“Then how . . .”
“Because I took him!” His mother finally lifted her head and faced them. “I saw him. I wanted him. I took him. And I raised him. I would give my life not to have done so, but I did. If it does any good, with all my heart, I apologize for the terrible pain I have caused this family.”
Everyone was silent for a few seconds, absorbing his mother’s outburst.
“He does have a bit of the look of our Elias about him,” Caleb’s wife said. “But I don’t know . . .”
“I’ll need better proof than that,” Caleb said. “We aren’t rich people, but there are some who might think we have money. If that’s what you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“I don’t need your money. Nor does my mother. We’re telling the truth.”
“You think these people are lying, Caleb? Why would anyone do such an evil thing?” Mary laid a hand on Logan’s knee. “Are you the baby I lost? Are you Joseph?”
Then his mother spoke, and she was once again an accomplished attorney stating a case.
“You were supposed to be watching him.” She looked straight at Caleb. “But you got bored. You started swimming farther and farther out. Then you got caught in some sort of current and disappeared. Your baby brother was left completely alone. I did not intend to take him. I thought I would simply watch over him until the family came back. But no one did. There were no cell phones back then, and my cabin did not have a phone. I was still recuperating from chemo and did not have the strength to carry him far. I barely had the strength to get him to my cabin and then I thought I would rest before I put him in the car to drive him to town to the police station.
“He was so adorable and trusting. He had started trying to drink the ocean water and I could tell he was thirsty. I had some juice back at the beach house that I gave him. He fell asleep in my arms and I pretended that he was my baby . . .” His mother looked down at her hands, folded now in her lap. “That was my mistake. I allowed myself to pretend that he was my baby.”
Again there was silence as everyone tried to absorb the impact of her words.
“Did you know about this?” Ivan asked him. “Have you known all along? Have you been lying to us about who you are?”
“I only found out two days ago.” Logan shook his head. “I had no idea.”
“I still don’t believe it,” Caleb said to his father. “They could have gotten the information from the newspaper.”
“I’d eaten some bad food at a restaurant and was taken ill,” Mary said. “And Ivan was worried. Two of the other children were starting to feel unwell, too. He and the rest of the family helped walk me back to the cabin we were renting so I could lie down. Caleb did not want to come in yet, and offered to watch over his baby brother. Neither of them had eaten the food. Caleb was always such a responsible boy, we thought we could trust him to watch after little Joseph . . .”
“But he was just a teenager,” Deborah continued where Mary left off. “And the ocean current took him farther out than he could swim back. The baby was wearing Amish clothing, except for some little sneakers that had tiny Velcro fasteners. It was the first time I’d seen a child’s tennis shoes fastened like that, and I found it strange that an Amish child would be wearing them.”
“Englisch friends had given them to me,” Mary said. “Their child had recently outgrown them.”
“He had a little cut over his eye that did not heal for several days. I worried about that cut. It had gotten slightly infected—I think by the sand.”
“He had fallen in the cabin against the coffee table,” Mary said. “The furniture was unfamiliar to him and he stumbled over a throw pillow that had fallen to the floor.”
The realization seemed to finally hit Mary that he truly was her lost son. With a sob, she rose from her chair, and fell to her knees with her arms around his waist and her face pressed against his chest.
He did not know what to do. He awkwardly patted her back. This was, in truth, his mother. That man over there was his father. The old lady was his grandmother. These were his brothers and sisters.
As Mary cried, Ivan looked from Logan to Deborah, and then back to Logan again. He, too, was having trouble taking it all in.
“You stole my son?” he asked.
“I am so sorry,” his mother said. “I was young and half-crazed from illness and grief.”
“All those years you kept him? You knew what we would be going through, but you kept him!”
“I am so sorry,” his mother kept repeating. “I had worked so hard for so long for my law degree. I knew that if I gave him back and people found out that I had . . . taken a child, I would never be able to get a job with any reputable firm anywhere.”
“You allowed my parents to go through the agony of grieving a child because of your CAREER!” Caleb jumped out of his chair and came toward her, his hands clenched into fists.
Logan rose and stood between his brother and the woman who had raised him. “Don’t touch her,” he said. “She’s suffered enough.”
“She’s suffered?” Caleb exclaimed. “She doesn’t know the meaning of suffering! I was there! I watched my mother cry her heart out night after night. I had to live with the pain that I had caused it all by swimming too far out and leaving my baby brother alone . . .”
Stalwart, protective, prickly Caleb broke down at that point. Terrible, harsh man-sobs racked his frame. When his wife tried to comfort him, he shook her off.
“I think it might be wise for you and your . . . mother . . . to leave now.” His grandmother, Esther, who had been listening in silence, pulled herself upright on her cane and took charge. “I believe our family needs time to think this through. You should leave now before any more harsh words are said that cannot be taken back.”
“No!” Mary was on her knees, her arms outstretched toward Logan. “He is my son. I want to talk with him.”
