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Chapter One
Lydia Beachy continued to tuck the
log cabin quilt over her great-aunt, hands moving gently but automatically as
she struggled to make sense of what the elderly woman had just said. Great-Aunt
Sara’s mind must be wandering, for sure.
I still
remember your mammi playing with you and your two little sisters in the apple
orchard.
The apple orchard part made sense.
The orchard was still there, still producing apples for Lydia and her husband
and little boys. But she didn’t have any sisters.
“You must be thinking of someone
else, Aunt Sara.” She patted her shoulder, just as she’d have patted Daniel or
David when they lay down for a nap. “Rest now. A nap every afternoon, that’s
what the doctor said, ain’t so?”
Aunt Sara flapped her hand as if to
chase away the doctor’s words. “I’ll just close my eyes for a minute or two.
You and your sisters, ja, and the apple trees with blossoms like clouds. Three
sweet girls Diane had, that’s certain sure.” She smiled, veined lids drooping
over her china blue eyes, and in an instant her even breathing told Lydia that
she was asleep.
Sharp as a
tack, she is. Mamm’s voice seemed to echo in Lydia’s ears. She
and Daad had brought Great-Aunt Sara to stay with them after she’d been
hospitalized with pneumonia, even though she continued to insist that she’d be
fine in her own little place.
Stubborn, that was the word for her
great-aunt. She was always wanting to be the one who helped out, not the one
who received help.
Great-aunt Sara had another role as
well…that of family historian. She was the one who could tell the children
family stories going back many generations and never miss a name or a date. But
why would she say something so obviously wrong about Lydia’s own family?
Lydia’s forehead furrowed as she
slipped quietly across the wide wooden floorboards of the house where she had
grown up. Her great-aunt was confused, surely. Illness and age could do that to
the sharpest mind.
But she’d said Diane. Lydia’s birth
mother was Diane, and she’d always known the name even though she didn’t
remember her. Diane had been married to Daad’s brother, and Daad and Mamm had
adopted Lydia when they’d both died in an accident.
Those birth parents had always been
misty figures in her mind, like a pair of Amish dolls with features she
couldn’t see. She saw them as young and happy one minute and gone the next in
the accident Lydia didn’t remember, even though she’d been involved as well and
five at the time.
When she’d fretted at not
remembering, Mamm had always soothed the worry away. It is God’s way of making it easier for you, Mamm would say. The accident was a terrible thing, and it’s
better for you not to remember.
The memories kept Lydia company
down the bare, narrow stairs of the old farmhouse where she’d grown up. Coming
back here was like returning to her childhood, but home was where her husband
and children were now. She turned left at the bottom as she always did, her
steps taking her into the kitchen, the heart of any Amish home.
The square farmhouse kitchen was as
spotless as it always was, the long wooden table maybe a bit empty-looking now
that all of them were grown and mostly out of the house. April sunshine
streamed through the window, laying a path across linoleum faded from so many
scrubbings.
Mamm always had a calendar of the
wall over the table for decoration as well as use, and this year’s had pictures
of frolicking kittens. A few violets had been tucked into a water glass on the
window sill, a reminder that spring had come to Pleasant Valley at last.
Mamm was bending over the oven door
of the gas range, pulling out a cookie sheet. The aroma of snickerdoodles mixed
with that of the beef pot roast that was stewing in the Dutch oven on top of
the stove. Mamm looked up, her cheeks red from the warmth of the oven, and slid
the tray onto a waiting cooling rack.
“Cookies for you to take Daniel and
David,” she said, probably needlessly. Daniel and David would be dumbfounded if
Lydia came home from Grossmammi’s house without some treat she’d made for them.
It was a thing that never happened.
“Denke, Mamm. That will be their
snack after they get home from school.”
Lydia hesitated, wondering if she
should speak. Her great-aunt’s words kept going round and round in her mind.
They made no sense. And yet, Aunt Sara had sounded perfectly rational.
Mamm glanced at her, face
questioning, and closed the oven door. She dropped a crocheted potholder on the
counter.
“Was ist letz? Is something wrong
with Aunt Sara?” She took a step toward the stairs, as if ready to fly up and
deal with any emergency in her usual capable manner.
“No, no, she’s fine,” Lydia said
quickly. “She’s sleeping already.”
“Ach, that’s gut. Rest is what she
needs most now, even though she doesn’t want to admit it.” Mamm reached for the
coffeepot. “Do you have time for a cup before the boys get home from school?
Lydia shook her head. The words
seemed to press against her lips, demanding to be let out, even though she felt
a reluctance that was surely odd. She could talk to her mamm about anything.
“Aunt Sara said something I didn’t
understand.”
“Ja? Was she fretting about the
hospital bill again?”
