Did I expect the bishop to pull a U-turn and come after us to scold me for last night’s near collision? I checked over my shoulder and saw Lizzie craning her neck to watch him drive away. Armin, on the other hand, kept his concentration fastened on Thunder, who tried to challenge every other horse on the road in spite of the blinders affixed to his bridle. A topsy-turvy image came to mind: my father sitting in Armin’s spot just like Jeremy had the night before. I approximated what my father’s age had been when he took off. He couldn’t have been much older than Lizzie. Pops had no doubt gotten up early, milked cows, worked in the fields alongside his father like all the other young Amishmen in the area. The enormity that he’d hidden his childhood from me made me feel as though I were encapsulated in an episode of The Twilight Zone, an old TV program Pops still watched as reruns. Minutes later, I recognized the Sunflower Secondhand Store.
