Authors: Marta Perry
Face grave, Kendra swung the screen back to her. “I’m not sure what I’d feel in your
position. What are you going to do about this, now that you know?”
Chloe picked up the business card. “I guess I’ll be getting in touch with Seth Miller
again after all. But first . . .” She sucked in a breath, trying to still the quaking
that had begun deep inside her. “First I have to find out why my grandmother lied
to me.”
C
HAP
TER
S
IX
L
ydia
emerged from the orchard and headed across the yard toward Emma Miller’s farmhouse.
With the boys at school for a few more hours and Adam out making the rounds of people
who might be able to offer him a job, she’d found she couldn’t wait any longer to
find out if Seth had called with a report yet. He’d promised her he’d leave a message
on his mother’s answering machine, and surely he would have seen Chloe by now.
Amish didn’t ordinarily have phones in their homes, considering them a distraction
from work and family. But with Emma’s slow recovery from her broken hip and Jessie’s
bouts of emotional problems, Seth had insisted and the bishop had agreed.
But Emma had done some insisting of her own, which was like her. A strong woman, not
to be defeated by a broken hip, she’d determined that the phone shanty would be at
the end of the back porch, no closer.
Her lips quirking at the memory, Lydia paused at the phone shanty and peeked inside.
The telephone sat silent, and the battery-powered answering machine showed no new
messages.
“Lydia, I thought you would be here this afternoon. Looking to hear from my son, ja?”
Emma had opened the back door and was smiling at her through the screen.
“Seth hasn’t called yet?” Lydia tried to conceal her disappointment but feared she
wasn’t doing a very good job.
“Not yet.” Emma held the screen door open and motioned her in. “Komm. Have some coffee.
Seth said he would call this afternoon whether he managed to talk to your little sister
or not, and you can count on him.”
Nodding, Lydia stepped inside. “I’m certain-sure he’ll do as he said.” One thing you
could say about Seth—he did what he said he’d do. His trouble had been that what he
said he’d do wasn’t usually what the Ordnung decreed.
“You are still upset about what you learned about your family, ja?”
Emma’s keen eyes scanned Lydia’s face as she led the way to the table. Emma still
limped a bit, and the lines on her face told of the pain she suffered, but she wasn’t
one to give in. Even now, the old-fashioned kitchen with its plank floors and simple
wooden cabinets smelled of cinnamon and sugar.
“Just a little,” Lydia admitted. “But I don’t want to interrupt your baking—”
“Ach, it’s nothing. Some snickerdoodles for the grandchildren is all. Naomi is bringing
them over to visit later.” She seized the coffeepot, ready on the stove, and began
to pour.
“That’s so nice. You’ll be wonderful glad to see Joshua and Sadie.” Lydia slid into
a seat, knowing it gave Emma pleasure to have a guest to chat with.
“For sure. Naomi brings them every week. She’s a gut mamm to them, that’s certain,
and a gut wife to Nathan.” Emma’s eyes held sorrow, and Lydia knew it was for her
eldest daughter, Ada, the children’s birth mother, who hadn’t lived to see her offspring
grow.
“Is Jessie here?” Lydia couldn’t help a twinge of apprehension. She had been instrumental
in the discovery that Emma’s youngest daughter was so unstable she’d needed hospitalization,
and Lydia didn’t suppose Jessie had ever forgiven her for that act, although she never
mentioned it.
“She had a doctor’s appointment today.” Emma set coffee mugs and a plate with thick
slices of fruit-and-nut bread on the table and sat down. “Usually Seth takes her in
his car, but this time he made arrangements with an Englisch driver.”
Lydia accepted a slice of the molasses-rich bread when Emma shoved the plate toward
her. “How is Jessie doing?”
“Improving, I think, since the doctor started her on some new medicine. I hope so,
anyway. Sometimes it is hard to tell.” Emma leaned toward her, her gaze intent. “But
how are you? The truth, now, nothing else.”
“I don’t know.” That was the truth, if anything was. “I can see Mamm and Daad think
they did the right thing by not telling me about my sisters, even though they’ve said
how sorry they are.”
“All parents struggle with deciding what is best for their kinder.” Emma seemed to
look beyond Lydia, maybe into her own life, which had certainly had its share of trouble.
