A Daughter's Truth

by Laura Bradford

  With a quiet snap, the heart split in two and she slowly lifted the top half up and back, her answering gasp echoing around her in the cold morning air.

  There, nestled against a pale pink background, was a heart-shaped photograph of an Amish girl not much younger than Emma. . . . An Amish girl with brown hair and eyes so like Mamm’s. . . . Yet, with the exception of those two things, everything else about the girl was a mirror image of . . . Emma?

  Confused, Emma pulled the open locket still closer as, once again, she studied the face inside. The same high cheekbones . . . The same slender nose . . . The same wide, full lips . . . The same tiny freckles . . . In fact, with the exception of the hair and eye color, she’d actually think she was looking at a picture of herself.

  Closing her fingers around the locket, Emma rose to her feet and began to run, the steady smack of her boots against the cold, dry earth no match for the thud of her heart inside her ears.

  * * *

  She was nearly out of breath when she reached Mary’s driveway but she didn’t slow down. Instead, she ran faster, her attention ricocheting between the house and the barn while simultaneously trying to work out where she’d be most likely to find her one and only true friend.

  Her first stop was the barn, but other than a quick glimpse of Levi mucking a stall in the back corner, and Mary’s dat gathering together tools atop a workbench, there was no one else. Spinning around, she ran farther up the driveway to the simple white farmhouse with the wide front porch. When she reached the front door, she made herself stop . . . breathe . . . and knock in a way that wouldn’t startle everyone inside.

  Still, she knew she had to look out of sorts when, a few moments later, Mary’s mamm opened the door and almost immediately furrowed her brow. “Good morning, Emma. Is-is everything okay at home?”

  She followed the woman’s gaze down to her hands—one clenched tightly around the unseen necklace, the other nervously fiddling with the edge of her favorite pale blue dress. Realizing the sight she must be, standing there on the Fishers’ porch, still panting slightly from her run, Emma made herself smile. “I . . . I was hoping maybe I could speak with Mary for a few minutes?”

  “I thought you spoke. Outside.”

  “We . . . did. But . . .” She stopped, swallowed, and willed her voice to remain calm even as her fingernails threatened to draw blood from her palm. “I will not take too much time. I . . . I just forgot to tell her something.”

  “Very well.” Mary’s mamm stepped back, motioned Emma inside, and then closed the door against the winter morning. “Mary is making some dough for bread in the kitchen.”

  She followed the woman down the narrow hallway to the back of the house and the large, yet simple kitchen that was nearly identical to Emma’s. Only here, at the Fishers’, the table was positioned in the center of the room whereas at home the table was off to the left where Mrs. Fisher kept her sewing table.

  “Mary, Emma has something she forgot to tell you.” The woman smiled again at Emma and then swept her hand toward the basket of laundry at the base of the steps leading to the second floor. “I’ll start putting away the laundry while you girls talk.”

  “I’ll be up as soon as we’re done, Mamm.” Eyeing Emma with a mischievous grin, Mary spread a cloth over the dough bowl and carried it to a sunny spot in the corner of the room. “You’ve been running, haven’t you?”

  “Yah. I—”

  “I know we do not see my brother the same, but to run all the way here just so you will look at the ground when he speaks to you? I do not understand you, birthday girl.”

  “I did not come to see Levi,” Emma rasped. “I came to see you.”

  Mary’s left eyebrow arched with intrigue. “But you just saw me. At the cemetery.”

  “Yah.” Emma pointed to the long bench beside the table and, at Mary’s nod, sunk onto the wooden seat, looking toward the stairs as she did. When she was satisfied Emma’s mamm was no longer within earshot, she pulled her fisted hand to her chest and looked up at her friend. “I-I have to show you something. It is why I ran all the way here.”

  Mary took a seat on the opposite bench, her gaze locked on Emma. “What? What do you want to show me?”

  “This.” Emma lowered her hand to the table, opened her fingers, and held out her palm to reveal the locket.

  Confusion darted Mary’s eyes between the necklace and Emma. “What is that?”

