Sister's Forgiveness

by Anna Schmidt

  Matt’s response to everything happening around him was to become more talkative, filling any lengthy silence with reports on how things were going with the current football season—at his school, in the college ranks, and with the professionals. He continued to pepper his delivery of this information with such things as “Uncle Geoff thinks that…” or “Uncle Geoff told me…” And he needed only the slightest encouragement to keep talking, a nod of Lars’s head or a murmured but distracted “Really?” from Emma.

  “I think when I get out of school I want to be a coach,” he had announced as the three of them shared their first meal since Sadie’s arrest.

  “What sport?” Lars had asked, grateful for any distraction.

  Matt had shrugged. “All of them.”

  Lars had looked across the table at Emma and seen the fleeting lift of the corners of her mouth. And that almost-smile had been a lifeline for him. They would get through this somehow, and one day they would be able to do all the things they had done before—smile, laugh, plan a future.

  The cut piece of lumber clattered to the concrete floor of the workshop, and Lars put down his saw and blew the excess sawdust off the edge of the board, examining it closely for any possible flaws. He was sanding the board when he heard Emma’s bike tires crunch the crushed shell driveway.

  By the time he got to the screen door of his shop, she was already on her way into the house. With Sadie confined and their ability to see her limited, Emma filled her hours helping Jeannie prepare for the funeral. Normally this was Emma’s day to help out at the thrift shop, and she would come straight to his workshop full of news she’d heard from customers and other volunteers.

  But since the accident, their family was the news. He watched as Emma went inside and returned a moment later with a broom and dustpan. “Emma?”

  She paused but did not turn.

  “Come on out here and give me a hand with this,” he said, holding the screen door open.

  “I’ve got housework, Lars,” she replied.

  “And plenty of time to attend to that.” For some reason he felt compelled to break the cycle of her need to be constantly busy—cleaning, cooking, doing laundry. “You can’t keep going on like this, Emma.” He knew by the way her shoulders tensed that she understood what he was saying.

  She swept a small pile of dead leaves into the dustpan and set it with the broom on the back stoop as she started toward him. “Why?” she asked when she was almost there. “Why can’t I do what I want? Why do I ever have to do anything again?”

  Amazingly her response gave Lars a flicker of hope. She sounded like Sadie, who had always leaned toward the dramatic. “You don’t have to do anything,” he said handing her a wood block wrapped in sandpaper and indicated the edge that needed work. “We have a choice, Emmie. We can shut out everything and everyone and hide behind chores. Or we can find some way to move forward. Shutting all this out may seem the easier path, but it seems to me that as time goes by, it might be a decision we’d regret.”

  By the way she ran the sandpaper over the rough edge of the board, he could tell that she was listening, hesitating now and then as she considered his words.

  “It’s so very hard.”

  “Ja. Life’s like that.”

  He set up a second board to cut, and the conversation between them was drowned out by the whoosh of the saw moving back and forth.

  After they worked in silence for a while, Lars saw her pause and study the rough penciled drawing he’d made, noting the dimensions for the piece. She watched as he cut another board, and then she said, “I know you’ve made coffins for others in the community, Lars, but what is it like making a coffin for Tessa?”

  The directness of the question startled him, and he had to wonder what other unspoken thoughts she might be entertaining. “I don’t know. I never really thought about it. Don’t misunderstand—I am taking special care—all of the special care that Tessa deserves.”

  Emma nodded. “She would have liked that. She always thought your furniture pieces were the finest.” She actually smiled. “There was this one day when the girls and Jeannie and I were at Yoder’s and these women were in the next booth. They were snowbirds, we guessed, from the way they talked and were dressed and all. Anyway, they were going on and on about how they’d always heard that Amish furniture was the best made anywhere.”

  She was sanding the edge of the board now with smooth regular strokes, as if for a moment everything was as it had been before and she was just relating this incident. Her voice was livelier than Lars had heard it since that moment at the hospital before they’d gotten the news—that moment when there had still been hope.

  “…and Tessa just turned around and said, ‘Well, my uncle was raised Amish, and he makes the most beautiful furniture you’ve ever seen. You should give him a call—his name is Lars Keller.’ And remember? They did. That one woman came here with her husband and ordered that dining room set from you.”

  Lars nodded and kept working, afraid to break the special moment of memory.

  “Tessa said she might just have to ask you for a commission.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, but your daughter told her good luck with that. She said that everybody knew that you’re cheap.”

  “Thrifty,” Lars corrected with a smile.

  It was so wonderfully normal—this conversation with his wife. This time together in his workshop. This banter. But as quickly as it came, it was gone. Emma sat staring at the sanding block she held in one hand for a long moment. Then she placed the block on Lars’s workbench and stood up.

  “The kitchen floor needs washing,” she said.

  Chapter 16

  Sadie

  Sadie had never been more terrified in her life. The whole day had been a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake up, and now it was night and she was in jail—or detention as she’d been corrected by the ginormous, uniformed African-American woman driving the van as she was transported from the police station to the center. “No, miss. That place we just left? That was jail. This is different.”

