A Wedding for Julia

by Vannetta Chapman

  “True?” Wess asked.

  “Maybe. I get up at four thirty.”

  “Oh! No. Do not tell me that. It’s still night at four thirty.” He dodged his mother’s push.

  “I don’t want to hear any complaining on Monday at seven when your alarm beeps.”

  “Shaaa-ron. You said you’d see our room.” Victoria grabbed one hand and Zoey laced her fingers through the other.

  They were pulling her across the living room and down the hall when Tim stepped out of what must have been the master bedroom. She’d seen him several times at Julia’s, but not in the last few days. Not since Wess had shared about their troubles in Chicago.

  He smiled and ran a hand over his head—which was bald and shiny, even in the semidarkness of the hall. “Sharon. It’s great to see you.”

  “You too, Mr. Elliott.”

  “It seems my girls have captured you.”

  “Daddy, she promised.” Victoria flopped her head to the side.

  “Uh-huh. Well, if you become lost in the piles of toys, holler. We’ll send help.”

  He didn’t seem stressed. In fact, he seemed like most every other father she’d known, only in Englisch clothes. He watched his girls drag her away, a look in his eyes that said he was relieved to have a few moments of rest and also he knew their young ages wouldn’t last. It seemed to Sharon that parents had so much to balance—devotion, exhaustion, and the future.

  She thought of Caleb and Julia’s spat the night before. It really wasn’t a surprise. They were both working so hard, and they barely knew each other. What Caleb had said had sounded like something one of her brothers might have said, though he’d have been given kitchen chores for rudeness. Sharon didn’t think anyone would be giving Caleb kitchen duty. In fact, she’d heard him offer to help and Julia had turned him down.

  Probably because her feelings were still hurt. Were adults that much different than teenagers? Did she want to be married and have a houseful of babies? Because Amish didn’t stop with two or three.

  Wess’s words came back to her. “We’re kind of too young to know where we want to be or what we want to do.”

  Sharon loved children, but she was only seventeen. She wasn’t sure when she’d be ready to have her own. Maybe it was okay that she didn’t know. Maybe Wess was right.

  “Do you like it?” Victoria let go of her hand and fell onto a purple beanbag chair.

  “Do you want to play?” Zoey pulled her toward a corner of the room that was full of dolls.

  Sharon had never seen so many, except maybe when she had shopped in a store.

  “We can play with them. Which one do you like best?”

  “She’s too old for that, Zoey.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Is too.”

  “Is not. Tell her you’re not, Sharon.” Zoey tugged on her hand until she knelt on the floor next to her and the dolls.

  “I haven’t played with a boppli in a while. My little schweschder, Rachel, likes to play with her dolls. They’re a little different from yours.”

  “What’s a schweschder?” Victoria sat down beside them.

  “What’s a boppli?” Zoey asked.

  “A schweschder is a sister, and boppli can mean baby or doll.”

  “You have a sister?” Zoey fell over onto the pile of dolls, giggling.

  Victoria picked up one of her sister’s dolls and studied it. “What did you mean that her dolls are different?”

  So Sharon explained that Ruthie’s dolls were Plain, with clothes made in an Amish fashion and with no face.

  Zoey’s voice dropped to a hushed whisper. “They have no face?”

  “Think of it as a coloring page you haven’t colored yet. Instead, you imagine what her face would look like.”

  Zoey thought about that a minute. “I like to color,” she declared, and then she threw her arms around Sharon’s neck, nearly pushing her over backward.

  “I like coloring and I like you!” After a quick hug, she was off, digging through the pile of dolls and finding three that would do for Sharon.

  Victoria went to her side of the room and pulled two dolls off of a shelf. Apparently she was too old to play with dolls on a regular basis but not quite ready to give them up yet. For the next few minutes, they changed clothing, combed hair, and set out tea things at a tiny table. Sharon noticed that Zoey’s favorite doll, the one with the sweater like hers, remained in her pocket. She seemed to be exempt from the mass of toys on the floor. She was special.

  “Tell me they are not making you serve tea to dolls.” Wess’s voice in her ear caused her to jump, nearly knocking over a doll in a chair.

  “You’ve been serving folks all day, and now you have to wait on dolls. That is totally not fair.” Wess held out a hand, which she accepted, and he helped her to her feet.

  “Where are you taking her?” Victoria glanced up, a doll in both hands.

  Zoey gestured to the tea party in progress. “Yeah, Sharon can’t go. We’re not done. No one’s had their tea yet.”

