A Daughter's Truth

by Laura Bradford

  “Killed her?” Miss Lottie echoed.

  “Yah. It is while she was having me that she went to the Lord.”

  “But I thought Ruby was your mamm’s sister.”

  “And I thought Mamm did not smile at me because I reminded her of a sad day. But it was not that. She does not smile when she looks at me because I am the reason for that sad day.”

  Miss Lottie moved her hands from her lap to her armrest, her eyes never leaving Emma’s. “I don’t believe that, child.”

  “What? That she does not smile at me?” Anger tightened Emma’s jaw. “I am not the one who lies! That is Mamm and Dat! They told my real dat that I died with Ruby! Every year on my birthday he has come to the grave to visit with Ruby and me. But I was not there! I played. I went to school. I had birthdays. I grew. I went on Rumspringa. I was baptized. In all that time, Brad did not know I had lived, and I did not know I was his and Ruby’s child.”

  Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop, the details she’d pieced together since the morning of her birthday pouring from her mouth with nary a breath in between. “I have a grossmudder who likes to cook just like me . . . and cousins who are very different but only because I was raised in a home where I did not belong. A home where—when I would look across the table at dinner—I would see bits of Dat and Mamm in everyone else. Dat’s eyes in Jakob’s . . . Mamm’s in Annie’s and Esther’s . . . Dat’s chin in Sarah’s, and Mamm’s nose in Jonathan’s. But my eyes did not look like anyone’s. My hair was different, too. It was all just more ways I did not fit. But it was not me! It was not that something was wrong with me! It is because I did not belong at that table! Dat was not my dat! Mamm was not my mamm! The children were not my . . .”

  Dropping her head into her hands, Emma gave in to the sobs she could no longer hold back—gut wrenching, shoulder heaving sobs that drenched her cheeks and made it difficult to draw full breaths. But as she wiped her eyes in an attempt to see through the torrent of tears, Miss Lottie was suddenly beside her, pulling her close. “Oh, Emma. . . . It’s okay, sweet child.... Let it out. . . .”

  And so she did. She cried for the mother she’d never know, she cried for the father she barely knew, she cried for the family that was never supposed to be hers, and she cried for herself—for the life she thought she had and wasn’t sure she should.

  Soon the sobs gave way to quieter tears and, finally, sniffles that filled the time between cracks and pops of the fire. “I don’t . . . I don’t know where I . . . belong,” she said between the last few hitched breaths. “I don’t know where I want to belong.”

  Slowly, gently, Miss Lottie released Emma from her arms just enough to be able to afford eye contact. “You have had your world turned upside down in a matter of two weeks, Emma. The only way you can know those things is to get information.”

  “Information?” Emma wiped her face with the back of her hand. “What kind of information?”

  “Get to know your birth father. Get to know your grandmother. Get to know your cousins. Learn their world. Soak it all in. And, while you’re doing that, pay careful attention to what”—Miss Lottie touched Emma’s chest with her finger—“your heart is saying. Then, and only then, can you answer those questions about where you belong.”

  “It has already been twenty-two years,” she protested between leftover sniffles.

  “You’re right, Emma, it has. You can’t erase all that and accumulate twenty-two years of new knowledge in a matter of weeks. Not when it’s all still so raw. Decisions made in anger are never good decisions, Emma. Never. You must give it, and yourself, more time.”

  “But do I even have a choice?” she asked. “My real family is English. Isn’t that what I should be now, too?”

  Miss Lottie pushed her glasses higher on her nose and then gathered Emma’s hands inside her own. “I don’t know the reasons behind the decisions your parents—Rebeccah and Wayne—made. Only you and they know that, but—”

  “There is never a reason to lie, Miss Lottie. The Bible says, ‘Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but they that deal truly are his delight.’ ”

  “That is true, certainly. But the Bible also says, ‘He that answereth a matter before he heareth, it is folly and shame unto him.’ ”

  She stared at Miss Lottie. “But they lied, Miss Lottie! And no, I don’t know why!”

  “Have you asked?”