“Everyone agrees I shouldn’t upset Susanna by revealing the truth when her adoptive
mother is so ill. And Adam . . . well, he doesn’t like the idea of trying to get in
touch with my Englisch sister. We don’t often disagree, but I just don’t understand
his attitude.” She couldn’t help the tiny edge that showed in her voice.
“Maybe he’s afraid you’re going to get hurt,” Emma said gently. “He’s protective of
you. Your birth daad was that way with your mamm.”
Lydia’s breath caught at the unexpected tidbit of information. “You knew them well,
ja?”
“As well as neighbors usually do,” Emma said. She seemed to look back through the
years. “I was a bit shy of them at first, I remember, knowing that Diane had been
Englisch, but she soon made me feel comfortable. And she learned Pennsylvania Dutch
so quick it was hard to believe she hadn’t always spoken it.”
The language was one of the biggest hurdles for someone wanting to become Amish, Lydia
felt sure. If you weren’t comfortable in the language people used with each other,
it would be near-impossible to feel at home.
“It seems so odd to think that my mamm was raised Englisch,” she admitted. “Did she
ever talk about her family?”
Emma shook her head. “Not much. It was like she wanted to forget that part of her
life ever existed. And she was so in love with your daad it warmed my heart just to
look at them.”
“That’s nice to know.” Lydia’s heart seemed to warm, as well.
Emma gave a faint, faraway smile. “She was crazy about you girls, too. I mind seeing
her under that big old tree in the middle of the orchard. Sometimes she’d bring out
a blanket and put the baby on it. Sometimes she’d sit on that low limb with you and
Susanna next to her, telling you stories.”
Lydia stored the memory up, realizing that it was much the same as the image Mamm
had given her. Obviously Diane had loved that spot in the orchard, just as she did.
“It seems strange to think of her living the way we do, with her having been raised
in the city and all. She must have had a lot to learn, not just about living Amish
but living on a farm, too.”
“Ach, ja. Many’s the laugh we had when I showed her how to make apple butter or can
jelly. But she loved every minute of it.”
“I’m glad to know that, even if I can’t remember it for myself.” The loss of her early
memories was like a splinter sticking into her, always there, always hurting just
a little.
Emma reached across to pat Lydia’s hand. “You must never think Diane had regrets about
the life she chose with your daad, because she didn’t. She seldom spoke of her parents,
and as far as I know, they never got in touch with her.”
“I’m glad she was happy.” Lydia blinked quickly, not wanting to let a tear get away
from her. “It seems so odd, though, that her parents didn’t try to be part of her
life.”
And given that apparently bitter separation, it wondered her that Mrs. Wentworth had
even wanted to take Chloe.
“I mind Diane saying something once about her mother,” Emma said slowly. “She said
that all her life she’d known she had to live up to what her mother expected, and
if she couldn’t, then she wasn’t worth loving. It made Diane determined never to let
any of you girls doubt her love for you. She was a fine mother to you girls, even
though she had such a short time.”
Lydia was glad to have that knowledge of her mother, but in a way it made her more
apprehensive about her grandmother. That woman had had the raising of Chloe, and who
could guess how such a person might have affected a child?
The telephone’s ringing jerked her upright, and in an instant she was out of her chair.
She hesitated, glancing at Emma, who smiled and waved her hand.
“Go on. It’ll be Seth, calling for you, like as not. You might as well answer.”
Lydia raced out to the phone shanty, fearful that he’d hang up before she got there,
snatched the receiver, and said hello rather breathlessly.
“Lydia?” Seth sounded alarmed to hear her. “Is my mother all right?”
“Ja, ja, she’s fine,” Lydia assured him. Naturally he’d be surprised at her answering
his mamm’s phone. “We were visiting, and she knew you’d be calling to tell me what
you’d found.”
“Of course.” His voice seemed to deepen. “You want to hear how my meeting with Chloe
turned out.”
“You saw her, then?” She tried in vain to control her excitement. “How did she look?
What did she say when you told her?”
“She looked fine. Like her photo, only not so dressed up, since she was at work. As
for her reactions . . . well, that wasn’t so good, I’m afraid. She didn’t believe
me.”
“Didn’t believe you?” In all the imagining she’d done about Chloe, it seemed that
response had never occurred to her. “But why wouldn’t she believe it? Why would she
think you’d lie to her?”