Mamm’s brown eyes, magnified by her
glasses, showed concern. Hospital bills were nothing to take lightly when, like
the Amish, a person didn’t have insurance. Still, the church would provide what
was needed when the family couldn’t manage. That was the Amish way.
“It wasn’t that.” Lydia’s throat
was suddenly tight with apprehension, as if some unknown fear clutched her. Just say it, she scolded herself. She’d
always been able to take any problem to Mamm, and Mamm always had an answer.
“Aunt Sara was talking about my
mother. My birth mother, I mean. Diane.”
“Ja?” The word sounded casual, but
the lines around her mother’s eyes seemed to deepen, and she set the coffeepot
down with a clatter, not even noticing it was on the countertop and not the
stove.
“She was…she must have been
confused.” The kitchen was quiet, so quiet it seemed to be waiting for
something. “She said that Diane had three kinder. Three little girls. I thought
certain sure she…”
The words trickled off to silence.
She couldn’t say again that Aunt Sara was confused. Not when she could read the
truth in Mamm’s face.
“It’s true?” The question came out
in a whisper, because something that might have been grief or panic had a hard
grip on her throat. “It is true.”
Mamm’s face seemed to crumple like
a blossom torn from a branch. “Lydia, I’m sorry.”
“But…” The familiar kitchen was
suddenly as strange as if she’d never seen it before. She grasped the top of
the closest ladder-back chair. “I had sisters? Two little sisters?”
Mamm nodded, her eyes shining with
tears. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “You didn’t remember, and so we thought it
best not to say anything. We didn’t want you to be hurt any more than you
already were.”
Hurt. Lydia grasped the word. She’d
been hurt in the accident that killed her parents. She knew that. She’d always
known it. Her earliest memories were of the hospital…blurry images of Mamm and
Daad always there, one on either side of the bed each time she woke up.
“Sisters.” With three younger
brothers, she’d always wished she had a sister. “What were their names?”
Mamm moved around the table toward
her, as cautious as if she approached a spooked buggy horse. “Susanna. She was
not quite three at the time of the accident. And Chloe, the baby, just a year
old.”
Lydia pressed her palm against her
chest. Her heart seemed to be beating very normally, in spite of the pummeling
it had taken in the past few minutes. She had to hear the rest of it. “They
died in the accident, too?”
Silence. She saw in her mother’s
face the longing to agree. Then Mamm shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said
again, as if she couldn’t find any other words. “They were injured, but they
healed. Like you.”
“But…” Lydia’s mind kept tumbling,
her thoughts rearranging themselves and breaking apart again. “I don’t
understand. What happened to them?”
Mamm pressed her fingers to her
lips for a moment, as if to hold back the words. “They went with different
families. I’m sorry. We didn’t want to split you up, but…” Her voice broke, and
it was a moment before she went on. “Since you didn’t remember, it seemed best
not to tell you.”
“Best not to tell me?” Lydia’s
voice rose as she echoed the words. A wave of anger swept away the pain for a
brief moment. “How could it be best for me not to know that I had two little
sisters? Why were we split up? Why didn’t you take all of us? Why?”
“Lydia, hush.” Mamm tried to take
her arm. “It’s going to be all right.”
Lydia pulled away. This was not
something Mamm could make better with hugs and soft words.
“You have to understand how
difficult it was.” Mamm’s voice was pleading. “There were your parents dying
out there in Ohio, and the three of you kinder in different hospitals, and the
rest of the family frantic to get there—“ Tears spilled over onto her cheeks,
choking off her words.
Ohio, yes. That rang a bell in
Lydia’s mind. The accident had taken place when her family was in a van on the
way to a wedding in Ohio. Mamm had told her that once, when Lydia was of an age
to ask questions and wanted to know more about the accident.
“I don’t understand. You should have told me.”
“Just sit down and calm yourself.
Your daad will be home soon. He can explain.” Mamm reached for her, her face
and voice pleading.
Lydia wanted to step into her
mamm’s loving arms. She wanted to feel the comfort that had always been there.
She wanted to hear Daad’s deep, soothing voice chasing her fears away, as he’d
done when she was a child having nightmares.
Her breath seemed to catch in her
throat. She had relied on them always, just as Daniel and David relied on her
and Adam. Now it seemed she couldn’t trust them at all.
The urge to flee nearly overwhelmed
her. She had to get out of this house that had always been her sanctuary.
“I can’t.” Tears threatened to clog
her voice, but she wouldn’t let them flow, not yet. “The boys will be home from
school soon. I must be there for them. We’ll have to talk later.”
Tears nearly blinded her, but her
feet knew the way to the back door without the need to look. She was vaguely
aware of Mamm’s voice, protesting, urging her to stay, but she couldn’t. She
had to think this through. She had to talk to someone she knew she could trust.
She had to go home to Adam. Adam
was her rock. He would know what to do.
