Plain Perfect & Quaker Summer 2 in 1

by Beth Wiseman; Lisa Samson

  “I’m trying, God. I’m trying to have faith. I’m trying to live a good life. Please help me to trust that You will provide what’s best for me,” she whispered, “and for Samuel and David.”

  She felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Grandma, I didn’t hear you come downstairs. Is everything okay?” She was embarrassed that Grandma might have heard her praying. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with her evolving relationship with God.

  “Ya, Jonas is sleeping soundly,” Grandma said, sighing. “He isn’t feeling well.”

  Her gray hair was bound tightly in a bun on her head. Deep wrinkles spiderwebbed from the corners of her eyes and trailed downward, burrowing into sunken pale cheeks. The circles under her eyes were more prevalent than usual, and her stance indicated sheer exhaustion might cause her to surrender to gravity at any minute.

  “Grandma, you can’t go on like this. You have to let me help you with Grandpa.” She grabbed her grandmother’s elbow and walked her to the nearby rocker. All the while Grandma was shaking her head.

  “Why not?” Lillian asked.

  “Your daadi is a proud man, Lillian. Sometimes he gets down in a bad way. He wouldn’t want his Lilly to see him like that.” She kept shaking her head.

  “Irma Rose!”

  Grandma jumped when she heard him calling, but Lillian gently grabbed her shoulders. “Grandma, let me go to him. I can handle it. You have got to get some rest.”

  She watched her Grandma eyeing the staircase as if it were Mount Everest. “But he might need—”

  “Whatever it is, I will handle it. Go have a snack or something. I’ll take care of Grandpa.”

  Before Grandma could refuse, she headed for the staircase. Halfway up the stairs he cried out again. But it wasn’t Grandma’s name or Lillian’s name he was calling. Lillian froze in her tracks on the staircase, her legs trembling.

  10

  FORCING HER FEET TO MANEUVER UP THE STAIRS, LILLIAN eased into her grandparents’ bedroom, dimly illuminated by one Forcing small lantern on a nightstand by the bed. On a wooden hutch across the room there were at least a dozen pill bottles, a pitcher of water, a glass, and a Bible. Grandpa was tucked under a brown-and-red quilt, his eyes closed. His thinning gray hair was tousled and flattened against a feather pillow, and his breathing was labored, his mouth opened wide.

  Taking a seat on the wooden chair beside the bed, she said, “Hi, Grandpa.” She reached over and touched his arm.

  Twitching his pale face, he slowly opened his eyes and smiled. “Sarah Jane,” he said softly. She’d hoped maybe she heard him wrong when she was walking up the staircase.

  “Grandpa, it’s Lilly,” she said. She gently squeezed his arm and leaned in closer to make sure he could see her clearly.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said tenderly.

  “I saw you at breakfast this morning, Grandpa.”

  “Ya, ya,” he whispered. “Is the pond frozen up? Reckon we’ll have to shine your skates up.”

  “Grandpa, it’s summertime,” she said hesitantly, resisting the urge to cry. What is wrong with him? He’d been frail since she arrived, but his mind was always sharp as a tack.

  He laughed. “I’m a silly old man. I know you’re a might too old to be skatin’ on the pond.” He leaned in close and his eyebrows lowered as he reached over and gently clutched her arm. Gazing hard into her eyes, he said, “You’ll be breakin’ your mamm’s heart if you leave us, Sarah Jane. I know something’s goin’ on with you. Talk to your Pop.”

  “Grandpa,” she whispered, “it’s Lilly.”

  He was looking right through her with a glassy expression. “It’s the Englisch man, ain’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Ya. Your mamm ought not know ’bout this, Sarah Jane. But I reckon’ I’ve seen the newspapers you’ve been stashing in the barn. The Englisch man writes of worldly ways, Sarah Jane, things best not learned. And you ought to stay away from him.”

  Her mind was awhirl, thinking about the boxes David moved into the barn. “What Englisch man?” she asked.

