Abram's Daughters 05 The Revelation (8 page)

"Talkin' like what? Sayin' what to me?" Lydiann's eyes flashed with what appeared to be resentment.

Leah moved closer to her on Sadie's bed, aware of Lydiann's sweet-smelling perfume, an alluring fragrance she hadn't noticed till now.

Sadie stepped nearer the door, as if guarding it against Lydiann's possible attempt to flee midrevelation.

In hushed tones Leah said, "Even though I'm opposed to secret keepin' I've learned some hard lessons 'bout that you must never

.-:' '..;" '.' . ': 68 '... ' '"'.' .69The Revelation

Hi anyone what I'm goin' to say. And I mean not a single soul . . .

*''

I "If the family Bible were nearby, we'd ask you to put your hand

Hi it and promise," Sadie cut in.

Still staring at them with defiance in her eyes, Lydiann sat quinly, not making an effort to pledge anything at all.

"Oh, my dear girl," Leah said softly, "it would affect you terriUy, and most probably any future children, if you and Jake were to many because of being ignorant of what we know." Leah felt she was stumbling over her words . . . wishing there was a better way

*kan to speak this horrid truth that was going to shatter Lydiann's

Hut.

I Lydiann's shoulders dropped and she appeared to wilt at the

Hention of Jake's and her marriage or perhaps she was reacting

H the comment about their being ignorant. "I'm listenin'," she

id.

I "And promising, too?"

I "Whatever it is, I won't share with anyone. You have my word."

I Tears glistened in Sadie's eyes. "Not Jake, neither."

I Lydiann grimaced when she caught sight of her eldest sister's

Bars. "What on earth?"

"Years ago," Leah began again, "when Sadie gave birth to her Hn, she thought he had died ... his comin' too early into the world id all."

I Sadie sniffled and^moved away from the door, coming to sit be-

Hde Lydiann. "My sin resulted in a beautiful dark-haired boy . . .

Iho did not go to heaven that night as I'd thought." She stopped,

Hearly unable to finish.

H Lydiann looked first at Sadie and then at Leah and then back at

Hdie, as if to ask, What are you saying? She opened her mouth to

Beak but shook her head instead. Finally she ventured, "Surely, you

H)n't mean . . ."

H Sadie's eyes met Lydiann's.

"But Jake is Mandie's twin . . . Peter and Fannie Mast's son!" Hrdiann insisted.

Leah, still sitting on the other side of Lydiann, reached for her Hnd, but Lydiann pulled away, her breath coming in short gasps.

70

|

Leah quickly explained how Dr. Schwartz had switched Fannie's stillborn twin son with Sadie's premature babe. "He was just barely alive."

"Dr. Schwartz did this?" Lydiann asked in obvious disbelief.

Leah nodded sadly.

Lydiann's lower lip began to tremble, and she covered her face with both of her hands. "If this is a lie, it's the crudest scheme in the world to keep us apart."

"We would never think of saying a word 'bout this to you il things were otherwise," Sadie said. "We love you."

"Ever so dearly," Leah added. "And we want what's best for you and for Jake."

"For your future children, too." Sadie handed Lydiann ;i handkerchief.

"But Jake loves me and I care for him. Tellin' me this doesn't change the way I feel," Lydiann sobbed.

Leah waited a moment before going on. "We were terribly unfair to you and Jake. We did you wrong by not sayin' something immediately." She told how she'd first stumbled onto Jake with Lydiann in the kitchen last summer. "Once Jake left for Ohio, we thought your affection for him might fade with time."

"How can I just stop carin' for someone so wonderful?" Lydiann was staring now at Leah. "You . . . you knew this for that long? How could you keep it from me?" She bent her head low. "Honestly I don't believe my first mamma would've let something like this happen!" With that she headed straight for the door and flew out.

/ can't bear to watch her heart breaking so, thought Leah. How I wish I could do everything differently . . . for Lyddie's sake most of all.

Sadie wrapped an arm around her. "I won't let her treat you this way."

"No . . . no, just leave her be. There's nothin' more we can do." Leah rested her head on her sister's shoulder and gave in to anguished tears.

