Hidden Life (9781455510863)

by Senft, Adina

  Emma sighed. It would feel good to talk it out with Carrie and Amelia. She should open herself up like a book and let them read the shameful lines she’d written there herself. Let them scour them away with sense and good counsel, and she’d leave feeling as though anyone could read her and not judge her again.

  Yes, she should.

  But should was a fantasy. Should wasn’t real. It was an obligation, and she’d never handled obligation very well.

  They are your best friends. Helping you through this sin would not be an obligation. It would be a gift, one they’d give you gladly.

  Maybe. Maybe she would talk it over with them on Tuesday at the next quilting frolic. Then by the time she saw Grant in the yard, giving instructions to his crew, walking back and forth wearing his carpenter’s belt, holding the tools of his trade in strong, capable hands that always knew what needed fixing, she could smile and speak like a rational person, like a neighbor or a grateful customer.

  Not like the woman he hadn’t chosen—and whom no one else had chosen, either.

  A sound on the steps made her lift her head and look at the calendar next to the kitchen archway. Thursday! How could she have forgotten?

  She crossed the room swiftly and closed her mother’s bedroom door, then went to the front of the house. Alvin Esch stood shivering on the porch, a canvas messenger bag that might have seen service on an ambulance in the Second World War clutched to his side. “Am I late?” he whispered as she held the door open to let him in.

  “Not at all. I just forgot what day it was. Lucky we don’t have company.”

  “I’d have just kept going,” he said. “As it is, my folks think I’m courting Sarah Grohl, so I’d probably have turned left instead of right and gone over there.”

  “You should be careful.” She opened the tallest cupboard in the kitchen—the one out of reach of everyone but her—and handed him the packet that had come yesterday from the correspondence school where he was getting his GED. “Sarah’s liable to think you really mean it.”

  A hot flush of color under his fair skin and white-blond hair gave him away. “Would that be so bad?”

  “Only if you really do. If you’re just using her for a handy excuse, that’s a different story.”

  He ducked his head and Emma smiled. Lucky Sarah, to have a boy who cared so much.

  She got up and began to measure coffee into the old pot as he ripped open the packet and read his grades from last week. “How’d you do?”

  When he lifted his head, he was grinning. “A minus.”

  “Good for you. You worked hard on that paper.” She didn’t know a thing about Shakespeare except that reading him was a lot like reading the Bible and there was a lot of very colorful swearing. But Alvin, apparently, knew a bit more than that. He’d been working hard to get his high-school diploma so he could go on to college in Lancaster. He didn’t rest on his laurels, though, just tucked the papers into his bag and spread out this week’s work on the table.

  She watched his busy pencil on some math problems for a while, then got up, poured the coffee, and cut a couple of slices of snitz pie. She liked hers with a splash of rich cream poured over it, and once he’d gotten over the fact that it wasn’t ice cream, he’d come to like it that way, too.

  One thing about teenage boys—they loved to eat and she very rarely found a fussy one.

  “Do you ever think about what you’re going to do if your parents find out?” she asked when he put his pencil down and pulled the pie in front of him. Her shameful secret was safe inside, but his was not. His involved the U.S. Mail and buggy rides to the other side of the district, which made it exponentially more dangerous.

  He shrugged, his mouth full of pie. With a swallow, he replied, “I’m not stopping even if they do find out. My instructor just sent the sheet with our choices of final essay for English and history. I have ten weeks to go and my junior year will be done.”

  “What if your dad takes all your papers away?”

  “I’ll write and get new ones. Besides, all my essays are stored on the computer down at the library. I just write out the drafts by hand when I’m here.”

  He looked up at her and she realized he’d had his hair cut in the Englisch style, like Aaron King, who used to come on Thursday nights, too, to write, when he still lived in Whinburg. He’d had some kind of falling-out with his father and had gone to visit his aunt and uncle in upstate New York.

  “What would you do if they found out?” he asked.

  “How would they find out unless someone followed you over here?” Or Carrie or Amelia told them.

  “But if they did.”

  Emma had often wondered that herself. It was one thing to encourage talent in the younger folks. It was quite another, as Amelia and Carrie had taken pains to point out not long ago, to aid and abet a young man in deceiving his parents. Will and Kathryn Esch had no idea he spent this time in her kitchen, and her own mother had no idea the packets came to their post box, because Emma collected the mail every day. Karen was glad to let her, because cooking breakfast for her family and getting the children off to school in the morning was so chaotic that the mail was the last thing on her mind.

  It was the first thing on Emma’s. Not just because of Alvin’s packets, but because once in a while a check might come from a magazine for her, or a circle letter from her old buddy bunch, or a flyer from some women’s clothing emporium that would give her ideas for characters in her book. The mail was full of inspiration no matter how you looked at it, and if Karen got hold of it, she’d never see half of it.

  So what would she do if they were discovered? “I’d ask forgiveness of your folks, I guess,” she mused aloud.

  “What if they put us in the Bann?”

  “If we asked to be forgiven, they wouldn’t do that, Alvin. It’s only if we refused to, if we weren’t sorry for doing what we’re doing and kept on doing it, that they might consider something more serious.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  “Nei.”