  “No. I do not need to ask. Lies are never good, never right.”

  At the approaching clip-clop of Levi’s horse, Miss Lottie squeezed Emma’s hands one last time and then released them in exchange for her cane. “Remember, Emma, anger does not make for good decision making.”

  “I will try. . . .” Emma smoothed her skirt down against her legs and then stood, her eyes making short work of the uneaten pie on her plate. “Oh, Miss Lottie, I never tried your pie. I just got so busy telling you—”

  Miss Lottie stilled the rest of Emma’s sentence with a gentle finger. “Shhhh . . . It just means you must come back and see me. Soon.”

  Chapter 18

  Emma settled back against the tree and tried not to think about Sarah’s face as she’d passed the clothesline and the basket of clothes waiting to be hung with nary an offer to help. But while that memory invoked a knot inside her throat, the one of Mamm’s disappointment as, Mamm, too, had looked up at Emma, stirred an anger she didn’t want to feel in her special place.

  No, Miller’s Pond had always been her happy place—the place where something as simple as watching a butterfly flitting around in the spring, or a colored leaf floating down to the earth in the fall brought her a sense of peace. Here, she could be herself without self-critiquing her every move and non-move. Here, she could cry if she wanted to cry, or laugh if she wanted to laugh. And here, she’d been able to pretend what the truth had been all along—that the trinkets she’d added to the drawstring bag in her hand each year were, in fact, her birthday gifts.

  Thanks to her time here, at the pond, and later at Brad’s office, she now knew the reason behind the gifts left through her fifteenth birthday. She’d hoped they’d get to the last few items the day she’d met her grandmother, but it hadn’t happened. Instead, she pulled the last six presents out, one by one, studying each one closely. The plastic covered bridge . . . The small, red rubber ball . . . The yellow spinny thing on a stick . . . The baseball with the ink markings on it . . . The dried flower with the blue and pink ribbons tied around the stem . . . And, finally, the whittled bird . . .

  When they were lined up, side by side, across the top of the rock on which she sat, Emma ran her fingers across each and every one, her thoughts visiting a time Brad had brought to life in her head—a time when Ruby was alive, and Emma’s birth parents had been able to convey thoughts to one another with little more than a glance. Thanks to Brad, Ruby was becoming more than just kin she’d never met—kin who had died too young and whom Mamm still mourned. Now, Ruby was someone who’d looked like Emma, laughed softly, looked happy in a photograph, learned to skate, planned picnics, rode rides at an English carnival, drew pictures of houses, made wishes, had been in love with Brad, and seemed to be happier in his English world than she’d been in her own.

  Scooping the last present up off the rock, Emma took in the carefully whittled bird—the wings poised to indicate balance, the eyes cast downward as if observing something below, and a tiny worm inside its partially open beak.

  “That bird needs a baby!”

  Sucking in her breath, Emma turned to find Esther not more than five feet away, heading in her direction. In the little girl’s left hand was her lunch pail, and in her right, a small picture book Emma recognized from her earliest school days. “What are you doing here?” Emma traveled her gaze past the five-year-old to the path that wound its way around the far side of the pond. “And where are Jonathan and Annie? They should be with you.”

  “I peeked at the pond through the trees”—Esther pointed to the narrow break between the trees that
otherwise hid their location from the road—“and I saw you! I asked Annie if I could walk the rest of the way with you and she said yah!”

  Esther set her lunch pail and book on the ground and clambered onto the rock by Emma’s feet, her large brown eyes fixing on the bird once again. “Did the nice man give it to you?”

  “Nice man?”

  “Yah. He spreaded all his toys on the rock the other day.”

  “Spread,” Emma corrected.

  “I liked the horse best!” Esther inched her way across the rock toward Emma, her finger guiding Emma’s attention back to the whittled bird. “Since we don’t have six kittens, you could name the bird. . . .”

  She looked a question at the little girl only to shake it away as the answer dawned all on its own. “You did such a good job naming Flower, I think you should name this bird, too.”

