The Sacrifice

by Beverly Lewis

  Sadie nodded, seemingly a bit dazed.

  “Didja have to travel long?” asked Leah, bending to pick up the suitcase.

  “First by bus, then by train; then from Lancaster I rode the trolley back to Strasburg.” She stopped and caught her breath. “After that, I hired a taxi driver to bring me on home.”

  Leah said nothing as Sadie took in the house, the grounds, the barn, and milk house. “So you and Gid, are ya livin’ in the main house now? Are Dat and Mamma snug in the Dawdi Haus?”

  She felt the air go out of her. “What do ya mean Gid and me?”

  “You and your husband, Smithy Gid.”

  “Why, no. He’s married to Hannah.”

  “Hannah?” A quick frown crossed Sadie’s brow and she stumbled.

  “Watch your step,” Leah offered, reaching out a hand.

  Sadie grasped it and they walked hand in hand.

  “Where are your children?” Leah asked. “We heard you were expecting a baby back some time ago.”

  Sadie was quiet as they made their way toward the house. “Stillborn babies were all I ever birthed, Leah . . . same as my first wee son, so long ago.”

  As sorrowful as Sadie appeared just now, Leah thought she best be thinking how she should tell her sister of Mamma’s passing. Sadie must hear the heartrending news before ever encountering either Dat or Aunt Lizzie. It was the compassionate thing to do.

  When they approached the back door, Leah knew she must speak up. She paused on the sidewalk and turned to look at Sadie. “There’s something you oughta know . . . in case you didn’t hear. Believe me, I tried to get word to you.”

  Sadie’s countenance turned nearly gray.

  As upset as Leah was, her heart went out to her sister. “I’m awful sorry to be the one to tell ya, but someone ever so dear passed away a while back. Someone we all loved very much.”

  Sadie’s eyes welled up with tears, and she shook her head. “Not Mamma. Please, say it’s not my mamma.”

  Leah breathed in some air for courage. “Jah, Mamma’s gone to Jesus.”

  Sadie collapsed on the back stoop, her hands over her eyes, head down, sobbing, knees up close to her face. She began to rock back and forth. “Dear, dear Mamma.”

  Leah felt compelled to explain further, wanting to comfort her sister in this moment; yet she stood without moving, arms held stiffly behind her back. “Mamma’s been gone for many years now. She passed away giving birth to Abe.”

  Looking up, Sadie blinked her eyes, tears staining her face. “Ya mean to say, Mamma had another child after Lydiann?” Sadie frowned with wonder. “I have a baby brother?”

  Leah honestly wished there was a better way to catch her up on things than standing here on the back stoop. “Well . . . Abe’s not such a baby anymore. He’s nearly seven—will be, come Christmas.” She wished to say more, wanted to set the record straight. Abe wasn’t just Sadie’s baby brother. In all truth, he was Leah’s son, only not by birth, just as she had been Mamma’s daughter in every way that truly mattered.

  But hadn’t Sadie, travel weary, taken in enough information in the past few minutes? Maybe too much for having just arrived home. That the gaunt young woman before her had suffered more than her share of pain was clearly etched on her face, beautiful as it still was.

  “Come in and rest. I’ll make you some sweet tea.” Leah opened the door and held it, then led the way into the kitchen.

  “That’ll hit the spot. Goodness knows, I need something to pick me up.” Sadie dried her tears and, sighing loudly, sat down on the bench beside the table.

  “Once you’ve had a sip or two, you’ll want to go next door and say hello to Dawdi John and Aunt Lizzie. Dawdi’s up in years and doesn’t go out much, but he still tells us some mighty interesting stories. He and Lizzie both are excited to see you, of course. Dat, too, but he must be over at the smithy’s, or he would’ve shown his face by now.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll take my tea quietly.” Sadie accepted the warm cup and held it between her hands, staring at Leah. “Didja . . . well, I mean, should I ask . . . if you ever married?”

  Please don’t ask this, she thought, unsure how to share any more of the essential things. Leaning her head back, she began. “Long after we heard you were married, nearly two years later, Smithy Gid did court me, but only for a time. When Mamma was dying, she asked me to raise Lydiann and Abe. Honestly, maybe you’d rather not—” “No, no . . . I want to know about you, sister. It’s been the hardest thing, me bein’ separated from my own family for all these years.”

