Leah's Choice

by Marta Perry

  His gaze wandered over the crowd while they talked. Elizabeth and Becky were helping Rachel, Becky’s mamm, spread things on the table for lunch. It looked as if they’d all be called to the food shortly. Bishop Mose Yoder, white-bearded and saintly, stood at the head of one of the tables, surveying the food he’d be called upon to bless.

  Fortunate, Daniel thought again. The Lord had blessed the families that settled in Pleasant Valley. He had been right to bring the children here. With no reminders of Ruth, it was easier to forget.

  Jonah raced by, and Daniel reached out to collar his youngest. “We’ll be eating soon. You’d best wash your hands. Where is your brother?”

  “I dunno, Daadi.” Released, Jonah ran off in the general direction of the outside pump.

  Scanning the hosts of children, Daniel failed to come up with Matthew. But Leah moved toward him, her smile a little tentative. Perhaps she worried that her knowing so much about his past would make the situation uncomfortable between them.

  “A grand program, Teacher Leah.”

  Her smile eased. “The scholars did well, I thought.”

  “Speaking of scholars, do you know where Matthew is? We’re about ready to eat.”

  She glanced around. “He and Thomas were taking the curtains down. They’re probably packing up in the schoolroom.”

  With a nod, he retreated toward the schoolhouse. The trouble with talking to Leah was that he always wanted to prolong the conversation. But when he did, it seemed they got into things he’d rather not discuss. Or into a disagreement.

  The door stood open. He stepped inside. Sure enough, the two boys were there, but they didn’t seem to be putting things away. Ropes, pulleys, and curtains lay on the floor between them, and they faced each other like two roosters squaring off over who was to rule the henhouse.

  “I tell you I did.” Matthew’s voice was shrill. “I flew on an airplane and I rode on a motorcycle, and lots of other stuff, too.”

  “I don’t believe it.” The other boy’s jaw came out. “You’re making it all up, Matthew Glick. When did you do all those things, tell me that?”

  “When I was English.” Matthew practically shouted the words. “When I was English.”

  It was like an axe handle to the belly. Daniel grabbed the door, just to keep standing upright as the wave of fury hit him.

  Ruth. This was Ruth’s fault. His children would never really be his again because of her betrayal.

  He knew, in that moment, that he’d been lying to himself. Lying to Leah, too, for that matter. Because he hadn’t forgiven Ruth. She was six months dead, and he hadn’t forgiven her at all.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Leah closed the kitchen door behind her, shutting out the sound of her two nephews squabbling over a toy train, and crossed the covered walkway that led to the daadi haus. Mamm had seemed unusually quiet at supper, and since Daadi had gone out, she’d best check on her.

  She tapped gently as she opened the door. “Mamm?”

  How many times over the years had she come this way to see Grossmutter? She’d invariably found her grandmother in the rocking chair by the window, fingers busy with a quilt for someone’s new baby or a hooked rug to cover a bedroom floor on cold mornings.

  Now it was Mamm who looked up with a smile from that same rocker. Instead of a quilt patch, her lap was covered with the massive family Bible.

  “Leah. Am I needed for something?” She started to close the Bible.

  “Nothing at all.” Leah went quickly to pull a chair over next to her. “I thought you might like a little visit is all. But if you’re busy reading—”

  “Not reading,” Mamm said, patting the Bible, which Leah saw was opened to the family tree that covered several pages in the front of the book. “Just remembering. Come sit with me if you have time.”

  Leah sat, guilt crowding in on her. She was busy, but she could have found the time to sit quietly with Mamm more often.

  She leaned on the arm of her mother’s chair to scan the fine, faded printing on the genealogy chart. Since her work with the clinic, she’d never look at a family tree in the same way again.

  “What are you remembering, Mamm?” She looked more closely, realizing it was the Lapp family Bible—her mother’s family. “I didn’t realize you had this one. I thought Uncle Jacob and Aunt Emma kept it.” The Bible, like the farm, usually went to the oldest son of the family.

