* * * * *
February turned into the coldest Ohio had seen in recent memory, keeping children housebound and adults ready to scream ... until two strangers entered their midst.
Two women traveling alone spent a day going door to door looking for the Amishwoman who delivered babies. The Amish kept their mouths shut around strangers, so the search was anything but easy, but everyone wanted to know who would be looking for Sara, when she hadn’t a soul in the world.
When Sara opened her kitchen door, two women stood on her stoop, wearing odd brown outdoor bonnets and capes, while their buggy in the drive, Sara noted with shock, was as yellow and bright as the summer sun.
“Are you Amish?” Sara’s thoughtless question embarrassed her. “Sorry. Can I help you?”
The older of the women nodded. “Indiana Amish, we are, and looking for the Amishwoman who delivers babies, Sara Zuckerman. But no one seems to know her.”
Sara looked at the younger of the two, but saw no sign of pregnancy. “I am Sara Zuckerman. Come inside, please?” She ushered them into her kitchen and shut the door. “Welcome. Can I take your capes and bonnets? The fire will warm you.”
Silently, they handed her their outer wear. Their indoor kapps were gray and gathered rather than pleated, their dresses and apron bodices boxy, not vee-shaped, all in shades of grays and browns. Odd about the bright buggy, given all that. “Tea?” Sara offered, indicating the chairs at her kitchen table.
The younger of the women nodded and sat. The older followed her lead.
“Is there something I can do for you?” Sara asked again as she put honey jumbles and crabapple tarts in a plate, but neither answered. The younger looked toward the older woman to respond, but the elder seemed unready, or unwilling, to speak.
Sara brought the kettle and tea strainer to pour.
The older woman smiled and nodded. “We hear you deliver babies and make the Elders mad doing it.” The woman’s smile, her admiration perhaps, made Sara want to hug her. She smiled, instead. “I am afraid so.”
“Mercy Bachman told us,” the elder of the two said, which started them talking about Sara’s first patient and her sweet little girl. “Mercy is expecting again,” the elder stranger said. “They are planning to return, so you can deliver it.”
Sara was flattered and failed to hide her pleasure. “I cannot wait to see her again, but Indiana to Ohio is a long way to come to give birth.”
“Mercy waited for years for one living child, she is willing to come a good distance for another. They have even talked about moving here to be near you permanently.”
Sara was less attuned to the compliment this time, than to the quiet, young girl, a smile nearly, but not quite, present, so like ... Adam’s. “Have we met before?” Sara asked.
“Ach, foolish me,” the older woman said. “I am Lena Zuckerman and this is my daughter Emma. I believe your Adam is my son.”
Chapter 8
Despite the impossibility, Sara’s legs trembled as she lowered herself to a chair. “That cannot be.”
The woman made to speak, but nap time was suddenly and loudly over and three refreshed and lively little girls flowed into the room, Lizzie carrying Hannah.
“Lena, Emma. Here are … my children.” She’d almost called them her husband’s children, but they were hers now too, and they needed to know she was pleased to claim them. Sara tried to introduce each child by name, but Lena began weeping into her handkerchief.
Emma rose to pat her mother’s back and rest her cheek on the woman’s head. Sara did not know what to make of them, and neither did the children. Well, except for Katie, who crawled into the woman’s lap, bringing a fresh supply of tears. “My’s Katie, and my’s five,” the three-year-old said, holding up two fingers.
Before Sara had a chance to lift Katie off the woman’s lap, Adam came in from the barn and hung his hat and coat on the pegs by the door. Rubbing the cold from his hands, he turned, saw the woman, and lost the light in his eyes.
His bad leg buckled.
Cursing, half in German, half in Penn Dutch, he regained his balance, and like the night Abby died, he denied whatever emotion gripped him. His gaze riveted upon the older woman, his expression hardened to an uncaring mask. “You are supposed to be dead!”
Lena seemed at first frightened, but like Adam, she masked it well. Emma began to scream, and Katie scooted off Lena’s lap as the woman rose to calm a daughter, who acted as if Adam might eat her alive.
