Something sparked behind Levi’s eyes. “So, you will stay?”
“I know I should be able to answer such a question, but what seemed so easy two days ago, is not easy now. Miss Lottie said not to make a decision in anger. But without anger, there is only”—she looked out at the barn—“confusion.”
“I am listening.”
And so she told him. She told him about Brad’s steadfast belief that Mamm and Dat belonged in jail. She told him how Miss Lottie convinced her it was time to talk to Mamm. She told him how Mamm’s lack of smiles toward Emma over the years had both nothing and everything to do with Emma. She told him Ruby had chosen to raise Emma in the Amish way and how she’d confronted Brad with that information. And last but not least, she’d told him how Brad had finally, finally relented on the notion of jail provided Mamm and Dat didn’t interfere in his relationship with Emma ever again.
His slow, thoughtful nod when she got to the end let her know he’d been listening. The quick touch of his hand on hers let her know he cared even if her answering gasp made one of the barn cats rethink his approach and scurry behind a bush, instead.
“It is good that you know these things,” Levi said, catching and holding her gaze with his. “It is when you know things, you can decide things.”
“Three days ago, I wanted to punish Mamm for keeping me from Brad. He is my only living birth parent and I should know him. But now that I know the truth about everything, I see that Mamm was doing what Ruby wanted her to do. And me? I am a link to Ruby for Mamm, and a link to Ruby for Brad. But I cannot be both, just as I cannot be both English and Amish.”
Again, he nodded. And since his hand had never left hers, he simply tightened his grip. “Whatever world you choose, Emma, I will choose it, too.”
“Whatever world I . . .” She looked from Levi, to his hand on hers, and back to Levi. “What are you saying, Levi? What do you choose?”
“I choose you and me. To be together.”
“Together?” she echoed.
“Yah.”
She stared at him, waiting for some outward sign he was teasing, but there was none. Just a tender smile that was trained solely on Emma. “But-but I’m not Liddy Mast!”
“You’re right. You are Emma Lapp.”
“I know but—”
“You are Emma Lapp,” he repeated.
“But I’m not sure what that means.... Who I am, anymore. . .”
Levi quieted her words with a gentle squeeze. “You are still the same person you have always been, Emma. You are kind. You are sensitive. You are caring. You are good at volleyball and baking cookies. You are a fine sister, a fine daughter, and—”
“How can I be a fine daughter when I am so confused?”
“You are a fine daughter because you are confused,” he said, his voice thick.
She stared at him. “That does not make any sense.”
“You have taken time to get to know your birth father, yah?”
Emma nodded. “Yah. I have learned many things, but there is much more to learn.”
“And your mamm?” Levi asked. “Have you learned things about her?”
“Do you mean Ruby or . . .” She stopped, swallowed, and steadied her voice. “Mamm?”
“Both, I guess.”
She considered Levi’s question. “Yah.”
“And?”
“I love them both. Brad and Dat, too.”
“Then that’s the only real difference I see about you, Emma. You have more people to love, and more people to love you now.”
* * *
Emma ran her fingers across the back of the now-closed photograph album and looked up at Brad and Delia, the love in their eyes making her smile tremble even more. “Thank you for letting me look at the rest of these pictures. They help me to see Ruby in a way I never could have without them.”
“I’m glad, dear.” Delia rubbed Emma’s back in smooth, even circles. “She was happy with your father. Very happy.”
She could see how they thought that. Ruby’s smile in each and every picture was proof. It was also proof that the decision Emma had come to was the right one. For Emma.
“Mom and I talked about it and we know transitioning from an Amish life to an English life is going to take some time. We know you’ll make it fine, but we also know it will be filled with unknowns for a while. So that’s why we thought maybe it would be best if you and I move in here, with Mom, until you get more comfortable. Then, and only then, we can move to my place—our place.”
“Or just stay here,” Delia added, resting her cheek against Emma’s shoulder. “I certainly have the room and the books to keep you busy.”
Emma let her answering laugh accompany her gaze as she took in the cozy sitting room that had made her feel at home on her very first visit to Delia’s home.
* The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with more books than the English grocer . . .
* The photographs of Brad as a baby and a young man . . .
* The happy little knickknacks she’d come to know the origin of thanks to the warm and welcoming woman sitting beside her . . .
* The window with its view of the pond Ruby had skated on . . .
* The mantel with the framed picture of her birth parents, together and smiling . . .
Somehow, Emma could see the room as it might look in two years, five years. The pictures and the books would still be the same, but in her mind’s eye there would be new things on the shelf, too. Perhaps a framed picture drawn by one of her own children . . . The skates she hoped to own one day lying beside the window . . . Her husband seated beside her on the couch while Brad added a log to the hearth . . . A plate with Delia’s pastries and her own bread sitting atop the coffee table . . .
“If there is something you want to change or add, we can do that. This is your home, too, Emma.” With the gentlest of fingers, Brad turned Emma’s chin until he was the only thing she saw. “We want you to feel as if you fit here—with us. Always.”
