A Daughter's Truth

by Laura Bradford

  She lowered her hand back to her lap. “I am told you want to talk about what they did . . .”

  “I do, indeed. So, are you good with the recorder?”

  She looked to Brad for approval, and, at his nod, gave one of her own.

  “Okay, so let’s get started.” Clearing his throat, Nicholas positioned his notepad in front of him, consulted a notation on the upper right-hand corner, and then pressed a button on the silver box. “The date is February 10th and I’m here with Emma Lapp. Emma, when were you first told Brad Harper was your father?”

  “I-I was not told. I knew when I saw him. When I came to his office to ask why he put things on my birth mother’s grave.”

  Nicholas made some notions on the notepad and then moved on, his tone brisk. “How long did you know the deceased Ruby Stoltzfus had been your mother?”

  “I did not know until my birthday. When I found the locket Brad left with her picture inside. When I asked Mamm later that morning, she told me about Ruby—how she had gone to be with the Lord while giving birth to me.”

  “Until that day, Rebeccah and Wayne Lapp had always said they were your birth parents?”

  She stopped, mid-nod. “I do not remember them saying those words. I just knew them to be Mamm and Dat.”

  “And Ruby? How did they refer to her?”

  “I knew her to be Mamm’s sister, who died when she was eighteen.”

  Nicholas jotted something down and then returned his attention to Emma. “Were you told how she died?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “No! I did not want to upset Mamm. Speaking of Ruby, thinking of Ruby, visiting Ruby’s grave . . . it all made Mamm sad. My birthday made Mamm sad.”

  Nicholas leaned forward. “Your birthday made Rebeccah Lapp sad? Why?”

  “Because Ruby died on my birthday.”

  “So, you knew that part?”

  “Yah. It is on her grave at the cemetery.”

  “Yet you never asked how she died?” Nicholas asked, again.

  “No.”

  “Did the other children in the house . . . I think there’s”—again Nicholas consulted his notepad—“five of them . . . ever ask how Ruby died?”

  “No. Everyone wanted to see Mamm smile. Such questions would keep her sad.”

  “Do you think the children knew you were not their birth sibling?”

  She blinked against the tears she knew were seconds away from escaping down her cheeks and willed herself to answer the question. “No.”

  “When Rebeccah and Wayne introduced you to people, did they refer to you as their daughter?”

  Had they?

  She couldn’t be sure.

  “They would call me Emma.”

  “Is that different than the way they’d introduce the others?”

  “No. But we do not need to be introduced to people we already know.”

  Nicholas allowed a half smile. “Fair enough.” He flipped to the next page in his pad and looked back up at Emma. “I want to ask you about an incident when you were seven. I understand you fell through some ice and that no adults were present at the time, is that right?”

  She slanted a glance at Brad only to follow his eyes back to Nicholas. “I-I was on the way home from school with Jakob. We should not have been on the ice.”

  “How long were you in the water before you were rescued?”

  “Only my leg fell in. Jakob helped me out with a stick, and we walked home. Mamm warmed me with blankets and scolded me.”

  “She scolded you?”

  “Yah. We were not to be on the pond alone.”

  “Was Jakob scolded as well?”

  “No. I was older.”

  “You were seven,” Nicholas said.

  “Jakob was six.”

  The man jotted some notes and then looked up at Emma once again. “Were you treated like the other children in the house?”

  “Mamm did not smile at me the way she did the others. Before the locket, I thought it was because I was a reminder of a sad day. Now, I know I was not just a reminder. I am the reason.”

  Brad’s chair creaked as he leaned forward and snapped at Nicholas to turn off the recorder. “Whoa, whoa. You need to stop saying that, Emma. You are not the reason Ruby died. Having you in a house with people who aren’t trained in proper medical care is what killed her, not you. You have to know that. You need to know that.”

  Oh how she wanted to believe him. To know she wasn’t responsible for her birth mother’s death and Mamm’s heartache....

