Jenny's Choice (Apple Creek Dreams #3)

by Patrick E. Craig

  “The Lord knew that in the inner part of you, a wound had to be healed. That was why it was so important for you to find Mama Rachel. Without knowing your Amish roots, you would never have come to know the Lord as you have. And Jonathan would never have given his life to the Lord. And there’s one more thing. When I was repairing the quilt, I found that I could think of Jenna without pain. As I remembered her, there was only joy. So Gott was healing me too.”

  Jenny thought for a moment and then asked, “So you’re saying that Gott knew I came from an Amish family, and that was why He put me with you? So that I would understand who I really was when I finally discovered the truth?”

  “Ja, Jenny. And then He blessed you by bringing you back to Grossdaadi Borntraeger and giving you the farm.”

  “The quilt is wonderful, but where are we going with all this, Mama? I’m still confused.”

  “Jenny, I’m thinking that if Gott showed us a picture of your life in this quilt, the story didn’t stop when you found Jonathan and your grossdaadi. Somehow I feel your story is not yet finished.”

  “And that’s why my story is about the Rose of Sharon quilt?”

  “I think so. I don’t know whether the book will ever be published, but I’m sure you must finish it. Look here.”

  Jerusha pointed at the red rose in the center of the quilt. It was perfectly sewn, with not a pucker or a wrinkle anywhere.

  “One hundred and twenty silk rose petals are sewed together to make the rose. This was the hardest part. Each one had to be sewn in such a way that it’s impossible to see where one stops and another starts. I think our lives are the same way. Each moment in our life is sewn to the next one in such a way that we feel only the days and years going by. But Gott sees each moment and each connection as complete and separate events.”

  “You know,” Jenny replied, “I haven’t looked at it that way in a long time, but I understood it once. Wait a moment.”

  Jenny hurried down the hall to her room. She picked up the box that held her letters to Jonathan and searched for the one she wanted. When she found it, she went back to the sewing room. Jerusha was sitting in her chair, and Jenny curled up at her feet.

  “This is part of a letter I wrote to Jonathan before we began courting. Let me read it to you.”

  I want to thank you, my dearest, for helping me to locate my grossdaadi. Finding him has put a seal on my life. The questions are all answered, the journey is over, and all the fear is gone. Now I finally know the truth. I am Amish, I have always been Amish, and I always will be. And now I will marry an Amish man, and my life will flow on in the unending ways of our people.

  It’s like the quilt my mama made for Jenna, the one she wrapped me in to save me so many years ago. Every piece of the quilt fits together in a perfect pattern, and none of it is haphazard or unplanned. Every color means something, and the whole quilt tells a story.

  So it is with my life. God has always been with me, and He has always been with you. All the pieces of our lives were planned before we were born, and God has fitted them together perfectly, every stitch in place and every piece in perfect relationship with the one next to it.

  And now I wait for the day when we can begin courting and the story of our lives will be complete and whole. I love you, Jonathan, and I always will. I wait now with peace and great joy in my heart for the day when we will be married.

  “Ja, and the story does not stop with Jonathan’s death, my dochter,” Jerusha said. “It goes on until you die. You don’t know which pieces you will discover tomorrow, but they are there, already determined by die Vorkenntnisse des Gottes. He has already planned them. Now let me show you one more thing as a reminder.”

  Jerusha moved the quilt until the rose was under her hand. “Look! Do you see it?”

  Jenny looked but couldn’t see what her mama was pointing at. And then she remembered and looked closer. There it was! In the center of the rose, a small key-shaped piece of red silk was so finely stitched that it was almost invisible.

  “Ja, Jenny, a key. The Lord had me add it to the quilt so that we would always remember—”

  “That He is the key to our lives, and without Him we cannot hope to comprehend what is happening to us and why?”

  “Ja, Jenny, and if you put your life into His hands, He will guide your path, and you will understand everything.”

