Read Online Forbidden by Leanna Ellis - Free Book Online

have been seeing someone outside the district.” Roc kept on with the possibilities, trying to jar loose their tightly held belief that this involved a vampire. “Maybe she started seeing an Englisher .”
    â€œRoc,” Hannah said with firm conviction, “our parents had suggested other single men who might take up the mantle of fatherhood for Josef’s baby, but she wouldn’t—”
    â€œIf it was someone they might not approve of, then they might not know either. You probably wouldn’t even know.”
    â€œShe would not risk being shunned.”
    Roc blinked but kept on. “She might.”
    â€œShe was never alone,” Hannah said in crisp tones.
    Roc frowned. “What do you mean?”
    â€œWe kept an eye on her. Others kept watch too,” Levi explained, glancing at Hannah. “Because we feared something like this might happen.”
    â€œOkay, then maybe she went to the doctor. She was pregnant, right? So maybe the hospital—”
    â€œAnd how would she have gone?” Levi questioned.
    Roc opened his mouth then closed it. Back in New Orleans, there would have been a dozen ways for someone to get to an ER. But here in Promise, Pennsylvania, where buggies outnumbered cars, or at least seemed to, where telephones were rare commodities, in the Amish community at least, where hospitals weren’t even the first choice, the possibilities were more limited. Would a pregnant woman have hitched a horse to a buggy by herself? Maybe. But then wouldn’t they be missing a horse and buggy? One of those red scooters so many of the youngsters used going to and from school was out of the question for a pregnant woman. If she’d asked for a ride from a neighbor, then the neighbor would have told the family, and the whole community would already be in the know. The natural grapevine wove through the community, tying them all together and keeping them better informed than any telephones, newspaper, or twenty-four-hour news station could.
    Levi shifted in his chair. “I admit, Roc, we jumped first and foremost to a difficult conception. But I went over to our Mennonite neighbors and used their telephone. I called the doctor in town. He’s the one in our district who looks after some of the women, especially those expecting. He hadn’t seen Rachel for over a month.”
    â€œSince she had problems before,” Hannah explained, “we thought maybe she was having trouble and went straight to the hospital.”
    â€œThe simplest explanation is usually the most likely,” Roc agreed.
    â€œUsually.” Levi nodded his agreement. His stony gaze revealed no doubts as to what he believed had happened to Rachel. But still the Amish man let Roc think it through without interrupting, without arguing his case. He simply waited. It was Hannah who reached over and touched her husband’s sleeve, but Levi cupped her hand, patted it once, twice, and they both watched Roc with solemn gazes.
    Frustrated with them, with himself, with the whole situation, Roc pushed away from the table and walked toward the back door of their kitchen. He stared out the window at the yellow daisies planted around the base of a stout oak. Life had certainly been simpler before he’d ever come to Pennsylvania. If he’d been on a drinking binge for the last six months, then he could easily doubt all he’d seen, doubt his sanity, doubt the blood and bodies. But he hadn’t been drinking. His eyes had been opened to an even more frightening world than he’d ever known existed. And he couldn’t close his eyes just because he wished it away.
    â€œBut why?” he asked, without facing the Amish couple. “Why would he…Akiva…this vampire ”—he emphasized the word they seemed reluctant to use—“want Rachel? It doesn’t make sense.” Roc remembered meeting the woman, Rachel, several months ago in his desperate search