Was this why?
Because she was actually Ruby’s—
Unfurling her fingers from their near death grip on the latest gravesite present, Emma stared down at the heart-shaped locket and the strangely familiar face inside—a face that looked like, yet wasn’t, her own. The pronounced cheekbones were the same, and the shape of the eyes was the same, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything, did it? Ruby was, after all, Mamm’s sister. There was no reason Emma couldn’t look like her. And besides, Emma’s eyes were blue like—
No one’s.
A flurry of footsteps off to her left broke through her thoughts in time to see her five-year-old sister, Esther, running in her direction, a sweet smile stretching the child’s cheeks wide. “Emma! Emma! I helped Mamm bake a cake! For your birthday!”
She forced herself to smile as she squatted down for the hug the little girl liked before heading off to school each day. “I bet it will be a wonderful cake.”
“You cannot eat it until tonight!” Esther wiggled free in favor of pointing at Emma’s hand, the excitement over her cake-baking adventures replaced by a sudden bout of solemnness. “Mamm said we are not to take pictures.”
Closing the locket back inside her hand, Emma stood, her gaze inching past Esther to a rapidly approaching Annie and Jonathan. “Did you forget something?” she asked, looking back at Esther.
“No.”
She pointed the little girl’s attention toward the driveway and their eight-year-old sister. “Seems Annie is carrying two lunch pails when she only has one tummy.”
Esther’s eyes widened. “Oh. I forgot.”
“Yah.” She tapped Esther’s nose with her index finger. “It is your job to remember your lunch, not Annie’s, right?”
Shame led Esther’s eyes down to the ground. Curiosity lifted them back to Emma. “Why do you have that in your hand?” Esther asked, pointing at Emma’s now closed fist.
“Because I do. Now go get your lunch pail from Annie and make sure you walk together to school, okay?”
For a moment she thought the little girl was going to protest, but, in the end, Esther simply ran back to Annie, liberated her lunch pail from Annie’s hand, and then waved for her siblings to follow her onto the road toward school. “Bye, Emma. Happy birthday!”
“Happy birthday, Emma,” Annie and Jonathan said in unison as they passed.
“Thank you.”
Annie paused and glanced back. “Mamm is looking for you, Emma.”
She bit back the I’m looking for her, too, that was on the tip of her tongue and, instead, mustered a smile and an answering wave as the trio set off in the direction of the one-room schoolhouse.
Seconds turned to minutes as she stood there, watching them, her mind’s eye filling with memories of her own walks to school—her feet always slowing as she approached and then passed the cemetery. A few classmates had noticed over the years, but they never said anything. Then again, other than the teacher and her brother Jakob, most of the kids hadn’t said a whole lot to Emma to begin with. Everyone had always been polite, of course, but no one had ever sought her out to chat or play the way they had with one another. Except, of course, Mary.
She yanked her attention back to her siblings only to discover they’d made it past the bend in the road that claimed them from her sight. Squaring her shoulders, she looked again at the locket, breathed in every ounce of courage she could find, and then headed up the driveway toward the house, the distant tap-tap of a hammer letting her know Jakob was working on another section of fence, while a peek at the chicken coop showed Sarah gathering eggs into a basket.
When she reached the porch, she walked up the steps and into the house, letting the door flap closed in her wake.
“Surely you are not already done collecting the eggs—oh, Emma. I did not know it was you.”
Stopping briefly just inside the kitchen doorway, Emma took a moment to catch her breath. When she did, she crossed to the sewing machine and Mamm. With little more than a blink, she thrust her hand out, palm up, and watched as her mother’s eyes dropped to the locket.
“What is that?”
With nary a word or even a sound, Emma wedged her finger against the locket’s seam and pried it open, her mother’s answering gasp echoing around the room. “Emma! Where did you get that?”
“At the cemetery.”
Mamm jumped to her feet, her eyes ricocheting between the locket and Emma. “What were you doing at the cemetery?”
