A Daughter's Truth

by Laura Bradford

  “Why was she not there to pick you up from school?”

  “She was at home. Doing chores and looking after Sarah.”

  Delia pointed at Brad. “It’s probably unnecessary, but jot that down for Wednesday.” Then, without waiting for a reply, the woman lifted her wrist into view and tapped the face of her watch. “Everyone should be here soon, so I better get this tray back into the kitchen and the oven turned on for the roast.”

  “Please, let me help with the mess.” Emma lurched forward, collecting Brad’s and Delia’s mugs with efficient hands. “Then I will get my coat.”

  Delia pulled a face. “Your coat?”

  “Yah. So I can leave before everyone comes.”

  Closing her hand atop Emma’s arm, Delia smiled. “They’re coming to meet you, dear.”

  “To meet me?” Emma repeated, turning to Brad.

  “You don’t think your family stops with your grandmother and me, do you?” At Emma’s gaped mouth, he continued, his smile reaching all the way to his eyes. “No, kiddo, you’ve got an aunt, an uncle, and cousins who can’t wait to meet you, either.”

  Chapter 15

  “I do that when I’m nervous, too.”

  Stilling her fingers against the edge of her dress, Emma looked up to find the English girl Delia had introduced as Emma’s cousin Michelle looking at her with the same kind of face Sarah wore while perusing the magazine covers in the checkout aisle of the English grocery store. “Do what?” she asked.

  “Fidget. If I’m at my desk at school, I play with my pencil. If I’m riding in the car with my mom, I fiddle with whatever she has in her cup holder that day, and if I’m sitting on a couch with nothing in reach”—Michelle nudged her chin at Emma—“I play with the seam of my jeans like you’re doing with your dress.”

  Michelle stretched out across the carpet in Delia’s now empty sitting room and rested her head against the wall at her back. “So maybe that means it’s just some family quirk or something, instead of some sort of weird thing like my idiot brother is always claiming.”

  “I didn’t realize I was doing that.” Emma moved her hands from her dress to the cushion on her left and the armrest on her right.

  “And now you’re picking at that loose string Grandma keeps forgetting to cut off.”

  Sure enough, a glance at the armrest yielded a single strand of thread clasped between Emma’s index finger and thumb—a thread she rushed to abandon. “Oh. Sorry. I-I did not realize I was doing that, either.”

  Picking her head up off the wall, Michelle pushed her long, dark, silky hair back over her shoulder and shrugged. “I’m not getting on your case, Emma. Just noticing we might actually have something in common.”

  “Yah.”

  “So I’m guessing this whole”—Michelle wiggled her fingers in the air—“revelation has to be even weirder for you than the rest of us, huh? I mean, you’re not just meeting a new cousin like I am, or a new niece like my mom is. You’re meeting your entire family.”

  Unsure of how best to respond, Emma managed a nod while Michelle continued. “So this means you don’t really have to dress like that anymore, right?”

  Emma followed the path indicated by the teenager’s purple fingernails and swallowed. “I am Amish. This is how Amish dress.”

  “But my mom says you’re not supposed to be Amish. Your mom died when you were born and since you should’ve been with Uncle Brad instead of those Amish people, you’re really English.” Lurching forward, Michelle grabbed a chip from the bowl Delia had left out for them when the adults opted to linger at the table after dinner. “My mom thinks you might need a little while to get used to everything, but if I were you, I’d be pulling off that head thing and running straight to the junior department at Charlotte Russe or Forever 21 or someplace like that.”

  Michelle nibbled her way around the outer rim of her chip and then waved the rest of it between them. “Why do you wear that bonnet thing on your head, anyway?”

  “It is not a bonnet,” Emma corrected. “It is a prayer kapp. The Bible says, ‘But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head; for it is one and the same thing as if she were shaven. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.’ ”

  Michelle’s mouth gaped. “You memorized that? From the Bible?”

  “Yah.”

  “Wow. That’s crazy.” Michelle popped the rest of the chip in her mouth and, after a few moments of quiet chewing, stood and made her way over to the couch. “So, will you? Take that stuff off, I mean?”