  “I had forgotten all about the key.” Jenny looked more closely at it. “It’s the strangest thing. Mama, did you know that Rachel has a key-shaped birthmark right above her heart? She’s had it since the day she was born, and it’s almost the same color as the rose. That makes me think I was wrong in what I wrote to Jonathan. Maybe Gott is still speaking to us through the quilt. Perhaps the journey is not over after all. In fact, we may be coming to a new beginning. That’s a hopeful thought.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Journals of Jenny Hershberger

  FOR JENNY, THE FOLLOWING DAYS were filled with much soul-searching and contemplation. The questions came rushing at her heart like hailstones in a driving wind. What was Gott doing? What about Jeremy? What about the book? And the other books that lay unwritten in the recesses of her heart—what about them? How did the quilt fit into everything that was happening? Was Gott using it the way He had with her mama? What was He trying to show her?

  At the end of a week, she realized that she had never felt such an intense need to write, and it became clear to her that she was to tell the stories of her family. As she looked back at all that had happened to her and everything she had learned, she began to sense that this was the task that had always been ordained for her. So as the first snow began to fall and Apple Creek fell into the slumber of winter, Jenny Hershberger began the work that would become a lifelong endeavor.

  December 6, 1980

  Slowly and softly the flakes drift past my window. The cold December wind is bitter, and the trees groan with the weight of the freshly fallen snow, their naked branches lifted like the arms of starving men. At times, the pale moon peers through the stream of clouds as though through cracks in the night. The storm rumbles across the unmoving heavens, and weary travelers look to these broken fragments of moonlight to light the way home. As I watch the night sky, I remember how Jonathan described the Ordnung of our faith. He said it is like the stars that guide sailors at night on a dark sea.

  Gott has set me on a journey, and I am sailing a dark sea. I will need the boundaries of my faith to keep me on course, but I must be sure that I listen for His voice and let His Word be a light unto my path. I see now that my whole life has resolved to this one pinpoint of time. A door has opened, and if I step through, I think I will find a strange, wonderful way set before me. And as I set sail, let all that I do or say bring glory to Him.

  Jenny took up her unfinished book and began to go through it, making revisions and changes. She tried to remember what Jeremy had taught her about editing, but it was a grueling process. Even though she wanted to spend all her time writing, she had her part to play in the family. She had Rachel to care for and everyday tasks to do. After a few weeks, though, she settled into a routine. Reuben got up every day at four to care for the stock and do the chores. Jenny got up with him and made coffee, and together they went out to tend the farm. Jenny loved these cold winter mornings with Reuben. They didn’t say much but worked quietly, tending the cows and feeding the chickens.

  When the sun peeked over the eastern hills, Jenny went into the house. Jerusha had Rachel up for school, and the three of them fixed breakfast. When it was ready, Rachel fetched her grossdaadi, and they ate their morning meal together. Once Rachel was off to school, Jenny went to her room for two hours of writing.

  Often Jerusha stopped by Jenny’s door to listen to the clacking of the typewriter keys and lift a prayer for her dochter. Sometimes there would be long periods of silence. Once she heard Jenny exclaim, “Du Schlecht’r!” followed by the sounds of a sheet of paper being torn roughly from the typewriter and wadded into a bal
l.

  Jerusha called through the door to her daughter. “Jenny Hershberger! You should not use bad words!”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Jenny answered. “Yes, Mama. I’ll be more careful.”

  Jerusha smiled and went on about her day. After two hours, Jenny came out of her room, and the two women spent the day cleaning, baking, preparing meals, or washing clothes. When Rachel came home, Jenny sat with her to go over what she had learned in school.

  As the weeks and months passed, Jenny found a deep and quiet rhythm settling into her life. Time was no longer measured in minutes and hours but in days and sunsets and the cycles of the fields and the farm. She was connected to the land and the land was forever. She began to see deeply into the ways of her people, and there was comfort and safety in her connection to the Plain way. Her family was like a living history of the Amish. In it she saw the past and the future—recorded in the unending cycle of work and rest. She drew strength from her mama and papa, and they encouraged her to unveil the gift God had placed within her.

