The Shunning Read online

  “Well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t take it on over to John’s place, after all.” Instantly Mam took on that glazed, cloudy expression again that settled in her eyes as she spoke.

  Dat must have noticed it, too. “Let’s just be thinkin’ about it for now,” he soothed.

  “Jah, think,” Eli teased. “Just think about Katie bein’ mighty holy—holy enough to be the bishop’s wife.”

  “Eli Lapp!” Dat scolded. “You will say no such thing!”

  His sharp rebuke snapped Rebecca out of her daze. “Well now, who’s hungry for dessert?” She sprang to her feet and began to move back and forth between the kitchen counter and the table, serving apple cobbler and ice cream.

  Katie observed her, wondering when she should bring up the topic of the satin baby dress. If at all.

  The moment came later, while Samuel was having his coffee. Black. Not a speck of cream or sugar.

  “If it wouldn’t be too much bother,” Katie began hesitantly, “I want to ask about that baby dress . . . the one I found in the attic.” To the best of her ability, she did as Ella Mae had advised, approaching the subject gently. In a spirit of humility.

  “I thought I told ya to leave it be.” Dat stirred his coffee with a vigor.

  “No, no.” Mam touched his forearm lightly, letting her hand rest there. “We really ought to discuss it, Samuel. The time has come.”

  Dat shrugged.

  “I have to make you an apology,” her mother pressed on, looking now at Katie. “It was wrong of me to do what I did.” Her voice grew velvety soft—the tone she usually used when telling of the day Katie was born. “You see, I was the one hiding the dress.”

  Eli and Benjamin looked up in surprise, lips still smacking over the tasty cobbler. And Dat . . . his eyes widened, then squinted into slits. “Maybe it’d be best if we did our talking to Katie . . . alone.”

  There was no mistaking the meaning in her father’s look. Eli gave a bit of a grunt and gulped down another glass of milk before the final silent grace, then left the kitchen for the barn, lantern in hand. Benjamin bundled up and headed for parts unknown, leaving Katie alone with her parents in the warm kitchen.

  Katie was aware of a portentious feeling, as though something she had always known deep down was about to be revealed—like the missing piece of a life-sized puzzle, maybe, or an explanation she’d waited her whole lifetime to hear.

  Rebecca began, softly at first. “We—Dat and I—have to tell ya something, Katie. Do try and bear with us ’til we’re all through, jah?” Her eyes were soft and misty. She took in a deep breath.

  Then, before she could launch into whatever it was she had to say, Dat stopped her. “Wait, now. I’ll be the one tellin’ it.” He got to his feet and lumbered over to the woodstove, turning to face them.

  Mam leaned her elbows on the table, seemingly relieved that, for tonight at least, her husband would be the storyteller.

  “When we first laid eyes on ya, Katie . . . well, there was no doubt in our minds that you came to us, straight from the Lord God in heaven himself.”

  Rebecca nodded. “We always considered you the same as our own flesh and blood.”

  “Wait!” Katie threw up her hands. “What are you both saying? I don’t understand a word of this!”

  “Aw, Katie, my dear, dear girl,” Mam said, her chin beginning to quiver. “It’s time you knew. It’s time you heard how it was that you came to be ours.” Her tears welled up and spilled over, leaving a watery trail down her flushed cheeks.

  “You mean . . . I’m not your own . . . daughter?” The thought was too large, too shattering to bear, yet her mind was racing frantically. Somewhere from the misty past, something Dan Fisher had said drifted back from that summery day. Something about kissing her on the cheek “the day you came home from the Lancaster hospital.” Some problem Mam had had giving birth. But Katie had been so deliriously happy that day, so giddy with Dan’s nearness that she’d paid scant attention to anything but their love.

  “It comes as a shock to ya, no doubt.” Through the veil of tears, Katie could see the concern on her father’s face. He paused for a moment, breathing hard.

  “Dat and I, we love ya so—honest we do.” Mam picked up the conversation. “Seems now it’s our turn to be beggin’ your forgiveness. You see, we never told you the truth, Katie—not all of it.”

