lips tightened into a firm line. She was probably thinking this wasn’t his business, but he intended to know the truth if he had to stand here all night.
“Because they rejected her.” The words burst out of her. “My mother. They turned away from her because she married an outsider. Why would I want a relationship with them now? They haven’t bothered about me all these years.”
“That’s not how it was.” He remembered all he’d heard, all he’d known. “She’s the one who left. She deserted them, not the other way around, and they’ve never recovered from that.”
“How do you know so much about it?” Suspicion edged her tone.
Emma had only been three when her sister left, but she’d remembered how her mother had aged overnight, how all the happiness seemed to go out of the house with Hannah. And he remembered how she’d cried in his arms when she’d told him she couldn’t do the same thing to her parents that her sister had done.
He stiffened. Some things Fiona didn’t have the right to know, especially that.
“It’s a small community,” he said. “I don’t think you realize how small. I’ve been a friend of the family for a long time. I know how much the Stolzfus family grieved when Hannah left. I don’t want to see them hurt again.”
“I don’t want to hurt them. I don’t want to have anything to do with them.” She thrust her hands through her reddish-blond mane as if she’d pull it out in her frustration. “Can’t you just accept that?”
He watched her steadily, trying to read the truth in those gray eyes. Did she really believe what she was saying?
“No,” he said slowly. “I can’t accept that. How can I, when all of your actions have brought you to a place where you’re bound to run into them? You say it’s not intentional, and maybe that’s so. But the results are the same, and people I care about are already hurting as a result.”
“I’m sorry.” She stood very straight, facing him, her face pale and set. “Sorry if this hurts them, and sorry you don’t believe me. But they rejected my mother, and—”
“Will you stop saying that?” He took a step toward her, as if his very nearness might convince her to believe him. “They did not turn her away.”
Her face was like stone. “I read about the Amish, once I was old enough to understand that’s what my mother had been. I read about how they shun people who don’t do what they’re supposed to.”
“That proves the old saying, doesn’t it?” He sighed in frustration. Did he have to give the woman a crash course in what it meant to be Amish? “‘A little learning is a dangerous thing.’ It’s true that someone might be separated from the congregation to help him see the error of his ways, but that doesn’t apply in this case.”
“What do you mean?” Doubt flickered in her face.
“Hannah was seventeen when she left, not yet a baptized member of the church, so she didn’t break any vows by what she did. I’m sure her parents didn’t approve of her choice, but if she’d stayed, they would have made peace with it. They never had the chance. If she’d come back, anytime, they probably would have welcomed her.”
Fiona shook her head stubbornly. “How can you say that? They never attempted to get in touch with her after she left. And after she died, they never tried to find me. My whole life, I’ve never heard a word from them.”
Her pain reached out and grabbed his heart, and for a moment he couldn’t speak. The urge to comfort her was so strong he had to fight it back. He could pity her, yes, but his loyalties lay elsewhere.
“Fiona, what makes you think they knew you existed?”
He saw that hit her, saw the doubt and pain in her eyes, and thought he’d be a long time regretting that he’d put it there. But it had to be done. This was a bad situation, and an impulsive act on her part could make it even worse.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Could be you think I’m interfering, and maybe I am. But the best thing you can do now is to stay away from the family. You don’t begin to understand them, and you can’t judge them by your California standards. Just leave them alone, before you cause each other more pain than you can bear.”
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