A Love for Leah

by Amy Lillard

“We did okay at the festival, huh?” Hannah asked the following Sunday.

  Leah nodded. “I would say that one hundred and fifty dollars apiece is pretty good.”

  Gracie fanned out her cash. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much money in one place. I mean, a number in the bank account book, but not in my hands. Can we do it again?”

  “There’s only one festival,” Leah reminded them.

  “But we could sell the goods in your shop.”

  “You already have the shop out front,” Leah pointed out.

  Like most families in the area, the Gingeriches had a small shed at the front of their property where they sold canned goods, bright plastic beaded jewelry and key chains, and Mamm’s goat milk products.

  “Jah, but if we had a couple of shelves of product in Twice Blessed, then we would be able to reach people who don’t come all the way out here.”

  “She’s got a point, you know. And it might help spread the word for other farms.”

  Leah turned the idea over in her head. Most of the farms made various jellies and jams, but the Gingeriches were the only family in the area who sold apple butter. The Danny Yoders and the John Bylers were the only families who sold sauerkraut. And Sarah Hostetler had made a name for her marvelous candies. If anyone came in the store and asked for something Leah didn’t have, she would be able to direct them to the correct house for the items. It would help her store and her family as well as the entire community.

  “I guess I could move some things around and we can put the jars up front.”

  “Where the kitchen goods are now?” Hannah asked. “That’s a great place. People walking by will be able to see them.”

  “You’ll need more shelves too,” Gracie mused.

  Hannah smiled. “I know just the person to do it. In fact, I’m going to ask him right now.” She turned and started toward Jamie’s cabin.

  Leah grabbed her arm. “He has . . . company.”

  “Company?” Gracie and Hannah asked at the same time.

  “His ex-fiancée.”

  “She’s still here?” Hannah asked.

  “Last I heard.”

  “Have you talked to him?” Gracie asked.

  Leah shook her head. The last thing she wanted was to compete with the beautiful Deborah King. Like she could compete. Deborah was one thing Leah could never be again: Amish. “I don’t think it’s going to work out between us.” That was an understatement. She had been waiting around for God to give them a sign or an answer. And He had. One look at Deborah, and Leah knew she and Jamie didn’t have a hope. Too much separated them. Too much that could never be bridged.

  “What happened?” they asked.

  “Nothing.” She gave a quick shrug that felt stiff and unnatural. “We’re too different.” She looked to Gracie. “I’m sorry. He was interested in you, and I ruined it. And for what?”

  Gracie waved away her concern. “I’m not sure we would have been good as a couple either. We never seemed to be able to talk about anything.”

  “And now this?” Leah smiled.

  “I think maybe you saved me from a lot a heartache.”

  “Gracie, he doesn’t deserve you,” Leah said.

  “You too,” Gracie said. The words were meant to make her feel better, but they only made her stomach hurt.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get by to see you yesterday,” Jamie said.

  Yesterday had been Sunday. An off-Sunday. Leah and Brandon had made their usual trip to visit with family and had stayed as long as they could. She’d had to drive by Jamie’s cabin arriving and leaving. But she hadn’t seen him at all. Which meant one thing: He had better things to do besides spend time with her. Specifically spending time with Deborah. She knew this would happen, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.

  “It’s no problem,” she said with an offhand wave. Her mother or Hannah must have asked him to come work on her shelves, for he’d been at the shop first thing. Leah supposed it was only logical that she hire him to do the work, but it didn’t make it any easier.

  “I need to explain.”

  “There’s nothing to explain.”

  He raised one brow. “Deborah.”

  “You don’t owe me an explanation.” She started tossing clothes into a laundry basket so she could easily move them to the back.

  “I can’t see how you figure that.”

  She shook her head. “Really, Jamie. You don’t need to do this.” More clothes in the basket.

  “Leah, would you stop that and listen to me for just a minute?”

  She rested her hands against the edge of the basket, but they itched to reach for more clothing. She needed to keep moving, keep busy until she accepted the inevitable. “Explain,” she ordered.

  “I didn’t ask Deborah to come here.”

  She nodded. That much was evident when Deborah had called out, “Surprise.”

  “She came down here all on her own,” he continued.

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  “Why did she come down here?”

  “To get back together.” He turned red as he spoke the words.

  “There you go.” She moved to take the basket to the back.

  “Leah, wait.” He lunged toward her, stopping her with one hand on her arm. “You didn’t ask if I wanted to get back with her.”

  She glanced down at his fingers where they lay against her thin, long-sleeved T-shirt. Then back to his eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What?” He pulled away as if he had been burned.

  “She came down here to find you. She obviously cares about you. And you two belong together.”

  He propped his hands on his hips. “What makes you say that?”

  “You’re Amish. She’s Amish.”

  “Maybe I don’t want an Amish girl. Maybe I’ve decided that I’d rather have a Mennonite lady.”

  She stopped and, unable to help herself, burst out laughing. “That is without a doubt the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to be funny, but if it helps you understand.”

