A Daughter's Truth

by Laura Bradford

  “No one is angry at you, Emma. No one. They’re angry at the circumstances—that you were raised Amish when you should have been raised by me, that none of us had the chance to watch you grow or influence your development, and that you didn’t get to know any of us until now—at the age of twenty-two. They’re upset by that and they want justice. We all do. And, come Wednesday—maybe Thursday, at the latest—I’m certain we’ll have it.”

  “I heard talk of Wednesday. Why?” Emma asked. “What is to happen that day?”

  Turning his body flush to the driver side door, Brad hooked his right calf onto the bench seat. “First up, I’m flying out to Florida tomorrow morning. There’s a housing development down there I need to see, and I made the arrangements before you walked into my office for the first time last week. I can still back out if you need me here, or even if you just want to spend the time together. I keep trying to remind myself we have the rest of forever, but . . .”

  “But you will come back, yah?”

  “Of course. Tuesday night. I should be back from the airport around eight, maybe a little sooner.”

  “Sarah and Annie will be pleased that I will be there to do my own chores.” Lifting her hand to the windowsill, Emma ran her finger along the edge. “I am sure there is mending to be done on Jonathan’s pants by now.”

  He drew back so quickly, his head thudded against the widow. “No. Let someone else do the mending and the cleaning and the gardening and all the other things you never should have been doing.”

  “I am good at mending. Sarah, not so much.”

  “But I was thinking your grandmother would just pick you up out by our usual pickup/drop-off spot by Miller’s Pond just as I would if I were here. That way you could go to church with her tomorrow, go shopping for new clothes on Monday, and then maybe, on Tuesday, you two could spend time together in the kitchen, since that’s something you both enjoy.”

  “Tomorrow I am to go to church at the Schrocks, and I do not need new clothes. I made two new dresses for all of us just before Christmas.” Emma parted the bottom edge of her jacket to reveal the green of her dress. “It is good fabric. Sturdy. It will last many years.”

  He started to speak, stopped himself, and, instead, looked out at the road. “Maybe Tuesday, then. I know she’d love to cook with you.”

  “Yah.”

  “Wait. Let me give you her number.” Heaving himself forward, he popped open a recessed compartment she hadn’t noticed and pulled out a piece of paper and pen. “Since I can’t give her a number for you, I have to trust that you’ll find your way to a phone to call her if you need something or want to finalize a time for Tuesday, if not sooner.”

  He jotted down a series of numbers and then handed the paper to Emma. “Either way, I need you to be on the road by the pond at eleven o’clock on Wednesday morning. Gives us a little time together before we sit down with Nicholas.”

  “This Nicholas. You have said his name many times. Is he your friend?”

  “He’s my lawyer, and a darn fine one at that. Even though he’s not a criminal attorney, I knew he was the one I could count on to point us in the right direction in order to minimize any unnecessary glare on you.”

  Looking up from the slip of paper in her hand, she tried to feign some semblance of understanding, but it was no use. She’d missed something.... “I do not understand.”

  “I want justice to come swiftly, first and foremost. But if there’s a way to do it without having every news truck in the area camped outside our door, that’s even better.”

  “What news truck?”

  “Kidnapping is big news, Emma. Particularly within the market in which it takes place. But kidnapping by someone inside the Amish community? That’s got the potential to go national. Fast. The past two weeks have been enough of a blur for you—for both of us—all on its own. I don’t think we need to compound that with the circus that a national news story will bring if we can avoid it. That’s why, on Wednesday, Nicholas is going to ask you questions—about your upbringing, the things you were told, the things you weren’t told, that sort of thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we need the facts. We need to know what you were told, how you were treated, that sort of thing.”

  “I was not told anything until I showed Mamm the locket,” Emma reminded. “You know this.”

  “I do. But Nicholas needs to know, too. So justice can be served.”

  “Soon, I will tell Bishop King and they will be shunned.”