  “Whew!” Jenny said, letting out a sigh. “I’m almost finished with my revisions. Only six chapters to go. It’s been sehr schwierig, but I’ve learned so much.”

  “What will you do now that the book is almost finished?” Jerusha asked from her seat on the couch. “You are still under the bisschop’s instruction not to publish it.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure if it will ever be published. Right now I might simply be creating a legacy for Rachel and her children and for our people. I’m filling my journals with stories of our family, and as I write them, I’ve started to uncover the deep reality of my own faith. There is great peace in being part of a way of life that has flowed unchanged for centuries.”

  Jenny rose and stood in front of the fireplace. Her face became animated as she began to share her dreams with her mother.

  “I’ve been praying a lot about what to do next, and I think I’m ready to write Jonathan’s story. If I can just put it down on paper, I’m sure I’ll find solace and comfort in it. You know, Mama, writing is almost like talking to someone about your problems. I know I share with you, but when I’m putting it down on paper, I seem to clear my mind of the things troubling me.”

  “Your papa and I have seen the healing come since you began your journals. That’s why we encourage you to go on. You have written more besides the book?”

  “Yes, Mama. Sometimes when the words don’t come so easy, I just stop and write what’s in my heart. I also have notebooks filled with different things I discovered when I was working at the library. And I have the study I did about our family when I was still in schule. They’re like a treasure box full of rare and precious things, and as I read them again and again, always they inspire me. I feel as if I have the whole history of our family inside me—all the way back to Switzerland and even earlier. It’s like I’ve already written it, and the story is just waiting for me to set the words free.”

  Jerusha looked at her daughter and smiled. Jenny had changed so much in the past few years. She was her own woman, strong and beautiful, and Jerusha knew that the fires of her trials had refined her as pure gold.

  Dr. Schaeffer came into the room with Bobby and a nurse.

  “Bobby!” Jerusha said. “I know you had something to do with finding me. Thank you.”

  “If it wasn’t for Bobby, you wouldn’t be alive today,” Reuben said.

  Bobby took Jerusha’s hand. “I’m grateful to God that I was able to help,” he said.

  Jerusha and Reuben looked at each other and smiled.

  Dr. Schaeffer came to the bedside, peered over his glasses, and said, “Well, one of our patients is doing better, I see.”

  “One of our patients?” Jerusha asked.

  “Well, there’s this one too. She came in with you.”

  Dr. Schaeffer pointed to a smaller bed pulled up next to Jerusha’s. A little girl lay in the bed. Her eyes were open and she lay looking at Jerusha solemnly.

  “You found me,” she said to Jerusha. “I was lost, and you found me.”

  Jerusha stared at the little girl. For a moment she thought it was Jenna. But it couldn’t be Jenna. Jenna was gone. And then she remembered everything—the storm, the wrecked car, the cabin. She remembered God’s healing touch and holding this little girl through the long nights.

  The child started to try to get out of bed, to move to Jerusha’s bed, but Dr. Schaeffer moved forward. “I don’t think—”

  Bobby tapped him on the shoulder. “I think I just heard a nurse calling you, Doctor. They need you in the ICU.”

  The doctor looked at Bobby and then at Reuben and then to Jerusha and the little girl.

  “Yes, I believe you’re right. I’ll be on my way.” He turned and left.

  Reuben walked around to the little girl and picked her up. He placed her in the bed beside Jerusha. Jerusha took the little one into her arms.

  “What’s your name, darling?” she asked softly.

  “My name is Jenny.”

  Reuben and Jerusha looked at each other in amazement, and then tears began to flow down Jerusha’s cheeks. She pulled Jenny close against her breast.

  “Thank You, O my Lord! Thank You.”

