A Daughter's Truth

by Laura Bradford

  Instead, she stepped forward, waved at the driver she couldn’t quite see yet, and waited as the car hurried to a stop on the opposite side of the country road. When the window lowered to reveal the expected face, Emma crossed the finely graveled road to the driver’s door.

  “Thank you for coming. I hope it is not a bother.”

  Delia’s hand shot through the opening to grab Emma’s. “If you had seen my face when I got your call, dear, you would know just how much of a non-bother this is.” Then, with her soft blue eyes searching Emma’s, she squeezed. “Are you okay?”

  Shrugging, she pointed at the other side of the car and, at Delia’s emphatic nod, looped around the front and slid into the passenger seat. When she was settled, with the seat belt fastened across her shoulder, she gave into a sigh. “It is all too much to think about. This who is and who is not my family stuff. I don’t know what to think, and when I do think, I do not like the anger that I feel.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Delia asked.

  Did she? She wasn’t sure.

  So much had changed. Who she was . . . Where she came from . . . Where she belonged . . . But somehow, amid all that change, she wanted, no needed, to feel as if something—some aspect of herself—was still the same. Yet there she was, sitting in a car with her newly discovered English grossmudder. How could anything ever be the same again?

  Aware of a burning in her eyes, Emma turned and looked out her window, the fields she’d glimpsed from this spot nearly every day of her school years soothing her heart with the kind of familiarity she felt every time she—

  Emma sat up tall, her focus skipping back to Delia. “Could . . . could we bake together?”

  Delia drew back only to have her whole face lift with a smile. “Oh, Emma, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.” Placing her hand on the gearshift, the woman divided her attention between the road and Emma. “Do you want to teach me something you like to bake, and I’ll teach you something I like to bake?”

  “Yah!”

  “Then let’s head to the store, shall we?” At Emma’s emphatic nod, Delia closed her window against the chilly day, made a U-turn back in the direction she’d come, and let loose a happy squeal. “From the moment Michelle was old enough to hold a spoon I tried to cultivate a love of cooking and baking in that child. She always liked to watch, always liked to be nearby for any extra chocolate chips or blueberries that didn’t make it into the cookies or muffins I was baking. But beyond that, she’s never had any interest in recipes and actually baking. So this is going to be a real grandma-dream-come-true for me.”

  She sensed the Amish fields giving way to property and houses owned by the English to her right and left, but all she could really see was the dough they’d soon be making from the generations’ old recipe she’d tweaked and changed until it was her own. “Where do you get your recipes?” Emma asked on a whim.

  “All sorts of places. Magazines. Online recipe sites. Friends. Family. If it has ingredients I like, I’ll give it a whirl.” Delia turned right at the first traffic light and continued. “Many of our favorite recipes have come about that way. How about you? Where do you get your recipes?”

  “Some have been handed down from my mamm and my grossmudder. But they do not stay the same.”

  Delia stopped at the next light and peered at Emma. “Meaning?”

  “The recipes are good as they are—they have fed many mouths for many years. But I like to change them. Sometimes the change is little—like a bit more salt, or a splash of vanilla where there was none. But sometimes, in changing little things, I find that I can change even more. When I am done, it is no longer someone else’s recipe. It is mine.”

  “And the change?” Delia prodded. “Is it well received?”

  The last of the tension she’d been harboring in her shoulders faded away as she rested her head against the seatback. “Plates are always empty and tummies are always full when I make something new. Even Esther’s.”

  “Esther is the youngest, correct?”

  Emma smiled as an image of the little girl popped—fully formed—into her thoughts. “Yah.”

  “You two are close, aren’t you? I can see it in your face and hear it in your voice every time you say her name.”

  It was something she’d never really thought about, yet the reason for that closeness was really quite simple. “With Esther, I do not have to try to change,” she said. “I can be me.”

  “You can’t be you with the other children?”

