Abby Finds Her Calling

by Naomi King

  And what could this be about? She watched him, waiting.

  “Remember a few weeks ago, when you dialed Jonny Ropp’s number twice and hung up?”

  How did he know about that? Zanna shifted her weight, suspicious now. It wasn’t as though she’d said anything indecent for Jonny to respond to on the message machine—and it wasn’t James’s business if she had!

  James sighed. “Well, he called you back. It took me by surprise, sitting there at the phone and hearing his voice mail message. It hit me all wrong, that you’d be in touch with him, and before I thought about it, I erased Jonny’s message. And I’m sorry for that, Zanna.” He rushed on in a whisper. “I hope you can understand. And forgive me.”

  Jonny had called her back? Jonny called me back! And James is saying—

  Zanna forced her thoughts to stop swirling in her head. She desperately wanted to know what Jonny had said. But it didn’t feel right, asking James about that. “I’d called to tell him his mamm could use his—well, what with his dat acting so—oh, never mind!”

  Jonny called me back! So maybe when he hears that last message I left him—

  James stood rooted as though he had no intention of ending this conversation. “I didn’t feel right, letting it go by without saying something,” he explained. “I hope you feel as gut as you look, Zanna. Hope things are going well for you.”

  While James had spoken to her with this same consideration after her confession last Sunday, she hadn’t expected him to keep wishing her well. “Doing okay, all things considered,” she murmured.

  Zanna noticed the softness of his brown eyes… the laugh lines that deepened when he smiled at her. While James Graber would always be considerably older than she, and his parents would only get more difficult to deal with, for a fleeting moment Zanna wondered why she’d thrown away their relationship. “James, I—”

  A dark red van pulled to a stop in front of them. The driver rolled down the window and grinned at her. His blond hair fell in unruly waves around a face that shot her pulse into a panic.

  “Zanna!” Jonny Ropp looked her up and down as though James weren’t standing beside her. “Hey—got your message from last night. Thought I’d check out what you said about that fire. Hop in,” he coaxed, nodding toward the passenger seat. “Fill me in, will you? It’s not like I’ll be staying long, if Dat’s out there.”

  Zanna suddenly knew how Lot’s wife must have felt, being transformed into a pillar of salt, unable to think or speak. The dimple in Jonny’s cheek winked at her. “Sorry! Gotta go!” she rasped, clutching her coat around her, and then realizing how that accentuated her belly.

  Into the mercantile she dashed, as though one of Mervin Mast’s bulls were chasing her. She beelined toward the back room, where she might get hold of her runaway thoughts in the peace and quiet. From the aisles where the yard goods were displayed she heard familiar voices, Abby’s among them as she encouraged Jonny’s sisters to choose fabric that was warm and sturdy for their new winter dresses.

  I saw Jonny and ran like a scared rabbit, while he gawked at my belly…

  “So there you are, Zanna. We were thinking James must have had something awfully interesting to say—” Abby stopped in the storeroom doorway. “You look like you just saw a ghost. Are you feeling all right?”

  She forced herself to breathe. She made herself drape her coat over a peg as though it were an ordinary day and nothing extraordinary had just happened. “I—I called Jonny’s voice mail again last night,” she confessed in a halting whisper, “to tell him about the fire. He just now pulled up in his van. Asked me to ride out there with him, to see the house.”

  Abby’s eyes nearly filled her slender face. “Jonny came here?” She glanced into the main room of the store, where Maggie and Becky were choosing their dress fabric. “Shall we tell the girls? Or will they only get more upset if he doesn’t want to see them?”

  “I was so shocked I didn’t tell him they were here. I don’t know.” Zanna grabbed for the back of the chair where she usually sat to fill bags with spices and cookie sprinkles. “Honest to Pete, Abby, I don’t know anything right now. My brain’s whirling so fast it might spin right out of my head!”

  . . .

