by Beth Wiseman
Charlotte scribbled her name on the guardianship paperwork, then stood up. “They’re my family,” she said in a shaky voice before she turned to leave.
“Charlotte . . .”
She turned around. Glenda was standing now. “Don’t you want to see your mother? She’s in a different room today.”
Charlotte looked past the woman and out the window that faced a courtyard filled with colorful potted plants and two chairs. “Not today,” she said before she turned and left.
Guilt nipped at her as she walked out of the building, but this entire thing with Janell was going to require baby steps, and today Charlotte had inched forward as much as she could.
When she got back to the King place, she saw Amos working the mules in the field. She hurried to the gate that separated the pasture from the front yard, then ran to where he was working. She bent at the waist, out of breath, as she waited for Amos to step down from the plow.
“Child, what is it?” Amos touched her on the arm, the first physical contact she’d had with him. “Tell me now. What is wrong? Is it Hannah? Lena?”
Charlotte straightened, and he dropped his hand to his side, his eyes wide and questioning.
“All I’ve wanted is for you to love me,” she choked out. “To be the father I never had.” She flung her arms in the air as tears streamed down her cheeks. “And most of the time, I don’t even think you like me, and you surely haven’t forgiven me. I appreciate you letting me use the truck, but I also know it was to help Annie. So . . . so I don’t understand why you’ve gifted my mother with this random act of kindness, a woman you don’t even know . . . who probably isn’t worthy of your help any more than I’m worthy of your love.”
Amos’s eyes glazed over as he stared at her. “Is this what you think?” His voice was gravelly. He stepped closer to her, blinking his eyes a few times. After clearing his throat, he reached into his pocket and handed Charlotte an envelope that was folded in half. “This was in Jacob’s room. Lena found it when she was stripping his bed. Jacob must have brought it from your apartment when he returned, unless you dropped it in there.” He stroked his beard. “We read that you had been evicted from your apartment. I was only trying to help you with your mother since I supposed you had come upon hard times.”
Charlotte cried harder. “Amos, I have no way to pay you back. I’m broke. My life is in shambles. My mother, who I haven’t seen in ten years, has resurfaced, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.” She bent at the waist again, trying to calm her breathing. “Some days I feel stronger, just being here with all of you, but Amos . . .” She tried to breathe. “I’m not just broke . . . I’m broken.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how to pay you back for this.”
Amos opened his mouth to speak, but his bottom lip trembled. He cleared his throat again. “What you did . . .” He stopped speaking and stared at Charlotte. She held her breath and waited for Amos to write her off, to tell her the lies would not be forgiven, no matter her reasons, that he was only paying her mother’s expenses because it was right in the eyes of the Lord.
“What you did”—he began again, his voice cracking—“for Lena.” He hung his head, then finally looked at her with tears in his eyes. “I do not know how I could go on without my Lena. What you did for her . . . I can never repay.”
Charlotte ran into his arms, and after a few moments, Amos embraced her too.
“I need you to forgive me,” Charlotte said through her tears. “I need—”
“Hush, hush now, child.” Amos kissed the top of Charlotte’s head. “I was slower to forgive than the others, I admit. But I forgave you a long time ago. And what you did for Lena . . . you and her Englisch doctors . . . letting her stay with you, carting her to the hospital . . . such kindnesses I can’t repay—” His voice broke again, and Charlotte hugged him tighter. “Helping your mudder is a small thing compared to what you did for Lena. It is easy to throw money at a problem. It’s not as easy to do what you did. Lena told me about you holding her hair the times she was sick, about holding her hand each time she met with the doctors for more news about the cancer. There is no price tag for that.”
“There will never be a need to repay me. I love you and Lena. And Hannah and Jacob. I love you all.” Charlotte felt like she couldn’t tell him enough.
“And we all love you, maedel.”
In that moment, Charlotte wept as if purging herself of all the heavy baggage she’d been carting around.
“Charlotte . . .”
She stayed in his arms. Don’t stop hugging me just yet.
