She nodded. “Jonah believes so as well. We were all good friends back then, you know, and I think he saw the situation even more clearly than I did. He tried mightily to comfort me in those early days after she left. He kept reminding me of all the times she would push for more even as I would insist on holding back. My sister and I were the best of friends, but there was a wild streak in her that I never had—not wild like bad, just wild as in she couldn’t be tamed. She had too much energy. Too much curiosity. Too much desire for the things of this world.”
I had accepted Sarah’s explanation then, but now that I looked back, I had to wonder if there had been more to it than that. Could it have been a crisis of faith that drove my mother away? A need to seek something in the broader world? A tugging from outside that she, too, had attributed to God?
Sadly, there was no way I could ever know.
What I did know were the basic facts that my father had told me over the years, how she left her family’s farm in Lancaster County in the middle of the night and caught a bus to Philadelphia. How she moved into a tiny apartment there and took a job as a waitress. How not long after that, my dad just happened to go into the restaurant where she worked, spotted her behind the counter, and fell in love.
He’d been a first lieutenant back then, on leave before heading oversees to an army base in Heidelburg, Germany. He had come to Philadelphia to visit with his old West Point roommate and best buddy, and when the two of them came into the restaurant that night, they both flirted with the pretty girl working the counter. She flirted back only with my father, however, as if it had been love at first sight on her side too. At the end of the evening, half joking, he had asked her if she’d like to come to Maryland and take a ride in his ’67 Charger convertible. To his surprise and delight, she had said yes. And she hadn’t been half joking.
Three weeks later—and just a month before his deployment to Germany—they had driven down to Maryland to tie the knot and spent their honeymoon at the Jersey Shore. At some point fairly soon after that, they went to Lancaster County to tell her family about their marriage—and their upcoming move—in person.
I knew that was one of the few times my dad had ever been to the farm. And I also knew the visit hadn’t gone well. Years ago, I had asked Sarah if she remembered that day, and she’d nodded as a heavy sadness fell across her face.
“That was the last time any of us saw her. She was so happy, and she wanted all of us to be happy for her too, but how could we? First, she ran away without a word. Then when she finally came back it was to announce that not only was she married—to an Englischer—but that her husband was in the military—and that they were bound for Germany for three years. I think it was just too much for my parents to take in all at once. Too much for all of us. I was so upset I couldn’t even talk to her.”
“Did any of you stay in touch? Maybe write to her over there?”
She shook her head sadly. “In the beginning she didn’t send us an address, Tyler. I think she needed some space.”
I nodded, knowing the fault was hers, not theirs.
“I think she wrote Mamm once, and then we didn’t hear from her again until after you were born. One day out of the blue she called the buggy shop from the Philly airport, saying that she and her husband had a child now and that the three of you were back in the States while he attended some special training or something in Maryland.”
“Maryland? That’s not far. Did they come out for another visit?”
“No.”
“So did any of you go down to see her—see us—in Maryland?” I was careful not to sound accusatory.
“No.” Sarah grew quiet for a long moment. “But I think Mamm and Daed would have done things differently if they had realized what was going to happen. I know I would have.”
I could see the truth of that statement in her eyes. I could also see the infinite pain behind it.
“Only God knows the future, Tyler. Sometimes you learn how to handle things by making mistakes the first time around.”
That Sunday, the worship service was held at Rachel’s farm, and though I was glad to see her, she and I did not speak of what I had mentioned at the wedding. Not directly, anyway. Chatting after lunch, she asked me about Jake—if we had heard from him and how he was liking farrier school so far—but there was a veiled concern there, as if her question really didn’t have much to do with his absence at all. We were surrounded by other people, so I wasn’t free to tell her that I had talked to both Jake and Daadi about what I was wrestling with, and that Daadi would be asking the bishop what I should do. I could only tell her that Jake had left a message on the buggy shop phone, assuring us he had arrived safely in Missouri, and that I missed him but appreciated not having to fight him for the last pork chop at dinner.
Back home that afternoon, as I put away the buggy and began to brush down my horse, Daadi joined me in the stable. I could tell something was on his mind.
“I spoke to the bishop,” he said, taking the harness from me and hanging it on its hook.
“Yes?” My heart was pounding, but I focused on running the brush over the mare’s brown flank.