Heritage of Lancaster County 02 The Confession (28 page)

Her natural mother had had it all--wealth, the most stylish clothing, the finest foods, even golden combs for her long auburn hair. There were mirrors galore and the best furnishings money could buy, but it hadn't been enough, Laura had told her. Laura Mayfield-Bennett needed some- thing--Someone--greater in her life. Someone who would never run off and leave her or betray her. The Lord Jesus.

Tears sprang to Katherine's eyes, and she wondered suddenly if this was what Daniel had tried to explain to her five years ago. Could it be that Dan, too, had come to know

267 Laura's Lord? Really know Him . . . before he died?

Dan knocked on the back door of his father's house. He'd probably made a mistake by not asking Annie to warn his parents. What if they couldn't handle seeing their dead son's "ghost"?

He stood far enough back so that they might see him fully, not merely his face pressed close to the storm door.

For a brief moment, he was glad that it was his mother who appeared at the door but watched in dismay as the blood drained from her cheeks.

"Jacob.'' he heard her call out.

"Oh, Mamma, don't faint!" Quickly, Dan opened the door and held on to her until his father came to assist him-- this stranger with the beginnings of a beard and a borrowed Amish hat. But he kept his head down, not letting Dat see his face.

"Ah, Elam," said Dan's father, "what didja do to your mother-in-law?"

By now Daniel found himself inside the utility room, helping his mother into the kitchen, where she fell into the big old hickory rocker. He wondered again why he hadn't thought to fine-tune this plan. After all these years--some of them spent in a trade school--shouldn't he have had more sense than to burst in on his loved ones this way?

He found himself sputtering out an apology. "It's not Elam, Father. It's... I'm your own son, Daniel."

"Who? What's that ya say?" his mother shrieked and stared, long and hard.

But Dat promptly grabbed both his wrists, squeezing them in a viselike grip. "But you're dead! We thought you died years ago . . . drowned in the ocean!"

He let his father lash out at him. Let him spend his fury.

268 "How could you go off and let us think you were dead?" the old man bellowed. "Didja know how awful hard your mamma would mourn and grieve your death, till the tears in her eyes all dried up?"

Standing in the middle of the kitchen, Dan did not budge an inch, even after his father released his arms. Then, trying to reckon with his own pain, Dan watched his father pace the floor like a distraught lion. Every now" and then the gray-haired man glared back at him, his eyes red-hot with righteous indignation.

Dan was taught as a child to believe that the eyes of his father were near sacred, that they could emanate such emotions as anger, displeasure, and disapproval--yet without sinning.

Truth be known, Dan felt as though he had been transported in time, back to his late teen years, during one of the daily "preaching" sessions his father had imposed on him.

At last, Dan, still standing as if on trial, spoke up. "I've come home to confess, Father. I want to make things right between us."

His anger dissipated, Jacob pulled out a straight-backed chair and sat down near his wife. "The Lord God almighty is sovereign and just," the man said, not sternly, but with conviction. "Welcome home, son."

Then, removing his hat, Dan knelt at his father's knee, praying silently for grace and forgiveness. "I come to you, carrying the memories of my past sins," he began with folded hands. "Transgressions I committed against you, Father. And I'm here to ask you to forgive me."

"Can you ever.., forgive me?" Laura begged, struggling to speak. A suffocating cloud of heaviness weighted her

269 chest. "I wish I had.., kept.., you as my own, Katherine. I wish .... "

She could not finish. The air was gone, and she could not consume enough to say more.

Lying there, hooked up to a lifeline of whirring machines, she longed to hear Katherine's answer. Waited for the words that could free her, those precious words to fill up the past emptiness, the pain-filled years alone without her child.

"Please, Mother, don't be worrying about what you did . . about choosing Samuel and Rebecca to raise me." Her dear girl stood up unexpectedly and bent down to whisper close to her ear. "I love you. I love you in spite of all the past."

"The past is under the blood of Jesus," Dan continued. "The Lord God heavenly Father has brought me home, to offer my confession, full repentance at your knee, Father," he said, using the Amish terminology they would best understand.

Here, he reached for his mother's hand. "Will you forgive me, too, Mare? Can you understand that I didn't intend to fake my death as it seemed I did?"

