Quill pulled into a parking spot at the hospital and left the engine running. His eyes burned from lack of sleep. At least Mingo was only a couple of hours from here, but typically his job as an electrician for Schlabach Home Builders had a lot more flexibility than it had yesterday. With the new homes crawling with inspectors and closing deadlines looming, Quill had been unable to get away to visit his mom.
His real trade, however, the one that mattered most, was to help the distressed and oppressed Amish work through their emotions and make the best decision for their lives. He’d helped more Amish see that they needed to stay than he’d helped to leave. But people didn’t know that aspect. All they knew was that sometimes entire families, usually younger couples with only a child or two, disappeared during the night.
“You ready?”
Frieda reached into the console and grabbed Quill’s leather-bound copy of William Bradford’s The Plymouth Settlement. It had been a gift from his dad for his thirteenth birthday, and Quill went nowhere without it. For that same birthday his dad had taken him to Massachusetts to see the Pilgrim Monument. That’s what his dad called it, and that had been its name at one time, but now it was called The National Monument to the Forefathers. Those few days of learning that history had changed how Quill saw life.
Frieda’s hands trembled as she ran her fingers over the gold embossing on the leather cover. “No. Not at all.” She handed him the book, offering him a way to pass some time while she calmed her nerves.
He opened it, hoping to find comfort. The book covered the time period of 1608 to 1650 and included the persecution of Puritans, their flight from England, and their settlement in Holland. It continued on, telling of the difficult voyage to America and the hardships endured once they arrived. He never tired of reading the day-to-day accounts of the new colony, but what held particular interest was the internal fighting among the believers.
Even though both the Puritans and Separatists were so loyal to God that they would gladly die for Him, they argued over interpretations of specific verses. Puritans believed that persecution was from God and should be embraced, trusting that God would reward them in the afterlife. The Separatists believed that persecution was the tyranny of people and that the only way to stop it was to stand one’s ground—to fight or flee but never go willingly to prison or execution.
Inside that overly simplistic definition was the heart of the trouble between Quill and the Old Ways. The Amish had too easily accepted what had happened to Frieda as God’s will—as a type of godly persecution.
Since Quill’s Mamm and Frieda’s Mamm were close friends and distant cousins and fifteen-year-old Frieda needed to get away from her home in Ohio, she had moved in with the Schlabach family.
Frieda and thirteen-year-old Ariana had become good friends. But within two years of Frieda’s arriving at Quill’s home, it was clear that she needed what he had to offer far more than she needed a girlfriend.
“I hate this place.” Frieda toyed with the colorful plastic beads on the fringe of her purse while staring at the hospital.
Quill closed the book. “I know you do. Me too.”
The first year after they left the Amish, they had lived near here because Frieda had needed to spend as much time in this hospital as out of it. When the worst of her physical needs were met, she began seeing a psychiatrist who was on staff at the hospital as well as a psychologist.
The whole journey had been long and painful.
And lonely.
But tainted memories had little to do with why his nerves were on edge. He took several deep, slow breaths, hoping to find relief from the pent-up anxiety. After years of seeing Ariana come in and out of his Mamm’s place with a smile on her lips and a lilt in her steps, hearing her sing of God’s faithfulness with that gorgeous voice, he’d thought that by now she would have found peace with what had happened. So he’d expected that if they ever met again, it would be awkward at first but they’d end up with some understanding between them. He’d been wrong. She didn’t understand what he’d done any better today than she had five years ago. She saw his actions as a betrayal to the faith, so how she felt about him made perfect sense. He got it. So why did his heart ache much as it had when his Daed died?
Still, he had made his choices, and he would have to live with the fallout of every decision. Perhaps much of what was eating at him was the knowledge of what lay ahead for her family.
Frieda’s hands no longer trembled, and he turned off the car. “You ready?”
“I guess.” Frieda opened her door.
They made a beeline across the crowded lot and headed toward the north entry of the hospital. They both knew the layout of this facility well. Too well. Once they were on the crosswalk, he stepped behind Frieda, making room for oncoming people. Clearly a Sunday morning was a busy time to visit.