  A snort of laughter made him scramble for a napkin to mop pie crumbs off his chin. “But you’d say you were if we got caught?”

  She gave him a level look. “Alvin, we’re not stealing honeydews out of Mary Lapp’s garden. In your parents’ minds, this is a serious thing. You should treat it seriously.”

  He sobered, and pushed his empty pie plate away. “I know it is. I also know I couldn’t say I was sorry and be willing to give up my courses. Because you know the second part would have to go along with the first.”

  That was the thing about repentance. It didn’t just mean being sorry. It meant turning away from what you were sorry for, and not going back to it, ever. Her thoughts turned to Lavina Weaver. Would she one day realize all she’d left behind? Would she repent and return to Whinburg?

  “I’m glad to see you’ve thought about it,” she said. “I just hope you’re prepared if that day comes. Can you finish out your senior year living under die Meinding?”

  He met her gaze, and when he didn’t answer, she got up and cleared the dishes. When she looked over her shoulder from the sink, he was hard at work again.

  Which, she supposed, was answer enough.

  Trent O’Neill

  1440D 37th Street

  Springfield, MO

  Dear Trent,

  We have never spoken, but I am Lavina’s husband. I am writing to you because this is the only address I have for her. Since she left Whinburg, she has written at least once a month to get news of the children and for money. I have not heard from her since Christmas and I am getting a little worried. If she is no longer willing to write, I understand, but maybe you could let me know she is all right.

  I am enclosing ten dollars for her. It isn’t much, but it’s all I have.

  Thank you.

  Grant Weaver

  Grant Weaver

  P.O. Box 254

  Whinburg, PA

  Hey man, I can’t remember the last time I wrote a letter o
n real paper. I think I was eight. Anyway, here goes with the bad news.

  Here’s your ten bucks back, plus Lavina’s stuff in the box. The truth is, I don’t know where she is. She went out to get whipped cream or something at Christmas and I haven’t seen her since. Chick was flighty, but man, that takes the cake. I figure if she’s going to contact anyone about her stuff, it’ll be you.

  We had some good times, but I’m moving on. You want the truth, man—so should you. She might have asked about the kids and stuff, but there was no way she was going back. Just thought you should know.

  T. O’Neill

  Whinburg Township Police Department

  Missing Person Report

  CONFIDENTIAL

  Chapter 3

  March 30, 2012

  Dear Ms. Stolzfus,

  Congratulations! We’re delighted to inform you that your entry in the Commonwealth Prize fiction contest has been judged by two panels of readers and has progressed to the final round. Competition was steep, as we had 742 entries. The finalists comprise the top one percent of the total.

  Please send the complete manuscript to me by April 7. Finalist manuscripts will be judged by an editor from a publishing house and an agent from a well-known literary agency. We wish you the best of luck in the final round.

  Sincerely,

  Tiffany Hickman

  Contest Coordinator

  Emma staggered over to the phone shanty from the mailbox and slumped against the wall, clutching the letter with its New York return address.

  Finalist! She was a finalist!

  She’d never been a finalist for anything in her life, except in sixth grade at the school spelling bee, when she’d come within one word of beating an eighth grader for the prize. But this! Out of 742 stories, hers was one of the top seven.

  Thank You, dear Lord. Thank You for giving me this gift. If I never achieve anything else in this life, this moment is enough.

  Because of course she would never win. Someone would find out that she was an Amish woman living miles from anywhere, and would realize how impossible it would be. And even without that, there were six other people with more talent than she who would be fighting it out for the prize. She was outnumbered, and that was that.

  Emma folded up the letter and stuffed it deep into the pocket of her work dress, under her apron. Relieved to find her legs were operating again, she walked up the lane, methodically separating Karen and John’s mail from hers and Lena’s as she went.

  How had it gone? Had her pages been passed from one hand to another, or had someone made copies and mailed them all around the country? It didn’t matter. Someone—several someones, maybe—had read her words and thought them good enough to pass on to the next round. And the next. Who knew how many people had heard her—had maybe been changed just a little by what she’d written?

  And not changed as in they now knew how to keep cucumber pickles crispy. But changed as in perhaps they had an inkling about the goodness and greatness of God.

  Such a gift!

  She’d heard the expression burning a hole in his pocket all her life, but had never applied it to herself. Now she knew what it meant. Throughout the morning she felt the folded paper in her pocket every time she reached or turned. When she was alone, she took it out to read again and again, until she could recite it verbatim. By the time she saw Amelia coming over the fields and got her sewing things together, she could hardly wait until they got to Carrie’s house to share the news.

  As soon as her coat was off, she pulled the letter from her pocket and held it out to them. “Read! Read my good news.”

  Carrie grabbed it and Amelia read over her shoulder. Then both of them looked up at her, their faces slack in identical expressions of astonishment.

  “Isn’t it amazing? Isn’t God good?” Emma clapped her hands in delight.

  Amelia turned back to the letter, as if it might say something different this time, pulling it from Carrie’s fingers altogether. Then she slumped into a kitchen chair. “You entered a contest?” she finally managed. “A writing contest? This isn’t from a magazine?”

