The Bishop's Daughter

by Patricia Johns

  “You’ve got a job to do,” Sadie murmured, and for a moment, Elijah wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or to the goat.

  “I can see that you hate having me here,” he said, as she pushed the baby’s mouth toward the mother’s milk once more. The baby latched on, and the mother kicked. Sadie let go of the baby and looked up at Elijah.

  “Do you want me to be a good, quiet woman, or do you want the truth?”

  Elijah released the goat from his grip, irritation simmering inside of him. “I value honesty,” he said. “It might be all I have left.”

  “Then I’ll be honest,” she replied. “You’re the reason my brother left our community.”

  He left a beat of silence, waiting for her to continue, and when she didn’t, he said, “So this isn’t about you and me—”

  “Whatever we were is in the past, Elijah,” she retorted. “But my brother is still gone, isn’t he?”

  “There is only so much you can blame on me,” he said with a bitter laugh.

  “Really?” Her eyebrows crept upward. “Because he said as much in his note to us. He was leaving with you so that he could bring you back. That was all. It was his Rumspringa, too, after all, and he had no issue with us. That was you.”

  And then neither had returned. Until now. Elijah rolled her words over in his mind. “I can’t believe he wrote that . . .”

  It wasn’t the truth—not as Elijah knew it. Absolom had wanted to leave, too. He’d been cramped under his father’s dominion. The bishop expected higher purity from his own children since they were examples to the rest of the community. The bishop’s position was chosen by lot, and guided by the Almighty. And God never gave more than a family could bear. Absolom had resented those crushing rules, the lengthy list of things he must not even think, and he’d complained about it at length. He was frustrated, angry, and more than once he’d said how much he hated his father. And yet, Elijah still carried around a nagging sense of guilt that Absolom might have reconciled with his father if it weren’t for Elijah’s dreams for a better life in the city . . . and his pressure to bring his friend along.

  “He’d have stayed home if it weren’t for you,” Sadie said. “He didn’t want you to go alone.”

  “That’s true. I don’t deny it. But he stayed with the Englishers,” Elijah pointed out. “If this were only because of me, he’d have come back. So why didn’t he?”

  “You tell me!” Her eyes flashed, and he watched her visibly compose herself, hide the sparking emotion back under a veneer of calm. Maybe he should give her more credit— the chilliness he received from her might be a step above her actual feelings.

  Sadie nodded to the goat again, and he pulled the mother goat closer to her kid once more and restrained her as before. Sadie brought the baby closer to the milk, and this time the kid managed to latch on and start to drink without the mother lurching away.

  “I asked Absolom to come back with me a couple of years after we left, but he’d changed too much. His life had changed too much,” Elijah said. Sharon had changed him most of all—she was different from the others, at least for Absolom. She’d been Absolom’s first real love.

  “And you hadn’t?” Sadie asked pointedly.

  “I’ve changed, too, but I have my own reasons for being here,” he retorted. He wasn’t here to fit back in and be a good Amish man. He was here to help his parents, for as long as that took, and then head back to the city where he had plans to grow a business without Amish leadership cutting him off at the knees.

  “What’s Absolom’s girlfriend like?”

  He struggled for words. “She’s an Englisher.” He shrugged. How else to say it? She was as foreign to this way of life as it was possible to be.

  “I see,” Sadie said with that tight disapproval he’d learned to expect from anyone who asked him questions about the outside world. But she didn’t see—that was the problem. Sadie had no idea what was out there in the Englisher world, the loneliness he and Absolom faced on their own. You could take a man out of the Amish community, but you couldn’t change where he’d come from. The Englishers acted like the Amish had hatched from eggs, and they could cut off family without much problem if they got into an argument. But the Amish knew where they came from—the parents who’d loved and protected them mattered. And Absolom was no different. He missed his family desperately, but what was a man to do when he’d changed too much to fit back in, and his family wouldn’t take him back unless he did? He couldn’t slice off the new growth any easier than he could carve a pound of flesh from his own body.

