A Wedding for Julia

by Vannetta Chapman

  “It’s loud from where you were standing, but in the back, where trucks and other machinery are, it’s the right volume.”

  That made sense. Still, she felt foolish for having had him called out so loudly and so publicly.

  “What brings you to town?”

  Julia closed her eyes. He had a fifteen-minute break. There was no church on Sunday, and he wouldn’t be delivering groceries to their home again until a week from Tuesday. She’d only left Ada this morning because one of her mother’s quilting friends had stopped by and insisted on staying until lunch. This moment was the perfect chance to ask him the questions she needed answers to, and she shouldn’t squander the opportunity.

  “Julia?”

  “I’ve been thinking.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. “I’ve been considering your offer.”

  “Do you mean my proposal?”

  She opened her eyes and stared directly into his. “Yes. Your proposal.”

  “And?”

  “And I think that maybe I will say yes.”

  She’d gone over a dozen ways to begin this conversation. None of them had included plopping her answer out there, and she certainly hadn’t anticipated the slow smile that spread across Caleb’s face. She’d actually thought his most likely reaction might be denial—as in he hadn’t actually meant to ask for her hand in marriage.

  “This is gut news.”

  “Caleb, I said maybe yes. We need to talk about this first. I have a lot of questions, and I’m not convinced you understand all you’re getting into.”

  Now his eyebrows shot up beneath his long bangs, and Julia was reminded of what her mother had said about the needed haircut.

  “You think I don’t understand what marriage entails?”

  “Nein, but you don’t know all of the details of my situation. You can’t possibly know the condition of my family’s finances, all that needs to be done at the farm, and my mother’s—”

  Raising a hand, Caleb waved away her concerns, but she stopped him.

  “No. This matters. If we are going to begin a marriage without—” she bit off the word “love” before it could escape. “Without the traditional feelings, it’s all the more important we understand other things about each other. Plus, we need to decide when and where and what happens next.”

  A truck trundled around from the back of the shop. Its driver nodded at Caleb and then continued out onto the main road.

  “I don’t even know where you live,” Julia continued.

  “I live here, in Pebble Creek.” Caleb’s voice held a light note, but his eyes studied her seriously. “I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought, Julia, and I’m glad you have. I realized you weren’t a young girl who might jump into something without much prayer and consideration. How about I come over to your house tonight after work?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Too soon?”

  “No, but—”

  “We can talk as long as you like. I assume your home would be better because it’s probably hard for you to leave Ada alone.”

  “Ya. It is.” It occurred to her again that he had noticed much about her life, but she knew very little about his.

  “Tonight, then. I’ll eat dinner before I come, but if you have any of your famous baking left, I won’t turn it down.”

  “All right.”

  Caleb helped her into the buggy and handed her the reins.

  She glanced back once. He was still standing there, in the parking lot, watching her leave.

  It had been a long time since Caleb had courted a woman. He let his mind slip back through the years, trying to do the math. There had been Lois and then a few feeble attempts after that. His mother had tried to arrange some dinners—not so subtle efforts at matchmaking that had failed miserably. Even then he had known that politeness required him to bring something to The Event, which is how he’d always thought of it.

  His heart hadn’t been in any of those occasions, though.

  With Lois, he’d been enamored and not thinking clearly. He’d been lucky to arrive wearing both shoes. Once he’d even forgotten his hat. The other girls? He had operated from duty. First because he thought he should, and then because other people thought he should. He’d known before the evening started that things wouldn’t work out, so it hadn’t much mattered what he’d taken as a token gift.

  Tonight was different.

  Looking at the two items lying next to him on his buggy seat, he prayed he’d chosen well. Julia had looked so vulnerable, almost afraid, standing at the front of the store before she had seen him walking toward her. Caleb didn’t know how this was going to end or what God had in mind, but he did know he wanted to decrease Julia Beechy’s burdens, not add to them.

  He drove straight to the barn because Red seemed to behave himself better there. After releasing the horse from the harness and leading him to a shaded pasture, he walked back to his buggy and retrieved his gifts. By the time he walked toward the front porch steps, Julia was waiting for him.

  She looked different somehow, and it surprised him again that he’d never taken the time to notice her before. Her clothes were proper for a Plain woman—but hadn’t she always worn the same color? He thought it was a practical gray with a black apron, but he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t think clearly as he walked up the steps of the porch. Today her dress was a dark green and her apron a light gray. It wasn’t the same thing she’d worn to the store, so she must have changed, as he had. He could barely see her hair, which was pulled back. Maybe an inch of chestnut brown showed in front—combed and pinned, but a few curly strands teased out from the nape of her prayer kapp.

  He’d guess her height to be somewhere between five foot seven and five foot eight—certainly well under his five foot eleven. And though her brown eyes often clouded with worry, he didn’t see any lines yet…only the freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose.

  “Forget something?” she asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “You’re standing there looking as if you left something back in your buggy, or maybe you aren’t sure about coming up.” The smile teasing on her lips grew.

  It eased his heart to see that the tension from earlier in the morning was gone, at least for the moment.

