Free Accidentally Amish by Olivia Newport

your friend.” Now the clipboard was in front of Rufus. “Driver signs here,” the nurse said. She reached over to a side counter and picked up a plastic bag to push into Rufus’s arms. “Here are her personal items.”
    “Can she walk?” Rufus asked.
    “I’ve got a wheelchair ready.” The nurse stepped into the hall and returned in a few seconds with the wheelchair.
    Annalise was going to need looking after. She could not go back to Colorado Springs in this condition, and Mo was running a motel, not an infirmary.
    He would take her home, Rufus decided. He would not take no for an answer.

    “She can stay in Ruth’s old room,” Rufus told his mother. “I know I am asking a lot, but I will try to be home more the next couple of days to help.”
    Annie listened in a vague, medicated haze. She did not recall agreeing to this arrangement and was not entirely sure who Ruth was or why her room was available, but she liked the idea of lying in a bed at that moment. She was on a sofa in the Beiler house and had a fleeting thought that she could no longer understand the conversation. It was as if Rufus and Franey had switched to another language. If she could just rest a few minutes, she could muster the strength to call the attorneys.
    The conversation went mute.
    When she woke, the sparse bedroom was dim, the only light coming in from the hall through the open door. The shadows formed themselves into Rufus’s shape sitting in a straight-backed chair just outside the door, and gradually Annie’s brain made the necessary neurological connections. This was Ruth’s room at the Beiler house, and she had dozed the day away in the fog of painkillers.
    “Rufus,” she said. He was instantly on his feet. “Why am I here?”
    “Because you need to be.” He stood tentatively in the doorway. “I … have business matters….” She sighed, which hurt.
    “You are in no condition.”
    She lifted a lightweight quilt and saw that she was wearing a nightgown.
    “Do not worry,” he said, “my sisters helped you change. Then they washed your things and put them over there.” He pointed to a neat stack on top of a dresser. “I will go back to the motel tomorrow to get whatever you left.”
    “It’s not much,” she said.
    “Yes, as I recall, you had little with you.”
    “I really do need to check on some things,” Annie pushed herself to a half-sitting position. “Where’s my bag?”
    Rufus pointed toward the foot of the bed.
    Annie winced as she leaned forward to reach her bag.
    “You should rest.”
    “Fortunately, in my business I can work and rest at the same time.”
    “Does your line of work have something to do with why you ended up in the back of Tom’s truck?”
    “That has more to do with the people I chose to work with,” she said, “and less with the business itself.” Slowly, she managed to fish her phone from the bag.
    “Must you do this now?”
    “Let me just check my e-mail on my phone.” She ignored Rufus’s scowl. “You can come in.”
    Rufus stepped tentatively into the room.
    Three messages from Jamie reporting on client actions.
    Thirteen Facebook notifications.
    Six client questions.
    One from Barrett.
    I am not a mobster, Annie. Let’s sit down and talk this through. We’ve worked together too long for it to end this way.
    Annie opened the site her family used for messages and found one from her mother.
    You were right. Daddy says Jakob Byler came from Switzerland in the 1700s. He doesn’t remember much else. We’ll find the book the next time you’re here. Maybe Aunt Lennie knows more.
    Love,
Mom
    “Rufus,” Annie said, “did your ancestors come from Switzerland?”
    “Nearly three hundred years ago. That is a strange question to ask at the moment,
ya
?”
    “I told you I had a Byler great-great-grandmother. Her ancestors came from Switzerland, too.”
    “I suppose it was a common name then, just as it is now.” Rufus moved closer to the bed, glancing at the open door.