“David . . . you know, an addict never fails to disappoint.”
“Maybe, but I sensed a crack in Grace Miller’s façade, just enough for the light of God to shine through. Maybe she’ll surprise us.”
Luke had to hand it to David—the man did not give up on people. Luke? He had plenty of doubts about Grace. Yes, there might have been a crack or two in the façade, but Luke knew how hard and deep that shell was. He could tell.
But then, what if David had given up on me? Where would I be? It had taken three times for Luke to get through rehab. Three times! He had to bottom out, to get to that point of no return. Imagine if he’d had a life of alcohol or drug abuse—years and years of patterned responses to stress of any kind.
“Pray for Grace this week, Luke. Pray for Izzy and Jenny too. This is an important week in their lives. It could be a fulcrum point.”
“I just hope I haven’t opened up a Pandora’s box.”
A look of sadness covered David. “Oh, you have. In more ways than you could possibly imagine. But closed boxes never did anyone any good.” He folded his arms against his chest and closed his eyes, as if he was suddenly and thoroughly exhausted.
Another thought danced through Luke’s head, a happier one. He’d found Grace Miller for Izzy. He was officially done with the fence-mending list. Done! Every name checked off. Hardest, most gut-wrenching thing he’d ever done in his life.
Best thing he’d ever done in his life.
Two days later, David and Luke went to the courthouse for Grace’s arraignment. David didn’t even have to invite Luke. He just assumed he would be going.
The two men sat at the back of the courtroom on a long, hard bench. They waited patiently through three hearings until the bailiff announced the next case number on the docket. Grace Miller was led in and sat at the defense table next to her court-appointed lawyer. Luke watched her carefully. Dressed in civilian clothing, she looked better than she did in her prison jumpsuit, softer, a little less brittle. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. The only sign that she was nervous was the way she kept tugging on the sleeve of her blouse.
The judge picked up the file, read through the first page, and looked up at Grace. “Ms. Miller, you’ve been arrested for driving under the influence. Your public defender has requested a plea bargain. He’s asked that your DUI charge be reduced to a drunk and disorderly charge. You have a prior record of arrests and convictions, and I have the authority of the court to deny this plea bargain. But I’m taking into account that your probation officer has confirmed you’ve been clean and sober and gainfully employed for the past two years. The plea bargain would drop the charge from a felony to a third-degree misdemeanor. That means it would not be a criminal charge on your record, but it should be taken seriously. The maximum sentence for a drunk and disorderly conviction is ninety days. Ms. Miller, if you agree to this plea bargain, you’ll relinquish your right to a trial by jury and go directly to sentencing. Is that what you understand you’ve agreed to?”
Luke saw Grace lean over to whisper something to her public defender, then she straightened up and said a clear and loud yes.
“Ms. Miller,” the judge continued, “you have another choice here today. If you are willing to check yourself in to the Mountain Vista Rehabilitation Clinic and successfully complete the program, then your sentence will be suspended. If you do not complete it, a warrant will go out for your arrest. Personally, I’d like to keep you out of jail and on a path to sobriety. But it’s your decision to make.”
Grace rose to her feet. “I accept the offer to go to rehab.” She started to sit down, but her public defender whispered something to her and she straightened. “And I thank you, Your Honor.”
The judge rapped her gavel. “Then your sentence is hereby suspended. Grace Mitchell Miller, I don’t want to see you in this court again. You’ve got a chance here. Don’t blow it.”
Outside the courthouse, David and Luke waited in the cold for Grace Miller to get released. It took so long that Luke started to wonder if something had gone wrong.
David didn’t seem at all anxious. The man amazed Luke. Whenever he was around him, he felt his heart and soul settle. Sometimes he wondered if that’s what Heaven would feel like. Your whole self settled into a permanent and lasting peace.
Luke pondered where the money was coming from for Grace Miller’s rehab costs, because he doubted the church would provide for an outsider. They were generous people, but not that generous. Then he realized the money was probably coming from David and Birdy’s own pocket. It wouldn’t surprise him.
