The Girl in a Coma Read Free

outside the window of the upstairs front bedroom Rebecca shared with her sisters in the weathered farmhouse. She could hear men’s voices; they were speaking urgently. The boys were still asleep in the next room. Her mother and father had been doing chores for an hour, well before the sun had broken over the horizon.
    She scrambled from bed and looked down. Johannes Haun, her father, was staring up at her window. Rebecca was one of four sisters and four brothers, but she knew that the men were talking about her. Her father saw her through the glass and waved for her to come down.
    She dressed quickly, ran down the narrow stairs, splashed icy water on her face from the basin in the sink, and slipped on her boots. She grabbed a shawl from behind the door and walked out into the yard.
    â€œRebecca,” her father said in his sternest voice, “what do you know about Jacob Shantz?”
    â€œI know him.”
    â€œHe has disappeared. What do you know about that?”
    She couldn’t lie, especially to her father. But she didn’t know what he wanted to hear. The two men beside him were British soldiers. One thing she did know was that Jacob was in trouble.
    â€œI haven’t any idea where he is,” she answered honestly. She knew he was on his way to Valley Forge, but she didn’t know how far along the road he had made his way.
    â€œDid he go off to find George Washington?” one of the men asked.
    Rebecca said nothing. She knew what Jacob had planned to do. But you never know what someone actually does until they do it.
    Her father put his hand on her shoulder. It might as well have been the hand of God. Her eyes filled with tears but she refused to cry.
    â€œWhat happens to Jacob is not our concern,” her father answered. His tone declared the death of a romance that had never really been born. Rebecca shuddered. Her father would never make her marry someone against her wishes. He was a kind man at heart. But he could prevent her from marrying someone if he chose. He was a righteous man, sure of God’s will. “These men would like to talk to him,” her father said.
    One of the soldiers offered Rebecca a smile and the other looked angry. The smiling man had a scar running down his right cheek and a handsome mustache. His scarlet uniform was quite clean. The other man had not shaved in a week. His filthy uniform was mended in several places with coarse black thread.
    The smiling man introduced himself. “I am Corporal Jonas,” he said. “This here is Private Panabaker. We’re looking for your young man, Miss Haun. It is very important”
    Rebecca’s cheeks flushed with color. Her eyes flashed. Jacob was not her young man . Not now, and maybe never.
    Her father’s hand tightened on shoulder.
    â€œHe killed a man,” said Johannes Haun. “He killed his own father. They found the body in their barn early this morning. Noah Shantz died from a blow to the head. One of his horses is missing and so is Jacob.”
    Allison
    I wake up suddenly. I’m surrounded by quietness. Not silence, because I can hear hospital sounds, the whirring of machines keeping other patients alive, muffled voices through the door drifting down from the nursing station. It’s the quietness you get in the dead of the night.
    But I’m not scared anymore. I’m focused. Whoever this heavy breather was, since he didn’t try to kill me, why should I bother thinking about him at all? My dreams are more interesting.
    I concentrate on Rebecca’s world.
    What I was hoping for was a romance. I wanted Rebecca and Jacob to discover how much they were in love. I wanted them to get married and leave Pennsylvania and travel north by covered wagon. I wanted them to settle in Canada and raise a family. I wanted them to be my ancestors.
    But it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out that way. Not if Jacob has killed his father and stolen a horse. Mind