A Wedding for Julia

by Vannetta Chapman

  “Perhaps a look or word occasionally, but none who were serious about future plans. As I grew older and mamm’s and dat’s health grew worse, men became less interested.”

  When they reached their bedroom door, he turned her toward him, tipped up her face, and kissed her lightly on the lips. “I’m a fortunate man, Julia.”

  He wasn’t sure she believed him, but she would. He vowed then and there that one day she would.

  She slipped into their bedroom. Perhaps she needed a few minutes alone, though she hadn’t seemed disturbed by the retelling. He walked down to join Ada and Sharon in the sitting room and picked up the Budget, the same issue he’d read the night before. It was a large paper, and there were parts he would like to scan again.

  He had trouble focusing, though.

  His mind kept returning to Julia’s story. Occasionally he’d glance over the top of the paper to Ada, who was working her way through the Psalms with an occasional stop in Proverbs, and Sharon, who was again pretending to read one of the few novels Julia kept in the house.

  Several minutes later Julia joined them, and they passed a pleasant hour—the four people who made up Caleb’s odd little family. He impatiently watched the clock hands move. He could hardly wait until it was a proper time for them to be alone. There were things he wanted to say to her.

  Finally Ada rose and toddled off to bed.

  When Julia stood and began tidying the room, an expression of panic crossed his cousin’s face.

  “I think I’ll read a little longer,” she said.

  “All right.” Julia paused at the door before walking across the room and enfolding the girl in a hug. “Remember we rise extra early tomorrow.”

  Sharon nodded and went back to staring at the book.

  As he and Julia were walking down the hall to their room, Caleb heard Ada go back into the sitting room and talk softly with Sharon.

  When Julia came to bed, he honestly meant to speak with her, to tell her all that was on his heart. Perhaps he shouldn’t have asked about her first love, if it was love, but on the other hand he was glad he knew. He wanted to be able to heal the hurt places from her past, and how could he do that if he didn’t know where they were?

  He had every intention of putting those things into words, but he found it was easier to show her than it was to tell her.

  Caleb discovered that in the darkness and without saying a word he could express his feelings more tenderly, more honestly, and more completely than he would ever have imagined possible.

  Later, when he thought she was asleep, Julia turned onto her back and asked, “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Ya. You’re even older than I am. There must have been someone else.”

  His laughter slid across the room as easily as leaves falling from the trees outside their window.

  “That’s not an answer,” she teased.

  “That’s not a normal question when we’re in bed.”

  “You didn’t give me time to finish our conversation earlier.” She snuggled up to him, her back against his chest. “What was her name?”

  “Lois.” He wasn’t surprised that the name brought no real emotion with it. Too many years had passed. It was like pining over an old injury. At some point, you forgot which scars had come from which mishap. One day you woke and it didn’t matter anymore. You were simply glad you had healed.

  “How old were you?”

  “How old was I?”

  She elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re stalling by repeating my questions.”

  “Ya. It’s harder to realize how young I was then—and how old I am now—than it is to think about a young pup who fancied himself in lieb with a girl.”

  “So you weren’t? In lieb?”

  “Who is to say? I thought I was.”

  The sounds of a night bird in the tree outside their window interrupted the silence that had fallen around them. Caleb realized he could be satisfied here, with Julia. He could be content for the rest of his life.

  “What happened?”

  “Lois was young, probably too young, a mere eighteen.” He ran his fingers through Julia’s hair. It was thick and soft and felt like silk…or what he imagined silk would feel like. “We were planning to marry but hadn’t made our announcement yet.”

  “You never did?”

  He shook his head in the darkness. “She left.”

  “Left?” Julia flipped over on her back. “Moved away? Like…like Thomas?”

  “Nein. Not like Thomas.”

  Because it seemed she wanted to know, he told her all of it. How he had counted himself so lucky to have attracted the younger girl when he was twenty-five. Now he thought his feelings for her must have been infatuation, like when one of the Amish boys saw a new horse or a new buggy and thought they had to have it. He had been that way with Lois. Only people aren’t things and couldn’t be had in that way.

  “Where did she go?”

  “She would run off sometimes with her girlfriends. They would ride in cars and such. I told myself it was because she was young and she would outgrow it before we wed. Then one night she came to see me and told me they were going to Indianapolis and wouldn’t be back.”

  “To live in the city?”

  “Ya. I didn’t believe her. Six months later, I was still waiting, still sure she would show up and we’d pick up where we’d left off. Her friends did come back, but Lois stayed. Later I heard that she’d moved to Ohio and joined a Mennonite group there.”

  “She broke your heart?”

  “No, Julia. She hurt my pride, and pride is a sin, ya?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I thought she would want me more than she wanted a different life. When she didn’t, it left me confused about myself, but it didn’t break my heart. I’m not sure how much of my heart was ever involved.”

  Julia thought about that a while. Finally she snuggled closer and asked, “So what did you do next?”

  “I told myself I liked being alone—that being alone was better. That the fishing, hunting, and outdoor things my married freinden no longer had time to do, I was able to do all the time, or at least as much as I wanted. I convinced myself there would always be a chance to find another woman to share my life with.”

