“Well, you’ll be needin’ these if you’re to meet with Dat.” She held out a bag of clothing. “And don’t forget this.” She handed him a black felt winter hat.
“Thank you, Annie. I appreciate your help.”
“Ach, my husband has plenty of hats, ya know.” Then she told him about her marriage to Elam Lapp.
The Lapp name touched a nerve. For the life of him, Dan couldn’t bear to hear Annie spill things about Samuel’s daughter … Katie. Who she’d married, where she lived … things like that.
The huge lump in his throat made it difficult to speak. He cleared his throat. “I hope to see you again before I leave.”
“Leave?” Her eyes widened. “But you just got here.”
“I’m Mennonite now,” he told her.
“Then why’dja come back?”
“To confess my wrongdoings, to come clean before the Lord and Dat. I had a spirit of rebellion in me back in my younger days. Our father needs to hear that I am truly sorry.”
Annie appeared stunned, as though she couldn’t believe her ears. “But don’t you know that if ya leave, you’ll be shunned?”
“I’ve come to face it like a man … at last.”
She burst into tears. “Oh, we’ve got the harshest bishop ever!”
“Who?”
“John Beiler, remember?”
“But he’s always been hard on the People.”
Annie shook her head. “I never thought much about it, till here lately.” She began to cry again. “Oh, I wish ya didn’t have to go through the Meinding, Dan.”
He reached for her, wrapping loving arms about his sister. She sobbed bitterly, and when he thought she might never quit, she looked up at him through wet lashes. “Don’tcha see? It’ll be like losin’ ya twice. Like you’re dead again. Oh, Daniel, can’t ya stay? Can’t ya come help Elam work the farm for a bit … live with us? Just don’t leave again. Please, don’t.”
Her pleas tore at his heart.
“We have a baby son,” Annie said suddenly, as if telling him might make him change his mind. “We named him Daniel … after you.”
Drawing a deep breath, he touched his sister’s chin, realizing, as he stood near the desk where he’d learned his ABC’s, that if he didn’t change into Elam Lapp’s clothing soon, if he didn’t drive over to his father’s house, he might never be able to go through with any of this.
It saddened him that much.
“If ya hafta leave again, will ya at least come say good-bye?”
beseeched Annie, and she told him how to get to hers and Elam’s house.
“Yes, I’ll come,” he said. “I won’t leave this time without saying ‘God be with you,’ sister.”
It had been an awful selfish thing not to tell Daniel about Katie Lapp’s shunning—that his former girlfriend was off in New York somewhere, searching for her birth mother. Annie pondered the problem while driving the horse back to the house.
If she had told her brother about Katie, if he knew his sweetheart no longer lived here in Hickory Hollow, well, she could almost predict how Daniel would react. And then, even if her father did talk some sense into Dan after he offered his confession, even so, she understood the drawing power of love. Their love—a love so sweet, so strong, that if truth be known, she’d have to say she’d envied it through the years. Oh, she hadn’t committed the sin of envy. No, it was more like the wonder in a child’s heart on Christmas morning. It was that kind of feeling she felt when she saw them together.
‘Course, Bishop John might not think so if he knew about it, but she didn’t care. Main thing was, she had high hopes of Daniel returning to the Amish church. And by keeping this one little secret from him, least for now, it was the best thing she could do. For Dan, mostly, but also for herself.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Katherine was shocked when she heard the news.
“You’ll … be the mistress of the manor, darling … after I’m gone,” Laura Bennett gasped out.
Shaking her head, Katherine could only reply, “I’d rather be poor and have you alive, Mother.…”
“Nevertheless, what’s mine today … will be yours … soon.”
With growing horror, Katherine realized that the deadly pneumonia was squeezing the life out of her mother’s lungs. There’d be no more talk of the inheritance—not now. She must hear Laura’s story—how it came to be that she’d decided to give her newborn infant to an Amish couple. Still, when that moment came—later in their conversation— she’d be very, very careful how she phrased the question. The subject was much too painful—for both of them.
Meanwhile, sitting here beside the hospital bed, Katherine realized how very similar they must appear. Hair color and texture, even their noses matched … and the bold, determined line of their chins.
Catching her studied appraisal, her mother smiled. “I’m afraid I’m not looking … my best,” she managed with a wry look. “My hair …s so thin now … probably the medication.”
Katherine took the fragile hand, like a bird’s wing, it seemed. “Did the boys ever tease you about being a redhead?” she asked in a lilting tone, hoping to steer the conversation to more pleasant paths.
“Your … father did sometimes … your birth father.”
The comment caught her off guard. She hadn’t considered another man—other than Samuel Lapp—as her father. Strange, how she’d felt so instantly at home with her natural mother, with not a thought for the young man—her real father—who’d loved Laura as a teenager, then left her pregnant and brokenhearted.
There was a pause when the nurse came in to check for vital signs and see that her mother’s IV and oxygen tube were in place. Immediately after that—when they were alone again—Katherine began to ask more questions. Several that had remained lodged in her recollection ever since the day she’d first spied the baby dress.
“Why did you pick satin fabric for the dress?” she wanted to know.