  Emma felt the car slow in advance of the turn into the grocery store’s parking lot and let her gaze travel ahead while her thoughts stayed with Delia’s question. “I love them all, but there is something special with Esther. It is why I am most afraid to tell her about all of this.”

  “Will that be soon?” Delia asked as she pulled into a parking spot not far from the market’s door.

  “It must be, even if Mamm does not agree.”

  An audible inhale from behind the steering wheel pulled Emma’s gaze back onto Delia. “I don’t think Rebeccah is in any position to argue anything with you right now, dear.”

  “Right now, it is just me who knows of Mamm and Dat’s lie.” Emma returned her chin, if not her thoughts, back toward the window. “I do not think she wants the others to know. But I do not want to tell lies the way she does.”

  Delia’s answering smile held no sign of humor. “Trust me, sweet Emma, Rebeccah has far bigger worries on the horizon than what those children know, I can promise you that.”

  Desperate to reclaim the lightness she’d felt not more than five minutes earlier, Emma unlatched the seat belt and wrapped her fingers around the door handle. “Could we go inside? I just want to think about baking, if that is okay?”

  “Of course. You’re right.” Delia pulled her keys from the ignition, tucked them into her purse, and opened her own door. “Let’s leave the unpleasantness to those who created it and go have some fun, shall we?”

  * * *

  With little more than a few finger points at two or three cabinets, Emma moved around Delia’s kitchen with ease, gathering requested ingredients for Delia’s favorite recipe and familiarizing herself with the many English trappings available to Emma in making her own. When everything they needed was assembled across the top of the counter, Delia nudged her chin at a red-capped bottle.

  “I’ve never made apple cinnamon bread before,” Delia said, tying her apron into place.

  “We are to make white bread. The cinnamon and apples are for the apple butter we will put on the bread.”

  Delia brought her hands together with a quick clap. “I love apple butter! But I’ve always heard it’s very labor intensive, no?”

  “Not with that”—Emma pointed at the slow cooker she’d found on Delia’s shelf of pots and pans. “It will still take many hours, but it will be delicious with the bread.” After little more than a brief hesitation, she, too, tied one of Delia’s aprons across her dress. “At home, it must sit on the stove for a long time, with much stirring.”

  Ingredient by ingredient, they created the simple dough for Emma’s bread. While it rose in its bowl by the kitchen window, they sliced apples and chatted. When the apple butter was turned over to time, they punched and kneaded the dough and then left it to rise once again.

  As it did, they moved on to Delia’s recipe—a white chocolate pastry puff that required whisking, melting, and occasional samples enjoyed off the edge of mixing spoons and fingertips. When Emma suggested melting some dark chocolate to drizzle across the top, Delia grinned.

  “You remind me of her right now,” Delia said as she scooped up the latest dirty bowl and carried it over to the sink.

  Emma gathered up the used mixing spoons and followed. “Who?”

  “Ruby.” Delia squeezed a drop of dishwashing soap into the bowl and turned on the water. “Your mother. She was just like you are now whenever I’d catch her drawing during a visit.”

  Intrigued, Emma
set the spoons into the bowl and waited for more. Delia didn’t disappoint.

  “You’ve been floating around this kitchen since the moment we unpacked the groceries from the store. And once we actually started, that joy you told me you feel when you bake was every bit as tangible as that bonnet.”

  “It is a prayer kapp,” Emma corrected quietly. “I like to bake. It makes me happy.”

  “I can see that. And that’s what drawing did for your mother.”

  Emma picked up a dishcloth to Delia’s sponge and waited to dry the first of many things they had dirtied. “Do you mean the drawings she did of houses?”

  “I do.”

  “That was not just for my . . . father?”

  “The drawings?” At Emma’s nod, Delia handed her the first bowl and moved on to the next. “The first house she drew was for herself—so she could get a better idea of Brad’s dream to build homes. But as he talked about different features he wanted to do and different looks he wanted to create both inside and outside, she really seemed to enjoy drafting new versions. Soon, it became apparent she had the kind of ability that made her a natural for a career in architecture.

