“I was worried about you, Emma. You did not tell me you were leaving.”
“You are right. I did not.”
Rebeccah crossed to the bed she shared with her husband and sat down. “You were gone a long time. Jonathan said you were not at Miller’s Pond.”
“You sent Jonathan to look for me?”
“Yah.”
Nodding, Emma claimed the now vacant spot at the window. A precursory look at the barn straight ahead, and the road in the distance, quickly bowed to her overwhelming need to shock. “I saw him today,” she said.
“Him?”
“My father. My real father.”
And just like that, any natural color drained from Rebeccah’s face, taking with it the strained yet muted aura that had filled the room just moments earlier. Before the woman could speak, though, Emma continued. “He was surprised to see me. To hear that I”—she touched the front of her chest—“am alive. To know that I did not die with Ruby the way he had been told. By you and by Wayne.”
“Emma! What have you done?”
Dropping her hands to her sides, Emma stepped forward, her eyes locked on the pair staring back at her as if Emma was in the wrong. “What have I done?” she spit back. “I am not the one who did this! You are. You and your husband!”
“Emma—”
“No! I never got to know my mamm. I knew her only as your sister, Ruby. Every year we would go to the cemetery and you would be sad. But she was not just your sister. She was my mamm. She died having me. But I didn’t know because you didn’t tell me. And then, when I found out and asked about my birth father, you said he didn’t care. That he didn’t care about Ruby or me. But you were wrong! I know this now because I found him and he told me.”
“He didn’t care about you—either of you!”
Anger propelled her forward, closing the gap between them to mere inches. “You do not speak the truth! You haven’t for twenty-two years!”
“Emma!”
“You did not speak the truth to me, and you did not speak the truth to my real father. But now he knows. Because of me! Because I found him! Now he knows I did not die with her. . . . That I lived right here in this house the whole time.”
Rebeccah dropped her head into her palms. “Oh, Emma, what have you done?”
“I told the truth! And now, because I did, I will finally know the truth. About my real mamm. About my real dat. About the way they loved each other and—”
“He should not have been with my sister,” Rebeccah thundered back, looking up. “He is why she is dead!”
The words drew tears Emma fought to blink away. “No. I am why she is dead. And because of that, I will never know her. But I can know him, and I will. Starting tomorrow.”
Rebeccah’s answering gasp echoed around the room. “Emma, you can’t!”
“Can’t what? Get to know the man who would have raised me if you hadn’t told him I was dead?” Wiping her face, Emma made her way back to the door while her words, her thoughts remained in the room. “For twenty-two years, you kept me from him. You told him I had died, and you let me believe I belonged here—with you. But I didn’t die, and I never belonged here.”
“Of course you belonged—”
Emma whirled around, hand up. “The Bible says, ‘The lip of truth shall be established forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.’ But the Bible is wrong! Twenty-two years was not a moment for me. It was my forever. But no more. Tomorrow, my life—the life I should have had all along—will start. With my father.”
Chapter 8
The sudden flash of sunlight across the trio of smiling faces propelled her gaze toward Sue Ellen and then onto the backlit figure making haste through the front door of Harper Construction.
“I’m here.... I’m here.... The woman behind the deli counter was new and so it all took a lot longer than it . . .” The deep voice trailed off, returning, seconds later, peppered with hesitation and uncertainty. “Where is she? Where’s Emma? I saw her scooter parked out back.”
Swiveling her chair to the right, the receptionist’s smile directed Brad’s gaze through his office doorway and onto Emma. “Ta da!”
“You came.” He set two plastic bags atop Sue Ellen’s desk and then closed the gap between them with three slow yet deliberate strides. “I was afraid they wouldn’t let you.”
“It is not for them to choose.” Returning her attention to the framed photograph at her shoulder, Emma pointed at the young family depicted. “Are they your friends?”
“Clients, actually.”
“They look so happy,” she said, staring, again, at the face-splitting smiles worn by the three-member family.
“That’s because it was a very big day for them.”
“A big day?”
“The day they moved into their first real home.”
Confused, Emma looked back at him. “They did not have a home before this?”
“Not a house, no. They lived in an apartment in the city.”
Again, she looked at the picture, but this time she focused beyond the exuberant faces to the pale yellow house with a wide front porch and a pillow-topped swing. On the top step, leaning up against a white spindled rail, was a small brown teddy bear and a bright blue suitcase. “An apartment is small, yah?”
“They can be. Especially in cities. Theirs had two bedrooms, but there was not much room for the little girl to play. The mother loved to cook and bake and wanted to involve the little girl in that, but the kitchen was so small she could barely fit by herself. But the house changed all that. The little girl got a yard and a playroom, and the mom got a big kitchen. And now there’s another little one in the third bedroom.”
Brad nudged her attention toward the next framed photograph and the elderly couple sitting peacefully on the back deck of a home with more windows than Emma had ever seen. “The Donnelsons, there? They downsized. Their kids are grown and so they decided to build a smaller home here, and get a vacation condo at the beach. They spend a lot of their time out on that very deck, reading, chatting, and singing.”