“Your Father in heaven has not forsaken you, and He will guide your steps, but I would be honored to be your father during your time here on this earth.”
Charlotte squeezed him tighter around the waist, not ready to let go.
Annie was fuming by Thursday afternoon. No call from Jacob since Monday. She’d called the hotel and asked them to ring his room, but the call never went through, despite her repeated attempts. She’d also redialed the number he had called her from on Monday, but no answer. She had her phone on vibrate in her apron pocket, which had become its permanent home, much to her father’s dislike. She paced around the house alone. Her parents had hired a driver to take them to Mamm’s doctor appointment. This was her father’s first visit to the Englisch doctor. The nurse had recommended he go, since they were doing an ultrasound to make sure everything was okay. Charlotte had offered to drive them to town, but Daed didn’t think Mamm should ride in that “rickety clunker” as he’d called it.
Annie’s only job for the day was to bake two loaves of bread and whip up a chicken casserole for supper, and she hadn’t started either project. She stopped pacing when she heard a buggy coming up the driveway.
She peered through the front window. Ugh. She wasn’t in the mood for Edna today.
“Hello, Edna,” Annie said when she opened the door.
Edna held up a wicker basket covered with a dark blue towel. “I made way too many cookies for just John and me, and I remembered how much Daniel enjoys my peanut butter cookies.”
“Danki, do you want to come in for a while? I’m the only one home.” Please say no. Annie was much too distracted about Jacob, she hadn’t done her chores, and Edna’s visits were always a fishing trip. Annie wondered what information Edna was in search of today. The woman had tried to be Annie’s best friend when she was dating Daniel.
“Ya, that would be nice. It gets lonely at our farm when John is at work.” Edna handed the basket to Annie, then they went to the kitchen. Annie offered Edna some coffee and put out a cookie for each of them before they sat down.
“Maybe it’s time to start a family,” Annie said before taking a bite.
Edna bit into her cookie but didn’t look at Annie. “Ya, ya.” After she’d taken a sip of coffee, she said, “So I hear Charlotte is in town again. I hope it’s not to torment the Kings again.” She shook her head.
Annie’s mood was just bad enough to unload on Edna if the woman wasn’t careful. “The Kings love Charlotte. And I’m pretty sure something is going on between Daniel and Charlotte.” Annie smiled before taking another bite of the cookie.
“That seems unlikely. Charlotte isn’t Daniel’s type.”
“Why not? She’s beautiful and smart.”
Edna put her cookie down on the napkin. “She’s not Amish, for starters. And have you forgotten all the lies she told when she was pretending to be Amish? She’s not a gut person.”
“Charlotte is a great person, and we’ve all forgiven her for that. What she did was wrong, but she wanted to know why her brother ended his life.” She was fueling Edna’s emotions, but Edna had hurt Daniel when she stopped dating him, and that hadn’t sat well with Annie.
Edna shook her head. “I don’t trust her.”
Annie shoved in the last bite of her cookie. And I don’t trust you. “Ach, well . . . you’ll have plenty of opportunities to get to know her better. She’s been living with the Kings, but
she’s decided not to sell Ethan’s house. Instead, she’s going to live there, so this is truly a permanent arrangement for her.”
Edna choked on her bite of cookie and covered her mouth.
It was a week later before Charlotte was ready to visit Janell. She parked Big Red, which she’d grown accustomed to driving, and baby-stepped all the way to the entrance of the rehabilitation center. After she’d verified what room Janell was in, she walked the long hallway, pausing at room 245 before she walked in. Her mother was lightly snoring. Charlotte walked to the edge of the bed and stared at her. With the exception of being clean, Janell didn’t look much different from when Charlotte found her. Maybe a little more color in her face, but she still had dark circles underneath her eyes, and the sores on her face looked red and irritated.
Charlotte took a step backward and sat in a nearby chair, wondering if anyone in Janell’s life was looking for her. Does she have any friends, anyone who cares what happens to her? Charlotte would have picked up an animal on the side of the street and taken it to a vet if need be. This felt shamefully the same to her. She was having trouble finding compassion amid all the dark memories that had bubbled to the surface. But this woman had given birth to her. It was all in God’s plan. Charlotte was trying, and for now, that was all she could do.