Just for a moment, as she stared into the eyes she’d yearned to see her whole life, she wished someone would take a picture. But as quick as the thought came, it disappeared. She didn’t need a photo album to remember this moment. This man, and his mother, were part of her life to stay.
“Emma? Did you hear me? We want you to know that you fit here. . . .”
She found Brad’s hand with her left and Delia’s hand with her right and squeezed both. “I know. And I do. But I also fit in Blue Ball. With Mamm, Dat, and the children. And with Levi.”
“Levi?” Brad echoed.
“He has asked to court me and I have said yes.”
“To court you? As in the Amish tradition . . .”
“Yah.”
Brad’s eyes left Emma for Delia, only to return with a hint of anger. “Emma, I told you if Rebeccah and Wayne interfered in any way, I will not be able to honor my promise to you.”
“This is not about them—not in the way you mean, anyway. Levi was willing to leave his vows to be English with me if that is what I wanted,” she said.
“Then do it!” Brad said. “He can come work with me!”
“That is what Levi said, too.”
“Good! And you can do what you love, too. You can open a restaurant and people will come from miles to eat what you make!”
The image his words created in her thoughts quickly bowed to another, better one—one responsible for the smile she felt tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I am counting on that.”
“Then I don’t understand. . . .”
“I do not want to leave my Amish ways, and I do not want to leave my family.”
“We’re your family, Emma,” Brad protested. “Your real family.”
“It is nice to look at you and see my eyes, and my same hair. It is nice to look at pictures of Ruby and see my chin and my nose. But Mamm and Dat? And the children? They have made me who I am, too.” She looked from Brad to Delia and back again, the love she felt for them setting off
a stream of tears she didn’t bother to wipe away. “I need all of you in my life—in the simple life Ruby wanted for me and for herself.”
“Ruby’s choice doesn’t have to be your choice, Emma.”
She smiled at her birth father. “You are right, it doesn’t. But I’m not making this choice because of Ruby. I’m making this choice for me. For my life. I do not need many tables full. I need only one table full—my own.”
“But you haven’t given me a chance to show you what it can be like here. . . .”
“I don’t need you to. I know my life. It is like it was with Ruby. Her smiles in your English world were different than her smiles in simpler times. She smiled here, by your pond, but her smile with the bubbles and the dandelion? They were bigger, happier. Because that is where she fit best. I know I have said I didn’t fit in Blue Ball, but that is because I was looking to others instead of inside to my own heart.”
“But I just found you, Emma,” Brad pleaded. “I don’t want to lose you again. I can’t lose you again.”
“You won’t, you can’t. I am your daughter.” She released her hold on his hand to wipe the tears from his eyes. “And you, Brad Harper, are my dad. Forever and always.”
Eleven Months Later
“You are not peeking, are you?”
Emma stopped moving and turned her temporarily sightless eyes in the direction of her husband’s voice. “How can I peek if your hands are covering my eyes?”
“I don’t know. Your dad told me to be sure you cannot see.”
She tried to make a face, but when her mouth was determined to smile as it was at that moment, there was little she could do to make it stop. Three months earlier, in front of God and their families, she’d become Emma Fisher. It had been a surprisingly warm day for late October, a fact Delia hailed as Ruby’s part in the special day.
Emma knew she wasn’t to think such things, but still, during quiet moments alone, she couldn’t help but believe Delia was right. After all, Emma had been able to have what Ruby couldn’t—a family that knew no bounds. A family where she had both a dat and a dad.
“Are you ready?” Levi called.
“Yah. I am ready. And I am right here, next to you, so you do not have to be so loud.”
Levi’s laugh filled her ears. “I was not asking you.”
She drew back into Levi’s chest, but his hands remained firmly in place. “Who? Who else is here?” she asked.
In lieu of an answer, Levi dropped his hands to a ta-da she recognized as belonging to her father. “Dad? Where . . .” The words drifted away as her uncovered eyes came to rest on the two-story home no more than three buggy lengths away.
She took in the three front steps, the wraparound porch with the view of the Amish countryside on one side, the driveway on the front, and a small pond on the other. She took in the flower boxes on the first floor, the dark green shades of the second-floor windows, and the man standing next to it all with a tool belt around his waist and the smile she could never get enough of seeing.
“Dad?”
“It was a little too big to leave by the grave, but what do you think?” Brad Harper asked, stepping forward.
She rubbed her eyes, took in the house again, and then locked gazes with the man slowly closing the gap between them. “This . . . this is The Ruby, yah?”
“It is, indeed.”
“But you have never built one.”
“I have now.” Brad clapped a hand on Levi’s suspender-clad shoulder. “With Levi’s help, of course.”
She looked from Brad, to Levi, and back to the house, her mind’s eye skipping ahead to the inside she’d yet to see. “Is . . . is it the way she drew it inside, too?”