  “What . . . truth?” Katie’s heart was pounding, ringing in her ears until she could only hear as if from a great distance.

  “The truth about who you are . . . really.” Rebecca broke down, her tears giving way to sobs.

  But Katie couldn’t comfort her, couldn’t move. She was rooted to the spot while the room spun crazily, tilting this way and that, like a windmill in the spring. “What do you mean . . . you never told me the truth? If I’m not Katie Lapp . . . then who am I?”

  Her father came to hover over Mamma as she looked up, her eyes swollen and red. Her voice came out in a whisper, trembling with emotion. “You’re Katherine Mayfield, Katie, that’s who you are.”

  Katherine Mayfield. The name sewn into the satin dress.

  It was Dat who attempted to explain. “You’re English by birth and Plain by adoption.”

  The words came as a blow. “I’m . . . what? Adopted?”

  “In so many words,” he said, resting his big, work-roughened hands on Mam’s shoulders. “We never made it legal . . . didn’t see the need, really. We loved ya from the start, and love was enough.”

  “But I’m not yours . . . not your own real daughter?”

  “Now, now, nothing’s changed at all,” he was quick to say. “Nothing’s diff’rent because of your knowin’ it. You’re ours and ours forever, and in our hearts you’ll always be our little Katie.”

  “But you never told me . . . not in all these years. No one ever told me.” Katie could hear herself whimpering. Suddenly she felt cold and crisscrossed her arms in front of herself as if to create a shield against the complete and utter shock of it all.

  “Not a soul knows of this,” Samuel said. “Though a few may suspect it, I do believe.”

  Rebecca blew her nose and spoke at last. “You don’t carry the family’s traits in looks, you know.”

  “My hair’s red, that’s all.” Katie was shocked at the words from her own lips. She’d never before used that term to describe her hair. Auburn, of course. But never red. Red was for worldly English barns and highway stop signs—not for the single most beautiful feature God had ever given a woman. But she didn’t stop to correct herself; her thoughts were flying way ahead. “So no one in Hickory Hollow knows I’m not Amish?”

  “But you are Amish, Katie, through and through,” her Mam said gently. “In every way, ’cept blood.”

  Katie propped her head in her hands as the truth began to dawn. I’m adopted. . . . I’m someone else. Someone else . . .

  Slowly, she looked up at them. “Do my brothers know?”

  Dat shook his head.

  “Shouldn’t they be told, then? Shouldn’t everyone know the truth?”

  Mam gasped. “What business is it of anybody’s? Life can go on just as it always has.”

  “No,” Katie replied. “Things can not go on as they always have. Everything’s changed, don’t you see? Everything!”

  She ran out of the kitchen, tears dripping off her cheeks. Without a lantern to light the way, she stumbled up the stairs and fell across her bed, sobbing into the inky darkness. “Oh, dear Lord in heaven,” she cried, “let this be some awful dream. Please . . . oh, please . . .”

  It was only the second time in her life she had used such desperate, non-German words in addressing the Creator of the heavens and earth. She lay there weeping and trembling, remembering another dark and grievous time when her body had heaved with sorrow. And she could not be comforted.

  ————

  Rebecca’s rest was fitful. Three or four times in the night, she got up to look in on her grown children as they slept, her heart
breaking anew as she stood at the door of Katie’s room and heard the intermittent hiccups that come from crying yourself to sleep.

  Finally, past midnight, she gave herself permission to stretch out on the bed beside Samuel. She made herself lie there, trying, but not succeeding, to shut out the voices of the day. Wondering if she and Samuel had done the right thing. Hoping against hope that all of them could go on with their lives and prepare for Katie’s wedding.

  Despite the brightness of the moon, a cloud of gloom descended over her as she stared, teary eyed, at the ceiling. She knew full well that the whole wretched truth—that an English woman was searching for her birth child—had been withheld. That neither Samuel nor she herself had mustered the courage to tell Katie the complete story.

  At last, she slept. And as she slept, she dreamed—a dream both distorted and hopeful. In her desperation, she reached into the belly of the cookstove and retrieved the charred English letter, burning her fingertips. But instead of hiding it from Katie’s eyes, she handed the letter over to her.