“That’s what we do on my birthday, isn’t it?” she countered, her voice shrill. “We go to the cemetery to visit your sister’s grave, and you cry. It is a part of my birthday like a picnic is for Sarah’s, a game of stickball is for Jonathan’s, a walk to the pond is for Jakob’s, a game of follow the leader is for Annie’s, and bubble blowing is for Esther’s.”
Like a moth to an open flame, Mamm’s gaze returned to the open locket, tears making their way down her colorless cheeks.
“I used to think your sadness was because Ruby died on my birthday. But it is more than that, isn’t it?” Emma demanded. Then, before she lost the courage Mamm’s tears were rapidly eroding, she added, “It’s because I’m the reason she died, aren’t I?”
She wasn’t sure what response she’d been expecting. Maybe a gasp . . . Maybe a violent shake of Mamm’s head . . . Maybe a frantic reach for Emma’s hands while pleading for her to refrain from such silly talk . . . Whatever it was, though, it hadn’t been this weighted silence that hung in the air like an impending storm.
Not knowing what to do or say, Emma looked again at the photograph of the girl atop her hand and willed the eyes she saw looking back at her to respond the way she’d wanted Mamm to respond. But as with Mamm, there was only silence.
Heavy, heavy silence.
The kind that was an answer all on its own.
“Please,” Emma whispered past the emotion gathering inside her throat. “I-I need to know. Was . . . Was she . . .” She stopped, swallowed, and tried again, her voice reflecting the shake of her locket-holding hand. “Was Ruby my mamm?”
Slowly, Mamm lowered herself back onto her chair, her breath labored. Then, dropping her head into her hands, she released a tired sigh. “Yah.”
On the walk home from Mary’s, she’d known the truth. Deep down inside herself, she’d known the answer she would soon have. But still, hearing it confirmed aloud pained her in a way nothing else ever had. “I-I don’t understand,” she said between gulps of air. “Ruby was only eighteen when she died. She wasn’t even . . .”
The rest of the protest faded from her lips as the reality of who she was and where she came from hit her like an unexpected kick from one of Dat’s mules. Suddenly it made sense why Mamm never smiled at her in quite the same way as her brothers and sisters.... Why Dat had always held her at arm’s length, preferring to nod his approval in her direction rather than pat her shoulder the way he did with Sarah, Annie, and Esther. . . . Why her classmates in school hadn’t tried as hard with her as they did with each other. . . . Why she was the only girl at the hymn sings who wasn’t courting yet....
“I remind you of her,” Emma whispered. “Don’t I?”
Mamm’s head snapped up, her eyes wet with tears. “You do! You have her smile and her cheeks!”
More than anything she wanted to believe that’s all it was, that when Mamm looked at her it was like looking at Ruby. But she knew the reminder went deeper than that—to a shame that weighed on Mamm’s shoulders every bit as much as any pain. “No, I remind you of her sin,” she rasped.
“Emma! That’s—”
“Did she get to see me?”
Mamm drew back. “Who?”
“Ruby . . . My mamm . . . I don’t know what I’m supposed to call her!”
A flash of pain skittered across Mamm’s face as, once again, she rose to her feet. “Emma—”
“Please. Just answer my question. Did she get to see me before she died?”
“Yah.”
>
“And?”
“She smiled at you.” Pressing her fist to her mouth, Mamm inhaled sharply only to let the same breath go in a slow, controlled whoosh. “And then she was gone.”
Wandering over to the window, Emma looked out over Dat’s winter fields. Even with the dormant earth, she could imagine the view come spring, when the corn and barley were starting to grow. Spring was a time of beginnings just like birth. Only, in her case, it had been different. Her birth had meant the end of Ruby’s life and, in some ways, Mamm’s—
She spun around. “What about my dat? I mean, my real dat? Why didn’t he take me when Ruby died?”
“Because he was an Englisher!” Mamm closed the gap between them, grabbed the locket from Emma’s hand, and shook it in the air. “He did not care that Ruby was Amish! He did not care that she had been baptized! He did not care about your mamm or you at all!”
