by Anna Schmidt
But then George Stevens might not agree that Celery Fields was the best place for John. After all, the man had a business venture that was dependent on John’s skills as a draftsman and designer. What if he decided to sabotage her efforts to reunite with John? What if he laughed at her?
Lydia gritted her teeth. Well, God would show her the way. She felt more strongly than ever before in her life that God was guiding her steps. Never in her life would she have even considered leaving Celery Fields for so much as a day, much less for the week or more that it might take to find John and persuade him to forgive her. Such reckless actions were more Greta’s style. And yet here Lydia sat, night after night, plotting and planning every little detail of her adventure.
It occurred to her that she might be feeling what John had felt when he had left that first time. Like her, he had set a purpose for his journey. Like her, he had been certain of his cause. Like her, he must have had moments when he questioned the wisdom of his actions. And, like her, he had cast all doubts aside and moved forward. She would tell him all of that and more once she found him. She would tell him how she now realized that it had been her own fears that had prevented her from seeing his true purpose.
She shook off all such thoughts. There was only one thing she needed to tell him and make him understand: that she loved him, and if only he would give her one more chance she would show him how happy a life they could build together.
In just two days she would say goodbye to her students for the last time. The day after that she would pack up her supplies and close the school for good. And the day after that?
She would set out in search of the only man she had ever loved.
Chapter Fourteen
George insisted on driving John to the train station and seeing him off. “I have a confession to make,” he said as the two of them stood on the platform, the train hissing and belching next to them while men loaded the freight and passenger luggage.
John had noticed how quiet his friend had been on the ride to the station. He had assumed George was struggling with the reality that John was leaving. “Look, George, let’s not...”
“There was a letter,” George blurted. “From her. From your Lydia.”
John thought he must have heard wrong. The noise from the train and shouts between the men loading it had surely distorted George’s words.
“It came after you’d been here for a couple of weeks. We were in the midst of everything by then and the pressure to get the designs completed and the patterns developed— Well, I just didn’t want you to have any distractions.”
“Distractions?” John felt his grip tighten on the toolbox that he fully intended to keep by his side for the entire journey. “Lydia is not a distraction, George. She is...”
George looked away, his cheeks blotched with red. “I know. I’m sorry. I assumed that she would write again and by then...” He turned back to face John. “Besides, when we left Sarasota you were so hurt that I figured you wanted nothing more to do with her. As you told me, it wasn’t the first time that she had—”
“The letter,” John interrupted. “Give it to me.”
“I don’t have it.”
“You destroyed a letter meant for me?”
“I sent it back unopened.”
A dozen scenarios danced through John’s brain as he tried to imagine what Liddy must have thought when her letter was returned. In his heart he knew that there was only one true reaction she could have had. She would have thought he had refused her letter and was cutting all ties to her, this time for good.
“I’m so sorry, John. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve never met anyone like your Lydia and I thought that in time you would meet someone else. But then as the days passed I realized how miserable you were and I knew I had done the wrong thing. That’s why I encouraged you to go home. That’s why...”
“But you made sure you had gotten what you needed from me first,” John said, fighting to keep his temper in check. He set down the toolbox and fished out the envelope that held the cash and his train ticket. “You would buy my forgiveness, George?”
George pressed the envelope into John’s hands. “The money is yours, John. You would not take payment for your designs and patterns and so per your wishes I divided that money among our employees. But this is payment for your part of the factory building and machinery. We owned that together. I am simply buying you out.”
“And the tools?”
George looked down at the box between them. “Yes, that part was guilt. I hoped to make it up to you by giving you a stake to start your business. But the men insisted on being part of it when they learned that their bonus money had come from you. They wanted to show their appreciation.”
“I did not give the money to be handed it back in another form,” John argued as the conductor moved along the platform making his first call for passengers to board the train. “I cannot accept...”
“The men are innocents in this, John. Do not reject their gratitude out of some false sense of pride or hurt.”
“All aboard!” the conductor shouted for a second time. All around them people were saying their farewells and heading for the entrances to the passenger cars.
“I am asking you to forgive me,” George said. “I do not deserve it and I fully understand that I may well have ruined any chance you might have had to make things right with Lydia. I’ve never had someone in my life that I cared about so deeply, much less anyone who cared about me beyond what I could buy her. But then I realized that what you had with Lydia was the kind of love we all search for in this life. I just hope I didn’t realize that too late.”
John stared at his friend, a myriad of emotions throbbing in his veins. He felt anger and pity and regret and, oddly, hope. “Maybe it’s not too late,” he said as he picked up the tool chest and handed it up to the porter. “Goodbye, George,” he called as he stood on the landing between cars and waved to his friend.
