by Amy Lillard
She climbed into her buggy. It would be good to go visiting today. She needed to see Chris, tell him of her decision. To talk to Johnny as well. She knew he would probably not be able to talk to her yet, but Sadie knew that one day he would get his speech back. At least that was what the doctors had told her. She turned the horse’s nose west and toward the Flaud residence.
The day was turning out beautiful. Spring was in the air. The trees were starting to bud, and the birds had come out to bring their song to let everyone know that spring had come to Wells Landing. A couple of more weeks and it would be Easter. After Easter, Chris would start his baptism classes. After that, there would be nothing to stop them from getting married.
Half an hour later, she pulled into his drive. She was glad to see that the ambulance that had brought Johnny home had already left. Hopefully by now he was settled in his bed.
She parked her buggy and got out. She would need to unhitch her horse. She had no idea how long she was staying, and she didn’t want to leave the mare attached to the wagon for hours on end. Not when the horse could frolic in the pasture.
Sadie had just turned the mare out when Chris came to the door. “I thought I heard you out here.”
Sadie smiled. Chris. Her best friend forever. Her soon-to-be husband. It was what she had wanted for years. Now why did the thought fill her with sadness?
“Walk with me?” she asked.
“Don’t you want to come in and see Johnny?”
“In a bit. For now I need to talk to you.”
“How come when somebody says they need to talk to you it’s usually bad?” He tripped down the stairs to her side.
She shook her head. “It’s not like that. This is actually good, I guess.” She tried a smile on for size, but it felt too tight.
“You guess it’s good?”
Sadie nodded her head. “I’ve come to tell you that I accept your proposal. I want to be your wife.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
He could hardly believe his ears! After all this time and all the trouble with the Mennonite from Taylor Creek, he had finally gotten what he wanted. Sadie Kauffman had agreed to be his wife.
He stopped there in the middle of the yard and spun her toward him, taking her hands into his. He squeezed her fingers, having to hold back his strength and excitement.
“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for you to say those words to me.”
“Surely not more than a couple of weeks?” She laughed, but the sound was brittle.
He shook the thought away. “I’m glad you said yes. Baptism classes are starting soon.”
She nodded.
“And we’ll get married this fall. Maybe October?”
Sadie shook her head. “I think October is probably full. Why don’t we wait until December? Maybe after Christmas.”
After Christmas? “That’s an awful long time to wait. Why not November? Maybe the first or second? Whatever the first Tuesday is. Let’s get married then.”
She thought about that a second. He worried that perhaps she was looking for an excuse to tell him no. Or postpone her wedding until the end of the month.
Instead, she gave up a hard swallow, then nodded. “Jah. Okay then. We’ll get married then.”
Not quite the joyous reaction that he had anticipated. But he would take it for now. He loved Sadie Kauffman and wanted to do anything and everything to make her happy as his wife. He looked into those hazel eyes, but he couldn’t find the spark that was normally there. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Her eyes fluttered closed, and she gave a small nod.
“I love you, Sadie Kauffman.”
With her eyes still closed she replied, “I love you too.”
It was a special occasion. It was not every day that a man got engaged, and he wanted one small kiss to commemorate. He lowered his lips toward hers, but she turned away at the last second and his kiss glanced off her cheek. He hid his disappointment. “Are you sure?”
“Am I sure what?”
“That this is what you really want?”
Sadie nodded. “Of course it is. But I think we should wait, don’t you?”
There was something to be said about that first kiss being on the wedding night. A lot of Amish waited until they were married before they shared even the gentlest of touches. And as much as he wanted to kiss Sadie in that moment, he realized that this was something she wanted too.
He nodded. “Okay, then. We’ll wait.”
He was certainly excited that they were getting married in early November instead of after Christmas like she had suggested. But he didn’t know how long he could wait to kiss his new fiancée.
* * *
Ezra pulled his four-wheeler out of the barn and checked the gas gauge. It was time to ride the fences to make sure there were no holes or problems. It was also time to look for any newborns that he didn’t know about. Between the bison, bovines, and the deer, he had to keep a good watch on the babies, that was for sure.
He grabbed his pliers, some wire fencing, and a few posts and strapped those onto the cargo rack in the back. Just a few things to keep him from having to run back in the event he found a problem. All ready to go, he cranked the engine as an unfamiliar car pulled into the driveway.
It was a fancier car than he normally saw in these parts, red and shiny. Not at all like what Mennonites usually drove. His was a secondhand farm truck with more scratches than clean paint. Most everyone drove older-model sedans and economical imports. This one was a luxury car, worth more than probably all the vehicles Ezra owned put together.
Somebody must be lost, he thought.
Or not.
By that time, the car had gotten close enough he could see that a woman was driving. A woman with shoulder-length blond hair and gold earrings.
