Butterfly Garden (25 page)

Sara sighed.

“So if I had called you when her labor began….”

She touched him again, and God help him, he craved the contact. He grasped her hand and brought it to his heart as if that alone could heal him.

“Do not blame yourself, Adam. We don’t know if—”

“Who better to blame than me?  You did. With so many babies so close, you’re killing her.”

“Oh, Adam. I never meant it that way.”

Adam stopped the buggy and regarded his beautiful, full-of-life Sara, if her candle were snuffed, he would die himself. “What other way is there to put it?  I will not do that to you, Sara. I will never expose you to the danger of childbirth, I will not get you with child. I will not kill you, too.”

Sara went into her husband’s arms and wept. She’d poisoned the man she loved with unfounded guilt. How could she take back those hasty, horrible words, so prophetically spoken?  How young she had been that night, how harsh and careless. How very much she had grown since, yet it was almost too late.

Her stubbornness, her thoughtless judgment had hurt Adam in a way from which he might never recover. ‘Foolish, foolish Sara Lapp,’ she could practically hear her Maker saying. She could even see Him shaking his head, looking down at her from heaven.

She’d crippled her marriage before it had a chance to begin. She’d broken her husband’s spirit.

“Don’t cry, my Sara. Don’t cry,” Adam said. “We have babes aplenty. And they need you for kissing tears and singing silly songs. They need you for making dresses in
ferbudden
colors, and they especially need you for laughing with.”

Sara sat back and wiped her eyes. “The dress colors I use are not forbidden; they’re the right colors, just … better, livelier. And, Adam, the girls need you, too, especially for laughing with.”

Adam shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

“But I want to. Oh, Adam, I want so badly to understand. I want to be a real wife to you. I can handle whatever you have to tell me. I can handle anything that comes along, even more babies.”

“No,” he shouted. “Never that. And you will not coax me into it, either. You will be happy with what we have, or we have nothing. Else I will sleep in the barn, Sara. I mean it.”

Sara was speechless. She was frightened.

“What we have now together, is good,” he said. “It is enough. It has to be.”

It was good, she thought. They had come a long way since their marriage.

But the ground they had gained would surely be lost, and soon, because when Adam discovered she carried his child, he would never forgive her.

Chapter 15

Adam set off in their big, new family-sized buggy to pick up Jenny Redding and her seven children to take them to the Amish settlement in LaGrange, Indiana, where he was brought up. His mother had written to friends who’d responded that they would welcome Jenny and her family and help find a place for them to live.

Sara only hoped that Butch Redding would not pick a fight with Adam when he went for Jenny, because Sara would not be there to stop her husband this time.

“He is a good man, my Adam,” Lena said as they stood side by side at the edge of the drive to watch Adam’s buggy disappear over Mulberry Hill.

Sara nodded, but not before her mother-in-law saw the tears in her eyes. Sara could not speak for the lump in her throat, though Adam had promised her, repeatedly and with conviction, that he would not allow Butch to provoke him.

Sara swallowed. “I know I am being foolish, but I am going to miss him.”

Lena placed an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “He will be back, our Adam. He cannot stand the separation any more than you. I thought his eyes, maybe, seemed bright too.”

Her mother-in-law walked her back to the house. “At least you have an excuse for tears,” Lena said. “What is his, I wonder?  Or is he the one with the sickness of morning in this family?”

It was meant as a joke, but Sara was too caught by Lena’s perception to laugh. “You know?  About the baby?”

“Of course. Did you think to keep it a secret, even from the people in the house?”

Panic filled Sara, but then she realized that Adam would never be able to hide such knowledge, so he did not suspect. Yet.

Lena stopped walking to regard her. “Adam doesn’t know?”

Sara shook her head. “It wonders me that you know things I don’t tell you, like the fact that I am expecting.”

“Mothers are like that. Now, you tell me why your own husband does not know of this. You have been wrong to keep it from him.”

It was the first time Sara had been chastised by this new mother of hers and it hurt not a little bit. “Oh, Lena, it is so complicated and such a long story.”

“Adam will be gone five weeks at least. Plenty time for a long story, I think. And you will feel better for the telling.”