  “Let’s see.” He shifted the flowers to his left hand, the hand still holding the basket, and began patting his pockets. “I did have a list. I’d written down the addresses of houses I could stop at, and I wasn’t sure if this was the one or if maybe…say, do I smell oatmeal cookies?”

  “You do.”

  “This is the house then. The one with the beautiful woman, gut cook, and fresh oatmeal cookies.”

  Julia’s eyes narrowed, and he wondered if he’d pushed too hard. “Flattery will not get you up these steps, Caleb Zook.”

  “How about flowers for your mamm and fresh raspberries for you?”

  “Ya. I believe that will do it.”

  They walked into the house, shoulder to shoulder, and Caleb wondered if that was what it would be like should they marry.

  “Where did you find the berries? And how did you know—”

  “You like to cook, so I guessed you might like them. Folks put out signs on my route, and Mary Stutzman had more than she could use.”

  “Mary? You deliver to the east side of Pebble Creek?”

  “Ya. East and west. I deliver to all the Amish families, and Kendrick uses the truck to deliver to anyone farther out than I want to take Red.”

  They had made it to the kitchen, and the smell of baking caused Caleb’s stomach to rumble.

  “I believe he’s hungry, Julia.” Ada sat at the table. What was left of the evening light shone through the window positioned next to the stove. It fell on her like a blessing. “Feed him. He brought you flowers.”

  “Nein. I’ve already eaten dinner, though the cookies smell wunderbaar.” He set the small bunch of flowers in Ada’s hands. She couldn’t straighten her fingers, but she pawed at them and leaned
forward to inhale their fragrance.

  “The berries are for Julia,” he explained. “But the flowers are for you.”

  “Sky Blue Aster—butterflies like this one.” Ada pushed her small glasses up so she could see better. Leaning forward, she ran her fingers over the blooms. “Julia, we can dry these and put them in your garden next spring. These taller ones are Spotted Joe-Pye Weed. I haven’t seen it in ages. The blooms are such a deep purple. You must have found them growing near the creek.”

  “Yes, near Aaron’s cabins. There’s a place that stays moist nearly all the time. I saw them when I went home this afternoon to…” He cleared his throat, not wanting to go into detail about how he’d taken off work early and spent time cleaning up and changing clothes. He was beginning to feel like a seventeen-year-old on his rumspringa. “I hope you like them.”

  “Let’s put them in water.” Julia slipped a mason jar onto the table and placed the bouquet in it. They stood there in the last of the day’s light, a bundle of color against the approaching darkness.

  “Honor and majesty surround Him.” Ada’s voice was softer than the breeze coming through the window. “Strength and beauty fill His sanctuary.”

  Caleb glanced at Julia, uncertain how to respond, but she shook her head.

  “Mamm. Let me help you to bed now.”

  “Is it so late already?”

  “Ya.”

  “But the flowers—”

  “Will be here in the morning.”

  He offered to help. Ada was still fairly mobile, though, and she waved him away. Her mind might wander. She might use the Psalms as a sort of guidepost to help her find her direction, but her body seemed determined to continue plodding along each day. She stood, grasping her cane, and walked out of the room in front of Julia. When she reached the doorway of the kitchen, she turned and wagged a finger at him.

  “If you decide you want that hair cut, I believe I can still find my scissors.”

  Before he could respond, she’d crept on down the hall, explaining to Julia she wasn’t being rude by offering her services.

  Caleb was left running his fingers through his too long hair and staring at the jar full of wildflowers.

  Chapter 11

  Ten minutes later Caleb was sitting on the front porch in one of the rockers. Julia was perched on the other. A plate of still-warm oatmeal raisin cookies sat between them as well as a glass of cold milk for him and water for her.

  “Go ahead and eat them. It’s plain you want to.”

  “Ya, but I’m trying to be polite and let you go first.” Caleb smiled, reached for a cookie, and popped the entire thing in his mouth. Closing his eyes, he allowed the flavors of sugar, oatmeal, nutmeg, and cinnamon to please his senses, reminding him of home and simpler times.

  “I’m going to assume by the look on your face that you approve?”

  “Oh, ya. I approve, Julia. You’re a wunderbaar gut cook. Where did you learn? From Ada?”

  “Some.” She drew the word out as she made circles on the arm of the rocker with her finger. “My mother cooked as well as most women, but I could tell from the time I was a teenager she didn’t much enjoy doing it. So it seemed natural for me to take over that chore. Baking was something that came natural to me. Soon I was trying my hand at casseroles and other types of dishes. I like old recipes, but I also enjoy experimenting.” She hesitated before adding, “It’s why I want to open a café. I know I’d be good at it, and I think it would provide us with some financial security. My father left enough money to provide for the two of us, but I still feel I should be contributing.”

  Caleb downed half of his glass of milk and devoured another cookie. “You’ve had this dream a long time.”

  “I have.”

  “And you’re worried that if you marry me, you won’t be able to pursue it.”

  She studied him for what seemed like a long time. As he waited for her answer, he could make out the sound of a chipmunk in the bushes near the porch.