  James reminded himself that he was wiser and more mature than Jonny Ropp, the hellion who’d taken advantage of his fiancée. Of course, this kid in the van didn’t know any of that—did he? Unless Zanna had told Jonny about her engagement, and told him he was about to become a father, Jonny probably assumed that Zanna had been chatting with James Graber as she had all her life, because he lived across the road. Yet something in Zanna’s expression when he’d mentioned Ropp’s phone message suggested she hadn’t spoken with this fellow since last July…

  It would be so easy to give Cedar Creek’s most flamboyant smart aleck an earful about what Zanna had really gone through of late, and then send him packing. Jonny wore a black leather jacket, but no hat. The shiny ring in his ear boldly announced that he hadn’t joined the church and never intended to.

  “So… there really was a fire?” Jonny demanded as he gawked out the window of his rumbling van. “How come I didn’t see it on the news?”

  James saw no reason to get chatty. After all, Jonny hadn’t asked how he was, or what was up with Zanna, or anything else that would reconnect him to anyone here in Cedar Creek. “Bishop Gingerich didn’t want reporters and TV cameras—”

  “Oh, that’s right. Amish are good at keeping their secrets.”

  James clenched his jaw. Jah, like when Zanna didn’t tell you she was marrying me last July.

  “Secrets aren’t always a gut idea, you know,” Jonny said. “They make it easier for folks to get away with stuff—to sweep problems under the rug, like they never happened.” He turned off his ignition and opened the van’s door to step outside. “If people knew what my mother’s had to put up with in the name of submission to the Old Order’s ways—” He bit off his sentence as though he’d revealed more than he had intended to. He leaned against his van and crossed his arms as though he didn’t quite trust James. “So is the house totally gone or did Zanna exaggerate about that in her voice mail? Did everybody make it out okay?”

  James scowled. “Why would she exaggerate about your house burning down?” he demanded. “If the fire trucks hadn’t arrived when they did, the milking barn and all the other outbuildings would’ve burned, too, you know.” James was familiar with folks who started talking about one thing and then swerved into a different subject. As far as he was concerned, it was rude—and it led folks to believe things that weren’t true.

  At least Jonny looked more concerned now. His eyes widened and he raked back his hair as he considered what he’d just heard. The Ropp boy stood taller these days—their eyes were on the same level even if the two of them didn’t see eye to eye—and it seemed Jonny wanted to prove to James that at nineteen he was a man. And a man of means, as well.

  “Jah, the girls came downstairs, hollering about the fire, just in time to get out through a window, along with your folks,” James explained. “The house and the shed burned to the ground, though.” Something made James want to lay it on with a heavy hand, to see what Jonny Ropp was really made of. Was he still the loudmouthed daredevil who’d sped through Cedar Creek full tilt on a motorcycle, scaring the sheep and cows? If so, he had no business—no right—to raise Zanna’s child.

  “They lost all their savings, too,” James added. No sense in leaving out this very important detail, considering Jonny supported himself quite well by driving—or that’s what folks said, anyway, and that’s what his big van and that flashy motorcycle suggested. “Guess your dat got into it with a teller a while back and then pulled their money out of the bank. Stashed it in the house.”

  “He yanked out all of their—you can’t be serious!” Jonny paced to the front of his van and back again, as though deciding what to say next. “When Zanna left a message that they’d lost— Well, a lot of that money was what Mamm earne
d at the cheese factory. But Mamm’s all right? And the girls, too?”

  “Jah. The three of them are staying with the Lambrights.” No need to reveal how the locals had voted to rebuild their home, at least not until he heard Jonny’s own plan for helping his family. “The girls are at the mercantile now.”

  “Lemme guess,” Jonny interrupted in a tight voice. “Dat wouldn’t leave the place. Would rather hole up with those blasted cows, wallowing in his mucky moods and blaming everybody else for his troubles.”

  “Far as I know, he’s still out there, jah.” James smiled, waiting for whatever other axes this troublemaker might grind… whatever he might reveal about his feelings toward Zanna, too. Jonny had filled out some; he had more of a man’s body now. But he still didn’t seem inclined to take on adult responsibility.

  “So what started the fire?”