  Thrusting her hand forward across the table, Emma swallowed. Hard. “Open it. Please.”

  “Open it? Open what?”

  “I will do it.” Emma popped open the delicate silver heart and wordlessly held it out toward Mary once again.

  This time, Mary leaned forward, disgust registering across her round face a split second before infusing its way into her voice. “Emma Lapp! The Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not make unto thyself a graven image!’ ”

  “I didn’t,” she whispered.

  “You are not to pose for one, either!”

  Emma met and held her friend’s eye before leading it back down to her open palm. “It’s not me, Mary. Look again.”

  “What do you mean it’s not you?” Mary snatched the necklace from Emma’s hand. “Of course it’s . . .”

  Emma waited as Mary’s eyes chronicled the same features she, herself, had noted back at the cemetery. Sure enough, as she watched, the disgust her friend had worn only seconds earlier began to dissipate, replaced, instead, by first confusion, and then curiosity.

  “Who is this?” Mary finally asked, looking between Emma and the locket. “She looks just like you. . . . But with light brown hair . . . And eyes that are brownish green, instead of blue.”

  She opened her mouth to speak but closed it when there were no proper words to be found.

  “Emma?” Mary repeated. “Who is this?”

  Aware of her friend’s probing eyes, she swallowed around the lump in her throat. “I-I don’t know. That is why I came here. To see you.”

  “But how can you not know? You’re holding it.... And she looks just like you. . . .”

  “I found it.”

  Mary pulled a face. “You found a necklace with a picture of an Amish girl that looks just like you?”

  “Yah.”

  “Emma, this doesn’t make sense.”

  “I thought it would be like all the other things—little and shiny, or even just silly. But it wasn’t.” She took the necklace from Mary’s open palm and stared down at the image again. “It was this.”

  “What do you mean like the other things? What other things?”

  “The presents I find at my aunt Ruby’s grave every year.”

  Mary’s head whipped around toward the stairs only to return to start with widened eyes. “Presents?”

  Nodding, Emma set the locket at her spot on the table and swiveled her legs over the bench until she was able to stand. Then, beckoning to Mary, she led her friend over to the kitchen window and its view of the cemetery in the distance. “Every year, since I was one, I imagine, Mamm and Dat would stop out at Aunt Ruby’s grave on my birthday. We would not stay long, but we went every year. Every year, Mamm would start out sad, but soon she, like Dat, would be angry.”

  The sadness she saw in Mary’s eyes at the beginning of her explanation ebbed into confusion. “I don’t understand . . .”

  “Someone leaves a present on Aunt Ruby’s grave each year. On the day of her death. I don’t remember what the presents were back then, but I remember Dat did not like them to be there.” She leaned her forehead against the cold glass and lingered her gaze on the area where she knew the cemetery to be. “He would take the present and he would throw it into the first trash box we would see. I did not understand why these things were there, I just knew I did not like to see Mamm hurt even more than she already was on my birthday.

  “That is why, when I was seven and able to walk to school alone, I told Luke Graber, Elizabeth Troyer, and the other children I walked with, to go ahead—that I would catch
up.”

  Mary’s quiet gasp pulled Emma’s focus off the scenery outside the window and fixed it, instead, on her friend. “You went to the cemetery alone? On your birthday?” Mary asked.

  “Yah. I wanted to get the silly thing before Mamm and Dat were to see it.” Swallowing back against the emotion she felt building, she willed herself to remain calm, to hold back the memory-stirred tears. “But when I saw the miniature picnic basket sitting on the ground, I—”

  “Miniature picnic basket?” Mary echoed.

  “Yah.” Bringing her hand up between them, Emma separated her thumb and index finger by about an inch. “It is just like a real picnic basket, but it is this small. It even opens . . . but there is nothing inside.”

  “I imagine it was hard to throw such a thing away.”

  “That is why I didn’t.” She shrugged away Mary’s renewed gasp and wandered back to the table with her friend in tow. “I put it in my lunch pail and kept it there until the school day was over. Then, on the way home, I hid it out by Miller’s Pond.”

