Fraying at the Edge (2 page)

Bellflower Creek, Pennsylvania

A
riana stood in her biological father's kitchen, listening as he and her birth mother screamed at each other. Her heart raced in a way it never had before, and she felt she needed to make a conscious effort to remain connected to her body, but that didn't even make sense. Was it her lack of sleep for weeks? her inability to eat? stress?

Whatever was happening and why, she seemed to leave her body and hover above the room, looking down. She appeared as out of place as she felt—an Amish girl fresh off the farm and in full Plain attire while in the home of strangers who, as God would have it, were her parents. Despite being twenty, she felt like a five- or six-year-old child as her parents kept screaming at each other.

Emotions suffocated her, just as they had when she'd arrived thirty-six hours ago, and there was no one to talk to about any of it. The only tie to her past that she was permitted to contact was Quill—former Amish man, current con man. Was he skilled at deceiving everyone or just her? She didn't care, not anymore. Truth be told, she'd rather keel over dead than call him.

What she desperately needed was to talk to
Mamm
and
Daed.
She missed them so badly it hurt, but they weren't her parents. The DNA testing had revealed she belonged to these people.

She wasn't angry with Quill because he'd investigated her birth and had uncovered the truth that landed her in this nightmare. She was angry because he did it behind her back, along with a thousand other sneaky things, after once again having won her trust. She was the poster child for the saying “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” And she felt ashamed. But she would not give him a third chance to deceive her.

“Do the words
culture shock
mean anything to you?” Brandi hissed at the man Ariana would never call Dad, but apparently he was her father.

The tension rose as her parents shouted at each other even louder. Surely there had been a mistake. How could she go from being a beloved third daughter in a caring and gentle Amish family to…this? But missing home was easier than missing herself, and she did miss who she'd once been or at least who she'd thought she was. Would she ever again be that innocent young woman full of hope and love? Or would confusion become her shadow, tracking her every move?

“I will not agree to this, Nicholas!” Brandi shook her finger at him.

He laughed, but his face was scarlet. “You think I expected you to? Here's the deal. You don't have to. She's as much my daughter as yours, and I have just as many rights as you do.”

Brandi's arm bangles clinked and jingled as she stabbed a finger toward him. “You were never like this about Skylar.”

Skylar.
The poor girl who should have been raised Amish. How was she faring in an Amish home?

“And just whose fault was that?” Nicholas asked. “You need me to admit that twenty years ago I wasn't invested in having a child with you and that not living in the same house made things tough to navigate? Okay, I'll admit both. But you pushed me away at every turn. You know you did, and I let you. Not this time, Brandi. Not this time.”

Her biological parents hadn't wanted her, and they weren't living in the same home when she was born?

Floating to the ceiling wasn't far enough away. She wanted to go home. The air continued to crackle with unfamiliar tension, and the angry voices bounced off the four walls. The room seemed to shift, changing shape and color as it tilted on its side.

Both parents stood mere steps from their current spouses. They had been introduced to Ariana as stepparents, which wasn't a completely new concept. Sometimes one Amish parent died and the other remarried, but she'd never thought about the possibility of one child having two parents and two stepparents simultaneously.

Just one of the million things she'd never considered before being removed from her home.

“I want to be fair,” Nicholas said. “But you have to be reasonable, Brandi. I won't give in. You know I can outlast you.”

“Give me a break. Who doesn't know what a loudmouth you are?”

“I'll split the time with you equally.” Nicholas held out one palm and then the other, as if each represented a home. “But for the first time I've taken some family leave. I have two weeks off and then some extra time here and there over the next six months. Let me use next week to get her feet under her and get her started on some goals. A bucket list of sorts.”

“Good name. One of your bucket lists might just kill her.”

“That's absurd. Stop fighting me, and give her and me some space. She'll have fun. I promise.”

Maybe Brandi was right about the culture shock. Ariana simultaneously felt like a loose helium balloon and feed corn being run through a grinder. Clear thought seemed impossible, but she knew Nicholas was wrong to use the word
fun.
Fun was being home and spending time with Rudy. Fun would be running the café she'd finally purchased a few weeks ago.
This
was miserable. But she would learn to cope, because if she didn't, Nicholas would take legal action against Rachel, the Amish midwife and family friend who'd known for twenty years that she and Skylar might have been swapped when she delivered them back to back before a fire engulfed the birthing clinic. Ariana hadn't known a person could be sued for negligence. If she left here, would Nicholas stop at suing the midwife, or would he also sue Mamm and Daed? Within a few days of her birth and Skylar's, her Mamm and Daed had a hint that something might be amiss. The blanket Ariana went home in differed slightly from the one Rachel swaddled her in following delivery.

“You listen up, Nicholas. She's not ready for all that.” She pointed at the stack of books on the kitchen table. “Good grief. On Saturday she stepped out of her world, a world that more closely resembles the eighteenth century than the twenty-first.”

Gabe, Brandi's husband, nudged her and opened his eyes wide, as if asking, “Seriously?” Brandi glanced at Ariana and gasped. Apparently in the heated exchange Brandi had forgotten for the moment that Ariana was standing there.