  Emma shook her head so that the strings of her organdy prayer covering danced against her chin. “I read about it in one of those writer’s magazines that they have in the bookshop. I copied down the address and what they wanted, and typed out the manuscript as neatly as I could. They only wanted the first three chapters but you had to have a whole book. And now look! It’s in the top seven, and they want the rest; so I mailed it this morning. Can you believe it?”

  Carrie leaned against the counter, completely oblivious to the fact that the kettle was boiling madly on the stove. “But I thought—when you were so happy, I— Oh, dear.”

  She was supposed to be jumping up and down, sharing Emma’s delight. “What? Oh, dear, what?”

  Carrie plastered on a smile and took the kettle off the flame. “It’s wonderful gut, Emma, of course. It’s just that we had no idea. And I thought…Well, obviously, that will get me in trouble every time, won’t it? Thinking?”

  “What did you think?”

  A shamefaced glance passed between the two of them. “We both thought you’d had a letter from someone, that’s all,” Carrie finally said.

  “I did. A wonderful letter. The best letter ever.”

  “I meant, from a special someone.”

  Emma let out a long breath, then held out her hand for the letter. She folded it up and slipped it into her pocket again, where it should have stayed to begin with, obviously. “And who do you suppose might be writing me letters like that?” she asked in an even tone.

  “Don’t be mad,” Carrie pleaded.

  It was impossible to be mad at Carrie. She was as transparent as a running creek, and just as refreshing, even when she was being a wet blanket. “I’m not mad. But it was silly for either of you to think such a thing. If anyone would know I was corresponding, it would be you two.”

  Amelia had begun cutting the widest of the borders they’d planned. For a moment, Emma watched her hands. Amelia noticed the direction of her gaze, and waggled the fingers holding down the dark green fabric. “They’re working pretty well. Not a hundred percent yet, but more and more as the days pass.”

  She was going to change the subject, and leave Carrie’s foolishness where it lay. “You’re using them, at least,” Emma said. “I remember when all you could do was use that hand like a paperweight.”

  Amelia nodded. “I have a lot to be thankful for.”

  “Speaking of things to be thankful for, did you hear that I’m to have some work done on the Daadi Haus? John has hired Grant Weaver to replace both porches.”

  Carrie smiled at the prospect of any good thing happening in Emma’s life, even the most prosaic. She had obviously decided to let the subject drop, too. “That will be gut. But Lena? Will the noise bother her?”

  “The sound of work getting done has never bothered her. In any case, it won’t be until later in the spring. John is putting an addition on for the new baby, upstairs over the kitchen.”

  “Grant Weaver is a good carpenter,” Amelia said. “He helped Daed and my brothers build the new barn a couple of years ago. Before…”

  Before Amelia’s Enoch died. And before Grant’s Lavina left. All of them thought it. “Does anyone hear from Lavina?” Carrie asked.

  Amelia shook her head. “If any of the Yoders do, they don’t say so. She’s still under die Meinding for…for that business with that Englisch boy.”

  Emma looked up from the narrow strip of fabric, blue as the summer sky, that they’d measured and cut the previous week for the first border. “What business?”

  “They tried to keep it quiet at the time, but some of us knew. She was having a—she was looking outside her marriage vows for attention. And since she couldn’t get it from any of our men, she looked outside for it.”

  Oh, my. Emma’s heart swelled with sympathy and sorrow for poor Grant—sympathy she could never, ever express to him. He would
n’t thank her for knowing about his shame.

  “Is that where she went?” Carrie asked. “To be with this Englischer?”

  Amelia shrugged and resumed cutting. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t have known about it at all except that I saw them once on my way home from the shop, standing in the door of the post office so close together you couldn’t get a butter knife between them.”

  The post office, with its glass doors that concealed nothing. Foolish Lavina. Foolish in so many ways, and now having lost her family, she might lose her eternal hope, too. Had it been worth the price? Because she was not the only one to suffer. She had made Grant to suffer as well. She might have left him and gone off to begin again, but he was the one who would be alone for the rest of his life. A few brief years of marriage set against a lifetime of loneliness.

  At least Emma had hope that her situation might change. Grant had no such hope.

  “Poor man.” The words came out before she realized she’d spoken them.

  Amelia looked up from the scissors. “At least he has his work. And his children. She could have taken them, you know.”

  “She wouldn’t have been so cruel.” Carrie’s tone was firm. “Besides, if you’re going to step out on your husband, you wouldn’t take the Kinner along, would you?”

  The butterfly loved to flit from flower to flower, preening its wings and soaking up the sunshine. With baggage, it couldn’t fly.

  “I guess he should have chosen me when he had the chance,” Emma said, hoping the words came out with airy nonchalance. A joke. Ha ha.

  Carrie’s pale eyebrows rose. “He had a chance with you? When?”

  She should have kept her mouth shut. They would make more of it than it really was. “Not really. He gave me a ride home from the singing once, that’s all. Years ago.”

  “Why, Emma.” Amelia’s voice was soft with revelation. “You never said a thing to us.”