Chapter 25
For the second time in less than three weeks, Emma made her way toward the simple white farmhouse with the wide front porch. A quick peek in the barn as she passed revealed little more than a few curious horses, a sleeping barn cat, and an old buggy wheel in need of repair. The tap-tap of a hammer from somewhere just beyond the barn piqued her curiosity, but, still, she kept walking, her need to figure out the final piece of the puzzle leading her to the one person who’d always understood her, even when she didn’t always understand herself.
Mary Fisher had been her friend since the beginning, enabling them to carry on a tradition started by their mamms. They’d chased each other around the pond when they were toddlers, sat beside each other as they learned to read, raced each other to the part of their post-school-day walk that required one to go left and one to go straight, and kept each other’s innermost secrets. But perhaps, more than all that, Mary had a way of seeing things Emma could not always see.
Taking the porch steps two at a time, Emma fast walked across the wood planking to the dark green door she’d helped Mary paint the previous summer. In spite of the heaviness in her heart, the memory of Mary’s howl when Emma accidentally painted her toe brought a fleeting and oh-so-needed smile to her lips. The raw day would prevent them from sitting outside today, but an empty stall in the equally empty barn would certainly work, too—
“Emma? Is that you?” At the familiar voice and the equally familiar flapping it always seemed to kick off inside her stomach, Emma stepped out from behind the upright and waved at the handsome twenty-four-year-old heading in her direction with a hammer in one hand and a level in the other. “Dat left with Mamm and the girls in the buggy not more than twenty minutes ago.”
She tried to hide her answering slump, but if the way Levi’s eyebrows dipped with worry less than a blink later was any indication, she’d failed. Miserably. Before she could come up with something to placate him, though, he settled himself on the second-to-last step and patted Emma over to the top one. “I know I am not Mary, but I am good at listening, too. Maybe even better.”
Her laugh stirred a matching one from Levi as she heeded his invitation. “I think it is good that Mary cannot hear you say such a thing.”
“I think you are right.” He brushed a piece of straw from his pants leg and then swiveled on the step so Emma was his view. “Have you decided what you will do?”
And just like that, any residual laughter on her part ceased, wiped away by the tug-of-war that had become her life. “I thought I had . . . before I talked to Mamm.”
Something sparked behind Levi’s eyes. “So, you will stay?”
“I know I should be able to answer such a question, but what seemed so easy two days ago, is not easy now. Miss Lottie said not to make a decision in anger. But without anger, there is only”—she looked out at the barn—“confusion.”
“I am listening.”
And so she told him. She told him about Brad’s steadfast belief that Mamm and Dat belonged in jail. She told him how Miss Lottie convinced her it was time to talk to Mamm. She told him how Mamm’s lack of smiles toward Emma over the years had both nothing and everything to do with Emma. She told him Ruby had chosen to raise Emma in the Amish way and how she’d confronted Brad with that information. And last but not least, she’d told him how Brad had finally, finally relented on the notion of jail provided Mamm and Dat didn’t interfere in his relationship with Emma ever again.
His slow, thoughtful nod when she got to the end let her know he’d been listening. The quick touch of his hand on hers let her know he cared even if her answering gasp made one of the barn cats rethink his approach and scurry behind a bush, instead.
“It is good that you know these things,” Levi said, catching and holding her gaze with his. “It is when you know things, you can decide things.”
“Three days ago, I wanted to punish Mamm for keeping me from Brad. He is my only living birth parent and I should know him. But now that I know the truth about everything, I see that Mamm was doing what Ruby wanted her to do. And me? I am a link to Ruby for Mamm, and a link to Ruby for Brad. But I cannot be both, just as I cannot be both English and Amish.”
Again, he nodded. And since his hand had never left hers, he simply tightened his grip. “Whatever world you choose, Emma, I will choose it, too.”
“Whatever world I . . .” She looked from Levi, to his hand on hers, and back to Levi. “What are you saying, Levi? What do you choose?”
“I choose you and me. To be together.”
“Together?” she echoed.
“Yah.”
She stared at him, waiting for some outward sign he was teasing, but there was none. Just a tender smile that was trained solely on Emma. “But-but I’m not Liddy Mast!”
“You’re right. You are Emma Lapp.”
“I know but—”
“You are Emma Lapp,” he repeated.
“But I’m not sure what that means.... Who I am, anymore. . .”
Levi quieted her words with a gentle squeeze. “You are still the same person you have always been, Emma. You are kind. You are sensitive. You are caring. You are good at volleyball and baking cookies. You are a fine sister, a fine daughter, and—”
“How can I be a fine daughter when I am so confused?”
“You are a fine daughter because you are confused,” he said, his voice thick.
She stared at him. “That does not make any sense.”
“You have taken time to get to know your birth father, yah?”
Emma nodded. “Yah. I have learned many things, but there is much more to learn.”
“And your mamm?” Levi asked. “Have you learned things about her?”
“Do you mean Ruby or . . .” She stopped, swallowed, and steadied her voice. “Mamm?”