  His answering laugh was void of anything resembling lightness or humor. “You said that the other day. That backs will be turned on them at church until, I imagine, they say, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again?”

  “Yah.”

  “Yeah, no . . . Sorry.” He grabbed her hand off her lap and held it tight, his blue eyes holding hers with such intensity she couldn’t look away. “They kept you from me, Emma. That’s not okay.”

  Not sure what to say, or even how to slow her breath down enough to think straight, Emma looked out at the road in front of them, the momentary, yet overpowering urge to go home giving way to total emptiness.

  Somewhere in the darkness, just beyond the beam of the truck’s headlights, was another bend in the road, another handful of farms to pass before the turnoff to her farm.

  But it wasn’t her farm. Not now. Not then. Not ever.

  “I don’t know where I belong,” she whispered.

  “I do. You belong with me. You always did, and you always will.”

  She looked down at his hand enveloping hers once again and tried to make herself feel something, anything. But there was nothing.

  “Well, I guess I should get you back. For now. I’ve still gotta get back to my own place and get packed for my trip. But you’ve got Mom’s number”—he pointed at the paper atop her lap—“and I’ll be back to get you by the pond on Wednesday at eleven o’clock.”

  She knew he was waiting for her to answer. She could feel it just as surely as she could the chill claiming every inch of her body despite the heat still blowing against her skin. Turning toward the window, she nodded.

  Chapter 16

  Many times, throughout the next morning’s church service, Emma had been aware of Levi’s glances. She’d felt them just as surely as she’d felt Annie’s breath across her hand as she’d held open the Bible for them both. Once, she’d even caught him as she’d scanned the benches of men and boys in the hope the periodic tapping she heard didn’t belong to Jonathan. What she hadn’t been able to tell was whether Levi’s expression was one of disgust or . . . concern?

  It had been a fleeting impression that had lasted only as long as it had taken Annie to plant an elbow in Emma’s ribs and Emma to return her attention to the service. But even with that reminder as to where her focus should have been, her thoughts had returned, as they had again now, to the things Brad had said in the truck the previous night. His repeated insistence and unwavering conviction that Mamm and Dat be held accountable for their lie gnawed at her heart and mind.

  It wasn’t that she suddenly approved of Mamm and Dat’s lie. Because she didn’t, couldn’t. That lie had kept her from having Brad and Delia and the rest of the Harper family in her life all along. It had also left her to spend her whole life erroneously believing if she just tried harder or did more, she would finally fit with her brethren the way her siblings, and everyone else in their district, did so naturally.

  But to be shunned by their community? To have backs turned to them in church and at all meals until they repented? Surely that was a worthy punishment. And while she knew their shunning would bring shame to the children, as well, it was they who had lied. They who had acted as if they knew better than God.

  “I am sorry, Emma. For what you carry in your heart.”

  Startled, Emma whirled around only to watch, helplessly, as her dinner roll slipped off the edge of her plate and toppled onto the dirt driveway. “I’m sorry, I do not mean to be wasteful,”
she murmured.

  “That was my fault. For scaring you like I did.” Swooping down, Levi retrieved the roll from its resting spot, wiped the dirt onto his pants, and swapped it for the one on his own plate. “Please. You are to have mine.”

  “I can’t ask you to eat a dirty roll,” she protested.

  “You did not ask, and thanks to my pants, it is not dirty anymore. See?” He lifted it for her to see and then, with a mischievous grin, took a bite. “Yah. That is good. Very, very good.”

  It felt good to laugh, even if it didn’t last. Still, she was grateful when he hooked his thumb toward a sparsely used table on which to set their plates and eat. A glance at the food table showed that it would not be long before Mary’s plate, too, was filled and she could join them. Falling into step beside Levi, Emma crossed to the vacant end of the table and lowered herself to the bench while Levi claimed the empty spot opposite. “So? Are you going to the hymn sing at Luke’s when we are done eating?” he asked.

