IN-BETWEEN GIRL

Chapter 1

January 2024

Soft amber rays split the pre-dawn January sky, silhouetting the factories lining the four-lane highway. The market wagon’s gentle rolling lulled Hannah to sleep. Her chin tilted low and her eyelids slid down like shutters over her eyes as she tuned out of the muted thud of the draught horse’s hooves on the snow’s hard surface. A firm prod against her upper arm made her stir and spy the single lane roundabout ahead.

‘Wake up, sleepy.’ Aaron flicked the reins to signal for Blue to veer right.

She swayed as they skirted the central island and continued along the outer lane past a small corpse of birch trees by an open field buried in crisp snow where, beyond a low stone wall, a makeshift wooden cross stood.

‘They should have taken it down by now. The vigil was weeks ago,’ Aaron said. Hannah recalled standing ankle deep in biting snow on a sub-zero December night, teeth chattering so hard she could barely say the prayers and sing the hymns for the souls of those who had died. So many lost in the flames, all those years ago.

The wagon’s boxed-in rear, filled with crates of beef and chicken, leaned to one side. Hannah gripped the wooden bench underneath her. The overhanging roof offered scant shelter from the freezing temperature. She wrapped her woollen cloak tighter around her body and stifled a yawn with a gloved hand. Biting, crisp air nipped at her cheeks and turned her breath cloudy.

Past winters had taught her that despite the protection of her bonnet’s wide edges, her pale skin with its rosy undertone would appear as if she had scrubbed it with a hard brush in such weather, leaving a coarse, pinkish hue to her face.

‘I’m surprised they’ve asked you to go in – who’d want to hire a bike or ride one in these conditions?’ Aaron brushed the snow off the broad brim of his black hat, keeping the reins held tightly.

‘I’m going in to serve customers coming to collect their bikes from Sol’s repair shed.’

Hannah tried not to stare at Aaron’s scraggy beard, typical of a newly wedded man, remembering the angelic, clean-shaven youth she had known all her life. The facial growth hid his smooth, plump jaw and full lips, belying his twenty-something years. No one called him a baby anymore.

‘Sorry to get you up so early, but I do the farthest deliveries in the morning and the local ones in the afternoon. Don’t we, Blue?’

The horse twitched his ears at the sound of Aaron’s slow, nasal tones. Puffs of frosty air spurted out of the black gelding’s nostrils as he plodded along.

‘Better than walking through the snow.’ Hannah rubbed her eyes, thinking of how her tiny feet would have been frozen within minutes of leaving home. She looked at the fields beyond the factories, buried under a blanket of snow. No bus could plough along the snow-filled country lane leading to her Amish home on the east side of Birchwood town, Pennsylvania. By the time she had trudged the two miles to the main road, her boots, stockings, and the hem of her dress would be soaked. It would be evening before she could return home and dry herself. Getting up before dawn was a small price to pay to avoid standing all day in damp footwear; a fate she’d already experienced twice earlier in the week. Friday had its advantages – two whole days to stay dry.

Cars sped past buggies driving into the factories’ car park. Workers hurried to get inside the buildings, more for the warmth than the day’s labour, Hannah suspected. A group of cloaked and bonneted women stomped their boots in the snow as they followed two middle-aged women wearing bobble hats and thick padded coats through the car park’s side gate. At the other end, she spied another huddle of workers filing inside, their heads covered in broad-brim black hats, baseball caps, and woolly hats. Amish or English, all needed to earn.

From the outskirts of the town, Blue continued at a steady pace along the highway as factories gave way to retail shops, leading them to town. Over the decades, Birchwood had become the place where Amish and ‘The English’, as her community called everyone non-Amish, coexisted. Along the main street, the English-owned shops’ night-lights pinged off amid the darkened Amish stores. Aaron flicked a rein, signalling Blue to swing left into a wide street lined with an assortment of shops and cafes. Hannah spotted English ones with their shutters down and canopies rolled up, and plain coloured Amish ones with their simple painted signage and window fronts.

‘What will you do while waiting for the shop to open?’ Aaron asked.

‘I’ll go to Izzy Stoltzfus’s flat.’

‘Grace’s sister?’ Aaron shook his head. ‘They should both be married. Izzy’s twenty-two, isn’t she?’

‘That’s only two years older than Grace and me.’

‘Like I said.’ He grinned. The nub of his nose, red from the cold weather, glowed like a traffic light.

