Once Rebekah sat down, Elnora did the same before continuing. “He was up half the night for days on end, sick and exhausted, all so you could have something meaningful and nice for Lil’ Bit. Something to hand down, for generations to come.”
Regret curdled within Rebekah like sour milk on a hot summer day. Her face puckered as she tried to hold in the emotion. She deserved to hear these words from Elnora, and she deserved each and every feeling that came of it, as well. “I know. What I did was terrible. Unforgivable.”
Elnora picked up a slice of toast and scooped out some butter. She buttered the toast in long, even strokes. “Terrible, yes. Unforgivable, no.” She handed the slice to Rebekah. “You regret the anger already, so words from me are apt to make that feeling worse, which is not my intention.”
Rebekah covered her face with one hand and balanced the toast in the other. “I am so ashamed, Mater. Ashamed and regretful. Even more so since I could not bring myself to confess this to Fater.”
Elnora buttered a second slice of toast for herself. “Your confession would have only brought hurt to a sick man. You were right to keep quiet.”
“When I calmed down, right after I promised myself that I would never lose my temper again in such a manner, I went to find where Joseph put the bits of the cradle so that I could fix it myself. But it was gone.” She dropped her voice low. “Gone along with Joseph.”
“He left?” Elnora raised her eyebrows. “Joseph?”
Rebekah nodded. “He said he was leaving for the night or longer. He took the cradle with him.”
Elnora looked down at the bopplin. “As sweet and precious these little gifts from Gotte are, they can be awfully trying to a young couple the first time around. We might even say or do things we do not mean.”
“Not you, Mater.”
“Oh, ja.” Elnora raised her toast to her lips. “Even me.” Finally, she rewarded herself with a bite. She closed her eyes and groaned. “Yum.”
Rebekah took a bite of her bread and studied the wood grain of the table. Normally, her mother’s treats tasted delicious, but the bread today felt dry on her regretful tongue. She managed to chew the bite and swallow roughly. “What did you do?”
“Do?”
“Ja. Things we regret?”
“Oh, ja.” Elnora’s eyes misted. “It was when we first found you. I had been praying, asking Gotte for a child of my own for many months. Yet I had still not become pregnant. When we found you…” She looked down at Lil’ Bit. “It was a gift that we were there to save you. And I knew that.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Samuel was not so quick to believe that Gotte had answered my prayer. He said it was unfair to keep you from your kind, from any family you might have. He felt for them, that we could not take away something from them that would be so wonderful gute and precious. He thought that would be us being selfish and taking what we wanted from people who had not intended to give to us.”
Her mother’s words rang with perfect sense in her ears as she heard the story of her father not wanting her for the first time.
“So, once we settled here, Samuel went to find your family. He did not know about Peter, he did not know that the only surviving family you had was another child, or he would have adopted him, too.”
Rebekah dared another bite of bread. It went down much easier than the bite before.
“He discovered you had nobody else in the world, or so we thought at the time. And the Englischer world pointed him to a place where all helpless children go when they have nobody to take care of them. It was a place called an orphanage.”
Orphanage. Peter’s stories of his time spent in an orphanage made the little hairs on her neck stand on end.
“Orphanages and orphan trains, where they put the babies and children onto a train and sent them west…” Elnora’s voice cracked, and her hand began to shake. She shook her head and gathered her wits. “So, when Samuel learned this, he came home, and without telling me anything, he snatched you out of your cradle and carried you outside. All of the other families knew what was going on, so we all figured that he had come to get you and take you to your new home.”
“I was powerless to stop him. I just followed and listened.” Elnora stared past her, as though she was staring into a past that only she could see. “He said he wanted the town to meet his dochder, Rebekah, and no child of his was unwanted or unloved, and this child would grow up with parents who loved her in a community where she was celebrated.”
Rebekah nodded. “So, what did you do that was…”
Elnora shook her head and held up a finger to quiet her. “That night, when it was just us, I talked to Samuel. I told him that even before he made his announcement, you were my dochder. He did not understand my meaning, so I continued. I told him that whether he liked it or not, I was raising you as my child. Even if I had to do it alone, as a shunned woman.”
Rebekah’s mouth fell open. She remembered at once that she was eating and closed it again. “Mater, I had no idea.”
“Nobody does, besides Samuel and me. Until now.” Elnora took another bite. When she was finished with her toast, she continued. “We have never spoken of it again, and I would be grateful if you did not, either.”
“I will keep that for myself.” Rebekah felt very loved. “Thank you for trusting me with that story.”
“You see, Rebekah,” Elnora said, “I understand more than you might think.”
She nodded. “I am so grateful that you are my mamm.” She reached across the table and patted her hand. She hoped that it gave her mother the same feeling that her touch gave her. Of hope and strength and comfort.
“So am I.” Elnora smiled. “So, what else is bothering you?”
As much as it hurt to think, and hurt to say, she took a deep breath. “I fear I have driven Joseph away for gute, Mater.”
Elnora sat, looking thoughtful for quite some time before she spoke. “I am a bit older than you,” her mamm said, “and I have seen a thing or two in this world. And one thing that has fascinated me most is birds.”
Rebekah’s eyes widened. Of all the words her mother could have said at that moment, birds was not one of them. “Birds?”
“Particularly mourning doves. I know you have heard them, with their long lonesome call. But have you ever sat and watched them?”
“I cannot say that I have.” Rebekah shook her head. “I suppose I know more about bears lately than about birds.”
“So, I have heard.” Elnora chuckled. “Anyway, no matter how much a pair of mourning doves peck at each other, and they do peck at each other quite often, they still love each other a great deal.”
“I did not know that.”
“They mate for life, you know.”
