Last Bride, The (Home to Hickory Hollow Book #5) by Beverly Lewis Page A
Authors: Beverly Lewis
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liked to call it. Focused on the promise of the scrumptious dessert that evening, she moved toward her father’s rolltop desk, which was especially dusty, though she’d given it a thorough going over just last week.
Sliding it open, she noticed a couple of sticky notes—reminders for the vet’s visit to administer the horses’ routine shots. There was also a black folder lying out with the words Family Charts written on a yellow tab. Curious, she opened it and found a listing of Hickory Hollow families: Stoltzfus, Fisher, and Beiler/Byler . . . She’d heard of such genetic charts being kept quietly by the older patriarchs and some ministersin other church districts, but never in Hickory Hollow, where Bishop John had forbidden it. The People believed the health of their children was up to God’s will, when all was said and done. So she was shocked to see her own father kept such a list.
She looked more closely: The surname King seemed to jump off the page. Tessie read on and was stunned to discover that Marcus’s father, Lloyd King, was actually a third cousin to her own father . . . which made her and Marcus third cousins once removed. Distant enough to marry legally, but a potentially alarming mix in their closely related community.
Scanning the charts, Tessie realized her father must have painstakingly created these lists of families that, for genetic reasons, he considered off-limits to his daughters—he’d taken care to note some of the diseases each family had encountered in recent generations. Clearly, his concern was for high-risk genetic disorders like mental retardation, dwarfism, autism, cerebral palsy, sudden infant death, and others.
Tessie had seen more than a handful of Lancaster County farmhouses glowing nightly with steady blue lights in the bedrooms of Amish and Mennonite children who suffered from Crigler-Najjar syndrome, a condition that resulted in severe jaundice and brain damage, even possible death. New genetic diseases due to close intermarriage were being identified all the time.
Tessie was horror-struck. To think this was likely the primary reason her parents opposed a marriage to Marcus.
Leaning heavily on the desk, she considered the implications.
What have we done?
She caught her breath as she recalled that one of Marcus’s older sisters had given birth to a baby with a fatal genetic disorder just in the past year. And now that she thought of it, Marcus’s aunt Suzy had lost a toddler boy to the same disease not long ago.
The bleak reality plagued her.
She moaned. “Could it be that Dat only wanted to spare me heartache?” Turning, Tessie stared out the window. From this distance, the meadow beyond the corncrib looked pea green and, in some places near the mule roads, almost as if a giant foot had flattened it.
The truth was more dreadful than she’d imagined, and her legs went as limp as slack ropes. She tumbled into the willow chair near the desk and raised her hands to her face, murmuring, “Why didn’t they just tell me?” She began to weep. “Why?”
Chapter 8
T he hues of Hickory Hollow were peacefully muted and fall-like that Sunday morning as daylight began to peek over the distant hills.
Marcus reached for his ledger as he rolled out of bed that no-Preaching day, exhausted in every way. A feeling of detachment from the People had begun to engulf him, all the more so since communion and foot washing last Sunday. He should not have participated in the Lord’s Supper, but lest he call attention to himself, he’d gone ahead. Prior to the day, he’d fasted on Friday, beseeching God to forgive him for getting Tessie into such an excruciating mess. And for disobeying his unwitting father-in-law.
Filled with turmoil, he began to write.
Sunday, October 20
My beloved Tessie is troubled. If only I could remedy that! Her father continues to be a roadblock. I’ve tried several times to work with Ammon, to somehow get into his good graces.Yet I don’t
Sliding it open, she noticed a couple of sticky notes—reminders for the vet’s visit to administer the horses’ routine shots. There was also a black folder lying out with the words Family Charts written on a yellow tab. Curious, she opened it and found a listing of Hickory Hollow families: Stoltzfus, Fisher, and Beiler/Byler . . . She’d heard of such genetic charts being kept quietly by the older patriarchs and some ministersin other church districts, but never in Hickory Hollow, where Bishop John had forbidden it. The People believed the health of their children was up to God’s will, when all was said and done. So she was shocked to see her own father kept such a list.
She looked more closely: The surname King seemed to jump off the page. Tessie read on and was stunned to discover that Marcus’s father, Lloyd King, was actually a third cousin to her own father . . . which made her and Marcus third cousins once removed. Distant enough to marry legally, but a potentially alarming mix in their closely related community.
Scanning the charts, Tessie realized her father must have painstakingly created these lists of families that, for genetic reasons, he considered off-limits to his daughters—he’d taken care to note some of the diseases each family had encountered in recent generations. Clearly, his concern was for high-risk genetic disorders like mental retardation, dwarfism, autism, cerebral palsy, sudden infant death, and others.
Tessie had seen more than a handful of Lancaster County farmhouses glowing nightly with steady blue lights in the bedrooms of Amish and Mennonite children who suffered from Crigler-Najjar syndrome, a condition that resulted in severe jaundice and brain damage, even possible death. New genetic diseases due to close intermarriage were being identified all the time.
Tessie was horror-struck. To think this was likely the primary reason her parents opposed a marriage to Marcus.
Leaning heavily on the desk, she considered the implications.
What have we done?
She caught her breath as she recalled that one of Marcus’s older sisters had given birth to a baby with a fatal genetic disorder just in the past year. And now that she thought of it, Marcus’s aunt Suzy had lost a toddler boy to the same disease not long ago.
The bleak reality plagued her.
She moaned. “Could it be that Dat only wanted to spare me heartache?” Turning, Tessie stared out the window. From this distance, the meadow beyond the corncrib looked pea green and, in some places near the mule roads, almost as if a giant foot had flattened it.
The truth was more dreadful than she’d imagined, and her legs went as limp as slack ropes. She tumbled into the willow chair near the desk and raised her hands to her face, murmuring, “Why didn’t they just tell me?” She began to weep. “Why?”
Chapter 8
T he hues of Hickory Hollow were peacefully muted and fall-like that Sunday morning as daylight began to peek over the distant hills.
Marcus reached for his ledger as he rolled out of bed that no-Preaching day, exhausted in every way. A feeling of detachment from the People had begun to engulf him, all the more so since communion and foot washing last Sunday. He should not have participated in the Lord’s Supper, but lest he call attention to himself, he’d gone ahead. Prior to the day, he’d fasted on Friday, beseeching God to forgive him for getting Tessie into such an excruciating mess. And for disobeying his unwitting father-in-law.
Filled with turmoil, he began to write.
Sunday, October 20
My beloved Tessie is troubled. If only I could remedy that! Her father continues to be a roadblock. I’ve tried several times to work with Ammon, to somehow get into his good graces.Yet I don’t
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