A Daughter's Truth

by Laura Bradford

  “Me?”

  “Of course. Everyone in Brad’s family is involved in some way. Brad’s mom consults with customers on color schemes—countertops, appliances, paint, etc.; Brad’s uncle helps with odds and ends as his health allows; and you? Well, I guess you two will figure that out. Together.”

  “But I . . . I’m . . .” She let the rest of her words go in favor of the obvious. An obvious that had her sitting in an English office in an aproned dress, black lace-up boots, and a white kapp.

  Abandoning her position beside the wall, Sue Ellen crossed to the empty chair beside Emma, the animation she’d shown only seconds earlier all but gone. “I can only imagine what these past few days have been like for you, dear. Are you holding up okay?”

  Was she? She didn’t know. If she wasn’t actively spending time with her birth father, she was wandering around in a daze, the near constant roar in her ears making it difficult to think through anything in its entirety.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, looking down at her lap. “Everything is different. My mamm and dat are not my mamm and dat. My aunt was not my aunt—she was my mamm. And my real dat is English.”

  Sue Ellen’s gentle hand quietly stilled Emma’s trembling one. “It’s a lot for anyone to try to process. Your whole world has literally been turned upside down. But Brad will be by your side every step of the way, I know he will. And, for what it’s worth, I’m here, too. I may never have walked in your shoes, Emma, but I’m a mighty fine listener and I’ve been told my hugs have a way of making things a little better.”

  “Your hugs?”

  “My niece showed up in the middle of the night one time to get one of my hugs.”

  Emma drew back. “She was not sleeping?”

  “She was cramming for one of her last exams at college and she needed an energy boost,” Sue Ellen said, laughing at the memory. “When I opened the door and saw her standing there, I thought something bad had happened. But she just told me she was doubting herself in terms of the test and needed something to get her over the hump, so to speak. I reminded her that chocolate works beautifully for me in that regard, and that’s when she told me my hugs were her chocolate. Tickled me to no end to hear that.”

  “Did the hug work?”

  Sue Ellen nodded. “She aced the test.”

  “Is that good?”

  The woman’s momentary confusion parted in favor of yet another nod and laugh. “It means she passed the test with flying colors!”

  The roar was still there, and everything was still as daunting as ever. But, for just a moment, something about Sue Ellen’s lighthearted voice made Emma feel a little less alone. A little more—

  “You’re going to pass all of this with flying colors, too, Emma. I just know it.”

  She allowed herself one good, deep breath as she, again, met Sue Ellen’s eye. “But I am not in college. I am not taking such a test.”

  “You’re right. You’re not.” Pausing, Sue Ellen cupped Emma’s cheek in her hand. “But when you’re ready to make the leap into this world for good, who knows where you might go and what you might do in life. The sky’s the limit for you now, dear. Your father will move heaven and earth to make sure of that.”

  * * *

  Slipping his fingers inside the bag’s narrow opening, Brad tugged outward until his entire hand could reach inside. “You’re sure you’re okay with going through the rest of your presents here at the office instead of back at the pond?”

  Emma turned from the window overlooking the back parking lot and managed a nod. “Yah. It has gotten colder since I rode my scooter here.”

  “I’m sorry I was so late getting back here. My meeting went a little longer than anticipated.” One by one, Brad set fifteen years’ worth of birthday gifts across the top of his desk and then tossed the drawstring bag onto a nearby shelf. “So, did Sue Ellen take good care of you while you were waiting?”

  She wandered back to her chair and lowered herself to its edge. “Yah, I—”

  “Oh! I didn’t tell you. . . . My mom is due back from her sister’s sometime in the next”—he peered at his silver link watch—“three hours or so. I figure I’ll either be there when she arrives, or stop by shortly thereafter, to tell her the big news.”

  “There is big news?”

  He pulled a face only to let it dissolve into a smile. “Um, hello . . . My daughter—her granddaughter—is alive and well.” He picked up the baseball and turned it over in his hands. “You could go with me, if you want. Really bring home the surprise.”

