Leaving Lancaster: A Novel by Kate Lloyd

Author:Kate Lloyd
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Family Secrets, Amish, Christian, Fiction, Romance, Lancaster County, Mothers and Daughters, General, Cultural Heritage
ISBN: 9780781405089
Publisher: David C. Cook
Published: 2012-03-01T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Maintaining my distance by a few yards, I followed Mom into the house. She crossed the front hallway to the sitting room and stood by Isaac—the first time I’d seen him actually off his feet and relaxing. My mother appeared timid, her eyes lowered, as she handed him the letter. She paused, then turned and trod up the stairs.

Shutting the front door, I inhaled the fragrant aroma of cooking apples wafting from the kitchen. I should help Greta with dinner preparations, meaning I must walk past Isaac, who sat opening the letter. Why was I reticent? Even though he’d been aloof, Isaac had treated me with respect. He seemed to be a good husband and dad. He might have a beef with my mother, but not with me.

Much as I loved Dori and Jim, calling them Auntie and Uncle, I’d always wished for genuine blood relatives. Like a banner waving out my window, my mantra growing up could have been: I want a humongous extended family!

In the past I’d kicked around the idea I might have distant cousins, but Mom had acted as if her entire family left Pennsylvania when her parents died. Address unknown. But really, I scolded myself, by using the Internet or hiring a detective, I could have pursued my relatives; their tracks would have trundled straight to this farmhouse. I’d been gullible, believing my mother’s smoke-and-mirrors deception, and wasn’t any closer to understanding her motivation. Unless she was a sociopathic liar or her drug use in San Francisco had erased her memory. Then Dori had convinced Mom Haight-Ashbury was no place for a pregnant woman. According to Mom, she’d moved with Jim and Dori to the Northwest and never looked back.

Once a runaway, always a runaway, I thought, hearing Mom’s voice upstairs speaking to Mommy Anna. Did she even love my grandma?

I meandered across the entry’s rag rugs.

Uncle Isaac stroked his beard with one hand as he perused the letter. He must know I was watching him. As far as I could tell he was ignoring me. Maybe Mom was right about my wearing the borrowed dress and apron; it was a mistake. I’d disregarded her opinion because I’d been infuriated when she bad-mouthed her father, my Daadi Levi, whom I’d never meet. All my life I’d imagined my grandfather a mixture of Santa Claus and John Wayne, but now I wondered if Isaac was a younger version of his father, authoritarian and domineering.

Not the shy type, I goaded myself to stroll into the sitting room, coming to a halt near him. “Hi, Uncle Isaac. How’s it going?”

He folded the letter, slipped it into the envelope, and placed it on the side table.

“Care to share your plans?” I said. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

He tugged his earlobe. “What exactly are ya askin’?”

“For starters, why are you moving?”

“We need more land. We’re stymied—nowhere to expand. This county is clogged with traffic jams, making it dangerous for horse and buggies.”

“I haven’t seen many cars.”

“If you went through Bird-in-Hand or Intercourse, you’d see outsiders swarmin’ like locusts.

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