Frieda stopped short, and Quill stumbled against her. Someone bumped into him, and he turned to those behind them. “Sorry.” He smiled and nodded as people frowned and went around them. Quill placed his hand on the small of Frieda’s back, nudging her toward the sidewalk.
She glanced back at him. Then she hurried out of the way and didn’t stop until she was near a metal bench. She turned. “Sorry about that.”
“If the worst thing that happens today to any of those people is we slowed them down for a bit, they’re having a good day. Don’t you think?”
“I doubt they see it that way, but yeah.” She picked at the fringe on her purse. “Look, I thought I could do this, but I can’t.”
He was used to this kind of resistance, and he wouldn’t insist she go in, but he would reframe the scenario so she would think about it clearly. She struggled on all fronts, and who could blame her? “So you had a driver bring you seven hours one way from Kentucky, and you spent most of yesterday in a car, and now you’re going to back out?”
Frieda had needed a hired driver to bring her because Quill was working and staying in Mingo, two hours away. Schlabach Home Builders built spec homes for subdivisions, which could take months or even a couple of years, depending on the number of houses and how far the job site was from their home in Kentucky. So Quill and his brothers would rent a small house or trailer near the construction site, which they dubbed a temp house. No one liked staying there, so when possible, they headed home early on Friday afternoons for the weekend.
“Your mother doesn’t want to see me.”
“Of course she does.” He’d told Frieda that for years, but she’d yet to join him when he made one of his visits. She blamed herself for causing Quill to leave as he had. That wasn’t true. They chose. Navigating guilt and remorse was a tricky thing, especially for former Amish. He should know. He lived in a community of them in Kentucky. Of all the issues people dealt with in life, he thought self-condemnation was the trickiest weight. Before last night he hadn’t stoned himself over his mistakes. Actually, he’d felt pretty good all these years—until he saw himself through Ariana’s eyes.
Regardless of why Frieda didn’t come with him on visits home, it was just as well that she didn’t. It was really hard sneaking around to see his Mamm in a way that didn’t get her into trouble with the church leaders. But that was easy compared to experiencing the contentment of home and all they’d left behind and then to have to pull away hours before sunrise. The reality that anything could happen to his mother between his visits hung over him.
Frieda sat on the bench and looked up at him. “Even if she did want to see me, what if someone is visiting her and spots us?”
“It’s a Sunday morning. Do you know any Amish who hire a driver on a Sunday morning? Besides, it’s a public facility, and we’re checking on her while she’s in the hospital. If someone saw us—and that’s a huge if—they couldn’t hold Mamm accountable, so what else can they do?”
“Judge us.”
“Oh, I’d say that horse went rogue long ago, wouldn’t you?” He forced a smile, hoping she didn’t see through it. Apparently even Ariana judged him now, but after talking to her, he figured her condemnation was probably the kindest emotion she felt toward him.
Frieda stared across the parking lot filled with vehicles. “And if we see Ariana?”
“We deal with it, just as I did Friday night.”
“Yeah, we made our bed, and we have to lie in it, but what about her? I was her friend, and I knew how she felt about you.”
He didn’t want to talk about this again or even think about it for the rest of his life. When he lay in bed on long, quiet nights, listening to the crickets chirp, the truth he’d buried whispered to him. With a five-year age gap between them, for most of his life he’d thought of Ariana only as the little sister of his closest friend. But as she grew older, she became his friend—an odd little creature who somehow worked her way into his confidence. Not long after her fifteenth birthday, he began to see the young, vibrant woman in her, and he decided to wait for her. They could’ve begun dating when she was sixteen, but with their age gap he thought it best to wait until she was at least eighteen. Maybe twenty.
He turned his attention to Frieda. “It would do you good to force your way through the anxiety and visit Mamm with me.” It was her decision, and normally he wouldn’t push like this, but Frieda had come such a long way—physically by car and emotionally by hard work with counselors. If Quill couldn’t get her to visit his Mamm today, he wasn’t sure she ever would.