  Katie shrank back in horror, determined to have nothing to do with something so fancy—not the fine stationery nor the woman who had penned it. Instead, Katie fell into Rebecca’s arms, declaring her love and loyalty, forever and ever.

  Rebecca awoke with a start, not knowing whether it was outright fear or love that propelled her out of her warm bed and down the hall to check on Katie, asleep in her childhood room. On her way down the cold hallway, Rebecca wondered why she had not been able to part with the satin baby dress all these years.

  Now, as she cracked the door to Katie’s moonlit bedroom, she saw that her daughter, too, had been drawn to the small garment. For there on the feather pillow, clasped tightly in her hand, was the infant dress she’d worn home from the hospital.

  The dress—was it a symbol of the wicked outside world? Had Rebecca herself been too attached to it, to the glorious memory of their day of days? Was this dress the cause of all their present heartache?

  What had Katie said before flying off to her room? That everything had changed? That learning she wasn’t their “real” daughter meant things could not go on as before?

  Katie stirred in her sleep and murmured a name. “Dan . . .”

  Was it Dan Fisher she was still dreaming of? Poor Katie, her darling child . . . losing Dan . . . and now this? Poor, dear girl.

  Rebecca blamed the dress, and she blamed herself. If only I’d told Katie the truth from the very start, she groaned inwardly. If only I hadn’t been so proud.

  Pride. One of the deadly sins the People prayed against daily, lest it bring about their downfall.

  Rebecca backed away from the bed, inching her way out of the room. She could only hope that her past sins would not scar her daughter for life, that Katie wouldn’t let her impulsive nature drive her to some reckless decision. That she would put the shock of her true identity behind her and get on with her new life. A glorious new life with Hickory Hollow’s finest widower, the bishop John Beiler.

  Thirteen

  Katie doesn’t think before she speaks . . . never has,” Samuel grumbled to Rebecca at breakfast the next morning. “She leaps before she looks, ya know.”

  The milking and early-morning chores done, they sat at the table sipping hot coffee—just the two of them. Eli and Benjamin had excused themselves to go finish up some work in the fields, and Katie was still in bed.

  “Where is that girl?” he went on, looking around with a frown on his face. “She ought to be up helpin’ you.”

  “Aw, she’s exhausted from crying,” Rebecca told him, her heart in her throat. She wished he wouldn’t go on being hard on the girl. It wasn’t kindly of him, not when Katie was suffering so. “Our daughter’s like a wheel with two spokes missing.”

  “Two?”

  Rebecca didn’t even attempt to explain. Matters of the heart made little sense to her husband, practical man that he was. Things such as losing your first sweetheart to the sea and then, on top of that, losing your own sense of who you were. Well, she couldn’t fault him for not understanding. He was just like that.

  “Our dear girl’s lost right now, Samuel, swimming in an ocean of sorrow and—”

  “You’re not makin’ sense yourself,” he interrupted. “You can’t be babyin’ her along when she’s got things to do to get this weddin’ done up just right.”

  Among the People, weddings were a reflection on the father of the bride. Rebecca knew that her husband had high hopes that Katie’s special day would come off without a hitch. Besides, no father had ever loved a daughter more, she thought, gazing fondly at his strong profile.

  Rising briskly, Rebecca cleared the table. “I best run on up and see how she’s doing. She’s probably got herself a real bad headache.”

  “Jah, and I’ll be havin’ one, too, if we don’t get her things moved over to the Beiler place ’fore sundown,” he groused. “And don’t you go lettin’ her make you feel bad,” Rebecca heard him say as she dried her hands on the kitchen towel. “Katie owes her life to us, ya know.”

  That’s where you’re wrong, Samuel Lapp, Rebecca thought. Don’t you know it was our Katie who gave me a reason to live twenty-two years ago? It was Katie’s coming that had filled Rebecca’s empty heart, her empty arms.

  She climbed the long, steep steps leading to the second floor, bracing herself for whatever hurtful words Katie might fling at her first thing. Her love was strong enough to endure it. Strong enough.

