A Love for Leah

by Amy Lillard

  Jamie chuckled. “It’s good to see you too, buddy.” He hugged Peter tight. “Go on and get washed up for supper.” He set Peter back on his feet and watched as he made his way to the water pump.

  “He still hasn’t said anything?” she quietly asked.

  Jamie shook his head. “I keep praying that it’s only a matter of time.”

  “There’s that doctor—” she started, but Jamie cut her off before she could explain further.

  “No thanks. There’s nothing wrong with Peter that a lot of love and a little time won’t cure.”

  Leah watched Peter disappear around the side of the cabin.

  She hoped Jamie was right.

  * * *

  The rest of the week was taken up with work and preparing her booth for the Bodock Festival. Jamie said he wanted to take things slow, and that was the only way, considering how busy she was at the moment. But after this . . . well, she said a prayer every night that after the festival she and Jamie would have more time to spend together.

  “Is this authentic Amish apple butter?”

  Leah turned her attention to the couple who had just come up to her booth. “Yes, it is.”

  The woman’s cool gaze raked over her. “You don’t look Amish.”

  “That’s because I’m not. But I used to be,” she added as the woman went to set the jar back on her table. “I was raised Amish and then left to join the Mennonites.” Why was she telling this woman, this stranger, half her life story? The woman didn’t need to know all that. But it seemed as if Leah couldn’t help herself.

  “My sister and my cousin made it,” she said, leaving out her part in the process, lest her hands cutting the apples made it less than authentic.

  “And they’re still Amish?” the woman asked.

  Leah nodded.

  “Okay, I’ll take it, then.”

  Leah waited for the woman to deliver the rest of her ultimatum, but she stopped there and dug in her purse for the five dollars to pay for the apple butter. Leah placed the jar in the sack, along with the flyer she had made for the shop. “Thank you.”

  The woman gave a stern nod, then moved away to the next booth.

  “Whew.” She collapsed back in her seat.

  “Tough crowd.”

  She jerked her attention to the man who approached. “Jamie! What are you doing here?”

  “I thought I would bring Peter out and show him the festival.”

  “Have you ever been before?” she asked.

  A flush of red stole into his cheeks. “Actually, no.”

  She didn’t think many Amish attended the festival as either booth operators or visitors. In fact, Peter and Jamie were the first Amish people she had seen all day.

  “Be sure to check out the cotton candy vendor. I’ve heard he has green apple this year. Do you like green apple?” she asked Peter.

  He nodded in a gesture big enough to knock his hat off his head. Thankfully, he held it in place with one hand, even as he continued to nod.

  “Not many Amish come out for the festival,” Leah said. One year she had heard that they gave away cane fishing poles at the fishing competition and that brought out a lot of horse and buggies, but for the most part, as they usually did, the Amish of Pontotoc kept to themselves.

  “I noticed.” Jamie looked around as if to prove his point. Leah wasn’t sure if he was talking about the lack of other Amish or the fact that everyone within twenty feet of them was staring.

  “Does it bother you?” she asked. “The people who stare?”

  He gave a rippling shrug. “It’s not like I can do anything about it. Did it bother you when you were still with the church?”

  She supposed it had, but she had been too caught up in Sunday singings and other activities to give curious Englischers much mind. And now that she was with the Mennonite church, she didn’t dress much differently than anyone else. Just her head covering gave her away. “A little, I guess. But that’s not why you came by today,” Leah said. It was more of a statement than a question.

  “I knew you wouldn’t be out to the house until Sunday. And I haven’t seen you all week.”

  A warmth filled her. “Did you miss me?”

  He nodded and swallowed hard.

  How could two people go from practically hating each other to falling in love? It was as bizarre a thought as there ever was. But that was just the way love was. Or so she had heard. She might have been smitten with Benuel King back in the day, but her heart had never pounded like this. His kiss hadn’t made her knees go weak or made her forget that she disagreed with him on a lot of points.

  “I thought maybe tonight you could come out to the house and have supper with us. I figure you’ll be tired and won’t want to cook.”

  He got that right. As if cooking had ever been high on her list of priorities. If it had, she surely would have learned the art by now.

  “What will we eat?”

  “Cold chicken sandwiches and potato salad, courtesy of your mamm, of course. Maybe afterward we can sit and talk. You know, get to know each other better.”

  Suddenly a cold chicken sandwich sounded like the best supper a woman could ever have. “I’d like that,” she said. “I’d like that a lot.”

  Peter tugged on Jamie’s hand and pointed toward a game where a person could win prizes by picking up a rubber duck from a kiddie pool.

  “You want to go play that?” Jamie asked.

  Peter nodded.

  “I see no harm,” Jamie said. He turned back to Leah. “I guess we’ll see you—”

  “Jamie Stoltzfus! I didn’t think I was ever going to find you in this crowd.”

  Chapter Nine

  Jamie turned at the sound of his name.

  “Deborah?” he whispered. He almost rubbed his eyes to see if it would clear his vision. Deborah shouldn’t be here. She was in Tennessee, most likely preparing to marry some unlucky fellow who didn’t have the baggage of an orphaned nephew.