She turned off her car’s engine like she intended to stay for a while, then opened the door and got out. Her white suit looked strangely out of place on a dusty Oklahoma ranch. Her big sunglasses hid half of her face from view. She took two steps toward him, then stopped as the heels on her sandals sank between the gravel rocks of the drive.
“Help you?” How had a city slicker managed to lose her way in Mennonite country Oklahoma?
“Ezra? Ezra Hein?” Her voice was clear and strong, if not a bit hesitant. As if she wasn’t sure if she was in the right place or not. But whoever she was, she had found him.
He swung his leg off the back of the four-wheeler. “That’s me.”
“My name is Brenda. I knew your father.”
Ezra felt as if he had been punched in the gut. “My father?”
She looked around, obviously uncomfortable with her surroundings. “Can we go inside and talk?”
It was on the tip of Ezra’s tongue to tell her no. Whatever it was that she knew about his father and whatever she wanted with him could be said right there. But somehow he felt this was a matter that needed to be settled in the quiet of the house.
“Come on in.”
She picked her way across the driveway, through the patches of grass in his yard, and up onto the front porch. “It’s very different here than I expected.”
“Oh?” He tried not to sound skeptical. But he really didn’t want to make small talk.
“Your father told me about it.”
“How is it exactly that you know my father?” Ezra asked as he held the door open for her.
She seemed grateful to be out of the wild outdoors as she stepped into their modest house. He had a feeling that her house was probably twice the size of his and she had people to help keep it clean. But he wasn’t going to be ashamed of what he had, what he and his mother had worked for. They might not have a lot, but they had each other, and they had this house. As far as he was concerned, that counted for a great deal.
“Is your mother here?” He couldn’t help but notice the slight hesitation before she said the word “mother.”
And he had a sinking feeling that this woman knew his father very
well.
He swallowed hard.
“I’ll get her.”
He left her in the living room perched on the edge of their sofa as if she wasn’t sure if it was actually safe to sit there. Did she think they had cooties? Or maybe she was uncomfortable sitting in a strange person’s living room while that person was nowhere to be seen.
He rapped lightly on his mother’s door. And she wasn’t in there, which meant she was sitting in the kitchen nook staring out at the road. He walked down the hall and turned the corner to find her exactly there. She looked up, her hand clutching at her throat. “Is she here?”
Ezra blinked at her. “I’m going to say yes because there’s a lady here and she wants to talk to you. She says she knows Dad.”
His mother swallowed hard. He had a feeling she knew something that he didn’t, as if she had been waiting for this lady.
Ezra stepped back and allowed his mother to maneuver her chair down the hall and into the living room.
If the lady was surprised that his mother was disabled, it didn’t show on her face. She stood as they entered the room, reaching out to shake hands.
“You must be Ellen.”
His mother nodded but made no move to grasp the woman’s hand. It dropped down to her side, and she perched back on the edge of the sofa once more.
“I came to tell you that Jakob is dead.”
His mother buried her face in her hands. But he couldn’t tell if she was crying or simply trying to get herself together.
He felt like he was going to get sick. The man who had walked out on them seven years ago was dead. There was no reconciliation. There was no time for forgiveness or explanations. He was simply gone.
“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you. But I thought it would be best coming from me than anyone else.”
“Who are you?” Ezra asked. “His attorney or something?”
She gave a sardonic chuckle and shook her head. “I’m his widow.”
To his mother’s credit, she didn’t point out that she was his widow as well, because according to the Mennonite law, his mother and father were not divorced and were technically still married. Instead she asked the one question that had been pinging around inside Ezra’s brain the whole time. “What happened?”
Brenda gave a wobbly smile, and to Ezra’s dismay her eyes filled with tears. “He hadn’t been feeling well for quite some time. Nobody could figure out what was wrong. He kept going from doctor to doctor. They did all sorts of tests, but nothing. They couldn’t find anything. Then one day we went to a new specialist. He ran some different test, thought he might have cancer, and did surgery.” She pressed her lips together and swallowed hard as if she needed a moment before she could continue. “But it was too late. By the time they found it, it had spread too far. They sewed him back up and tried to make him as comfortable as possible until he passed.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“About two months now,” Brenda said.
“About two months?” Ezra managed to calm his tone to one below the screams that were building inside him. “He’s been gone about two months and you’re just now getting around to telling us?”
Brenda shook her head. “It’s not that easy, you know. I had to get his affairs in order. He had life insurance policies and—” She shook her head again as if the motion might somehow put things back to rights. Instead she reached into her purse and pulled out several documents in an envelope. “He had time before he died, you know, to come to terms, to think about his life. He wrote each of you a letter. I have no idea what they say, but I promised him that I would bring them out here to you. Along with this.” She held out two white envelopes and the brown manila envelope toward Ezra.
