Lydia's Hope (3 page)

“Mammi’s sad, Daadi. You have to do something.”

“Sad?” Adam’s heart seemed to turn over. He’d counted on telling Lydia the bad news
himself, finding a way to break it gently so she wouldn’t worry. How could she have
found out from someone else so quickly?

“Her eyes looked funny when we came in from school,” Daniel said, with the precision
that always seemed to mark his words. “And she gave us an extra snickerdoodle and
said to go play. So we think she’s sad.” Daniel’s hazel eyes, so like his mother’s,
were fixed on Adam’s face. “I told David you would make it better, ain’t so?”

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, hoping he could find a way to make good on those words.
“Suppose you two get moving on your chores. I’ll go in and see your mammi, ja?”

“Ja, Daadi.” Daniel nodded, handing him back the lunch pail. “Race you to the barn,
David,” he said, starting off slowly so that his little brother could catch up.

Daniel had a kind heart. And David had a gift for making people smile. Adam watched
them for an instant before he headed to the back door. Good boys, both of them.

They were his responsibility, just as Lydia was, entrusted to him by God. He was the
husband and father. He had to take care of them, and right now he wasn’t sure how
that would happen.

He went quickly up the two steps to the back porch and into the hall that served as
a place to hang up coats and take off muddy boots. Lydia was always in the kitchen
when he came in, with supper on the stove and a smile that reminded him how lucky
he was every day of his life.

Supper was almost ready, all right. He could smell the chicken cooking and the biscuits
baking when he moved through the doorway. But Lydia’s gentle smile was missing, her
peachy skin pale and her hazel eyes shadowed. When she saw him, her lips trembled,
and tears filled her eyes.

“Adam.” In an instant she was in his arms, clinging to him. “I’m sehr glad you’re
home.”

He nestled her close against his chest, feeling the familiar warmth of her slender
body, and his heart hurt that he was the cause of her tears. “Hush, now. It’s all
right. Don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice soft with the tears. “I shouldn’t be acting
like a boppli, crying all over you. It was just such a shock.”

He smoothed his palm down the long, sweet curve of her back. “It’s not that bad, after
all. We’ll manage.”

She shook her head, her hair silky against his cheek. Then she stepped back, wiping
tears away with her hand the way David would.

He opened his mouth to say that he would find another job, that she could count on
him like always. But she spoke first.

“Here I am carrying on, and you don’t even know what it’s all about.” She tried to
smile, but her lips trembled at the effort.

He didn’t know . . . Maybe it was just as well that Lydia didn’t seem to expect him
to say anything, because he was speechless. If this wasn’t about him losing his job,
what was it? Clearly the boys were all right.

“Your great-aunt?” he ventured, knowing she’d been going to her mamm and daad’s place
to visit with Aunt Sara that afternoon.

“She told me something . . . something I could scarcely understand or believe.” Lydia’s
smooth, wide forehead furrowed. “She said she remembered seeing my mamm in the orchard,
long ago, with her three little girls.” Lydia’s gaze met his. “
Three
little girls.” Her voice emphasized the number. “She was talking about my birth mother.”

Now his frown must match hers. “Your great-aunt must have been confusing Diane with
someone else. Sara’s been sick, and at her age it’s easy to get mixed up, ja?”

“That’s what I told myself.” Lydia cupped her palm against her cheek in that way she
had of comforting herself when things went wrong. “But when I repeated her words to
Mamm, I could see in her face that what Aunt Sara said was true.”

“True?” He struggled to get his mind around it. “But if you had sisters, for sure
we’d know about it. How could we not have heard? I mean, your parents were living
right here in this house when they died. Everybody would have known.”

“They knew.” Lydia’s voice hardened in a way he’d never heard before, and he’d have
said he was familiar with every tone of it. “They knew, and they kept it a secret.”

He realized what must have happened, and his heart hurt for her. “Your sisters died?”
His voice filled with sympathy. “Is that it?”

He and Lydia had talked about the accident. Her parents had died, and people said
Lydia was lucky to survive, and that losing her memory of everything that had gone
before the accident was a small price to pay for having lived.