  How? she wondered. Worse? It couldn’t be worse, could it?

  The rain had stopped. In fact, it was a beautiful, clear day—a Friday. She should be out on her bike with Tessa sharing stories of what had happened in school. Instead, she had spent the day in her hospital room, and then the social worker lady had come to tell them that she was being discharged. Right behind her had stood Lieutenant Benson.

  The ride to the juvenile detention center took forever and at the same time was over way too soon. Sadie glanced at the other girl in the van. She looked a lot younger than Sadie, and she sat curled up as if trying to make herself disappear. When they were first escorted to the van in shackles and handcuffs, Sadie had tried to give the girl an encouraging smile, but the girl had refused to make any eye contact. Sadie had made the same attempt at eye contact with the guard sitting with them with no better results. Finally, she had given up and stared out the window for the remainder of the trip.

  Tessa was dead. Dan had disappeared into thin air. No word. No visit. Nothing. And when she’d asked about him, all her mother would tell her was that Dan had been treated for minor injuries and released. “He’s with his family,” she’d said as if that should end the discussion. And then Sadie had been arrested.

  The world had gone insane.

  The van driver turned into a driveway between a couple of one-story concrete buildings then waited for another uniformed person to open the gate that led into a wire enclosure before driving in. The uniforms—as she had decided to call them since there seemed to be so many of them and distinguishing one from another took more effort than she could muster—exchanged brief banter while the gate was closed again. Only then were she and the other girl allowed to leave the van.

  Sadie was exhausted. Like a sleepwalker, she followed instructions. Whatever the uniforms told her to do, she did without protest.

  Once inside the b
uilding, she was told to remove all her clothes. She did not protest, nor did she make any comment when a female uniform searched her from head to toe, including looking inside her mouth and examining her even “down there.” She was directed into a shower. She was then given a whole new set of clothing—a faded blue jumpsuit, underwear, socks.

  Once she was dressed, she was taken to a room where another uniform asked her more questions—not about Tessa or the accident, but things like whether she wanted to harm herself.

  “Well, duh,” she wanted to say. “My best friend is gone forever, and it’s my fault. What do you think?” But she said nothing.

  “You can call your parents now,” another uniform told her.

  How could she? How could she ever explain? All the time they’d been with her since the accident, not once had her parents asked her what had happened. But the question had been there in their eyes. She was well aware that her day of reckoning had only been postponed.

  She said nothing.

  “You know, a kid like you from good people like your folks seem to be… All I’m saying is that’s not always what we see here. They’re probably waiting to hear from you,” the uniform said, holding the phone out to her.

  Sadie focused on her hands. From somewhere outside the small room, she heard doors slamming.

  “Call your folks,” the woman urged again.

  Sadie took the portable phone from her and punched in the numbers. It rang once and started to ring a second time, and then she heard her father’s voice. It was supper time, and he hadn’t turned off the phone. That alone gave Sadie a feeling of relief—that whatever happened, her dad would take care of her.

  “Hello?”

  She collapsed into tears, and the phone slipped from her fingers and clattered to the concrete floor.

  Vaguely she was aware that the uniform had rescued it and was talking to her dad. “Yes sir. Well, understandably she’s a little… she’s upset, but she’s here and getting settled in. Tomorrow. Thirty minutes. Yes sir. Good night.”

  Sadie continued to cry. Then she began to shake.

  “Your folks will be here to visit tomorrow. How about something to eat?”

  Her mother would have wrapped her arms around Sadie and held her until the shaking stopped. The uniform offered food as if the two of them were out shopping or something and the idea of eating had just occurred to her.

  Sadie shook her head vehemently. She wanted to go home. She wanted to turn back the clock. She wanted this to be over. “So tired,” she managed through sobs and hiccups. That had to be the understatement of the year. The truth was that she was exhausted on every level—physically, mentally, and especially spiritually.

  They moved through another series of locked doors into a larger room furnished with molded plastic chairs that looked really uncomfortable. At the opposite end of the room were a series of tables with attached stools similar to the tables in the cafeteria at the academy. Near the door they’d come through was a kind of podium-style desk. Sadie glanced up and saw cameras attached to the ceiling and a series of identical doors around the perimeter of the large room.

  The uniform unlocked one of the doors and held it open. Inside Sadie saw two concrete risers the size of her twin bed at home and a metal toilet attached to the wall just inside the door. There was also a small window high on the wall opposite the door. It was still light outside. She glanced at a wall clock imprisoned in a metal cage. Seemed like everyone and everything was in jail around this place.

  “Not tonight,” another uniform told the woman with Sadie. “She’s on watch status until mental health can evaluate her.”

  The uniform led her back out into the larger room where someone had placed a mattress on the floor. The guard handed her a pillow and thin blanket. “You’ll sleep out here tonight.”