  Looking up at the ceiling, he shook his head. “Can you imagine? Hey, Mom . . . The baby didn’t actually die with Ruby. She’s actually been living with her kidnappers for the past twenty-two years. And . . . ta da . . . here she is.” He turned the ball over one last time and then deposited it back atop his desk. “Yeah, probably a bit too jarring, huh?”

  She knew he was still talking. His facial expressions told her that. But her thoughts kept returning to one particular word and the way it made her stomach feel the way it did when she thought about Esther wandering away from the farm. “Wait.”

  His eyes lit on hers. “You okay, Emma?”

  Pressing her hand to her stomach in an attempt to stop the sudden yet definitive swirl inside, she made herself breathe. “You called Mamm and Dat kidnappers.”

  “Because that’s what they are.”

  “But . . .” She thought back over the many newspaper and magazine headlines she’d seen in the English grocery stores while growing up and, as her mind’s eye narrowed in on a few, she gasped. “But kidnappers steal people!”

  His blue eyes darkened. “That’s right. They do.”

  “They . . . they . . .” She stopped, swallowed, and tried again, the swirling in her stomach growing all the more urgent. “They didn’t steal me. They just didn’t tell me I was Ruby’s baby.”

  “And my baby.” The wheels of his chair thumped against the floor as he stood. “I’m your father, Emma. That means you belonged to me—that I should have left that house with you that day. Only I didn’t. Because Wayne told me you didn’t make it and I believed him. And for the next twenty-two years they raised you as their own. Unbeknownst to me.”

  He stopped midway to the window and turned back. “Unbeknownst. To. Me. That’s kidnapping, Emma, in every sense of the word.”

  “But they just didn’t tell us,” she whispered. “I know it was a terrible lie. I have even thought about telling the bishop so they will be shunned. But—”

  His half laugh, half snort echoed around them. “Shunned?”

  “Yah. It means the members of our district will turn their backs to them until they repent and—”

  He shot his hand up, stopping her explanation. “Trust me, kiddo, I know all about the way the Amish work. The way they govern.”

  “The Amish do not govern,” she protested. “When one is baptized they vow to—”

  “Remain Amish. To live in the world but not like the world. I know. I got it. But there are laws in this country that everyone must follow. Including the Amish. And when people break them, there are consequences—consequences that are, thankfully, blind to hats and beards. In theory, the jurors should be as well.”

  The rhythmic tapping of her booted toes against the carpet broke through the mental roar kicked off by his words. Shifting her hand from her stomach to her knee, she pressed down until the motion stopped. “I-I don’t feel well right now.”

  Like the overhead lights the English flicked on and off with a switch, the anger Brad wore bowed to concern. For her. He covered the gap between them with two long strides, and squatted down beside her chair. “What can I do? Do you want some water? Some air? What?”

  “Maybe some . . . air?”

  “You got it.” He bounced back up, strode toward the window, and lifted it up a few inches. “How about some water, too?”

  With her leg steady, she returned her hand to her stomach. “Yah.”

  He ste
pped over to his desk, tapped a button on a small brown box, and, when Sue Ellen’s voice appeared through it, he asked for a water. Less than a minute later, Emma had her water, and she and Brad were alone once again.

  “Look, kiddo, I didn’t mean to upset you. The whole reason I put my guy on this is so I can focus on us. So let’s let him do his thing while we do ours, okay?” With purposeful steps, he returned to his chair and swept his hands toward the top of his desk. “So, shall we get back to this?”

  Nodding, she reorganized the items to match the order in which she’d found them and then picked up the picture of the dandelion from her eleventh birthday. “Sarah and I would always race to see who could blow on these the fastest. I would always win until Sarah got bigger. Now, it does not take Sarah many puffs, and Annie is very good at it, too. Once, it took Annie only one big puff!”

  “Sarah and Annie—those are Wayne and Rebeccah’s, right?”

  Wayne and Rebeccah’s . . .

  “Yah. Sarah is sixteen. Annie is eight.”