  “Ja, they do, but Em wanted me to fill in names and dates for Levi and Barbara’s children.” Mamm’s finger traced a line. “Look, there is me and all my brothers and sisters. Twelve of us, there were. Such a noise when we sat down to supper that you couldn’t hear yourself think.”

  “I can imagine.” She squinted to read the faded ink in the failing light. “Was that Uncle Mose who came after Jacob?”

  “Elizabeth,” Mamm corrected, her fingers seeming to caress the page. “Elizabeth came next, you remember. Only eight when she died.”

  Again her newly acquired information surfaced. “Was she ill, Mamm? What did she die of?”

  “She fell.” Tears glistened in her mother’s eyes. “Such a daring girl she was. Like our Anna. Always had to try and climb the highest or run the fastest.”

  “I’m sorry. You were close.”

  “Only thirteen months apart.” Mamm wiped away a tear that had spilled onto her cheek. “Ach, it’s foolish to cry. She has been safe in God’s hands these many years, but still, sometimes in my mind I see her scrambling up that tree.”

  Leah clasped the hand that had always been so strong, so comforting. Frailer now, but still, the comfort was there. “I wish I could have known her.”

  Her mother seemed to look into the past. “I wonder, sometimes. What would she have been like as a woman? How many babies would she have had?” She smiled a little. “Brothers are fine, in their way, but sisters are closer, I think. Ain’t so?”

  “I guess so.” Were she and Anna close? Once she’d thought so, but that had changed in recent years. It was as if the gap between their ages had suddenly started to matter more, instead of less.

  “Uncle Jofie, now, he and his twin sister were close as could be, but maybe that came of bein’ twins. You remember him, don’t you?”

  Since Uncle Jofie, for whom her brother Joseph was named, had died before she was born, she didn’t. “I remember you talking about him.”

  “You remember him,” Mamm repeated. “Hair the color of ripe horse-chestnuts he had. You remember.”

  “Uncle Jofie died before I was born.” She forced her voice to gentleness, trying to deny the panic that rose in her. Did Mamm really not realize—

  “Ach, how foolish.” Her mother shook her head. “Of course you don’t remember Jofie. How silly I am. Seems like my memory gets mixed up sometimes, ever since I had that chemo.”

  “That must be it,” Leah said soothingly. “Mammi, you’re—If something is wrong, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  Her mother’s gaze focused on her face. “Now I’ve scared you, making you think I’m getting sick again, when I’m fine. Just a touch forgetful now and again, is all.”

  Reassured, Leah smiled at her. “You seemed—well, a little tired and a bit confused.”

  “I’m fine.” Her mother’s voice seemed to gain strength on the words. “But you know, having the cancer showed me how true it is that our time is in His hands. God could call us at any moment.”

  “You beat the cancer.” Leah infused confidence into the words. “You’re going to be with us for many more years.”

  “If God wills.” Her mother stroked the page. “There’s comfort here, Leah, in looking at those I loved who are gone ahead of me. Here or in Heaven, I know I am surrounded by the family’s love.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Leah admitted.

  She touched the page, running her fingers along the generations. Her family. Spread out through time and space, those were her kin.

  The names of the women drifted through her mind
like dandelion puffs carried on the breeze. They were women who had held their faith strong, who had passed it on to their children and their children’s children. Women who mourned for those who died young and those who left, who rejoiced and welcomed those who came back.

  Love welled in Leah’s heart. She was connected to all of them. She ran her finger down the page until she found her name. She was connected to all of them, but nothing led from her name. It sat there alone.

  “We were more fortunate than some,” her mother said. “Not many of our family jumped the fence to the outside world.”

  It almost sounded as if there were a question in that.

  “That’s right, Mammi. Not many from our family.”

  Her mother looked at her, and Leah had the feeling that she saw right into her heart.

  “You are worrying about Anna. About what she’s getting up to in her rumspringa.”