  Grandpa released his grasp on her arm and pushed back gray bangs that were too long and had fallen forward. Swiping his brow, he frowned and shook his head.

  “Grandpa, what Englisch man?” she asked again. But, he closed his eyes.

  “Grandpa?”

  Within seconds, the labored breathing returned, and she realized he was fast asleep. Lillian sat quietly for a few minutes, until she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. She turned to see Grandma entering the room.

  “What did he need?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Lillian paused. “He thought I was my mother.”

  Grandma patted her shoulder. “It happens. I reckon it’s those pills the doctor gives him.” She waved her arm toward the hutch. “Sometimes he thinks I’m his mother.”

  “Does he just snap out of it?” She hoped so.

  “Ya. He mostly acts up like this right after he takes the pills.”

  “Oh,” she said softly, contemplating whether or not to share the conversation with her grandma. Deciding she wasn’t up for such a discussion, she excused herself.

  She barely choked down her breakfast the next morning. After cleaning up the kitchen, she told Grandma she was going to the barn to brush Jessie and lavish a little attention on him for a while. Giving her loose strands of hair a final tuck under her white Kapp, she asked, “Need me for anything else right now?”

  “You go on,” Grandma said. “I’m going to take these dippy eggs on up to Jonas.” She poured a glass of orange juice and toted everything up the stairs.

  On the way to the barn, Lillian pondered on what Grandpa had said the night before. Between that and thoughts of Sadie cooking for Samuel and David, she hadn’t gotten much sleep.

  “Hello, Jessie,” she said, prying the barn door open. Giving the horse a quick stroke on the snout, she made her way to the stacked boxes in the corner and heaved the top box down to the dirt floor. In the dim light of early morning, she saw The Intelligencer Journal, November 2, 1980 folded neatly on top. Lifting the newspaper up, she could see the box was filled with past issues.

  Why did Mom save all these? And what Englisch man was Grandpa referring to?

  The Intelligencer Journal was a daily publication. But upon further inspection, she noticed they were all thick Sunday editions. Why only Sunday papers, she wondered.

  The Budget was the choice of newspaper for the Amish in Lancaster County—the national Amish publication coedited by both the Amish and English. Grandma read The Budget every Wednesday. Grandma also read Die Botschaft—strictly for Old Order Amish—every week. But she’d never seen The Intelligencer Journal in the house.

  Placing one of Jessie’s saddle pads on the dirt floor, she took a seat with the November 2 issue of The Intelligencer. She scanned the headline. “U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan Debate in Cleveland, Ohio.”

  “Wow,” she whispered as she flipped through the pages to the entertainment section. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Friday the 13th were movies featured at the theatres. Both movies were made before she was even born. “Sailing” by Christopher Cross was the top record. And everyone wanted to know who shot J. R., evidently from some TV show named Dallas. The headline said the November 21 conclusion was expected to draw more viewers than any other show in TV history.

  She set the paper aside and retrieved the next issue in the box. November 9, 1980. Ronald Reagan won the presidential election in a landslide victory. The NASA space probe Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Saturn and sent the first high-resolution images of the world back to Earth. And people were still talking about who’d shot J.R.

  While all this was fascinating, why did her mother save all these papers? Clearly, it had something to do with an Englisch man who wrote about worldly events, as Grandpa put it. Continuing to flip through each Sunday edition, she looked for something each issue had in common.

  After an hour, s
he was starting to doubt the newspapers had anything to do with anything. But July 27, 1980, offered up a clue. As she had been doing, she scanned the front page headlines. “Former Turkish Prime Minister Nihat Erim Killed by Two Gunmen in Istanbul, Turkey.” And “Pope John Paul II Visits Brazil—Seven People Crushed to Death in Crowd.”

  No wonder the Amish didn’t read the daily papers and stuck with The Budget and Die Botschaft. Bad news was everywhere.

  The most interesting items to her were what movies were showing and the top albums. She scanned the entertainment section and almost closed the paper when something in the columns section caught her eye. Actually, not the column itself, but the inscription beside it. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like her mother’s handwriting. Daniel and Sarah Jane forever.

