Loving Jenna

by Amy Lillard

  Jenna jumped back in surprise. “What’s wrong?”

  “Burns!” Buddy cried, still rubbing his tongue with the cupcake paper.

  Jenna dug one finger into the icing of another cupcake and scooped up a bite. She popped it into her mouth and spit it out immediately. “Hot,” she cried.

  Buddy nodded.

  Jenna’s eyes filled with tears. Her surprise was ruined. She had tried so hard to make him his favorite treat, but instead she had nearly blistered their tongues with too much peppermint.

  “Don’t cry,” he said softly, but that just made the tears spill over her lashes.

  “I’m not,” she lied. How many lies had she told these last couple of weeks? But she couldn’t admit she was crushed that Buddy didn’t like her cupcakes. Not even that. The problem was that she wasn’t able to make them for him. Not edible ones at least.

  “Jenna.”

  More tears. She ducked her head where he couldn’t see her face and tried to wipe them away with the back of one hand.

  “Jenna,” he said again. His arms came around her and she laid her head against his shoulder. They were almost the same height, and her head fit perfectly into the crook by his neck. How wonderful and natural it felt to just rest against him.

  She hiccupped softly. “I’m sorry the cupcakes taste awful. I wanted them to be a wonderful treat for you.”

  “Sweet Jenna, they are a treat. Because you made them for me.”

  She pulled away so she could see his face. “You mean that?”

  He nodded. “Of course I do.”

  She simply looked at him for a moment. She stared into those honey-colored eyes of his, not looking for sincerity but finding it all the same.

  “What are we going to do about Mamm?”

  “My mamm or your mamm?” he asked.

  “Mine. Yours. Both of them. They don’t want us to be together, and I want to be with you always.”

  He took her hand into his and squeezed her fingers. “We’ll think of something.”

  * * *

  Buddy led Jenna back to the swing, careful to step over the awful-tasting cupcake and icing splotch on the porch. He sat on the swing and pulled her down next to him.

  She snuggled in beside him. He put his arm around her shoulders and she laid her head in the crook of his neck.

  “We have to make them understand,” Buddy said.

  Jenna nodded. “But I messed up the icing. Mamm will say I’m not ready for a boyfriend. I can’t even make proper peppermint icing.”

  “Did you have a recipe for the icing?” he asked.

  “Sort of.” She twirled one of her kapp strings around her finger. “I just didn’t know how much peppermint to put in.”

  “That’s not proof of anything.” But there was his mishap over breakfast the day before. “I wanted to make breakfast for my family yesterday. I thought that if I could make food, then they would see how grown-up I am and how ready for the next part of my life.”

  “How did it turn out?”

  “The bacon was uneatable, and I burned up my clothes.”

  She immediately sat up straight. She turned in her seat to face him. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded. “But Mamm . . .” He ended his words with a sad shake of his head. “They don’t think I’m ready either.”

  She settled back against him. He loved the feel of her slight weight and her warmth so close to him. “We can show them,” she said.

  “We have to,” he added. They had to, or they might not ever see each other again.

  “But I don’t think we should sneak around anymore.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t feel right.”

  He had to agree. He didn’t want to hide what he felt for Jenna. He wanted it out there for the whole world to see. God had a plan for them. Everyone needed to know it. “Jah,” he finally said. “Okay, no more sneaking around. Everything we do we show the world.”

  Chapter Ten

  “What happened to all the powdered sugar?” Mammi asked the following day.

  Jenna looked around the room as if suddenly a piece of furniture would give her the answer. No such luck. “I spilled it.”

  Mammi turned, the empty container in her hands. “All of it?”

  Jenna nodded and turned away so her mother wouldn’t be able to see her eyes, look at her and see that she wasn’t telling the truth. Again. “Jah.” She and Buddy had agreed to do everything they were doing out in the open, but that didn’t mean they had to go back and explain what they had been doing. She had thought about it late into the night, and revealing all would surely bring them more trouble to add to their decision to face things head-on. She might not like lying to her mamm and mammi, but for now there was no way around it.

  “How did you—” Mammi’s words broke off, and she shook her head. “Never mind. I’ll add it to the grocery list.”

  Jenna breathed a silent sigh of relief. After Buddy had gotten on his tractor and left, she had made a mad dash to the kitchen to clean up the mess. The too-peppermint-y icing had gone in the trash along with the frosted cupcakes. Thankfully there were only two that had frosting and she rearranged the rest so it wouldn’t look like any were missing when her mamm and mammi got back. And she didn’t allow herself to think about how good she was getting at deception. She had just gotten the porch cleaned off from their almost-snack when her mamm and mammi returned. She’d had to make up a story about feeling better and coming down on the porch for some air. Thankfully no one asked her about her dress, though she thought Mammi was giving her strange looks.

  Today she had vowed to start telling the truth, as much as possible anyway, and having to say she had spilled the powdered sugar was necessary.

  “Are you going to the store today?” Jenna asked.

  Mammi shook her head. “The new ad comes in the mail today. You know your mamm likes to shop on Thursday.”

  “I could go for you,” Jenna offered.

  Mammi frowned. “By yourself?”

