“Are Tim and Willa here, too?” Hope asked.
“You know their names?”
“Of course. Computers, you know …”
“Well, you’re quite the devoted aunt.”
Hope sighed. “I deserve that.”
“So you also know when Mom died? That’s when the money stopped coming.”
A nod.
“Jennie, is everything all right?” Shep’s voice was concerned. “We’re waiting to hear if you would pick the cheesecake from that place just outside Lawrence over the pecan pie we had on our tenth anniversary in Boston. Remember that?”
“Be right there,” she called back.
“It was wrong for me to come tonight. Maybe I should come back another time,” Hope said. “I’m staying at a motel nearby, so I could wait until after you celebrate Christmas tomorrow. The next day, maybe.”
“You’d wait around?”
Hope gave a wan smile. “This is what’s important, so I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
“I don’t get it!” Jennie exploded. “Why have you materialized on my doorstep?”
Her sister looked directly into her eyes. “I’ve wanted to see you for years. But I didn’t think you’d ever forgive me. I was living in Phoenix, and I sold my house. The day I left, I got to thinking it was time to see you, not because I wanted to—which I did—but because I needed to make it right. Or try to.”
“So you decided to come here all the way from Arizona on a whim.”
“It wasn’t a whim at all. But I’ve always lived like that. From the day I left home, I never wanted to get stuck in one place, like I felt stuck in our house. Makes me feel as if I’m suffocating. Anyway, the point is, I’ve never stopped feeling bad about leaving you behind. Leaving you alone with her.”
“Then why did you?” Jennie wanted to shake Hope. “I was too young to be in charge like that. I had to take care of her, me, the house, everything. I was a kid!”
“I couldn’t stay there. And I knew she wouldn’t hurt you.”
“No, you hurt me! Everything she did hurt me. You abandoned me—but she did, too. Just in a different way.”
Hope’s voice got quiet. “I meant hurt you physically. Like she did to me.”
Jennie stared at her. “What are you saying?” It came out as a whisper.
“She used to hit me when she got drunk, a lot and pretty hard. With one of Dad’s belts. She blamed me for him leaving us. Soon as I could, I got out. You were the only one she really loved, and I was dead certain she would never do that to you.”
“She never did.” Jennie was thinking back, horrified at the knowledge of what must have been going on in the house. “But I didn’t know. How could that be happening and I didn’t know?”
“She never did it when you were awake. At least some part of her brain realized it was wrong and knew enough to hide it from you.”
Jennie was at a loss for words.
“So I left, and I never stopped leaving. Every place and everyone. I wished all the time that I had taken you with me, but I couldn’t have had you on the road with me. Your life would have been much worse.” Hope sighed. “And I knew you’d get through school if you stayed. The day you got married was one of the happiest of my life. Mom was gone and you had a real chance at having a normal life.” She glanced around. “Which, it seems, you do.”
Jennie was dumbfounded. “You tracked me all these years.”
“I never stopped loving you, Jen. You’re my baby sister. But I had to leave. If she didn’t kill me, I was afraid I would kill her. But I never would have let anyone harm you.”
“Where did you get all that money you sent?”
Hope shrugged. “Waitressing, mostly. I saw lots of places, had a lot of adventures. Mostly good, some not so good. I worked all over. Racetracks, funeral homes, you name it.”
“Those don’t sound like places that paid enough for you to send me money all the time.”
“I didn’t spend much. You needed money, and I got my freedom. It seemed like a fair deal.”
Jennie was trying to absorb what she was hearing. It was too much to take in, she realized. Everything she’d believed about her childhood would have to be reexamined. “You’ve been moving around your whole life?”
Hope grimaced. “Most of it, but not the whole time. There was one person I didn’t leave. My husband, Tom. We got married fifteen years ago. We were living in Michigan. I must have been there about seven years, which was a record for me. We had a son.” She paused. “My husband and he were killed when he was two. Tom was pushing him in the stroller, crossing the street. Hit-and-run driver. Truck.”
Jennie gasped.
“I left Michigan right after that.”
Before Jennie could say anything, Shep appeared in the hallway, napkin in hand. “Honey, what’s going on?” He stopped as he saw they had a guest. “Oh, excuse me, I didn’t realize.”
Jennie took a deep breath. “Shep, I want you to meet someone.”
He came forward, smiling, extending a hand in preparation to shake.
“This is my sister, Hope.”
The smile disappeared, and his hand fell to his side. “You’re Hope.” Said in a flat voice, it wasn’t a question.
“Yes. Jennie didn’t know I was coming here tonight, but here I am.”
“Here you are, indeed.” Anger on his wife’s behalf was evident in his tone. He had met Jennie after Hope left town, but he knew the entire story and all the pain her disappearance had caused Jennie.
Hope didn’t try to deflect his anger, only stood there returning his gaze.
Jennie couldn’t handle the silence any longer. “This is all a little much to resolve in the hallway tonight.” She turned to Hope. “I guess it’s going to happen one way or another, so you might as well come meet everybody else.”
“This is what you want, Jen?” Shep sounded skeptical.