“Why don’t we go inside and you can tell me if it’s the same or not.”
For the briefest of moments, she couldn’t move, the notion of stepping inside almost more than she could handle. But it didn’t last long. Soon, she was fast walking across the earthen driveway, up the porch steps, and through the front door.
Two steps in, she froze.
Somehow, someway, Levi and her father had managed to take a simple pencil sketch and transform it into something with walls and paint and . . . life. Stunned, Emma inched forward, her eyes scanning the room for the simple details that had been so important to her birth mother all those years ago.
* The fireplace to her left . . .
* The large windows overlooking the Amish countryside...
* The accordion divider tucked into the wall to accommodate church . . .
“It’s Ruby’s house,” she whispered, looking from Brad to Levi and back again. “You built Ruby’s house.”
“Ruby designed it, and Levi and I built it, but it’s your house . . . yours and Levi’s,” Brad said, grinning.
“Ours?” she echoed. “But—”
“Happy birthday, Emma.”
Bookending her face with her hands, she took everything in again, the joy bubbling up inside her making it difficult to breathe. “I do not know what to say.”
Brad laughed. “Then look first, talk second.”
“I am looking.... It is . . . It is wonderful.”
“There is more to see, kiddo.”
“More?”
“Surely you need a place to make all that amazing food, don’t you?”
She sucked in her breath. “Is it the kitchen Ruby drew?”
“Why don’t you see for yourself?”
In need of no directions, Emma crossed the living room to the small linking hallway she knew would take her to the kitchen. Sure enough, as she stepped inside, her eyes moved immediately to the large window Ruby had envisioned as the perfect napping spot for her infant.
She tried to imagine the young girl she’d seen so many times in photographs, tucking Emma’s infant self into a sun-drenched wooden cradle and showering her chubby cheeks with sweet kisses....
“I think your mother would be very pleased to know that one day soon, our grandchild will be sleeping in that very same spot,” Brad said, his voice thick with emotion. “God willing, of course.”
She stole a glance in Levi’s direction long enough to trade knowing smiles before turning back to the window and the slightly different image that was now just a little less than seven months away—
Something that sounded a lot like an Esther giggle floated into the room and sent her attention skittering toward a pile of brightly wrapped boxes stacked atop the large center island. Before she could fully process the sight or formulate anything resembling a question, a flurry of faces entered the room from the door Ruby had marked pantry so many years earlier.
* Dat . . .
* Jakob . . .
* Sarah . . .
* Jonathan . . .
* Annie . . .
* Esther . . .
* Delia . . .
* Mary . . .
* Levi’s Mamm and Dat . . .
* Miss Lottie . . .
Stunned, she stumbled back into Levi’s waiting arms. “What . . . what is this? Why are you all here?”
As if one, all eyes, including Emma’s, turned back toward the pantry door as Mamm stepped her way through the crowd of Emma’s loved ones with a birthday cake in her hands and a smile as bright as the sun on her face.
“Happy birthday, Emma.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing is, by its very nature, a solitary act. I spend months sitting in front of my computer screen, losing myself in my characters’ worlds. Still, there are some people who make the journey to a book’s completion all the more fun for me.
That said, I’d like to thank my friend Tasha Alexander. The nugget for this story came while visiting her in the most peaceful place I’ve ever visited. Being able to play the “what-if” game with her for a few hours that same day made it all the more fun.
A huge thank-you also goes to my family for their patience, understanding, and willingness to eat leftovers while I tapped away on this book.
And, finally, I
must thank you, my readers. Your kind emails and enthusiasm for my books keep me doing what I’m doing.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
A
DAUGHTER’S
TRUTH
Laura Bradford
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included
to enhance your group’s reading of
Laura Bradford’s A Daughter’s Truth.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. In the blink of an eye, Emma’s world changes. Not because of her own choices, but because of the choices made by those around her. Have you ever had your life significantly impacted because of the choices of others? Can you share?
2. While talking to Emma the first time, Miss Lottie references a sign she saw in a San Francisco outdoor market that said, “Home is not a place, it’s a feeling.” It’s a sentiment that eventually leads the English woman back to her childhood roots in Amish Country. Is there somewhere (besides your physical house) that always feels like “home” to you? Where you feel the most like yourself? Where?
3. Levi’s advice to Emma when she’s on the brink of leaving everything behind is to “think before you do.” If you could give one piece of advice about life to someone, what would it be?
4. All her life, Emma has yearned to see herself in someone. For Emma, it’s about something tangible she can see. Whom do you most resemble, appearance-wise, in your family? Do your interests/abilities resemble anyone’s?
5. Mary has always been Emma’s safe harbor—the person who has been by her side every step of the way, and truly knows Emma’s heart without Emma having to say a word. Do you have a friend like that? How long have you known her/him and how did you meet?
6. What do you think was the turning point for Emma—the moment or series of moments that helped her choose the right life for herself?
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