“No. They didn’t die.” Her voice was sharp with pain. “Maybe I could understand better
if they had. But they survived the accident—two little sisters, and each of them was
adopted by someone different. The family parceled us out to different people like . . .
like leftovers.” Her hands clenched into fists.

Somehow that gesture, so foreign to his gentle, loving Lydia, galvanized him. He crossed
the small space between them, taking her hands in his. “There must be a reason for
such an action. What did your mamm say?”

“She wanted me to wait until Daad came home. She kept saying he could explain it so
I’d understand. But how can I ever understand something like this?” Her eyes filled
with tears again, and Adam moved quickly to put his arms around her.

“It will be all right.” The words sounded worse than useless, and he longed to have
something better to offer her. “They must have meant it for the best. You’ll see.
We’ll sit down and talk to your mamm and daad together, and they’ll tell us everything.
You’ll see.”

Even as he said the words, he wondered. Clearly there was more going on than any of
their generation had been told. Something had happened . . . something so serious
that not just the family but the whole church had decided to keep it a secret. He
couldn’t begin to imagine what it could be.

One thing was certain. He couldn’t burden Lydia further at a time like this by telling
her about losing his job. That news would have to wait.

He held her close, murmuring soothing nothings, just as she would do with the kinder
when they’d suffered some hurt. How had their peaceful lives unraveled so suddenly
and so completely? And how were they going to find the faith to accept all of this
trouble as God’s will?

* * *

Lydia
wasn’t surprised when she heard a carriage rolling up the lane not half an hour after
she’d settled Daniel and David in bed. She’d known Mamm and Daad would come to talk
to her again, and it would be after the kinder were asleep for a matter so painful.

She rose, brushing a slight dusting of flour from her black apron, and exchanged glances
with Adam. With two rambunctious boys around, they hadn’t yet had much space for a
quiet talk. Still, she hung on to the sensation of his arms around her as she headed
for the door.

“That’ll be Mamm and Daad.”

“Ja.” Adam followed her, maybe thinking she needed his support. “They’ll be able to
explain it all, so you can accept what happened as God’s will.”

She felt certain they’d explain, and now that she was calmer, maybe she’d understand.
Or at least find the right questions to ask. But as for accepting . . . well, she
wasn’t sure acceptance would be easily found.

Adam supported her, just like always. But did he really understand that the very foundations
of her world were shaken?

There was no time to talk about it now—Mamm and Daad were already at the door. Adam
pulled it open.

“Joseph. Anna. It’s gut you’re here, so we can talk.” Adam’s voice had deepened with
the gravity of the situation, his level brows lowered over his blue eyes, his strong
face solemn above his short brown beard. He gestured her parents into the kitchen.

“Ja. We must talk.” Daad’s tone was heavy. As he and Mamm stepped farther into the
light, a shock ricocheted through Lydia.

Daad’s square, ruddy face seemed to have drawn tight against his bones. And her mother . . .
Lydia’s heart thudded against her chest. Mamm looked near as old as Great-aunt Sara,
her eyes red-rimmed behind her glasses, the fine wrinkles of her skin turned into
sharp valleys.

The urge to put her arms around her mother was almost too strong to resist, but somehow
she managed. If she and Mamm started crying together, she’d never regain her calm,
and somehow she had to stay focused enough to hear this story to the end.

“I’m sorry, daughter.” Daad kissed her forehead gently. “Sorry that you had to find
out this way.”

Lydia pressed her lips together for an instant, feeling the flicker of anger again.
Are you sorry for telling me lies to begin with, Daad?

“Let’s sit down.” Adam pulled out one of the chairs around the table. “Will you have
coffee?”

“Not now, denke, Adam.” Daad sank heavily into the chair at the head of the table,
planting his elbows on the surface in the way he had when he was about to tell the
family something they needed to hear. He’d looked that way when he’d gathered them
to say that Grossdaadi had died, Lydia realized. In a way, maybe this was a death
as well.