She looked from one to the other. “I don’t have any idea what I want. But it’s Christmas Eve, so we’re going to sit down at the table and finish eating. For now, that’s all I can manage.”
Chapter 20
When Jennie got out of bed the next morning, she realized that snow must have been falling throughout the night. From her bedroom window, she saw a lush and silent landscape of white. A perfect setting for Christmas, she thought, pulling her robe’s sash more tightly around her.
Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was seven-fifteen. Shep was still asleep as she tiptoed out of the room. A quick check revealed that everyone else in the house was sleeping as well. Tim had vacated his room for his uncle Michael and Evan. Willa was on a sleeping bag on the floor of her room, having given her bed to Kimberly for the night. Downstairs, Jennie peeked into the living room to find her son gently snoring on the couch with a quilt thrown over him. It was incredible that no one else was up yet on Christmas morning, she mused as she went into the chilly kitchen. Scout came padding into the room.
“It’s just you and me, my friend,” she murmured as she filled the carafe with water and measured out enough coffee for a full pot. It didn’t take long for the aroma to fill the air.
The late sleepers shouldn’t surprise her, she thought, recalling what time they’d all gone to bed. To say it had been a strange Christmas Eve didn’t come close to describing it. Her brother-in-law had heard the story of Jennie’s missing sister long ago, but his children had no idea their aunt had this mysterious sibling. Willa and Tim knew only the broadest outlines of what had happened; Jennie had never wanted to paint a negative picture of Hope for them. All she had told them was that she’d grown up with a sister who’d moved away and lost touch. Athough for different reasons, everyone’s face wore an expression of shock when she introduced Hope.
Jennie refilled Scout’s water bowl, thinking that, oddly, the dog had taken an immediate liking to her sister, planting himself beside her feet for most of the night. Hope’s nervousness was revealed in the way she continually petted him and scratched behind
his ears, the dog acting as friendly as she had probably hoped the other humans would be. Well, she had been out of luck there, Jennie thought as she set out the bowl and took a cup of coffee to the table. Michael and Shep had been minimally polite. Kimberly and Evan had, quite logically, lost interest in the adults within a few minutes and disappeared upstairs. Even Tim and Willa, fascinated at first, found the awkwardness among the adults to be tedious and followed their little cousins soon after.
The conversation had been awkward. Jennie was fighting off the assault of conflicting feelings, not wanting to say too much or too little. Every time she started to think that she could patch things up with her sister somehow, that they could repair the damage of the past years, her good intentions were replaced by a cold sense of rage. Hope could come up with all the justifications she wanted, but it wouldn’t change the fact that she had run away and left Jennie to fend for herself.
Her husband and brother-in-law made small talk about some of the places Hope had lived, but that went only so far. None of them was willing to talk about what was actually on their mind. At around eleven, Hope got up, insisting it was time she get back to the motel. It was a relief to Jennie to know the house was already full; she couldn’t have extended an invitation to Hope to stay over even if she had wanted to. Which she did not.
There hadn’t been an opportunity to discuss any of it with her husband or Michael after Hope had driven away. The children came trooping downstairs, wanting to make popcorn. After that, they started a game of Pictionary. Jennie was happily shocked to see her teenagers engaging unself-consciously with their little cousins, and she was able to put her thoughts aside as she got caught up in their laughing and shouting. Before anyone realized, it was two in the morning, and it took another half hour to get everyone settled into a bed or sleeping bag. When Jennie got into bed at last, she could almost believe she had imagined Hope’s visit altogether. It was the best and the worst Christmas Eve of all, she reflected, sliding closer to Shep. Her sister had stirred up some of the most painful memories of Jennie’s life. Yet she had also seen her children sharing a holiday with family, in the way the word “family” was meant to be used.
Her thoughts were disturbed by the sound of Kimberly and Evan coming down the stairs, talking in loud, excited whispers. She got up and sneaked over to stand by the kitchen doorway where they couldn’t see her. The two children paused at the bottom of the steps. “Can we open our presents if no one else is here?” Kimberly whispered in an anxious voice.
“Sure,” her brother said, all confidence.
“But Daddy won’t—”
Jennie took a quick sideways step into the doorway and said in a booming voice, “Somebody here looking for Santa?”
The children jumped with fright.
“Aunt Jennie,” Evan shouted, thrilled to be so scared.
The two of them ran over to her, shrieking as they lightly pummeled her in pretend anger.
“Okay,” she said, “if that hasn’t woken everybody up yet, you might as well get them up for present time.”
They raced off, whooping. Wow, she thought, they were going to have a real Christmas morning. Humming, she decided to make pancakes along with the planned eggs and bacon.
Dressed in pajamas, the others assembled around the Christmas tree to open gifts. Everyone looked exhausted. Jennie served coffee to the two men, who were grateful to take the steaming mugs from her. Michael’s children were by far the most energetic of the group, so they went first, pouncing on the boxes Jennie had wrapped for them. She had chosen a painting kit for Kimberly, with an assortment of oil paints, brushes, and cleaners. Evan received a set of artist’s drawing tools: charcoal and colored pencils, erasers and a sharpener in a suede pouch. Jennie hoped they would like the low-tech gifts; something in her had rebelled against buying the two more gadgets.