“Singing?”
“Well, technically, she sings. He plays the guitar—something he loved doing as a kid but gave up when it came time to get married and raise a family. Retiring and downsizing gave him back that time.” Rocking back on his heels, Brad ran his fingers along his jawline. “I love that shot because it encapsulates their reason for building—to slow down, to breathe, to soak up life. Whereas, with the Regans”—he swept his hand toward the shot of the family in front of the yellow house—“you get the feeling they can’t wait to get busy with their new life. Two very different ends of the spectrum in a lot of ways, yet both ended up being really memorable projects for me.”
“For you?”
His blue eyes met and held hers. “I designed and built both of those houses, Emma. It’s what I do. What Harper Construction—my company—does.”
Unsure of what to say, Emma dropped her focus to the floor and swallowed. “I-I did not know.”
The feel of his hand around hers pulled her focus back. “Hey . . . You not knowing things about me, and me not knowing things about you, is not our fault, kiddo. But we’re going to change that, starting now. Okay?”
She was pretty sure she nodded, although it was possible she just imagined it. Either way, he squeezed her hand ever so gently and then hooked his thumb toward Sue Ellen’s desk. “I wasn’t sure what you like to eat, so I just got a little bit of everything until I figure it out. The picnic table in back works for me unless there’s somewhere else you’d rather go to eat?”
“I don’t know about a picnic table.”
His shoulders rose and fell with a shrug. “We could go to a real restaurant if you’d prefer, but I thought, since it’s not all that cold today, that maybe eating outside would be nicer. You know, less distractions and stuff while we get to know each other—”
“Boss?”
Emma followed Brad’s attention to the doorway and the
woman standing inside it. “Yes, Sue Ellen . . .”
“The picnic basket is packed and ready to go.”
“Thanks, Sue Ellen.” He returned his smile to Emma. “So are you good with the picnic table in back, or would you prefer a park somewhere?”
His question hovered in her thoughts as she looked back at the picture of the young family.
The woman’s pure joy . . .
The man’s arm wrapped casually, yet protectively, around his wife and child . . .
The little girl’s squeal of excitement you didn’t have to hear to know . . .
They were people Emma had never met. People she saw only through a picture frame. Yet standing there, looking at them, she felt as if she’d known them her whole life.
The joy . . .
The protectiveness . . .
The squeals . . .
Only for Emma, they had been part of a dream she’d tried to shake off more times than she could count—convinced her thoughts were a sign of an ungrateful heart.
“Emma?”
She looked past the family to the yellow house, her mind’s eye soaking up the suitcase, the teddy bear, and the front door that stood open and waiting. The image blurred as she imagined herself stepping inside, the sound of laughter guiding her feet down the hall. In the kitchen, she saw the woman placing cookies on a plate she then carried over to the little girl seated at the table. Soon, their comfortable chatter and warm laughter beckoned the man inside.
Every time she tried to conjure up a topic for them to talk about in her thoughts, it faded against the simple sound of laughter and . . . ease. The way it did when you truly belonged somewhere.
“Emma? Is everything—”
Breathing in a sudden burst of clarity, she turned, the location for their first lunch together practically rolling off her tongue. “I would like to have our picnic at Miller’s Pond.”
* * *
Emma settled onto a corner of the blue and black checked blanket and carefully arranged the hem of her dress across the upper edge of her black boots. “It is the first time in many days that I do not see my breath when I am here. Perhaps it will be an early spring.”
“I take it you come here often?” Brad leaned against the trunk of the oak tree and slowly unwrapped his sandwich.
“Yah.” Pulling her sandwich onto her lap, Emma looked out over the pond, her thoughts wandering to her favorite rock on the other side of the tree. “It is where I come to think and to feel . . . better.”
He balled up the wrapper and tucked it inside the empty basket. “You come here, to Miller’s Pond, when you’re sick?”
“No. When I am sick, I stay close to home.”
“Then what did you mean when you said you come here to feel better?”
She dropped her focus to her lap and slowly began to unwrap her own lunch. “Sometimes it is nice to not have to try so hard to be me. I do not have to think of different ways to get a smile or what I must change to make people like me. I can just come here and be me.”
For a long moment, he said nothing, his eyes searching her face the way she might search the henhouse for any missed eggs. When he finally spoke, his voice, his words, his interest seemed to still the air around them. “You should always be you, Emma. Always.”
She listened to the echo of her laugh as she looked at the pond once again. “When I was in school, I would wonder why the other children did not wave me over to play games like they did with each other. So I would put extra cookies into my lunch pail—to make them like me. It did not work. At the hymn sings I go to, I see the smiles and hear the happy shouts when people win a volleyball game. So when I play, I work hard to help my side win. But when it is time to be silly after we win, they are silly together. Without me. And at home, the other children can make Mamm smile with her eyes. I cannot. Doing extra chores and having Englishers want to buy my quilts at the road stand does not change that.”