She put her hand in his and jiggled it. “I understand your need to answer the call to help Amish leave, even when it’s Ariana’s family, but can’t we come up with something that would make life easier for her?”
He’d wondered that same thing for the first few years after they left. “Our hands are tied when it comes to her.” He sat on the bench next to Frieda. This past week had been emotionally hard on both of them. First his mom was missing, and they had no way of finding out why. Then, after praying Ariana’s sister would change her mind and choose to remain Amish, she sent a confirmation letter to his post-office box. When Ariana caught him at his mother’s, he’d been rendered nearly speechless as she stood in that dark hallway holding a candle, looking so grown, as years of good memories pummeled him. “We knew the cost from the start.”
“Did we?”
He’d been twenty and Frieda was seventeen. “We understood enough.” He got up. “Do you want to undo it?”
Her eyes grew large and she shuddered. “No, never. But—”
“But nothing.” Given the situation he and Frieda had been caught in, they had devised a reasonable plan and carried it out. If a person wanted to leave, the Amish—church leaders, all relatives, and every friend a person had ever known—would begin by gently tugging on the person to do as the Ordnung, the rules of the people, taught. If a gentle tug didn’t work, they would send letters and visit daily, preaching judgment—hellfire and damnation—until the dissenter yielded his or her rights of freedom to them or the person left, having been mortally stabbed through the heart. It was an unbearable wound to have one’s Mamm, Daed, brothers, sisters, and friends assure you that you’d go to hell for your wicked ways. It broke something inside most people.
The faithful Amish were like cockleburs on a long-haired dog. They didn’t hurt, but there were only two ways to get rid of them: pull them out one by one, taking some hair from the roots, or cut off the hair.
The only way for most to get free was to disappear. That’s where he and his brothers came in. While growing up, Quill had no intention of leaving the Amish, let alone helping his brothers establish a haven for other Amish.
But then the reality of what put his father in the grave hit Quill so hard he couldn’t stay. So now he helped families know how to prepare to leave. Not many wanted to leave, which was good, but when they did, he worked with them for a year or more while he and his brothers secured them jobs and a place to live. There were several rules, but the two most important were that the person or family had to spend at least a year praying before they gave a final decision about leaving, and they had to write a respectful, kind letter to leave behind. Had Ariana gleaned nothing from the letter he’d written to her? He had to stop thinking about this.
He glanced toward the entrance of the hospital. “You going? As I said, it’ll be good for you.”
“I fully agree, but I can’t.” She gestured down the sidewalk. “Go without me.”
Quill stifled his internal reaction. Her doctors said she had to make her own decisions concerning each step. She’d come to Pennsylvania for the first time in years. Apparently that was as far as she would get…this time. “Okay.”
“Thanks, and give your Mamm my love, will you?”
“Sure.”
She stood. “I can’t stay out here in the open.”
Being back in this area had Frieda’s fears running rampant, and he had to wonder if she would ever return again.
He looked for a less conspicuous spot for Frieda to wait for him until they could return to Mingo to meet her driver. He trusted no Amish would be here on a Sunday, but she didn’t, and he had to respect that. He pointed to another bench a few hundred feet away. “That spot has a shade tree, and no one will recognize you from that distance.”
Appreciation radiated from her eyes. “I’ll be right there when you get back.”
“I could be a while.”
“Not a problem.” She pulled her tablet from her purse, and he knew she’d spend the time doing e-mail, text messages, and games.
He went inside, and a group of people got in the elevator with him. It never ceased to amaze him how many folks visited at this hospital. He moved to the back. “Five, please.” The woman standing in front of the control panel pressed the number five.
The elevator stopped at his floor, and he made his way to the front and stepped off. The bell rang behind him as he strode down the corridor, looking for room 522. Once at the right room, he eased inside.