  Leah continued on, telling how she had made the promise to care for Mamma’s little ones and how that promise had sealed her future as a maidel due to Dat’s eagerness to raise his own son and daughter, instead of allowing Gid and Leah to do so. But she didn’t care to say much more. It was enough . . . almost, to have Sadie sitting here in the kitchen, sipping brewed tea with her, like old times. Enough to have those sad blue eyes staring and searching hungrily, as if looking for meaning in Leah’s gaze, longing to know what she had missed here in her own family’s home.

  Leah didn’t have the heart to go on, though she wished she might tell Sadie how sorry she was Jonas had died so terribly young, leaving her a widow. Awful sorry . . .

  Leah felt nearly too ill to attend the required membership meeting the Sunday following Sadie’s arrival, but she went anyway, sitting clear in the back, thus allowing herself no visual memory of repentant Sadie kneeling before the People. But her ears surely witnessed Sadie’s embarrassing, even frank words of confession—the repeated meetings in the hunter’s shack in the woods, the loss of her illegitimate son. . . . She cringed, wishing to stop up her ears, as well, but surely . . . surely, Sadie’s heart was pure before God and the People. Surely Sadie hadn’t come home to repent just because she was a widow and all alone in the world.

  Leah, nevertheless, had become quite ill with an early autumn flu. The stress of having to vote to receive her shunned sister back into the fold had made her absolutely green round the gills, but she did her duty as a church member in good standing. Good thing the ministers can’t see into my heart, she thought, despising her own reluctance to forgive and forget.

  After the common meal at Uncle Jesse Ebersol’s place, where house church had been held, several couples and their families followed Dat’s carriage back home for a visit. Naomi and Luke Bontrager came with their little boys, as well as Hannah and Gid and their girls.

  Mary Ruth joined all of them after church, as well, just as she’d quickly come to visit on the first evening of Sadie’s arrival.

  Leah felt some better later in the afternoon and joined the cheerful group, though she kept to herself, not stepping into her usual role as hostess. No doubt sensing her difficulty, dear Lizzie filled her shoes instead, and Leah pulled up a chair, relieved to simply sit and not lift a finger.

  Abe hovered near, evidently not interested in playing with his cousins. Leah was glad for his company and that he stood protectively beside her chair for the longest time. Lydiann, however, was her outgoing self, readily engaging the laughter and attention of the big sister she’d never known. Because of the severity of the shunning, neither Lydiann nor Abe could remember hearing Sadie’s name uttered in their lifetime. So there was much catching up to be done, and everyone, especially Sadie, seemed to enjoy the spontaneous gettogether. They all stayed and talked till milking time, and then disbanded outdoors with Naomi and Sadie weeping in each other’s arms, best friends reuniting under the canopy of heaven.

  Dear Lord, please give me the grace I need, Leah pleaded. But the tearful scene was too much for her, and she slipped back into the house to soothe herself yet again.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Soon the daily routine—Monday washday, Tuesday ironing and cleaning—took precedence as the newness of Sadie’s return began to wear off, at least for Leah. Lydiann, on the other hand, was rather taken with Sadie and followed her around the house incessantly, Leah noticed. />
  Early Wednesday morning, while Leah was still making the bed in her room, a firm knock came at the door. “Who’s there?” she called, reckoning who it might be.

  “It’s Sadie.”

  Stopping what she was doing, Leah moved toward the door and opened it slowly.

  Before her stood her sister, the blue gone from her eyes, washed away by tears. “May I come in?” she asked.

  “If it’s important enough for you to be cryin’, then I ’spect we ought to go outside,” she surprised herself by saying. Honestly, she didn’t much care to hear Sadie tell of her widowed sorrow, not in the privacy of Leah’s bedroom. Not this near-sacred place where Mamma had given up her life for Abe . . . and where Leah had made her important promise.

  “I’m not meanin’ to box your ears,” Sadie said suddenly. “But the way ya talk, you’d think we were gonna have it out between us.”

  Leah hadn’t meant to be reckless with her words. “I’ll meet you out front, where we can speak plainly without bein’ overheard.”

