The Amish Bride (3 page)

“Can we talk?”

Ezra leaned a little farther over the creek, his brown eyes sparkling, his red hair pushed up at his hairline. “About?”

“Our future.”

“How about if we take off for Florida?” He grinned.

“I’m serious.”

He stood upright, his hands resting on the railing, his eyes connecting with mine.

“I know what I want to do,” I said. “Go to baking school and then open my own business.”

“I know,” he said. “You’ve told me a dozen—make that a baker’s dozen—times.”

I wrinkled my nose. I probably had. “So what about us?”

He shrugged. “Time will tell,
ya
?” He reached up and touched my hair. “I like it when your
kapp
is off,” he said. “You’re so pretty.” I was used to compliments from him. I stepped closer. As he leaned over to kiss me, I pulled my hand from my pocket, accidentally pulling out my
kapp
too. As I reached for him, it fell to the railing, and before I could snatch it back, it went over the side.

We both leaned forward, watching it float downstream for a few seconds, a white vessel bobbing along in the darkness.

“Will you get in trouble?”

I shrugged. “Not much. I have another at home.”

“Want me to jump in after it anyway?”

“And make it miss the adventure of a lifetime? Who knows where that
kapp
might go?”

Before Ezra could reach for me again, my phone rang. It was Mom. I knew if I ignored it, she would grill me later.

“I need you to come on home,” she said.

I assured her I was on my way and hit “End.”

“Your mom?” He stepped back.

I nodded.

“Let’s go.”

I followed him to the bike, put on my helmet, and climbed on behind him, wrapping my arms around him again. Even through his coat I was aware of his muscular shoulders and back. He was everything I’d ever wanted—handsome, adventurous, and strong.

In no time we were back on the pavement, rolling through the hollow and then up the hill to the driveway to my house. As he turned, we both leaned in unison again and came to a stop in front of my cottage.

I climbed from the bike, pulled off the helmet and then the jacket, and gave both back to him. “Thanks.” I leaned toward him just as the front door opened. My brother, Zed, stepped onto the porch. The fringe of his blond bangs nearly hid an odd, befuddled look on his face, but as he flicked his hair from his eyes, I could tell something was troubling him.

“Give me a minute, would you?” I called to him, though I consciously kept my voice kind. In the past I’d been a bit of a brat, but lately I’d really been working on being nice to everyone, even my little brother. Make that younger brother, by three years. I still couldn’t get over the fact that he was now taller than me.

In spite of my effort, a hurt expression passed over Zed’s face, and he stepped back inside and shut the door.

I felt a twinge of regret that I’d put my brother off, but still I turned my attention back to Ezra. Before I could say anything the front door opened a second time. I spun around, expecting Zed again, but it was my mother.

“Hello, Marta,” Ezra quickly said, his back stiffening.

“Ezra.” She nodded, and then her eyes fell on me. “Come on in, Ella.” She stood, sure and solid, with her arms crossed over her chest. She wore a kerchief over her graying hair instead of her customary prayer covering, which meant she was tired, stressed, or had been cleaning. Maybe all three.

No matter. I knew not to argue with her. I gave Ezra a wink. “See you soon.”

His deep brown eyes flickered in agreement, but he didn’t say anything more to me. He called out a goodnight to my mother, secured the extra helmet, and by the time I reached the open doorway, he’d swung the motorcycle around and was gunning it toward the highway.

Mom appeared more serious than usual as she directed me to sit in the wingback chair next to the woodstove. Zed sat on the couch, and she sat down beside him.

She didn’t ask me where my head covering was or tell me to change out of my jeans. Instead, she launched right in with, “I need to tell you something.”

I could see that it was something big. Eyes wide, I glanced at my brother.

“Zed already knows. He overheard me on the phone the day before yesterday.”

“And you’re just bringing me into the loop now?” I knew my voice sounded petulant, but I hated it when people kept secrets from me.

My mother nodded. “I wanted to tell you, but not during finals, and then last night, with me being out on a birth and all, I didn’t have a chance.”

I leaned forward, wondering what in the world she was talking about.

“I had a call—”

I nodded my head impatiently.

“From your father.”

I fell back against the chair. No one ever talked about him. Especially not my mom. Never, ever.

“He’s ill.” My mother turned her head to the side, profiling her tired face. She took a deep breath. “He wants to come back to Lancaster County.”

Zed had known this since Thursday and hadn’t told me? I shot him a disapproving look and turned back toward Mom. Her gaze was fixed on the darkened windowpanes below the half-closed shade.

“You told him not to, right?” My voice was raw. So much for trying to be nice.

She didn’t respond, but the look on Zed’s face told me she hadn’t. And that he hadn’t asked her to.

“Why do you care?” I blurted out to Zed. “He’s not your real father.”

Zed flicked his bangs out of his brown eyes and stared me down. I’d never seen such a challenging look on his face—at least not directed toward me. Me, he had deferred to his entire life.

“Actually…” Mom’s head turned toward me as she spoke. Her features looked more weathered than usual. And sadder. “It’s time for you to know the truth, Ella. I told Zed Thursday night. I’m telling you now. Freddy Bayer
is
Zed’s father, as much as he is yours.” She leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees.

“Yeah, of course, legally and all,” I replied with a wave of my hand. “But he’s not his
birth
father.” Mom and Dad had adopted Zed when he was just an infant.

“Actually, he is. Freddy is Zed’s
biological
father. By a woman other than me.”

I barked out a frustrated laugh, but neither of them smiled. Closing my mouth, I stared at her for a long time as her words tried to make their way into my brain.