  She pulled the newspaper closer to her face to get a better look. Daniel Foster looked to be in his late twenties. Maybe thirty. Although it was hard to tell from the black-and-white photo above his column, he looked to be a handsome guy. Sporting clean-cut short hair and a pair of large, gold-rimmed glasses, he smiled above his column, entitled “Outside the Box.” She read:

  The road to happiness is filled with paths of self-discovery. One slip, and you can end up going down the wrong path with no map to guide you back to the main road. How do we as individuals choose which road will fulfill our destiny with the least amount of challenges? Are we born into a predetermined plan? Is it fate? Or do the choices we make render us capable of creating our own destiny?

  These are questions I have pondered. In the end, I believe we create our own destiny. But notwithstanding an occasional trip down the wrong path. The key is realizing when it’s the wrong path and having the courage to do a little backtracking until you are back on the road to the life you were meant to live.

  Were all his columns this heavy? She grabbed the next paper and read:

  Dreams are the manifestations of our daily thoughts. Although some dreams might seem like they came out of nowhere, that’s not true. We have but one mind, and the thought processes—whether in waking hours or asleep—belong to us exclusively. So the next time you have a bizarre dream that makes no sense, take the time to dissect it. There might be a message in there somewhere.

  Lillian tossed the paper aside and went on to the next issue, thinking about her mom reading the columns twenty-eight years ago. Clearly, his message had intrigued Mom.

  Religion and spirituality—are they one and the same? I think not. I know people who are religious and who lack a shred of spirituality. Then there are those who never attend church but possess more spirituality than most . . .

  She read at least ten more columns. Two of the ten had hearts drawn around them. All thought-provoking in some way, she could see why her mother would have a crush on the guy. But she wasn’t naïve and she’d done the math. Her mother would have been eighteen in 1980. Mom left the Amish community in 1981. Lillian was born in 1981. Could this guy be her father?

  Her heart was pounding against her chest. Maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to find her father. He was handsome, a good writer, deep, and apparently spiritual.

  Her heart raced faster. Finally, after all these years . . . just maybe.

  There was only one way to find out. P

  “Hi, Mom,” Lillian said. She’d retrieved her cell phone and headed back to the barn without Grandma’s knowledge.

  “Lillian, what a surprise. Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, everything is fine.”

  “I know you’re probably wondering about the money, Lillian. I had it all ready to put in the mail to you, and I—”

  “It doesn’t matter, Mom,” she interrupted. “I want to talk to you about something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Who’s Daniel Foster?”

  The line was silent so long, Lillian wondered if her mother was still on the other end. “Mom?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “I found the newspapers in the barn. I read his columns, and I saw where you wrote—”

  “Lillian!” her mother interrupted hastily. “I don’t know where you’re going with this, but just leave it alone.”

  Her mom’s voice was quivering, and Lillian knew she’d hit the nail on the head. “He’s my father, isn’t he?” She knew her tone was demanding, but she’d been denied any knowledge about her father because her mother had refused to discuss it, always saying she just didn’t know who he was. Lies. All lies. She knew exactly who he was.

  “Is he why you left Lancaster County? Is he, Mom? I have a right to know who my own father is. It’s him, isn’t it?” She realized her voice rose to a near yell.

  “Lillian. Please let this go.” Her mom was crying, but Lillian pushed on. She felt it was her right to know.

  “Mother,” she said sharply. “You said you never knew who my father was. If you covered this up for all these years . . . That is so wrong. You owe me this.”

  “I was young, Lillian. I was just so young.” She was crying full force now.

  Lillian softened her tone. “Mom, please. Please tell me. I’m trying so hard to start a new life. I’m trying so hard to find answers and fill the voids. This is part of the process for me. You have wonderful parents. You can’t deny me the right to even know who my father is.” Her own tears began to flow as she realized she needed to know, but at the same time was afraid to know.

  “DNA does not make a person a parent, Lillian.”