71t-^z-

4^-t- {/L^

*- *- e-

I jydiann had been only five or six when she first realized that folk looked on her and Abe differently than other children, especially women at Preaching service whose eyes shone with sympathy and puy. Leah had been a wonderful-good mother to them both, no question, but while Abe obviously considered Leah his mamma, Lyili.inn had always thought of Leah as both a mother and a sister. And when she'd fallen for the first boy who made eyes at her, she Wondered, if God was somehow making up for taking her mother to heaven early.

Jake was everythihg I wanted in a beau . . . in a husband and father for my children, she mourned as she headed away from the house. She wc|>l angry tears, infrequently brushing them away with the back of her hand, letting most fall freely. She felt she was rebelling somehow ii|',.iinst nature and the Lord God who'd fashioned her in His own iiu.ige, with tears and emotions beyond her control. She walked as I.i.m as she could to try to drive away the painful feelings, unable to i".( .ipe them no matter how swiftly she went. "Jake . . . oh, Jake."

She passed the woods on her right and Dr. Schwartz's clinic on t he left as she came up on the crest of the hill where the road fell xlowly yet decidedly toward the area known as Grasshopper Level. She slowed her pace somewhat, contemplating just where it was she wanted to go or if she really wanted to go anywhere at all.

72

Stopping now, she thought what it would be like to walk all the way to the Masts' orchard house. But what good would that do? Jake would wonder why she was there . . . ask why she looked so disheveled, with swollen eyes and a face streaked with tears. He would press for answers and she might give in, breaking her promise to Mamma Leah and Sadie. Nothing good could possibly come of that. . . could it?

Standing there in the road, she brooded further on the possible consequences of Jake's hearing from her his own aunt, of all things that he was not his parents' son at all, but the child of a woman he did not know and had been kept from knowing since Sadie and her family had always been off limits to him. Out-and-out shunned.

Things don't add up, she thought sorrowfully. Why does one family reject another?

All in, she turned to go back home, hardly able now to make her legs move. If what Sadie and Mamma Leah had shared with her was true and she knew better than to doubt their word she had no choice but to break things off with Jake.

She knew she could not do that today, nor tomorrow. Just when she would bring herself to turn her back on him, she didn't know. She almost wished his dear face repulsed her, but as she again considered the shocking news that he was indeed Sadie's own son, she was moved to further tears. She also felt an unexpected sorrow for Sadie, who had never been able to know her only living child.

Why, O God, should something this dreadful happen to me? To all of us?

Henry gathered up all the trash from the house and dragged it out to the receptacle in the garage. He shuffled back to the clinic, aware of some movement in the air, more subtle than a breeze, and he wondered if it was a figment of his imagination. The ghost of Henry past, perhaps. He deserved any haunting he might encounter, even welcomed the notion of rebuke by an accusing spirit.

Inside his office, he picked up the small waste basket and went from examining rooms to the patients' waiting room, not looking

73

forward to Leah's arrival at work tomorrow. He speculated on what hc might have to say about his giving Lydiann and Jake a lift.

I lie sight of the young Amish couple together on the road earlier loday had put him in something of a panic, even though he was tonvineed he had concealed it well. However, he /^/experienced a urnsai ion of nausea, and the more he became aware of the pair's anil naicd whispering in the backseat behind him, the more discoursed he'd become.

All my doing. . .

I1 seemed as if he had mentally repeated the logic, or lack thereof, in choosing Peter and Fannie Mast to raise and nurture Niulie and Derek's illegitimate infant thousands of times. Had it her i) the wrong thing to place Derek's firstborn in the arms of birthwcary Fannie . . . tricking her into thinking she had indeed birthed

I1 if gangly and gaunt boy? A counterfeit twin to Amanda, with not a m i up of resemblance to her in build or facial features. Truth be known, Jake was the spitting image of his biological father, Henry's Mvond son.

vSo Henry had committed the riskiest act he had ever elected to

11< >; one he had concurrently lamented and praised, unknown to any< >11c but Leah or so he hoped. Now, as he returned from disposing "I the last of the clinic rubbish, he happened to look up and see Ly-

11.inn walking alone, appearing somewhat agitated.

Sighing loudly, he strode down the sidewalk toward the house. Whatever was weighing on the Ebersol girl was none of his business.