Janell opened her eyes and blinked them into focus. “I wondered if you’d come.” She spit the words at Charlotte while keeping her face void of any expression.
“Well, I did.”
“You didn’t have to. I did without you for ten years, so I reckon I could keep on doing it.” She reached for a glass of water and moved the straw to her mouth.
Janell wasn’t slurring her words like she was over-medicated or anything. She was just plain mean. “Uh, you say that like it’s my fault.”
Janell set the glass of water on the tray by her hospital bed. “Well, ain’t it?”
Charlotte tapped her foot against the tile floor, slow at first, then faster, as if she was winding herself up to sprint from the room when the time came. “Sure, Janell. I guess it was my fault.” Charlotte felt childish for mocking her mother’s attitude, but shouldn’t there be some tiny bit of appreciation?
“Don’t you get smart with me, young lady.” Janell pressed what was left of her teeth together, sneering at Charlotte.
“Everything okay in here?” A nurse walked into the room, raised an eyebrow, and walked to the side of the bed. She looked about Janell’s age. “Is this the daughter you were talking about?” The woman extended her hand to Charlotte. “I’m Lorraine. Janell told me she had a daughter that might be visiting.”
Charlotte smiled. “Nice to meet you.”
Janell grunted and rolled her eyes. “That ain’t her. That ain’t the daughter I was talking about.”
Charlotte frowned as she shook her head and locked eyes with Lorraine. “I’m Charlotte, and I’m the only daughter she has.” She paused, then leaned toward the nurse and whispered, “Is she medicated?” Even though her words weren’t slurred, she wasn’t making a lot of sense.
Lorraine glanced at Janell, then back at Charlotte. “No, she’s not on much medication. We’ve been weaning her off of everything.”
“That explains the meanness,” she said under her breath. It just slipped out, and she wished Lorraine hadn’t heard, but it was too late.
Janell grunted loudly. “I told you! What did I tell you, Nurse Lorraine? I said I had one nice daughter and one mean daughter.” She pointed to Charlotte. “And this is the mean one. I felt better when I was staying in Ethan’s house.”
“Janell, we talked about all this,” Lorraine said. “You felt better before because of the drugs, but you don’t need drugs to feel good. We’re going to have you feeling better soon without all those toxins in your body.”
Charlotte was confused. Janell seemed to be half in reality, half in some fantasy land. “Anyway, I just stopped by to see how you were doing. I’ve seen, so I’ll go.” She turned to Lorraine. “Good luck.”
She was almost out the door when Janell yelled, “My other daughter will come to see me.”
“That’s good,” Charlotte said over her shoulder. “Maybe you’ll be nicer to her.”
Lorraine caught Charlotte before she got too far down the hallway, tears already building. “Hon—”
Charlotte stopped but didn’t look at the woman.
“She’s a drug addict, and she’s trying to wean off some bad stuff that she’s been doing for a very long time. Maybe don’t take everything she says to heart.”
Charlotte looked at Lorraine. “I don’t know how to take it any other way. She’s no different than she was.” She reached inside her purse, dug around for her keys, and realized she didn’t have them. “Ugh. I must have left my keys in her room.”
“I’d offer to go get them for you, but that’s me they’re paging.” She held up one finger and an ear toward the ceiling. “Lorraine, station six.” Waving, she hurried down the hallway, and Charlotte slowly marched back to room 245, thinking she liked Janell better when she was drugged out and not making sense.
“I forgot my keys,” she said as she shuffled to where she spotted them on the floor by the chair.
“You hooked up with that Amish fellow that was with you?” Janell was sitting up in bed now, more than before. “Them are some bad people, those weirdos.”
Walk away, don’t engage, walk away. Charlotte took a deep breath. “No, I am not hooked up with that Amish man. He is a friend. And the Amish people are not weirdos.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Janell frowned. “I don’t know.”
