Read Online Leaving Lancaster by Kate Lloyd - Free Book Online Page B

might change her mind and send them away once she saw Esther and Holly dressed Englisch? Esther wondered what she’d think when she learned their visit was temporary. As a girl, Esther’s parents’ bishop had instructed the congregation to forgive seventy times seven. But by now, Esther’s mother might have run out of forgiveness.
    A chill ran through her like an arctic blast; Esther wrapped her fingers around her coffee cup.
    Fifteen minutes later, Holly descended the stairs from the second floor and wheeled her suitcase to the front door. “Mom, are you packed?”
    â€œNot yet.”
    â€œAren’t you the woman who insisted I drop everything and fly all this way? Don’t expect me to visit Grandma Anna without you.”
    â€œYah, okay, I’m comin’.” Esther climbed the stairs, each leg as heavy as if she were wearing waterlogged fishing waders. She folded her belongings into the suitcase and zipped it shut, catching the edge of her cotton nightgown.
    Feeling light-headed, she perched on the bed and tried to picture her mother’s countenance when she and Holly knocked on her door. Mamm and Dat had never been what Northwest folks classified as easygoing. “Go with the flow,” Holly had remarked last week when Esther fussed about receiving an incorrect order from a furniture factory in Illinois, a magazine rack stained mahogany instead of oak.
    Growing up, Esther’s parents had insisted she and her brothers obey stringent rules because God expected humility and obedience. Had Esther fled to escape their iron hand? After all these years, she still wasn’t clear, only that her life had felt like a prison. How could she explain her actions to her mamm when she didn’t understand them herself?
    In her mind’s ear, Esther heard Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” a tune she and Samuel performed on San Francisco street corners to earn change. At first, Samuel played his harmonica, the only musical instrument the bishop allowed back home. Samuel’s tenor voice outshone Dylan’s by far.
    Esther dragged herself off the bed and carted her suitcase downstairs. Finally out in the nippy morning air and sitting in the passenger seat, she could scarcely inhale. Had she buttoned her blouse too tightly at the neck? She loosened it, but found no relief.
    Holly coasted the car down Beth’s lane and turned onto North Hollander Road, driving past harvested corn and a bountiful field of emerald-green alfalfa.
    Moments later, Esther spotted the farmhouse. “There it is, on the right.” Her voice sounded scritchy, like she was coming down with laryngitis.
    The car felt oppressive, the heater cranked too high. The closer they neared her childhood home, the faster Esther’s heart galloped, until it seemed to curl in on itself and lurch to her esophagus, cutting off her breath. She thought she might faint.
    Holly craned her neck for a better view of the white austere clapboard home, standing in front of the gable-roofed cow barn, the larger main barn, the outbuildings, silos, and windmill. She pulled onto the graveled patch near the mailbox. Esther decided not to tell her most visitors used the back door exclusively. No use making Holly uncomfortable; she’d learn the routine quickly enough.
    Esther scanned the hundred-year-old home where she’d literally been born and raised. The two-story structure looked the same. Green shades covered the windows of the smaller Daadi Haus off to the left, connected to the main house at a corner to provide light to all rooms. But she noticed subtle differences: a new white picket fence and a curved arch now graced the entrance leading to the front porch.
    Esther lowered her window partway, allowing air to surround her, filling her nostrils with the heady aromas of sod and drying cornstalks. But she didn’t open her door; her hands wouldn’t move.
    â€œMother, what’s wrong?”