It was so complicated that just trying to sort it out made Sara tired. But then everything made her tired these days. When they got inside, she sat at the table, looked at Lena and felt as if she were going to cry again. She did not even know where to begin.

Lena clucked like a mother hen whose chick has gone missing, urged her from her chair and accompanied her back to her room to lie down. Then this new mother of hers sat at the edge of her bed and took her hand. “Start from the day you see Adam first time, ya?  Good beginning?”

Sara smiled. “The first time I saw him, he was big and angry and ... big.”

“And handsome, my Adam.”

Sara smiled. “Very handsome. But he never smiled. Sometimes I felt as if he were watching me, especially after I had been laughing—”

“It is the bright butterflies, Adam likes best.”

“Your family likes butterflies a lot,” Sara said, intrigued by the subject. Adam had called her his perfect butterfly.

“We do. Go on.”

“But why butterflies?”

“They are bright and beautiful, one of God’s most perfect creations, I think. They are a symbol for me, of God, of his healing power, even of light and sunshine. I passed my love for them to Adam when he was small. He held on to it, I guess, if you have heard him mention butterflies.”

“His horses are named for them. Titania and Tawny.”

“I did not realize. Such knowledge warms a mother’s heart. Now tell me about the first time you saw him.”

It was right after the districts had been re-divided and I became part of this one. I knew no one, but already, the Bishop was annoyed with me, because I had made known to him my plan to become a midwife. We were at a barn raising, discussing the subject ‘heatedly.’  Bishop Weaver shouted that I should stick to women’s work, so of course, I needed to prove to him that I could do anything a man could.”

“Oh
liebchen
, what did you do?”

“I went to the stack of planks and followed the example of those who were bringing them to the men nailing them to the lower outside wall of the barn.”

“And you handed one to Adam?”

“I didn’t know who he was yet, but I saw him waiting for one, so I made for him, carrying the plank over my shoulder, as I’d seen the others do. But when I had just about reached him, I saw Bishop Weaver coming toward me with an angry stride, and it made me nervous. My grip on the plank faltered, and it tilted, down in the front, up in the back, and slipped toward Adam so fast, it hit him ... hard ... in a bad spot ... between his legs.”

Lena screeched and slapped her hand to her mouth

Sara feared for a minute that her mother-in-law would chastise her again, but instead her eyes twinkled and she began to laugh. Sara was so relieved and so enchanted by Lena’s merriment, that Sara saw, for the first time, the humor in that long-ago encounter, and she began to laugh as well.

Lena wiped away her tears. “What did my Adam do?”

“He set his jaw hard and made a face like this,” Sara’s  tense face made Lena laugh again. “Then he bent over, very carefully, picked up the board and nailed it to the studs.”

“And the Bishop—”

“Told me I was needed to watch the children.”

“And after that?”

“Adam made me mad with his constant watching, not as if he thought I would hurt him again, but as if he were annoyed with me for being happy, so I did what I thought would bewilder him, you know, keep him guessing. I walked right up and served him first, that day, and most every time after, at fellowship meals, barn-raisings, whatever frolics we had in the district. I did it to show him I was not afraid of him, even if he wished me to be.”

“My Adam would need a wife to give as good as she got. Do you think he wanted you not to be afraid?”

“I just know that he made me so uncomfortable, being rude that way, that I had this need to be nice to show him up.”

“And annoy him a bit,” Lena said on a laugh. “But he still married Abby instead?”

“Oh, he was already married to Ab when the district was re-divided. We became instant friends, his first wife and me. Abby was my only friend until Mercy, but Mercy lives in Indiana.”

“
Liebchen
?  I would think friends of yours would be plenty, with your easy laugh and happy disposition. Why none?”

“I was a woman who belonged nowhere and to no one. An Amishwoman who wanted to deliver babies, which was
ferbudden
.” Sara made to lower her voice like a man. “A woman should not take on so, an unmarried one, especially.” She laughed. “This I heard often. But I am a rebel, a scrapper, I know it and everybody else in Walnut Creek does too. Sometimes, even now, Adam calls me Scrapper Sara, but it’s better than Spinster Sara, which is what he used to call me.”

