Too late to close the barn door after the horse has run off.
Jude was glad the darkness hid some of his anguish. He realized how difficult it had been for Leah to tell him about the twins’ crude behavior, because now he’d opened an emotional door and there was no shutting it until he’d answered Leah’s question. If she’d trusted him with her expression of fear—her need to leave his home because she felt like an outcast—it was only fair for him to share the circumstances surrounding his first marriage . . . the damning details he’d told no one else.
“Hear me out before you judge me, Leah,” he pleaded softly. He was encouraged when she remained snuggled against him, and he hoped his revelation wouldn’t drive her away. “Frieda came on to me like a house afire. I was only eighteen—flattered and delighted that a beautiful woman three years older than I wanted to marry me—and I . . . I believed it was love.”
Jude paused, recalling that time when he’d believed he was so mature and ready to handle anything life threw at him. Leah, bless her, remained silent as he collected his thoughts. Frieda would’ve been pecking at him like a hen, demanding details and expressing opinions about situations she only assumed she knew about.
But Leah isn’t Frieda. Get on with your story and trust her to give you a fair shake when she’s heard it all.
Jude took comfort in running his fingers through Leah’s long, soft hair. “When Frieda got sick a couple of times at our wedding, I figured she was just nervous. I didn’t realize that some of our guests were speculating that I’d already had relations with her—which I had not.”
Leah drew in a sharp breath and held it. Her gracious silence gave him the strength to keep talking.
“As a lot of newlyweds do, we lived with her parents at first,” Jude continued. The story was easier to tell now that Leah had already figured out the punch line. “Her mother didn’t seem a bit concerned that she was vomiting so often. When I asked Frieda if I should take her to the doctor, she admitted she was pregnant. You could have knocked me over with a feather—but I realized immediately that her baby couldn’t have been mine.”
“That was despicable,” Leah muttered. “She knew you’d have no way to wiggle out of raising another man’s child after you married her.”
Jude sighed gratefully into Leah’s hair. “Frieda begged me to forgive her deception, so of course I did as our faith expects us to do, without letting on to anyone about her secret. Nobody said anything about the twins arriving full-term after we’d been married only six months.”
“They figured the girls were yours, conceived before you’d married,” Leah muttered.
Jude held her closer, thanking God for her understanding heart. “Several years and a few miscarriages later, everyone was delighted when Stevie came along,” he continued in a faraway voice. “Maybe I was too suspicious, but when I counted the months back to a time I’d been on the road with an auction company for a long while, the math didn’t work out in favor of my being his father, either.”
Leah gasped. “How could she do that to you? Especially after you were already raising another man’s twins as your own?”
“Here again, maybe my suspicions were playing me false,” Jude said with a shrug, “but Frieda didn’t seem the least bit upset about my leaving to accept that job. Three other Amish auctioneers and I were gone a couple of months, helping a bunch of Plain families in Ohio sell off their farms and relocate farther west, where land was more affordable. Frieda thought such a worthwhile cause deserved a little sacrifice on her part—and my parents were living here then, so it wasn’t as though I was leaving her to raise the girls alone.”
Jude chided himself for stirring up the ghosts of old memories—speaking ill of his deceased wife—yet he wanted Leah to understand his emotional state. “Maybe I was partly to blame. Maybe I shouldn’t have been lured away by the exceptionally gut pay, knowing Frieda had succumbed to temptation before we’d married,” he admitted with a sigh. “Guess I’ll never know how it would’ve worked out had I stayed in Morning Star instead of traveling those months.”
“Who was Stevie’s father?” Leah blurted out. “Was it the same man who’d sired the twins?”
“The kids all resemble their mother, so I have no idea—and at this point, it doesn’t matter.” Jude was relieved that Leah had recovered from her low mood and was being so supportive. “I didn’t tell you these things to win your sympathy, sweetheart. I’m just realizing that I married Frieda in a rush of adolescent hormones, and I’ve married you because of a different need—without fully considering what sort of emotional support I should be providing to help you fit into my family.”
“But it’s not your fault that Stevie and the girls don’t—”
“Hear me out,” Jude said, gently pressing his finger to Leah’s lips. “I love you so much, sweetheart—I’ve known you and admired you for years,” he added, hoping his candor hadn’t disappointed her. “So now I’ve got to find a way to turn your disillusionment and heartache around by replacing my need with a love you can depend upon. A love that helps you more than it gratifies me.”
Leah kissed his cheek. “I’ve always loved you, Jude,” she whispered. “I was only thirteen when you married Frieda, but even then, I knew nobody else would be the right husband for me—so I figured to remain a maidel. I didn’t care if I could cook or sew, because I thought I wouldn’t be leaving home. If I had it all to do over, I might’ve helped