  “You know what?” Brad sat up and shifted his focus back to his friend. “Since we’re ahead of schedule anyway, what do you say we take a break, have some of that food from Melly’s, and then get back to the rest of your questions?”

  Setting his pen atop his notepad, Nicholas shrugged. “Works for me. Though, really, I don’t think I need to ask anything else. Emma has done a great job answering everything so far. I’m sure she’ll be fine with the chief’s questions. We’ll just need to make sure the camera is on her face and set to record, and then we can—”

  “Camera?” she echoed, looking from Nicholas to Brad and back again. “I cannot have my picture taken. I am Amish.”

  “Emma, please,” Brad said around a moan. “This is not the time or place for that. It was this, or the police station. And Chief Wilton is a good man; his questions will be very much like the ones Nicholas just asked.”

  Emma braced herself against the edge of the table. “I-I cannot talk to the police! It is not the Amish way!”

  Reaching forward, Brad covered her hand with his own. “I know that, kiddo. That’s why Nicholas suggested doing this by way of video. We figured it would be less intimidating for you.”

  “But it is not the Amish way,” she repeated, pulling away.

  “This isn’t about being Amish, Emma. This is about reporting a crime and seeing to it that justice is served.”

  “But that is what Bishop King will do. He will see to it that Mamm and Dat are shunned.”

  Brad splayed his palms. “Oh no . . . No way . . . Keeping my child from me—and me from her—for twenty-two years is due way more than a momentary snub.” He grabbed her hand off her lap and held it tight, his blue eyes holding hers with such intensity she couldn’t look away. “Not only did I miss out on everything—your first smile, your first rollover, your first word, your first step, your first birthday, your . . . everything—I can’t recapture any of it by way of pictures or videos because the Amish don’t take pictures.”

  “I can tell you some things.”

  “Some, yeah. But not everything. Not the things I should have seen with my own two eyes, not the things I should have experienced all on my own.”

  “But—”

  “Emma, Rebeccah and Wayne stole a baby! They stole you! That’s not okay. They shouldn’t be allowed to walk around like they did nothing wrong, like they didn’t just strip us of time we’ll never get back . . . memories we missed out on making . . . milestones we didn’t celebrate together! Rebeccah and Wayne belong in prison, Emma—for a long, long time!”

  “Prison?” she said, pulling her hand from his grasp once again. “You-you mean jail?”

  “Yes. Prison . . . Jail . . . Locked away for the rest of their lives . . .” Exhaling through pursed lips, Brad raked his fingers through his hair. “That’s where kidnappers belong, Emma.”

  She started to stand, but a sudden bout of dizziness kept her from actually gaining any momentum. Instead, she gripped the edges of the table and waited for the room to stop spinning.

  “Maybe I should give you two a few minutes?” Nicholas asked, pushing back his own chair.

  Brad waved for him to stay put. “No. No. She can do this. I know she can.” He draped his arm around Emma. “Emma, they’re bad people, they have to be punished.”

  Chapter 23

  She heard the crunch of his tires as he backed down the driveway, but she didn’t turn. Instead, she lif
ted her fist to the door and knocked as hard as she could. “Miss Lottie?” she called, her voice hoarse with tears. “It is Emma. Emma Lapp. I-I need to speak—”

  The door swung open, knocking her off balance and into the arms of the elderly English woman. When the woman swayed from the unexpected force, Emma jumped back, the apology she’d uttered again and again on the drive over making yet another loop past her lips.

  “Shhh . . . Shhhh . . .” Miss Lottie summoned her inside enough to be able to close the door and then pulled her close. “It’s okay, child. I’m here.”

  Seconds gave way to minutes as Emma gave into the torrent of tears she was powerless to stop. As she cried, Miss Lottie rubbed her back, telling her everything is going to be okay . . . to have faith . . . to trust the Lord.

  She heard the words, knew they were supposed to comfort, but they fell short. Still, she tried her best to get her emotions under control if for no other reason than the fact her tears had soaked clear through to Miss Lottie’s skin.