To soothe her, Lena spoke Emma’s name over and over, like a song.
“Mein Gott, you look just like him,” Lena said, regarding Adam from beside her fretting daughter.
“Emma?” Adam’s expression closed, but not before he revealed more hope than Sara had ever seen in him. “Little Emma?” He stepped eagerly forward but Emma screamed again, backed away, gaining speed as she went. Then she turned and ran screaming from the kitchen. She dashed through the best room and out the front door.
They could hear her scream fading, as she got further away.
Adam swore again, in English this time, and the woman scolded him. His laugh was harsh, bitter. “It’s thirty years too late.” Don’t start acting like a mother now, old woman.
Lena really was Adam’s mother? How could someone mistake such a thing as a mother’s death?
Adam ran out the door as well, no coat or hat, to chase a young woman who shared his inability to smile.
Sara rose, looking to Lena for guidance. “Should I go after them?”
Lena shook her head. “She’ll slow down soon enough and he’ll catch her, though I can’t imagine how he’ll—” She stopped speaking, shook her head, and turned to the children. “Kum,” she said to Lizzie, as if there were no point in continuing what she’d begun. “Kum, buss grossmutter.”
The children had a grandmother. A dizzying realization struck Sara; Adam had not needed her to care for the girls. He had not needed to marry her. Except that it was too late to send her away. Marriage was forever. Relief sat her down, her trembling limbs betraying her.
If the woman had come a few weeks sooner ... “Oh God.”
Lizzie kissed her grandmother as directed. Each of the girls did, then Lizzie placed Hannah in the emotional woman’s arms. After Lena kissed Hannah’s brow about a dozen times, and cooed and sighed over her, she regarded Sara over Hannah’s head. “With you and Adam, ve come to liff,” she said. “With my grossbabies, ya?”
At the thought of them all living together, Sara’s eyes filled, but Lena misunderstood, and rose. “Ve go. Ve go.”
“No,” Sara said, taking the woman’s arm and sitting her back down. “I was ... It’s been a long time since ... I haven’t had a moth—a family for a long time. I’m ... I—” Sara raised the skirt of her apron to wipe her eyes. “Happy tears,” she said on a watery laugh. “A big family. I always wanted a big family.”
After a hug, she led Lena, still carrying Hannah, into the best room, toward the window, where they stood side by side staring out at the barren winter landscape for signs of Emma and Adam.
Brows furrowed with worry, Lena patted Hannah’s back, while Sara prayed she was correct and Adam would find his sister. They remained there until dusk bruised the horizon and Hannah began to cry.
Sara started supper and fed Hannah. Her new mother-in-law tried to help, but Sara caught her staring out the kitchen window, a fork in her hand, while the frying chicken turned a rusty brown. After she saved supper, Sara walked up behind Lena and touched her arm. “Adam will bring Emma back.”
The woman nodded. “I fear he ... I should have gone. Emma does not like ... she is afraid all the time of—”
“She is afraid of me!” Adam shouted, his words tossed at his mother like an accusation.
How could he? Sara thought. How could anyone be angry at a mother who had as good as returned from the dead? Sara was more troubled by this ‘mad’ turn of Adam’s than any of the others.
“How can she be afraid of me, after
everything?” Adam shook his head, denying the possibility. “I had to get Roman to come and help, but she screamed almost as much when he got near her. Why?” He seemed to be asking himself the question.
To Sara’s surprise and relief, it was Roman’s mother who tenderly helped an unsteady Emma into the kitchen, answering the question Sara had wanted answered since Adam came back: Where was Emma?
Emma’s dress was torn and muddy, her kapp was missing, and her wild hair almost hid her dirty face. Like a madwoman, Emma looked. Did madness run in the family?
As had been the case since they arrived, Adam directed his ire toward his mother. “Do you care to explain this foolishness?” he demanded, too harsh, too brutal, even for him.
Lena looked down at her hands. “It is men.” She spoke barely above a whisper, then she raised her head and squared her fragile shoulders. “All men. My Emma is afraid of men.”