  “And there are how many others?”

  “Three. Jakob, Jonathan, and Esther.”

  Grabbing a pen from a holder to his right, Brad jotted something on a small notepad and then shoved it off to the side. “Okay . . . So the dandelion picture . . .” His chair creaked as he leaned back against his chair. “I’m not sure why, but the English—as you call us—don’t just blow on dandelions when they turn white like that. We make a wish while we blow.”

  “A wish? Why?”

  “I don’t really know. It’s just something kids, and sometimes even adults, do. It’s like wishing on a birthday candle, though I’m not sure it holds as much weight. Depends on who you ask. But my mom taught me to make a wish every opportunity I had. So birthday candles, dandelion fluff, pennies in fountains, and the wishbone from the turkey on Thanksgiving were all fair game as far as I was concerned.” He tented his fingers beneath his chin and grinned. “Of course, Ruby thought I was crazy the first time I handed her a dandelion and told her to make a wish and blow.”

  She looked from Brad, to the picture, and back again. “Did she?”

  His laugh eased the last of the tension from her body, allowing her to finally relax into the back of her own chair. “She blew, but she didn’t make a wish. So I handed her another one and told her to try again. That time, she supposedly made a wish, but she kept her eyes open.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Wishes don’t work if you don’t close your eyes.” Dropping his hands, he lurched forward, plucked up the picture, and gazed down at it, the skin around his eyes crinkling with amusement. “So I picked up another one and, that time, I made the wish. Closed my eyes and everything.

  “When I was done, I opened them to find I’d been successful in scattering the fluff and that Ruby was watching me with the biggest smile, her head cocked just like this.” He tilted his chin a hairbreadth. “When I told her that’s how she was supposed to do it, she asked me what I’d wished for. I told her I couldn’t tell her, or it wouldn’t come true.”

  “Did it?” Emma asked. “Come true, I mean . . .”

  Righting his head, Brad took one last look at the picture and then set it back down on the desk in front of Emma. “On your eleventh birthday, when I set this reminder of that special moment on the grave, I’d have said no. But now, with you sitting here? Yeah, it came true. In a form very different than I imagined when I made it, but it’s still true, nonetheless.”

  She hovered her fingertips above the dandelion stem and tried to imagine a younger Brad sitting in a field of dandelions with the girl from her locket. When she had a fuzzy version of it, she looked up. “What was your wish?”

  “For Ruby to be part of my life forever.”

  “But she’s not,” Emma protested.

  A softer yet no less genuine smile reclaimed his lips. “In the sense I envisioned as an eighteen-year-old, no, she’s not. But having you here”—he splayed his hands around the office—“in my life, changes that.”

  Emma pulled her hand away from the picture and braced it on the edge of the desk. “But I am not Ruby.”

  “But you’re a living, breathing part of her, Emma. And there are times, when you look at me the way you are right now, it’s like looking at Ruby all over again. Like all the bad stuff never happened.” He reached out, patted the top of Emma’s hand, and then leaned back in his chair once again. “I’d consider that an answered wish, all things considered.”

  She took another sip of her water and then set the bottle on the floor. “Did she try again? After you showed her how to do it?”

  “You mean with the wish?” He returned her nod with one of his own. “She did. Don’t know what she wished for, but I know she kept her eyes closed even after the fluff was scattered. Like whatever she was wishing for was taking a little time.

  “I teased her about it when she was done. Asked her if she was wishing for an ice cream cone. But right before we came across all those dandelions, we’d been dreaming out loud about what I might want to do for a career, and what we’d like our one-day house to be like. I guess that’s why I’ve always figured it had to do with one or both of those.”

  It was a lot to take in. A lot to add to the image she’d managed to conjure of the encounter. Swapping the picture for her twelfth birthday present, she held up the bubble wand. “And this?”

  “I surprised her one day with a jar of bubbles. We practically used the entire jar that same day. I showed her how to make double bubbles, and she showed me how to make really long ones. We laughed a lot that day. And she jumped, too . . .”

  “Jumped?”