“This is very cool,” Evan said, sorting through his kit. He opened the accompanying gift, a flat package that turned out to be a sketch pad. “Neat!”
“Thanks,” Kimberly added, unwrapping two blank canvases to go with her paints. “I can’t wait to do this.” She looked around anxiously. “Will somebody show me how?”
“Of course,” Jennie said. “Absolutely.”
It was hard to believe they were the same children who had been there the year before. Given some time to relax, and removed from all their displays of wealth, they were the loving children she remembered. If they hadn’t yet grasped the truth of the situation at home, at least she knew they had a good foundation to support them in the painful times that lay ahead. With a pang for what they would soon have to face, she reached out to pull Kimberly to her for a hug.
The rest of the gift giving went by in a flash. Willa had requested a new backpack, and Tim wanted a pocketknife with lots of attachments, so they were both unsurprised but happy. Michael had brought the family a large wooden salad bowl with matching servers, along with an assortment of movies on DVD for the kids. Jennie was impressed that he’d made the time to pick out gifts, given his busy schedule and personal problems. After the wrapping was cleared away, he turned to his own children.
“Guys,” he announced, “for your gifts this year, we’re going to go to Uncle Shep’s store and get you both new bikes.”
“Yeah!” Evan held up a hand to his sister for a high five.
“Evan’s outgrown his, and Kimberly is too small for his old one,” Michael explained to Shep. “Not that she would ride a boy’s bike. So it’s time, and this is the place to get them.” He turned to Jennie. “I also want to place an order with you, if I may. Can you ship some peanut brittle every month to us in Chicago? I’d pay you for a year in advance.”
Jennie considered it. “I don’t see why not.”
“Great idea,” Shep put in. “The Got To Have My Monthly Candy Division.”
She smiled at him. “I like that.”
There was the sound of a horse whinnying outside.
“Horse and buggy,” Shep informed his brother. “Some of our Amish neighbors. Let’s see if it’s the Fishers.”
Everyone went outside, where the sun had broken through the clouds. They saw two horses pulling buggies up the street. Through the windshield of the one in front, Mattie waved. Jennie realized that the man next to her, holding the reins, was Zeke. Peter was driving the second buggy.
“I wasn’t expecting them today, but this is lovely.” Hurrying to yank on her snow boots beside the door, Jennie got down the steps just as they were turning in to the driveway. All the younger Fisher children spilled out of the two buggies. They were dressed for the winter weather, the boys in wide-brimmed black hats and jackets, the girls in small dark jackets and bonnets.
“Merry Christmas to you,” Mattie said, coming to greet Jennie with a hug. She wore a black bonnet and her heavy black shawl.
“And to you. What brings you here today? I thought you would be at worship.”
Mattie shook her head. “No, that would only be if it was a regular Sunday for worship. We don’t go to a special service because it is Christmas.” She gestured toward the children. “We are home today, but we have some food to take near here.”
Jennie gave her a questioning look. “What do you mean?”
“It is for two families. One of them has a very sick father, so the mother had no time to cook today. The other cannot afford it.”
“Oh, Mattie, I didn’t realize … You made Christmas dinner for other families.”
“Yes. They need it.”
Jennie smiled. “With all you have to do, you still managed that.”
“Please do not think it was trouble for me. It was not. On this day in particular, it made me very happy to do it.”
“I hope we can talk for a few minutes before you have to go. Please.” Jennie gestured. “See, all the children are already playing together. So you can’t go yet.”
An informal snowball fight had started, which intensified when Shep, Michael, and Zeke got involved.
Mat
tie laughed. “Shall we walk?”
Jennie ran back to grab a jacket, and they set off together.
“You’ll have your Christmas dinner later?” Jennie asked, squinting in the bright sunshine.
“Tomorrow.” She saw Jennie’s look of surprise. “We celebrate Christmas for two days. Today is more quiet. We will read Scripture, and later, the children will help me bake special cookies. Tomorrow is a day for visiting and a very big dinner.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Also, tomorrow is Efraim and Barbara’s last day. They are going. So are Red and his family. It will be a nice good-bye this way.”
Jennie let out a wistful “Oh.”
“Soon Zeke and I will be married, and we will run the farm.”
“I’m so thrilled for you.”
The Fishers would be a big, happy family again. The thought reminded Jennie of her sister, whom she had managed to drive from her thoughts all morning. When Hope left the previous night, she had asked Jennie to consider whether they should get together today. Jennie didn’t know if she could face it all again.
“Mattie,” she said, shoving her hands into her coat pockets. “I’d like to ask your advice about something.”
“If I have something useful to say, I will be glad to say it.”
“It’s about my sister.”
“I didn’t remember you had a sister.”
“No, you wouldn’t. I never mentioned her to you.”
Jennie went back to the beginning, back to the days when her father lived with them, before her mother started drinking. Although her expression never changed, Mattie listened closely the entire time.
“I prayed she would come back, and now she has. But I’m so mad at her for what she did. She hurt me so much. I don’t know if I can forgive her.”
They walked along in silence for a few minutes, the only sound the snow crunching under their feet. At last Mattie spoke.
An Amish Gift Page 17