  “Why won’t he marry the girl?” Sadie asked, her voice low.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t feel like marriage without a bishop for the vows and a plain girl with her wedding apron.”

  “The child won’t know who it is like this,” Sadie said.

  “Would you rather he marry her?” Elijah asked. He was actually curious about what she thought was a good solution. “She’d never fit in here. She’ll never make an Amish wife.”

  “I don’t know. What’s worse?” She sighed.

  “Englishers are different, Sadie,” he said. “The children make their peace with their parents’ arrangements. They can grow up to do things differently if they want to. Englishers want freedom, not obligation. They want love without the demands.”

  In contrast, an Amish life was full of limitations, love packed into boundaries. Instead of width, there was depth, and while width could feel free and easy, depth could be painful in the plunge, and that narrow way could grow incredibly cramped.

  “Love is full of obligations . . . demands, as you put it,” she said with a shake of her head. “Love is more than a feeling. You might not see that, but I do.”

  “And why wouldn’t I see that?” he asked.

  “Weren’t you the one who told me how you loved me, and then left?”

  Sadie released the kid and it suckled noisily without her support. Elijah loosened his grip on the mother goat, and eased away. They watched the two doing what nature required to feed an infant. Sometimes what was natural and right needed a little enforced structure to keep it going—duty, obligation. She was angry that he’d left her without saying anything, but she didn’t know the whole story, either.

  “You should never have come back without Absolom,” Sadie said.

  “Then I’d still be out there,” Elijah said, his throat thick with emotion. “Because Absolom wasn’t coming back . . .”

  Sadie met his gaze, then looked away, but she didn’t answer. Maybe she would have preferred it that way.

  “Do you hate me that much?” he asked.

  Sadie opened her mouth, closed it, then said, “I don’t know.”

  Fair enough. He’d expected some religious deference about Christians not being permitted to hate, and she’d surprised him there.

  “I’m sorry,” he added.

  “For which part? For leaving? For bringing Absolom with you? For claiming to love me and then disappearing one day?”

  “We were both young,” Elijah said quietly. “You were fifteen, Sadie . . .”

  And she’d been under her father’s dominion. He’d had every right to tell Elijah to shove off.

  “Very young,” she agreed. “And now I am older and wiser.” She rose to her feet. “I’ll check on the goats again. Are you leaving them here for now? Or are you bringing them back to the cow barn?”

  “Sadie, your father told me to leave you alone.”

  She froze, then turned back toward him. “So you left Morinville completely?”

  “It was the way he said it.” Elijah sighed. “And the other frustrations. I wanted to be more than a farmer. I wanted a chance at more. But he’s the one who told me to stay away from you. I wasn’t welcome back on this land. I wanted to say good-bye, but he wouldn’t allow it.”

  Sadie shook her head. “You could have stayed in Morinville and proven yourself. You could have seen me on service Sundays.”

  “Sadi
e, I was seventeen. My pride had been bruised, I was filled with doubts and anger.... We had three years until you were eighteen, and at that age, three years felt like an eternity.”

  “You didn’t write.”

  “I was trying to get over you.” He might have been young, but he’d seen the writing on the wall. He’d never be good enough for her, and three years wouldn’t have changed that. In Morinville, there was a slot waiting for him—the place where he’d fit into the community. He’d work alongside his daet in a business that didn’t interest Elijah in the least, and he’d stay in his place. For the rest of his life. The thought was enough to choke him.

  “Obviously, you managed to get over me.” She nodded toward the goats. “Where will I find them?”

  So that was it? She didn’t want to hear his side of things—all she seemed to want was to have someone to blame besides her beloved daet.

  “I’ll bring them back to the other barn,” Elijah said woodenly, idly picking up the shovel the bishop had been using. “After I finish in here.”

  Sadie met his gaze for a moment, her blue eyes swimming with conflicting emotion. Then she turned and strode back through the stable and pushed open the outside door, sunlight bathing her.

  “Sadie, I did love you,” he called after her, and she turned back, shooting him a sharp look.