Finally, the door opened and there was Grace Miller. She walked up to David. “So . . . you meant what you said.”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll try it. I’ll give this place of yours a try. That’s all I’m promising to do.”
David smiled. “Then, let’s head over there.”
Amos and Fern sat across the table from David and Luke. David had stopped by Windmill Farm early this morning to ask if they could talk privately today. That wasn’t out of the ordinary, for David often stopped by to discuss deacon business. But then he asked for Fern to be included, and Luke too. Amos’s spine stiffened. And could Amos find a way to have Izzy be away from the farm when they talked? With that, the hair on Amos’s neck stood up. He racked his brain, wondering what trouble Luke might have gotten himself into. The boy had been doing so well, he’d thought. So well.
After the midday meal, Amos had sent Izzy over to the Bent N’ Dent on a fool’s errand. “Fern needs salt?” she asked him, a skeptical look on her face. “Salt?”
“And sugar. Both.” He had handed her a ten-dollar bill, feeling a little guilty, but David was due to arrive in ten minutes and he was anxious to get to the bottom of this. Whatever this was.
David was sipping a cup of coffee, calm as a man could be. Amos’s stomach was twisted into a tight knot. What had happened? He glared at Luke. What had the boy done?
David set down his coffee cup. “Can you tell me what you know of Izzy’s parents?”
Amos looked to Fern to answer. He knew nothing.
“Not much,” Fern said. “She skirts the issue if I bring up anything about her background. Sometimes I think she wants to pretend her life started here, one year ago.”
David put a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “A couple of weeks ago, Izzy asked Luke to find her mother. And lo and behold, against remarkable odds, he did just that.”
“So this meeting isn’t about something Luke’s done wrong?” Amos avoided Fern’s frown. He could read her thoughts. She was sending him a silent scold for being so quick to assign blame to Luke.
David gave Amos a surprised look. “No. Not at all.” Hands clasped, he set them on the table. “Are you familiar with the name Grace Mitchell?”
Amos sucked in a big gasp; he felt like he’d had the wind kicked out of him.
Fern glanced first at him, then at David. “That’s a name we’ll never forget.”
David’s eyes remained fixed on Amos. “Would you mind telling me what you know of Grace Mitchell?”
But Amos couldn’t seem to gather the words. He closed his eyes, swallowed, and tried again. Nothing. After a long, awkward moment, Fern filled in. “She grew up in the house that backs up to Windmill Farm. She lived with her father, a man named Colonel Mitchell. She had two children, a boy and a girl. She got involved with drugs—I’m not sure about that part, but then—”
Amos held up a hand to stop her. This part of the story, he had to make sure was crystal clear. “My first wife, Maggie, she took pity on Grace Mitchell. Not so much on her, but on those two little ones. Maggie would go over to the house and try to help, but that woman, she was not an easy person to help. Maggie used to say that she thought the colonel named his daughter Grace because she was going to need so much of it in life.”
Slowly, he eased out of his chair and went to the window. “One spring afternoon, Maggie had gone over to visit Grace. The little
girl baby, she had colic like our Menno did. She wanted to take goat’s milk over to Grace, to see if it might help with the colic. I expected her back within an hour or so, but she didn’t come home.”
His voice choked up and he had trouble getting the words out. “I knew something was wrong. As soon as Julia, my eldest, came home from school, I left the little ones with her, and I went over to the colonel’s.” The vision rolled out in his mind, vivid and clear, as if it were yesterday. “Maggie had fallen down the porch steps and hit her head on a rock. Her skull was fractured. The paramedic said she had died instantly, that she never knew what had happened.”
Luke’s eyes went wide. “Grace pushed her?”
“Colonel Mitchell confessed to pushing Maggie and she fell backward. The coroner ruled the death as accidental homicide. He went to prison and died there, from cancer.”