Brandi smiled, her eyes holding an apology as tears filled them. Ariana supposed Brandi missed Skylar as much as Ariana missed her Mamm. This whole mess was so new to all of them. Brandi and Nicholas had no idea Skylar wasn't their biological daughter until four weeks ago.

“Look.” Nicholas took a deep breath. “I don't want to fight with you like this, but I'm not backing down. I have one year to…”

Their voices faded as Ariana slipped into memories of last Saturday when Rudy kissed her and held her tight, promising to wait for her return. Neither of them had ever desired life outside the Amish. Then she learned she wasn't at all who she'd thought herself to be. When she first heard the news, she feared telling Rudy. He had felt sympathy for her heartache and hated being separated from her for a year, but he hadn't minded that her DNA was Englisch.

All she had to do was live here for a year, and then she could return to Rudy and her café and her family that wasn't actually related to her. Would they love her just as much after they'd had a year to ponder that the ties of blood had been broken?

“Ariana?” Gabe spoke softly.

Ariana seemed to float down from the ceiling and return to herself. The stack of books in the center of the table still looked overwhelming, but the fury radiating from Brandi and Nicholas was the most disconcerting. She tightened her grip on the edge of the kitchen table, hoping to remain on her feet.

Gabe held his hand toward his wife and snapped his fingers. Within seconds the room fell silent. He angled his head. “Can you tell me how you're feeling?” His calm voice brought a bit of peace.

She should be fine—a little rattled maybe, but nothing more. What difference did this short time of upheaval make? Her life was back home, and this mess was just a slight detour. So why did her skin feel as if it were on fire? She wanted to ask if divorced people always argued like this. They didn't understand. Not one of them. She'd spent a lifetime having ingrained into her every thought that all these things—from divorce to higher education, from nail polish to television—were wrong, and now she was living in the middle of them. If she could get her mind to slow, to absorb what was happening. “A…a little confused.”

“Yeah. I imagine so.” His eyes radiated gentleness.

“Could…I mean…Would it be okay if I went for a walk?”

Nicholas moved forward. His face was so unfamiliar, and yet she recognized the parental concern. “We shouldn't have…I'm sorry, Ariana.”

She managed a nod.

He drew a deep breath. “You're right. Some fresh air would probably be good for you. What if one of us goes with you?”

“Nee.”
The word came out fast and sharp. “I mean, no thank you.”

“Okay, but it's a confusing subdivision, laid out strangely. So don't leave this block, and you'll be fine. If you go around two or three times, we'll have a plan when you get back.”

Did that mean they would know where she would sleep tonight—here or at Brandi's? That's what began the argument. She'd slept at Brandi's Saturday night and here last night. Brandi had come to pick her up, and Nicholas said no. Then the argument shifted to everything concerning Ariana, including her clothes and hair. The threat of Nicholas suing her loved ones is what kept her here. Otherwise, she would walk out and never return.

Ariana pointed at the stack of books. “I can do this.”

“Yeah?” Nicholas sounded hopeful. He'd been disappointed to discover he had a daughter with an eighth-grade education, but surely he knew she could read. He picked up the thinnest book. “Do you think you could learn to drive?”

If that's what it took to cause peace, she could.
“Ya.”
That wasn't the right word. She was used to floating between Pennsylvania Dutch and English at home, but here the wrong language kept slipping out. “Yeah.”

He motioned from Ariana's head to her feet. “Look at you. I told your mom you're a smart, capable girl.”

Then why do I feel like a prized horse?
she wanted to ask. If her sister Susie were here, Susie
would
ask.

Awash in embarrassment, she walked past them and out the front door.

She looked to where the horizon had been her whole life, but it wasn't there. A multitude of huge houses covered every inch of the horizon, and there was barely the width of a lawnmower between them.

So many homes. Yet the emptiness Ariana felt was overwhelming, and the thought of calling Quill came to mind again. Nicholas had said she could reach out to Quill because he had left the Amish to live as the Englisch did. That's what Nicholas hoped she would choose to do by the end of her time here—leave the Amish and live Englisch. She would return home, but a year without anyone to talk to who knew or understood her was a very long time. Still, she wouldn't call Quill, no matter how bad things got.

The cool fall air felt good. Autumn meant a lot to the Amish—a time of refreshment, a season when life without electricity was easy. Spring also had gentle weather, but it was filled with planting and tending crops. In contrast, fall was a season of relative ease and weddings.

I want to be there, God. Or at least be allowed to reach out to my family, friends, and, maybe most of all, Rudy. You have a reason for all this, right, God?

She felt no stirring of God in her spirit, only loneliness. Before learning she wasn't really a Brenneman, she'd never understood the pain of being alone. How had Quill's mother withstood her older boys leaving one by one? Then, a couple of years after her husband died, Quill, her youngest son, left the Amish, taking Ariana's good friend Frieda with him.

What kind of person did that?

A car stopped abruptly, and she realized she was crossing a street. It was dark? She supposed she'd known that, but it hadn't actually registered. It was also rather cold. How lost had she been in her thoughts? How long had she been gone?