“On my way out of town, I had bought a newspaper. A three-year-old child drowning off the coast of Florida was not big news, although there was a brief mention of his disappearance and a paragraph about his brother being found later on that day when a fishing boat had discovered him clinging to a large piece of driftwood.
“As my strength returned, my grief over my illness and faithless fiancé diminished, and I began to regain my emotional stability. By that time, I had landed a job with a good law firm. I knew I could not confess my sin without destroying my future. The way I saw it, there was nothing I could do to make atonement except love the child as my own and give him the best life possible.”
She stopped talking.
He waited. “Is something wrong?”
“Just gathering my thoughts. It seems like I’ve spent my life dreading this moment.”
“Take your time, Mom,” he said. “This is a lot for me to take in, too.”
After a few minutes, she began her story again. “Because I had studied criminal law, I had a great deal of book knowledge about the mechanics of committing crimes in general. I had the legal knowledge necessary to obtain a birth certificate for the child and I applied for a social security number for him. I gave him a name that I thought sounded strong and brave.”
“You named him Logan.”
She nodded. “I named him Logan, after the great Indian chief.”
He wondered if he would ever rid himself of the sickness he felt in his stomach over this terrible tale. Where was the family from whom he had been stolen? Who were they?
“It wasn’t long before I realized that caring for a child was not all giggles and kisses. Little boy Logan needed supervision and constant care. Fortunately, the bit of language he had learned by three years old dissipated under a steady diet of English. It was all he heard, and eventually, it was all he remembered.
“I’ve read that taking away a child’s native tongue also helps take away his memory. This was not something I deliberately did, but I genuinely had no idea what he wanted when he asked me for something in that foreign language. If he used any form of English, I praised him lavishly.
“As he got older, he seemed to have forgotten everything he’d experienced before the age of three. If he mentioned some vague memory, I told him that it had been a dream. When he turned into a man, I braced myself to be accosted with his knowledge of what I had done, but he never did. He had been a good child, and he became a good man.
“I was never a good mother. I tried, but I could never give him what he truly deserved . . . the truth. I also could not give him one other thing he always wanted, a sibling. Sometimes in the beginning, he would cry himself to sleep repeating what sounded like his brothers’ and sisters’ names. He was lonely, and each time that happened, I would hold him, trying to comfort him, and shedding silent tears over what I had done. I loved him, I still love him, very much.”
“You were an excellent mother.” It was true. At least, apart from the fact that she had stolen him from someone else, it was true.
“I’ve often thought it was no accident you became a writer who explored criminal and psychotic behavior. Subconsciously, you must have realized you had been living with ‘crazy’ most of your life,” she said. “Looking back, I realize that I have tried to make up for the terrible wrong I committed by going out of my way to do pro bono work. I’ve helped a lot of people, innocent people wrongly accused who did not have the money to hire a really top-notch criminal attorney.
“I kept innocent people from dying inside prison where they didn’t belong. I also put psychopathic killers behind bars with so much evidence and expertise it would take a hundred years for them to get out. I built, brick by brick, a reputation for integrity so thick, strong, and high that I thought with luck it might protect my son and myself for the rest of our lives. Even though I was raised with zero religious training, I began going to St. Patrick’s every Sunday morning to pray. I was not Catholic, but I have never wavered from that one habit. Even when I was traveling, I would find some kind of a chapel somewhere and pray.”
She drained her water glass and set it down on a small glass table beside her chair.
“One of the great ironies of all of this mess is the fact that in trying to make up for what I had done, I became a very good person . . .”
With that last sentence, she was done.
Logan left her sitting on the balcony while he wandered into the kitchen in a sort of daze. Trying to comfort her, he microwaved a cup of water for tea. She liked tea. He had gotten his Earl Grey habit from her. It was only after he absentmindedly took a sip before giving it to her that he realized he had neglected to put a teabag in the water. He did not bother to go back.
He sat back down beside her, trying to take it all in. He was not his mother’s son. Not his grandmother’s grandson. He looked down and rubbed the skin on the back of his hand, wondering whose DNA he carried. Who did he belong to? Were they still living? Were they dead? Did they love him and long for him, or did they have so many children that they had gone on with their lives and forgotten him?
He tried to wrap his mind around the fact that everything she had told him about his existence was a lie. Deep down, he had never known who he was. Deep down was a memory of something else, someone else, an entire family from whom he had been ripped away.
He had no idea how he should feel about this revelation. On one hand, he felt so very sorry for his mother—for the guilt and pain she must have felt all these years.
On the other hand, what kind of a person steals an innocent child?
“Who were they?” he asked. “Who did you take me away from?”
Her answer staggered him.
“I thought your writer’s brain would already have filled in the details by now, Logan. For many years, Sarasota has been a popular Amish vacation destination. The Sarasota newspaper said their names were Ivan and Mary Troyer, an Amish family from Holmes County, Ohio. You haven’t been experiencing déjà vu all this time, Logan. From the moment you saw that fork in the road that looked so familiar, you’ve been experiencing actual suppressed memories.”