‘Spoken like a deacon.’ Hannah smiled back. Her single status seemed of great interest these days for Maemm and Grandfather at mealtimes. Time to settle down, they would say, noting which young men were ‘a good catch’. Why were they so keen to see her married off? English women married later; why couldn’t she? She contributed to the household by working in town. If she married, she would have to live with her husband. She might not be allowed to work, and certainly her wages would go to him or his family. Had Maemm and Grandfather thought of that? No, they were too concerned for her ‘happiness’. Well, she was happy being single. They did not push her younger brother, Evan, to get married or engaged like many of his friends. Besides, she was on her Rumspringa. Nobody got engaged, let alone married, when ‘running about’ as the old folk referred to it. She tucked a strand of cinnamon hair back under her bonnet. ‘You and Bishop Fisher would have all the single women over sixteen married off.’

‘Oh, maybe not that young.’ Aaron winked.

Hannah shook her head with a dry smile. She knew he jested, but his view was shared by many. A woman unmarried at twenty within her Amish community brought pity from the wedded women and sympathetic looks from the older ones. With no suitor knocking on her parlour door, they would continue. Not that she did not wish to marry; she did not want to marry just anyone. She wanted to marry the one who would make her heart dance. Meanwhile, she would pray about it and wait for her prayers to be answered.

‘I shall be back later this afternoon if you want a lift home,’ Aaron offered.

‘Denki. But the buses should be running. I’ll get off here, if I may.’

Hannah pointed to a shop with a display of hardware items in its window. Further down at the post office, a lone figure swaddled in a workwear jacket and woolly hat and scarf reached for the top bolt on a red wooden door. Aaron eased the wagon’s brake lever and yanked the reins; Blue halted.

‘Goot gute,’ Aaron bid Hannah as she stepped down from the wagon. Her toes curled in protest within her boots as her feet sank into the snow. Bitter air stung the inside of her nose as she sniffed and glanced inside the shop at the clock on the far wall. Seven-thirty a.m.

She wrapped the flaps of her navy woollen cloak tighter, bowed her head to shelter her face from the falling snowflakes, and headed for the café opposite the cycle shop further down at the junction. The blackboard with its chalked ‘open’ sign was already stationed by the door. Eager to get out of the cold, she hurried past shop owners as they brushed snow from their doors. She shivered, the bitter wind slicing through the gaps of her cloak.

An elderly Amish woman, dressed head to toe in black, tottered towards Hannah, her portly body rocking from side to side as she walked by and exchanged greetings. A trail of boot and cat-paw imprints crossed each other on the snow-covered sidewalk. Hannah focused on the café with its bottle-green painted frontage. Peering at one of the large, plain windows stood a man of medium height, wearing a camel-coloured sheepskin coat and fedora hat, reading the menu. Her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled at the thought of a scrambled egg muffin or omelette. Perhaps Izzy would make one for her. Cheered by the idea, she approached the post office ahead.

‘Goot meiyet.’ The man with the bobble hat half-turned to her, one wet boot on a stone step as he pushed the front door open. He pulled his scarf from his mouth, his olive-skinned face breaking into a teddy-bear smile that matched the shape of his body.

‘Good morning, Danny.’ Hannah stopped and faced him. ‘Another wintry day.’

‘You bet. Twenty-five years I’ve been freezing my keister – pardon – body, opening up this place. Twenty-five. Colder than Brooklyn. Jeezers.’

Hannah ignored the last word, glancing up at the sign above the door: Birchwood Post Office. She could not remember a time Danny had not run the office.

A large grey car careened round the café towards them, the screech of its engine shattering the silence and deafening Hannah. Danny swung round and squinted at the vehicle, and the man by the café window spun, staring after it, his mouth dropping open. Danny slammed the post office door shut as the car sped towards them with its nearside rear window open.

Hannah whipped around, one boot slipping on the snow, her ears tingling from the sharp squeal of tires burning the tarmac road. Who on earth would be hurtling through the centre of town at this early hour? She backed away from the edge as the car approached, snow spraying from its wheels. She took a large lungful of air to steady her rapid heartbeat.

A lumpy object flew out of the rear window as the vehicle raced past. It tumbled across the sidewalk near the butcher’s. Hannah scanned the empty street and ran to it, ignoring Danny’s yell to stop.

A ragged-shaped object the size of a table-tennis bat lay on the ground, wrapped in an inky red-blotched cloth. Hannah stooped and picked it up. The cloth fell away from the object wrapped inside, which dropped to the ground, and Hannah froze, her mind refusing to comprehend what her eyes saw. A mass of blood and flesh. Human flesh. Her hand flew to her mouth, stifling a soundless scream.

The severed hand jerked from the force of the drop, as though prodded with a taser, and rivulets of ice ran through Hannah’s veins. Wedged within its bent, claw-like fingers was a crunched-up sheet of white, blood-stained paper.

A soft wheezing followed by Danny stomping past her jolted Hannah from her daze. He bent down, tentatively tugged the scrap of paper from the hand’s grasp, and unfolded it.

Scrawled across in black biro were the words: Let this be a lesson.