  “Next thing I knew, they were planning their one-day business, with Ruby as the architect, and Brad as the builder. They even came up with a name for their business.”

  Emma stopped drying. “What was it?”

  A sad smile tugged at the corner of Delia’s mouth as she scrubbed at a spot near the bottom of the bowl. “Imagine Homes.”

  Before she could ask why, Delia continued, the woman’s voice almost wistful. “They used to say that to each other. He’d say something like, imagine a fireplace with a long, narrow window on each side.... Or she’d say something like, imagine a house built around a flower garden. Sometimes the things they’d throw out would get them laughing, and sometimes it would have Ruby reaching for paper and a pencil while Brad talked the idea through into something workable.

  “Believe it or not, even as young as the two of them were at the time, they really had some great ideas. So much so, I truly believed Imagine Homes would exist one day, with Ruby drawing the designs, and Brad making them come to life all over this town.”

  “But he did not call his company Imagine Homes,” Emma said, swapping the now dry bowl for the next wet one. “It is Harper Construction.”

  Delia reached for the pile of spoons but stopped and shut off the water instead. “He did that at my suggestion. I wanted him to look forward, instead of backward. To really embrace this venture as his own. Though, even with the name change, he still made sure Ruby was part of it even if he’s the only one who ever actually sees it.”

  “A part of the company?” At Delia’s emphatic nod, Emma lowered the partially dried bowl back to the counter. “But how? She is dead.”

  Delia wiped her hands across the front of her apron and reached for Emma, her eyes sparkling. “Come. I have something very special to show you.”

  Chapter 20

  Sitting on the couch, waiting, it was hard to look at anything besides the photograph of a young Brad and Ruby on the way to the carnival. Sure, she saw snippets of herself in Brad’s hair and eyes, and Ruby’s everything else, but that’s where the connection ended. In fact, if not for a handful of lunches and a single family-style dinner, the curly haired boy with the ear-to-ear grin would be as much of a stranger to Emma as the girl smiling warmly at his side.

  “I’m sorry that took so long, Emma,” Delia said, breezing into the room with a burgundy-colored folder in one hand, and a dark brown leather book in the other. “It seems I need to move clean office a smidge higher on my to-do list for this week and—”

  Delia’s gaze landed on Emma’s face, quickening her steps to the couch as it did. “Emma? Is something wrong? You look a little . . . upset.”

  “I do not mean to be upset,” she said, looking between Delia and the mantel, her voice barely more than a rasp. “It is just that . . . I don’t know what to feel.”

  Depositing the folder and book onto the coffee table, Delia sat down and draped her arm across Emma’s shoulders. “Oh, sweetie, this is time to be happy! You’ve found us and we’ve found you! It’s an answer to many, many prayers!”

  “I did not say such prayers.”

  “That’s because you didn’t know. Those people kept us from you and you from us.”

  Those people.

  Mamm and Dat.

  Only they weren’t really—

  Shaking off the troubling thought, Emma lifted her finger and Delia’s attention back to the picture. “I do not know them. They are strangers to me. But I would not be sitting here without them.”

  “Brad isn’t a stranger anymore, Emma.” Delia hooked her finger beneath Emma’s chin and guided Emma’s gaze back to hers. “Little by little, the two of you—and all of us—are going to build something very special, I just know it.”

  “Yah.”

  Delia watched her for a few moments and then reclaimed the brown book from its temporary resting spot on the coffee table. “Brad told me the two of you have been working your way through the little memories he’s been leaving at the gravesite each year, yes?”

  “There are six more I still do not know.”

  “And when he gets home tonight, maybe you two can rectify that. Or, better yet, once tomorrow is behind you both.”

  “Tomorrow?” Emma echoed. “Do you mean this man I am to talk to?”

  “Nicholas. Yes.”

  “I do not know why I must speak to him.”

  “Because he has to know everything as it happened. He needs facts.”