  Her breathing evened out, and he thought she was asleep when she reached up and touched his face. “You found me.”

  Julia’s words were as gentle as the touch of her hand, as soft as her hair, as tender as her heart. They were a whisper of love.

  Caleb fell asleep, thanking God for what had been and what was to come. He stepped into dreams where he and Julia walked through fields thick with tall stalks of corn, and in the distance he could make out the sunshine glinting off the waters of Pebble Creek.

  Chapter 22

  Sharon thought she was used to hard work. After all, she was the oldest girl in a family of seven children. Once she graduated from the eighth grade, she didn’t look for a job because there was so much work to do at home. And her parents probably figured she would marry soon. While seventeen wasn’t old maid status by any means, she had seen the occasional worried look pass between them. Those looks had increased when she’d begun seeing James.

  Carrying yet one more armful of dirty lunch dishes into Julia’s kitchen, Sharon realized she had learned several things since leaving the one-room schoolhouse in Monroe. She’d learned that sitting in a desk and learning was much easier than washing laundry for a family of nine. She’d learned that whoever came up with her favorite proverb, “Keeping a neat house is like threading beads on a string with no knot on it,” must have been a woman. And she’d learned that she adored small children, especially the preschool age.

  There was an Englisch family of three sitting in the front dining room whom she’d checked on more often than others—the impish three-year-old boy could have been the reason why. Every time she slowed at their table, he held up three fingers and declared, “Colton free.”

&nb
sp; Breakfast had been manageable, with a steady but small stream of customers.

  The lunch rush was a “slam,” as her brother Jonas would say. They had been nearly full since eleven thirty. The clock in the kitchen now said one fifteen, and still cars were pulling up in front of the house.

  “The special is ready for table eight,” Julia said, beaming even as she wiped the perspiration off of her forehead.

  Opening day for Plain Café was a success by any standard, unless you counted the collapse of its two employees—three if you included Ada, who sat by the front door and welcomed customers as they entered.

  Sharon hefted the plates and turned to march back into the main dining room, but her vision shifted, the room angled left and then right, and the plates teetered in her arms.

  “Was iss letz?” Julia was beside her immediately, reaching for the plates with one hand and steadying her with the other. “Are you ill?”

  “Nein. Only a little dizzy. I’m fine.”

  “You should rest. You haven’t had a break all day.”

  Sharon shook her head. They both knew Julia couldn’t wait on customers and cook.

  At that moment a tap was heard on the back door and then a tall, sandy-haired boy stepped inside. He wore blue jeans and a black T-shirt with cartoon characters on the front, and even from where she stood Sharon could see that he had green eyes.

  “Wess, could you take this soup and sandwich to the man sitting alone in the main dining room? It’s table eight, the one nearest the window looking over the garden.”

  “Gotcha covered.” He accepted the dishes as if he’d been carrying plates of food all his life and headed toward the elderly gentleman, who probably thought he’d been forgotten.

  Sharon didn’t want to know who he was.

  The last thing she needed or wanted was to be around a teenage boy. Just as she felt her emotions balancing, just as Ada’s voice in her mind was becoming stronger than those of her supposed friends in Monroe, she did not need to be around someone like him.

  “I think I will take a break.”

  “Sure. Here, you can have this sandwich. The little girl at table four changed her mind. And go outside—”

  She never heard the rest. She fled out the back door to the barn, to somewhere she could hide and figure out what to do.

  Twenty minutes later Sharon forced herself to walk back to the house. She couldn’t leave Julia in there alone, and she would not be run off by some Englisch boy. As she’d nibbled around the edges of the sandwich, she had thought about it and ruled out any possibility that he might be Amish and on his rumpsringa.

  For one thing, his hair was much too long. She’d caught sight of a ponytail as he’d left the kitchen. A ponytail on a boy! Second, he’d said “Gotcha covered.” No Amish boy could have pulled off that slang and sounded even marginally convincing.

  So why was an Englisch teenager helping Julia?

  It didn’t matter why, she decided, climbing the back porch steps and entering the mudroom. They had four hours until closing. She did feel better now that she’d rested and eaten a little, plus she wanted to check on Ada. She was not going to hide because of a boy.

  Julia was sitting at the table eating when she walked into the kitchen.

  “Better?”

  “Ya.”

  “Gut. Things have slowed a little, but only because they’re lingering over dessert.”

  Sharon smiled. She’d never watched someone’s dream come true before. What did that feel like? From the expression on Julia’s face, it felt better than fabulous, better than anything Sharon could imagine.

  “The woman at table one wants you to know your apple pie is better than her mother’s.” Wess placed some dirty dishes next to the sink and pulled a wad of money from his pants.

  “Do I keep this or are we sharing?” His lopsided grin widened as he spoke.

  Sharon walked to the kitchen cabinet and pulled out one of Julia’s canning jars. Unscrewing the lid, she dumped the money from her apron pockets into it. “Tips should be shared if you’re staying.”

  “Sure, I’ll stay. That’s why my mom sent me over here. To see if you needed help.”

  “Your mom?”