He stared at it a full three seconds before finally putting his feet into motion and crossing the room to take it from her. It burned his hands, and he wasn’t sure he wanted it. Part of him wanted to rip it open right then and devour every word that his father had left for him, while another part of him wanted to tear it to shreds and toss it into the wind. The best thing to do for now was just hold it until he could figure out where his emotions fit in with this new message he had from his father.
“The envelope is a life insurance policy that he’d taken out for the two of you. When he and I got married, he told me that if something were to happen to him, the money was to go to you. And I promised.” She stood and blinked rapidly, he supposed to keep her tears at bay. It was hard for him to realize, but it appeared that this woman, this stranger, had loved his father. Maybe even as much as his mother had. “I’ve done what I told him I would do. I won’t bother you anymore.”
She didn’t bother to ask for an escort from the house. She simply turned on her heel and made her own way to the front door. It shut behind her, and a few moments later Ezra heard her car start and back out of the graveled driveway.
“Give it to me,” his mother said. Her voice hid any emotion she was feeling.
Ezra handed her the envelope with her name on it in that familiar handwriting. One last message from his father. He touched the manila envelope, then shook his head. He thrust it toward his mother. “Here, take this too.”
It dropped into her lap.
He turned on his heel and headed out the back door. He had to get away and he had to get away now. He needed to be alone, he needed to read this letter, and he needed to figure out something, anything as to why his father left. Why his father was now dead. Why there would never be that chance for forgiveness ever again.
“Ezra,” his mother called after him. But he didn’t slow his steps. He slammed out the back door and flew across the yard and into the shadowy coolness of the barn.
The smell of hay and horseflesh tinged with manure was like a balm to his nerves. But this was all too much. He climbed into the hayloft and sat down on a stack of bales, his back to the small octagonal vent. It was open and light spilled in, allowing him to better read this missive from his father.
Dear Ezra,
I’ve just received what is probably the most challenging news of my life. By now you know that the news is my imminent death. And I will be judged soon. Though I’ve asked God for forgiveness for all of my sins and transgressions, there are enough of them that I wonder if that forgiveness will be granted. Although that means my placement for eternity, there is another forgiveness that I must beg for before I leave this earth. I only wish I could do it in person.
I wish I could say a man can go through life without making mistakes, but that is not the case. Unfortunately, I have made more than my fair share of mistakes and big ones. The biggest of all was walking out and leaving you and your mother to fend for yourselves. It was never my intent to hurt you, though I know that it happened. It was never my intent to hurt your mother. But some things are harder to deal with than others, and some people have trouble dealing with their problems. Regrettably, I am one of those people. I never wanted to be a farmer. I never wanted to raise horses or cows. But I grew up Mennonite, and that was the only future I could see. Get married, farm, and milk cows. I could live that life for only so long. Every day I felt as if I was hitting my breaking point. I was unhappy and depressed.
It’s not an excuse. There is no excuse for what I did. I only want you to know the reasons behind my actions, what led me to leave.
Then there was your mother’s illness. What a cowardly thing. She was diagnosed with MS, and I walked out. I can’t tell you how ashamed I am with myself. I know it is no consolation to you, but I pray every night for God to forgive me and to please watch over you and take care of you.
Then I met Brenda. She’s a wonderful person, a wonderful woman. It was Brenda who helped me see that my depression was crippling and that it had torn my family apart. I got help and learned to live with the choices that I’d made, the mistakes that I had wrought, and the hearts that I had broken.
But those mistakes are not without consequences. As I think about my diagnosis, I wonder if it is a punishm
ent from God, my own actions coming back to me.
I know you may not see it, but I’ve led a good life. I’ve had two good women love me. I know that you have turned out strong and steady. I’ve heard about your ranch, and I’m proud that you’re my son. I know I never had a chance to say that to you directly, so I have to say it now. While I still can.
Please know always and forever that I love you. And if I make it, I’ll be watching you from heaven cheering you on and loving you still.
God forgive me,
Jakob
Ezra crumpled up the letter as hot tears ran down his cheeks. He didn’t want to forgive his father. He didn’t want to know the many reasons why he left. He didn’t want there to be a medical reason that caused his father to overload and leave when most men would have stayed.
His heart was in a vise, being squeezed dry of every last drop of compassion to be had. It wasn’t what he wanted.
He balled the papers even tighter in his fist and raised his arm back to throw them across the barn. But he couldn’t complete the motion.
He lowered his hand and straightened the papers, pressing them to smooth out the wrinkles. It was the last thing he had from his father, the last thing that told of his father’s own heartbreak and heartache and walking out on the family he had once loved. And as much as it killed him to do so, he forgave his father, uttered a final prayer, and hoped that God had forgiven him as well.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Sadie? Sadie?”
Sadie hauled herself out of her own thoughts as Melanie called her name once again. “Jah?” she asked.
“It’s your turn. Are you going to bowl or are you going to sit there all night?”