  Stepping back, Emma wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks, her gaze slipping to the floor. “I am sorry, Miss Lottie. I did not mean to make you all wet like I did.”

  “Oh, child, my dress is fine. Nothing a sit near the fireplace won’t fix.” Hooking a finger beneath Emma’s chin, Miss Lottie searched her eyes before abandoning them in favor of a full head to toe inspection. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Your parents? The children? Are they hurt?”

  Emma squeezed her eyes closed against the faces she’d been unable to shake from her thoughts since the meeting with Nicholas and eked out another no.

  “Then everything else is small potatoes—remember that.” Miss Lottie reclaimed her cane from its resting spot beside the door and led Emma down the very hallway she’d walked just three days earlier.

  The living room looked very different in the limited winter sunlight streaming in from the windows off the back of the house. The welcoming feel was still there, but something about the change in lighting and the distant tap-tap of a hammer made Emma feel fidgety and ill at ease. “I should not be here, interrupting your day. I-I should go.”

  “I was knitting, dear. I can knit while you talk, if I want to. But I don’t. I’d much rather visit with you.” Miss Lottie pointed Emma to the same couch she’d occupied on Sunday evening and then claimed her armchair. “Let’s save that piece of pie I owe you until after we talk. I get the sense that’s what you need most right now, anyway.”

  Emma nodded, pulled the nearest throw pillow onto her lap, and exhaled a wobbly breath. “He wants them to go to jail.”

  Miss Lottie’s brow arched above the rim of her glasses. “He?”

  “Brad. My birth father.”

  “I see. And by them, you mean Rebeccah and Wayne?” She swallowed, hard. “Yah. He says they kidnapped me and that kidnappers belong in jail. His friend Nicholas asked me many questions today. He wrote some things down on paper, and he pressed a button, too.”

  “A button?”

  “It was on a small box. It was silver. He pressed the button when we talked, and he pressed it again when we did not.”

  “So, he was recording you . . .”

  “Yah. That is what he said.” She startled at the snap of a log in the hearth, the pillow tumbling off her lap and onto the floor. Two rapid apologies and one grab later, it was back on her lap. “He asked things—about Mamm and Dat. Things they said to me when I was little, if they were good to me, and many questions like that. I did not mind answering his questions. I-I thought he just wanted to know, like Brad—my birth father—did. I didn’t understand why Nicholas wanted to record what I said, but Brad said it was okay.”

  “Go on, child.”

  “It was time to eat, so Nicholas stopped asking questions. That is when Brad mentioned the police. That the policeman would ask me questions after we ate. I said I did not want to talk to the police—that it is not the Amish way—but Brad said it was important. He said Mamm and Dat committed a crime when they kept me and did not tell him I had been born. And that is when he said they were to . . . to . . .” She stopped, wiped a fresh round of tears from her cheeks, and made herself breathe in and out until she could continue speaking. “That is when he said they were to go to jail.”

  Miss Lottie sat up tall, her wrinkled hands gripping the armrests of her chair. “Did the police arrest them?”

  Emma drew back, horrified. “Arrest them? No! Why would they do that?”

  “Because that’s what will have to happen in order for them to go to jail.”

  “No! I-I did not talk to the police. I ran outside. I ran down the road. I was almost to the end of the first road when my birth father stopped in his truck. I told him I did not want to talk to the police. I told him I couldn’t.”

  “And what did he say?”

  She traveled her thoughts back to the memory of Brad’s eyes, hooded and tired, looking back at her through the open passenger side window, the disappointment they’d conveyed leaving her more confused than ever. But when she’d asked to be taken there, to Miss Lottie’s, he’d grudgingly consented.

  The sound of her name on Miss Lottie’s tongue yanked her back into the room in time to hear the woman’s question repeated.