  “N-no.” How had her mother guessed that? “I mean, not exactly. Our Anna is a smart girl.”

  “Smart, ja. But maybe not so much common sense as you had at her age.”

  “She’ll be fine.” Please, God.

  “Everyone feels the pull of the world at one time or another,” her mother said gently. “For Anna now it is pretty clothes and parties. For others—” Her mother hesitated. “For others it might be something different.”

  Something different. For an instant Leah was back in Lydia’s office again. She knew what she’d really wanted, looking at all those books. She’d thought what a pleasure it would be to have Lydia’s life, to be an educated woman with a serious job to do.

  Mamm was right. The world tempted different people in different ways.

  “Remember this, Leah.” Mamm clasped her hand firmly, leaning toward her. “No matter what my children do, I will never stop loving them. Never.”

  A chill went down Leah’s back. Were Mamm’s words for Anna? Or for her?

  Leah walked into the clinic for her reporting session with Stacie, a determined smile pinned to her face. She would not allow the woman to irritate her this time. As for Lydia’s idea of what was behind it—well, she wasn’t going to think about that at all.

  But when she reached the desk, it wasn’t Stacie who waited for her. It was John.

  He rose, giving her that sweet smile that made him look like the boy he’d been once. If Lydia was right about Stacie’s feelings, it would be that smile that had snared her heart.

  “I’m looking for Stacie.” She gestured with the sheaf of papers in her hand. “I have my latest interviews.”

  “Great.” John took them from her. “But as you can see, Stacie is occupied.” He waved a hand down the long row of computers. Stacie sat at the far end, frowning at the screen in front of her. At his movement, she transferred the frown to them.

  “I can wait—” Leah began.

  He shook his head, sitting down and riffling through the papers. “Not necessary. I’ve switched places with her for today. I’ll go through the reports with you.” That smile again. “Though if I know you, Teacher Leah, everything will be perfect.”

  Teacher Leah. Had he ever called her that before?

  She could continue to argue, but he was looking at her in a faintly challenging manner, and the lift of his eyebrow seemed to dare her.

  She sat down, and he turned to the forms.

  Well, fine. She realized that her hands were clenched in her lap, and she smoothed the fingers out. This was business, and she would handle it that way. Meeting with Johnny would not be a difficulty either for the Ordnung or for her conscience.

  She turned slightly, not wanting to stare at him while he read her carefully written reports. But doing so brought her around so that Stacie was in her line of sight. The woman’s head came up again, and she stared at Leah.

  Taking a deep breath, she ordered herself not to fidget. She was not a nervous scholar, turning in sloppy homework. She was a conscientious volunteer, and the interviews had been conducted to the best of her ability. If John found something to criticize, she would learn from that and do better the next time.

  The desk was a pale gray metal, and when John moved slightly, his knee bumped it, making a small thumping sound. Behind him, a coffeemaker burbled on a countertop.

  Two long-haired young men passed them, arguing loudly about something to do with the computers, she thought. The terms were so unfamiliar that she couldn’t be sure.

  John glanced up, frowning in annoyance, as they seemed to settle in front of the coffeemaker to continue their conversation.

  He gathered up the papers.

  “I can’t hear myself think in here.” He beckoned to Leah. “We’ll move this to the conference room.” He turned and walked away, leaving Leah to follow.

  Conscious of the men’s gazes on her, Leah went after him down the hall, around a corner, and through a glass-paneled door. A rectangular table with chairs around it filled most of the room.

  John jerked out a chair and slumped into it, spreading the papers out with an intentness that made her uneasy. Was something wrong with her work?

  She slid into the chair that stood at right angles to his and waited. At least here she was away from Stacie’s gaze. She was used to the stares of the curious when she was out among the English, but she wasn’t used to having someone look at her with such open dislike.

  On the other hand, here she was alone with Johnny. Business, she reminded herself. He seemed perfectly able to keep this on a businesslike basis, and she could, too.