“Is . . . is that why I have never fit here?” Emma asked, closing her eyes.
“What is here?”
“Here—in Blue Ball . . . In school . . . At hymn sings . . . When we go visiting . . .” She heard her voice growing hoarse, knew it was only a matter of time before she began to weep. But still, she had to know. “Here—in this house . . . In this family . . . Because everyone knows what I am?”
She waited for Mamm to break the silence, to argue that Emma did belong and always had, but those words never came. Instead, when Emma opened her eyes, she saw that Mamm’s focus had moved to somewhere far beyond Emma. And in that moment, she knew the truth.
Chapter 3
Hugging her knees to her chest, Emma wiped the last of her tears against her dress sleeve and looked out over Miller’s Pond. Even without Dat’s mantel clock, she knew afternoon was beginning to fade into early evening. She also knew that by being here, instead of at the house as she should, Sarah and Jakob, and the younger ones, now home from school, were surely covering her chores and beginning to question where she’d gone.
She tried to imagine what Mamm would say. Would she shrug and change the subject? Would she redirect their attention to a chore that needed to be done? Or would she tell the truth—that Emma was really their cousin, not their sister?
Tired of the tears that had been her constant companion since fleeing the kitchen and Mamm’s painful silence, Emma lifted her chin to the sun’s waning rays and breathed in the cold, crisp air. For as long as she could remember, this pond, this rock, had always been her retreat of choice. When she’d been little, she’d liked it for its vantage point over the wildflowers that grew along the southern shore, and the squirrels and birds that hovered nearby, oblivious to whatever it was about her that made her peers shy away. When she’d gotten a little older and school was no longer part of her days, she’d venture here during a break in chores, to think and to dream. And, of course, every year on her birthday, she’d come here to hide yet another trinket inside the hollow of the oak tree she could just barely see from her favorite resting spot . . .
For what had to be the hundredth time that day, she opened her palm and gazed down at the eighteen-year-old face she’d all but memorized—a face she’d never known, yet shared in more ways than not. But it was the other stuff—the stuff she couldn’t see in a tiny picture—that she most wanted to know about Ruby.
Like the sound of her laugh . . . Had it been hushed like Mamm’s or—
“I figured I would find you here.”
Dropping her knees back to the rock’s surface, she jerked her gaze across her shoulder to the footpath. “Mary! Stop sneaking up on me like that!”
“That stick”—Mary pointed at the ground behind her feet—“and these leaves did not let me sneak. You let me sneak.”
Emma swiped the residual dampness from her cheeks and scooted forward until her feet touched the ground. “How did I let you sneak?”
“By not seeing or hearing anything around you.” Mary crunched across the last of the leaves separating the footpath from the rock and sat beside Emma, her brows dipped with worry. “Are you okay? Your face looks a little funny. Almost like you’ve been crying.”
Pushing off the rock, Emma shrunk her neck farther into her coat and wandered over to the water’s edge. “Why did you come?” she asked instead.
“I made something for you—for your birthday. But when I stopped at your farm to give it to you, Sarah said you were not home. When I asked if you would be back soon, she made a face and went back to feeding your dat’s new calf.” Mary, too, abandoned the rock and joined Emma at the edge of the pond. “I thought feeding the new calf was your job.”
“It is.”
Mary laughed. “It is good to have a birthday. It means less chores.”
“I have been here since the sun was”—Emma swept her hand across her shoulder—“back there.”
Mary’s laugh hushed. “But you were at my house this morning . . .”
“Yah. And then I ran home and, after a little while, I ran here.”
“You’ve been here this whole time?” Mary asked, drawing back.
“Yah.”
“Doing what?”
“I have done some yelling, some stomping, some throwing, some thinking, and, yah, much crying.”