  She set the basket on the table in the back. She would have Shelly fold the items for storage. Cooler weather was on the way, and short-sleeved shirts would be a memory until next year. “It’s not about understanding.”

  “Then tell me what it is.” His tone was so urgent, so caring that she almost told him that everything would be okay. But she couldn’t. She owed them both that much.

  “When we talked, I thought everything would turn out okay. We just had to believe.”

  “What changed?”

  “I prayed for a sign. For direction so we would know that we were doing the right thing. I prayed for an answer to our differences.”

  “And?”

  “Deborah showed up.”

  “You think Deborah is a sign from God?”

  Leah shook her head. “But her arrival is.”

  “Would you listen to yourself?”

  “I can hear me just fine,” she returned.

  “Then you know how ridiculous you sound.”

  “I know that regardless of how hard it is to face the truth, you and I are too different to make any sort of relationship deeper than friendship possible.”

  * * *

  He couldn’t believe his ears. Was she really saying that? Her mouth moved and sounds came out, but he hoped he was hearing something someone else was saying. “I don’t get a say in this?”

  “What good would that do?”

  “I don’t know. But this is my life too. And if I want to keep looking for a solution, then I will.”

  Leah shook her head. “It’s useless,” she said. “The sooner we face that, the better.”

  “There’s an answer,” he insisted. “We just have to have faith. We have to believe, and it will be.”

  “Faith isn’t going to get us through this. Don’t you see? Faith isn’t always the answer.”

  “I’m not giving u
p on you, and I’m never giving up on us.”

  Having said his piece, he went back to the front of the store. He had faith, and it was the answer. He knew that with enough time, the Lord would move Leah’s heart, she would join the church, and they could get married.

  Okay, so he was jumping ahead of himself. But there it was. One day he hoped to marry Leah Gingerich. It was strange. He had never felt so sure of anything in all his life. And if that wasn’t a sign from above, he didn’t know what was.

  * * *

  Jamie finished the shelves, packed up his tools, and headed for home. He didn’t say another word about Deborah or getting married the rest of his time there at Twice Blessed. He had planted the seeds. Now all he had to do was show her that there was a way.

  “I was about ready to leave.” Deborah rose to her feet from her place sitting on the edge of his porch.

  “What are you doing here, Deborah?”

  “I came to visit. I thought maybe you would want to go with me over to Sarah Hostetler’s candy shop to see what we can find.”

  “I’m sure we’ll find candy.” He started to unhitch his horse. He didn’t have another job today, so he was walking down and helping Abner, Jim, and David finish a gazebo the city commissioned to place in the park in town.

  She smiled. “Okay. You got me. I just wanted to spend some time with you, and I remembered how much of a sweet tooth you have. I thought it might be fun.”

  Sarah’s candy was some of the best he had ever eaten, and he liked supporting her shop, but that didn’t mean he needed candy right then or that he wanted to go with Deborah to get it.

  “I’ve got work to do,” he said. “Maybe another time.” Like never.

  “If you have to work, why are you unhitching your horse?”

  He sighed. “If you must know, I’m going down to work with the Abner Gingeriches.”

  “Don’t they make sheds and things? I heard my brothers talking about it.”

  “They make all sorts of things.” He turned his mare loose in the pasture with a silent promise for a good brushing later.

  “And you help them a lot?”

  “When I don’t have another job to do.” Abner had almost too much business for the three of them to keep up with. But Jamie wanted to work for himself and not at a job that had been handed to him. Abner had told him it wasn’t like that, but it felt too much like charity for Jamie’s comfort.

  He and Peter were making it just fine. If things changed for them, then he would consider working with Abner more, but until that time, he was happy doing exactly what he was doing.

  “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

  Jamie shook his head. “There’s nothing to be easy or hard,” he said. He needed to get down to Abner’s and help, but he had to take care of this first.

  He led Deborah over to the porch and sat on its edge. She settled down next to him.

  “There was a time when I thought the two of us would get married,” he started.

  “Me too.”

  “But things have changed.”

  “Because you moved here? Everyone knows it’s just a matter of time before you come back home. Once the time has passed and Peter hasn’t spoken, well, I figured you’ll move back to be close to him.”

  Her words settled around him like a cold fog. “You think I’m going to lose him.”

  “Has he talked any since you’ve been down here?”

  “That’s beside the point. You think I won’t have Peter, so now you want me back?”

  “Noooo. I told you. I realized that I was too quick in calling off the wedding. I didn’t think things through.”

  Because she realized after the fact that he might not have Peter forever. But he wasn’t letting Sally’s parents take the boy from him. Peter needed to know that he was loved and safe, not just another mouth to feed.

  Jamie wasn’t doing this again. He stood. “I’ve got to go to work, Deborah. I’ll see you later.” He stalked off toward Abner’s with her last words ringing in his ears: “Of course you will.”

  * * *

  “I can’t believe she’s still here,” Gracie said at their following cousins’ day.

