The Amish Bride (5 page)

“Did you find out who your birth mother is?”

I’d asked him the same question several times over the last two weeks when Mom wasn’t around. I’d wanted to know for years, ever since I comprehended that his mother and my mother had been two different people. Then, when my cousin Lexie came searching for her own birth mother, I wanted all the more for Zed to do the same.

He didn’t answer me.

“Zed…” I cajoled.

“It’s none of your beeswax,” he answered matter-of-factly, using one my favorite phrases and keeping his eyes glued to the screen.

Certain he knew her identity by now, I decided to try a little nectar to get him to reveal the name to me. Mom had been around pretty regularly lately, and I hadn’t had a chance to speak with Zed alone for more than a few minutes at a time. Today was my chance.

“What do you want for breakfast?” I turned toward our closet-size kitchen. “Waffles? Dutch babies? Deep-fried French toast with ice cream?” I’d seen that on an online cooking show.

“I already had oatmeal,” he answered, and then he stood and stretched. In the last year he’d grown and grown, and he’d started shaving too. Not every day, but at least a few times a week.

His blond hair had darkened a little and so had his eyebrows. His eyelashes had grown thicker, and he’d lost his baby fat.

“Are you done with the computer?” My voice dripped with sarcasm.

“No. Just taking a break.”

“Because you have so much homework to do, right?” It was too early in the semester for him to have too much.

His face stayed bland. “I’m getting started on my German project.”

“When is that due? A month from now?”

“Two weeks,” he answered as he headed into the living room.

I heard him on the stairs, probably on his way up to our one bathroom. That gave me a couple of minutes to snoop for what he’d been looking at. I popped into the Internet history. The last item was an article from the local newspaper. I clicked on to it. It was about the legal case against Mom from two years ago, when she was the midwife for Lydia Gundy. She and the baby had both died under her care during childbirth. Mom had been exonerated when it was determined that the cause of Lydia’s death had been an undiagnosed heart condition and had nothing at all to do with any of my mother’s actions during labor and delivery. Of course, that never made the front page of the paper the way the other articles had—it was buried in the back. I couldn’t fathom why Zed was looking at it.

I jumped as I heard him on the stairs. By the time he reached the computer again, I was in the kitchen. “Even though you already had breakfast, I thought I’d make you a Dutch baby. You’ll be hungry again by the time it’s done.” I’d found the recipe in Sarah’s book and copied it onto an index card. I’d been doing that with all of her recipes I could read. That way I didn’t risk ruining the book in the kitchen, and I only had to decipher the words once instead of each time I used the recipe.

I beat the eggs with the wire whisk I’d purchased with my hard-earned babysitting money. It was stainless steel and weighted. I loved the feel of it in my hand and the way it blended the ingredients together so swiftly and smoothly. I added milk to the eggs and then gradually whisked in flour, nutmeg, and salt. The way the ingredients came together to create something entirely new thrilled me every time. Years ago Aunt Klara made Dutch babies for breakfast one time when I was visiting. All we ever had at my house was oatmeal, and I thought what she whipped up—sort of like a pancake but fluffier and baked in a skillet in the oven and then sprinkled with powdered sugar—was absolutely divine.

I hadn’t thought to ask for her recipe back then. Now I wondered if it had been passed down from Sarah.

Twenty minutes later, as we ate I smiled at Zed between bites, hoping to make up for my earlier attitude.

“Stop it,” he said, his lips covered in powdered sugar.

“What?”

“Smiling. You’re creeping me out.”

I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. After I was done eating, I asked him again about his birth mother. He just shook his head and then shoved in another bite.

I folded my arms.

He ignored me.

I leaned toward him, the ties of my head covering falling forward.

“Zed, you’re my brother. You always tell me everything.”

“Who says?”

“I say.” I tried to smile, but it came out more like a snarl. He’d always been so compliant. Until now.

“Thanks for the Dutch baby.” He shoved the last bite into his mouth, sending a puff of powdered sugar down his chin.

“Baby,” I said, “is the key word. You as a baby is what we need to talk about. Come on Zed.” Now I was whining. “Tell me. I’ve wanted to know, like, forever.”

He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing around on his neck. He shook his head then, a little sadly, and took his plate into the kitchen. A moment later, I heard the water running. He was washing his dishes. Something was really bothering him.

As much as I resented the secrets in our family, I couldn’t help but marvel at the decisions around those secrets that had been made so long ago. I was certain that Mom forgiving her husband’s sin, accepting his child with another woman, and adopting Zed could have only come from her Anabaptist roots. Some women would hold the child’s origins against him. Not Mom. Although she wasn’t much for physical affection or expressions of endearment, I knew she absolutely loved Zed. He’d been her own since the day she brought him home.

After I fed the chickens, nagged Zed to clean the ashes out of the woodstove, and scrubbed the kitchen, it was nearly noon. My phone
beeped with a text from Ezra.
Just got done with church. Singing at the Benders’ tonight. Want to go?

I answered immediately, overjoyed that I would get to see him for the first time in days.
That sounds great!

I caught myself humming after that. Zed may have turned on me, but at least I had Ezra.

By the time Mom came home, I had a pot of vegetable soup simmering on the stove, a broccoli salad made, and biscuits in the oven. She’d delivered a nine-pound baby girl, the first for a couple near the village of Paradise. She stretched out on the couch and closed her eyes while I set the table.

I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be a midwife. Some weeks Mom wouldn’t have a single birth. Others she’d have four or five. Some years nothing went wrong. Others years lots went wrong. Sometimes she got a full night’s sleep. Other times she didn’t sleep at all.

