The Amish Midwife - By Mindy Starns Clark Page 0,139

I was. Of course, our little friendship eventually petered out, but when we were older we ran into each other again, though by that point he was no longer a boy at all but instead had grown into a very handsome young man. We compared notes, and as it turned out, none of us except Mammi had ever heard from Giselle again once she left for good—not even the great Burke Bauer himself. Freddy said his parents were still together, though not very happy, and that he was pretty sure his dad had had a few more extramarital affairs over the years.”

“Did you ever see Freddy again after that?”

Marta laughed.

“Why, yes. Given the history there between our two families, we began to fancy ourselves as a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Our love would prevail, regardless of the factors that divided us. Made for a very exciting relationship, you know, so clandestine and romantic and everything.”

I turned to her, my eyes wide.

“So you dated Freddy Bauer?”

She nodded, saying, “Way more than that, Lexie. We got married. Freddy Bauer was my husband. Ella’s father.”

“I can’t believe it!” I cried, my hands flying to my cheeks.

“It’s true.”

I was speechless for a moment as I tried to grasp what she was telling me.

“But…that means my biological father was your father-in-law?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re not just my aunt, you’re also my…my what?”

Marta smiled.

“Your half brother’s wife. We’re sisters-in-law, of a sort.”

My jaw remained open. Truly, if I had thought our family sounded like a bad country song before, at that point I could have sung the chorus and then some!

“Wait a minute,” I told her, shaking my head, trying to align what I knew with what I was learning. “Your married name isn’t Bauer. It’s Bayer.”

Marta shrugged. “When I first got pregnant with Ella, Freddy decided to anglicize our name, changing the Bauer to Bayer. He said it would be easier on our kids, but I always suspected he had mostly done it as a dig at his father. When it came to Burke, my husband tended to be a bit passive-aggressive.”

“I can see that. So how did the two of you end up as Mennonites? Was that also some sort of dig at Dad?”

Marta shook her head. “No, it wasn’t like that. When my time of rumschpringe ended, I was in love with Freddy and decided not to join the Amish church. He belonged to a nondenominational group, but I needed something Plainer. We finally reached a compromise and became Mennonite.” She hesitated and then added, “At least I thought that’s how it was at the time. But maybe you’re right. Maybe Freddy used it as yet another dig at his father—turning his back on Burke’s wealth to join a Plain community.”

I looked away, her words ringing in my ears. His father was also my father. Suddenly, I wanted to meet my half brother more than anything.

“Where is he now, Marta? What happened to end your marriage?”

“Lexie!” she suddenly cried, throwing her hands out and tilting her head toward the sky. “Can you not leave a single stone unturned?” Her voice was loud but not necessarily angry. More like exasperated. Worn down.

I couldn’t help but grin, thinking that lately I had become pretty good at wearing people down.

“Fine!” she said, dropping her arms to her sides and turning to face me. “Fine. You want to know? Just like his father, Freddy was a cheat. Worse than that, his affair was with an Amish girl, just like Daddy. A local Amish girl. That he got pregnant. Yes, Lexie, history had repeated itself. Can you imagine how that made me feel?”

I was stunned. After all of the pain that Burke’s actions had caused his family, how could Freddy, of all people, have turned around and done the very same thing to his?

“Believe it or not, he tried to minimize it. ‘No big deal’? ‘It meant nothing’? Had he really forgotten how it felt to be that betrayed young man who showed up at our house all those years ago with Giselle’s horse and buggy, only to learn what his father had done?” She allowed her questions to hang in the night air and then added, “Despite all that, I tried to make things work, I really did. For Ella’s sake, I think I could have gotten past the infidelity, with counseling and time. But Freddy wasn’t having any of it. He stuck it out for a while but eventually insisted on a divorce, saying he wanted a ‘fresh