  Confirmation. “Oh, Mom. So Daniel Foster is my father.”

  “Yes.”

  Lillian grabbed her chest, sure that her heart was going to leap through her skin. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  When her mother didn’t answer, Lillian went on. “Is that why you left Lancaster County? You were pregnant with me? Why didn’t you tell someone? It would have been hard, but I don’t think Grandma and Grandpa would have—”

  “Shunned me?” her mother interjected with a sharp tone. “No, Lillian. They would not have shunned me in the traditional sense because I wasn’t baptized. But I was eighteen years old, and I had premarital sex with an Englisch man. Reprimanding by the community would have been equally as harsh as a shunning. I couldn’t have stayed. The embarrassment for your grandparents . . . I just couldn’t stay. It was best to leave and never say anything.”

  “All these years, Grandma and Grandpa never understood why you chose to leave the district.” She paused. “And what about me, Mom? You let me believe that you didn’t know who my father was. How could you do that? How?”

  “Lillian,” Mom cried, “you don’t understand.”

  “Then explain it to me!”

  “I made a horrible mistake and I didn’t know what to do. Daniel gave me some money, and I left to start a new life.”

  “Why couldn’t you have started a life with him?”

  Mom wept harder. “He wouldn’t have me, Lillian. He wanted nothing to do with me or having a baby. Daniel said he would deny the entire thing, that I would be an outcast in my community, and that it would be best for me to leave town.”

  “And you never saw him again? Did he ever see me? Did he know you had a girl?”

  “I never heard from him or saw him again. Please, Lillian. Now you know. Let it go.”

  “I’m going to find him. He’ll want to meet me after all these years. I’ll find him, Mom, with or without your help.”

  Sobs were vibrating through the phone lines. “No, Lillian. It was a long time ago. Please don’t do this. I doubt he even still lives near Paradise.”

  “Mom!” she cried. “That’s three miles down the road. I could have bumped into him on the streets in town. How could you not have told me?”

  “Lillian, leave it alone.”

  “Good-bye, Mom.”

  She hung up the phone, nervous anticipation flooding over her, commingled with fury and sympathy for her mother. As angry as she was with Sarah Jane Miller, hearing her mother relive that painful part of her past pulled at her heartstr
ings in an unfamiliar way.

  Samuel eyeballed a big wooden table outside a shop in Paradise. It wasn’t as nice as the one in Intercourse—the one he would buy someday. He wondered if that day would ever come. Lately his visions of the table in his kitchen came with a detailed picture of him and David sitting at the table with several other children—and Lillian cooking supper. It was a notion he couldn’t seem to shake.

  Telling Sadie the night before that a courtship wasn’t going to work had been hard. Extra hard when she started to cry. But carrying on with her when he couldn’t shake his feelings for Lillian wasn’t fair. Not even the elders could push him into a courtship with someone he didn’t think he could ever love. And it wasn’t fair to the boy either.

  He’d rather hold out hope that maybe Lillian could find her way to the peaceful way of life she was longing for. That maybe she’d find God in her heart. She’d so lovingly accepted him and David into her heart. Why was it so hard for her to accept God’s will in her life? It wasn’t his way, but maybe he should help her more. After all, she’d had no upbringing that would teach her such things.

  It was a difficult situation—compounded by the fact he could list all the reasons Lillian wasn’t right for him and David. But the bottom line was she brought out feelings in him he’d only ever had for Rachel. And allowing himself to indulge usually resulted in guilt. Guilt that he shouldn’t have such thoughts when Rachel was the love of his life. He still dreamed of her. Only now, not as often. It was both comforting and worrisome when Lillian showed up in his dreams more often than Rachel these days.

  As he continued to fantasize about a life with Lillian, he caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye. Was she looking for him? She was sure looking for something. He headed toward her.

  She appeared frazzled. Her hair looked like she’d been on another high-speed buggy ride, tousled and dangling about her beautiful face. But something was wrong. Her eyes were swollen and registered an uncharacteristic seriousness.