he wasn’t about to go inside. He curled up on her grave, on the freshly turned soil, and dozed off.

That’s when it happened. At first, he thought he was still asleep. But he wasn’t. He was awake. He could see the sky and the dark shapes of the barn and pens and fields. He could smell the farm aromas. He was at his grandfolks’ house. He was awake. No question about it. And the sounds he heard were real.

It was a low sound. The thrum of a heartbeat? Was it possible? No, ridiculous. Not a heartbeat, not a regular rhythm. But something. A distinct pounding of some sort. From the grave. Gabriel pressed his ear against the fresh, still-moist soil, and put his hand over his other ear, canceling out all other sounds. And when he did, the sound he heard from his sister’s grave was even louder and more distinct. A knock; then nothing, then more nothing. Another knock. Two more knocks.

Gabriel lunged into action. He knew what he needed to do. He was a young boy then, only eleven or twelve. But he had a fierce personality and was also physically large. And the burial of his beloved sister—the unforgivable betrayal, in his mind, by his entire family—had filled his body with such a zealous rage that he became a fully grown man in one single night. When he heard the sounds—or what he thought were sounds—from his sister’s grave, he ran to the barn, grabbed a pick and shovel, and began furiously digging. Though he didn’t care for, nor trust, his family to help him, he knew that more people digging were better than one, and so he began shouting, even as he was digging.

It wasn’t long before his uncles and cousins, and one of his brothers, came running out. Without even hesitating, they tackled him, certain in their suspicion that Gabe, already so troubled by the loss of his sister, had now finally gone mad. But Gabe was strong and filled with the righteousness of his cause. He put up a formidable fight. But soon enough his family members overpowered and subdued him. They had to tie him up and gag him. He would not relent otherwise.

But when they had Gabriel gagged and tied up, and the noise and commotion of the fight had died down, they heard it, too. They heard the same sounds that Gabriel had heard, the same sounds that had sent him, deranged, into the barn to grab a shovel. The sounds were unmistakable. When Whitey told Rose this story, he would re-experience the emotions of that moment—the torment and struggle, the horror.

The men and boys all stood there silently by Hefsibah’s grave. They listened. And then it came again: the muffled sound of pounding. Without even saying a word to each other, they all ran to the tool shed, grabbed every pick and shovel they could, and furiously began digging. They were so focused on the sudden, horrifying task that they hardly noticed young Gabriel, still lying on the ground, gagged and hog-tied. But soon, one of them did notice and untied him. He immediately joined them.

Within minutes, they’d managed to dig far enough to hear more of what was happening down there. It wasn’t just pounding. It was scratching. And most chilling of all: a small voice. It was a girl’s voice, no doubt. But it sounded animal-like. No words could be discerned. And yet its meaning could not be more clear.

When they reached the casket—the very casket they’d buried only a few hours earlier that day—they hoisted it out of the ditch and threw open the top. What they saw in there was so horrible that none of them ever really managed to describe it directly. It was as if they’d forgotten what they’d seen. But they hadn’t forgotten. They remembered all too well.

All of the people involved agreed, though, that what they witnessed changed each person there that night, each in his own way. None of them was ever the same. And they also agreed on another detail: Hefsibah’s eyes. Yes. They were wide open. Wide, wide open. And her lips murmured continuously. Every few moments her mouth would drop open, and her eyes would screw up, as though she were shrieking. But not a sound was heard.

The moment they’d come face-to-face—again—with Hefsibah, one of the older boys, Gabriel’s cousin, Reuven, panicked. Convinced that this was the work of the devil, he lunged at the girl, determined to suffocate whatever demon had possessed her body. The other men restrained Reuven. But he continued to rave that they had made a great mistake in unburying Hefsibah, they had to kill the demon, or immediately rebury this body—or burn it. The men, though some of them murmured that perhaps he was right, restrained Reuven and overruled him.

One of the men picked up the girl. Her body was almost totally limp, despite the intense alertness of her eyes. He carried her into the house. When Hefsibah’s grandmother saw this, saw one of the boys walk into the kitchen with the girl they had buried that morning, she collapsed on the floor and fell ill for a week. She nearly died.

Hefsibah lived out the rest of her life on Stony Creek Road, just a short distance from where she’d been buried. She eventually married, had a few children of her own, and lived a life of average length. But she was always a strange, quiet presence. She said almost nothing. She rarely smiled. She had a look of doom permanently on her face.. . .