A Daughter's Truth

by Laura Bradford

  “My mom—your grandmother—makes a great apple pie. It even won a ribbon at the county fair one year. She would have loved getting to teach you how to make it.” Brad pushed forward, raking a hand through his hair as he did. “If she’d had the chance, of course.”

  She stilled her hand just shy of her eleventh birthday gift and swallowed. “I am sorry I did not find you sooner. I did not know.”

  “You’re sorry?” he echoed, his voice thunderous. “You’re sorry? For what? For being told you belonged to someone who had no right to claim you? For having no reason to believe you’d been lied to? For living the lie that had been forced on you and forced on me? Please, Emma. There are only two people who are responsible for this situation and it’s not you and it’s not me. They’re the ones who should be sorry—will be sorry, if I have anything to say about—”

  The telltale snap of a twig from the direction of the road brought Emma to her feet. “Shhh. Did you hear that? I think someone is . . .” Her words faded off as a quick flash of blue pulled her gaze toward a gnarled tree not more than two buggy lengths away.

  “Who’s there?” Brad called out as he, too, stood.

  Seconds later, a familiar round face peered around the tree, causing Emma to stumble back a half step. “Esther!”

  The single crunch that had guided their focus toward the child turned into a series of crunches as Esther covered the distance between them in short order.

  “Hi, Emma!” A bright smile pushed the five-year-old’s cheeks nearly to her eyes just before she wrapped her arms around Emma’s legs. “I looked and looked for you and now I found you!”

  Prying the little girl’s arms away, Emma squatted down. “Esther, what are you doing here? And where is”—she looked toward the road—“Annie or Sarah or whoever you’re with?”

  “It is just me! Annie and Sarah are home with Mamm.”

  She sucked in a breath. “Esther! You are not to come so far by yourself!”

  “But I had to share my school cookie with you!” Esther opened her hand to reveal a crumbled cookie half and then slid her attention off Emma and onto Brad. “Hi! What’s your name? Are you Emma’s friend?”

  “My name is Brad and I’m Emma’s—”

  Grabbing hold of Esther’s free hand, Emma stood, her face warm. “Every morning, I-I put two cookies in Esther’s lunch pail for her to eat. But each day, she brings half of one back home to me.”

  “It is a very good cookie,” Esther said, her expression earnest. “Here, Emma. Eat it.”

  “Okay, okay.” She took the cookie, offered some to Brad, and, when he declined, popped it into her mouth. “Mmm . . .”

  Satisfied, Esther wiggled free and ran to the rock. “Emma, look! It is like a store!”

  She followed the tip of the child’s finger to the now empty bag and the contents she’d lined up in a row beside it. Before she could think, let alone speak, Esther scooped up the bubble wand and gazed up at Brad. “Did you bring bubbles, too? ’Cause I love bubbles!”

  “No! He didn’t.” Mouthing an apology across the top of her sister’s head, Emma gathered up all of the gifts, stuffed them inside the bag, and handed it to Brad. “I need to get her back to the farm. She’s too little to be out here alone.”

  He looked from Esther, to the bag, and, finally, back at Emma. “But we have more to go through, more to talk about.”

  “I know. And we will. Tomorrow.”

  Chapter 11

  She allowed Esther one final wave at the shiny black truck and then captured the little girl’s hand inside her own. “Come now, Esther. It is time to get you home. Mamm will be worried if she discovers you are not in the barn.”

  “You are not in the barn.”

  “I’m older than you are. I don’t have to be in the barn.”

  The crunch of gravel beneath Esther’s feet slowed as she looked over her shoulder and then back up at Emma. “Is that man your friend, Emma?”

  “No, he’s . . .” She squeezed her eyes closed, silently counted to ten, and then opened them to find the five-year-old staring up at her, mouth agape. “He is just someone I am getting to know—someone I should have known long before now.”

  “Can I know him, too?”

  “Perhaps. Maybe. I-I don’t know.” Desperate for a change in topic, Emma pointed at the Weavers’ horse rooting around the dormant field and worked to infuse a lightness into her voice that she didn’t feel. “Now, is that one Dolly or is that one Molly?”