But if Daad looked square and solid and unmovable, Mamm seemed to shrink into her
seat. When Adam moved to take her jacket she shook her head, drawing it around her
as if she were cold. She did remove her black bonnet, and the overhead lamp picked
up the gray strands in her brown hair.

“Bishop Mose said from the start that we were wrong to keep the truth from you,” Daad
said. “It’s the only time in my life I went against something the bishop said, and
I feared we’d regret it one day.”

So the bishop had known, too. Well, he’d have had to, wouldn’t he? Every older person
in the church district must have known, and they’d kept silent all this time.

Adam had seen that already, she realized with a separate little shock. That was why
his gaze was so wary. He was afraid of what they were about to find out. She’d like
to touch his hand for support, but he’d taken the chair across from her, the width
of the table between them.

Lydia cleared her throat. She had to be strong, remember? “So I had two little sisters,
and you never told me.” If that sounded accusing, she couldn’t seem to help it.

Daad nodded gravely. “Ja, but that’s not where the story starts. If you are to understand,
you must know first that your mother, Diane, was Englisch.”

“Englisch!” The exclamation came from Adam. Lydia didn’t think she could have spoken
at all.

“Ja. Diane Wentworth, that was her name before they were married.” Daad paused, shaking
his head. “It’s been so long since I heard it, I’d nearly forgotten the name.”

“But I don’t understand. My birth father was your own brother. Amish. How did he come
to marry an Englischer? Was her family from around here?” Her mind scrambled for a
connection with the name he’d said and came up empty.

“Not from around here, no. They met when Eli was working out west.” Daad clasped his
hands on the table and looked at them, but she didn’t suppose he was seeing them.
“My big brother always wanted to explore a bit of the world, so when he was in his
twenties, he went off to work construction in Ohio. That’s where he met Diane.”

“She was lost.” Mamm spoke unexpectedly, her voice soft.

“Lost?” Adam’s face showed his lack of understanding.

“Not really lost, I guess,” Mamm said. “But later, when we knew each other better,
that’s what she told me. She and her parents didn’t get along at all. She’d left home,
and she didn’t have anyone else. She was lost. But when she met Eli, she said it was
like she’d found her home.”

Lydia struggled to swallow the lump in her throat. “So she became Amish for him.”

That was a thing that almost never happened. The other way around was more common,
yes, when an Amish person jumped the fence, but it was so difficult for someone raised
Englisch to adjust to Amish life.

“It wasn’t easy,” Daad said, echoing her thought. “But Eli and Diane were determined.
They married, and they stayed in Ohio for a time, where they had friends who understood
and helped Diane adjust. They moved back and took over this place when you were about
two, I think, and by then Diane had been Amish long enough that most people didn’t
even think about her being raised Englisch. Susanna and Chloe were born here.”

Adam looked around the house as if he was seeing it with fresh eyes. “They were happy
here,” he said, as if he knew it for a certainty, and his perception startled Lydia.

“Ja.” A smile trembled on Mamm’s lips. “Diane said she’d never known she could be
so happy. She wanted to forget all about her life before, and we honored that wish.”

Lydia stored up the words, knowing she’d want to bring those images of her parents
out and relive them later, when she was alone. But now she had to know more about
how their story had ended.

“The accident,” she prompted. And the little girls, Susanna and Chloe. She said the
names over and over in her mind, trying to draw up an image, but nothing came.

Daad sighed. “There were a couple of Amish families on their way to the wedding of
a friend in Ohio, out in Holmes County. They’d hired a van and driver for the trip.
The police said it looked like the van driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. He crashed
into a tractor trailer and overturned, rolling down a hill.”

Mamm made a small sound of grief or pain. Daad put his hand to his head, as if he
were reliving it too clearly. It was a terrible picture, but it seemed so remote to
Lydia, as if it had happened to someone else.

“We got word from the state police about the accident and hired someone to take us
out to Ohio,” he went on. “The van driver had died instantly. The rest of you weren’t
even in the same hospital. The kinder didn’t have identification on them, of course,
so no one knew who was where. We were frantic, trying to find all of you and make
sure you were taken care of.”