“At first she thought I had made a mistake,” Seth said. “But when I insisted I hadn’t,
she thought I was trying to get something from her.”
Lydia’s mind must be working very slowly, because she couldn’t seem to figure that
out. “I don’t understand. What could you get from her? You were trying to tell her
the truth about her background.”
“She didn’t see it that way. I suppose when you have as much money as her grandmother
does, you start expecting people to try to trick you out of it.” His voice seemed
to change, as if the answer had hurt him as much as it hurt her. “I’m sorry, Lydia.
I really thought I could convince her.”
“It’s not your fault.” She had to say the words, even though all she wanted was to
let go and weep. “I know you tried your best.”
“She may still change her mind. I left the documents with her, along with my card.
She might look at them and decide to give me a call.”
Lydia held the receiver tight against her ear for a long moment, trying to assess
the emotion in his voice. “Tell me the truth, Seth. Do you think that’s likely?”
Seth hesitated in his turn. “I don’t want to hold out false hope, Lydia. She seemed
pretty determined. I’m afraid we’ve reached a dead end. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” She had to struggle to swallow the lump in her throat. “I’d rather
hear the truth, even when it hurts.” So that was it, then. As Seth had said, it was
a dead end.
* * *
As
luck would have it, Chloe walked in the back door of the Wentworth house in Chestnut
Hill, coming from the garage, just as she heard her grandmother entering the front
door. Margaret Wentworth declined to drive herself in city traffic, instead calling
a car service when she went out, and no doubt she had just returned from one of her
many civic meetings.
Chloe had moved back into the family home when she finished grad school, partly because
her grandmother had so clearly wanted it and partly because, until she decided that
the position at the Pennsylvania German Cultural Museum was going to work out, she
hated to invest in an apartment. Soon, she promised herself. Maybe the job wasn’t
perfect, but the Wentworth name had eased her into a better position than she’d have
found elsewhere in her crowded chosen field.
She walked through the dining room and into the tiled entrance hall that was as cool
and traditional as her grandmother. Gran turned at the sound of her footsteps.
“You’re home early today, Chloe. I should have been as well, if not for the tendency
of some library board members to argue over every issue.” She frowned slightly, touching
the elegant waves of her white hair. “We should have known better than to have invited
so many newcomers to participate in board meetings.” Gran made it sound as if the
newcomers were the equivalent of a band of Viking marauders.
“I’m sure you straightened it out.” Chloe had something more important than the travails
of the library board on her mind.
“Of course.” Her grandmother looked slightly surprised, as if the comment were unnecessary.
Naturally she had straightened it out.
“I’d like to talk with you, Gran.” And the sooner the better, before the wave of righteous
indignation she was riding ebbed and she resorted to hiding her emotions, as she so
often did when it came to a confrontation with her grandmother.
“Can it wait, dear?” Gran was already turning toward the stairs. “I have to dress
for the Food for Africa dinner this evening, something you should be attending as
well.”
It had never seemed quite appropriate to Chloe to join a group of people who’d never
gone hungry in their lives and dine on filet mignon while listening to stories of
the malnourished, but she knew better than to say so if she wanted to get to the subject
that was uppermost in her mind.
“Now, please. This is important, Gran.”
That earned her a raised eyebrow. “More important than your charitable responsibilities?
Really, Chloe, your priorities should—”
“I found out about my sisters today,” Chloe said, her voice coming out breathless
and weaker than she would have liked. “Why did you hide that information from me?”
Her grandmother didn’t blink. She stiffened, that was all, as if taking a blow she
hadn’t seen coming.
“Really, Chloe.” She repeated the two words she so often used when she considered
her granddaughter to be unreasonable. No weakness showed in those syllables. Obviously
her grandmother was made of tougher fiber than Chloe was. “Such dramatic language
is not necessary. I didn’t hide the information. I simply didn’t feel it necessary
to tell you.”
“Not necessary?” A sudden spurt of anger strengthened her tone. Gran was acting as
if this were as simple as not mentioning that the newspaper hadn’t been delivered.
“I had a right to know that I had two sisters.”
“You were a baby when you came to us. You were hardly of an age to remember your sisters
or anyone else from your earlier life.” Gran put her leather handbag on the marble-topped
stand in the hall, looking into the rococo mirror above it to check her appearance.