The Bishop's Daughter

by Patricia Johns

  “What about you, then?” Elijah shot back. “Is this secrecy abiding by the Ordnung?”

  The older man’s face colored, but he crossed his arms over his chest and met Elijah’s gaze regardless.

  “He’s my son.” This wasn’t the church leader talking. This was the father.

  Elijah shouldn’t be doing this—meddling in the Graber family’s business. He shouldn’t care. He’d come back in spite of the bishop, not because of him. And even his memories of Sadie had paled in the face of his new reality. There was no peace to be found here in the bosom of the Grabers’ problems.

  “All I ask is that you keep this plan a secret until we have Absolom home,” Bishop Graber said earnestly. “Including from your parents.”

  “You don’t think my father can be trusted?” Elijah barked out a bitter laugh. “He followed your instructions with me, didn’t he? With his son.”

  The bishop considered for a moment. “Your father is a good man. But this is a private matter, and all it takes is for one person to breathe a worry to another.... I expect you to protect my daughter while she’s in the city, and discretion is in her best interest,” the bishop said, his voice hardening.

  Elijah put his hat back onto his head. He wanted to set everything right again—more than Bishop Graber might realize. But what was right at this point in time? Was Absolom better off working his father’s farm, abandoning his family in the city?

  “I’ll bring her back.” It was all he could promise.

  “And the discretion?” the bishop pressed.

  “You’ll just have to trust my judgment on that.”

  They regarded each other, but this time there was more equality between them. The Amish believed that no man was above another, but ideals didn’t always match reality. Was this what it took to bring the old bishop down to Elijah’s level, the unforgiving grind of the mill?

  “One more thing,” the bishop said quietly. “I want you to drive your own car.”

  “It would go against the Ordnung.” And if the bishop was asking Elijah to do that—was his return really so important? Not compared to Absolom’s.

  “It will help keep things discreet,” the bishop went on when Elijah hadn’t responded. “No one need know. Leave early while it’s still dark, and come back after sunset. Turn off the lights when you turn into the drive.”

  The older man had put some thought into this. Elijah stared at him, mute. The thought of driving again was appealing—he couldn’t deny it. It was one of the Englisher pleasures he missed most, but the bishop was putting the Ordnung aside completely for his son, it seemed. And Elijah’s spiritual integrity, as well.

  And what was Elijah fighting this for? He had no intention of staying in Morinville, whatever the bishop believed. The Grabers wanted Sadie to see their son—who was Elijah to stand in the way? The fallout would be theirs to bear.

  “All right,” Elijah agreed. “I’ll drive.”

  He felt a simmer of anger at the prospect, though. The bishop was willing to sacrifice anyone at all to bring his son back, it seemed. Like wheat kernels on a flour mill, ground up for the sake of community.

  The bishop stood there on the grass as Elijah walked toward the buggy barn to hitch up and go home. Elijah looked back once, and the bishop was still there, his spine straight and his thumbs tucked into the front of his pants.

  Elijah would take Sadie to the city, but he couldn’t guarantee what it would do to her. Not everyone wanted to be ground up into the community flour. Some Amish fell off the millstone and lay panting on the ground, grateful to be in one piece. Sadie’s freedom might mean more to her than even her father suspected.

  What then?

  * * *

  That evening, Sadie and Rosmanda stood in front of the kitchen sink washing the dishes. Such an ordinary chore to do, with her visit to the city looming in a matter of days. She’d imagined seeing her brother again a thousand times over the years, but in her imagination, he’d come to them. Going to see him—her heart sped up at the thought. What would she say? Would her brother even expect them? What if he didn’t want to see her?

  Except that Elijah had said that her brother did miss her. . . . That was something. But he’d never written to her. And she’d never written to him. That was for Mamm and Daet, and after she was married, Mervin had forbidden it. The constraints still chafed. And yet, even given all the freedom in the world, what would she do?

  Sadie’s hands were deep in the hot water, and her sister stood next to her, a dishtowel in one hand and a scowl on her face.