“Write to me,” George shouted back as he ran alongside the train.
John laughed at the irony of George’s words. Letters sent and returned. Letters sent and never answered. As far as John was concerned, letters were a poor way of saying what a man needed to say. This time he intended to talk to Liddy in person. This time there would be no more room for misunderstanding.
And if she rejects you?
“Then God’s will be done,” he murmured as he found his seat and the porter slid the heavy toolbox onto the floor next to him.
* * *
On the last day of classes the children were almost beside themselves with excitement. Lydia knew that for them this was just the same as other years when they would be off school for a few months and then return. Only Bettina and one or two of the good students seemed to realize that the school would be closing for good.
“Do you want me to help you pack up everything tomorrow?” Bettina asked at the end of the day as the children enjoyed the picnic that Lydia and some of the other women had prepared for them.
Lydia smiled and patted the girl’s hand. “You are kind to offer but I would prefer to do it alone. There are many memories here and I need to savor them a bit before I close that door one last time.”
“Do you think the elders will truly tear it down and sell the land?”
“That is for them to decide.” She saw a tear trickle down Bettina’s cheek. “Come now, this is not a day for sadness. Look at the children, how happy they are.”
“I had so wanted to teach...”
“And if it be God’s will, one day I have no doubt that you will lead a classroom full of children, Bettina. But it won’t be in this building. You must accept that.”
Bettina nodded and dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her apron. “What will you do now?”
Lydia’s heart swelled with the excitement that
had lodged there now for days, but she could hardly reveal her plan. “Oh, I will be fine, Bettina. You mustn’t concern yourself about me.” She stood up and clapped her hands loudly, her signal for the children to make a circle and join hands. “Let us all give thanks,” she said once their chatter had settled into a low murmur of whispers and giggles.
And as every head bowed, Lydia silently prayed that she would have the courage to follow through on her plan to travel east and find John. And she dared to add a plea that God would soften John’s heart and make him receptive to her gesture of reconciliation.
The following day she arrived at the school early. It was a hot, humid day and her first job was to open all of the windows and block open the double doors hoping to capture as much of a breeze as possible. Next she packed up her books in the cartons that Roger Hadwell had left for her and loaded them onto the cart waiting just outside the door. Luke would come by at the end of the day and move the cart up to her house where Bettina and her sweetheart, Caleb, would help unload it.
At first Lydia had protested the elders’ decision that she should take everything that was usable from the building. “You have earned it, Lydia,” Jeremiah told her. “By the time we can reopen a school the maps and such will surely be outdated. And, besides, if you plan to offer private lessons you need something with which to teach.”
It was simply assumed by most people in town that once she had closed up the school Lydia would set up her house for private lessons, not that anyone in Celery Fields had the money for such a thing. It was further assumed that either she would continue living in her father’s house alone or that more likely, in the absence of an income, she would move in with either Greta or Pleasant. The women in town had it all planned out for her and Lydia had been annoyed more than once over the past few weeks at their assumptions.
The truth was that as her plan had developed she had rediscovered the impetuous girl she had once been, the girl John had fallen in love with. More than once she had almost blurted out her intentions during a conversation with Greta. Her sister had developed a habit of looking at her with pity, and it seemed nothing Lydia said or did would convince Greta that she was not yet defeated when it came to John Amman.
She smiled at the thought of him. She did a lot of that these days, imagining his surprise when she simply appeared one day at the factory he owned with George Stevens. She had debated whether or not to write to George and let him know she was coming but, from what John had told her about his friend and business partner, she was not sure the man could be trusted to keep a secret.
No, better to simply go there. The train would arrive midday, so there was plenty of time for her to seek directions and make her way from the railway station to the factory. She refused to even consider the horrid thought that had awakened her one stormy night—the idea that John might have found someone else.
Once the books had been packed and she had loaded the rest of the supplies onto the cart, she began the process of cleaning the single room. How she had loved being here. It had been her refuge in those weeks and months that passed with no word from John after he left that first time. And in the years that followed it had given her a purpose for rising each day. The children needed her.
The shadows lengthened into late afternoon, and she climbed to the top of a ladder so that she could use the broom wrapped with a dust rag to sweep away any cobwebs that might be lingering in the corners. As she stretched to reach the high peak of the beamed ceiling she heard someone enter the foyer where normally the children would leave their coats. “I’ll be right there,” she called out, assuming it was Luke coming to deliver the loaded cart up to her house.