“There will be plenty of time for that later,” Ivan said firmly. “He’s not going anywhere. My mother is right. We need time to absorb this information, think about it, and pray about it. Go on home . . . Son.”
Logan noticed that this time, Ivan stumbled over the word.
“I won’t fight you on this,” his mother said. “I know what I deserve and I won’t fight whatever the court decides.”
“Go on home, Logan,” Ivan repeated. “Give us some time. Please.”
Logan thought he had never heard a better suggestion in his life. The one thing on earth he wanted right now was to get off this porch.
As he helped his mother across the field and into his house, he glanced back and saw that the entire family, including the children, had disappeared into the Troyers’ home, except for Esther, who seemed to be standing vigil on the porch, an old lady leaning on her cane, facing his house.
• • •
Hope saw them coming back, and it reminded her of pictures she’d seen of refugees. Logan’s mother was bent over, and his arm was thrown around her protectively. He kept looking back over his shoulder at the Troyer house. She didn’t know what had happened over there, but from the look of things . . . it wasn’t good.
Simon had finished his soup and had gone out to the barn. With Esther Rose in one arm, she hurried into the kitchen and turned on the electric teakettle, then she started the oven warming. Mary had brought over cinnamon buns a few hours earlier for their breakfast tomorrow morning. They would be good warmed up.
“I have water boiling for tea,” she said as Logan and Deborah came in. “And cinnamon rolls. If either of you are hungry now.”
“Mother?” Logan asked solicitously. “Can you eat something?”
“No.”
Deborah fell into a kitchen chair and buried her head in her arms. She seemed utterly exhausted.
“Please let me make you some tea, Mother. Or coffee. Or . . . please, just let me do something.”
“Did you see her?” his mother said. “Did you see Mary’s eyes when she found out? I’ll never f
orget that look as long as I live. And your brother Caleb. So much pain!”
Hope heard only one word. “Brother?”
Almost as an afterthought, Logan said, “Yes. Caleb is my brother. I’m the baby who drowned. Except I didn’t. My mother here found me and took me home with her . . . and kept me.”
Hope decided that she needed a cup of tea, even if Deborah did not. With plenty of sugar. She was a strong woman, but she’d just given birth three days earlier. This was way more than she could take in while standing up.
“Logan. Am I hearing this correctly?” She plopped down on a kitchen chair, a sleeping Esther Rose cradled in one arm. “You’re Joseph?”
“Yes, I am.”
“If you are Joseph, then my mother used to babysit you,” she said. “It was at a time when she was newly married and didn’t have any children yet. Mary was older and a little overwhelmed with her large family. My mom said she would go get you nearly every day and play with you to give Mary a break.”
She sat there, piecing everything together in her mind. “That’s why this house was familiar to you, Logan. My mom used to take care of you here.”
“I’m sure that’s the reason,” Logan said. “But right now . . . that’s the least of my concerns. Mom’s not well, and everyone over at the Troyers’ is in shock.”
“How bad was it over there?” Hope was very concerned about Ivan and Mary. They were not young.
“It was bad. They’re talking it over now to decide what to do. I don’t know when they’ll contact us again. Tomorrow maybe?”
“My guess is tonight,” Hope said. “I know those people really well. They do not believe in allowing the sun to go down upon their wrath. Unless I miss my guess, they are deep in prayer right now. They will come here once they feel they have had an answer from the Lord.”
chapter TWENTY-NINE
It broke his heart to see his mother waiting, waiting. The tension in the room practically roared in his ears as he waited. Simon came back from the barn, took one look at their faces, and went right back outside without saying one word.
Esther Rose began to grow fussy, so he took her from Hope and walked the floor with her. It hit him that Ivan and Mary had probably walked the floor with him in their arms. It was all so very strange to try to imagine.
Would he continue to call this woman who had raised him “Mother”? Would Mary want him to call her that? He had no clue how to deal with any of it.
And then Hope, who was looking out the window toward the Troyers’ home, gave a small cry.
“They’re coming!” she said.
He strode over to the window, and sure enough, they were coming . . . the whole tribe of them. Even Esther was with them, and with a grandchild’s help, seemed to be leading them. She steadied herself by holding on to the child’s shoulder, her cane grasped in the middle like a drum major. The wind was blowing, and her long, gray hair streamed out behind her. She wore a plain, brown dress and reminded him of some sort of prophet as she marched across that field.
Mary stumbled along behind her with Ivan. His arm was around Mary’s waist. Children scattered out on either side. All the rest walked together in a loose group.
Why was it necessary for the entire family to come? he wondered. Why the children? Why all the in-laws? Why the grandmother? Couldn’t just Ivan and Mary tell them whatever it was that they wanted to say?
He and his mother walked out to the porch to face them.
Esther sat down in one of the many porch chairs and gestured for him and his mother to sit as well. The others grabbed chairs and scooted them into a circle around them. The children sat on the floor, their arms draped over fathers’ and mothers’ knees, some crawling onto laps. One young teenage girl sat with a toddler on her lap on the porch floor with her back against a porch column. He remembered the girl’s face, but not her name or which of his siblings she belonged to.