  Did they think she was dangerous? That she might try to escape? What? The one thing that was crystal clear was that her jailers were not inclined to provide her with information beyond the basic. “Sit here.” “Wear these clothes.” “Sleep there. “

  She took the bedding and curled up on the mattress. The two uniforms talked in low tones that Sadie was too exhausted to interpret, and then one left while the other took up her position at the podium desk. “Just so you know,” she said, “I’ll be right here all night, and about every thirty minutes I’ll be checking on you. Got that?”

  Sadie rolled onto her side and pulled the blanket up so that it covered her face. From somewhere outside, she heard a train whistle and thought it must be the most forlorn sound she had ever heard. But she was so wrong

  It wasn’t the train whistle that made her long for her own bed. It was the slamming of all those doors as they’d led her through this place, especially the one heavy door just outside the room where she lay on a mattress that was nothing like her bed at home, under a blanket that had been through too many washings.

  Chapter 17

  Lars

  In spite of the advice of Arlen Detlef and other leaders of the congregation that he hire a lawyer to defend Sadie, Lars was uncomfortable with the whole idea. But on Monday morning, Lars awakened well before dawn.

  Emma was sleeping for once, and he was thankful for that. With the accident, preparing for the funeral, and now with Sadie being held in detention, neither of them had gotten much rest these last several days. He realized that for the foreseeable future, every new day was likely to arrive with a fresh set of challenges to be faced. The night before, he and Emma had come as close to a shouting match as they had ever come in all the years of their marriage.

  Oh, they had disagreed in the past—even argued. But they had never lost their tempers with each other to the degree that they had flung angry words around like fists. They had never looked at each other with such repressed fury—such doubt. That had been the most painful blow of all. The way that Emma had looked at him, her mouth working but no words coming out, her eyes wide with distrust. “I’m going to bed,” she had finally managed and had gone down the hall to the room they had shared for nearly twenty years, to the bed that she had declared on their wedding night should never be sullied by anger or ill will between them. Clearly time could change everything.

  They had argued over the hiring of a lawyer. Emma wanted one, and Lars was not yet ready to give in to the ways of the outside system.

  Why couldn’t they talk to the judge? he had asked. They could go there with Arlen and others from the church and community and plead Sadie’s case themselves. If the judge would only talk to Sadie, he would see for himself how filled she was with remorse and regret for her reckless act. And if he had children of his own, Lars continued, surely the judge would be sympathetic to the pain that Tessa’s death had brought to both sides of the family.

  “Besides,” he’d reminded Emma, “Lieutenant Benson said the case was borderline, remember?”

  “Well, Lieutenant Benson apparently has no say in that,” Emma had replied. “You heard him, Lars—the state gets to decide these things.”

  “It is not our way to—” he had begun, but Emma had interrupted, her fists clenched at her sides, her voice tight, strangled with emotion.

  “They don’t care about our ways, Lars. They will do things their way. Sadie has violated their law. She is in their hands even as we speak. The news reports quote the attorney for the state as saying that too many teens are dying because other teens are not paying attention when they drive. He wants to make an example of our Sadie.”

  “Sadie is in God’s hands,” Lars had replied, and when Emma had rolled her eyes, looking more like Sadie than usual, he had felt his stomach lurch.

  “And did you never hear that God helps those who help themselves?” She had practically spat the words at him, and there had been a terrible silence between them following that. Then Emma had touched his arm. “Lars, Arlen has given you the church’s permission to hire a lawyer to defend our child. What more do you need?”

  “Our ways do not allow for such—”r />
  “Your ways? You mean Amish?” She looked down at her hands and made an effort to relax them. She drew in a deep breath. “We are Mennonite, Lars. The children have been raised in that way, not your way.”

  “I realize that, but…”

  “This is about what is best for Sadie—for our child—our Mennonite child. Pastor Detlef has given us the way we need to move forward. Will you do it for Sadie?”

  As was so often the case for Lars, the world was moving far too fast for him to clearly comprehend what God’s plan for him and his family might be. He hesitated, wanting so much to reassure Emma, to do what was best for his daughter, to salvage what he could from this horror for their family.

  “I will pray on it,” he had murmured.

  And that was the moment when she had given him that look and announced that she was going to bed. Lars had watched her go. Torn between going after her and knowing that he had nothing more to offer her, he’d waited until the door at the end of the hall had quietly closed, and then he’d taken his Bible from its place on the bookcase by his chair and started to open it to the place where he had last left off reading.

  But the book had slipped from his grasp, and rather than allow the precious volume to hit the floor, Lars had grabbed for it and found his thumb resting on the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. He started to read but stopped when he had reached only the second verse—the verse that read: “Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.”

  He had looked up, removing his glasses as he stared down the dark hallway to the bedroom where a slim shaft of light peeked out from the bottom of the closed door. Emma was sure that hiring a lawyer was the right thing. She had all the proof she needed. Lars was certain of nothing, and yet the scripture counseled them to be of one mind—surely it was God’s intent that they follow the will of the mind that had already resolved the question—in this case Emma’s mind.