  Sadie frowned, seemingly surprised. “All right, then.”

  Leah closed her door. She took her time finishing up the bed making, even set the green shades straight, eyeing them carefully so they each matched in length across the three windows on the side facing the woods. All this before ever leaving the house to meet Sadie.

  “Truth be told, you act like you wish I’d stayed away forever,” Sadie said when they were alone amidst the trees on the rolling front lawn. “And don’t be sayin’ otherwise.”

  There was nothing to add, really. Leah felt if she couldn’t say anything nice, she ought not to say anything at all.

  “What’s wrong, Leah? Why do you seem to detest me?”

  She filled her lungs with air. “Best not talk ’bout it, I’m thinkin’.”

  “Why? Does it annoy you that I assumed you were married to Smithy Gid? If so, I was only saying what Jonas told me years back.”

  “He told you that?” She was as bewildered now as she had been the day his strange letter arrived, followed by total silence once she promptly responded, writing him the truth.

  “Several times, jah.”

  “But there was nothing tender between Gid and me, ’least not while I was engaged to Jonas.” She paused. “Are you rememberin’ things correctly—did Jonas really say that?”

  “Why, sure he did. Even his father confirmed to Jonas that Gid was sweet on you, that Dat had given his blessing for him to court you. All this while you were betrothed to Jonas—just as he was completing his carpentry apprenticeship and preparing to travel home for your wedding.”

  So this was what Peter Mast and Dat had secretly discussed—the two of them had destroyed her future with Jonas!

  “Frankly,” Sadie went on, “at the time, I found it downright surprisin’, but I assumed you’d decided to follow Dat’s wishes in the end and marry Gid instead.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You of all people knew how much I loved Jonas!”

  “Jah, I thought I knew that, but I was altogether befuddled when I saw you and Gid holdin’ hands in the woods that day you got yourself lost up there. Remember?” “You saw what?” She couldn’t believe her ears.

  Sadie was off in the head!

  Her sister went on, describing the day Gid had gone in search of Leah, at Mamma’s urging. Sadie told how she herself had gone into the forest, up to the low stone wall rimming Aunt Lizzie’s log house. “Smithy Gid and you were holding hands and laughin’ together. I saw it with my own eyes, so you can’t deny it.”

  “You must’ve told this to Jonas,” Leah said, not recalling the hand-holding incident whatsoever. “You made me look unfaithful . . . was that what you did?”

  Sadie shook her head, blinking back tears. “I simply told him once he asked what I knew ’bout Gid, and only after that. You must believe me, Leah. He’d heard, but not from me, that you’d gone to a summertime singing in our barn where you’d linked up with Gid, then walked home with him through the cornfield.”

  Again, she was wholly baffled. “I believe I recall that evening, but Adah and I went together to the singing. She and I, along with Gid—the three of us— walked over to the Peacheys’ afterward . . . innocent as the day is long.”

  Sadie touched her elbow. “Ach, Leah, I don’t care to bring up the past. That’s not why I say these things. I only wondered why you hadn’t married Smithy Gid after Jonas and I had believed it so strongly.”

  They were still for a moment as the sun rose higher through the trees from its dawning place. “I s’pose there’s nothin’ to be gained by rehashing all this,” Leah said, grappling with her own words. “We oughta be thinking of you now, sister. Your needs . . . your great loss.” She looked at her brokenhearted sister, sharing the intense sorrow. “How sad to have lost Jonas that way—in the silo accident. I feel right sorry for you . . . him so young and all.”

  A shadow swept over Sadie’s face. “Didja say . . . Jonas?”

  Leah nodded, unable to go on, wishing not to visualize the fatal fall from such a height.

  Sadie shook her head slowly. “Oh, Leah . . . no wonder. You’re sadly mistaken. I haven’t seen Jonas in years.”

  Leah’s breath bounded out of her lungs. What on earth . . . how can this be? “You mean you didn’t . . . you never married Jonas at all?” She held herself around the middle, thinking she might be sick then and there.