“You might not have been happy to be a spinster, but you are pleased to be a scrapper, I think. Glad to break rules, like with your dresses of the rainbow colors for my grandbabies. Pride and stubbornness are both a weakness and a strength for you, my daughter. For Adam too. That’s why you belong together.”

That Lena thought she and Adam belonged together, warmed Sara. She closed her eyes, her new mother’s hand stroking her wrist, soothing her as no mother had done for some time. “Adam’s first wife laughed at how I used to make the Elders mad,” Sara said opening her eyes again. “She told me she used to tell Adam whenever I had done so and he would get as mad as the Elders did. Madder. Ab seemed to think it was funny, the way I could make Adam mad, and the way I tried to annoy him by being nice, serving him and all, and joking with him. She did not believe me when I said he scared me.”

“Tell me how it happened that you went from being my son’s first wife’s friend to his second wife. When did his first wife die?”

“Sara’s heart plummeted. Last fall.” She related the circumstances of Abby’s death. “Adam always disliked his children. Everybody knew it. Not that he liked the adults. But with children, especially his own, his dislike seemed to go deeper. He stayed apart from them, frowned when they came near. The girls seemed nearly as afraid of him, back when Abby was alive, as Emma is now.”

Distraught, Lena stood and went to the window, looking as if she might weep. After a minute, she turned back to Sara, disbelief in her look. “Adam hurt his girls?  He closed their little fingers in doors and such?”

“Of course not!  Why would you say such a thing?  Oh no.” Stricken, Sara sat up. “Please, do not say that his fath—”

Lena’s hand sliced through the air, cutting off Sara’s words, as if doing so could change the fact of them, and that’s when Sara knew it was so, and she too wanted to weep.

They stared at each other as the color returned to her mother-in-law’s face, but Lena shook her head, refusing further discussion. On the previous subject, however, she felt no such compunction. “Tell me more about you and Adam and his children,” Lena said.

Sara decided she owed her mother-in-law the truth. “Adam gave them to me after Abby died. He said I should take them home to raise them. Just like that.”

“So you said you would marry him instead?”

“I would never have suggested such a thing. The Elders decreed we must marry or be shunned.”

Lena shook her head again, but seemed willing to let her confusion pass for the moment. “You think Adam does not like his children, even though he never hurt them?”

“He wants no more.” Tears of shame coursed down Sara’s cheeks as she told Adam’s mother how she had been so selfish and unfeeling as to accuse him of killing his wife when Abby was already dead. “And now he won’t touch me, because he doesn’t want to kill me—God help us both—by getting me with child. Oh, Lena, this will destroy him. What have I done?”

Lena let go of Sara’s hand as if it burned her suddenly. “So this is not my son’s babe you carry?”

Sara laughed at the accusation and the look on her mother-in-law’s face, but her laughter became a wellspring of tears that could not be held back. Rolling away from the woman whose love was for Adam first, as should be, Sara let herself cry. She could use a mother of her own, right now, though. Then she felt Lena’s hand rubbing her back, soothing her, a mother’s soft voice trying to calm her, calling her
liebchen
.

Sara turned to face her. “Thank you.” She rubbed the tiny mound of her child. “This babe beneath my heart is your grandchild. Adam was delirious in that shack we sheltered in and doesn’t know he broke his vow. I only learned of the vow recently, or else ... No,” Sara shook her head in firm denial. “No. I would not have tried to stop him, had I known. Oh, Lena, I love him so much, it hurts.”

“Love usually does,
liebchen
, but it is worth the price, though I have never known such a love as you and Adam share. Be grateful for the gift.”

If only there were love on her husband’s part, Sara thought.

Lena’s eyes twinkled again and Sara saw where Emma got her spirit. “So you became my son’s bride in truth on that snowy night, and the
dummkopf
doesn’t even know it.”

Sara actually giggled. She felt so much better, she hugged her mother-in law. “I needed to laugh just then. Thank you.”

* * * * *

Weeks into Adam’s absence, Katie came running into the room where Lena was showing Sara how to make a baby quilt. “The butterflies, they come.” She grabbed her grandmother’s hand. “Come
Grossmommie
; my take you. Sara too.”