  “What’s the matter?” Sadie asked.

  “Hmm?” Rosmanda immediately adjusted her expression. “Nothing.”

  “That’s not true.” Sadie pulled a plate out of the sudsy water and ran it under the tap to rinse it off. “Are you still upset about not being allowed to see Absolom?”

  “No.” Rosmanda sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Sadie eyed her sister a little more closely. “You’re going to the sing-along tonight, aren’t you? You should still go.”

  “Yes, I’m going.” Rosmanda picked up the next dish. “But I wish Daet would let me be baptized. Mamm was married at my age.”

  “You’re too young,” Sadie said with a small smile. How many times would they go over this?

  “Oh, stop that! What else am I to do? I have no more school. I do chores and see my friends sometimes.... I’m bored! I want a home of my own.”

  “You hardly clean the one you live in,” Sadie said with a short laugh, but her sister didn’t take the bait. She took the next dish, her jaw set. There was more to this. Rosmanda could be stubborn, but she wasn’t stupid. This didn’t make sense, unless—

  “Is there someone you’re thinking of?” Sadie asked.

  “What if there were?” Rosmanda raised her chin slightly.

  Sadie ran through the available young men in her mind. None of them seemed appropriate for her sister. “Who is it?”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “Don’t lie to me, Rosmanda.” Sadie wasn’t in the mood for this. Her sister had been getting more and more defiant as the year wore on.

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s courting someone else,” her sister replied tightly.

  “Jonathan Yoder?” Sadie turned to her sister, the certainty of it slapping into her like a wet towel.

  Rosmanda’s cheeks pinked, but she didn’t answer.

  “But he’s courting Mary Beiler. You know that! What would you do, break them up?”

  “He would be with me if I were available. But I’m not baptized yet.”

  “What makes you so sure about that?” Sadie shook her head.

  “He said so.”

  That changed things. Sadie shot her sister a cautious look. “When?”

  “At service. He told me that he feels the same way I do, but I’m too young, and he can’t wait anymore.”

  Sadie shook the suds from her hands and dried them on her apron. “You realize he’s doing this behind Mary’s back.”

  “He doesn’t feel about her the way he feels about me.” Rosmanda looked away. “He feels about Mary the way you felt for Mervin.”

  Sadie’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?”

  “She’s . . .” Rosmanda turned back, her cheeks still flushed. “She’s boring.”

  “What do you know about that?” Sadie shook her head and turned back to the sink. “Marriage needs some consistency, and I’m glad that Jonathan Yoder can see that much. Mary is a good choice.”

  “Marriage needs love, too.”

  “Love?” Sadie pulled another plate from the sink and rinsed it. “Rosmanda, you are young. And a boy who would talk like that to you behind his girlfriend’s back isn’t much of a catch.”

  “Unless I’m the one who fills his heart,” Rosmanda replied with a small smile. “And then it isn’t about him being unfaithful so much as him having to choose.”

  “He can’t court you yet.” Sadie shook her head.
r />   “He could if I were baptized.” Rosmanda’s eyes glowed. “He does love me, Sadie. He’s told me so. He says that he thinks of me day and night, and he—”

  “You haven’t let him touch you, have you?” Sadie interrupted.

  “Yes, he’s kissed me.” Rosmanda’s chin rose again. “And he’s held me close, and I fit right under his chin in the most perfect way. He says that no girl has ever made him feel the way I make him feel, and—”

  All words Sadie had heard before at about the same age, too. What was it about boys that made them so eloquent right when a girl was the most vulnerable?

  “They say that,” Sadie said with a sigh. “But he’s still courting another girl. And your reputation is at risk letting him kiss you. You know where babies come from, don’t you?”

  “Not kissing.” Rosmanda rolled her eyes.

  “Fine. But that’s where it starts. He has no right kissing you if he isn’t courting you.” Advice she should have taken herself with Elijah back then. A mangled heart could ache for years.

  “He has to marry.” Rosmanda’s eyes welled with tears.

  “So what happens when he does?” Sadie demanded. “What then? Will you keep seeing him?”

