Free A Simple Winter: A Seasons of Lancaster Novel by Rosalind Lauer Page B

doorway. “And I’m not the only one who’s tired,” Jonah said. “You sound like an old man.”
    “I feel like an old man.”
    Jonah poked him in the shoulder. “Get some rest, old man, and think about what I said. God gave you ten siblings for a reason.” With that he went into the kitchen, leaving Adam to stew, his feet beginning to prune in the cooling bathwater.

SEVEN
    t was Sunday night, and Remy couldn’t sleep. She flipped over and faced the numbers that glowed blue on the nightstand beside her bed: 1:37.
    Monday morning, actually.
    She was tired, having stayed up late last night talking with Dakota about anything and everything, and yet sleep eluded her.
    She threw back the covers, grabbed her laptop, and burrowed into the corner of the sofa. No stranger to insomnia, she knew that it was better to get up and do something than to beat yourself up in bed. She logged on to the Internet, skimmed the headlines, then closed her eyes with a groan.
    She was in no mood to be sucked into the Internet vortex, the array of articles built on varying degrees of truth and writing skill. The nasty comments from readers, the meaningless postings from friends she barely knew—it was a cold, impersonal lifeline after her weekend with Dakota, chock-full of shopping and cooking andanimated conversation. Not to mention running into Adam King at the Saturday market.
    What a pleasure it had been to see him, looking healthy and whole less than a year after his family tragedy. In his dark Amish attire, he had been attractive in that
American Gothic
way. With his long dark hair and old-fashioned clothes, Adam reminded her of Heathcliff in
Wuthering Heights
, although unlike the hero of the Brontë classic, Adam’s deep brown eyes held compassion and insight. She’d been touched that he remembered small details about her. Yes, Adam King was a man with backbone, someone who cared about people.
    With a small burst of interest, she did a search for King Family Dairy and found that the only reference was to their booth at the Reading Terminal Market. Hmm.
    Next she tried to find information about how his family was doing—especially the little boy, Simon, who had witnessed his parents’ murders. There had been plenty of coverage in the weeks after the tragic event, but the story had been dropped eight months ago, with a brief report from a Lancaster TV affiliate saying that the murders were still unsolved.
    How had the King family recovered over the last year? Remy tried to imagine a line of Amish boys and girls who resembled Adam as she set her laptop on the table and walked purposefully to the window. Despite the cultural differences, grief and sorrow were a universal response to losing someone you loved, and it must have rocked their world to lose both parents. Did they know who had committed the heinous crime? What if someone in the community had murdered Mr. and Mrs. King? What if it was someone Adam knew?
    Outside, wind stirred the bare branches of the trees that lined the street. These were the dreary days of winter, the merry twinkle of Christmas lights stripped away to reveal skeletons of trees and walkwaysriddled with ice hazards. Looking down toward Logan Square, she saw a slice of the lit fountain, and only two cars moving slowly through the traffic circle. Street lamps cast pools of light along the pavements, pin dots of loneliness. It was small comfort to live in a majestic, sophisticated place when you had no one to share it with.
    In that, she envied Adam King, with his ten siblings. His life was probably crazy-hectic at times, but with so much family around, loneliness was an impossibility.
    She pressed her forehead to the cool glass, stretching to look west, toward the river. Somewhere, fifty or so miles beyond Philadelphia’s buildings and lights, Adam’s family was at home in Lancaster County. Probably asleep. Probably bundled under blankets in this cold.
    If only she knew more about them. And she wasn’t the