Freddy is Zed’s biological father.

By a woman other than me.

I shook my head. None of it made sense. “How could a father adopt his own child?”

“He didn’t, Ella. We let others believe we were
both
adopting. But the truth is that the only one in our marriage who actually adopted Zed was me. Freddy was already Zed’s father, so there was nothing else he needed to do.”

Again, all I could manage was to stare. What was she saying? That my father had a child outside of my parents’ marriage, a baby boy, and then he took that boy from his own mother and forced his wife to raise him? All while pretending the child wasn’t even really his in the first place?

I ran a hand over my face, telling myself to breathe. Zed and I shared the same biological father.
Breathe
. He wasn’t just my brother legally; he was my half brother biologically.
Breathe.

This was insane.

“What about his birth mother?” I managed. “Who was she?”

“An unwed young woman, as I’ve always said. No need to know more than that.”

“But how could Freddy make her give up the baby? Even if he was the father, she was the
mother
. Don’t the courts favor—”

“Ella, he didn’t make her do anything. She loved her baby. She loved him enough to want to give him a better life, one with two parents, where he wouldn’t have to endure her shame and grow up under the scorn of the community.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to understand. “What about you? How could he make you raise that baby, the result of his”—I spat out the word—“
affair?
“

“Ella, he didn’t make me do anything either. I
wanted
the child, desperately so, regardless of how he came to be.”

I opened my eyes to narrow slits. “So you weren’t forced to do this?”

“Absolutely not.”

“And the birth mother really wasn’t either?”

Mom shook her head. “No. She loved the babe enough to give him up. And I will always be grateful. I loved him enough to make him my own. It’s that simple, Ella.”

As her words finally began to sink in, I found myself curling up in a ball, my hands grasping my knees. I tried to breathe normally, but instead gulped for air.

I felt more deceived than I ever had in my life.

Not that I’d ever had any big delusions about the kind of person my father was. After all, he’d abandoned us when I was just three years old. But now, to learn that not only had he done that, but he had also had an affair, taken in the result of that affair, and created a lie about it for the world to believe, was a shock.

I looked at Mom and then at Zed. Both suddenly appeared as strangers, sitting before me. Calmly.

Where was their outrage?

I concentrated on my brother, whom I’d coddled and bossed and nagged and loved the last fifteen years. I looked at his blond hair, so different from my dark auburn waves. Sometimes, people who didn’t know he was adopted said we looked alike, but I knew it was just coincidence. All these years I thought my baby brother and I didn’t share a single genetic cell, and yet we did. I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Mom said, rising and stepping toward me. “I know this is a surprise, but—”

I found my voice. “You told him none of us would see him, right?”

She leaned forward as if to reach out to me, but I recoiled.

She shook her head. “I told him to do as he wished, as God led.”

“As God led?” I bolted from the chair, my voice bouncing off the walls of the tiny living room. I grabbed the backpack at my feet. She reached for me again, but I swung around the newel post of the staircase before she could touch me. I bounded up the wooden stairs and into my room, but even before the slam of my door finished echoing through the little cottage, I regretted it. Now I was stuck. Why hadn’t I dashed out the front door instead and sent Ezra a text to come get me?

I expected Mom’s quiet knock, but it never came. Neither did Zed’s tentative voice, asking if I was all right. I paced around my room, around the path I’d worn into the braided rug, round and round. It was an Amish rug. The quilt on my bed was Amish too, made by
Mammi
, with the typical blocks of green, blue, maroon, and black. As a little girl, I’d wanted pink. But these were the more common Amish colors.

Amish colors, Amish quilt, Amish rug.

My mother’s forgiveness of my father was most likely Amish as well. Which made sense because she’d grown up in that faith. We had the same deep roots, but Mom had raised us as Mennonites, not Amish.

Still, I used to think I understood the whole Anabaptist forgive-and-forget thing, but clearly something was missing when it came to my father. He had never once, in all these years, contacted me. Not on a birthday or on Christmas. Not for any reason at all. And he’d never acknowledged what he’d done. He’d never asked for forgiveness.

Half an hour later, I sent Ezra a text. I told him I’d had an argument with my mother and could really use some cheering up, but he didn’t respond. He must have left his cell phone in the barn, as his parents had been requesting for a long time. Feeling even more lost and sad and alone, I set my phone aside and closed my eyes.

For years I was out of place not having a father, but by the time I was in high school I’d kind of liked the mystery of him disappearing. Here I was, an ultraconservative Mennonite girl with a mother who was a social
misfit and a geeky younger brother who wanted to make films but wasn’t even allowed to have a camera. The missing father added a little intrigue to who I was, which I sorely needed.

At times I made up little stories for myself. Maybe he’d done something heroic and was in a witness protection program in Alaska. Sometimes I pretended he was a famous actor or politician. I imagined he would come back someday, loaded with money.

But tonight, with this new information—and his return a real possibility—I hated what he’d done. Though Mom had always drilled into me to hate the action and not the person, that wasn’t happening here. If I was honest with myself, I’d have to admit that I didn’t just hate what he’d done; I hated
him
.

And why shouldn’t I? He’d abandoned me. He’d cheated on my mother and then abandoned her. And now it turned out he’d abandoned Zed too.

As for Zed himself, I didn’t know what to think. All these years I’d been so smug about the fact that even though my father had left, at least I knew who he was. Zed hadn’t known who either of his birth parents was. That thought would have driven me crazy were I in his shoes, but it had never mattered to him at all.