Several hours later, Esther and Daisy made their way back to their small house across the street. Cleaning Mrs. White’s house had never gone more slowly. All Esther could think about was that the man who had broken every promise he’d ever made was at her home. There would be no running away this time and no excuses about the funeral crowd.
As they walked up to the house, Chester stood from the porch swing. He wore older denim pants with a plaid shirt. After his eyes shifted for several moments, he lifted them to Esther’s.
“Who’s this little sweetheart?” His head nodded toward Daisy.
“This is Daisy.” Esther put a smile on her face and signed her name—pretending to pluck petals from the letter D. The little girl waved at Chester but kept close to Esther’s side.
“Why did you name your maetleh ‘Daisy’?” His pronunciation of little girl was laughable, and Chester cleared his throat as if embarrassed. “It’s not much of an Amish name, last I knew.”
“Daisy is my cousin’s daughter. Her father is over in the Pacific.”
“Oh, her daddy’s a soldier. And her mother, she’s . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Irene, Roy and Lucy’s maedel, died when Daisy was three. That’s when Joe left for the war. I’ve been caring for her ever since.” Esther realized she was having a conversation with her dead father. She shouldn’t be talking to him about anything but where he’d been for twenty-nine years.
He nodded. “I remember Roy and Lucy, but they had a brood. I don’t remember which one . . . And you use your hands to speak to her?” He squinted at her.
Esther ignored his question and knelt down to Daisy’s level. She signed for her to wash the potatoes for supper. The little girl nodded and obeyed instantly.
Esther walked up to the porch and stepped over the broken stair. She took these few moments to gather her thoughts, she remembered that the evening before Orpha’s death, she spoke of her son and called him such a good boy. Esther stood in front of the open door and faced Chester.
“Essie. Meh missah schvetzah?”
Esther agreed, “Yes, we do need to talk.”
Chester gestured toward the house.
“The house looks nice. I remembered it being bigger. Know what I mean?” His words were laced with a nervous chuckle. He spoke in a mixture of English and their Dutch dialect. “Nothing’s really changed. Same couch and table. Even the dent in the wall. Happened when your uncles and I played too hard and my heel dented the plaster.” He shook his head, then smiled at her.
Esther couldn’t find her voice, but his—his voice—took her back to being a little girl. The little girl he left behind. He shrugged when she didn’t respond.
“Can we sit down inside?” he asked.
Esther didn’t answer but instead just walked inside. Chester followed her into the house. This had been their home together; they’d both been raised within its walls. The house floorboards creaked as if complaining at the betrayal of Chester’s presence after his abandonment.
“I didn’t want to barge in like this,” he said to Esther’s back. He paused for a moment, and Esther put down her basket of old cloth rags she used to clean when he began again. “Well, lookie here, I didn’t see this earlier. My harmonica.”
Chester walked toward the kitchen window.
“Don’t pick that up.” Esther’s heart drummed.
Chester’s hand stilled and after several beats put his hand in his pocket.
“Mammie cleaned that every week since you’ve been away. Every week. I thought she was just being sentimental, but she was keeping it clean for you.” Esther’s shock made her skin numb and the house suddenly felt like a teeter-totter beneath her feet, making her feel unsteady. She closed her eyes for several long moments. Daisy patted Esther’s hand, bringing her back.
“I have no place to go.” He spoke in English. “This is the only home I’ve ever had.”
“The only home you’ve ever had? I think you have that backward. This is the only home I’ve ever had. You’ve been living somewhere for almost thirty years, so you can’t say—” Esther’s heart bloomed with courage. She finally blurted out, “Why are you here, Chester?”
Chester looked surprised, and his eyes got larger. “Mah mem ist schtavah.” His Pennsylvania Dutch had an accent, and it sounded odd as he spoke.
Yes, Esther knew his mother had died—but that hadn’t answered her question.
“You didn’t come when Mem died—dah frau.” He hadn’t taken the time to return when his own wife died.
Chester’s nod affirmed what she said. Though it was subtle, the pain of the truth broke the facade of strength in her face.
“There’s so much you don’t know.” His voice was raspy, like a strong wind forced through a missing slat in a barn.
“So much that I don’t know? I could say the same about you. Do you know how Mammie Orpha still grieved for you even the night before she died? She talked about you. She wasted some of her last words on you. I thought her mention of you was because of her forgetfulness, not because of this secret. And mem, auhm mem. How could— Why would—” She shook her head in consideration of her poor mother and all she’d gone through. She bit her tongue and winced at the pain. Her anger needed to be abated. It was not the Amish way to lose one’s temper. But as Lucy had told her, she had a right to know.
