I sat, stunned, speechless, wondering how Liz could know this.
“I was working the night shift, so I was home during the day. One afternoon your mother was sitting on the steps of our duplex watching you play in your wading pool, and I had come out to wash my car. It was a blistering hot day. She asked me over for some lemonade, and we got to talking. I already knew she had been raised Amish because we had spoken before. But for some reason, on that particular day, she was feeling especially talkative—or maybe just homesick. She talked about the farm where she grew up and her family and how sad it was that her own son would never know the joy of an Amish life. She said she wished there was some cosmic way she could have both worlds.”
I still could not speak.
“I didn’t know much about the Amish, and I asked her why she couldn’t just have both, like a cousin of mine who had a Korean husband. They lived in Korea, but she managed to be a Westerner while still embracing his culture.”
Liz looked to me as if I would agree that these were valid suggestions. I just stared back at her, waiting for her to continue.
“Anyway, your mother told me it was different with the Amish. That that was impossible. That the two cultures were mutually exclusive. She said that living an Amish life meant giving up all other ways, not merging them.” Liz took another long sip of her water. “Your mom told me your dad was on one side and the Amish life was on the other. And that those two sides would never meet. Ever. It was one or the other, but not both.”
I looked away, out the window next to our table, where the busyness of life rushed past, trying to absorb what she was telling me.
“It wasn’t that she was unhappy, Tyler. She didn’t want to go back there if that meant leaving your father behind. But she wished there was a way she could go back and keep him too. And she knew that wish would never come true.”
I slowly turned my head to look at her as she added, “I’m telling you now because I think she would want you to know.”
We were both quiet for a minute, each lost in our thoughts.
“I honestly didn’t think I would ever run into your father again,” Liz said, breaking the silence. “I hardly ever saw him in those eight months they—you and your parents—were at the base in Texas. Then, five years later, when I was stationed in Spain, he came into the hospital one day with a burn from some equipment he’d been working on. I was his nurse. He barely remembered me, but I remembered him. I asked him how his wife was. And when he told me what had happened, I started crying, right there in the exam room. I don’t know why. For some reason, I had hoped Sadie had finally come to peace with the choices she’d made. With her passing so young, though, I figured she probably hadn’t. And that thought was just heartbreaking to me.”
Our food arrived and we began to eat. I suppose it was cooked perfectly and I might have enjoyed it had my head not been brimming with new thoughts.
“Why did you say you thought my situation was unfixable?” I asked a few minutes later. “Earlier, in the car. That was the word you used, unfixable.”
“Because it was. Duke waited too long to come back for you. And then we waited too long to come back for you. I should have insisted the minute we were married to come to Pennsylvania and get you. You had just turned eight. It had only been two years since you’d been there. But I got pregnant pretty soon after we were married and we just kept putting it off. By the time we got our act together, it had been five years since your grandparents had taken you. And we had Brady. And you…well, it was too late.”
Too late.
She was right. For all intents and purposes, by that time, I was fully ensconced in the Amish world, fully a part of my grandparents’ household. But had that been a good thing or a bad thing? I wondered. Then I realized that it didn’t matter either way.
All that mattered was that it had been a God thing. Growing up Amish had been His will for me.
“I’ve had a good life, Liz. I’m not bitter about the way things turned out.”
“I know you’re not. And I’m really glad you’re not. But you need to know that there’s nothing keeping you there now but you.”
“Are you telling me you think I shouldn’t go back?”
“I’m telling you that right now, you have what your mother didn’t have. The ability to choose.”
I processed this for a long moment. Then another thought occurred to me.
“Can I ask you something?”
She nodded, waiting.
“When you were stationed in Spain and my father came into your hospital that day and you asked him about my mother…” My voice trailed off, unsure of how to say it.
“Yes?”
“Did he mention me at all? Did he say where I was or what had happened to me?”