  Esther’s gaze followed Emma’s to the upcoming fence line and the solitary mare. “That is Molly.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Esther tugged her hand free and ran over to the fence, her finger pointing. “See her eyes? She has black in the middle. Dolly doesn’t have black. Only brown. Like the man’s horse.”

  “What man’s horse?” she asked, motioning her sister back to the road for the final stretch of their walk.

  “The man you are getting to know.”

  She stopped, mid-step, as Esther ran back to her side. “Brad does not have a horse,” Emma corrected. “He has a truck.”

  “It was on the rock! It was brown, like Dolly.”

  And then she knew. Esther was talking about Sugar, the stuffed horse Brad had left at Ruby’s gravesite on Emma’s tenth birthday. Scanning the Weavers’ field to the left, she searched for yet another way to distract Esther, but before she could settle on something, Esther began hopping up and down.

  “He drawed a heart on a rock.”

  “Drew,” she corrected as her own thoughts returned to the pond and the present she’d found on her fourteenth birthday.

  “Why did he drew on a rock?”

  Leaning down, Emma tapped her sister on the nose. “Actually, that time it’s draw. And I don’t know why. You showed up just as we were getting to the—”

  “He had a red ball that was very dirty!”

  “It wasn’t dirty,” Emma protested. “It is just old, and someone wrote on it.”

  Emma pulled a face. “Balls are for throwing, Emma. And rocks are for touching. Paper is for writing.”

  “That is true. But I am sure there is a reason. We just didn’t get to those things yet.” She held out her hand and, when Esther took it, began walking again. “Why did you leave the farm, Esther? You know you are not supposed to do that.”

  “I had to share my cookie. But you were not there to share it.”

  “That’s right, I wasn’t.”

  “But you’re always home to share my cookie, Emma.”

  “I know, sweetie, but things are different now.”

  Esther peered up at Emma. “Why? Don’t you like sharing cookies with me anymore?”

  “Of course I do. I-I love sharing cookies with you. But, well, I need to figure out some things is all and—”

  “I can help you, Emma! I am learning lots of things at school! Watch!” Esther pulled her hand free and hurried into Emma’s path. “A, B, C, D, E, F, G . . .”

  Emma grinned. “Come on, what’s next?”

  Esther tapped her chin, once, twice, and then squealed. “H! I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P!”

  “Very good, Esther!” Emma clapped her hands and then squatted down for a big hug. When Esther stepped into her arms, she lingered a kiss against the little girl’s kapp. “That’s four more letters than last week! You will know the whole alphabet soon!”

  “When I do, I can help you figure out things!”

  Oh how she wished it were that simple. If it were, maybe she wouldn’t feel so alone, so unsettled.

  “Mamm’s eyes look like that, too,” Esther said, pointing at Emma’s face.

  “Like what?”

  “Sad.”

  She fought against the familiar worry trying to gain a foothold in her heart and made herself shrug, instead. “No, my birthday is over, sweetie. Mamm only gets sad on my birthday. You’ll get used to it. I certainly did.”

  “Mamm made me wet here.” Esther reached into her shoulder through
the open neckline of her black coat. “But I got dry before I came to find you with your cookie.”

  “Slow down a minute. Mamm made you wet?”

  “Yah. She hugged me like this”—Esther wrapped her arms around herself and then dropped them to her side—“and her tears got me wet.”

  Emma drew back. “Mamm was crying?”

  “Yah.”

  “Why?”

  Esther’s little shoulders slumped beneath her coat. “I don’t know. Maybe her tummy hurts.”

  Or maybe she is worried she will be shunned for her lies . . .

  Standing, she reached for Esther’s hand again. “Maybe. Now come on, sweetie, it’s time I get you home.”

  * * *

  They were just passing the barn when the bang of the farmhouse door pulled Emma’s gaze off the baby calf she and Esther were laughing about and fixed it on the woman hurrying down the porch steps.