  “Ruby would do this little jump when she was excited about something—bubbles, skating, it didn’t matter. If she was happy, she did her little jump.”

  She placed the wand next to what remained of the carnival ticket and moved on to the rock with the sparkly heart drawn on it. “Did Ruby draw this heart?”

  Resting his left foot atop his right knee, he nodded. “She sure did. My cousin left a sparkly marker at my house the previous day and I gave it to Ruby. Next thing I knew, she was drawing that heart on a rock she found at the pond and giving it to me. Kept it in my room at Mom’s for years. When I came back on your birthday that year to leave my annual gift, I decided to leave the rock because it wasn’t more than a week after she drew that heart that she told me she was carrying you.”

  Emma snapped her attention off the rock and onto Brad. “Were you scared when she told you about me?”

  “Nope. I was excited. As far as I was concerned, you being on the way just made us more real somehow. In a good way. Besides, it was just one more reason for us to get married like we wanted to—or like I wanted to, at least.” Brad dropped his foot back to the ground with a thud. “So, what’s next?”

  “Next? I . . .” She followed the path of his finger back to the desk and the items she’d all but forgotten as his words had transported her back to a time when Ruby was alive and Emma had been on the way . . .

  “The red and black checked napkin, right?” Brad prompted. At her nod, he slid the piece of cloth in her direction until she relinquished the rock in its favor. “Remember that picnic I told you about? The one I put together to show her what an English picnic was like?”

  “Yah . . .”

  “She planned one a week later. To show me what an Amish picnic is like.” His gaze lifted to the wall just beyond her head but seemed to fix on something far beyond his office. “I guess I’d tucked the napkin in my pocket at some point along the way and didn’t realize it was there until I was back home afterward.”

  Emma pulled the napkin close and tried to imagine Ruby packing it inside a lunch pail along with the food she’d surely prepared. “You spent so much time together. Did my grosselders know about you?”

  Shaking his focus back into the room, he looked at Emma. “At that point, no. Eventually, they had to. But you have to remember, when we met, Ruby hadn’t officially
been baptized yet, so it’s not like she was breaking any vows or anything by spending time with me. Still, I know they weren’t pleased once they learned of my existence for obvious reasons.... I know I wasn’t that Gingerich guy and that my involvement with Ruby put the kibosh on that.... I know I wasn’t Amish. . . .

  “But you can see, from all of this”—he spread his hands wide to indicate the collection of memories spread across his desk—“that we had something special. Something real. Something worth sticking with. Different doesn’t have to mean wrong.”

  A soft yet staccato tapping sent their collective focus toward the now open office door and Sue Ellen’s wide eyes peeking into the room. “Boss? I’m sorry to interrupt, but your mother called and asked me to let you know she should be arriving back at her place around five and she’s hoping you’ll come for dinner.”

  Glancing at his watch, Brad pushed back from the desk. “So I’ve got about thirty minutes if I want to be there when she arrives.... Okay, thanks, Sue Ellen.”

  “You got it.” The secretary’s head disappeared from view only to return a half second later. “Oh, one more thing. I touched base with the crew and let them know you’ll be out of town Monday and Tuesday and will likely want a meeting with everyone here Thursday morning. Eight a.m. sharp.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Is there anything else I can do?” Sue Ellen asked, sending a smile in Emma’s direction before looking back at Brad. “For you, or for Emma?”

  He shook his head and then winked at Emma. “No, we’re good. But it’s Friday and the crews are probably calling it a day out at their respective sites, so why don’t you pack it up and head home, too. Enjoy your weekend.”

  “Thanks, Boss. That sounds perfect.” Sue Ellen wiggled her fingers around the edge of the door in a happy wave. “You two have fun this weekend. And kiss the proud new grandma for me when you tell her the good news.”

  “You can count on that.” As Sue Ellen pulled the door closed, Brad stood, his excitement palpable. “So, what do you say we save the rest of these stories for tomorrow? That way I can get you out to the farm, and me to my mother’s place before she gets back.”