  “Are you sure?” At Emma’s nod, Esther’s ever-present smile widened even more, revealing the sizeable gap where two of her top front teeth were missing. “I want to name her Emma, just like you!”

  “Emma?” She looked at the bird, wiggled it ever so gently, and then pretended to make it fly over to Esther. “Emma is a girl name,” she said in a squeaky voice. “I want a bird name.”

  Giggling, Esther rose up on her knees to address the wooden bird. “But you have a worm in your mouth.”

  “Yah. I am hungry.”

  “But you will not eat it,” Esther said, her brows dipping down in a sudden burst of seriousness. “You are carrying your worm like the bird in Dat’s barn.”

  Then, abandoning her conversation with the whittled bird momentarily, Esther fixed her eyes on Emma. “Jakob says it is good Flower and the other kittens cannot climb yet because they might eat the baby birds in the nest.”

  “Are you sure they have hatched? It is not spring yet.”

  “Yah! There are two babies! And the mamm bird brings them worms! I saw her!”

  Emma lowered the now-silent wooden bird back to her lap and, with the index finger of her free hand, tapped her little sister’s nose. “You will have to show me the nest when we go back to the house.”

  “Yah. But I still want to call that one”—Esther pointed at Emma’s lap—“Emma.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I were a baby bird, you would bring me worms just like that bird!”

  Leaning her head back against the trunk of the tree, Emma listened to her own laugh as it echoed around them. “Oh? You think I would give you a worm, do you?”

  “Yah! Because you love me and you taked good care of me.”

  “Take,” Emma corrected, sitting up. “And you are right. If you were a baby bird, I would bring you worms.”

  Esther pointed at the bird. “Can I sit there? For just a little while?”

  “You mean on my lap?” At Esther’s nod, Emma moved the bird to the rock and pulled the little girl into cuddle range. “I always have a spot for you to sit, little one.”

  “Even if you leave?” Esther whispered.

  “Leave?” she echoed, loosening her hold on Esther. “I am not . . .” Breathing back the rest of a sentence she knew she could not say, Emma straightened her shoulders against the tree and pointed at the sleeve of the little girl’s dress. “Would you quit growing, please? Because pretty soon there will not be enough fabric in the store to make the dresses you seem to be outgrowing faster than I can make them.”

  Lifting the bird off the rock, Esther held it to her chest and rested her cheek against Emma. “I tolded Annie and Jonathan you would not leave. I tolded them you do like us. But Annie tolded me you don’t anymore. She tolded me that’s why you do not help with the chores, and why you don’t sit next to me at dinner all the time.”

  Esther shot her chin up, eyes wide. “She tolded us you yelled at Mamm one day!”

  “Told.” She knew, in the moment, it didn’t matter if Esther’s grammar was correct, but drawing attention to it bought Emma time to breathe her way through the sudden dizziness.

  “Did you, Emma? Did you yell at Mamm?”

  She knew the consternation on Esther’s face. It was the same expression, she, herself, would have worn at the notion of any of her siblings ever raising their voice to Mamm. But that was before—before she knew everything about her life had been built on lies.

  “Emma?”

  Snapped back to the moment by the worry in Esther’s voice, Emma lingered a kiss atop the little girl’s kapp. “Why do you tiptoe over to see Bean’s kittens?”

  “Because they are babies. I do not want to wake them if they are sleeping.”

  “That is a good reason.” She breathed in the medley of earth and apples that clung to her sister’s hair and then sat back. “I have reasons for things that I do, too, Esther. And right now, there are some things I cannot talk about. But I will . . . soon. Can you wait for me to do so?”

  Esther started to nod but stopped to look up at Emma, instead. “You do like us, don’t you, Emma? Even if there were no more kittens for you to name?”

  Somehow, despite the tears she felt gathering in the corners of her eyes, Emma still managed a laugh. “I do not need a kitten to name when I have a bird to share mine.”

  She picked up the bird and turned it to face Esther once again, her voice adopting its earlier squeaky quality. “Thank you for naming me Emma, little girl. I like my new name.”