  “I am not Amish because my mamm and dat are Amish. Before baptism you are being raised by Amish. You are truly Amish when you are baptized.”

  Kicking her shoes off, Michelle hiked her sock-clad feet up onto the couch beneath her, her eyes riveted on Emma. “And are you? Baptized, I mean.”

  “Yah.”

  “But you can get out of it, right? Since you wouldn’t have been raised that way if Uncle Brad had known?”

  “If I were to leave, my family and my friends could not speak with me ever again.”

  “But they’re not your real family. Uncle Brad is . . . Grandma is . . . I am.” Michelle gathered her hair together in a makeshift ponytail only to let it fall down past her shoulders, once again. “And everyone is pretty cool. Except my brother. But you saw that at the dinner table, right? Total. Dork.”

  On cue, the dark-haired twelve-year-old Delia had introduced as Kyle bounded into the room and skidded to a stop in front of Emma. “Uncle Brad said he’s gonna get you ice skates and I can help teach you how to skate out on Grandma’s pond!”

  Michelle rolled her eyes. “Like she needs a twelve-year-old teaching her anything. Puh-lease.”

  Kyle’s gaze dropped to the floor, prompting Emma to lean forward for his hand. “Actually, I’d like it if you’d teach me the proper way to skate, Kyle. Perhaps then I would not fall down.”

  “Oh you’ll fall. Everyone does when they’re learning. But Dad says as long as you get back up and try again, you’ll get better!” Kyle slid a glance in the direction of his sister and, when she met his eye, stuck his tongue out.

  “This is what having a brother is like,” Michelle groaned. “Total torture.”

  Kyle stuck his tongue out a second time and then sat on the edge of the coffee table closest to Emma. “Do you have any brothers?”

  “Two. Jakob and Jonathan.”

  “How old are they?”

  “Jakob is twenty-one, and Jonathan is twelve.”

  “Like me! Cool! Maybe we can play together.”

  “No, you can’t play with him, dork.” Michelle dropped her feet back to the ground with a thud. “He’s not our family. And he’s not Emma’s family, either. She just thought he was her family because his parents pretended Emma was theirs.”

  Emma bolted off the couch, bumping her knee against the coffee table as she did. “Jonathan is my family!”

  “Maybe . . . Technically . . . Since the person who stole you is your aunt, I guess. But why would you want them to be family after what they did?” Grabbing another chip, Michelle popped it in her mouth. “I wouldn’t if I were you. I mean, who did she think she was, doing that? She stole your dad from you! And your grandma! And a normal life! My mom says you could’ve been in college now—probably getting ready to graduate in May. You could be getting ready to get a job or live in the city. Maybe you’d be dating some really amazing guy.”

  Emma didn’t know what to say. She heard the words coming out of Michelle’s mouth. She was even able to process most of them. But it was as if she were standing in the barn being handed more and more chores and being told to do them faster and faster when all she really wanted to do was run down the driveway and escape to the pond.

  But she wasn’t home. She wasn’t in the barn. And considering the night sky outside Delia’s sitting room window and the time it had taken to get to the
woman’s house, finding her way to Miller’s Pond wasn’t a viable option.

  Instead, she wandered over to the window and hoped the view of the very pond on which Ruby had once skated would give her the same sense of calm she found at Miller’s Pond. Pressing her head to the cool glass, Emma tried to make out the spot where the grass met the water’s edge, but in the dark it was hard to see. She knew, from earlier glimpses, that the pond was smaller than Miller’s and lacking in the kind of large rocks and downed trees that were perfect for sitting and thinking. Although, at that moment, she’d take the bench she’d seen when she first got out of the car. . . .

  Her mind made up, she turned back to Michelle and Kyle, excused herself, and headed up the hallway toward the closet where Brad had hung her coat. Yet as she approached the correct door, muted voices from the dining room had her veering closer to the wall and then stopping, completely.