All waited, including him and his mother, for what appeared to be a pronouncement. It reminded him of waiting in court for a judge to assign a sentence after a person had been found guilty.
“We’ve talked,” Ivan said. “My mother insisted that all the children be here to hear what we’ve come to say. She says we need to set up stones of remembrance after crossing this Jordan.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Logan said.
“Joshua was instructed to set up twelve stone monuments, after he and the nation of Israel crossed the River Jordan, so that when the children of future generations asked what they were there for, the adults were to tell them the story about how God had performed a miracle. How their people were saved when the river parted and they walked through on dry land.”
“You want me to erect a stone monument?”
Ivan looked a question at Esther, who nodded.
“It might not be a bad idea,” Ivan said. “You tell me if you think you should, after you hear what my mother has to say. Go ahead, Mother. You are the one who is responsible for all of this coming to light.”
“I still don’t understand,” Logan said. “How is Esther responsible for anything related to any of this?”
“Explaining it would require another Bible story,” Ivan said. “About a judge who gets pestered to death by a widow. The judge gets sick of her and gives in, just to shut her up.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m very confused,” Logan’s mother said.
“I think I understand,” Hope broke in. “Esther has prayed for the return of Joseph every day for as long as I can remember. Even though the police were certain that he had drowned, Esther never let up. It became a sort of sad little joke among her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. How their grandmother didn’t even eat breakfast each morning until she had prayed for the return of her missing grandchild.”
Esther pointed her cane at Deborah. “And I also prayed for you!”
“Me?” Deborah gasped.
“I prayed that someone kind had come along and found him and saved his life. I prayed that he was being raised by good people. And I prayed that someday, somehow, he would find his way back to us.”
“Are you saying that your prayers drew me here?” Logan said.
“Of course they did. I am growing very old. I wanted to see you again before I had to leave. I’ve been praying doubly this year for you to come back to us.”
Logan looked into her clouded eyes in wonder. All these years, this woman he hadn’t even known had kept him in her heart and mind?
“I—I did not pray,” Mary confessed. “I could not. I did not think I could continue to care well for the other children if I tried to keep hope alive in my heart. I was afraid it would eat me up. I am so sorry, Logan, but I gave up on you in order to survive.”
“You should probably call the police now,” Deborah said. “I don’t think I can bear much more of this.”
“Police?” Esther grasped the handle of her cane tightly. “Who said anything about police?”
All the Troyers looked at one another with discomfort written on their faces. Logan saw his brothers shift their feet and glance away.
Ivan cleared his throat. “Like the rest of the Amish and Mennonites, we try not to get police involved unless it is absolutely necessary.”
“But I committed a crime,” Deborah said.
“We believe that God can bring triumph out of tragedy,” Ivan said. “We believe that it is possible for His will to triumph over evil where His people are involved. We are a people who believe in practicing forgiveness.”
“I don’t deserve forgiveness.”
“You’ve got that right!” Caleb’s voice was bitter.
“Hush, Caleb. You stop that right now,” Esther said, then she turned back to Deborah. “You seem to want to be punished. No doubt you need to make amends for what you did and you should, but I think we can find a better way than by putting a perfectly good attorney behind bars.”
“Mother?” Ivan said. “What are you doing? I thought we had agreed about this.”
“Shhh, Son. This is a woman who needs to make restitution. I’m going to give her something to do.”
“Anything,” his mother said. “I will do absolutely anything you ask. Just name it.”
“Logan says that you are very good at what you do,” Esther said.
“It is rare for me to lose a case.”
The old woman seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself. “Do you know anything about international law?”
“Not a lot, but I could learn.” Deborah’s voice was puzzled.
“Do you, by any chance, speak Spanish?”
“I have a working knowledge of it.” She looked perplexed. “What does this have to do with me taking your grandson?”
“Mother, that is brilliant!” Ivan exclaimed. “I know exactly what you’re thinking, and you’re right.”
Esther sat back and smiled as Ivan explained.
“We are having trouble with legalities about one of the wells,” he said. “Logan might have mentioned that our family has worked for years to bring clean water to third-world countries. It is not terribly hard to get volunteers who will help dig wells or teach people how to use filtration devices or pass out purification packets, but the red tape we have to go through to get permission is sometimes a great headache. If we had someone who knows how to do the legal maneuvering to get things done—and would be willing to work for free—that would be a gift straight from God.”
His mother’s eyes grew wide. “Are you saying that you and your family would forgive what I’ve done for nothing more than some pro bono work?”
“Oh, no.” Esther shook a finger at her. “You will not get off so easily. We need funds for what we do. We’re assuming you have made good money in New York and have influential and wealthy friends?”
“I have made excellent money in New York, and I have dozens of influential and wealthy friends.”
Logan could hear hope dawning in his mother’s voice.
“Wouldn’t it be something,” Ivan said, “if what Satan intended as evil turned out to bring about a great good?”
“You truly believe that?” Deborah asked.
Fearless Hope: A Novel Page 26