His mother’s frail-looking body was limp against the bed. Her skin seemed translucent with dark veins looking like railroad tracks. An IV was attached to the back of one hand, and she had a nasal cannula giving her oxygen. Did she feel as poorly as she looked? Her salt-and-pepper hair had a lot more salt than he remembered. Then again, he was able to see her only late at night, and the light from a kerosene lamp wasn’t much.
Sweat beaded across his forehead as he wrestled with the shock of seeing her so vulnerable. Would he ever find an end to the hundreds of life issues he hadn’t considered before leaving?
He slipped into the chair beside her bed. “Ach, Mamm.” He clasped his hands together, breathing words into them. “What have I…we done?” His mind spun with thoughts—not so much regret, because he’d do it all again, but with the magnitude of every decision.
His Mamm opened her eyes and smiled at him. “You figured out where I was.”
“I did. You gave me quite a scare.”
“I’m sure. It’s not as if I can leave you a note.”
She couldn’t call him either. She’d had five sons leave the Amish, and she was forbidden to make it easier on them, so she wasn’t supposed to have any contact with them. Even though she was willing to go around that edict in certain areas of life, he and his brothers couldn’t chance calling her, because several families shared the phone shanty. Some of the young teens and children thought it was a game to call *69, reaching the last person called on that phone. And then there was always caller ID to contend with. So they wrote to her, leaving the return address blank, or they dropped in for a visit late at night.
She studied him for a moment, giving off that motherly vibe that said she loved him far more than herself. “You do know all this”—she shook her arm with the IV and touched the oxygen tube—“is about getting sympathy from my unsuspecting son, right?” She rested her arms at her sides.
“Then it’s doing its job.” He placed his hand over hers. “How are you doing, Mamm?”
“A lot better.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“How’s Frieda?”
“Good.” He shrugged. “She’s here, but she couldn’t quite make it to your room for fear of seeing someone who would know her. And she can’t make herself face you, as if you would hold her responsible. I’ll keep talking with her, but right now I’m far more concerned for you.”
“Ahhh.” She waved her hand across the bed. “They’re only keeping me here because I don’t have someone who can stay round the clock.”
Was that statement supposed to make him feel better?
She narrowed her eyes. “I’ve not seen that look of torment on your face in a lot of years.”
He nodded. “I’m fine.”
“What you are is schtarkeppich.”
“Yeah, but I learned stubborn from its inventor—you.”
“True enough.” She gave a reluctant slight nod. “So tell me what’s got you out of sorts.”
“I spoke to Ariana on Friday night.”
“That’s the hardest part of all this, isn’t it?” She pursed her lips and nodded.
“Apparently so.” He hadn’t meant to use Ariana as a shield, but regardless of what the girl thought she knew, she was still clueless…and fiercely loyal to his Mamm. If Ari knew that his Mamm had supported Quill’s decision to leave with Frieda, would she remain loyal to his mom? His Mamm hadn’t known when or how Quill and Frieda would leave. That would have been taboo to discuss, but weeks beforehand she’d given them what money she had.
“I need you to listen to me, Quill. You were so young, and every miscalculation was mine, not yours.” She pointed a shaky finger. “You wipe that guilt off your face and from your soul. We made a decision based on what had to be done. Hold on to that, and let everything else go.”
“I’m trying.” He’d done a decent job of it…until a couple of nights ago.
“You need to take some time off. Get away, just you. Maybe to a beach or mountain. That always helps.”
“Can’t.”
She narrowed her eyes, studying him, and she seemed to know there was another family to move, but they wouldn’t talk about it. They never talked about it.
She pointed at his chest. “What’s that?”
He looked down and realized his necklace was showing. She wasn’t criticizing because the Amish didn’t believe in jewelry. She was simply curious, or maybe she wanted to understand him better.
He tucked the necklace back under his pale-yellow T-shirt. “Nothing.” But often he returned to a time when he could hear the pinging of metal coming from the barn as Ariana forged it. He hadn’t known what she was doing at the time, but later, when she gave it to him, it had helped him find his way out of the seclusion and loneliness of losing his Daed. She had made life bearable.
Why had he agreed to help her sister leave the order?