“Ivan and Mary Troyer?” His mind was spinning. “Are you talking about my neighbors?”
“I am.”
He could not sit still another minute. He leaped to his feet and began pacing, trying to assimilate everything his mother had revealed. “How could I remember a turn in the road? I was so young. Children that age don’t pay attention to roads.”
“Maybe not a modern child riding in the backseat of a fast-moving car, but the Troyers were still Amish when you were a child. So—a smart little Amish boy riding on his mother’s lap sitting in the front seat of a slow-moving buggy? Yes, I think that fork in the road and many other places would be pretty well imprinted on your brain over a span of three years.”
It was all so difficult to imagine. If he hadn’t agreed to go with Marla on that furniture shopping trip . . . If she had not insisted on going to see that pottery place . . . It was amazing how random actions could impact a person’s life forever.
“You were lying each time I asked you if I’d ever been in Ohio.”
“That’s my whole point. I’ve been lying to you your whole life.”
chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
They were both exhausted. His mother was drained from voicing such a painful confession. He was drained from dealing with so many emotions warring inside him. The idea of being Ivan and Mary’s son was hard to take in. It was even harder to accept the fact that his mother was a criminal. And then there was the horrible news that she was terminally ill. How much could one person absorb? He longed for some normality.
“Can you eat?” he asked.
His mother looked at him in surprise. “I think so.”
“Let’s shelve all this for a bit and go out to dinner like we planned.”
“Do you hate me?”
“Mom, I have no idea how I feel right now. All I know for sure is that I�
�m hungry . . . and that I still love you.”
“Thank God for that. Could we maybe talk about the weather while we eat? I think I need a break from our present topic.”
“I think we both do. I’ll tell you all about the tornado and little Esther Rose.”
“It’s a deal. And . . . thanks.”
“For what?”
“For not storming out and never speaking to me again.”
And so they talked about Esther Rose, Carrie, Adam, Simon, Mr. Lemon, Hope, and the terrible storm. They discussed bedraggled chickens and damaged roofs. The one thing they did not discuss were the terrible things she had told him.
When he got his mother home, she took a bath and put on blue silk pajamas and a matching robe. Then they sat up and talked deep into the night.
He had never heard his mother talk so much or so openly. It was as though thick stone walls had tumbled down and he was allowed to see the brilliant but fragile girl who had fought her way through law school, fallen in love, overcome cancer and rejection, only to discover that an act so heinous could lock her away forever—not in a prison of mortar and bricks, but in a prison of her own making. She had waited for years to be found out. He saw the naked truth in her eyes that she had loved him desperately. “You know that I will have to face them,” she said, after their long and lingering conversation.
“That’s your decision to make,” he said. “I won’t force you.”
“No. I’m done keeping secrets. It is time for me to face the Troyers. They can press charges, of course, and I will give them my full cooperation. Under the circumstances, I doubt I’d do prison time. That’s at least one benefit of being terminal. It isn’t as though I’m a flight risk.” She grinned, an echo of her old self emerging. “I do happen to know a rather good criminal attorney.”
He was grateful she was not asking him to keep her crime a secret. He had seen the Troyers’ grief. Knew a little about Caleb’s ongoing guilt. It could be healing to tell them.
He did not expect, as a grown man, to be made part of the family. Attempting to become a Troyer after all these years would be a little silly. All he hoped for was to take away some of their pain.
“Are you feeling strong enough to make the trip tomorrow?”
“Honestly? Now that I know that you do not completely hate me for what I did, I feel strong enough to face anything.”
There was a peace on her face that he’d never seen before.
• • •
Hope was surprised when Logan drove in with an older woman beside him. She and Simon had just sat down to the simple supper of bean soup that her mother had brought over, when she heard the car.
She handed Esther Rose to Simon and went outside.
Her ewes had been delivered today and she was dying to show him, but knew this wouldn’t be a good time for bringing up farm issues.
“How are you feeling, Hope?” he said.
“I’m doing well.”
“I’m glad you decided to stay here while I was gone.”
He did not inquire about the baby or the children and seemed very distant and distracted.
“Who do you have with you?”
“My . . . mother,” he said, as the woman climbed out of the car. “Deborah Parker.”
Hope wondered at the hesitation. Something was not right here.
“Mom, this is Hope. I’ve told you about her.”
His mother had the bruised look about her face that a person got after crying very hard for a very long time. “Are either of you hungry?” Hope asked. “I have some bean soup.”
“Mom?” Logan asked. “Do you want to eat first?”
Deborah shook her head. “No, I want to get this over with. I won’t be able to think of anything else until I do.”
“We have some business next door that needs tending to,” he said. “Then maybe we’ll have some if Mother is hungry.”
