Love’s Journey Home (4 page)

“Aenti Louise. She’s written me regularly. Of course now her handwriting has gotten
so shaky I can barely decipher it.” Catherine glanced around, then nodded toward the
four hickory rockers that dotted the porch. “Can we sit?”

Aenti Louise never said a word. Not once. If anyone could keep a secret, it would
be Aenti. Barely able to comprehend the magnitude of the secret, Annie hesitated in
the doorway, the humid night air pressing heavy against her face like a wet blanket,
the pounding rain on the porch’s roof loud in her ears. A gust of wind tossed the
drops against her hands and face. She wanted to know more, but she shouldn’t invite
her sister in. Catherine had been shunned. Of necessity, but still, it hurt. Even
after four years it hurt in a fierce, open wound way. “I can’t. I don’t want to leave
Noah alone inside.”

“For a few minutes. I promise I won’t stay too long. Only a few moments.”

A few moments. She hadn’t seen Catherine in four years. God would forgive her. So
would Luke. Annie held open the screen door. “The rocking chairs are wet. Come in.”

She ushered Catherine into the living area as if she were a guest and not a sister
who’d grown up in this house, scrubbed these very floors, and dusted the fireplace
mantel and made quilts with all their friends and aunts and cousins. “Would you like
some tea? We have ice.”

“No, thank you. I want to talk to you, and I know I don’t have much time. It’s getting
late and you get up so early.” Catherine looked around, her curiosity bright in her
face. “Everything is exactly the same. I thought maybe Leah would change things up
a bit.”

“She’s been too busy with babies.”

“Jah, Aenti mentioned that. Jebediah, right?”

“Yes, little Jeb. A sweet baby boy.”

Annie took a seat on the sofa, letting Catherine have the hickory rocking chair Luke
favored. She looked well, much better than she had after Mudder and Daed’s deaths.
Better than she had after she’d left her groom on her wedding day. Better than she
had the last Christmas they’d spent together before she’d run away without saying
goodbye. Annie studied her sister, younger by one year but looking far older in her
damp, drooping Englischer clothes. She even wore pointy leather shoes and sheer stockings.
She must be warm in that getup.

“And Josiah and Miriam. Our brother and your best friend.” She smiled. “It must’ve
made you very happy when he finally settled down. No more running around.”

“Jah, and with Miriam. They’re so happy together.”

“Not surprising. She’s a strong, faithful girl. You must have fun spending time together
with the little ones.”

“We try.” She hesitated, not wanting to tell a lie, however inconsequential. Seeing
Miriam so happy made her happy too, and sad. She tried not to compare. Another baby
on the way already. Annie might never have that. “It’s hard…she has little Hazel Grace
and she’s expecting another bobbeli soon. Her mudder and daed need a lot of attention
now. She helped at first…after David…but she has so much morning sickness and Hazel
Grace has colic so she has her hands full.”

“So you don’t spend as much time together as you used to. Don’t worry, she’ll be back.
Miriam is a faithful friend.”

“I know.” Annie wanted to move the conversation away from painful topics, but everywhere
she turned there were more to be had. “You don’t want to see Luke and Mark?”

“Not tonight. I can’t. Not tonight.” Catherine plucked at the seam of her skirt, her
fingers worrying a loose thread. “I think it’ll be easier for me to do this a little
at a time. Besides, I don’t think Luke will be pleased when he finds you’ve allowed
me into the house. The bishop won’t be pleased.”

“You’re family, still. Luke will understand.” Annie stopped. Family or not, Catherine
had been shunned. She no longer had the right to share a roof with her brothers and
sisters. “You’ve been gone forever. They’ll want to at least see you—”

“They might want to, but I don’t want to get anyone in trouble with the bishop.”

“Why are you here? Why did you come now?”

“You first. How are you really, Annie?”

Annie had to swallow against the same rising tide of emotion that threatened to drown
her in the dark of night when she rolled over and found the bed empty next to her.
She inhaled and let the fragrance of wet earth that wafted through the open door calm
her. “I’m fine.”