For as long as Leah remembered, she had been careful to follow I he rules, doing as she was told by Mamma, by Dat. . . and, once she'd known to, by God. She'd always looked forward to being considered a faithful church member, and now, these many years away from having made her life covenant, she knew she must continually i r.ich for that mark. Even when no one was looking, she was striving i < > be all that she ought to be before God and the church. The one

I11 i ng she had done to disobey the Ordnung, though not blatantly,

11.id been to read the Bible more often than she supposed was neces'..iry, and more passages than were ever preached on of a Sunday.

74:

But today, this miserable day, she would have given anything not to have told Lydiann the appalling truth. She felt nearly as il she'd sinned, and she wished there might have been some reasonable way for her to remain silent, especially after witnessing the pain she'd inflicted upon her darling girl. Yet the strong possibility that ;i marriage between the two might occur; to the potentially disastrous effect such a thing would have on Jake and Lyddie's babies, should any survive; as well as the shame such devastating knowledge would have eventually brought upon Jake and Lydiann themselves had been enough to push her into speaking so plainly to Lyddie.

It was distressingly apparent how much Lydiann cared for Jake. Her affection for him was all over her face dwelling in her brooding eyes, pulling down the corners of her mouth even as she was hit with the startling facts.

Yet this heartbreaking dilemma was not Leah's doing, nor her fault. When all was said and done, it was Dr. Schwartz's deception that had brought them to this troublesome place when God, in His sovereignty, allowed Jake to breathe his first breath and live.

If the truth had not been revealed to Lydiann, the door would have remained open for more close contact between Sadie and her son. Yet with Jake unaware of his true roots, how satisfying could such a relationship have been for Sadie? Leah could only contemplate such things after the fact.

In the space of one heart-to-heart talk, the what-ifs had been settled. Today the agonizing truth had been laid open to one more person, and Lydiann's heart was surely breaking.

Sadie wandered aimlessly around the large plot that had been last summer's charity garden, feet pressing into the tilled-up earth as she talked to herself. "What have we done?" she whispered, still caught up in the sorrowful scene that had taken place a few hours ago. "I'll never know my son now."

She spoke to the dirt, but she suddenly raised her head. It was dreadfully quiet here past the side yard, not so far from the woodshed and the outhouse so much so that she thought she could hear the beating of her own heart.

She stared at the rolling lawn that swept up to the front of the

' : '; :"".". ''v' ' 74 '..:::' -. ..;75, ..

Ihiuisc, the location of countless happy family gatherings over these

11i.my years. Family. . . love. . . unity. Have we ruined that? She

lunged helplessly. Likely Lydiann was experiencing something

iniilar to the grief she herself had felt when the stunning news of

U.uvcy's death arrived at her door. The surge of sadness, even

mpiiness that had enveloped her had nearly drowned her as each

inimile ticked by. At times she had yearned for it to do just that

Mibmerge her into oblivion so she might not have to suffer such

|UIII.

Yet with the dawning of harsh reality came a slow but sorrowful .11 rcptance. Harvey was gone from her, never again to knock the mild off his work boots at the stoop, chuckling as he came into the

I louse at suppertime, eager to wrap her in his big, strong arms with .hi "Ach, I missed ya so."

I n her mind she saw the years ahead for Lydiann, her poor sister possibly feeling queasy every time she thought of her hand being

11cId so tenderly by her own nephew. Will she be able to put this out of lit't mind? Perhaps even forgive us for not saying something sooner? Sadie wondered as she noticed Aunt Lizzie coming toward her.

"Dorcas is having a few of the women folk over for a cornluiskin' bee tomorrow," Lizzie announced. "Would you want to go .uid help?"

Opening her mouth to answer, Sadie suddenly spotted Lydiann will king toward the house, making her way across the side yard. Anxious as to whjKre she'd gone, Sadie watched her sister, trying to

I1 link what she ought to be saying to Lizzie. "She ... I ... jah, I don't see why I couldn't help with the huskin."

"All right, then," Aunt \Jaz\s. replied, eyeing her curiously. Sadie was terribly aware of the lump in her throat as she noticed I .ydiann sit down on the back step, hands covering her face. Where'd \the go? Sadie wondered. Did she keep her promise not to tell anyone?

77t^^p