  Gracie might be confused, but Leah knew exactly why she was hanging around. She wanted Jamie for her own once again. It was a realization that Leah could understand. But that didn’t mean she had to like it. She knew it was only a matter of time before Jamie came to his senses and married Deborah. She would give him the stable Amish home that Peter so desperately needed.

  “I heard that she told Jamie she wasn’t leaving until he promised to move back to Tennessee.”

  “So he doesn’t want to marry her?” Gracie frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple, really,” Hannah said. “Jamie and Deborah broke up, and he moved down here to get away. He decided he needed a mother for Peter, so he was going to court you. Then he fell for Leah and had to tell you that he wanted to court her. Then Deborah showed up, and now Leah doesn’t want anything to do with him. But he doesn’t want anything to do with Deborah. It’s like a bad romcom.”

  “Who’s romcom?”

  Hannah laughed. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Gracie shook her head and began mixing up the ingredients for the lavender-scented goat milk lotion they were making. It would be one of the first products that she would sell in her store.

  The girls fell quiet as they worked, each one lost in her own thoughts.

  “He thinks faith will solve everything,” Leah said, her words sounding overloud.

  “What do you mean?” Hannah asked.

  “Can’t faith overcome everything?” Gracie added.

  “It’s not about faith. This is about reality.”

  “Sweetie, you are going to have to be a little more specific if you want our help.”

  “I don’t need help,” Leah said. “It’s not like anyone can change anything.”

  “Faith?” Gracie asked.

  Leah shook her head. “Jamie thinks he can just believe that there will be an answer, so there will be.”

  “An answer to what?” Hannah asked.

  “How we can be together.”

  “And there’s not one?”

  She shook her head. “Too many differences stand in our way.”

  “And you’re both stubborn as mules.”

  She shot Hannah a look. “Thanks, sister dear. You are too kind.”

  “Tell me it’s not true.”

  She couldn’t—not without telling a lie.

  Chapter Ten

  Could faith overcome anything? Honestly, Leah wasn’t sure. She had been told her entire life that faith was all a person needed. If you had faith, then God would take care of the rest.

  But she had never seen it at work. She’d had faith as a young woman going into her runaround years, and she had left to protect her sister. No amount of faith could keep Hannah in Amish country. She’d had faith when Hannah told her she was marrying Mitch McLean. And that hadn’t turned out at all, unless she counted Brandon on the plus side. He was definitely a plus as far as she was concerned.

  She supposed faith had played a big part in her decision to go to Central and South America and work as a missionary. The living conditions in the places she had been were abysmal. Faith played a part in every sip of water and every bite of food, every minute of sleep and every beautiful sunrise.

  But this was something entirely different. It was one thing to pray and believe that God would help work it out, and another to go blindly into whatever life handed out. Jamie was a smart man; smart enough to understand. Smart enough to figure it out. Smart enough to do more than just trust in God when it came to Peter. She wanted to shake Jamie—something, anything to get him to see clearly.

  And the two of them? That was another matter entirely.

  “Are you going to sit there all evening and stare at Jim’s house, or are you coming to help me at Jamie’s?”

  Leah stirred hersel
f from her thoughts and turned to find Gracie standing just outside the front door of the house, a large Dutch oven in her hands.

  “What are you doing at Jamie’s?”

  “We talked about this yesterday.” Gracie tsked. “Eunice wants me to go up there and make sure they have something to eat for the next few days. You said you would help.”

  She didn’t recall. But she supposed she had. As much as she disliked cooking, it sounded like something she would do, offer to cook for someone in need, but lately her brain seemed too full and things kept slipping out. Like promises to help. Good thing she drove out here after work. Brandon had gone to supper with Shelly and her family, and Leah couldn’t stand being in the apartment all alone.

  It was ridiculous. When she had moved in that had been her intention: to live alone. But now that she had Brandon, or maybe it was all the time she was spending out on the farm with her family—whatever it was, the place seemed too empty with only herself for company.

  “Are you coming?” Gracie asked. A small frown of worry stretched itself across her forehead.

  “Of course.” Leah pushed to her feet. She didn’t want Gracie to have to go to Jamie’s by herself. Who knew what she might find? Leah herself had hardly seen Jamie since the beautiful Deborah had arrived in Pontotoc. That in itself was telling. He had his love back at his side, and Leah was certain they were busy making plans for their future together. Just the three of them: Jamie, Deborah, and Peter.

  So busy that Deborah couldn’t be bothered to cook for them. Mamm probably just wanted Gracie and Leah to spy on the couple and make sure nothing untoward was going on.

  “What are we cooking?” Leah asked as they trudged up the slight hill toward Jamie’s cabin.

  “Eunice thought a pot of beans would be good, and a couple of pans of cornbread.” Gracie gave a small shrug. “Now that the weather is starting to turn, warmer meals will be more welcome.”

  Leah nodded.

  “And I thought I would make them some fried chicken for tonight.”

  Ugh. Leah loved fried chicken, but it was messy and involved. “What’s tonight?”

  Gracie shrugged and switched the Dutch oven from one arm to the other. “I don’t know. Eunice just said she wanted him to have something special for tonight.”