  “You’re done now. Time for dinner, my little minions.”

  Chapter 28

  Julia realized she had overreacted the night before.

  And she even understood how Caleb could be tired of eating the same meals every day. The menu was predictable. The menu was…well, it was printed and laminated.

  Food was for nutrition, but it could still be interesting. She had longed to open a café because she enjoyed cooking. What good was that if she made all of Pebble Creek happy but frustrated her own family? She was a little weary of eating the same things herself if she thought about it. She’d just been too busy and excited and tired to focus on the problem.

  Caleb’s comment had surprised her, but wouldn’t she rather he be honest? She shouldn’t fault a man for that. Well, she could. However, Caleb had admitted several times that he was clumsy with words, and he had tried to apologize.

  As for the bruises she’d seen the night before, she didn’t even want to think about those. She needed to talk to him about why they had frightened her. His health was important to both of them. That was a hard thing for her to admit. She was finding there were many things she didn’t like to admit. It was easier to make lists and mix casseroles and serve strangers.

  Maybe she should talk to him about his mother’s letter. Her stomach turned once, like the special pork chops she was sautéing, and then it flipped and settled back down. She wasn’t ready to talk about the letter or babies. One problem at a time.

  Sharon had agreed to eat at the Elliotts’, which completely surprised Julia. She wasn’t sure if Zoey and Victoria were winning Sharon’s heart or if Wess was. A budding romance between Sharon and Wess could be another problem, but not one she had to solve tonight. She should talk to Caleb about it, maybe tomorrow. She had an urge to start a list, just in case she forgot something.

  That was ridiculous, though. Who made a list of their problems?

  Ada had opted to eat leftovers earlier, and she was now reading upstairs. Maybe her mother had realized she needed a little time alone with her husband, or maybe the week had worn her out.

  She heard the stamping of boots at the back door, and then Caleb walked into the kitchen.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Mamm is upstairs. Sharon’s next door.”

  “So we’re all alone?”

  “Ya.” She glanced back at him and smiled tentatively. She had been rude the night before. Should she apologize for that now?

  Caleb walked behind her, stepped close, and craned his neck over her shoulder. “Smells gut.”

  “It does?”

  “I haven’t had pork chops in a long time.”

  “They’ll be ready in ten minutes. I only need to make the gravy.”

  “Gravy too?” The smile on his face reminded her of a young boy, which reminded her of the letter from Betsy and the scar on his hand. She’d meant to ask him about it.

  “I can clean up in ten minutes.”

&
nbsp; They ate sitting next to each other with the last of the day’s light playing outside the window.

  Caleb told her about his week. One order of groceries had been filled incorrectly, causing him to make a trip twice. Red had shied away from a truck, nearly tossing them both into a ditch. He’d spent twenty minutes calming the horse down, and that had made him arrive home later than he would have liked to. The highlight of his delivery days had been the large buck he’d seen standing at the side of the road, just watching and waiting.

  She asked about Lydia, but there had been no change.

  “Aaron says her last visit with the midwife went fine.”

  “That’s gut.”

  “Not that I know much about midwives.”

  Julia thought of the letter, tucked safely in her drawer upstairs, but she still wasn’t ready to discuss babies and her hopes and fears. So instead she reached out and touched his right hand, between the thumb and forefinger, on the scar.

  “I’m supposed to ask you about this.”

  “Ya?” Caleb sat back, claiming her hand and running his fingers along her palm.

  A light shiver ran up both of Julia’s arms. Would she always feel this way when he touched her?

  “Your mamm wrote again. She said Aaron had something to do with it.”

  “He did.” Caleb laughed. “I was freinden with Matt, Aaron’s older cousin. We’d been in school together and continued to spend time with one another as we grew older. The night of the accident we had been out of school for several years. We both worked on our daed’s farm all day and would sneak away to fish and hunt any time we could, though it sounds strange to say grown men were sneaking out at night. But you know how farm work is—there’s always something else to be done. So twice a week we would slip away to one of our favorite fishing spots. Aaron had just started school that year. He was a little runt of a kid who insisted on following us around, especially on weekends when he stayed at his aenti’s house.”

  Julia tried to picture Aaron small and skinny, maybe the same size as Zoey.

  “One night we were out fishing at this pond. It wasn’t our pond, and we probably shouldn’t have been fishing on it. But the old guy who owned it was a member in our district. He didn’t seem to mind. At least he never said so.”