  “Will I? If we were…” She stumbled over the next word. “If we were married, would I still be able to open the café?”

  Wiping his mouth with the napkin she’d provided, Caleb shot one last look at the plate of cookies. He would have liked to have eaten more, but he sensed they were down to the serious part of their evening. For all he knew, she would need to go in soon to be with Ada.

  “If it’s important to you and something that financially we could afford to do, then yes—I think we will be able to give it a try.” When she started to interrupt him, he held up his hand. “I like your idea, Julia. I liked it from the very first moment you told me before I even thought I might be involved.”

  He studied the old porch, which could use some repairs, not to mention a coat of paint. “But we need to make a list of what our start-up costs would be for a new business, how much money we have, and how much we’re willing to risk.”

  “Our start-up costs? Our money?”

  “Ya. Together we should decide how low we’re willing to take our finances before we would admit the café is not going to work—at least for this time and place.”

  Julia rubbed more vigorously at the arm of her chair. “You sound as if we’re already married.”

  “That’s what we’re talking about, though. Aren’t we?”

  “Ya. I suppose we are.”

  “This would be a union in every way. Together we could make a go of it, and I think it would work. But we have to be open to the possibility that it might not.” He nodded toward the lane in front of her house. “I see a lot of businesses start up and close in the first few months, usually because people haven’t thought out all the possible outcomes. Failure is a possibility, though we’ll work and pray for success.”

  “Our…our marriage would be about more than the café, though. How could you be willing to do this, Caleb?” She had been staring off into the gathering darkness, but now she turned and looked at him directly. “How can you be willing to commit yourself to me and to my mother?”

  Caleb hesitated before he answered. He’d asked himself that same question a dozen times, and he still hadn’t found the words to explain his answer. “Neither of us is getting younger—”

  “So I’m your last chance?” Her voice rose, startling a nearby bird.

  “Nein. I told you of my prayer—my plea for a freind. I didn’t ask Gotte for a fraa, though I remember thinking how lonely I was, how it wasn’t gut to be alone. But marriage? I stopped thinking of that a few years ago, I suppose. Somehow, in my mind, that wasn’t going to happen.”

  “Surely there were women who were interested back in Indiana.”

  “Ya, but there was always a reason why it didn’t work out. How about you?”

  Julia put both of her hands into her lap and stared down at them. “The same, at first. Lately, with my father and now my mother, I haven’t exactly been marriage material.”

  “That’s not true. I could see at Sunday’s luncheon that several men would be interested. Why have you never considered them before?”

  She shook her head so hard he could see the strings to her prayer kapp stirring in the small rays of light from the sitting room window. “They say they are interested, but they wouldn’t be. Once they visited here, I wouldn’t hear from them again. I’m not saying they are bad men, but if they saw mamm and her confusion, and then took a gut look at her hands and this house…”

  She paused long enough to also look around the porch, as if she were seeing it for the first time. “I know it looks fine from the road, but up close the years of neglect show. I’m aware of the repairs it needs. Nein. They would change their mind, and I half expect you will too.”

  Caleb scooted his chair so it was facing hers, so their knees were touching, and he reached for her hand. He held it as he had by the river at Aaron’s house. “I won’t be changing my mind. When I commit to a thing, I stay with it.”

  Something in Julia’s heart flipped over at those words. “When I commit to a thi
ng, I stay with it.”

  Could she trust him? Did she dare?

  No doubt he thought he meant them, but then people said things they thought were true all the time. Time and trouble often proved them wrong.

  “Julia, look at me.”

  It took more strength than harnessing Missy, but she raised her eyes to his.

  “Marrying this way is unusual. The one thing we need is to trust each other. You need to trust me when I say I won’t run away from your problems.”

  She jumped up from her seat and walked to the porch railing. She needed to feel the old boards beneath her palms. This house and her parents were all she had known for so long. Now she was supposed to trust Caleb? She barely knew him.

  He was beside her before she realized it, his voice low and close. When his hand covered hers, she looked down. The sight of his calloused hand on top of hers nearly took her breath away. This was all happening so fast, and so many things could go wrong.

  “I see Ada’s hands and also her confusion at times. And while this home needs certain repairs, it’s a gut solid house. Together we can make a life here, if that is what you want.”

  Tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision.

  “You won’t make me move?” The words tore from her heart, scratching at her throat as she spoke them.

  “Why would I make you move?”

  She shook her head and swiped at her cheeks.

  “Let me do that.” He reached forward and wiped her tears away with his thumbs.

  His hands on her skin sent her emotions scurrying in a dozen different directions. She struggled to remain focused, to control her fears and seek the answers she needed.

  “Why would I make you move, Julia?”

  “Promise me we can stay in Pebble Creek.” Staring into his eyes, she added, “You don’t own a home here, or…or back in Indiana. Do you?”

  Caleb laughed. “Nein. I live in Aaron’s barn at the cabins.”

  “I couldn’t bear to leave this place.”

  “You have my word. Wisconsin, and Pebble Creek, will be our home.”

  It was all she needed to hear.