David, Fern, and even Luke waited patiently, letting Amos continue at his own pace. He’d rarely spoken of that day since it had happened. “Colonel Mitchell, I believe, was protecting his daughter Grace. But I remained silent.”
Gently, David said, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I think I’d have done the same for one of my children.” He paced around the room for a moment. “I suppose I wanted someone to be held responsible for my Maggie’s death. I’m not saying Grace tried to kill Maggie. It might have been an accident, but she never owned up to it.”
“Has she ever returned to Stoney Ridge?” David said. “So far as you know?”
Amos spun around. “Once. The colonel had left the house to his grandchildren. Somehow, she managed to swindle her two children out of their inheritance. As far as I know, she’s never come back.”
David sat back in his chair. “Amos, she’s here now.”
twenty-five
Amos had to get out of the kitchen. His chest felt tight, as if he couldn’t get enough air, and he thought he might pass out. He leaned his hands on the porch railing and took in big draughts of fresh air.
How could this be? Grace Mitchell, surfaced again.
He thought he’d dealt with the anger he’d felt for her when he found out that Chris and Jenny Yoder were her children. He thought he’d dealt with it again when he learned that his youngest daughter, M.K., was sweet on Chris. For a long while, he blamed Chris. He worked that through, or so he’d thought, after he and Chris had made amends.
But from the violent reaction he had to news that she was in Stoney Ridge, he realized he’d never truly forgiven Grace Mitchell for her role in his darling Maggie’s death, not deep in his heart. And so the Lord had brought it to him again, while he still had time to face this hard thing.
Grace Mitchell. The mother of sweet Izzy? How could this be?
The door swung open with a squeak and out came David, holding a fresh cup of coffee for him. “You okay?”
“Yes. No.” Amos took the coffee with one hand and rubbed his face with the other. “David, why am I responsible for Grace Mitchell’s children? All three.”
“Has it been so very difficult to love those children? Jenny, Chris, Izzy?”
“No, no, of course not. They’ve been a great blessing to us.” He looked at the steaming black coffee. “But you have to admit that it seems strangely coincidental that they keep ending up at Windmill Farm. I want nothing to do with this woman, yet she keeps turning up like a bad penny.”
David’s mouth lifted in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve had the same thought.” He pointed to the rocking chairs. “Let’s sit down.”
Amos watched David select his words with some care. He leaned forward in the rocking chair, his fingers steepled together in a way that made Amos know something important was coming.
“Amos, years ago, while I was living in Ohio, a single mother and her daughter lived next door to us. Something wasn’t right. The little girl, only four or five years old, she was left alone quite a bit and kept wandering over to our house to play with my children. My wife, Anna, scooped her in among our own brood. Anna tried to help this woman, but she wasn’t easy to help. She had a drug problem, we thought. She didn’t mind having her daughter cared for by Anna, but that’s all the neighborly help she wanted.
“We had an open buggy that Anna liked to use on summer days. The buggy had a short in the turn lights. I’d been meaning to fix it, but something kept coming up. You know how that can go. Long to-do lists.”
Amos knew. His whole farm was a long to-do list.
“Then came a day when I got a call from the hospital. There’d been an accident—Anna and Katrina, my eldest daughter, they were driving in the buggy and were hit by a car. Anna . . . she was killed instantly. Katrina was badly hurt.” David choked up and couldn’t speak for a long moment. He squeezed his eyes shut. Then he puffed out a long breath. “It turned out the driver of the car was our neighbor, and drugs were found in her car. She was arrested, and her daughter was put into foster care. This neighbor ended up getting convicted of a DUI vehicle-related manslaughter, a felony. She was sentenced to . . . I don’t remember . . . maybe seven to ten years in jail. Long, but not as long as it could’ve been because of that short in the turn lights. She claimed she never saw the lights.” He let out a puff of air again, as if this was taking everything in him to say the words. “I never knew what happened to the little girl. Until now. Amos, our neighbor’s name was Grace Miller. Grace Mitchell Miller.”