  She smiled at him, and the crowd parted, the way good things just seemed to happen for Deborah. She looked the same as she always did. Same chocolate-brown hair and sparkling smile. Her dress was a deep green with a crisp black apron, and he was certain the color was meant to bring out the violet in her eyes. She was beautiful, and she knew it—a strange combination for a girl who lived in a world where physical beauty held no place of honor.

  Peter took a step behind Jamie as she continued toward them. At least he had stopped tugging on Jamie’s hand.

  “Surprise,” she said, her grin widening.

  Surprise indeed.

  “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  Jamie stirred himself from his disbelieving stupor. “Of course.” He had been concerned there for a moment that she was no more than a figment of his imagination. But now he knew she was real.

  Behind him, he heard Leah suck in a breath. He wasn’t sure if it was anger or hurt, but it wasn’t a good sound.

  “Why are you here?” He hoped the question didn’t sound as accusatory to her ears as it did to his. Wait. Why did he care? She broke off their engagement. Why should he have to bend and fetch for her if she could throw him away like yesterday’s scraps? Who was she to come here like nothing had happened?

  “You aren’t happy to see me?” She gave a pout that she could have only learned from her fancy Englisch friends. Friends he was certain her vatter didn’t know she had.

  No was on the tip of his tongue, but then Jesus’s words from the Sermon on the Mount came to him. All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And not the other way around. Just because she had treated him poorly didn’t give him the right to return the same attitude.

  He gave a quick glance back at Leah. He could almost touch her confusion. The air was thick around them. This changes everything, her eyes seemed to say. He shook his head, then turned back to the woman he once thought he’d marry.

  “It’s not
that,” he finally replied. “You just caught me unprepared.”

  Peter took another step over, so that he was completely hidden by Jamie’s legs.

  Deborah clasped Jamie’s hands in her own and swung their arms like she was playing a casual game of ring-around-the-rosy. Then she caught sight of Leah.

  “Who is this?” she asked. Her beautiful eyes widened in curiosity.

  Jamie cleared his throat. “Deborah King, Leah Gingerich.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Deborah didn’t release his hands. “Can we go somewhere and . . . talk?”

  He didn’t miss her slight hesitation in front of the last word. Make up would have been a better term, he had the feeling. Can we go somewhere so I can convince you that I didn’t mean a word of what I said?

  Why? Why was this happening now?

  “We can go back to my house.” He cleared his throat again. The words kept getting stuck there.

  “Perfect.” She leaned around him to look at Leah directly. “Nice you meet you, LeeAnn.”

  “Leah,” she corrected, but Deborah was no longer listening.

  “My buggy is behind the secondhand store.”

  She looped her arm through his, not even bothering to acknowledge that Peter was attached to one end of him. “Good,” she said. “I dismissed the driver. I told him I’d find my own way from here.”

  And that was Deborah: confident to a fault. And only mindful of what she wanted to see. How had he ever imagined that he would marry her? And how was he going to get rid of her now?

  * * *

  “What do you mean you don’t know who Deborah is?” Leah paced around her mother’s front room in frustration. She’d had to drive past Jamie’s cabin knowing that he and Deborah were in there talking. About what? She could only guess. But after the familiar way Deborah had treated Jamie at the Bodock Festival, it had to be something more. Or important.

  “Is there one word in particular that you don’t understand, or is it the whole concept of ‘I don’t know’?” Hannah shook her head. “Why do you even care?” Then her sister stopped, and it was as if the light had dawned in her thoughts. “You do like him. I knew it.”

  “It’s not like that.” And yet it was exactly like that.

  “Oh, jah? Then what’s it like?”

  “We talked the other day—”

  “Talked or argued?”

  “We can have a conversation without arguing, you know.”

  Hannah chuckled. “Funny, I have yet to see one of those.”

  Leah crossed her arms. “It happens. From time to time. You know, occasionally.” She wasn’t making this any easier on herself.

  “I see,” Hannah said.

  “Would you stop being that way. We just talked.”

  “About what?”

  “Your questions aren’t helping me figure out who Deborah is.”

  “My questions are trying to find out why you care who Deborah is.”

  Gracie came into the room with a dust rag and a broom. “I know who Deborah is,” she said.

  Leah’s attention snapped to Gracie. “You do?” She and Hannah said the words at the same time.

  Gracie nodded. “She’s his fiancée. Or rather, she was. Until he got custody of Peter. After that, they broke up.” She set about sweeping the floor. In the Mississippi heat without central air to cool things off, windows had to be left open all the time. Everything got a complimentary coating of orange dust, courtesy of Mother Nature.

  “I didn’t know he had a fiancée,” Hannah said. She turned to look at Leah. “Did you?”

  Leah shook her head. It seemed there were a lot of things about Jamie Stoltzfus that she didn’t know. That was all part of the getting-to-know-you phase they had just headed into. But now it seemed . . .

  “Why wouldn’t he tell us that he had a fiancée?” Leah asked.

  “Why would he?” Hannah retorted.

  “Because he’s going to court her,” Gracie said matter-of-factly.

  Hannah hopped to her feet and snapped her fingers. “I knew it. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.”