Catherine leaned across the narrow space that separated them and squeezed Annie’s
hand. “Liar.”

“I never lie.”

“Wanting something to be so is not the same as it being so. If anybody knows that,
I do.”

“Why are you here?”

“I’m starting my senior year. I’m getting my bachelor’s degree.” Her answer proved
to be no answer at all. Catherine leaned back in the chair, which squeaked softly
as if in protest, and gazed into the space over Annie’s shoulder. “I’ve missed you
and Emma and the little ones. Not so little anymore, I imagine.”

“If you missed us so much, why didn’t you come back?” Annie regretted her tart tone,
but only a little. “You only have to tell the bishop you are ready to return and embrace
our faith. The community will welcome you with wide open arms.”

“You’re such an optimist. You always were.” Catherine hugged her bag in her lap as
if someone might grab it away from her. “I don’t want to come back—not that way—the
way you’re thinking of. I’m visiting, and I’m thinking about the topic of the thesis
I’ll write when I start my master’s degree next year.”

“Thesis?”

“Yes, thesis. It’s a paper you write when you get your master’s degree.”

“Master’s degree?” Neither term meant anything to Annie, and that fact made her sad.
She and Catherine lived in different worlds now. It wasn’t the clothes or the car
or the way she talked with fancy, educated words. Annie had known that, but it had
only taken a minute or two to establish these facts in plain view for both of them
to see. “This is important to you. Tell me more. But first tell me how you survived
out there.”

Catherine spoke quickly, as if she knew their time together could end at any moment.
She described living in the home of her mentor, a psychologist who had treated her
after she witnessed Mudder and Daed dying when their buggy was hit by a wheat truck.
She recalled the weeks and months it had taken her to adjust to a new way of life,
new clothes, new surroundings, new people. The one place she had fit in, she said,
was in school. Her mentor had been right. Education suited her. Studying suited her.
She soaked up every morsel of fact, equation, and data thrown at her by her teachers.

“Next spring I’ll have a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in sociology,”
she said, her face lighting up with a smile. “Then I’ll work on an advanced degree,
a master’s they call it. I’ll work as a graduate assistant while I earn it.”

“This is good for you?” Annie really wanted to know. She never had wanted more book
learning. Her cooking utensils and her ovens and sugar and flour—these were the tools
of her trade, and they gave her a sense of accomplishment grounded in the knowledge
that she served others with nourishment to their bodies. “The nervousness you had
before, the sadness…it’s gone?”

“I take a medicine for it and the medicine helps.” Catherine rubbed her hands on the
chair’s wooden arms. “What I’m doing makes me happy, and it’s possible someday I won’t
need the medicine.”

“You’re happy?”

“Very. I have a passion for research.”

“But you haven’t married?”

“I know that’s how you gauge happiness, and I’m so sorry for your loss.” Catherine
hugged her bag to her chest again. “But for me, it’s different. That’s not to say
I don’t understand love. There’s a man—”

“An Englischer?” Annie tried to keep the disappointment from her voice. Catherine’s
path had long ago diverged from her family’s. This shouldn’t surprise her. “You plan
to marry?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. We’re talking.” The momentary happiness had seeped from her
voice. “There are issues. He’s a medical resident. He’s studying to be a doctor.”

“A smart man, then. Someone who helps others.” This was good. Different, but a man
who served others was good. “What stands in the way?”

“I found I can’t have children.”

The flat way she said the words spoke to Annie of how long and how hard her sister
had worked to accept the truth behind them. Tears pricked Annie’s eyes. She blinked
them away.
You took David home before I was ready, but You gave me the gift of his love and You
gave me his son. I am blessed
. “Are you sure? How can you know?”

“Doctors know these things. There are tests.”

“And this man doesn’t want you because you can’t give him children?”

“Annie! No! Dean’s a good man. He loves me. He says we’ll adopt.”