“But why? It’s your birthday and you found that pretty . . .” Mary’s words trailed off as understanding traded places with confusion. “You showed it to your mamm, didn’t you? That’s why she looked so troubled when I went up to the house to see if she knew where you—”
“She is not my mamm,” Emma whispered. “Her sister, Ruby, was.”
“Emma Lapp, you are not to say such things! The Bible says, ‘Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord!’ ”
“The Bible also says, ‘God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.’ ”
Mary’s eyes narrowed on Emma’s. “I do not understand what—”
“Ruby died the day I was born, Mary.”
“In an accident or because she was sick or . . . however she died. That doesn’t mean she was—”
“Your mamm told me Ruby died in childbirth.”
The whoosh of Mary’s breath as she sucked in her surprise echoed around them. “M-my mamm told you such a thing?”
“I asked how Ruby died, and she spoke the truth.”
“She . . .” Mary stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “She told you Ruby was your mamm?”
“No. I figured that part out on my own when I left your house. It made sense—the day, the way Mamm would never speak of how Ruby died, the way she and Dat have always been different with me than Jakob and Sarah and the rest of the children, seeing her picture in the locket and knowing I look more like her than Ma—I mean, Rebeccah . . .”
Again, Mary stepped back, only this time, the heel of her boot touched water. “Rebeccah? Who—wait. What are you doing?”
“Ruby was my mamm. Rebeccah is my aunt.”
“Emma, you shouldn’t talk like that!”
“Why? It is the truth! Mamm—I mean, Rebeccah told me!”
Mary’s mouth opened, then shut, then opened again. “I-I don’t know what to say.”
“That is okay, because I don’t know what to feel. Except anger and . . .” Emma glanced across the pond at the tree she’d yet to approach. “Questions. Many, many questions.”
“But you know now, don’t you? What more could there be to know?”
Spinning on the toes of her boots, Emma led the way back to the rock and the necklace splayed across its center. When she reached it, she lifted up the locket, the strands of the delicate chain brushing briefly against her arm. “I want to know where this came from! Why it was next to my real mother’s grave!”
Mary looked from Emma to the locket and back again. “You mentioned other things you found, on other birthdays. That you’ve kept them . . .”
“Yah.” She pointed across the pond with her free hand. “They are in a bag in that tree.” Then, beckoning her friend to follow, she added, “Come. I will show yo
u.”
They trudged around the southern edge of the pond and headed in the direction of the half dozen oak trees that lined the western side. With quick feet, Emma led the way past the first and second tree. At the third tree, she circled around to the back and the hollow she’d long ago masked with a piece of bark.
With quick, deft hands, she maneuvered the piece of bark from the hole, set it on the ground beside the trunk, and reached inside. Sure enough, with little more than a single pat to the left, she closed her cold fingers around the gathered edges of the bag and pulled it out, Mary’s answering gasp barely audible over the sudden, yet familiar acceleration of her own heartbeat.
“How long has that been in there?” Mary asked.
“Since a few days after my seventh birthday—though, back then, there was only one thing in the bag. The next year there were two things . . . and then three things . . . and, soon”—Emma shook her locket-holding hand—“sixteen.”
“The presents? They’re all in there?”
“Yah. I will show you. Come.” Once again, she led the way back around the pond to their starting point and the rapidly decreasing sunlight the rock still offered. When they reached her favorite spot, she set the locket down and reached inside the bag’s drawstring top.
“This miniature picnic basket was the first one—or, the first one I got to before Dat.” She pulled it out, held it up for Mary to see, and then set it on the rock beside the locket. “It is just like a real one, isn’t it? Only tiny.”
Mary sat down, ran her fingers across the wicker sides and handle, and then glanced up at Emma. “Why would someone leave such a thing next to a grave?”
“I don’t know. I only know that they did.” Again, Emma reached inside, and again she pulled out a trinket. “This one was when I turned eight. It is heavy for something so small.”
Mary leaned forward, her breath warm against Emma’s fingers. “That’s a rose!”
A Daughter's Truth Page 3