  Rosmanda looked startled, but didn’t answer that. She turned away, picking up another dish to dry. Was that a yes? How had this happened? When had Rosmanda had the time to take up with an older boy, and no one noticed? Sadie had been busy with her son, and with Daet’s sickness, they’d all been distracted.

  Then there was Mary—Sadie’s friend, and she deserved better treatment than this. To think that Jonathan would go behind her back like that and spout off all sorts of romantic garbage to a girl young enough to believe it!

  “Rosmanda, boys will say things because they want to take advantage—”

  “That isn’t it,” Rosmanda snapped.

  “You’re young—”

  “I’ve watched!” Rosmanda turned on Sadie, her eyes snapping fire. “I’ve watched my older sister get married to a very nice man the whole family liked. And I saw what it did to you. You started out happy and excited, and then you just . . . you went flat. You turned pale. You stopped laughing.”

  So her marriage to Mervin had impacted Rosmanda, too, had it? It wasn’t her fault. If she’d had a little more privacy, some space from her family, she might have been able to hide it.

  “And what did that tell you?” Sadie asked, her throat tight with emotion.

  “That it’s possible to marry someone perfectly respectable and still be miserably unhappy.”

  “And you think you won’t be miserable in the end, playing this game?” Sadie asked quietly.

  “I’m not going to marry some boring old man,” Rosmanda retorted. “I’m going to marry the man who makes my heart race. I’m going to take a chance on love.”

  “He isn’t taking a chance on you, Rosmanda. He’s courting another girl!”

  “But he loves me!”

  “Love is an action. Not a feeling. Love is cooking for your family, ironing your husband’s shirts, raising children together.”

  “Is it pretending you’re his dead wife?” Rosmanda snapped, and Sadie’s breath knocked out of her chest.

  “What?”

  “Isn’t that what your mother-in-law said?” Rosmanda retorted. “He made you do everything like his dead wife used to do it. He most certainly loved her.”

  Sadie’s eyes filled with tears, and she had to hold herself back from slapping her sister straight across the face. How dare she? What did she know about life or men? She wasn’t even old enough for a Rumspringa!

  “Love isn’t some soggy feeling, you little idiot,” Sadie hissed. “And if you were a little older you’d know that!”

  “Then you’ve never felt it.” Rosmanda’s tone was quiet and confident. “Because if you ever had, you’d know what I’m feeling now.”

  Sadie swallowed a retort. She’d never loved? That wasn’t fair at all. She loved her son with all her heart. She loved her brother so much that she was willing to risk her own reputation to bring him home. She’d learned to love her husband, even though marriage had been difficult and jarring.... And a long time ago, when she was about Rosmanda’s age, she’d thought she loved a boy, too—but then he ran off with her brother and left her behind.

  “Things feel different at your age,” Sadie said at last.

  “Meaning what?” Rosmanda demanded.

  “Meaning, I had someone I thought I loved, too, and I can assure you that some kisses and honeyed words don’t make them stick around.”

  “Who?” Rosmanda breathed.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Elijah Fisher?”

  Was Sadie so transparent? She licked her lips. “You should listen to someone who has some experience, Rosmanda. That boy, Jonathan, isn’t going to leave Mary for you. He’s using you for some cuddles. That’s it.”

  “Are you going to tell Mamm about this?” Rosmanda asked.

  “Of course!” Sadie shook her head. “You’re playing with fire, Rosmanda!”

  “If you tell her”—her sister’s voice shook—“I’ll never tell you anything again. Anything. It won’t stop Jonathan from loving me, or me from loving Jonathan. I just won’t tell you anything again. Ever.”

  Nine years ago, Sadie had come downstairs to start the fire in the stove, and she’d found a letter on the table from her brother. Elijah and Absolom hadn’t told her, either, and that feeling of being the one left behind came flooding back over her so forcefully that tears pricked her eyes.

