“Emma? Is everything okay?”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?” she asked, her voice thick with emotion. “About this Englisher?”
“Yah.”
Her gaze flew back to Levi’s. “What? Tell me!”
“The sign does not just say Harper Construction. It says New Holland, too.”
Chapter 5
She had felt Mamm watching as she’d collected the breakfast plates and carried them to the sink. She’d felt her watching as she swept the floor, and readied the children’s lunch pails for the day ahead. In fact, once the little ones had left for school and Jakob and Sarah had headed out to attend to their respective chores, Emma had even caught her getting ready to speak in the reflection of the kettle, but when Mamm’s mouth invariably closed without so much as a word spoken, she knew nothing would be forthcoming.
On one hand, she knew she could help ease the week-long tension by acting as if nothing had changed. But, on the other hand, everything had changed, and she simply couldn’t pretend otherwise.
“Emma?”
Stilling the dishcloth atop the final plate, she glanced over her shoulder to find Mamm’s worried face replaced by Sarah’s. “Is something the matter, Sarah?”
“I don’t know. You’ve been so different this past week.”
She wished she could argue, but she couldn’t. Sarah was right. She was different. It was as if the truth about her birth and her parents had wiped away her incessant urge to please. Sure, she still did her chores and everything that was expected, but now she stopped at that point rather than going beyond. Part of that was because she was angry, sure. But a far bigger part was finally knowing no amount of trying would ever change Mamm and Dat’s feelings about her.
“Emma?”
She shook her thoughts back into the moment, added the now-dried plate to the stack inside the cupboard, and hung the damp towel across the stove’s handle. “I am fine, Sarah.”
“I heard you moving around in your room last night. Even after Dat’s lantern went out last night,” Sarah protested.
“I-I was thinking.” Emma grabbed the broom from its resting spot beside the refrigerator and crossed to the table. “I am sorry if I kept you up.”
“Did something happen when we were at the hymn sing? I saw you talking to Levi Fisher by the fire before it was time for us to leave.”
“What would happen, Sarah?”
“Perhaps he wants to court you and you do not know what Dat will say?”
She didn’t mean to laugh, nor could she stop it. “Levi will soon court Liddy Mast.”
“Liddy Mast?”
“Yah. Liddy Mast.”
“When did he start liking her?” Sarah asked, her nose scrunched.
“I imagine the first time he saw her at that hymn sing a few weeks ago.”
“But—”
Stopping mid-sweep, Emma lifted her hand into the air. “Sarah, it isn’t time to talk of such things. There is much work to be done—work I am doing but you are not.” Then, with a peek at the clock, she added, “If I am not here when it is time for lunch, please see that the meal is ready when Dat and Jakob come in from the field.”
“If you’re not here? Why, where would you be?”
Emma glanced toward the stairs and then the window before bringing her attention back to her sister. “I need to use your scooter. My tire is flat.”
“My scooter?”
“Yah.”
“But why?” Sarah asked. “Where are you going?”
“I just need to go into town.”
“Does Mamm know you are going?”
She lifted her chin in defiance. “No. I am twenty-two. I can go into town when I wish.”
“Emma!”
“It is true, Sarah. I am not a little girl. My morning chores are done. I am going into town.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. “Does Dat know?”
“No.” Emma pulled the broom handle tightly against her chest and did her best to rein in her growing irritation. “Please, Sarah. There is just something I have to do.”
“What am I to say if Mamm asks where you’ve gone?”
“If you are busy, she won’t ask. If that doesn’t work, just tell the truth—you don’t know where I went.”
After a few moments of utter silence, Sarah nodded, pivoted on the toes of her boots, and headed upstairs to the day’s waiting laundry. Emma, in turn, eyed the last few crumbs on the floor, returned the broom to its spot beside the refrigerator, and made her way out to the side yard and Sarah’s waiting scooter.
She tugged the scooter’s handle from its resting spot against the dormant apple tree and walked it toward the driveway, her gaze skittering between the barn and the fields. The telltale ting of a bucket against the ground let her know Jakob was inside the barn, likely getting ready to fill the animals’ water troughs. She was curious where Dat was, but to linger any longer than necessary made no sense, especially if she didn’t want her plan upset by additional tasks or chores. Besides, the longer she took to get to New Holland and back, the more difficult she made it for Sarah to keep from answering questions.
Stepping her left foot onto the scooter, Emma propelled herself forward with her right, the responding smack of cold air on her cheeks and hands making her wish she’d grabbed her coat on the way out the door. Still, she pressed on—down the driveway, past her neighbors’ farms, and onto the main thoroughfare toward town, the occasional buggy-only sighting giving way to one that included cars and trucks, too.
At the traffic light by the Amish eatery popular with the English on vacation, Emma spotted an Amish teenager stacking boxes on the back step. “Hello,” she called, scootering to a stop just inches from where he stood. “Do you know New Holland well?”
“Yah.”
She pulled her hands from the handles, wiped them down the sides of her dress, and then backed up a few feet in the hope it might minimize any chance he could hear her heart galloping inside her chest. “Have you ever seen a black shiny truck that says Harper Construction on the side?”
