Hidden Mercies Read Free

she were Englisch, she would have old photos. There would be an engagement picture clipped out of the local newspaper, perhaps a yellowed wedding dress hanging in the closet, maybe an engagement ring.
    As much as she wished she had a picture of Matthew, she did not disagree with their Amish leaders’ decision to forbid cameras. Graven images, they called them, and had she owned a photo of him, it probably would have become a graven image for her. Something to worship. Something to hold close to her heart.
    “You aren’t asleep yet?” Her sixteen-year-old niece, Maddy, stood in the open doorway in her long nightgown, brushing her hair.
    Claire’s first instinct was to shove the items out of sight, but she stopped herself. With her husband, Abraham, gone now, there was no one left to hide them from. She had been a good wife to Abraham. He had no cause to be jealous of Matthew—but he would have been furious had he ever come across her looking at these things.
    She did not pull them out often, but every once in a while she took them out just to reassure herself that Matthew had actually existed—that he had not been some glorious figment of her imagination.
    “Sure,” Claire said. “Come in.”
    “What are those?” Maddy sat down on the bed beside her.
    “Some things I probably should have thrown away a long time ago.”
    Maddy picked up the valentine and read it. “Who is Matthew?”
    Claire hesitated. “Matthew was Levi’s father.”
    “Oh.”
    Claire could tell that Maddy wasn’t sure how to respond. Many in the community still struggled with the fact that Levi had been born out of wedlock.
    “Did you love him a great deal?”
    “When I was seventeen, I thought I could not take a breath without him.” Claire folded the handkerchief into a neat square. “Then one day I learned that I had no choice.”
    “Is that a lock of his hair?”
    “The day he died, I asked the nurse at the hospital for a pair of scissors. I wanted something of him that I could keep with me always.”
    “But you had Levi to remember him by.” Maddy’s voice was tentative, as though she didn’t know whether or not this was a forbidden topic.
    “I did not know that at the time.”
    It was not the Amish way to speak of intimate things with children—or even with other adults, if it could be avoided, and yet, as a midwife, Claire believed there were things Maddy should know. The girl had just turned sixteen. Her Rumspringa would be starting soon. She needed to be taught that there were consequences to decisions.
    “Levi was conceived two days before Matthew and I were to be married. We loved each other very much, and with the wedding so close, we thought it would be . . . safe.” She brushed a strand of loose hair behind Maddy’s ear. “Until one is married in the eyes of man and of God, it is not right to express one’s love too passionately. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
    “Yes.” Maddy glanced down at her hairbrush, as though embarrassed. Claire wondered if she had said too much. The girl was still so innocent, and yet . . . Claire was trying to raise her brother’s two girls with as much wisdom as she could muster. There was more to her responsibility to them than just food and clothes.
    “Why did you keep the handkerchief?” Maddy asked.
    “I cut my foot on a jagged rock one day. A group of us were having a picnic. It was summer and I was barefoot. There were others about, but it was Matthew who knelt, took this handkerchief out of his pocket, and bound up the cut. He was so tender and kind. That is when I fell in love with him.”
    “He sounds wonderful.”
    “He was.”
    “What do you keep to remember Abraham by?”
    The girl’s question was innocent, and yet it hurt. The truth was, her marriage to Abraham had not been a success, but Maddy did not need to know that.
    She smiled brightly. “I have this house, and this farm, and my four other children to remember Abraham by.”
    “Didn’t you