Ties That Bind (6 page)

Was this Ariana's plan—to casually bring up the topic and read her siblings' faces?

The baby began to wriggle and fuss, probably waking to feed. Lovina swayed her newest granddaughter back and forth. “Should I take her to Salome?”

Ariana shook her head. “Her milk isn't in yet, and she thinks sleep is the best remedy. I doubt she will join us for breakfast, but Malinda put several bottles of breast milk in the fridge yesterday.”

Salome's younger sister Malinda produced enough milk to feed her babies and half of the other Amish babies in these parts. Since Salome had always struggled to provide milk for her own babies, it was nice that her sister had more than enough and willingly shared.

Susie came down the steps with Esther on her hip. “Somebody wants her
Aenti
Ari.” Susie rolled her eyes. “I don't mind that part, but why does she have to wake me up while she's looking for you?”

“Uh, because we share a bedroom?” Ariana lifted Esther from Susie's arms before going to the croissants and tossing one to Susie.

Susie grabbed it. “Okay, fine. This almost makes her waking me up worth it. But I need my rest at this age—for brain growth. Can't someone teach her that?”

“Even though you're a teen, you're an adult now, Susie,” Lovina reminded her. “And you should be up helping your sister every morning.”

“Great, Mamm. No more benefits than being seventeen and twice the responsibility. Don't become a salesman. We'd starve to death.” She winked at Ariana.

Lovina couldn't help but laugh at her daughter being her usual sassy self. Through the window Lovina saw two rigs pull onto the driveway, each belonging to one of her married children and carrying some of her fourteen grandchildren. Lovina's main concern of late was Salome's personal battle with God over Esther's physical scars. She prayed for Salome and doted on her, but today, as she caught a glimpse of life through Ariana's eyes, Lovina realized she had neglected to pray for her other children as fervently as she did for Salome.

Lovina should've spent years on her knees for each child, because she couldn't imagine who she would become if she lost any of her children to the world.

Q
uill 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.