Beverly Lewis [The Heritage o The Shunning (retail) (epub) id

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.Slowly, deliberately, she drank from it.Silence draped itself like a shawl over the barren gray walls.Seconds lagged.Rebecca could take it no longer.“Katie, are you ill?” She slipped her arm around her daughter’s trim waist, and Katie stiffened without speaking.Samuel was not one to tolerate disrespect, and Rebecca knew what was coming.As sure as a brush fire in a windstorm.“Both your Mam and I have spoken to ya,” he scolded without raising his voice.Still no response from the girl with autumn brown eyes and reddish hair, wound tightly into a bun under the solemn white netting.Katie refused to look up until Eli kicked her under the table.A hefty, swift kick to the shinbone.“Ach!” She glared across the table at the culprit.Eli sneered, “Don’t you have nothin’ to say for yourself?”“Eli!” his father cut in.“That’ll do!”Rebecca’s grasp tightened on Katie’s waist.Now the fire was sure to come.She braced herself for the heat.“I.uh, Dat,” Katie began at last, “there’s something I have to say.”Rebecca felt the tension draining out of muscles coiled tight as a garden snake.Her daughter—only nine days before her wedding—had averted a near disaster.The kindling of her father’s wrath.“There is something I must tell you—both of you,” Katie went on.She looked first at Samuel, then at Rebecca, who had folded her hands as if in prayer.“Ever since I was little, being Plain has been burdensome to me.” She took a deep breath.“More burdensome for me than most, it seems.”“Bein’ Amish is who you are through and through.” Her father’s voice was unemotional yet definitive.“Plain is how the Lord God meant you to be.You ought to be ashamed, saying things such as that after bein’ baptized.taking the kneeling vow and all.”Rebecca clasped her hands tighter in a wordless plea.“I best be speaking to Bishop John.” Katie could feel her eyes filling with tears.“I have to speak to him.about.” She paused, drawing in another thready breath.“About the wedding.”“Now, Katie,” her mother intervened.“Just wait a day or two, won’t ya? This’ll pass, you’ll see.”Katie stared at her mother.“But I’ve sinned against Dat.and.the church.”Samuel’s expression darkened.“Daughter?”“It’s the music—all those songs in my head.I can’t make them go away,” she blurted.“I’ve tried, but the music keeps tempting me.” She bit her tongue and kept silent about the other temptings, the never-ending yearning for beautiful things.Rebecca patted her hand.“Maybe a talk with Bishop Beiler would do us all some good.”“Alone, Mamma.I must see John alone.”Samuel’s green shirt and tan suspenders accentuated the red flush creeping up his neck and into his face.“Maybe if you’d destroyed that instrument of evil when I first caught you at it, that guitar wouldn’t be destroyin’ you now.”He continued to restrain her with a piercing gaze.“You’ll be confessing this before the next Preaching.If you’re serious about turning away from sin and crucifying the flesh, you’ll find a way.”“I’ve tried all these years, Dat.I wish I could shut off the music.” But even as she spoke, a stubborn defiance surged in her, demanding its way.She did not want to stop the music—not her beloved music.Not the precious thing she and Daniel Fisher had so joyously shared.Stubbornness gave way to guilt.She had just lied to her own father.One sin had given birth to another, and penance was long overdue.If she ever wanted to see Daniel in the courts of glory, Katie knew what was expected of her.A private confession in front of their elderly deacon and preacher Yoder.Her first ever.Samuel adjusted his metal-rim glasses and scrutinized Katie across the table.“I forbade you to play music many years ago, and I forbid you now,” he said.“‘Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?”’He pushed his chair away from the table, causing it to screech against the linoleum floor.Significant in its absence was the silent table grace that always followed the meal.With a grunt, he shuffled into the living room.Eli and Benjamin disappeared into a far corner of the house, as if grateful to escape the shameful scene.Under a ring of light, mother and daughter sat worlds apart.Rebecca willed her trembling to cease, relieved that her daughter’s outburst had nothing whatever to do with the past—that dreadful secret that could swallow them up.Every last one of them.Still, as she sat beside her only daughter—the child of her dreams— there was one consolation.This predicament could be remedied easily enough.A sigh escaped her lips, and with eyes closed, she breathed a prayer of thanks—for Katie’s confession of sin.For having had twenty-two blessed years with this precious child.She looked into Katie’s eyes and wiped tears from her cheeks, resolving to pay a visit to the attic just as soon as the dishes were done.Quietly, with Katie’s help, Rebecca set to work clearing the table [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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