  It was a sight she’d seen many times during her life, yet suddenly nothing about it was the same. Now, instead of thinking Mamm, she thought Rebeccah and liar. And now, instead of hurrying her own feet in response, she stopped, tightened her hold on Esther, and fisted her free hand at her side.

  “Esther Lapp, where have you been, child? Annie is searching the fields looking for you, and I sent Sarah to the Troyers’ to see if you’d chased a barn cat onto their farm.” Mamm’s brown eyes bore into Esther’s before lifting upward to meet Emma’s. “Emma? Was she with you?”

  “She found me.” Emma lifted Esther’s focus off the ground and back to her face as it had been off and on for most of their walk home. “Go on. Tell her.”

  Toeing the ground, the five-year-old stepped closer to Emma, her cheeks red with shame. “I . . . went to . . . the pond. To find Emma.”

  “Esther Lapp!”

  “I always give her the rest of my cookie,” Esther protested, her voice shaky. “Emma was not in the house or the barn. I founded her at the pond.”

  Emma squeezed the little girl’s hand, gently. “Found.”

  “Found,” Esther corrected.

  Uncertainty guided the woman’s gaze back to Emma. “Were you at the pond alone?”

  Esther brightened. “I said hi to her friend, Mamm! He said hi, too!”

  When Esther pulled her hand from Emma’s, Emma folded her arms and nodded. “That’s right. She met Brad. My real—”

  “Esther, you are to go inside. I need to talk—”

  “His horse looks like Dolly, Mamm!”

  Surprise propelled the woman back a step. “The Englisher has a horse?”

  Giggling, Esther shook her head. Hard. “Not a real horse, Mamm. A toy! And he had a red ball, too! A dirty one. But Emma said it is not dirty. She said someone writed things on it. Isn’t that silly, Mamm?”

  Emma opened her mouth to correct her sister’s grammar but let it go as the little girl began to hop up and down. “He had lots of toys, Mamm! And he isn’t little, like me. He is great big like Dat!”

  “Toys?” Rebeccah echoed.

  “Yah. The ones he”—Emma pointed toward the bearded and hatted man in the farthest field they could see—“did not throw away. The ones I got to first.”

  Esther stopped hopping. “Dat?”

  Squatting down, Emma redirected Esther’s attention toward the eight-year-old walking across the dirt, searching. “You know what? You should go tell Annie that you are home so she can stop looking for you. Then go with her to the Troyers’ to tell Sarah. I think they have spent enough time looking for you, wouldn’t you say?”

  Shame reddened Esther’s cheeks once again. “Yah.”

  “Good. Now go.”

  Emma watched the little girl run across the driveway and into the field, Esther’s kapp strings flopping against her tiny shoulders. When she was certain Annie saw Esther, she stood and turned back to Rebeccah. “Ever since I was seven, I have gone to the cemetery before breakfast. That first year, I did it because I wanted to make the day better for you and for”—again she gestured toward the far field—“him. I knew I could not stop your tears for the sister you lost, but I thought I could keep Dat from getting angry. I tried to throw the trinket away, but I could not. It made me happy, the way someone should be on their birthday—the way Jakob, Annie, Sarah, Jonathan, and Esther could be because your sister did not die on their special day. So I kept it in a bag in a special place, and I added to it each year.”

  “You should not have kept such things!”

  “Why? They weren’t for you or Dat. They weren’t for Ruby, either. They were for me. Me!” She narrowed her eyes until she couldn’t see Annie, Esther, the fields, or anything else beyond the pale-faced woman standing just inches away. “Brad thought I died with Ruby. No, he was told I died with Ruby. By you! Those things he left on the grave weren’t for Ruby. They were for me. For my birthday.”

  She jerked back at the feel of Rebeccah’s hand on hers. “Don’t!”

  “Emma, please. There are things Dat and I want to—”

  “You mean him?” She pointed at the far field, once again. “Because that’s not my dat. Brad is my dat. Or should I say father since he is English?”

  “Emma, I know you’re upset. But if you would just talk to me, to us, we—”

  “Perhaps that is something you should have done many years ago.”