He didn't wait for either of their answers but went on, recounting the story of the day he'd nearly drowned while swimming to safety. He told them of the Coast Guard boat he'd seen from the reef, watched it comb the raging waters, searching for his body. He repented of his immature behavior, his teenage rebellion, his defiance against his upbringing. And he explained how he'd decided, there on the sandbar, that the easiest, most compassionate way for the People, for his familymfor all those who loved him--was for them to presume him dead.

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"By not revealing the truth, though, I deceived you. I allowed everyone to think I'd drowned, let them mourn for me. I was only hoping to spare you the Meinding... release you from having to shun me."

He paused for a moment, their eyes fixed on him. "Don't you see? I thought to save you.., keep you from having to turn your backs on your son, to treat me as if I were dead. But I know now that I was wrong, Father. It was the worst thing I could've done to you."

His parents listened, their faces solemn and expressionless. Dan stood up and pulled out the wooden bench under the kitchen table. With a sigh, he sat down, facing them. The confession had made his hands clammy, his mouth dry.

Yet, before almighty God, his heart was pure. At least in His sight, Dan Fisher was forgiven.

She held her mother's bluish hand, unconsciously breathing hard as the dear lady continuously gulped for air. Her color was ashen now, and the death pallo frightened Katherine.

"Don't die, Mother," she whimpered. "I've just found you. Please don't leave me now."

Watching her mother's struggle to breathe, she felt as if she might not survive this crisis herself. She might die along with the fancy English woman who was her real, true mother.

Ach, she'd never witnessed a person die before; didn't think she wanted to even now. Yet she would not abandon

the woman who'd given her life.

"My dear Katherine..."

"I'm right here with you, Mother."

"Do you.., know.., my Jesus?" There was much gasping again, and she felt guilty that her mother had used up

271 so much air for such a sobering question.

What could she say? She wouldn't lie. Not as Laura May- field-Bennett lay dying, preparing to meet her Maker.

"God's Son knows me," she managed, hoping she believed her own words. "He knows me, aad He brought us together.., just in time."

"Yes. He knows . . . you, child."

Then without warning, Laura's breathing stopped. And Katherine began to cry.

"Why, then, does my dead son return home to confess these things?" Jacob Fisher asked. "What has changed?"

Dan breathed deeply, praying for courage. "So much has changed. More than you know, Dat. I'm a grown man now, able to think for myself, to understand God's precepts. I'm no longer afraid to express my beliefs and compare them with those of the People. And I can now follow the will of my heavenly Father and be the kind of son I should've been to you all those years ago."

"What are ya really tellin' us, Daniel?"

He turned to look at their bewildered faces. "I came here to confess my sins ... but I cannot return to the Amish church. And for that, I am truly sorry."

"So now you give us no choice but to shun you," Jacob said, frowning hard. "Bishop John will hafta be told."

"My life is in God's hands." Din stood up, knowing that if he were to stay longer, his time of confession might very well turn into a heated debate. One-sided.

"I love you, Dat . . . Mare." He leaned down to kiss his mother's face. "I wish we could see eye to eye about God's

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plan of salvation. It would be so good to be able to share the Good News as a family, to break the Bread of Life together."

Much to his surprise, his father accepted his handshake and did not attempt to refute his parting words.

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It was an endless day, even though Katherine never once resented sharing or bearing the dying experience with Laura. She felt she'd gained something most valuable by sitting there as her mother slipped away, pain gone forever.

But she'd been mistaken about that first moment when it seemed for all the world as if Laura was no longer breathing. Several more times, before the end, her beautiful mother had slipped in and out of consciousness, her chest barely rising and falling.

Laura had made one last effort to speak, and Katherine, in retrospect, was grateful for it. "Look for.., my... journal."

"You kept a diary?"

"While I carried.., you."

Katherine had wanted to hear more, but she sat quietly, holding her mother's hand. The coolness of Laura's hand in hers let her know that heaven was near. Gradually, ever so slowly, the delicate hand had grown lifeless . . . cold.

Laura's last thoughts had been of her daughter. While I carried you, the whisper had come, almost inaudibly.