Returning her attention to her sandwich, she unwrapped it and took a bite, the ham and cheese she’d finally settled on proving to be a good choice. “But now I don’t have to wonder why these things are so, and I don’t have to keep trying to think of different ways to fit. Because I won’t. Not here, anyway.”
“You lost me, kiddo. You won’t what?”
“Fit.” She plucked off the part of the cheese overhanging the edge of her bread and popped it into her mouth. “Cookies and quilts can’t change how I was made.”
Brad leaned forward. “How you were made?”
“Yah. My real mamm, Ruby, was Amish. You are English. There was no marriage. When people look at me, they see something bad—something wrong.”
Pushing his sandwich off his lap, Brad parted the fruit and chips from their resting place in the center of the blanket and scooted forward. “I loved your mother, Emma. Loved her with my whole heart. I wanted a life with her. I wanted a life with you.”
She liked how it all sounded, she really did. But—
“How did the two of you meet?” she asked, taking yet another bite of her sandwich. “Was it during her Rumspringa?”
A slow smile gathered at the corners of his mouth as his gaze traveled somewhere far beyond her face. “I was working for my uncle that first summer. Picking up nails, moving material, fetching drinks for the crew, that sort of thing. It wasn’t necessarily how I wanted to spend my summer, but schoolwork wasn’t really my strong point and my mom wanted to start exposing me to things I could do to earn a living in the future. She let me choose between working with my cousin or my uncle. Being around guys who were repairing things sounded infinitely more appealing to me than cutting grass, so I opted for my uncle’s fix-it business instead of my cousin’s lawn service.”
Brad cupped his hand across his mouth, only to let it slide back down to his thigh. “I remember the day I first laid eyes on Ruby like it was yesterday. I was out on a job site not far from here. Woman’s front porch was sagging and it needed shoring up. My uncle had moved on to the steps and needed a level he’d left in his truck. Since I was essentially his gopher for the summer, it was up to me to drop what I was doing and go get it for him. I walked down to his truck, popped open one of his toolboxes, didn’t find the level he wanted, and moved on to the second toolbox. Took some rummaging, but I found the right one and put everything else back inside the box. I was just stepping away from the truck when I saw her walking up the road. She had a plate of cookies in one hand, and a loaf of bread in the other. And when I waved, she gave me the prettiest smile I’d ever seen. Felt a reaction clear down to my toes.”
Shaking his head quickly, he scooted his way back across the blanket and reclaimed his sandwich. “I’d seen Amish hundreds of times. Can’t live in Lancaster County and not see them. Never paid much attention, really. They lived in their world, I lived in mine. But that day? Standing there next to the truck, looking at Ruby? There was only one world that mattered and it very definitely had her in it. So I stepped down to the road and I asked her name. Only the first time she told me, I was so busy looking at her it didn’t really register. She was wearing this pale green dress, and just this part of her hair”—he touched his hairline, then pointed at Emma’s—“was showing underneath her kapp. The sun was hitting it in such a way, it sparkled. And her eyes? They were this pretty brown, but in the sun, as they were that day, there were these little flecks of gold, too.”
He took a big bite and then another as he leaned back against the tree. “I know I had to have looked like a fool at that moment, just standing there, staring at her. But I couldn’t help myself. Fortunately for me, the sound of my uncle yelling for the level got me back on track. And that’s when I realized I hadn’t caught her name. So I asked again. And she answered again. I asked her where she was going and she told me she was bringing the bread and the cookies to the woman whose porch my uncle was fixing.
“Next thing I knew, we were walking side by side up the driveway. To this day, I can’t remember handing my uncle that level. I know he
was sitting up, looking mighty grumpy when we approached, but I didn’t care about anything except Ruby. And when she went inside to deliver the cookies and the bread, I kept that front door in my sight so I’d know the second she came back outside.”
He took another bite, grinning as he chewed. “And you know what? When she finished up inside, she came out with an oatmeal cookie wrapped inside a napkin for me. Best cookie I ever had, I’ll tell you that.”
“So what happened next?” she asked, her curiosity piqued as much by his words as the joy he wore while speaking them.
“I walked her back to the road. And even though the driveway was pretty short, I made the most out of that walk. I found out she was seventeen, that she had one sister and three brothers, and that she worked at a little ice cream shop out on the county road on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. And before I was ready, we reached the road and she said she had to get back home to help her sister with dinner. So she headed back in the direction she’d come and I just stood there, watching. She turned around a few times, and every time she did, I waved. After about the fifth time of her turning and me still standing there, she tried to shoo me toward the driveway. When I didn’t budge, she laughed. And, Emma? The second I heard that sound, I knew I had to see her again.”
Intrigued, Emma swapped her sandwich for a chip and slowly nibbled her way around the outer edge. “Did you get in trouble for standing there so long?”
“You mean with my uncle? Nah. Said he knew I was smitten the moment the two of us walked up the driveway together.”
“Your smile is so very big right now.”
“That’s because I’m thinking about your mother. But really, you should have seen her smile. There were so many things I loved about Ruby, but her smile? It was the best. Distracting as all get-out, but wow.”
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