  “Sharon, this is Wess. He lives next door. His parents are Jeanette and Tim. You’ve heard us talk about them. They have both helped us a lot since we began redoing things for the café.”

  Sharon didn’t trust her voice to say anything, so she nodded.

  “Wess, this is Caleb’s cousin Sharon. She’s from Indiana.”

  “Indiana, huh? I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard it’s pretty cool.”

  Sharon rolled her eyes.

  Indiana was not cool, but it was home. She missed it more than she would have thought possible.

  The front door opened and shut, and Sharon remembered she was going to check on Ada.

  “Can you stay until we close?” Julia was asking. “That’s four more hours.”

  “Sure, but I’m going to text my mom so she’ll know what’s up.”

  What’s up. Did he always speak in short slangy sentences?

  It was none of her business. She checked on the tables in the front dining room and then moved to the entry hall, where Ada was still sitting, though her head was practically on her chest.

  “Let me help you upstairs.”

  “What?” Ada looked around in confusion but relaxed when she focused on Sharon’s face. “You’re a gut girl.”

  “Would you like to go upstairs and lie down?”

  She plucked at Sharon’s sleeve. “Nein. Not upstairs. My rocker maybe.”

  “All right.” Sharon waited for Ada to stand and find her cane. She didn’t want her walking alone back to their eating area while she was still barely awake. She might trip and fall. She might be hurt.

  So she waited until Ada had stood and tucked her right arm through hers. Her left hand clutched her cane as they slowly walked back to the rocker. The woman was nearly asleep again by the time Sharon had covered her with a lap quilt.

  When she returned to the front dining room with a pot of coffee in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other, a woman at table five stopped her. “That’s a very sweet thing you did, helping your grandmother.”

  “Oh, but she’s not—”

  “In this day and age, it’s nice to see young people who know how to be respectful.” This was said by the man sitting across from the woman. His head was bald and shiny on top, but a bit of gray fringe wrapped around the side. “Rare, unfortunately, and it’s nice to see.”

  Sharon thought again of trying to correct them, but instead she murmured, “Danki” and moved on to the next table. Probably people would confuse Ada as her grandmother, possibly even Julia and Caleb as her parents. What difference did it make? She wouldn’t be staying long enough for it to matter.

  The afternoon was less busy than the morning, though Sharon admitted to herself it was still nice to have an extra pair of hands. Wess was able to take care of any orders that were ready when she was settling a customer’s bill. And just when she thought Julia could tell him they didn’t need him anymore, people started arriving and ordering food to take home.

  Why hadn’t they folded together some of the take-out boxes ahead of time? Instead, the pieces of cardboard sat flat and stacked neatly in a pile on the top shelf in the mudroom. Wess laughed, pulled them off the shelf without the help of a stool, and began putting them together. Julia wrapped the food in foil, and Sharon added up each order on the palm-sized calculator Caleb had purchased at the grocery.

  The take-out rush lasted until exactly six p.m., when Julia joyfully flipped the sign to “Closed,” Caleb stepped into the mudroom, and Wess raised his hand in a high-five gesture to all.

  Julia seemed at a loss, and Caleb only raised an eyebrow. Sharon did not want to encourage Wess into thinking they were friends, but she did feel a little sorry for him, standing there holding his hand up midair, waiting. So she slapped her palm against his and ig
nored the grin that spread across his face.

  “Gut day, huh?” Caleb placed his hat on the peg by the door.

  “Very gut.” Julia tapped her fingers against the counter. “Wait until I tell you about it.”

  “Can you tell me while we’re eating? I’m starved.” Everyone groaned, and Caleb glanced around in confusion. “What did I say? I thought you liked hungry customers.”

  “No more customers,” Wess explained, flopping in mock exhaustion onto the kitchen stool.

  “Actually, I saved some of the soup and cornbread, plus we have dessert left over.”

  “The heavens declare the glory of God.” Ada hobbled into the room. She’d been standing on the back porch staring across the fields. “What kind of soup did you make, dochder?”

  The conversation turned to food and customers and the amount of guests they’d had. Julia pulled out her list, checked off what had already been done for the next day, and added what would still need to be finished for the morning meal.

  Wess dropped the last of his tips into the jar and shook it back and forth. “Ready to count this up?”

  Sharon shrugged, but in truth she was curious. She hadn’t decided what she was going to do with her money yet, but she thought maybe she should give some of it to Caleb and Julia. They were letting her stay in their home for free.

  She followed Wess to a table in the front dining room, and they counted out the money, dividing bills from change and adding it all together twice to be sure the total was correct. Sharon split it and pushed half across the table to him.

  “No way.” When he shook his head, some of his hair escaped from the rubber band holding it back. “I wasn’t even here for the first part of the day.”

  He pulled out two of the bills and gave them back to her. “Tomorrow we’ll have two tip jars. One for the morning, which you keep, and another for the afternoon, which we’ll share.”

  “You’re coming back tomorrow?”

  Wess shrugged. “Why not? I don’t have anything else to do. In case you haven’t noticed, this town isn’t exactly hopping.”

  Hopping. “Don’t you have school?”