"Maybe because God Himself doesn't judge someone as bad—so why should we? I don't really know why. But I know that she truly can't be hurt by anything that happens to her."
"If that's true, how come she's got her arm in a sling?"
He heard the bitterness in his voice and got to his feet. "I'm sorry. I'm just angry that this happened."
"Angry at yourself or angry at God?"
Startled, Chris stared at him. "A little of both, I guess."
"I don't see how you could have prevented what happened.God allows for free will—for people to do things even when He probably wishes they didn't. And can you blame God when we don't understand why He allows things? He has His reasons and our job isn't to question Him."
Chris paced the barn again. "I tried to get her to leave, but she came back. She came back and put her buggy right in front of Kraft."
Matthew folded his arms across his chest and studied Chris. "I didn't hear all this before. I thought she just got in the way."
"Oh no," Chris said, spinning to glare at Matthew. "That crazy sister of yours decided she'd stop him from hurting me."
"She must love you even more than I thought," Matthew murmured, looking thoughtful. "Jenny said so, but I didn't believe her. Don't know why," he said, rubbing the back of his neck and giving Chris a sheepish grin. "She's always right."
Then his grin faded. "So now you have a lot of forgiving to do, eh? Kraft. Hannah. God. And yourself."
Chris slid his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "Yeah."
"You could talk to the bishop, you know. He helped me a lot when I felt angry at God."
"You were?"
"Isn't everyone at some point in his life? I experienced such anger when Amelia suffered such a terrible illness, enraged that He took her home to be with Him when we loved and needed her. I shouldn't have been left by myself to raise our kinner. They shouldn't have lost their precious Mamm. Ya, I was angry. It took a long, long time and a lot of talking to the bishop to get over that."
Chris thought about how he'd been so angry with God when he watched buddies get hurt and sometimes die during his tour. He'd been angry and hurt when his superiors and the men he served with didn't back him up to see that Kraft got prosecuted. All of that was bad enough.
Then, with a week to go before he got out, he'd been hit with a roadside bomb. Now he figured any woman would run screaming if she saw the scars on his body in the daylight.
Joshua ran into the barn. "Daedi! Aenti Hannah needs help—"
Chris felt his heart jump into his throat. "What's wrong? Has he come back?"
"What . . . who?"
"The man who shot her." His voice rose. "Has he come back?"
"Nee." Joshua looked from Chris to his father and then back at Chris. "There's no man. She just wants Daedi to come over and help move something."
He turned to his father. "Hannah says Phoebe's going to do it if you don't get there quick!"
Matthew thrust the hay hook at Chris and hurried out of the barn, muttering about some women taking on more than they should.
Chris's heart settled back down where it should be. He finished Matthew's task, then fed the horses. Joshua followed behind him, giving the horses fresh water to drink.
"You need to go see her."
"She doesn't want to see me."
Chris avoided Jenny's eyes and wondered how he'd allowed himself to be trapped into talking to Jenny. When she'd asked him to help her carry the refreshment tray back to the house, he'd been suspicious but didn't know how to refuse.
Then, when they reached the porch, she indicated that he should sit in a chair, then drew another chair over and sat beside him.
"She does."
Chris drained the glass of iced tea and set it down on the table beside him on. "She can't possibly want me to visit her after I was responsible for her getting hurt."
"That was Kraft's fault, not yours. I know you care for her— I saw that. And she cares for you too."
His heart leaped at the thought, but just as quickly he tamped down his feelings and shook his head. "It doesn't matter.How could that work with our differences?"
"Which differences would those be?"
He stared at her as if she'd grown three eyes. "Religious, cultural."
Her gaze went to the fields, and he looked in the direction she did and saw Matthew.
"It's worked well for us," she said slowly, and she looked at him again. "I'm not saying it hasn't been hard adjusting sometimes even though my grandmother was Amish and I visited during some summers."
She smiled and set her glass on the tray. "Matthew was the boy next door I had a crush on and never forgot."