“Both, I guess.”
She considered Levi’s question. “Yah.”
“And?”
“I love them both. Brad and Dat, too.”
“Then that’s the only real difference I see about you, Emma. You have more people to love, and more people to love you now.”
* * *
Emma ran her fingers across the back of the now-closed photograph album and looked up at Brad and Delia, the love in their eyes making her smile tremble even more. “Thank you for letting me look at the rest of these pictures. They help me to see Ruby in a way I never could have without them.”
“I’m glad, dear.” Delia rubbed Emma’s back in smooth, even circles. “She was happy with your father. Very happy.”
She could see how they thought that. Ruby’s smile in each and every picture was proof. It was also proof that the decision Emma had come to was the right one. For Emma.
“Mom and I talked about it and we know transitioning from an Amish life to an English life is going to take some time. We know you’ll make it fine, but we also know it will be filled with unknowns for a while. So that’s why we thought maybe it would be best if you and I move in here, with Mom, until you get more comfortable. Then, and only then, we can move to my place—our place.”
“Or just stay here,” Delia added, resting her cheek against Emma’s shoulder. “I certainly have the room and the books to keep you busy.”
Emma let her answering laugh accompany her gaze as she took in the cozy sitting room that had made her feel at home on her very first visit to Delia’s home.
* The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with more books than the English grocer . . .
* The photographs of Brad as a baby and a young man . . .
* The happy little knickknacks she’d come to know the origin of thanks to the warm and welcoming woman sitting beside her . . .
* The window with its view of the pond Ruby had skated on . . .
* The mantel with the framed picture of her birth parents, together and smiling . . .
Somehow, Emma could see the room as it might look in two years, five years. The pictures and the books would still be the same, but in her mind’s eye there would be new things on the shelf, too. Perhaps a framed picture drawn by one of her own children . . . The skates she hoped to own one day lying beside the window . . . Her husband seated beside her on the couch while Brad added a log to the hearth . . . A plate with Delia’s pastries and her own bread sitting atop the coffee table . . .
“If there is something you want to change or add, we can do that. This is your home, too, Emma.” With the gentlest of fingers, Brad turned Emma’s chin until he was the only thing she saw. “We want you to feel as if you fit here—with us. Always.”
Just for a moment, as she stared into the eyes she’d yearned to see her whole life, she wished someone would take a picture. But as quick as the thought came, it disappeared. She didn’t need a photo album to remember this moment. This man, and his mother, were part of her life to stay.
“Emma? Did you hear me? We want you to know that you fit here. . . .”
She found Brad’s hand with her left and Delia’s hand with her right and squeezed both. “I know. And I do. But I also fit in Blue Ball. With Mamm, Dat, and the children. And with Levi.”
“Levi?” Brad echoed.
“He has asked to court me and I have said yes.”
“To court you? As in the Amish tradition . . .”
“Yah.”
Brad’s eyes left Emma for Delia, only to return with a hint of anger. “Emma, I told you if Rebeccah and Wayne interfered in any way, I will not be able to honor my promise to you.”
“This is not about them—not in the way you mean, anyway. Levi was willing to leave his vows to be English with me if that is what I wanted,” she said.
“Then do it!” Brad said. “He can come work with me!”
“That is what Levi said, too.”
“Good! And you can do what you love, too. You can open a restaurant and people will come from miles to eat what you make!”
The image his words created in her thoughts quickly bowed to another, better one—one responsible for the smile she felt tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I am counting on that.”
“Then I don’t understand. . . .”
“I do not want to leave my Amish ways, and I do not want to leave my family.”
“We’re your family, Emma,” Brad protested. “Your real family.”
“It is nice to look at you and see my eyes, and my same hair. It is nice to look at pictures of Ruby and see my chin and my nose. But Mamm and Dat? And the children? They have made me who I am, too.” She looked from Brad to Delia and back again, the love she felt for them setting off a stream of tears she didn’t bother to wipe away. “I need all of you in my life—in the simple life Ruby wanted for me and for herself.”
“Ruby’s choice doesn’t have to be your choice, Emma.”
She smiled at her birth father. “You are right, it doesn’t. But I’m not making this choice because of Ruby. I’m making this choice for me. For my life. I do not need many tables full. I need only one table full—my own.”
“But you haven’t given me a chance to show you what it can be like here. . . .”
“I don’t need you to. I know my life. It is like it was with Ruby. Her smiles in your English world were different than her smiles in simpler times. She smiled here, by your pond, but her smile with the bubbles and the dandelion? They were bigger, happier. Because that is where she fit best. I know I have said I didn’t fit in Blue Ball, but that is because I was looking to others instead of inside to my own heart.”
“But I just found you, Emma,” Brad pleaded. “I don’t want to lose you again. I can’t lose you again.”
“You won’t, you can’t. I am your daughter.” She released her hold on his hand to wipe the tears from his eyes. “And you, Brad Harper, are my dad. Forever and always.”