  “I don’t know why you haven’t done it already, Brad.” The voice she knew to be Brad’s sister, Jeanine, morphed into an almost hiss-like whisper Emma had to strain to hear. “I mean, if it were me, I’d have called the second I got my mouth up off the ground.”

  “Yeah, well, after I got my mouth up off the ground as you say, sis, I was kind of focused on Emma—the daughter I’d been told was dead.”

  “As well you should have been, dear.” Delia’s tone moved from empathy to reproach with the help of a hushed clucking sound. “Brad is doing everything exactly as he should, Jeanine. This is a very delicate matter. Emma’s whole world has just changed. In an instant.”

  “I get that. So has Brad’s. So has all of ours, quite frankly.”

  A snort she recognized as being from Brad was followed by the distinct scraping of a chair leg against the floor. “How has your life changed, Jeanine?”

  “I have a niece I didn’t get to watch grow up! My kids have a cousin they’re meeting at twelve and sixteen instead of having her be there from the beginning! And instead of being someone they can relate to and look up to, she’s . . . Amish.”

  “Which means what, exactly?” Brad shot back.

  “You heard them during dinner. . . . Michelle talked about going to the junior prom and her classes, and Kyle talked about the video game he got for his birthday. Emma nodded along, sure. It’s clear she’s a nice, polite young woman. But it’s also painfully clear she didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. And it shouldn’t be like that! They’re cousins. I mean, don’t you remember how much fun we had with our cousins when we were growing up, Brad? The stuff we talked about? The trouble we got into? We got them and they got us. Always. But because of this . . . this travesty put into place by Ruby’s sister, our kids missed out on that. Missed out on getting each other on that special cousin-level.”

  Something that sounded like a snap segued into Delia’s voice. “Then it’s up to us to help them have that. And we will.”

  “How?” Jeanine challenged. “My kids know nothing about farming! And Emma knows nothing about real life.”

  “I can see your attitude hasn’t changed since I was dating Ruby.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You always thought you were better than Ruby. Always went out of your way to make her feel like she was weird.”

  “She wasn’t weird,” Jeanine said. “The fact that you two were trying to have a relationship was weird.”

  The sound of dishes clunking against one another was quickly followed by another snap. “Enough, Jeanine! Enough! That young woman in there is my granddaughter! I have every faith that Nicholas will see to it that justice will be served on this. I also have every faith that we can find plenty of common ground with Emma now—common ground that will only grow over time.”

  “Common ground?” Jeanine challenged.

  “Yes! Michelle likes to putter around in the kitchen when I’m baking, and I know, from our conversation earlier today, that Emma likes to bake, as well. And as for Kyle, well, he’s at the age where he can find something to talk about with anyone. Emma is no exception and—”

  “You can just go into the dining room, Emma. You don’t have to stand in the hallway like that.”

  All conversation on the other side of the open doorway ceased as Kyle skidded to a stop next to Emma. She, in turn, tried to think of a response but stopped as Brad came around behind her, his eyes framed with the same kind of worry Dat wore when an approaching storm threatened the crops. He searched her face for a few beats and then sagged against the wall. “You heard some of that, didn’t you?”

  Shame cast her eyes to the floor. “Yah.”

  Hooking his finger beneath her chin, Brad guided her gaze back to his. “How about we get your coat and head out? Maybe find a place where we can talk privately before I bring you back out to Blue Ball? Does that sound like something you’d like to do?”

  Did it? She wasn’t sure. The only thing she knew for certain was that the pounding in her head was rivaled only by the pounding in her chest.

  Stepping around him, she flung open the coat closet and closed her hands over her winter coat, the familiar feel of the fabric beneath her fingertips a welcome one. “Yah. That is something I would like to do.”

  * * *

  They rode in silence down one street after the other until, at last, Brad pulled onto the road that connected New Holland with Blue Ball. When they did, he looked at her across the wide bench seat and smiled.