Charlotte’s need to stay and defend her Amish friends was strong, but her need to leave was stronger. “Bye, Janell.”
“You know it was an Amish person that snatched Dianda from my arms that day. That horrible woman had no regard for my feelings at all. That awful woman in her Amish getup took you into the store while someone else carried Ethan off kicking and screaming in another direction, peeling their tires as they left. I didn’t get you and Ethan back for two years, but I never did get my baby girl back.”
Charlotte fell into the chair as she dropped her purse beside her and grabbed her chest. The secret I’m keeping from myself. She squeezed her eyes closed as foggy memories slammed into her with the strength and destruction of hurricane winds about to blow a person into oblivion.
“What? You don’t remember that woman snatching you in your little purple dress and dragging you away? You couldn’t have been more than three or four, Ethan maybe five or six. We never spoke about Dianda, our sweet little Andy, as we called her.”
Yes, you did. As Charlotte struggled to stay in the chair, hearing the name Dianda was triggering all kinds of partial memories that wouldn’t come together. She could vaguely recall Ethan asking about Dianda—and getting knocked upside the head for doing so. Time must have been kind to them both and stripped them of the memories.
“Where is she now, Dianda?” Charlotte asked in barely a whisper, the knot in her throat growing so much that Charlotte was sure it was going to cut off her air supply.
“Beats me.” Janell shrugged.
“Then why . . .” Charlotte drew in a long breath and blew it out slowly. “Then why in the world would you think she would show up here for a visit?”
Janell’s bottom lip trembled, and she tried several times to speak before she finally said, “She won’t.” She half smiled as tears poured down her face. “But in my mind, she doesn’t know me.” She paused as she blinked back more tears. “If she doesn’t know me, maybe she can love me. Even though I gave her away.”
Charlotte stared at this woman who birthed her, whose bloodline she shared, and she had no words. She stood up and slowly walked out of the room, but she hadn’t gotten far when she broke into a run. And she ran until she found the chapel.
It was a week later before Charlotte was ready to face the world, including Daniel. She’d spoken to him on the phone, but she’d mostly s
tayed in the comfort of her family’s arms; Hannah, Lena, Amos, and God the Father. Hannah read to Charlotte from the Bible each evening, often elaborating on each verse and what it meant to her. Lena had made sure Charlotte had an unlimited amount of buttered bread and a shoulder to cry on that was always nearby. Amos was reserved, but Charlotte felt his fatherly love in the little things he did for her—like making sure Big Red was safe to drive. He’d installed a rearview mirror and regularly checked the fluids. God the Father had shown her how to forgive. Charlotte had been forgiven time and time again, and now it was her turn to forgive her parents, once and for all, to release that burden to Him.
“Are you sure you’re ready to move? It hasn’t been that long.” Hannah swiped at her eyes, and Charlotte pulled her into a hug.
“It’s not like I’m going back to Texas. I’m just moving a few miles away.” She kissed Hannah on the cheek, then made her way to Lena. “I love you,” she whispered.
And last but never least, she hugged Amos, who was reluctant at first, but he hugged her back. “Give me a call sometimes,” he said, which made everyone laugh since Amos didn’t approve of all the cell phone usage.
Then she leaned down and scooped up Buddy. “You ready to go, little guy?” She nuzzled his face, but when she saw the forlorn expression on Amos’s face, almost as if he might cry, she did the most unselfish thing she could think of as repayment for all Amos had done for her. She handed him Buddy. “Here.”
Amos stood holding the dog with his arms straight out. “What? What are you doing?”
Don’t cry, don’t cry. “I’m going to be busy, Amos, and trying to save my money. I thought you could take care of Buddy now.” She thought about her mother giving away Dianda, and almost snatched Buddy back. But this wasn’t the same thing. Amos finally brought the dog to his chest and smiled. Jacob was gone, at least for now. Hannah would leave in the fall when she married Isaac. The house would seem quiet to Amos and Lena.
Charlotte threw her purse in the passenger seat of Big Red, climbed in, and waved to her family.