  Mary’s eyes brightened with excitement as, once again, she peered toward the stairs and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Do you think it could still be there even now?”

  Lowering herself to her seat next to the locket, Emma fingered the chain. “It is still there. In a bag. With fourteen other things. This”—Emma closed her hand over the locket—“will make fifteen things.”

  “You saved them all?” Mary glanced back at the stairs. “In the tree?”

  “Yah.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “Maybe. One day.”

  “Why did you keep them?” Mary asked.

  “Going there, to see what was left at Ruby’s grave, is the one part of my birthday that feels . . .” Emma stopped, took a breath, and made herself continue despite the emotion that was beginning to choke her words. “Special.”

  Mary took a spot on the same bench and rested her head on Emma’s shoulder. “Oh, Emma, I don’t like that your birthday is always so sad. It doesn’t seem right.”

  “Mamm did not ask God to take her sister.”

  “I know, but still . . . It was God’s will.”

  “I know that, and you know that, but Mamm is still sad.”

  “I understand that, but it is like you said earlier. It was twenty-two years ago.”

  “Yah.” Emma held the locket to her chest. “I know it’s wrong to say, but I began to see these things at the grave as birthday presents for me. They were something to get excited about each year. But I don’t know what to think about”—Emma opened her palm to the locket again—“this one. It is the only one with a picture.”

  “A picture that looks just like you,” Mary reminded, straightening up.

  The sound of approaching footsteps had Emma closing her fist around the necklace once again. Together, they looked toward the stairs in time to see Mary’s mamm appear with an empty laundry basket in her hands.

  The same shame that cast Mary’s eyes down to the table also propelled her onto her feet. “I did not mean to be so long, Mamm. I am sorry.” Then, to Emma, she said, “It is time for me to get back to my chores.”

  “I understand.”

  “We will talk again soon.” Mary lingered her gaze on Emma’s hand and then gestured toward the stairs. “Now, I must sweep.”

  She watched her friend disappear up the stairs and then turned to find Miriam Fisher watching her closely. “I am sorry I took so long with Mary. I did not realize how long we had spoken.”

  “It is all right, Emma. Sometimes friends just need a little extra time.” Miriam led the way toward the front door but stopped just shy of it. “You are twenty-two today, aren’t you, Emma?”

  “Yah.”

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Thank you.” Emma reached for the doorknob only to stop and turn back to the woman. “You grew up with Mamm, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “So then you knew her, too, right? You knew Ruby . . .”

  Miriam Fisher’s dark brown eyes dropped to the floor.

  “You knew Ruby . . .” Emma prodded again.

  Mary’s mamm lifted her gaze and fixed it on something just beyond Emma’s shoulder. “I knew Ruby.”

  “Was she like Mamm?”

  Miriam’s focus snapped back to Emma’s. “Ruby and Rebeccah? No, they were very different. Rebeccah was always so serious. She was selling quilts by the time she was fourteen. And her chores were always done. Always.”

  “And Ruby?”

  “She did her chores, too, of course. But always much later than she was supposed to that last year.”

  Something about the tone of the woman’s voice intrigued her and she leaned forward. “Why? What was she doing?”

  Miriam started to speak, shook her head, and then motioned over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “I’m sorry, but I really should get back to my own chores. There is much to be done before lunch.”

  “But—”

  “Emma, you must go.”

  Disappointment sagged her shoulders, but she knew the woman was right. She’d already taken enough of Mary’s time. To do so with Miriam, as well, would be wrong. Still, there was one thing she had to know—one thing she knew she couldn’t ask Mamm without intensifying a pain Emma’s very existence seemed to stoke.

  Readying her hand on the door once again, she waited for Miriam’s gaze to return to her. When it did, the question she’d wondered her whole life blurted its way past her lips. “How did Ruby die?”

  Miriam jumped backward as if she’d been slapped. “H-how did Ruby die?” she echoed.

  “Yah. Was she ill with fever?”