  Jonny’s tone told him Rudy was the first suspect who’d come to this kid’s mind. James saw no good reason to let this disgruntled son mistakenly believe that, however. “The fire marshal said too much creosote had built up in the chimney. When the wind whistled through the cracks, sparks flew right on up into the attic and caught fire.”

  An odd look crossed Jonny’s face. He looked James over, as though deciding how much to say. “You probably heard all sorts of stories about my running off a few years back,” he began in a defensive tone, “but I was putting distance between me and Dat after I told him I wasn’t gonna spend my life being a slave to his dairy. Where’s the future in that—for him and two sons, no less? The county extension agents gave him suggestions about how to get more milk from his herd and make a better living at it—and he told them where to go, too.”

  James had no trouble believing this about Rudy, but he merely nodded.

  “And then he’d sit in church—or wherever anybody else was watching,” Jonny went on in a rising voice, “and make like he was living right with God while, in reality, he was treating our mother worse than the dirt he walked on. Talking to her like nobody deserves to be talked to. And at all hours of the night, when we kids were trying to sleep.

  “And Mamm kept her secret, too,” Jonny added angrily. He dug his boot heel into the snow, shaking his head in disgust. “She went along with his bad-mouthing because wives are supposed to submit to their men. She acted like she was fine and dandy so her friends wouldn’t know how Dat slapped her around when he was in one of his moods.”

  James regretted hearing this. Rudy’s ways with Adah didn’t completely surprise him, but such violence went against the faith in the most fundamental way. Still, he had just been offered another avenue of discussion, and he meant to take it.

  “So why didn’t you stay to look after her?” he asked pointedly. “Why’d you run off and break her heart? It was bad enough that Gideon left, but you were always your mamm’s favorite.”

  Jonny leveled his gaze at James the same way Matt Lambright’s dogs stared down a contrary ewe. “I’m back. Ain’t so?”

  “Are you?” Jonny was still pretty good at dodging questions and tricky situations that put restrictions on him.

  “I’ve done right well, driving for Amish and making trips back East with them.” Jonny pressed on proudly. “Sounds like it might be a gut time to load Mamm and my sisters into the van and take them away with me.”

  Jonny crossed his arms again, leaning against his van as though he might be mapping out such a plan… or might have other subjects to catch up on yet. Even though James was getting cold, he sensed it might be worth his wait to stand there a few more moments.

  “So… were my eyes fooling me,” Jonny ventured in a quieter voice, “or is Zanna in the family way? She must have gotten hitched a while back without telling me.”

  Oh, James could think of answers for that question! But he knew better than to air his own grievances—especially to this fellow. “You’d better ask her that yourself. Girls get touchy when you talk about their personal business.”

  Jonny’s pale brows rose. He smiled slyly. “So… Abby Lambright hasn’t caught you yet, Graber?” He glanced pointedly at James’s clean-shaven chin, a sure sign that he wasn’t married. “I remember the way she used to gawk at you during church and the common meals.”

  The question caught James by surprise, though he kept it from showing on his face. Was this kid smarting off, trying to rile him up? Or had Jonny seen something in Abby’s expression that he’d missed? Had other folks noticed her watching him, too? James shifted, uncertain. Why hadn’t he picked up on any feelings Abby might have for him? Then again, why would he discuss it with Jonny Ropp, of all people?

  “Abby’s a maidel—by her own choice,” James replied. This was common knowledge, after all, made more apparent when her dat had built her a home and she’d opened her sewing business in Sam’s store. But two could play this game. “So how about you, Jonny? Have you joined up with the Mennonites by now? Got yourself a wife?”

  “Hah! That noose won’t go around my neck! Saw enough of what marriage is about while I lived at home. Well—” Jonny glanced at his fancy wristwatch. “Guess I’ll run out past the farm. Gut talking to you, Graber.”

  “Don’t be a stranger,” James replied. “Your Mamm would be awful glad to see you. And the girls are in the mercantile—”

  “Jah, I’ll catch up to them. Later, dude!”