“Sure.” He pointed to a large tree near the back of the parking lot. “Parks back there most of the time.”
She stared at the boy. “You’ve seen it here?”
“Yah. It is here often—Friday afternoons, mostly.” Setting the last box atop the pile, the boy eyed her from head to toe. “He comes in here for lunch after it is busy.”
“He?”
“The Englisher who drives the truck.”
“Do . . . do you know his name?”
“He told me to call him Harp.”
“Harp?” Emma echoed.
The teenager shrugged, then jerked his chin toward the restaurant’s back door. “I better get these inside before—”
“Wait!” Tightening her hold on the handles, Emma stepped off the scooter and inched closer. “Is there a building that goes with the truck? You know, like a barn where he builds the things he builds.”
“He builds houses. Big houses. He shows me his drawings sometimes when he’s waiting for his food to come.” The boy wrapped his hand around the bottom box and hoisted the entire pile off the ground. “He said I’m pretty good at reading a floor plan—least that’s what he called his picture.”
She laid her scooter on its side and then fast stepped it over to the door in an effort to help. “Okay, so maybe he doesn’t use a barn for what he builds, but maybe he has an office or something where he draws his pictures?”
The boy maneuvered the boxes through the narrow opening her assistance afforded and then stopped. “He has an office. It’s in the old bank building.”
She followed the direction indicated by his chin. “Old bank building?”
“Yah. Not far from Otis’s Buggy Tours.”
* * *
Emma wasn’t sure how long she’d been there. An hour? Maybe two? All she knew for certain was that the black shiny truck with the Harper Construction sign Levi had described hadn’t moved from it
s spot outside the back door of the old bank building since she entered the parking lot. Well, that and the fact that the only other car in the lot—a small brown two-door—hadn’t moved, either.
Yet every time she tried to tell herself it was time to head home, her feet wouldn’t budge from their hiding spot behind the old shed on the edge of a neighboring property. From that spot she could see both the truck and the back door, as well as two different windows that revealed little more than interior lights.
When she’d left the farmhouse, bound for New Holland, Emma’s only real goal had been to find Harper Construction. Once she did, the goal shifted to catching a glimpse of the man Levi had seen at the cemetery the morning of her birthday. But the longer she waited for that glimpse, the more agitated she found herself getting.
All her life, she’d believed there was something wrong with her—something she needed to try to change in order to make Mamm smile, or the kids at school include her, or boys want to court her. Maybe she could be a better quilter, do her chores faster, bring just the right cookies to share, or even learn to bat her eyelashes like Liddy Mast. When her efforts fell short as they always had, she tried harder and harder and harder.
But none of it had mattered. None of it was ever going to matter. Because in the end, it wasn’t about what she did or didn’t do, or how she looked or didn’t look. All that mattered was the actions of two people she’d never met—one who died during her birth, and one who hadn’t cared enough to even look in on her as she grew.
And then there was Mamm and Dat, or, rather, the people she’d thought were her mamm and dat. Unlike Emma, they’d known the truth. They’d known why she hadn’t fit inside their home and community. They’d known that her prayers to be like everyone else were never going to be answered the way she’d hoped. Yet they’d said nothing.
Fisting her hands at her sides, she shifted her focus from the building to the truck. How could someone have a child and not care? How could he go about his life, building houses, and never wonder if his child was even happy? How could he—
She stepped out from the shadow of the shed and headed toward the very door she’d all but memorized from her hiding spot. So much of her life had already been wasted not knowing. Today, that ended. Today, she was going to get the rest of the answers she needed.
With determined steps, Emma made her way around the building and through the front door, the contrast between the late-afternoon sun and the electric lighting that greeted her, momentarily jarring. A few quick blinks, however, helped her eyes adjust enough to be able to pick out an older woman seated at a desk, talking on a telephone. From somewhere beyond the woman’s desk, she could make out a deeper, male voice.
“I’ll be right with you, Miss.”
At Emma’s nod, the woman returned to her call, freeing Emma to peruse the framed photographs lining the wall to her right. Although the background in each picture changed, one person remained the same. Leaning closer, she studied the English man’s dark blond curly hair, defined chin, wide lips, and eyes the exact same shape and shade of blue as Emma’s. . . .
“I’m sorry for that delay. My name is Sue Ellen, how can I help you today, Miss?”
She thought back on the times she’d sat at the dinner table, looking around at her parents and siblings, noting the similarities each sibling had with either Mamm or Dat—similarities she’d always been hard pressed to find in herself. Yet, there, in the picture, she saw her own eyes.... Saw their same smile-born crinkle . . . Saw the—
“Miss? Is everything all right?”
The scrape of the woman’s chair against the wood floor snapped Emma back to her surroundings long enough to point at the closest picture. “Who is this man right here?”
Sue Ellen peeked around a large potted plant on her desk. “That’s Brad, of course.”
“Brad?”
“Brad Harper. President of Harper Construction and”—the woman swiveled her chair just enough to indicate the open office a few feet from her desk and then swiveled back to start—“my boss.”