  “Jah. I am almost twenty-one. I should be able to make it to the grocery store and back without a problem.”

  Mamm picked that time to come back into the room. “What’s this? Jenna wants to go to the grocery store?”

  “By herself,” Mammi said. Her frown deepened.

  Jenna couldn’t say that she wasn’t disappointed. She had hoped Mammi would be on her side.

  “Absolutely not.” Mamm’s mouth thinned into a straight line. “Why do you even think of these things?”

  “Why won’t you even think about it?”

  “Because,” Mamm said. But that was it. Just the one word.

  “Because why?” Jenna cried.

  “Because I said so.”

  Jenna stomped her foot, her frustration tipping her over the edge. “That is not a reason. That’s an excuse just to tell me no when you really don’t have an excuse at all.”

  Mamm stared at her for several long heartbeats. Jenna knew then that she had made another mistake. She had wanted her mother to take her seriously, to see her as a grown-up, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not now.

  “Go to your room.”

  “But—”

  Mamm shook her head. “Go to your room and stay there until you can be a loving member of this family.”

  I can do that right now! She wanted to scream the words at the top of her lungs, but it was too late for that. “Mamm, I’m s—”

  “Go.” Mamm turned away, and Jenna had no choice but to trudge up the stairs and into her room alone.

  Once there, she threw herself across her bed and sobbed. She could never seem to make her mother think that she was an adult. She would forever be a child to her. Hopelessness crushed the air from her lungs. She rolled over onto her back and tried to breathe. Instead she coughed and wheezed as her eyes watered. Was there anything she could do right?

  All she wanted to do was spend time with Buddy. And she would never be able to do that with her mothe
r’s approval. Not until she could figure out a way to make her mother see her as something more than a child.

  * * *

  “What happened to all the gas in the tractor?”

  Buddy looked up from the book he was reading as his dat came into the house. “I don’t know.” But he did. He had used it last night to go see Jenna. Not once had he thought about putting more gas in the vehicle. He would have to remember that for next time. And there was going to be a next time.

  When she had told him that they were part of God’s plan . . . he had completely lost his heart to her then and there. He had to see her again. And again. And again. He wasn’t sure how it was all going to go, but he would find away.

  Her cupcake icing might not be the best—okay, it was terrible—but he wanted to be with her anyway. No one except his mamm had ever made him cupcakes before.

  “If you talk to your brothers, find out if one of them took the tractor to town.” He shook his head. “When will you boys turn out responsible?”

  Buddy didn’t think he was supposed to answer that question, so he didn’t. Instead he stuck his finger in his book to hold his place and watched as his dat got a drink of water from the tap. “How did you know that you were in love with Mamm?” Buddy asked.

  His question must have surprised him. Dat turned around and gave him a strange look. “How did I know I was in love with your mamm?”

  Buddy nodded. He tried to make his expression sort of bland. Neutral, he thought the word was. He didn’t want his dat to see how much he needed to know the answer.

  Dat leaned back against the counter, glass still in hand. His face turned a little dreamy as he thought back. “I had had my eye on her a while. We lived in different districts, so I would only get to see her when she came to visit her cousin. One Sunday I decided that I had waited long enough.”

  “And you asked if you could take her home?”

  He nodded. “And she told me no.”

  Buddy’s eyes widened. “She said no?”

  “Jah.”

  “What did you do?” Buddy’s finger slipped, but he wasn’t interested in keeping his place right now. His mother had told his dat that he couldn’t take her home from a singing. How did they get from there to married with six children?

  “I went to visit her district the next Sunday.”

  “And you offered to take her home from the singing.” Buddy nodded. He knew how this was going to turn out. This was when his mother said yes.

  “And she said no again.”

  “Again?”

  “As a matter of fact.”

  “How many times did it take?” Buddy asked.

  Dat counted on the fingers of one hand, then switched to the other. “Seven.”

  “You asked her if you could take her home from a singing seven times before she said yes?”

  “Your mamm is nothing if not stubborn.”

  Buddy knew that. He figured most people in Wells Landing knew how stubborn his mamm could be. “Why did you keep asking?” he asked. Most people he knew would have given up after only a time or two.

  “Because she meant that much to me.”

  “So true love needs persistence.”

  Dat chuckled. “I guess you could say that, jah. Where’d you learn a word like persistence?”

  Buddy shrugged. “I pick things up.”

  Dat turned and rinsed out his glass, then set it upside down in the dish drainer. “We underestimate you, Buddy.”

  He was pretty sure he knew what that meant. That they didn’t give him enough credit for his brainpower. “Probably.”

  Dat chuckled and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll do my best to not do that from now on. I promise.”

  Buddy smiled. “If you do, can I point it out to you?”

  To his surprise, his dat nodded. “Jah. Sure. If I forget you can tell me. But only if you get one of the boys to take the tractor into town and fill it up with gas.” He held out his hand for Buddy to shake.

  “Deal.” Buddy shook his hand, then stood. He had a brother to find.

  * * *

  “My dat says true love needs persistence. If you don’t know what that means, it means to not give up.”