“No!” Adam reared back as if he’d been struck, the same way he’d reacted when Sara said he was killing Abby, God forgive her. “That cannot be,” he said. “I made sure. I made certain he never got near enough t—” Adam stopped, halted by his own words, and looked around, surprised by his audience. He wasn’t pleased they heard what he said to his mother, but Sara wished he had finished his thought.
He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. “I fetched Roman when I saw that Emma was afraid of me. But she was afraid of him too, which made no sense.”
And why, Sara wondered, would it make sense for her to be afraid of Adam and not of Roman?
Jordan, carrying his black leather bag, arrived to further splinter Sara’s chaotic thoughts. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you were in Philadelphia.”
“I saw the Coblentz carriage nearly run the girl down from the top of the hill.” He shook his head, as though he didn’t understand. “Who is she? She took a hard fall. I thought I should examine her to make certain she isn’t hurt badly.”
Adam’s laugh revealed frustration, but it conveyed a thread of satisfaction as well. He crossed his arms and leaned against the Hoosier cabinet. “Emma will not let you near her. Sara will take care of her.”
Jordan looked to Sara for answers, but she had none to give. Instead, she introduced Lena and Emma to Jordan, Roman, and Mrs. Byler.
Emma said nothing; she kept her gaze on Hannah, sleeping in Lizzie’s arms, as if the sight of the babe soothed her.
Roman and his mother said their good-byes and left.
“Jordan is our local doctor, Mrs. Zuckerman.” Sara handed Lena the plates to put on the table, giving them both something to do. “He wants to make certain Emma is well.”
“Adam is right,” Lena said. “Emma will not let him near her.”
Thirty years, and his mother finally speaks up, Adam thought, and sides with him, no less. A day of miracles. Wonder fled, however, when he saw The English touch Sara’s hand. Adam uncrossed his arms and stood straight.
“Sara,” The English said.
Her name on the doctor’s lips scraped Adam’s raw nerves. Sara belonged to him, damn it.
“Take Emma to undress and lie down, then I’ll take a look at her,” The English directed, ignoring their warnings, daring to order Sara in her own house.
Adam’s fists relaxed as Sara looked to him, her husband, as should be, for direction. Which room should she put his sister in? she asked with a look, and should she do what The English wanted?
“Put her in the big room upstairs,” Adam said, watching Sara’s eyes widen in surprise before she nodded and took Emma’s arm, urging her toward the stairs and up, her gentle voice sweet and coaxing, The blasted English right behind them.
After they were gone, Adam sent the girls into the best room to play, and he regarded the old woman who’d once been young, beautiful, and dear ... then dead to him since almost forever. “Why did you leave?” he asked, finally.
“Because I thought I had found you.”
“No,” he snapped. “Back then. Thirty years ago.”
“Leave? I did not.”
“You did! I saw you climb into that buggy and drive away!” She would never know how he had cried because she left him behind. She would never know that his tears, worse when he’d been told they were dead, were less because his mother and sister were beyond reach—his mother had always been—but more because they had been delivered, and he had not been delivered with them.
“I left to care for my sister who was ill, dying,” said the woman who gave him his sorry life, then abandoned him to it. “He knew,” she added, the word ‘he’ carrying a meaning both understood. He, being her husband, Adam’s father—Satan.
Adam shook his head, the pain in his chest like to fell him. Of course he knew, of course. Why had Adam never realized it? Because he was five years old when it happened, that’s why.
“When we came back, after she died, you were gone,” Lena said. “No one knew where.”
So, Aunt Pris had died. No wonder she had not come for him. The woman he had hated for not taking him to raise had died and the woman he had hated for abandoning him had lived. Adam shook his head at fate. Did his mother know what happened to him; did she care? He went to the stove and saw the chicken cooling. “He said you died, you and Emma. Carriage accident.”
Tired now, older even than when he first saw her standing here in his own kitchen, his mother nodded and wilted. “I never expected it, even from him.”