  “But I can speak to Bishop King alone. When I do, our community will shun them,” she said, her voice rising. “I will tell him as soon as the children have been told. Backs will be turned to them until they repent!”

  “Backs will be turned to them?” Delia cupped her mouth only to let her hand fall back to the still-closed book. “That isn’t enough, Emma.”

  “It is awful to be shunned! Your friends and your family cannot look at you, or speak to you! And if they do, they can be shunned, too!” Emma turned toward Delia, her knees scraping against the coffee table. “My friend, Mary? Her uncle Barley was shunned once for using electricity inside his home. Mary could not speak to him or look at him for weeks.”

  Delia started to speak, stopped, and, after several long moments of silence, tapped the cover of the book. “The other day, when you saw that”—she pointed to the picture on the mantel—“you asked if I had more pictures of Ruby. Perhaps you would like to see them before we get to the reason I brought you into this room in the first place?”

  “There are more? In there?”

  “There are, indeed.” Her smile back in place, Delia opened the book to the first page, her fingers immediately moving to the edge of the first photograph—a picture of a tired house Emma found vaguely familiar. “This is the house Brad was helping repair when he met Ruby for the first time. So, when I suggested putting all his pictures into an album he could look at whenever he was missing Ruby, he said it had to start with this one.”

  Emma studied the front porch . . . the front windows . . . the dilapidated looking house . . . the—“Wait! I know this house! It is different now. It has fresh paint and the porch is not lopsided like this. And that woman”—she pointed to the person standing on the porch, peering out—“does not live there now. Miss Lottie does!”

  “Is she Amish?”

  “No. Well, I mean, she was raised by Amish, but she did not join the church. I think she said she moved into this house when I was a little younger than Esther.” She leaned in for a closer look, her mind’s eye replacing the house in front of her with the tidy cottage she’d sat in just two days earlier. “She is kin to the Beilers and she is very wise.”

  Delia turned the page, her own soft inhale barely noticeable against Emma’s. “He borrowed my camera the first time he went to the ice cream shop because he wanted to take a picture of Ruby for me to see.”r />
  “I know this shop! It is still there!” At Delia’s nod, Emma pulled the book partially onto her own lap to get a closer look. “This picture? It is when Ruby came outside at the end of the night, isn’t it?”

  “Brad told you . . .”

  “Yah. He told me he waited for two hours for her work to be done. He is right,” she said, studying the picture. “Ruby was surprised to see him when she came out. Her eyes are very big like Mamm’s get when she is surprised, but there is a smile there, too.”

  “There’s more.”

  Page by page, they made their way through the album, the images Brad had recorded matching many of the stories he had shared. But as much as she enjoyed having the visual to go with the story, it was the faces, themselves, that held her attention most.

  “I realized, the other night, after you left, that we didn’t take any pictures. I guess we were all so in the moment, none of us thought of grabbing a camera.” Delia relinquished her hold on the edge of the album long enough to squeeze Emma’s hand. “We’ll have to rectify that so we can start a new album—one with you and your father . . . and me, too.”

  Emma drew back. “I do not take pictures. The Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not make unto thyself a graven image.’ It is the Amish way.”

  “Ruby took pictures,” Delia said, sweeping her hand back to the album.

  “Ruby had not been baptized yet. I am.” Emma swung her gaze between the photo in the album and the one on the mantel and then released a quiet sigh. “I should not even be looking at these pictures.”

  “Every child has a right to know their parents, dear. Since Ruby is gone, these pictures are your way to know her.”

  She knew she should argue, but she couldn’t. Delia was right. She needed to know. To see. And who would punish her for looking, anyway? Mamm and Dat?

  Leaning forward, she nodded at Delia to continue, and, once again, she soaked up everything the woman had to say about each and every picture. When they got to a picture of her birth parents sitting in a field surrounded by white fluffy dandelions, she looked up to find Delia watching her. “Did you take this picture?” Emma asked.