  She took in the food she’d placed on her plate—the chicken, the stuffing, the corn, the roll—and waited for it to speak to her stomach, but it didn’t. Instead, her stomach continued to clench and roil as it had since Brad had spoken of his anger for Mamm and Dat. “I should not have taken so much food.”

  “That is not so much. This”—he directed her eyes onto his plate and all the same items Emma had chosen, just in larger quantities—“is much food. Which I will eat, I am sure.”

  Shrugging, she nudged her plate to within inches of his. “Perhaps, if you are not too full, you would like to eat mine, as well.”

  “That is your food. For you to eat.”

  “I know, but I can’t. My stomach is . . .” She stopped, held her hand against her aproned front, and took a breath. “My stomach is not right.”

  “Is that why you looked so sad during the church service?” he asked, pausing his fork against the chicken he’d sought out first. “You do not feel well?”

  She lowered her eyes back to her plate before closing them for the briefest of moments. “I-I . . . I don’t know.”

  The smile she’d managed to chase from his face disappeared from his brown eyes, as well. “You are still troubled? About what you told me the other day?”

  “Yah.”

  Silence filled the space between them as Levi’s gaze darted to the food table and his sister before settling back on Emma once again. “Is he not kind?”

  “Who?”

  “The Englisher from the cemetery . . . The one you went off with in the black truck the other day . . .”

  “You mean my birth father?” she whispered. At his expected nod, she, too, leaned forward. “He is very kind. And I met his mother—my grandmother, too. She likes to cook and to bake like I do.”

  Levi studied her as she spoke, and then, when she was done, he pointed to her plate with his chin. “Stomachs do not feel bad because people are nice. Stomachs feel bad when one is sad or worried.

  “This, here”—he lifted his finger to the skin beside his eyes and then pointed across the table to the same location on her face—“says you are worried, while the smile you are missing says you are sad.”

  “That’s because I—”

  “It is crazy how much Isaiah King likes chicken. Lots and lots of chicken.” Mary set her plate next to Emma’s and hiked her legs, one at a time, over the bench. “But I did manage to beat him to the stuffing and the . . .” Mary’s verbal inventory of her plate petered off in favor of bugging out her eyes at her brother. “Must you look at me like that when I’m talking, Levi?”

  “Like what?” he groused.

  “Like you do not want me here.”

  “Emma and I were trying to have a conversation. . . .”

  Emma shrugged away Levi’s frustration and slid her plate next to Mary’s. “I have chicken that I am not going to eat.”

  “Really?” Pulling a face, Mary poked her fork into the first of Emma’s two slices. “But you did not even try it yet. I am sure that it is good. Isaiah’s big helping was not his first or his second.”

  “I am not eating it because I think it is not good. I am not eating it—or any of it—because”—Emma slid a glance at Levi—“I am not hungry.”

  It wasn’t an untruth. She wasn’t hungry. The fact that her lack of hunger was from the near constant clenching inside her stomach really wasn’t important.

  “Then why did you fill a plate?” Mary asked as she transferred Emma’s first slice of chicken onto her own plate and then shoved the second one across the table to her brother.

  Why, indeed.

  To Mary, though, Emma merely shrugged. “I thought I was hungry when I put those things on my plate.”

  Mary sliced off a bite of meat and slipped it onto her tongue, her happy eye roll a nod to the cook. But still, Emma’s lack of appetite remained.

  After a few bites, Mary pointed the tines of her fork at Emma. “Sarah says you have not been home very much this past week. That you have been in New Holland many times.”

  “She told you that?”

  “I asked why I had not seen you the few times I passed by your farm in the buggy.”

  “You could have asked me,” Emma protested.

  “Yah. But you were busy talking to Levi, and Sarah was next to me at the table putting more food out for Clara Schrock.” Mary scooped up some stuffing and lowered her voice so as not to be heard by anyone beyond their table. “Did you go into New Holland to see about working at the Quilt Shop? Did they like the quilts you have made? Are they teaching you things you must know to sell them at the store?”