  “No, that’s not it at all.” Leah tried to get ahold of the situation.

  “He’s not?” A slight frown puckered Gracie’s brow. “But the other day he said—”

  “You got this from Jamie?” Hannah crowed.

  Leah rolled her eyes. This is just what she didn’t need. There was a reason she and Jamie were taking it slow—or maybe that was her reasoning, and his was the fact that he had a fiancée waiting for him in Tennessee.

  “Jah,” Gracie said. “He told me that he couldn’t court me because he thought he had feelings for Leah.” She turned slowly to look at her cousin.

  “What a skunk!” Hannah laughed.

  “You think?” Leah’s heart dropped. She had thought for just a minute that she might have the chance at happiness that the others around her had been afforded. Hannah, Anna and Jim, even Benuel had all found someone to love and who loved them in return. She supposed she had to accept that it just wasn’t in God’s plan for her.

  “I thought he was different,” Gracie and Leah muttered at the same time.

  They looked at each other and laughed. What else was there to do?

  * * *

  “So you’re not going to court Jamie Stoltzfus?” Brandon asked that evening over take-out Chinese.

  “We never really talked about courting—just about talking.”

  “You were talking about talking?” He shook his head. “I don’t think I will ever understand anyone over thirty.”

  “Just wait till you’re one of us.” Leah flashed him a smile.

  “Does this mean you aren’t going to cook anymore?”

  “Why does your tone sound hopeful?”

  He stopped to chew and swallow his bite of sweet and sour chicken before continuing. “No, just curious.”

  “It’s a sin to lie, you know.” She tossed her napkin at him.

  Brandon moved to the side to dodge it. “You shouldn’t have to work so hard,” he said diplomatically. That was one thing he had picked up from Shelly. He knew more how to finesse the people round him.

  “Why don’t you learn to cook, then?”

  He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have to work that hard either. Though I wouldn’t mind having some spaghetti every once in a while.”

  “Now, that I can make,” Leah replied.

  “Can you teach me? I want to make it for Shelly. It’s her favorite.”

  “Are we dating now?”

  “I told you; we’re just friends. Can’t friends treat each other to supper from time to time?”

  “I suppose.”

  He nodded. “And you’ll teach me?”

  “Starting tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Leah.” He beamed her a smile, but this one she had trouble returning. Her throat had gotten clogged with stupid emotions, like remorse and regret and love for a nephew so strong.

  She swallowed them back and managed a smile of her own. “You’re welcome.”

  She was not going to let this define her. Sure, she had thought Jamie was special; that the two of them could have something. But this just proved how wrong she was. They had been looking for a sign, a way for God to tell them they had made the correct choice. And here it was in the form of a fiancée returned.

  Deborah and Jamie might have broken up once before, but they were better suited than he and Leah could ever be. How were they supposed to work out all their differences concerning faith and church? There was too much at stake to take this lightly. There were Peter and God and both of their families. Any decision they made would affect them all. She couldn’t say that he would be better off with Deborah, but we would definitely be better off without her.

  * * *

  This wasn’t exactly how he thought the day would end. Actually, it was nowhere near where he wanted it to be.

  “Well, it certainly is cozy.” Deborah glanced around the cabin, her expression a careful mask of indifferen
ce.

  For the first time since they had built the room onto the cabin, Jamie was glad Peter had his own space. When they arrived at the cabin, he had sent Peter to his room to play.

  “Why are you here, Deborah?” Jamie settled down on the worn sofa he had gotten from Twice Blessed. As a matter of fact, Leah had helped him with most of the furnishings in the now-three-room cabin.

  “I think maybe I acted a bit . . . hasty.”

  “Concerning?”

  “The wedding.” She beamed at him, that smile that used to melt his insides. Now it left him bewildered.

  “There is no wedding.”

  “And that’s why I’m here.”

  He shook his head. “I must be missing something.”

  “It’s simple, really. I should have never told you that I wouldn’t marry you. I didn’t think things through. I mean, you surprised me with Peter. I just needed some time to adjust.”

  “And you’re adjusted now?”

  “Very.” There went that smile again. It was starting to become unnerving.

  “Peter isn’t a shock. He’s a little boy who’s lost almost everything in his life.”

  “I just didn’t understand why you felt the need to take him. Not when Sally’s parents were willing to raise him.”

  He was not getting into this with her again. They had been over it too many times to count.

  He stood. “I think it’s time you should go.”

  She blinked at him, then shook her head. “Go? I don’t want to go.”

  “But I want you to. In fact, I’m insisting.”

  “No.” She settled a little deeper into the couch cushions. “I came to convince you to marry me, and I’m not leaving here until I do.”

  Jamie sighed. “Where are you staying?”

  “With Sarah Hostetler.”

  Jamie had met her. She was a young widow who had opened a candy shop to make ends meet for herself and her three young children. “I’ll take you over there.”

  “But I don’t want to go.”

  “Deborah, this is getting us nowhere.”

  She seemed to think about it for a moment. Finally, she stood. “All right, then. Jah. You can take me to Sarah’s, but I’m not leaving Pontotoc until you say you’re going with me.”

  * * *