Amos experienced a tingling on his scalp and a sudden flush of heat that began at his breastbone and spread quickly upward to his neck and face, turning them red.
“The little girl,” David continued, “her name was Bella. Short for Isabella. Amos, she’s our Izzy.”
Amos’s heart gave one huge thump and started to beat wildly. He felt little beads of perspiration on his forehead. This wasn’t good. Dok had said to avoid getting excited.
He tried to breathe in and out, tried to calm himself, but this was too much to absorb. His body was reacting faster than his mind could fathom the news. “Did you know? All this time, you knew who Izzy’s mother was?”
“No. Not until Luke and I went to that jail last week and saw Grace’s face. I never connected Izzy to the little girl Bella. More than twelve years have passed since I’d seen her. She was a child. Now she’s a grown woman. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if Izzy might remember me, and Katrina and Ruthie and Jesse, and the others.”
“She must have. At the Lancaster Public Market, she asked me if I knew a family named Stoltzfus. I never could figure out why she was asking.” Amos’s heart was still pounding, as hard and fast as if he’d run a race. He wondered if he should get some pills to slow it down. He set the coffee mug on the porch before he spilled it. “Why did you have to turn this stone over? Why couldn’t it just be left alone?”
“I didn’t intend to. Luke’s the one who found Grace.”
“About that. How did he find her? Why couldn’t he have just left things alone?”
“Izzy asked for his help. At the very least, the fact that Luke wanted to help her is a sign that our prayers for him are being answered.” David rubbed his hands together, as if he was getting cold. Amos had no sense of whether it was hot or cold. He wanted David to stop talking. He wanted to forget this conversation.
“Look, Amos, there’s more to this story than you and me, grief and loss. Grace Mitchell is in Mountain Vista, right now, trying to get her life together. She’s been clean for two years, until right before Jenny’s wedding.”
Two years. Two little years. That didn’t seem like much of a reason to welcome her into their lives.
“We have an opportunity to truly trust in the sovereignty of God. Grace Mitchell Miller matters. She is not lost in God’s eyes. This could be a time of great healing for her.”
Amos pounded his knees with his fists. “And what if she fails again, David? What about Izzy? That girl has been through enough. Do you know how long it took her to look me in the eyes? Six months! I can’t im
agine the kind of men who’ve been in her world. She’s finally learning to trust . . . and you want to bring this kind of a mother”—he practically spit the word—“into her world?”
“Don’t forget that Izzy’s the one who started this. She’s been looking for her mother this entire year, sending letters to every Grace Miller in the phone book. And another thing—even if Grace does fail, Izzy has a safety net. She’s got you and Fern, she’s got me and Birdy. And then . . . she’s got a sister named Jenny. And a brother named Chris. We never would’ve put that all together, without this . . . strangely prophetic timing. I guess we have Luke to thank for that.”
“When do you plan on telling Izzy all this? Seems only fair that she knows she has a sister.”
“I don’t know.” David crossed his arms over his chest. “I want to wait and get guidance from God before the girls are involved. I don’t want them to be needlessly hurt or disappointed.”
“Don’t forget that Izzy is getting baptized this Sunday. She should be told before then. It’s only right.”
“Believe me, I haven’t forgotten. And I agree with you. She should be told. I just want to pray a little more about it.” David squinted his eyes. “Are you going to be okay? You still look pale.”
“I’m still trying to get my head around all this. For me. For you. It’s a lot to take in.” His heart was still reacting to the news, but it was slowing down a little.
“That it is. When I saw Grace behind the divider glass at the prison and realized I recognized her, I . . . well, to be honest, I nearly passed out cold. All those feelings that are swirling inside you right now—a desire for revenge, for making her pay, for wanting her to understand how deeply she hurt my family, how she robbed my children of their mother, my grandchildren of their grandmother. All those terrible and overwhelming feelings that you’re dealing with now . . . I felt them too. I had to leave the greeting room and get some fresh air, just like you did.”
Mending Fences Page 22