  “I went to New Holland, but not for a job.”

  Mary moved on to her roll, eyeing Emma as she did. “Is this about what you told me the other day? When I walked you home? Did you go back again?”

  “Perhaps Emma does not want to answer such questions,” Levi challenged.

  Mary shifted her full attention onto her brother. “Perhaps you should not say such a thing. I am Emma’s friend, remember? Not you. You spend your time at hymn sings talking to—wait!” Mary relinquished her fork onto her napkin and grabbed hold of Emma’s arm. “Yah! That is why I had hoped to see you outside when I drove to Katie Beiler’s one day, and Miss Lottie’s the next. I have wonderful news! Leroy Schrock has asked to drive me to the hymn sing today!”

  “Le-Leroy Schrock?” Emma echoed, stunned. “I-I didn’t know you two talked all that much.”

  “I had a problem with Dat’s buggy the other day on my way home from town. Leroy passed by and helped tighten the wheel. It is then that we spoke.” Mary’s eyes shone with excitement. “He may not be good at volleyball, but he is very nice.”

  Emma started to speak, to string together something that sounded like the excitement she knew Mary was waiting to hear, but, instead, she pressed a hand to her mouth, murmured her apologies for her hasty departure, and ran around the side of the Schrocks’ barn. There, she surrendered to her stomach’s incessant churning before lowering herself to the ground and resting her head against the weathered wood at her back. Breath by breath, she steadied her hands in her lap and waited for their trembling to stop. And, breath by breath, she reveled in the cool, crisp air against her cheeks and forehead. It didn’t change the feeling in her stomach, but focusing on something, anything else for even a few minutes was better than giving in to the tears she didn’t want Mary to see when her friend invariably came around the corner.

  Yet when the feet she’d anticipated finally came, they didn’t belong to Mary. Hurrying his already hurried steps, Levi closed the gap between them with three long strides, the worry she saw etched in his face catching her by surprise.

  “Here you are,” Levi said as he, too, lowered himself to the straw beside Emma. “Are you okay?”

  When it became clear she could not stop the renewed trembling with breaths alone, Emma wedged her hands between her legs and the ground and managed the closest thing to a true nod she could muster. “Where is Mary?” she asked
.

  “She got up to try to find you, but it is then that Leroy said it was time to head out for the hymn sing. She told him to go ahead, that she had to find you, but I told her to go on—that I would find you and bring you to the hymn sing if that is what you would like.”

  Tipping her chin upward, Emma took in the charcoal-colored clouds, the lack of any real sun plummeting her mood even more. “That is very kind of you, Levi, but if I am to go, I will go with Jakob. I do not want to take Liddy Mast’s place on your buggy seat.”

  “I am not to bring Liddy Mast to the hymn sing.” Levi resituated his hat more squarely atop his head and then gazed up at the sky, as well. “You did not like to hear about Mary and Leroy, did you?”

  Oh how she wanted to protest, to say with conviction how happy she was for her dearest friend, but the effort to do so was greater than she could muster at that moment. Instead, she swallowed hard, and waited for the lump she felt forming in her throat to go away.

  “I know we have lost a few volleyball games when he has been on our team,” Levi said, his voice quiet, “but he is nice.”

  Closing her eyes briefly, Emma breathed her way through yet another flip and subsequent flop of her stomach. “I do not question that Leroy is kind. We do not speak often, but I have not seen anything to tell me that is not so.”

  Levi’s answering silence soon gave way to an inhale that matched the upward bent of his coat-clad shoulders. “Did you know that my mamm and Fannie Hershberger have been friends since they were both little ones?”

  “Mary told me that once.”

  “Did you know that Fannie got married first?”

  Unsure of his reasons for such an odd topic shift, Emma lowered her chin until his face, rather than the clouds, was her only true focal point. “No, but I do not understand why you speak of this.”

  “I speak of it because it doesn’t matter if Mary and Leroy are to court, or who is to marry first. You and Mary will always be friends, Emma.”