Deborah was very quiet. She kept staring at the Troyers’ home while Logan quickly carried her two small suitcases inside.
“We’ll be back in a while.” He took his mother’s arm. “Pray for us, Hope.”
“Of course I will.” Something was terribly wrong here, but she had no idea what.
She watched as he walked his mother across the pasture toward the Troyers’ home. Even though Deborah was not all that old or infirm, he kept his hand on her elbow the entire time, as though she needed steadying.
Hope could not begin to imagine what “business” he and his mother had with the Troyers that could cause them to act so worried. She went straight back into the house, took Esther Rose from Simon so he could finish eating, and then sat down to rock the baby to sleep while she prayed.
• • •
When Logan and his mother arrived at the Troyers’, he discovered that they had come on the one night a week the family tried to all eat together. He wished the timing was better. He would have preferred for his mother to face Ivan and Mary alone.
They had all finished supper and were sitting around on the porch, visiting and watching the children play. It was remarkable to Logan to realize that most of the people he was looking at were his blood relatives.
Perhaps as a holdover from their Amish heritage, Logan’s brothers and Ivan all wore some form of beard, although they were cut much shorter than the untrimmed beards of the Amish. This had kept him from noticing any family resemblance before now. As he approached this time, though, he saw that Caleb’s eyebrows were formed much like his, and William had the same color eyes, and Charlotte’s hair was the same shade of brown as his own. A nephew playing catch on the lawn reminded him exactly of his fourth-grade school picture.
It could have been a wonderful moment for him, the moment when he got to lay claim to this amazing family, as well as give them the gift of knowing that the child they thought they had lost had not drowned. But everything was overshadowed by the fact that his mother was standing beside him with a lifetime of regret in her heart.
“Don’t you dare feel sorry for me,” she whispered. “I deserve whatever they say, whatever they do. I don’t want you telling them I’m sick, either. I don’t want them to think I expect them to feel sorry for me.”
“Hello,” he said, as they approached the porch. “I’d like for you to meet my mother, Deborah Parker.”
There was a flurry of introductions and welcomes. Two chairs were drawn up, creating a sort of large, meandering circle.
“Would you like something to drink?” Mary asked, always the caring hostess. “I have fresh cookies, too, if the children haven’t eaten all of them.”
“Nothing, thank you,” his mother said.
“So tell me all about yourself.” Mary sat down next to her. “We’ve enjoyed having your son as a neighbor so much.”
“Well, I’m an attorney,” his mother managed to say.
“Mother is one of the top criminal attorneys in the country,” Logan said, wanting them to know that she was, in many ways, a remarkable woman.
“My, my, my,” Mary said. “You must be good at what you do.”
“She’s the best.” Logan wanted them to love his mother—in spite of what she had done. It was, of course, impossible, but he couldn’t help wishing.
“I can’t take any more of this, Logan.” His mother looked at him with those haunted eyes again. “They are too nice. They don’t deserve what happened to them. I have to tell them.”
“Tell us what?” Caleb said, suspiciously, always the protective, responsible one.
“I’ve always found that it’s best to say things straight out,” Ivan said. He looked at Logan. “Just tell us the truth, son, and it will be okay.”
It was that “son” that undid his stalwart mother. Her head dropped. She sat there shaking it back and forth while the Troyers looked at one another with concern.
He had thought long and hard on the drive over here about what he was going to say and how he would say it. He was, after all, a wordsmith. Now he realized that no manipulation of word
s could help this situation.
“Do you remember the first time I came here and thought I remembered about that little play closet?”
“I remember,” Mary said. “I’ve thought and thought about that, wondering how you could have seen it, but we’ve had so many guests through the years.”
“I’ve recently discovered that I was in this house and I did play inside the little room with the books.” He turned to Caleb. “I wasn’t making it up.”
“Did I babysit you?” Mary frowned, perplexed. “I used to babysit some Englisch children from time to time.”
“No . . .” There was no way to say it except to just say it. “I’m . . . Joseph.”
Several members of his family had been rocking comfortably throughout this conversation. Now all rocking ceased. All movement ceased. All sound ceased, except the faint voices of children now playing tag in the backyard.
“One-two-three . . . you’re IT,” a childish voice called.
“Huh-uh . . . you’re it!” another voice answered.
Beside him, Logan’s mother stared at the ground, a woman condemned by her own heart. Mary stared at him wide-eyed. Caleb’s mouth hung open. Ivan threw both hands in the air in disbelief, then grasped his thinning hair, with both hands—a stunned expression on his face.
Esther was the first to break the silence. “I thought you sounded like my brother John. I may be half-blind, but I am not deaf.”
“Sis ken fashtaut!” Mary whispered, as though to herself. “I can’t believe it.”
“Wait a minute.” Caleb got his wits back. “Are you trying to tell us that you’re my little brother who drowned while I was supposed to be watching over him?”
“I didn’t drown.”
Fearless Hope: A Novel Page 25