Long after Laura's spirit had left her body, long after, Katherine sat beside the bed. She imagined her mother

274 greeting loved ones who'd gone before. Daniel, too, maybe. Remembering the way he was, she figured her darling would be one of the first in line to receive Laura Mayfield-Bennett, just as soon as her mother passed through those pearly gates.

Dan had decided long before today that he would not interfere with his former girlfriend's life. He must protect his own emotions, as well, and by simply not inquiring, he could accomplish both. If he hadn't gone back to his sister's to say good-bye, though, he would've missed hearing about Katie.

Annie dropped the bombshell almost as soon as he arrived, after he began telling her that he needed to leave for New Jersey soon.

"Aw, must ya go?" Tears glinted in the corner of his sister's eyes. "Can't ya stay, Daniel?"

He reached for her hands. "It won't be long now before the People will be shunning me. We won't have many opportunities like this to spend together."

"Might not even be allowed to talk to each other, neither." She frowned and shook her head as if in pain. "Same way we treated... Katie," she whispered the name.

"Katie Lapp? My Katie?" His eyes searched hers, longing for answers.

"Ach, she's had the harshest Meinding put on her I've ever lived to see."

"What happened? How'd she get shunned?"

"It's not an easy story, really, but it all got started with a baby dress made of satin that Rebecca kept hidden in a trunk up in their attic."

Shocking as the story was, he listened to his sister's account of how his sweetheart girl had run away from her wedding, gotten herself shunned, and left Hickory Hollow

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to search for the natural mother she'd never known.

When Annie was finished, he found himself weeping in her arms--not due to Katie's painful shunning. No, the tears he shed were joyful.., selfish tears.

Ella Mae Zook was on the back stoop, shaking out her kitchen rug, when a right fancy English car pulled into her side of the lane. It slowed down, and she squinted, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun.

When a young Amishman got out of the car, she had a closer look at him--strikingly handsome, he was. But she near lost her false teeth after spying the blueberry eyes.

"Well, whatdaya know?" she said to the January sky, to God, and anybody else who might be listening. Then the Wise Woman laughed right out loud.

Mary wasn't seeing things; not hearing them, neither. Sunday morning, after the Ausbund hymns were sung, she watched Bishop John and listened to him, trying to decide whether or not his mellow voice--the one she'd heard on Christmas Day--was one of his Preachin' voices.

Then it happened. Right smack in the middle of a sermon on pride and how "one should run from it at all costs," he looked her way, resting his eyes on her longer than necessary. She wouldn't dismiss it as wishful thinking, but when his gaze strayed mostly for the rest of Preachin', she wondered how she might speak to him afterward, during the common meal.

If she did get a word with him, she might say that since he'd been put on this earth to save the souls of men, wouldn't he just consider thinkin' about saving Rebecca

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Lapp, too? From going insane, that is?

Oh, she'd tell it to him awful gentle, sweet as can be, and if the bishop was the kind of man she figured he was, deep down inside his soul somewheres--if he truly was God's choice for the People, a man who could change his voice at will--well, he just might consider her request. Just might think twice about lifting Katie's harsh shunning. At least so they could talk to the disobedient woman. Use the voices God gave them, all different ranges and tones, for sure, to witness the love of the Lord God heavenly Father himself and maybe even bring her back to the fold.

It was just a thought. Maybe not the right thing to do at all. But what with the bishop sending unspoken messages with his eyes during Preachin' and all, in light of that, she could surely hope.

By the time she'd climbed two long flights of stairs, the breath in her was gone. Katherine was reminded of Laura's labored breathing at the end--completely ready when the call from heaven came.

Finding the journal her mother had mentioned as she lay dying had proven to be a challenging task. Yet each day Katherine had searched the estate--even several attics-- with help from Theodore and Garrett. All to no avail.

Not to be outdone, she decided to meet with the entire domestic staff. Assuming her new role of mistress of the manor had not come easy, perhaps because she was more than eager to share the size and the warmth of the upstairs rooms. Because of this, because she wanted to allocate the space to her friends--Laura's loyal servants, and now hers-- she encouraged them to scatter out. They were to choose various guest suites, even Dylan Bennett's former office area--now vacant--for their own private quarters.