She lived by faith, is what she said. When we were little, she had to scramble to have someone stay with us when she was gone, hiring widows from our church mostly. But by the time I was eleven, she let us stay home alone. By then I was pretty much running the house. I’d grown up fast compared to my non-Plain friends at school, as far as responsibility and household duties went. Then again, I was about on a par with the Amish girls I knew, who also mastered such skills at a much younger age than their English counterparts.

On the other hand, I was sure I had far more of an independent streak than any Amish girl ever would have. How could I not? I had more options. I’d be able to drive a car—although I didn’t have my license yet. I attended high school, and now I could go to baking school—or at least take classes. I could marry a man of another faith—if I wanted.

The problem was I wanted to marry Ezra, who, despite his rebellious ways, was set on joining the Amish church. Once he did that, he wouldn’t be able to marry me unless I joined it as well. It would be a huge change for me, but at least I was familiar with the lifestyle, because
Mammi
and half of my family were Amish. I felt I could live as they did. And I was willing to do so for love—but only
after
I’d gone to baking school.

Putting that out of my mind for now, I set the last spoon down on the table and told Mom it was time to eat. I had an hour before Ezra would be by to get me.

I’d been sitting for a minute before she shuffled into the kitchen to wash her hands and then join me. She cleared her throat, getting Zed’s attention. He quickly popped up from the desk chair and joined us too. After a silent grace, I dished up soup for everyone.

As Mom started to dig into hers, her cell phone rang. I hoped it wouldn’t be another baby, not tonight. Then again, if she
did
leave, that would make it easier for me to go with Ezra. It wasn’t that she would tell me I couldn’t. She’d just give me that look of hers.

She stood and walked into the living room as she said hello. It didn’t sound like a mother in labor by her tone.

“You’re here already?” There was a pause. “I thought you were coming in a few weeks.”

I groaned. Zed smiled.

“That would work.” She sounded as if she were talking to an old friend, not the husband who had left her. There was another pause. “I know where that is. We’re just eating…” After another pause, she said, “Oh, no. It’s fine. We’ll see you in an hour.”

We?
I pushed my bowl and plate toward the center of the table as she came back into the dining room, her face calm and serene.

“I have plans,” I said. What I didn’t add was that even if I hadn’t had plans, I wasn’t about to stick around for this.

“Can’t you change them?” She looked at me with expectant eyes.

“No.” I looked from her to Zed, who also had a hopeful expression on his face. They were fools. Absolute fools. “Have you no pride?”

A confused look passed over Mom’s face, and then she touched the bridge of her nose with her finger. “I guess not,” she said. And then she laughed a little.

“He cheated on you! He left you!”

“Yes, Ella.” She wasn’t laughing anymore. “I know.”

Ezra arrived right on time. Because we were going to a singing, he was
in his courting buggy, which was open on all sides. He brought plenty of blankets, but I knew it was going to be a cold ride. At least we weren’t on his motorcycle—which he would never take to a church-sanctioned event—as that would have been an even colder ride.

By the time I was sitting beside him, I’d worked myself into a dither over the matter of my father.
Dither
. That was one of my mother’s words for me: “To act nervously or indecisively.” So it wasn’t completely true tonight. Yes, I was nervous. But there was nothing indecisive about what I was going to do. I’d had an epiphany. Ezra and I could get married first and
then
join the church. Doing things in reverse that way would not go over well with our families or the church leadership, but at least it was better than running away to Florida and never coming back.

I snuggled closer to him and tucked the lap robe in a little tighter. We rode in silence, me trying to solidify my plan as the horse trotted along at a brisk pace. I no longer wanted to go to baking school in Lancaster County. Not now. Not with my father moving back.

I needed to convince Ezra to leave Lancaster County with me. We could go to Chicago, where there was a great baking school. Or somewhere else. Or even Florida if that was really what he wanted. I didn’t care. Just anywhere but here. We could marry. He could work. I could go to school. We could join the church together when I was done. But first I had to get away from home. And I had to go to school. That was non-negotiable. It wasn’t about earning some certificate or degree—those things didn’t matter to me. It was about
learning
. I needed to learn everything there was to know. I needed to master everything there was to do. And for that I had to go to school.

Most importantly, though, we needed to leave
tonight
.

He pulled the horse to a stop at the crossroads. A big truck zoomed by. The horse nickered. Ezra turned his head toward me and smiled slightly.

“I’ve been thinking—” we said in unison, and then we both stopped and laughed.

“Ladies first,” he said as he urged the horse onto the highway.

I took a deep breath. “Well,” I started “now that I’m finished with high school…” I reiterated my goal of going to baking school and then described the school in Chicago, my absolute first choice. When he gave
no reaction, I added there were schools in Florida too. I’d wanted to be a baker since I made my first batch of peanut butter bars when I was six. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy all sorts of cooking. I did, everything from ambrosia to ziti, but I especially enjoyed baking—bread, pies, big cakes, fancy desserts. All of it.

“How would you pay for it?” he asked.

“Well, I would work…and maybe have a little help.”

“Help?” He looked straight ahead as he said the word. “From your mother?”

“No.” This was turning out to be harder than I thought. “From…you.”

“How so?”

I narrowed my focus. “I thought we could go together. We both could work. I’d go to school.”

“What are you getting at, Ella?” He was looking at me now. “We couldn’t afford that, both of us living on our own.”

I pursed my lips together, realizing that it was an expression I’d seen a million times on my mother.

“Well.” I concentrated on keeping my tone even. “We could marry.”

An amused expression fell on his face, but then a semi blew its horn and the horse jolted a little, causing Ezra to grip the reins tightly as the truck passed.