Emma took one last look at the picture and then strode the rest of the way to the desk. “I need to see him.”
“Who? Mr. Harper?”
“Yah.”
Dropping her chin nearly to her chest, Sue Ellen looked at Emma across the top of her glasses. “Can I ask what this is about?”
“I just need to see him.”
“If you tell me what this is regarding, I could make an appointment for you to come back tomorrow.” The woman shifted a pile of papers to her left and opened a small black calendar-style book. “He’s booked tomorrow morning with a new client, but he has a little time after lunch—say . . . maybe two o’clock?”
“No, I need to see him now. It won’t take long.”
Sue Ellen paused, took in Emma’s kapp and plain Amish dress, and stood. “I’ll see if he can spare a moment after he’s done with his call.”
She considered waiting, but the moment Sue Ellen started for the open door, Emma knew she had to follow.
“Brad? There’s someone here to see you.”
“Not now, Sue Ellen, I just got off with the foreman out on the Hanson property and the two new guys he hired didn’t show up today.” The brown leather chair creaked ever so slightly as it swiveled slowly in their direction. “Which means they’re gonna fall behind out there if we don’t find a pair of brick layers who can step in real quick and get—”
The hitch of her own breath cut short the man’s sentence and pulled his gaze past Sue Ellen and onto Emma, his eyes widening a split second before his face drained of all discernible color. “Ru . . . Ruby?” he rasped.
“Actually, it’s Emma.” She pushed her way past Sue Ellen, thrust out her hand, and opened it to reveal the locket with Ruby’s picture. “Did you leave this on my mamm’s grave last week?”
“Your-your mamm’s grave?” Grabbing hold of his desk for support, the man stood. “No. I left it by . . . no. I-I mean . . . This can’t be.... Ruby has been dead for—”
“Twenty-two years this past Monday,” Emma finished, her chin raised.
He drew back so fast, his chair banged against the window behind his desk. “How do you know that?” he demanded.
“Because having me is what killed her!” And, just like that, the anger that had brought her to that moment gave way to a steady stream of tears she tried, unsuccessfully, to blink away.
Chapter 6
Brad steadied himself against his desk and, when he seemed confident enough he could stand alone, waved Sue Ellen from the room. Seconds turned to minutes as he stared at Emma and then, unseeingly, at something outside the confines of his office walls. Eventually, he shook himself back into the room, back to Emma. “I . . . I don’t know what to . . .” His words trailed away, his eyes pained, his lips trembling. “I-I don’t understand. How . . . how can this be? You . . . I mean, I thought . . . I was told you died, too.”
Emma wiped away the last of the pesky tears. “If that were so, I would not be here.”
“I realize that, I just . . .” Stepping backward, he took her in from the top of her kapp to the tips of her boots before bringing his full attention back to her face. “You have her same cheekbones . . . And the same curve right here.” He touched the center of his own top lip only to let his hand drift back to his side. “But your eyes are different. Hers were this pretty brown that sparkled when she smiled. Yours are blue just like . . .”
He covered his mouth with his hand as he took a single step forward and then a half step back. “I-I don’t know what to say. I . . . I mean I can’t believe this. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“You did not know?” she rasped.
“Know? Know what?”
“That I lived?”
“No! I thought you died with her!” Raking his fingers through his hair, Brad took off across the office toward his desk, reversed course to the window, and then spun back around toward Emma, the confusion he’d worn just moments earl
ier morphing first to anger and then . . . joy?
When he reached her, he gathered her hands inside his own and held them tightly. “I don’t know what to say . . . You’re my-my . . . daughter—Ruby’s and my daughter . . .”
“Yah. I mean, yes.”
“I can’t believe this. It’s just . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t know what to say.” He led her over to his desk and invited her to sit in the chair across from his own. “I keep thinking Sue Ellen is going to walk back in here and tell me this is some sort of bad joke. That this is going to end up being just like all my other dreams.”
Slowly, Emma lowered herself to the edge of the chair, and after a moment or two of trying to decide what to do with her hands, she simply laid them in her lap. “Other dreams?”
“That Ruby didn’t die . . . That you didn’t die . . . That I got to build the house we wanted, for us.”
She stared at him. “You wanted to build us a house?”
“I did. We did.”
“But Mamm—I mean, Rebeccah—said you didn’t care about my real mamm. That you didn’t care about me.”
A darkness not unlike a summer storm cloud passed across his face. “Rebeccah, as in Ruby’s sister?” At Emma’s nod, he pushed off the edge of the desk, pulling a hand down his face as he did. “That’s where you’ve been this whole time? At Rebeccah and Wayne’s place?”
“Yah.”
“I sat out on the road, outside their farm so many times after Ruby died, wanting to talk to them, wanting to know something about her death—your death. But Wayne wouldn’t let me onto the property. Said Rebeccah had been through enough and my being there was an unnecessary reminder. So I stopped.”
A noise much like that of an injured animal followed his words, only to be smacked away by the thump of his fist against his desk. “I stopped! But you were there . . . inside . . . the whole time!”
A Daughter's Truth Page 5