  Giggling, Esther scrambled back onto her knees to maximize eye contact with the whittled creature. “I named you that because I love Emma.”

  “That is good,” she said, moving the bird in for a wooden beak kiss. “Because Emma loves you, too. Never, ever forget that.”

  * * *

  She’d tried for Esther. She’d tried for Jakob and Jonathan, Annie and Sarah. But nothing about sitting at the dinner table with Mamm and Dat had felt right. On the surface, it had been like any other evening meal—heads bowed in prayer, plates of rolls and potatoes and meat being passed around from person to person, and the sharing of stories from the day. But that was where the similarities had ended for anyone who dared to truly see.

  Some of that could be put on Mamm and Dat and the uneasy glances they sent her way every time the conversation around the table lagged in a way that made Emma’s silence almost deafening. Some of it, too, could be put on the anger Miss Lottie had warned her about, yet she couldn’t shake.

  For twenty-two years, these two people had told her an untruth—that she was their child. That single lie had led to the telling of more. To Jakob. To Sarah. To Jonathan. To Annie. And to Esther. Because despite what they all believed, Emma was not their sibling. She was still kin, sure, but not in the way they’d all believed or in the way they still believed.

  And every day that went by with her knowing a truth they didn’t, she, too, was part of that lie. But until she could tell them without her anger spilling into places it didn’t belong, she needed to wait.

  “Emma? I think the plate is dry enough to put away.”

  Halting her hand, mid-squeak, she looked up to find Sarah studying her from the top of the single step stool. “Oh. Yah. Here.” She passed the now dry plate to her sister to add to the cupboard and turned her attention to drying up the counter around the sink.

  “I do not know why you do not help with the laundry or the mucking or the baking anymore,” Sarah said, closing the cupboard door and stepping down off the stool. “I do not know why you do not speak at dinner. But I do know you are making Mamm very sad and that is not good.”

  Emma stopped wiping to stare at Sarah. “You think I am making Mamm sad?”

  “Yah. You do not see the way her smile disappears when you walk out the door without saying what you are doing or where you are going. You do not hear her crying when she says she is quilting.”

  “Something that is not there cannot disappear.”

  “What do you mean?” Sarah asked.

  “You said Mamm’s smile disappears when I walk out the door. But Mamm does not smile at me when I am here, s
o I do not know how it can disappear when I leave.” She draped the wet dishcloth across the oven handle and then turned back to Sarah. “And if she is crying in her room when she is to be quilting, it is because of her choices, her lies.”

  “Emma!” Sarah stamped her foot on the wood plank floor only to startle herself with the answering noise. Flustered, the sixteen-year-old glanced over her shoulder toward the hallway, waited to see if a reprimand would follow from the vicinity of the front room, and, when it didn’t, turned back to Emma, her voice dropping to a whispered hiss. “I do not know why you are this way. I saw Levi bring you home last night. That should make you happy, not like . . . this.”

  “Like this?”

  “Yah. Angry . . . Mean.”

  Sarah’s words snapped her back a step. “I am not mean.”

  “The Bible says, ‘Honour thy father and mother.’ But you are not. You are saying things you should not say about Mamm!”

  “It is not just Mamm. It is Dat’s lie, too.”

  “Emma!”

  “Listen to me, Sarah.” Stepping forward, Emma gathered her sister’s hands inside her own. “The Bible says many things. It says to honor thy father and mother, but it also says ‘Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.’ That is what I am now, Sarah. . . . That is why I leave and do not say where I go. Because I am free—free of lies that should never have been told. And soon you will know the truth about them, too.”

  With one big pull, Sarah wrenched her hands free, her expression a mixture of fear and defiance. “Maybe it is good that you go, that you do not help with chores as you once did.”

  Chapter 19

  She saw the described car the second it came around the bend. The slow pace, combined with its periodic stops and starts, a clear indication the driver wasn’t entirely sure where the path to Miller’s Pond was located. For the briefest of moments, Emma actually considered stepping back into the protection of the trees and letting the car drive right by, but considering she was the one who had requested the visit in the first place, it wouldn’t be right.