  “No.”

  “Was she in a buggy accident?”

  “No.”

  “Did she fall down or get hurt by an animal on Grossdawdy’s farm?”

  “No.”

  There was no denying Miriam’s growing discomfort as Emma cycled through the various scenarios she’d imagined in her head over the years, but she needed to know the truth. If she knew, then maybe things would be different between her and Mamm, somehow. . . .

  “Was there a fire?”

  “No.”

  “Then, how?” she pleaded. “How did Ruby die?”

  “She just died, Emma. That is all. Now, I really must get back to my chores and—”

  Emma reached out, stopping the woman’s retreat back to the kitchen. “I know she did not just die. That is why I am asking you to tell me what happened.”

  “Ask Rebeccah.”

  “Talk of Ruby makes Mamm sad. Especially today, on the day Ruby died. It is why I am asking you.”

  “Emma, please. I really must get back to—”

  “The Bible says, ‘A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape.’ ” Emma willed herself to breathe, to keep her voice steady and polite. “So you cannot say Ruby just died . . .”

  Pressing a fist to her mouth, Miriam pinched her eyes closed, her audible inhale whooshing its way past her fingers. “She died in childbirth.”

  Chapter 2

  She was halfway down Mary’s driveway when she realized she hadn’t said goodbye or thank-you or anything one should say after visiting. But she couldn’t turn back. Not now, anyway. Not unless she wanted to run the risk Levi would step from the barn and see her looking as lost as she felt.

  For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to know how her aunt Ruby had died, but she’d been too afraid to ask lest she upset Mamm. When she was old enough to know what death was, she’d imagined the teenager’s last breath coming while in bed with the flu. When she’d been old enough to understand conversations between grown-ups, she assumed the death had been tied to Rumspringa and an experimentation of the English world gone wrong. And when she’d attended the funeral of someone her own age in a neighboring district six months earlier, she’d seen Mamm’s quiet tears over the tragic buggy accident as evidence that the long-grieved death had bee
n because of something similar.

  But to learn that Mamm’s little sister had died during childbirth? It was—

  “No . . . It must be a mistake,” she murmured, stepping onto the roadway and heading east toward home. It couldn’t be.... Miriam Fisher had to be wrong.... One only had to look in the cemetery to know that.

  If Ruby had died during childbirth, the dead infant would have been buried beside her, the birth date matching that of death. Instead, to the left of Ruby’s grave was Abram King, a man who lived to be eighty-two. And to the right was Hannah Troyer, her childhood friend’s grandmother.

  No, the only baby born that day was—

  She stopped.

  “Nooo . . .” Her whispered rasp echoed in the still January air only to be chased off by the hitch of her own breath.

  Was it possible?

  Was she the child that . . .

  Feeling her legs begin to give out beneath her, Emma stumbled over to the edge of the road, to the fence that kept the Grabers’ pigs from venturing into town. She grabbed the upright closest to her body and closed her eyes against the unmistakable sense of dread snaking its way across every ounce of her being.

  The dimple little Esther shared with Mamm . . .

  Jakob’s tall, lanky build so like Dat’s . . .

  Sarah’s and Annie’s hair the exact same shade of brown as Mamm’s, while Esther, Jakob, and Jonathan shared Dat’s slightly darker hue . . .

  Her own dark blond hair and big blue eyes . . .

  The pretty sparkle in Mamm’s eyes as she looked around the dinner table at the other children . . .

  The way that same smile dulled as it came to rest on Emma . . .

  She tried to calm her strangled breaths, but it was no use. Instead, she made her way back onto the road, each step she took bringing with it another memory, another certainty.

  All her life, she’d felt as if she never quite fit. Not in the classroom or on the playground as a child, and not at hymn sings or other friendly gatherings now that she was older. But never did that sense of always being a step behind hurt like it did at home, where her childhood antics had drawn wary smiles, her thoroughness with her chores earned little more than a labored nod, and her smiles had never been returned with quite the same conviction as which they’d been given.