  James shook his head at that one. “Dude” had never set well with him, maybe because it went against the grain of everything Amish… which described Jonny Ropp pretty well, too, didn’t it? He stepped back as Cedar Creek’s most notorious fence jumper opened the door of his shiny red van and swung back into the driver’s seat. It didn’t sound as though things had changed much with Adah’s younger son, nor did James hold out a speck of hope that Zanna might receive any help from the kid who’d always seemed to be moving on to bigger and better things. Just passing through.

  With a grin, Jonny revved his engine, as though to race down the curving county road with no regard for the slick spots. Behind James, a door slammed and footsteps clattered on the mercantile’s porch.

  “Jonny! Jonny—wait for me! I’ll go out there with you!”

  James turned. Zanna was picking her way between the cars and carriages in the snow-packed parking lot. In her black coat and matching Plain bonnet she didn’t look like the type to be hurrying toward a fellow like Jonny Ropp, but James set aside his conflicted thoughts. When she nearly slipped, he caught her by the arm.

  “Denki, James.” Zanna looked nervous and scared… flustered that he was here while she was riding off with the father of her baby. Truth be told, James felt some concern for her safety, but he had no say over whom she rode with or how she behaved, did he?

  “Be careful,” he warned Jonny sternly. “The road home’s more slippery than it looks.”

  Chapter 22

  Zanna settled into the front passenger seat of Jonny Ropp’s van, aware that riding with him went against the Ordnung… aware that the safety belt made her pregnancy very visible. She couldn’t let such concerns stand in her way, however; she’d called Jonny to convince him he should come to Cedar Creek, and here he was. It might not be the best time to discuss the baby, now that his house had burned and his family had been displaced, but when would the perfect opportunity ever arrive?

  As the van turned down the county highway toward the Ropp farm, every nerve in her body jangled and she felt even more nervous than she had the morning she’d confessed her sins at the Members’ Meeting two months ago. What if Jonny didn’t believe the baby was his? What if he told her it was all her problem—that she was on her own raising his child?

  “So what made you change your mind and come along?” he asked in that carefree tone she remembered so well. “From the look on your face when I pulled up to where you and Graber were talking, I thought you were scared to get in the van with me or something.”

  “Your sisters and I—well, we didn’t think you should go out to your farm alone,” Zanna blurted out. There was no
sense in disputing how startled she must have looked when she saw his face.

  “But Becky and Maggie didn’t come. Only you, Zanna.”

  Oh, but that smooth, musical tone of his voice made her tingle all over. Zanna forced herself to focus on the topic at hand. “Maggie and Becky don’t want to go, Jonny. Your family barely got out of the house alive. They were barefoot in the snow, shivering in their nightgowns when the walls of their home—your home—collapsed into the flames. I—I felt so helpless. I’ve never seen anything so scary.”

  She made herself take a deep breath. Recalling last night’s disaster made her feel the heat and the terror and the devastation all over again. Zanna clasped her hands in her lap and looked at the familiar snow-laced trees along the shoulder of the road. “I was helping your sisters sew some clothes in Abby’s shop today because they lost everything, Jonny. That… that’s why I went back inside the mercantile when you rolled down your window. I had to tell them I wouldn’t be helping them for a while.”

  Well, that was partly the truth, anyway. Zanna inhaled again, wishing this conversation didn’t feel so strained.

  “So what did you want to tell me, those two times you called but didn’t leave a message?” Jonny asked.

  Zanna closed her eyes. Why couldn’t she just tell him the baby was his and get it over with? Her pulse throbbed all over her body and her throat tightened until talking felt impossible. As Jonny drove slowly around the last curve before they reached the Ropp farmstead, where the plows had piled the snow into a high bank that blocked their view of the house, she took hold of his wrist. His leather jacket under her fingers felt soft and supple. His muscles tensed as he started to turn in at the Ropps’ lane.

  “Jonny, the only home you’ve ever known burned to the ground last night,” she whispered. “Three fire trucks and all the fellas from around Cedar Creek were fighting it, and it was the most awful thing I’ve ever—” Zanna turned her head suddenly as the bleak, black remains of the house came into view. “It’s even worse in the daylight. Jonny, I—I’m so sorry.”