“Perhaps it was because … I’ve always loved the feel … the swish of satin.”
There were other such questions—favorite foods, whether Laura had a craving for sweets.… Then—how it was that her mother had happened to be in Lancaster on the day of Katherine’s birth.
At that, Laura’s face blanched pale as death, followed by a pained expression. “Oh,” her mother moaned. “Quick … the nurse!”
Katherine ran to the door to summon help. “My mother’s in terrible pain. Please help her!”
A rush of nurses swept through the door, one politely asking her to leave the room.
Had her never-ending questions set off her mother’s illness … caused undue stress? Katherine fretted. Why couldn’t she have been content to sit beside Laura’s bed, letting her mother talk only when and if she chose to.
Why must I be so bold, so curious?
Standing outside the hospital room door, she prayed that if this flare-up was to cause her mother’s passing—if it were—that the dear Lord Jesus, Savior of the world, of Lydia Miller and Laura Mayfield-Bennett, might ease the pain and cushion the tug-of-war between life and death.
Recalling the past hours of intimate conversation, Katherine counted up her blessings. Not only had her natural mother desired to pass on a vast fortune to her only offspring, but her strong faith as well. Laura had explained her relationship with Christ Jesus—in glowing terms of love and acceptance—such things Katherine had never heard.
The idea that God’s Son should come to earth and die for her— hardheaded and conniving as she was—made Katherine stop and think. Really think about her place in “God’s kingdom,” as Laura had put it.
As she waited in the hallway, hovering close to her mother’s door, she recalled the sweet moments spent talking about spiritual things. It was then, while thinking back over this part of their conversation, that she began to comprehend how unimportant it was to know who you were—her biggest hang-up in life, it seemed—but whose you were.
Her natural mother had had
it all—wealth, the most stylish clothing, the finest foods, even golden combs for her long auburn hair. There were mirrors galore and the best furnishings money could buy, but it hadn’t been enough, Laura had told her. Laura Mayfield-Bennett needed something—Someone—greater in her life. Someone who would never run off and leave her or betray her. The Lord Jesus.
Tears sprang to Katherine’s eyes, and she wondered suddenly if this was what Daniel had tried to explain to her five years ago. Could it be that Dan, too, had come to know Laura’s Lord? Really know Him … before he died?
Dan knocked on the back door of his father’s house. He’d probably made a mistake by not asking Annie to warn his parents. What if they couldn’t handle seeing their dead son’s “ghost”?
He stood far enough back so that they might see him fully, not merely his face pressed close to the storm door.
For a brief moment, he was glad that it was his mother who appeared at the door but watched in dismay as the blood drained from her cheeks.
“Jacob!” he heard her call out.
“Oh, Mamma, don’t faint!” Quickly, Dan opened the door and held on to her until his father came to assist him—this stranger with the beginnings of a beard and a borrowed Amish hat. But he kept his head down, not letting Dat see his face.
“Ah, Elam,” said Dan’s father, “what didja do to your mother-in-law?”
By now Daniel found himself inside the utility room, helping his mother into the kitchen, where she fell into the big old hickory rocker. He wondered again why he hadn’t thought to fine-tune this plan. After all these years—some of them spent in a trade school—shouldn’t he have had more sense than to burst in on his loved ones this way?
He found himself sputtering out an apology. “It’s not Elam, Father. It’s … I’m your own son, Daniel.”
“Who? What’s that ya say?” his mother shrieked and stared, long and hard.
But Dat promptly grabbed both his wrists, squeezing them in a viselike grip. “But you’re dead! We thought you died years ago … drowned in the ocean!”
He let his father lash out at him. Let him spend his fury. “How could you go off and let us think you were dead?” the old man bellowed. “Didja know how awful hard your mamma would mourn and grieve your death, till the tears in her eyes all dried up?”
Standing in the middle of the kitchen, Dan did not budge an inch, even after his father released his arms. Then, trying to reckon with his own pain, Dan watched his father pace the floor like a distraught lion. Every now and then the gray-haired man glared back at him, his eyes red-hot with righteous indignation.
Dan was taught as a child to believe that the eyes of his father were near sacred, that they could emanate such emotions as anger, displeasure, and disapproval—yet without sinning.
Truth be known, Dan felt as though he had been transported in time, back to his late teen years, during one of the daily “preaching” sessions his father had imposed on him.
At last, Dan, still standing as if on trial, spoke up. “I’ve come home to confess, Father. I want to make things right between us.”
His anger dissipated, Jacob pulled out a straight-backed chair and sat down near his wife. “The Lord God almighty is sovereign and just,” the man said, not sternly, but with conviction. “Welcome home, son.”
Then, removing his hat, Dan knelt at his father’s knee, praying silently for grace and forgiveness. “I come to you, carrying the memories of my past sins,” he began with folded hands. “Transgressions I committed against you, Father. And I’m here to ask you to forgive me.”
“Can you ever … forgive me?” Laura begged, struggling to speak. A suffocating cloud of heaviness weighted her chest. “I wish I had … kept … you as my own, Katherine. I wish.…”
She could not finish. The air was gone, and she could not consume enough to say more.