  As it turned out, when Rebecca knocked on the sturdy bedroom door, Katie’s voice was only a muffled, sleepy sound. “Come in, Mamma.”

  Putting a smile on her face, Rebecca tiptoed inside. At the foot of the bed, she looked down at the rumpled quilts and covers. “Were you able to rest at all?”

  Katie yawned and stretched, then sat up and pushed up her pillow behind her back. “I don’t remember sleeping much . . . but I must’ve. I dreamed some.”

  “Bad dreams?”

  “Jah, bad ones, all right.”

  Rebecca sighed. “Well, a good breakfast will do ya some good.” She hated to remind Katie that a group of cousins would be arriving soon to help crack nuts and polish the silver. “Elam came over yesterday with Annie’s dishes while you were out somewhere with Tobias and the pony cart.”

  “Satin Boy. His name is Satin Boy now, remember? I renamed him.”

  “Ah, I keep forgetting. A new name does take some getting used to, I must say.”

  Their eyes locked and held, and for one chilling moment, Rebecca felt her daughter’s incredible pain. She could see in Katie’s eyes the reality of what growing up Amish had done to the girl. How it had changed her entire life—stripped her of her true origins. What it meant to be the birth child of a wealthy, worldly family, never having been told of your real roots, yet knowing it in your bones as sure as you were alive.

  “It must take a lifetime of gettin’ used to,” whispered Rebecca. “But you’re Katie now . . . Katie Lapp, soon to be Katie Beiler, the bishop’s gut wife.”

  Neither spoke for a moment. Then Katie patted the spot beside her, and Rebecca moved silently to sit on the edge of the bed. “I don’t blame you, Mam,” came the gentle words. “I just don’t understand why it had to be such a secret.”

  Nodding, Rebecca reached for her hand. “I was ashamed, you see. There was a baby . . . one that died before it ever got a chance to live. And after it was born dead . . . well, the doctor said I was barren, said I’d never have any more children.” She stared down at the floor and caught her breath. “I felt cursed . . . wanting more babies . . . and knowin’ I’d never have ’em.”

  Katie listened without interrupting, letting Mam pour out her own pain.

  “Then when we saw you—your Dat and I—it was like the Lord God himself was saying to me, ‘Here’s your heart’s desire, Rebecca. Rise up and wash your face . . . put a smile on your lips. The daughter you’ve been longin’ for is here.’ And that’s what we did—brought you right home to be
our little girl.”

  “Just like that?” Katie asked, full of wonder, not pressing to know how or when or what had happened to bring all this to pass.

  “Exactly like that.”

  “And the People? They never suspected I wasn’t your real baby?”

  “Not for a single minute.”

  “And you never once thought I looked like a ‘Katherine’?”

  “Not after we undressed you and put away the satin dress. Once we renamed you, I guess . . . well, you always looked like a little girl named Katie to Dat and me.” She thought for a second, glancing at the ceiling with her head tilted to one side. “Jah, I can say here and now, you looked just like a Katie . . . right from the start.”

  Katie stared dreamily into space. “Who named me Katherine? Was it my first Mam?”

  The words were a hammer blow to Rebecca’s heart. Oh, not today. Not with the wedding so near. Not with Laura Mayfield-Bennett driving around Hickory Hollow, searching.

  “Jah, your biological mother named you, I think.”

  “Did you meet her?”

  “Only for a little bit.” Rebecca’s encounter with Laura and her mother in the hospital corridor had been brief. In fact, she seemed to recollect Laura’s mother more clearly than she remembered Laura Mayfield herself.

  “Did you see her long enough to know what she looked like?”

  Rebecca was thoughtful. “You have her brown eyes and auburn hair.”

  “Anything else?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember much now.”

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter, I guess,” Katie said. “I know who my real mamma is.” She slid over on the bed and hugged Rebecca, giving her a warm kiss.

  While Katie dressed and had a late breakfast, Rebecca jotted down a list of things to be done before tomorrow. In between the writing, though, she wondered at Katie’s response. She marveled that the girl hadn’t ranted and raved, hadn’t caused a fuss. Hadn’t threatened to tell the People the truth. But she’d done none of that.