  “Rosie, I only want to protect you!” Sadie put her hands on her sister’s shoulders and turned her to face her. “If you were caught kissing Jonathan Yoder, you’d ruin any chance you have of getting married. At least in this county. And if you were to get pregnant—”

  “I’m going to marry Jonathan Yoder,” Rosmanda said. “You’ll see. Are you going to tell Mamm?”

  Sadie stood in silence for a moment. What if Jonathan tried to run off with Rosmanda? What if she awoke to another letter on the kitchen table? Elijah had told her that he and Absolom hadn’t let her in on their plans because they were sure she’d tell Daet. She hadn’t even had the chance to make them see reason, and she wouldn’t give up that chance with Rosie.

  “I won’t tell her, on one condition.”

  “What’s that?” Rosmanda eyed her distrustfully.

  “That you won’t see Jonathan Yoder again without telling me first.”

  “Why?”

  “To give me the chance to talk you into some sense,” Sadie said with a shrug. “That should be obvious enough.”

  Rosmanda picked up another plate from the sink. “All right.”

  “You promise me?” Sadie asked.

  “Yes.”

  It would have to do. She’d had one sibling run off and ruin his life, and she couldn’t take a chance on Rosmanda doing the same. Sadie might not have loved her husband with the same kind of youthful abandon she’d felt back when Elijah had tugged her around by her heartstrings, but that was a good thing. Life was long and hard, and trials would come. Commitment and steadfastness counted for more—they lasted. Those fluttering, intoxicating feelings of whatever it was she’d felt for Elijah had only melted into heartbreak.

  Chapter Eleven

  Early Tuesday morning, Elijah stood with his parents in the gas-lamp-lit kitchen, weighing his car keys in his hand, which even after only a few weeks back in Morinville felt foreign. The jingling in his palm was like an echo from somewhere far, far away. Funny how the memories of Chicago clung so close, but when faced with driving his own vehicle, those same memories felt so distant.

  The car had been put under a tarp in the buggy barn when he returned. And while his decision to come back hadn’t had anything to do with the Ordnung, he felt the discrepancy of this request that he drive Sadie into the city. He hadn’t come home to corrupt anyone, and he was afraid of doing just that.

  “The bishop gave his permis
sion?” his mother asked in disbelief. She was still in her nightgown, a shawl thrown over her shoulders and her hair hanging loose down her back. At first, he thought he’d just slip out, but he’d changed his mind outside on the dew-laden grass. His parents would only worry. If they heard the engine and then saw the car missing, they’d think he’d abandoned them when they needed him most, and he’d break his mother’s heart all over again. As it was, she stood in the center of the kitchen in bare feet, her expression filled with misgiving.

  “He gave more than permission. He gave an order,” Elijah replied.

  It was early, and the sky was still fully dark. He and Sadie would need to be out of town by sunrise, and by the time they were drawing stares as an Amish couple in a hatchback car, they should be far away from anyone they knew. It was the only way to get to Absolom’s home without a vanload of Amish people seeing them do it.

  “It’s wrong!” Mamm shook her head, tears springing to her eyes. “We Amish walk the narrow way, and we don’t deviate from the path—not even for our children!” At least, his parents hadn’t deviated from the Amish way—even an inch.

  “I thought you supported the bishop’s leadership,” he replied bitterly.

  “Now is not the time, Elijah,” his father said, his voice low.

  “Abram?” His mother whirled around to face his daet, who stood by the door, his lips pursed and his expression grim. She seemed to be expecting some solidarity from him.

  “And you weren’t to tell us anything,” his father confirmed.

  Elijah chewed on the side of his cheek. “He didn’t want to risk gossip.”

  “Gossip!” Mamm shook her head in exasperation. “Gossip is unfounded lies. This would be truth!”

  “Nettie . . .” Daet’s tone held quiet warning. “We are not going to discuss this with anyone.”

  “Don’t go.” Mamm turned toward Elijah pleadingly. “Don’t do this, son. You’ve only just come back.”

  “Mamm, you know I’m not here to join the community again,” Elijah said quietly. He knew she hoped for more—the same as Sadie seemed to.