  “Emma—”

  “What is there to say? That I should not go to Bishop King? That you did not mean to lie to me and to my birth father? That you and Wayne did not pretend to be my . . .” The squeak of the barn door stole the rest of her words and sent her gaze racing toward the barn in time to see Jonathan walking toward them, cradling something in the crook of his arm.

  “Emma! Mamm! Look what I found near Mini’s water pail.”

  She held Rebeccah’s wary eyes for several beats and then found the smile the twelve-year-old sought as he stopped at Emma’s elbow. Leaning forward, she patted his sleeve down just enough to afford a clear view of the tiny mound of white and gray matted fur. “Oooh, I see Bean had her babies . . .”

  “She did. There’s four more next to the water pail, too.”

  “And Bean?” Emma prodded.

  “She’s already licking them,” Jonathan declared.

  “Then you probably should get this one back before the new mamma gets upset.” Emma stroked the tiny kitten between the ears. “I’ll bring Esther in to see the new additions when she gets back with Annie and Sarah.”

  Jonathan’s eyes disappeared beneath the rim of his hat only to reappear as he gazed back up at Emma. “Aren’t you going to say it?”

  She knew what he was asking. And why wouldn’t he? She’d been greeting every newcomer to the barn the same way since before Jonathan was even born . . .

  Not wanting to disappoint, she leaned across her brother’s arm and planted a soft kiss atop the newborn kitten’s head. “Welcome to your home, little one.”

  “That’s not how you say it,” Jonathan admonished as he headed back toward the barn. “You say, ‘Welcome home.’ Not ‘Welcome to your home.’ ”

  When he was safely out of earshot, she turned back to Rebeccah. “Soon we must tell them.”

  “Them?”

  “The children.”

  “Emma, I—”

  “They should know what I did not. They should know that this was never meant to be my home.” Sidestepping her way around the woman she’d once believed to be her mamm, Emma willed her stoicism to remain as she gave voice to the last of her new truths. “And that I was never meant to be their sister.”

  Chapter 12

  “I’m sorry that took so long, Emma.” Sue Ellen deposited the phone into its base and quietly folded her arms across the top of her meticulously kept desk. “My job with your father is full of peaks and valleys.”

  Emma stilled her fidgeting fingers. “You are to climb sometimes?”

  “Climb? No, I . . .” A knowing smile crept across the sixty-something’s face. “ ‘Peaks and valleys’ is an expression,
dear. It means there are moments when I sit here twiddling my thumbs. And other times, I have customers in the office, suppliers on the phone, and contractors coming in and out, asking me this, that, and the other.

  “Case in point, I was actually getting in a little reading not more than five minutes before you got here. But the second I noticed the door opening, the same supplier I’ve been trying to reach since yesterday afternoon finally decides to return my call.”

  “That’s okay.” Emma smoothed a small wrinkle from her lap and then pointed toward the open office behind Sue Ellen. “He’s not here?”

  “He had to step out for a little bit, but he won’t be long. You can wait at his desk if you’d like.”

  She studied what she could see of Brad’s office from her seat—the large desk, the fancy chair, the bookshelves filled with books and framed pictures—and shook her head. “No. If it is okay, I would like to sit here. I will not be a bother.”

  “You’re not a bother, sweetheart! In fact, you’re a breath of fresh air on an otherwise dreary, sunless day.” Sue Ellen pushed back her chair, stood, and came around the desk, her pale green eyes narrowed on Emma. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “No thank you. I will just wait.”

  “If you change your mind, let me know.” The woman wandered over to the row of framed photographs that had claimed Emma’s attention during her phone call. “Your father is a good man, Emma. A hard worker. Built this company by himself. From the ground up. And it’s only been six years.”

  Inching forward, Emma pointed to the center picture. “Why do so many people smile as he cuts a ribbon?”

  “That was the ribbon cutting ceremony that started all of this.” Sue Ellen splayed her hands. “It was the start of Harper Construction as you see it today. This building, the crews, my job, all of it. Now, there are Harper houses sprinkled all over Lancaster County, and we’re getting ready to break ground on our first full-blown Harper neighborhood. It’s all very exciting, Emma. And you’re part of it now.”