  “So . . . You met the crew. . . . They’re quite the bunch of characters, aren’t they?” He swung his attention back to the road and loosened his grip on the top of the steering wheel. “My sister—Jeanine? She can be a bit of an acquired taste, but she will grow on you. And her husband—Ned? He’s quiet, as you saw, but that doesn’t mean he’s not paying attention. I think he’s just so used to Jeanine barreling over him in conversations that he just listens, makes his own assessments, and speaks when she’s otherwise occupied. Smart man. Funny, too.”

  Resting her forehead against the passenger side window, she waited for the calm of the countryside to work its magic, but Brad’s need to talk through the day and evening made it difficult. “Now, I know Michelle can be a bit prickly at times, but I’m told that’s par for the course with teenage girls. Kyle is a cool kid. He loves to go out to job sites with me sometimes during his summer break. I had a hard hat made for him with his name on it that he thinks is pretty cool.”

  “He asked many questions about the farm.” Emma wiped at the fog made by her breath and then sat back against the seat. “Perhaps he would like to visit it one day.”

  “I’m sure we can find him a farm if he really wants to see one up close. In fact, one of the sites I’m getting ready to start building is alongside a farm. Maybe I can get the guy who runs it to let Kyle milk a cow or something.” He slanted a glance at her and then pointed at a series of dials on the dashboard. “You cold, kiddo?”

  “Only a little.”

  “Then that’s a little too much.” With a quick turn of his wrist, a blast of warm air seeped out of the dash vents. “And my mom? She’s the best, isn’t she?”

  “She is very kind.” And it was true. Despite not really knowing the woman, Delia’s very presence had quieted Emma’s nerves on more than one occasion. “She has much to say.”

  Brad’s laugh filled the truck’s cabin. “My mom always has something to say. Always. But honestly, more times than not, she’s right. It’s like she has this ability to step back and read a situation and a person within seconds. And her advice? Spot on. Wish I’d listened to her sooner on a few things.”

  Intrigue lifted her gaze to the side of Brad’s face as he continued. “Then again, hindsight is always twenty-twenty, isn’t it?”

  “Twenty-twenty?” Emma repeated.

  “Twenty-twenty means perfect eyesight on its own. But the expression I just referred to means it’s always easy to see things for what they are after they’ve already happened.”

  “Yah. That is how I feel about why I have n
ever fit no matter how hard I tried. Before I learned about you and Ruby, I always thought it was me. That I did not laugh right, or look right, or talk right, or quilt right, or play right. Now I know it was never about my laugh, or my quilting, or anything I could change.”

  His jaw tightened along with his hand. “If I could go back and change the day you were born, I would. In a heartbeat. But, like you, I didn’t know.”

  She wandered her gaze off him and onto the road, the headlights of his truck illuminating the upcoming bend even as her thoughts traveled back to Delia’s house. “I did not mean to bring anger to your family.”

  “Anger?” Brad echoed. “You didn’t bring anger, Emma! You brought joy! Unbelievable joy! Did you not see my mother’s face when we pulled up? Did you not see the way she could barely take her eyes off you when it was just the three of us? Or the way she kept smiling at you—and trying to force more food on you—all during dinner?”

  Emma smiled in spite of the heaviness inside her chest. “No, I saw it.”

  “Okay, good. As for Jeanine, I know she was probably over the top with all the questions she kept asking during dinner, but she means well. You’re her niece. She’s trying to learn twenty-two years in the timespan of dinner. Still, I didn’t get the sense she was angry. Curious, sure. Anxious to learn more, sure. But, angry? No.”

  “It was the anger at the table after I went into the sitting room with the children.”

  He slowed the truck to a crawl as they approached yet another bend. “I don’t know what—”

  “It was about me. That I am Amish. That I am not English like you and them.”

  “Not English like—wait.” On the far side of the bend, Brad pulled onto the shoulder and cut the engine. “So this is about what you overheard at my mom’s there at the end, isn’t it? When I was in the dining room with my mom and Jeannine?”

  “I did not mean to hear.” Emma looked from the darkened fields alongside them, to her lap, and back again, the chill she’d had only moments earlier replaced by a growing heat in her cheeks. “I wanted to sit by the pond for a little while. But when I was close to my coat, I heard anger. It was about me. About me being Amish.”