  True love? Jenna’s heart soared. She had been thrilled enough to get the message from Buddy on the shanty phone’s voicemail, but to hear him talk about true love was almost more than she could hope for. Did that mean that Buddy loved her? She could only hope, because as much as she had learned from reading the romance novels that she had found at the library, she was in love with Buddy Ivan Dale Miller. And more than anything she wanted him to be in love with her.

  “I’m not giving up on seeing you. But I need to see you before church on Sunday. I’ll come by on Saturday.”

  How exciting. He was coming to her house. Maybe this was the best way for them to get together. They wouldn’t be lying, and they could be persistent together. Surely Mamm would understand if the two of them stood together.

  Now she just had to bide her time until Saturday.

  * * *

  “Why are you so antsy, girl?” Mammi asked the following Saturday. They were sitting on the front porch, Jenna in a regular chair and Mammi in her rocker. They had thought to enjoy the day before it got too hot. Jenna knew that May was still considered part of spring. Though in Oklahoma, it felt more like summer most days.

  Jenna tried not to squirm as Mammi once again showed her how to make the stitches that would produce the pattern of afghan she wanted to crochet. She had thought she might make it for her room. But every time she started it, all she could think about was Buddy and when he might show up.

  “I dunno.” She squirmed again and listened to hear if any tractors were coming their way. All she heard was the clop of horse hooves. And the car engines from the main road.

  “I’m beginning to think that you have ants in your pants,” Mammi said.

  “I don’t,” Jenna said, momentarily forgetting that it was a saying and didn’t literally mean that she had ants in her pants. She wasn’t even wearing pants! “I mean, of course not. I’m just a little—” She broke off as the sound of hooves grew louder. She jumped to her feet, her small patch of crocheted yarn falling at her feet.

  “What in the world?” Next to her, Mammi stood as well.

  Buddy Ivan Dale Miller had just pulled up in front of their house, grinning from ear to ear and driving the Millers’ Sunday carriage.

  “Buddy!” Jenna sailed off the porch and raced toward him as he got down from the buggy. Her intent had been to fling herself into his arms and squeeze him tight. But she didn’t think her mamm or her mammi would like that display very much, so she brought her steps up short and hugged herself instead.

  “Hi, Jenna.” Buddy smiled at her. “Hi, Nadine.”

  Mammi nodded. “Buddy. What brings you out today?”

  “When Jenna came to my house a few weeks ago we had planned to go on a picnic. But it started raining.”

  “I remember.” Mammi’s voice was carefully without emotion. Jenna had no way of knowing what she was thinking.

  “So I came to take her on a picnic today. To make up for it.”

  Jenna felt Mammi’s sharp gaze land on her before sliding over to Buddy. “You did.” It was somewhere between a statement and a question.

  “Jah.” There went that sweet, sweet smile again. Jenna didn’t think she would ever get tired of seeing him smile. It made him appear strong and confident, but one look in his honey-colored eyes and she knew he was as nervous as she. Meeting things head-on was more nerve-wracking than sneaking around.

  “Have you discussed this with Charlotte?”

  Buddy’s smile faltered just a bit, but he managed to save it before it completely fell. “No. But I could do that now.”

  Mammi shook her head. “She’s not here.”

  “Will she be home soon?” he asked.

  Jenna shifted her stance. She hadn’t thought about Mammi upholding all the rules that her mamm had l
aid down, but why wouldn’t she?

  “She should be. Would you care to wait?”

  Jenna looked from Mammi to Buddy. He nodded. “Yes, please.”

  The three of them made their way over to the porch. Buddy sat down on Jenna’s chair, so she sat on the porch swing. It helped a little to be able to push herself back and forth and release some of the energy that was threatening to blow her head clean off. Not really. It was just an expression meaning she was overly nervous.

  Buddy seemed a bit nervous too. He kept his hat on and bounced one leg to a rhythm only he could hear. But it was definitely faster than any of the songs at any of the singings she had been to. Even faster than the Englisch music they played on the speakers in the grocery store.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Mammi asked.

  “Water would be nice,” Buddy replied.

  Jenna jumped to her feet. “I’ll get it.” After all, he was her guest.

  Mammi nodded and took her seat back in her rocker as Jenna hurried into the house.

  She had just gotten down a glass for Buddy when the thought occurred to her. Maybe she shouldn’t have left him alone with her mammi. Who knew what Mammi could be saying by now? Telling stories of some of the stupid things she had done over the years both before and after her accident. There were a couple that if she told Buddy he might change his mind about her completely. He might think she was a liability. At least she thought that was the word Mamm had used.

  She had to get back out there and fast. She quickly filled the glass with water from the pitcher in the fridge and hustled back out to the porch.

  They were still sitting where she had left them. In fact, it didn’t look like either one of them had even moved. Buddy’s knee still bobbed up and down like the presser foot on Mammi’s sewing machine.

  “I have your water.” She passed it to him and went to sit on the swing once again.

  “Thank you.” He took a big gulp and then a second one. His glass was almost empty.

  “Jenna, do you want to practice your crochet while we wait?”

  She looked to Buddy.

  He nodded.

  “Jah. Sure.” At least it would give her something to do with her hands.

  “Do you remember how to make the stitches?”