Lying there, hooked up to a lifeline of whirring machines, she longed to hear Katherine’s answer. Waited for the words that could free her, those precious words to fill up the past emptiness, the painfilled years alone without her child.
“Please, Mother, don’t be worrying about what you did … about choosing Samuel and Rebecca to raise me.” Her dear girl stood up unexpectedly and bent down to whisper close to her ear. “I love you. I love you in spite of all the past.”
“The past is under the blood of Jesus,” Dan continued. “The Lord God heavenly Father has brought me home, to offer my confession, full repentance at your knee, Father,” he said, using the Amish terminology they would best understand.
Here, he reached for his mother’s hand. “Will you forgive me, too, Mam? Can you understand that I didn’t intend to fake my death as it seemed I did?”
He didn’t wait for either of their answers but went on, recounting the story of the day he’d nearly drowned while swimming to safety. He told them of the Coast Guard boat he’d seen from the reef, watched it comb the raging waters, searching for his body. He repented of his immature behavior, his teenage rebellion, his defiance against his upbringing. And he explained how he’d decided, there on the sandbar, that the easiest, most compassionate way for the People, for his family—for all those who loved him—was for them to presume him dead.
“By not revealing the truth, though, I deceived you. I allowed everyone to think I’d drowned, let them mourn for me. I was only hoping to spare you the Meinding … release you from having to shun me.”
He paused for a moment, their eyes fixed on him. “Don’t you see? I thought to save you … keep you from having to turn your backs on your son, to treat me as if I were dead. But I know now that I was wrong, Father. It was the worst thing I could’ve done to you.”
His parents listened, their faces solemn and expressionless. Dan stood up and pulled out the wooden bench under the kitchen table. With a sigh, he sat down, facing them. The confession had made his hands clammy, his mouth dry.
Yet, before almighty God, his heart was pure. At least in His sight, Dan Fisher was forgiven.
She held her mother’s bluish hand, unconsciously breathing hard as the dear lady continuously gulped for air. Her color was ashen now, and the death pallor frightened Katherine.
“Don’t die, Mother,” she whimpered. “I’ve just found you. Please don’t leave me now.”
Watching her mother’s struggle to breathe, she felt as if she might not survive this crisis herself. She might die along with the fancy English woman who was her real, true mother.
Ach, she’d never witnessed a person die before; didn’t think she wanted to even now. Yet she would not abandon the woman who’d given her life.
“My dear Katherine …”
“I’m right here with you, Mother.”
“Do you … know … my Jesus?” There was much gasping again, and she felt guilty that her mother had used up so much air for such a sobering question.
What could she say? She wouldn’t lie. Not as Laura Mayfield-Bennett lay dying, preparing to meet her Maker.
“God’s Son knows me,” she managed, hoping she believed her own words. “He knows me, and He brought us together … just in time.”
“Yes. He knows … you, child.”
Then without warning, Laura’s breathing stopped. And Katherine began to cry.
“Why, then, does my dead son return home to confess these things?” Jacob Fisher asked. “What has changed?”
Dan breathed deeply, praying for courage. “So much has changed. More than you know, Dat. I’m a grown man now, able to think for myself, to understand God’s precepts. I’m no longer afraid to express my beliefs and compare them with those of the People. And I can now follow the will of my heavenly Father and be the kind of son I should’ve been to you all those years ago.”
“What are ya really tellin’ us, Daniel?”
He turned to look at their bewildered faces. “I came here to confess my sins … but I cannot return to the Amish church. And for that, I am truly sorry.”
“So now you give us no choice but
to shun you,” Jacob said, frowning hard. “Bishop John will hafta be told.”
“My life is in God’s hands.” Dan stood up, knowing that if he were to stay longer, his time of confession might very well turn into a heated debate. One-sided.
“I love you, Dat … Mam.” He leaned down to kiss his mother’s face. “I wish we could see eye to eye about God’s plan of salvation. It would be so good to be able to share the Good News as a family, to break the Bread of Life together.”
Much to his surprise, his father accepted his handshake and did not attempt to refute his parting words.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was an endless day, even though Katherine never once resented sharing or bearing the dying experience with Laura. She felt she’d gained something most valuable by sitting there as her mother slipped away, pain gone forever.
But she’d been mistaken about that first moment when it seemed for all the world as if Laura was no longer breathing. Several more times, before the end, her beautiful mother had slipped in and out of consciousness, her chest barely rising and falling.
Laura had made one last effort to speak, and Katherine, in retrospect, was grateful for it. “Look for … my … journal.”
“You kept a diary?”
“While I carried … you.”
Katherine had wanted to hear more, but she sat quietly, holding her mother’s hand. The coolness of Laura’s hand in hers let her know that heaven was near. Gradually, ever so slowly, the delicate hand had grown lifeless … cold.
Laura’s last thoughts had been of her daughter. While I carriedyou, the whisper had come, almost inaudibly.
Long after Laura’s spirit had left her body, long after, Katherine sat beside the bed. She imagined her mother greeting loved ones who’d gone before. Daniel, too, maybe. Remembering the way he was, she figured her darling would be one of the first in line to receive Laura Mayfield-Bennett, just as soon as her mother passed through those pearly gates.
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