  Shaking her head, Sadie appeared as flabbergasted as Leah felt. “Why, no. I married Harvey Hochstetler . . . from Indiana.” Sadie began to explain how Jonas had taken care to befriend her after she’d shared with him the tale of her wild rumschpringe. He had gone so far as to begin to date her, “solely out of a sense of duty, not love. He and I went our separate ways the following spring, after I met a boy named John Graber, who introduced me to Harvey.”

  “And what of Jonas? Where is he?”

  Sadie shook her head sadly. “I don’t know.”

  “When was the last you heard of him? Where was he then?” She felt nearly panic-stricken, suddenly aware of the horrid string of deceit coupled with misunderstandings. Unspeakable, for sure and for certain.

  “I last saw Jonas in Millersburg. He was preparing to move, though he never said just where. I assumed he was hoping to set up his own carpentry shop somewhere in Ohio, but I can’t be sure.” Sadie went on. “Bein’ shunned ruined his life, he said. It changed everything . . . made it impossible for him to continue his ties with his family and friends. Jonas once told me he felt like a man without a country. I surely understood that.”

  “So he just disappeared . . . is that what you’re sayin’?” Leah sat right down in the grass, her legs incapable of supporting her. She held her hands over her heart, no longer able to deny her tears. “Oh, Sadie, I can’t bear to hear any more,” she cried. “Please stop. I . . . loved him so.”

  Sadie knelt next to her, wrapping her arms around her. “I’m sorry for comin’ between you and Jonas,” she whispered, leaning her head against Leah’s. “I should’ve known you and Smithy Gid were merely good friends. I should’ve known. . . .”

  Like a breeze blowing the memory of that day gently back, the treacherous hike out of the deepest part of the woods became clear in Leah’s mind. She recalled well-meaning Gid reaching for her hand several times, steadying her when she felt nearly too weak to walk, having strayed through the immense tangle of the woods, wandering for hours. He had merely protected her as a big brother. Nothing more.

  But there were no words now to speak the truth of it to Sadie. Instead, she wept in her big sister’s arms— for the lost years, for her resentment toward Sadie, who had been caught in a maze of misconceptions. Her heart ached, as well, for the long-ago sweetheart she would never see again. Dear Jonas . . . gone forever. Leah felt as if her very life was being driven from her.

  Whispering now, Sadie said, “Do you remember what Mamma used to tell us? ‘God knows the end from the beginning.’”

  How on earth could th
e Lord God know such a thing, as Mamma had ofttimes said, and yet allow what had happened to take place? The end from the beginning. Leah had missed being Jonas’s loving wife by a series of errors. Nothing more.

  After a time, when the sadness and disbelief had spilled forth in a great veil of tears—Sadie comforting her through it all—Leah dried her eyes and kissed her sister. “The grapevine had it all wrong ’bout you and Jonas,” Leah said softly, still puzzled by the absolute certainty of the news they’d received over the years.

  Sadie spoke up, attesting to the fickleness of gossip. “No wonder you’ve despised tittle-tattle your whole life,” she remarked, to which Leah could only nod her throbbing head.

  Together, the two of them rose slowly and walked hand in hand toward the house. Sadie’s return is both an end and a beginning for us all, Leah thought, hoping it would be so when all was said and done. She was mindful to breathe deeply, willing her headache away. The children would be hungry for breakfast soon, and she must wear a smile for them.

  But it was Sadie who was smiling broadly now. “What do ya say if I help Dat and Lydiann with the milkin’ from here on out?”

  “Well, now, are ya sure, sister?”

  “That’s one chore you should never have to do again. After all these years.”

  Leah was surprised but pleased. “Sounds quite all right to me. I’ll be glad to cook breakfast and pack the children’s lunch pails.” With Sadie’s offer to do the milking chores, Leah realized they’d reversed roles from childhood. Not only that, but she and Sadie were both single women, without husbands or hope of any. Together under the same roof, she thought, finding the notion almost humorous in a strange sort of way, recalling the saying, “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”

  With that she carried stacked firewood for the cook stove into the kitchen, where she was met by the sound of Lydiann’s expressive voice. Sitting at the table, Lydiann carefully practiced the poem she was expected to recite at school today.

  “ ‘My Father, what am I that all Thy mercies sweet, like sunlight fall so constant o’er my way? That thy great love should shelter me, and guide my steps so tenderly through every changing day?’ ”