“I had not thought it would be necessary to do so thorough a cleaning if the school is to be closed.” The voice was familiar but not that of her brother-in-law. She grasped the top of the ladder as the broom fell from her hands and clattered onto the floor. Below her, John Amman was walking around the now-barren room, running his hand over the wide sill of a window and then standing before the chalkboard that she had washed earlier. He picked up a piece of chalk from the tray and lightly tossed it in the air, catching it each time as he continued to stare at the board.
“You came back,” she said, and realized that her voice was no stronger than a whisper, so unsure was she that weariness had not created a mirage before her.
If this were a vision then it was one she savored. Unlike the time before, when she had discovered him kneeling next to the woodstove feeding kindling into the fire, he was not a bedraggled man. This time he was dressed plain but everything about him was pristine—from his white shirt tucked into black trousers supported by wide suspenders to his black straw wide-brimmed hat resting on top of his golden hair. Only his shoes showed any signs of the dust of travel.
He used the chalk to begin sketching on the board and, as Lydia descended the ladders and moved closer, she saw that he was drawing a floor plan for the building where they stood. “I have just washed that board,” she said, reverting to her usual habit of reprimanding him whenever she was unsure of what to say to this man.
He shrugged and kept drawing. “I had thought perhaps to place a counter here with a desk there where we might take orders and manage the accounts. That way when customers first come through the door, they will be welcomed.” He sketched in the counter and desk leaving most of the rest of the space open. “We will need to add a door here and a loading dock.” He added these two features to the back wall of the plan.
“John, the building is not yours to change,” she said softly.
He glanced at her, cocked one eyebrow and gave her half a smile before turning back to his sketch. “I think we’ll keep the chalkboard. I like having it available to work out measurements and such.”
“John, what...”
“And the building is mine to do with as I please—I just bought it.”
“I...you...how...”
The smile tugged at his cheeks, fighting to break free as he continued his study of the sketch. “I paid the money the elders thought was fair and we shook hands and I am now here. Come to think of it, it is good that you have done such a thorough job of cleaning, although why you insisted on doing the job alone is beyond me. Nevertheless, it gives us a clean slate for planning the renovations.”
“What renovations? What are you talking about, John Amman?” She placed her hands on her hips as she stepped around him so that she stood between him and the chalkboard.
“This building will house my furniture-building and carpentry business, Liddy. It’s near enough to my uncle’s hardware and the rest of the businesses in town to draw customers. Tourists, I suspect, will make up the bulk of the business. Those Englischers do have an appetite for our simple ways. Not that they would ever change their ways, but they enjoy pretending. We can build a business on that.”
“What about the factory and the government contract and George Stevens?”
“George bought me out and that gave me the money to buy this place. It’s taken me nearly a decade, Liddy, but it’s all I ever wanted. And now...” His voice trailed off as he studied her as if truly seeing her for the first time. “The question is, Liddy, do you want what I want?”
He sounded almost wistful. She would have expected him to be angry or dismissive given the fact that he had returned her letter unopened. “I want you to find peace,” she said, uncertain of what he was asking her. “If building furniture for outsiders is the path to that, then I am pleased for you.”
He reached around her and replaced the chalk in the tray, then dusted his hands off by rubbing them together. “I did not know about your letter, Liddy,” he said quietly. “Surely you know that I would have answered you.”
“I knew nothing of the sort.” She moved away from him, busying herself by wiping a thin film of dust from the desk she had used all the years of her teaching. “And if you did not kn
ow of it, if you did not refuse to accept it, then how do you know of it now?”
He told her about George’s admission at the train station. “I don’t think I have ever come so close to striking another man as I did when he told me what he had done.”
She saw him clench and unclench his fingers.
“I do not think, John, that you and I should trust the habit of communicating by letter,” she said softly. “After you left—this time—Pleasant told me some startling news. My father destroyed your letters to me and mine to you. He was afraid that I would follow you, that he would lose me as your family had lost you.”
“They did not lose me,” John protested. “I always intended to return. But we had no future, Liddy. How was I supposed to provide for you and our children?”
“You had work on your father’s farm,” she reminded him.
“I was never a farmer, Liddy.”
“That was not for you to decide. Only God can guide the path we will take.”
“And do you not see God’s hand in all of this?” He waved his hand to encompass the bare schoolroom. “Do you know how I have prayed constantly for God to show me His way?”
“As have I,” she replied defensively.
“And yet here we stand. Why would God keep finding ways to reunite us if we are not meant to be together?”
“You must not question or test or bend His plan to fit what you want, John.”
John removed his hat and set it on the desk, then ran his fingers through his hair, drawing it back from his face—a face she now realized reflected hours without sleep and the weariness of all that they had been through separately and together. “Will you marry me or not, Lydia Goodloe?”