  “That wasn’t love, Elijah,” she said curtly. “It was lust. Now, if there are things I can take care of, tell me first, so that Daet can rest.”

  It wasn’t love? Maybe he hadn’t had anything to offer her or her family, but he’d most certainly loved that woman.

  “Yah. Sure.”

  And she stepped outside, leaving him in silence. He didn’t deserve her anger—not as much as she thought he did.

  But regardless, whatever relationship he and Sadie had once shared had only given Sadie new liberties in making her resentment of him known. Whatever it was between them—love or lust, depending on who was doing the remembering—was safely in the past.

  Chapter Three

  Sadie had just finished hanging the laundry out to dry in the summer heat. It wouldn’t take long until the fluttering shirts and dresses smelled of sunlight and fresh air. Samuel liked to hand her the clothespins—his favorite part of the job—and he’d stand next to her with a cloth bag of pins clutched in his pudgy little hands, beaming up at her every time he lifted the bag and she reached inside. Now the laundry was all hung, swinging in the warm gusts of wind, and Sammie was upstairs lying down for his nap.

  She hadn’t seen Elijah since breakfast. She packed him a lunch at his request so that he could eat out in the fields while he worked. Avoiding her? Perhaps. She should have been relieved to be free of him for a day, and she was . . . except she’d thought about him regardless.

  Rosmanda was in the kitchen, with Mamm to supervise. She was still learning, too. The clatter of pans, and the voices of her mother and sister filtered out into the hall. The house was quieter now with only two daughters and a grandchild in the home, but it was still full of life, as a house should be.

  Sadie paused in the doorway to the sitting room to look at her father. He sat completely still on the rocking chair, his brow furrowed. An open Bible lay on one knee, and his black suspenders contrasted with his white, button-up shirt. His long gray beard fell down his chest, and, as Sadie looked at him, the memory of being a little girl on his lap, and the tickle of his beard against her face, brought a smile to her lips.

  And Daet had been the one to tell Elijah to go away? If that were so, then her daet knew what she’d been doing with Elijah . . . the kisses, the hand-holding. She’d been too young to court, and too young for whatever they’d been playing at. All these years, she’d thought it was her secret, but the thought of her father knowing all of it embarrassed her. Still, Daet had never breathed a word about that.

  “Come in, Sadie,” Daet said quietly.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you, Daet,” she said. “I still need to gather the eggs—”

  “All the same.” He raised his gaze to meet hers with a solemn expression.

  Overhead, Sadie heard the creak of the springs on her bed and she sighed. Samuel was jumping on the bed again, thinking his mother wouldn’t notice.

  “That boy—” She turned back toward the stairs and called up to her son. “I want you lying down. You obey your mamm, or I’ll come up there!” The creaking stopped and she shook her head. “He’s getting more willful.”

  “They do that.” Daet nodded. “It doesn’t stop, either.”

  Was he thinking of Absolom? Strange how a family of seven children could feel so bereft when one was missing, like it would never be whole again.

  Sadie came into the sitting room and sank onto the couch opposite her father. She smoothed her apron over her knees. He looked wan, and she was glad he was inside today, instead of out at the barn. They had enough financial comfort that hiring more employees was a possibility. God had blessed them, and perhaps it was for such a time as this, when illness threatened.

  “Are you working on your sermon?” she asked.

  “I’m trying to,” he said. “It’s not coming easily, though.”

  “What will it be about?” she asked.

  “Dying to self,” her father replied. “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

  It was a common Amish theme, one that had been preached again and again.

  “How are you feeling, Daet?” she asked.

  “Fine.” He paused, glanced toward the window. “Perhaps that isn’t entirely honest. I want to feel fine, Sadie. I feel more tired than I’ve ever felt. Not the kind of tired after a long day of work. Something deeper, and that frightens me.”

  Her father had never been this open with her before, and she looked away, suddenly embarrassed. As she did, she saw her son’s little form in the doorway. For all his noise on the bed, he’d crept down the stairs silently enough.

  “Sammie,” she sighed, and Daet looked toward his grandson, too.