“I won’t ever forget that day. I was almost seven. Mem ran to the mailbox as soon as the mailman came. It was almost like she knew.” Esther could see her now. Her mother wore a drab brown dress, and even though Amish dresses were made to accommodate many waist sizes, this dress was at its smallest and still hung around her skeletal frame. On her head was worn-out fabric, tied at the nape of her neck. They’d been working outdoors all day. “She opened the letter and read it and her face went white. Her hands shook.” Esther’s breathing heightened. “She dropped the letter and collapsed on top of it.”
“Oh, Esther.” Chester took a step toward her. His brow furrowed like a wrinkled seam.
Esther stepped back. “No, I’m not finished.” Her harsh whisper rasped against the soft humid air in the small house. “I called for Mammie Orpha to come. We couldn’t wake Mem up. I ran to get Mrs. White and she had smelling salts. When Mem woke, she looked at Mammie and said—I’ll never forget it—she said, he’s gone.”
“But—” He extended a hand toward her. He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. Esther decided to ignore his eyes, which had begun to shine in the late afternoon’s waning light. She would not mirror his emotion. She would not cry.
“I’m not through,” she said, an open palm against him. “We put Mem in bed that day, and she didn’t get out for weeks—not even for your funeral. She didn’t die for another two years, but I lost her the day that letter came. I lost both of my parents with that letter. What did it say? I was told you were dead.”
The clip-clop of several horses and buggies passing by filled the silence between them. The horse hooves branded their shape on the road and beat down and hardened the gravel. Her heart felt no different.
Chester cleared his throat and pulled Esther from her unbridled thoughts. “Now listen. You don’t know the whole story. I never meant to be gone for so long. I just—” He paused, and his Adam’s apple moved up and down. His eyes shifted away from hers. “Please, sit down. I’ll tell you all about where I’ve been—and—don’t you—”
“Mem died longing for you, and now so did Mammie.” Her chest rose and fell heavily and quickly. Her hands shook. She’d never spoken to anyone in this manner before. “What did that letter say?” she asked again.
“That letter told your mem I was dead.” He cleared his throat. “I done some bad things in prison, things I couldn’t accept, and I had a guard send a letter telling her I was dead. Mem didn’t know I was alive.” He looked down, and the toe of his boot poked at a too-large groove in the wooden slat floor.
“About two years later, when I finally got out of prison, Leah was dead. I grieved her death, Esther, I promise you I did. My grief over it all turned me into a different person. I lost myself. I couldn’t come back.”
“Then how was it that Mammie knew the truth? Reuben said the two of you wrote each other.”
“I sent her a letter,” Chester whispered. “I ain’t proud of my actions.”
Esther eyed him with soundless suspicion. He shifted his weight, and the floor creaked beneath him.
“And what about all the other years?” Her palms were sweating. She’d made such a point her whole life to remain in the shadows and to be as invisible as possible. If avoiding talking to the father who had abandoned her for nearly thirty years was possible, she would’ve done it. This was not a conversation she wanted to have.
“Mission work overseas. Oil in Texas. Ranching in Colorado.” He waved a hand. “I’ve gotten around.”
“And you continued to write to Mammie? And she wrote you back?”
“For a few years. Then we lost touch.” He looked down at his feet. “You would’ve loved it out west, Essie. They call it big sky country and I don’t think I would’ve quite known what that meant until I lived it. I would’ve loved for all of you to see it.”
Esther shook her head and waved a hand at him.
“I still just don’t understand why. Texas, Colorado, or wherever—it’s all the same to me. You weren’t with your family who needed you.”
Chester looked up at the ceiling. But Esther didn’t look away from him, hoping he felt as uncomfortable as she did.
“I never meant for it to be so long.” His gaze returned to her. “I wanted to forget about how much it hurt for a little while, and then a few months turned into years. Then it was just too hard and everyone thought I was dead. It was easier to just—stay dead.”
“Easier for who?” Esther shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Esther. I want to make things right.” He paused for a moment and looked at his feet before looking back at Esther. “Let me stay, will ya?”
She wasn’t sure how she could let that happen, but Orpha’s influence over Esther had been strong. So much of the old woman still filled the quiet spaces of the house. All the times she spoke so highly of Chester came back to Esther like wind washing over a golden wheat field. Rippling over her mind, moving her. She closed her eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled.
“I’ll let you stay for a few nights—for Mammie’s sake—not because you can make things right. You can’t. Not ever.”