  Reuben knelt beside the bed and took them both into his strong arms. And though the wind blew and the storm raged outside, inside their hearts it was spring in Apple Creek.

  Jenny stopped typing. She was finished with the final revision. The story of Jerusha and Reuben, of Jenna and Jenny was complete. As she read the words, Jenny knew a chapter of her life was closing. A strange foreboding came over her, as though something had left her life that she would never find again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jeremy

  JENNY STOOD ON THE STEP leading up to the Wooster library, reading a letter from Jeremy.

  Dear Jenny,

  I need to talk to you about the book. I have a proposal I would like to go over with you. Please meet me at the Wooster library on Thursday of this week at three p.m. I promise I will only talk business.

  Your friend,

  Jeremy

  Jenny started up the stairs and then turned around and went back down. She stopped and turned. Indecision rooted her to the spot.

  What am I doing here? Jeremy is under the bann. But I want to see him. I miss him!

  She took a deep breath, ordered her feet to move, climbed the stairs, and went through the front door.

  Jeremy King stood in the lobby, smiling. “That was a real battle for you, wasn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been standing by the door watching you trying to decide whether you should come in. Does Samuel Lapp really hold that much power?”

  Jenny blushed. “Actually it’s not about Bisschop Lapp, if you must know.”

  “What was it then?”

  Jeremy’s smile was getting under Jenny’s skin.

  “And I don’t like you laughing at me,” she said. I never should have come here. This is just going to mean trouble.

  “Jenny, you’re a strange little thing. I’m not laughing at you. Now, let’s just go over to the coffee shop and get a cup of coffee. I promise to be on my best behavior.”

  “All right, Jeremy, but I can’t stay long.”

  They walked in silence to the café around the corner. It was crowded, and they took a table in the back.

  Jenny got right to the point. “So, what do you want to talk about?”

  Jeremy frowned. “Okay, have it your way—no small talk.” He took a breath. “Here’s my proposal. You already know I think your book is terrific. I think it could be a best seller. Interest in fiction about the Amish is growing, and I know the book could do well. If it troubles you to be an Amish woman writing fiction, you could publish it under a different name—what they call a pen name.”

  “I know what a pen name is, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy looked straight into her eyes. His gaze was so piercing that she had to look down at the table
.

  “Look, Jenny, let’s just get something clear,” he said. “I only want the best for you. I have no ulterior motives. You’ve made it clear where we stand romantically, and I’m fine with that. But can’t we at least be friends? I would never do anything to hurt you, so you don’t have to be defensive or short with me. Please.”

  Jeremy’s directness was like a slap in the face, and Jenny relented.

  “You’re right, Jeremy. I shouldn’t be short with you. You’ve only always been kind and helpful to me. You are my friend. I’ll be nice. It’s just my way sometimes when I am trying to sort things out.”

  “What are you sorting out?”

  Jenny looked up into his eyes again. “Well, if we’re going to be direct, then I’ll tell you. I’m sorting out my feelings about you. I told you I wouldn’t marry you, but I’m still conflicted by your proposal. You’re a wonderful man, and you would be the answer to most women’s dreams. You’re kind, considerate, articulate, and generous. You’ve made a place for yourself in the world, and you could offer a woman happiness and security. But for me, there is more to it.”

  “Jenny—”

  “You asked, so let me finish while I’m able, all right?”

  Jeremy nodded.

  “I’ve been writing a lot since we last spoke. I’ve been doing a lot of research and digging deeply into my Amish roots. In the process it’s as though I’ve come to the bedrock of my faith. And I discovered something about being Amish I never realized before.”

  Jenny took a deep breath.

  “Jeremy, it’s a good thing that we do. The Amish people may not be perfect, but the premise behind the Amish way is a good one. You’ve left the Amish faith and have chosen not to return. That for me is the most important thing. I love my faith. I can’t leave the church, even if I’m drawn to you, and…the truth is, Jeremy, I am drawn to you.”