  “Samuel, what are you doing down here?” Daet demanded, his voice deep and authoritarian. Sadie knew that tone from her own childhood—the kind of bark that used to make her jump.

  Samuel was silent, staring at his grandfather with round eyes.

  “Answer me, young man,” Daet said. “Why are you not in bed?”

  “I’m lonely,” the boy whispered, and Sadie’s heart melted. He wasn’t very old, and he hated being alone.

  “Oh—” Sadie rose to her feet.

  “No, Sadie,” Daet said. “He must learn.”

  Sadie’s breath caught. It was the same line Daet had used when she was a girl, when he’d decided it was time to cut a switch and bring his point home. The child must learn. And learn they must. There was the right way, and there was sin. There was obedience, and there was defiance. If the rod was spared, the child was spoiled.

  “Come here, Samuel,” Daet ordered.

  Samuel trembled slightly, but approached all the same, pale bare feet pressed against the wooden floorboards.

  “So you will not lie in bed and rest?” Daet asked solemnly.

  Samuel didn’t say anything.

  “Samuel, go upstairs and lie down,” Sadie said. She was giving him a last chance to obey.

  “I’m lonely,” the boy whispered.

  “So you will not obey your mamm?” Daet asked, his voice quiet.

  Samuel’s eyes flickered up toward Sadie, then back to his grandfather. Did he know what he was risking for a cuddle with his mother?

  “Well then.” Daet reached down and picked the boy up, but instead of turning him over a knee, he settled him on his lap, on the leg free of the Bible. “If you will not rest in your bed as your mamm has asked you, then you must learn.”

  “Daet—” Sadie’s heart jumped in her chest. She didn’t let Samuel run wild—she certainly did discipline, but she could take care of this herself. She was his mamm, after all. Her father flatly ignored her.

  “Samuel, you will listen
to the word of God.” Daet raised the Bible in one hand, the other cradling the boy against his chest. Samuel fiddled with the crinkly end of Daet’s gray beard between two tiny fingers, and Daet began to read aloud from his German Bible. It was high German, and Samuel wouldn’t understand the words, but the import in his grandfather’s tone of voice seemed to mean something to the boy. Samuel looked at Sadie pleadingly. He wanted to be held by his mother.

  “Mamm—” Samuel whimpered.

  “No.” Daet’s voice grew firm again. “If you will not rest, then you will listen as I read. That is all, Samuel.”

  The boy leaned back into his grandfather’s embrace once more and Sadie rose to her feet. She had expected something more disciplinary from Daet than this gentle scene, and she wondered if his illness had softened him. Perhaps he was too tired now to be the wall between right and wrong for his grandchildren. And maybe this approach was what Samuel needed—time with his grandfather, time with a man. Samuel tended to cling to Sadie, and perhaps if Mervin were still with them, her son would be more confident away from her. She could be a loving mother to her boy, and she could dote on him, feed him, discipline him . . . but the one thing she could never give him was a father’s touch. She couldn’t teach Samuel how to be a man.

  She took one last look at her son on Daet’s knee, and she wondered why her father had never said anything to her if he knew that she’d been playing with dangerous boundaries with an older boy. Why hadn’t he disciplined her then? Unless there was something to what Elijah had said . . . her father’s dismissal of Absolom’s best friend. Perhaps Daet felt more responsible for what had happened than she realized. She wouldn’t ask him about it—it was too humiliating. Leaving the sitting room, she headed out toward the mudroom where her rubber boots waited.

  “I’m going for the eggs, Mamm,” Sadie called into the kitchen.

  “Oh, good,” Mamm replied. “We’ll need more eggs for the lemon meringue pies we’re making next.”

  Rosmanda was kneading a heap of dough, and she looked up at Sadie, her face flushed in the August heat. Sadie chuckled and turned toward the door. Just yesterday, Rosmanda said she wanted to be married right away, and Sadie had informed their mother of it. It looked like Mamm was about to give her youngest daughter an introduction to doing all the hard jobs herself. If Rosmanda thought the work was hard now, she could try it all again at eight months pregnant.