  Finally he pressed his hands against the sheets. “Who told you to do a family tree?” He shot the question at her.

  “Well, I . . . I think Stacie said something about how seeing the family Bibles would be useful, but I told her I didn’t believe people would be willing to lend them out. I thought perhaps a transcription of the tree would work, but if not—”

  “If not?” That smile lit his face again, this time tinged with something like triumph. “Leah, this is fantastic. It’s exactly what we need.”

  A footstep sounded in the hallway outside, and Dr. Brandenmyer poked his head in the doorway. “Do I hear the noise of a scientific triumph in here?”

  Johnny waved the paper. “Leah has brought us a complete family tree for the Miller family, going all the way back to the early 1700s. It gives us exactly when the genetic illnesses began showing up.”

  “I copied it just as it was worded in the original.” Her hands twisted in her lap again, and she forced them to be still. “I hope—”

  “Excellent, excellent.” Dr. Brandenmyer studied the sheets and then beamed at her. “We’ve never had such a detailed source before, not even from the families seeking treatment here. You’ve done a superb job, Ms. Beiler. Superb.”

  She could feel the heat rushing to her face. It wasn’t the Amish way to lavish praise, and to accept it was prideful. She lowered her gaze.

  “The Miller family has a very complete family tree in their Bible, and because we are nearly related, they were willing to let me copy it. I can’t hope to obtain such results every time.”

  “If you bring in something half as good, we’ll be pleased.” Dr. Brandenmyer reached out, as if he intended to pat her shoulder, and then drew his hand back. “Excellent,” he said again. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Get those results into the computer as soon as possible, John. Well done.”

  “I will, sir.” Johnny straightened in his chair, looking almost as if he would like to salute, as the older man walked away with that long, loping stride.

  Once he was gone, Johnny turned to her, his expression exultant. “I knew I was right to bring you in on this, Leah. You have access the rest of us couldn’t possibly get.”

  Her hands gripped each other. “Don’t count on that much information every time. Please. I can’t promise to do that with every family.”

  “It’s fine,” he said quickly. Maybe he thought he was putting too much pressure on her. “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Leah.”

 
; “Praise is what makes me uncomfortable, as you well know.” She felt a trace of annoyance with him. She couldn’t expect the English to understand, but Johnny certainly should.

  “Oh, yes.” His mouth tightened. “I remember. Accepting a compliment would be prideful. Lacking in proper Amish humility.”

  She would not apologize for her beliefs. “The instruction to have a humble and contrite heart is not only for the Amish.”

  He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry. I guess I still have trouble with that one. What’s so bad about accepting that people think you did a good job?”

  For a moment she couldn’t speak. John did sound like an Englischer now. He’d been raised on the same Scriptures she had.

  Blessed are the meek. Do not think yourself better than anyone else, but humble yourselves in obedience to God.

  Apparently he had forgotten.

  “I don’t want to argue with you about it.” She started to rise. “If that’s all—”

  “Leah, don’t. Please don’t leave. I didn’t mean to offend you.” He rubbed the back of his neck with his palm, as if trying to wipe away tension.

  “Is it hard?” She asked the question abruptly, thinking about his obvious eagerness to please Dr. Brandenmyer. “Feeling you belong in this world now?”

  A muscle jerked at the corner of his mouth. “Sometimes not at all. Sometimes every minute of the day.”

  “I’m sorry.” She was. Not trying to convince him he’d been wrong in his choice. Just sorry it was hard for him.

  He shrugged. “It was worth it.”

  Did he really feel that? Apparently so.

  He stared down at the chart of the Miller family. Finally he cleared his throat.

  “I remember Naomi. So she married Nathan Miller. Everybody thought they’d make a match of it.”

  “Ja.” Everyone had thought that. Just as they’d thought she and Johnny would.

  He smiled suddenly. “Remember when Nathan and I took our daads’ buggies out on that dirt road behind the Esch farm and tried to have a harness race?”