“You should have,” Adam said, setting a platter of chicken firmly on the table, shaming his red-faced mother into jumping up and finishing, while she motioned for him to sit.
But Adam could not; he could not stop moving. He had to walk—despite the pain in his leg—or explode. “You should have expected anything from him,” he bit out. “Anything.”
His mother nodded but said nothing, her gaze pleading as she approached him.
He raised his hand to stop her. “You left a five year old boy with that—”
“You were strong. I thought—”
“Go away,” he ordered, closer to her, of a sudden, than he cared to be. “When she is better….” He pointed toward the ceiling, to where his sister rested upstairs. “You go.” He spoke the last words as though tasting something bitter.
“She will never be better, and there is nowhere for us to go. I sold everything to come here. We have nothing but our clothes and a wrong-colored buggy.” Her attempt to lighten the mood failed. Badly.
Adam was more upset than he had remembered being since before his father’s death. No, frustrated and … furious enough to ... to smash something ... someone, except the man responsible was already dead. This woman who bore him was a pawn, a puppet, and damn, he almost hated her for it.
Adam stepped close to his mother then, closer than he thought he could bear. He watched her eyes and spoke low, so only she could hear. “Whatever happens, old woman, you keep your mouth shut. You don’t tell Sara anything about life back then, you hear me? You do and you will be out so fast, you will not have time to blink. I will send you back myself, come to that, whatever the cost.”
She nodded her agreement, all the while keeping her eyes on his face.
“My’s hungry, Datt. Pris too,” Katie said, bright as an English button, wringing her purple skirt, standing like a waif at the entrance to the best room.
“Soon Katiebug. Go play with your sisters till I call.” He turned back to his mother. “How did you find me?” Why not try sooner? he wanted to ask. Years and years sooner.
“Mercy Bachman, from our district, gave birth when she was here visiting kin. Your Sara delivered her baby girl.”
His Sara. Adam shook his head, and sighed. One baby she delivers, and that brings his mother back. Where had Sara been twenty-five years ago?
“Adam, you must know I looked for you. I looked for years,” she said. “I questioned anyone who’d been on a visit, on any trip short or long.”
This was his mother, Adam kept telling himself as he stared at her, h
er redeeming words floating in the air around him. His mother. Alive. Not dead. Gray of hair and lined of face, but alive and pleading with him to understand. He should be glad she wasn’t dead, but it only made him feel thrown away. A piece of garbage. An ugly knot of gristle off an inferior cut of beef. Worthless.
Adam knew his gaze must be cold. He watched her as she poured out a jumble of words amounting to a plea for understanding. But understanding, forgiveness, would not come.
Niceties of feeling had been beat out of him long ago.
Still, he supposed he should try. He would try.
He attempted to focus on her words.
“I used to save the egg money,” she said. “Until I could afford to take a train, to a different town each time, to look for you, but you had vanished.”
Into Hell, Adam thought. The very fiery bowels of it, where gristle like him writhed and crisped and disappeared altogether.
Even in his numbed mind, he knew he could not remain there, pretending he cared what she had to say. Adam shook himself, refusing to wallow in the bone-deep pain crushing him. But Emma, his little Emma…. “What about her?” he shouted. “She is my sister, for God’s sake and she cannot even bear the sight of me!”
Upstairs, Sara washed the raw, bloody cuts and scrapes on Emma’s hands and arms, the gash on her forehead the worst. She helped the girl undress and got her into one of her own nightgowns, since Emma’s things had not yet been brought from the yellow buggy.
Emma answered none of Sara’s questions, so Sara spoke in a continuous, soothing tone, the way Lena did. “My marriage makes us family,” she said. “I have always wanted a big family.”
Emma gave her a sweet smile and fingered the pleats on Sara’s kapp. Sara took it off and gave it to her to look at.
Doctor Jordan wants to look over those cuts, Sara said, but the girl’s breathing changed and her gaze began to dart frantically about the room, a cornered animal seeking escape. When she saw none, she threw Sara’s kapp against the far wall. Frustration? Refusal? Fear?
Butterfly Garden Page 10