  “He said he’d give me a little time to get used to the idea, and then we’d try again with Nicholas and the policeman.” Pushing the pillow back onto the couch, Emma stood, then sat, then stood again. “I told him I would leave the Amish . . . That we would have new days to spend together . . . That it is okay if he does not have pictures of me as a little one because I can tell him things I did. I told him Bishop King would shun Mamm and Dat, that having backs turned to them was enough. But Brad does not think it is enough. He said they had no right, that they robbed him of me! He says it must be jail.”

  “I see. . . .”

  “But Esther is too little to go to jail, Miss Lottie! Jonathan and Annie, too! Soon Sarah will be baptized, and Jakob? It won’t be long until he is courting. They cannot go to jail.”

  “They wouldn’t.”

  Emma sidestepped her way between the coffee table and the couch to claim a seat closer to the elderly woman. “You do not think Mamm and Dat will go to jail as Brad says?”

  “No, if he pursues this, they likely will. But if your mamm and dat go to jail, the children will not.”

  “But that is where Mamm and Dat would be.”

  Miss Lottie leaned forward, captured Emma’s hands inside her own, and shook her head. “If your parents go to jail, the children will stay behind.”

  “Stay behind? You mean at the house? But how? Mamm and Dat would not be there. . . .”

  “How old is Jakob now, dear?” Miss Lottie asked. “Twenty?”

  “He is twenty-one.”

  “Then I suppose he could petition the court to take responsibility for the others, but it would likely be a hard sell. Esther is still so young.... Do your parents have kin still in the area? Siblings? Parents? Anyone?”

  “Two of Dat’s brothers live in upstate New York. One of his sisters is in Shipshewana, the other in Holmes County. Mamm’s brothers are scattered around, too. The closest one, Jeb, lives in the western part of the state with his wife and their eight children.”

  “Eight children?” Miss Lottie tsked softly beneath her breath. “So, there is no one here? In Blue Ball?”

  “Not kin, no.”

  “So they’d have to move in all of those cases.”

  Emma looked down at her hands inside Miss Lottie’s and quietly pulled them away, their sudden dampness necessitating a wipe on the sides of her dress. “I don’t understand. Who would have to move?”

  “Your siblings. They will need someone to go to if Jakob can’t take them. Somewhere that will satisfy child services.”

  “Child services?”

  “That’s who will place them into foster care if need be.”

  This time, when Emma jumped up, she hit the edge of the coffee
table with her shin, the quick stab of pain barely noticeable against the roar in her head. “That cannot happen. They belong with Mamm and Dat,” she protested.

  “I agree, but if your mamm and dat are in prison, someone will have to care for them, Emma. I’m not sure how successful a twenty-one-year-old would be in getting custody of four younger siblings.”

  “But . . .” Emma strode over to the window and its view of her brethren’s fields in the distance, the stark browns of a winter’s earth chilling her from the inside, out. “What should I do, Miss Lottie?”

  “Do you want them to go to jail, child?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Is that just because of the children?”

  Resting her forehead against the glass, she considered the woman’s question, her anger leapfrogging with . . . sadness? “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I-I do not know.”

  “Perhaps, when you discover the reason for that answer, you will know what you must do.”

  “What happens if I don’t know what to do?” she asked, turning around.

  Miss Lottie waved her back to the couch. “You will. In time.”

  “But I don’t have time,” Emma protested. “Brad said he will give me a few days to think, but if I still cannot talk to the police, he will talk to them, himself.”

  Plucking her glasses from the bridge of her nose, Miss Lottie rubbed her worried eyes. “Then use those few days wisely, child.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What did you do when you found out about Ruby and Brad?” Miss Lottie asked, sliding her glasses back into place.

  “I found him.”

  “And then?”

  “I have spent time getting to know him and my grandmother. There is much to learn. But I am learning a little, and they are learning a little.”

  “I imagine you ask them questions? And they, you?”

  “Yah. Many. There is much to learn.”

  “Have you asked your mamm why she did what she did? Why she didn’t tell you about Ruby and Brad?”

  “There is nothing to ask! There is no reason to do what she did!” The second she spoke, she dipped her head in shame. “Miss Lottie, I am sorry. I do not mean to speak that way to you.”