“So then, what?”

“I don’t know. It’s the same old thing. The thing I went through with Melvin. Poor
Melvin. Did he ever marry?”

So all those words, that psychology Catherine sought when she ran away from her family
and her community had not given her the peace she sought. Some lessening of her pain
and sadness, but not peace. Annie chose not to throw it in her sister’s face for surely
a woman of such learning had reached this conclusion on her own. “He did. He and Elizabeth
have two children.”

“Wow.” Catherine sniffed and smiled a watery smile. “Good for him. He deserves such
bounty.”

None of them deserved bounty. God gave them these things because of His grace, not
because of anything they did. Catherine had forgotten much in the outside world. They
sat silent for a few minutes, listening to the rumble of thunder in the distance that
reflected unspoken thoughts and feelings and words.

“You never did say.” Annie studied the tense way her sister held her bag, then followed
her gaze out the windows to the black curtain of clouds that made it seem later than
it was. “Why did you come now?”

“I’m planning for my thesis.”

“Jah.” Something about her words told Annie there was more. Something that made Catherine
even more nervous than the mere fact of the visit itself. Which was plenty. “Something
you’ll do next year. What brings you now?”

“It’s about the effects of living in a closed community.” Catherine opened the bag
and pulled a chunky black thing from it. In the fading light, Annie struggled to make
it out. “Also the effects of living in an Amish community and then leaving it.”

“What is that?”

Annie leaned forward.

A camera. Her sister held a camera.

“I want permission from the family to take photos. I want to illustrate my thesis
with the photos. And then publish it.” Catherine held out the camera. “Touch it. It
won’t bite.”

“I don’t think…you’ll have to…” Annie shrank back, letting the camera dangle between
them. “Luke will want to talk with the bishop.”

“I know. That’s fine. I understand.” Catherine laid the camera on top of the bag.
“In my spare time, I take photographs. It’s become my hobby, I guess you’d say. I
want to be able to capture something here.”

“Capture the memories you’ve missed and will miss.”

“I’ve made my own memories. Don’t be sorry for me. Be happy. It was meant to be.”

“What do you mean it was meant to be?”

“Don’t you see? If I’d stayed here and married, some Plain man would be forced to
stay with a fraa who could bear him no sons, no daughters. God had a plan for me too,
and it couldn’t have been to stay here and doom some good man to a miserable, childless
marriage. Don’t look so sad. I’m fine. And there’s more.”

Annie shifted in her seat, wishing Emma were here. Emma would know how to handle this.
More. More than the master’s degree and the doctor and the not being able to have
children. It seemed impossible that there could be more.

“I’m writing a memoir. It was Sheila—Doctor Baker’s—idea. She says it’ll help me to
resolve unresolved issues. It’s already been accepted for publication. I wanted you
and the family to know since it involves you.”

“A memoir? What is a memoir?”

“You don’t know? Of course, you don’t know.” Catherine laughed, but the sound had
no joy in it. “There’s so much. A memoir is stories from a person’s life. His or her
memories.”

“Your memories?”

“And by extension, your memories.”

“You’re telling people about my life?” So this was it. Catherine had come not for
the thesis, still a year away, but for this memoir. This sharing of their private
lives. Who would care or find interest in her life? Who out there in the world cared?
“About me?”

“Yes. And Luke and Emma and Josiah and Mark and the twins.”

Annie couldn’t fathom it. She felt stupid, but still she asked, “You’re telling the
whole world, the Englisch world, about our family?”

“Yes. Well, anyone who decides to buy a hardback book for twenty-four-ninety-five.”
Catherine leaned forward in the chair, her gaze lifted as if searching for something.
A crack of lightning sent a sliver of light zigzagging across the sky, brightening
the room for a few seconds. Thunder rolled, a deep rumble that seemed to ripple from
one horizon to the other. “And given the current fascination with the Amish way of
life, I’m thinking that will be quite a lot of people.”