  “Did he know you were there?”

  “Hard to say. We usually sneaked in the back of his property.”

  “Why?”

  “If you sneaked in the front, he’d put you to work. He claimed boys took too much time off, and he’d set you to helping in his field or his barn. We never dared say no for fear he would tell our parents we weren’t at school.”

  “You skipped school?”

  “Only once or twice. And only on days that nothing was really happening.”

  Julia rolled her eyes. He’d feel differently if it were his son ditching class. The thought popped into her mind before she had time to squash it.

  “We were too old to be told on by this point, but still we’d fish at his place occasionally, always at night. Less chance of getting caught that way.”

  “I’m shocked.”

  “We’d always leave him some of the fish on his back porch in his icebox. I think we were doing him a favor.” Caleb scrubbed a hand across his jaw. His beard had come in nice and full, completely brown, unlike the hair on his head, which had a peppering of gray.

  “The night mamm wanted me to tell you about, Matt and I had been fishing maybe twenty minutes when we heard something behind us. I thought it was a wild dog, but nein—it was Aaron.”

  “He’d followed you.”

  “Exactly. He was no taller than my waist, but he’d followed us and hid until it was too late for us to send him back. So we let him stay. And he whined so much we finally let him fish. Only thing was, he couldn’t cast so well yet.”

  Julia pulled in her breath. “A fishhook?”

  “Right through my hand. I reached out to swat it away. The thing was headed straight toward Matt’s head. Instead of dropping the tip of his rod, Aaron jerked on it, and pulled the hook right through the flesh of my hand.”

  Julia traced the scar with her index finger. She thought of the bruises she’d seen the night before, and she knew the answer to her next question before she even asked it.

  “Did you go to the doctor?”

  “Nein. Then we would have had to explain what we were doing, and why we were acting like schoolboys. Matt cut the hook with a pair of pliers we kept in the tackle box, and then he pushed it out. The incident completely ruined our fishing as my hand wouldn’t stop bleeding, so we had to leave. When I got home I found the basket of medical supplies my mamm kept—”

  “Tell me this wasn’t an everyday occurrence.”

  “Not exactly, but it wasn’t rare, either. With six boys medical supplies were always coming in handy. I poured some of the bubbly stuff on it—”

  “Hydrogen peroxide.”

  “Right. Then I slapped some cream from a tube over that and bandaged it up.”

  “Did you even think you might need a tetanus shot?”

  “I had one the year before. Mamm made sure she kept our shots up to date, especially the tetanus shot.”

  Julia closed her eyes. Maybe there was a reason Betsy had told her to ask about the scar. Possibly Betsy had guessed there were things about Caleb she needed to understand.

  Caleb leaned forward. With his fingertips he traced a path from her eye to the tip of her chin. “It’s only a scar. Everything healed fine.”

  He kissed her softly. Instead of pulling away, she scooted closer. Caleb’s hand went to her kapp, releasing the pins which held it, and then he worked his fingers through her braid.

  Closing her eyes, Julia allowed her tension and her worries to melt away. She nearly groaned when Caleb began massaging her scalp, then her neck, and finally her shoulders.

  “We can soak the dishes.” He nibbled on her ear.

  “I made dessert.”

  “It’ll be perfect for breakfast.”

  How could she argue? Suddenly washing dishes didn’t seem to matter, and there were only the two plates. They would keep, but moments like this? Something told her they might be rare. So she followed Caleb to the kitchen, placed her dish into the sink, and added soap as he ran enough water to cover them.

  He turned and kissed her once more, and then he reached to turn out the gaslight.

  “Leave it for Sharon,” she whispered.

  “Gut idea.”

  Caleb led her upstairs to their room, to the one place she could put aside every single thing on her list and just be. She didn’t protest when he helped remove the few remaining hairpins. In the darkness, he rubbed away the knots in her shoulders and left a trail of kisses as he brushed her hair away from the back of her neck.

  Julia felt like her garden—tenderly cared for.

  She realized she might not understand all of Caleb’s past. She certainly didn’t know their future and whether it would or would not include children. But she couldn’t doubt his feelings for her as he joined her in the big bed under the double wedding ring quilt.

  Chapter 29

  Dinner had been the same and also very different from what Sharon was used to. With the three Elliott kids, herself, and Tim and Jeanette, the table was more crowded than at Julia’s. It was more like home.

  Many people thought the Amish ate quietly with no one speaking, but at Sharon’s house mealtimes had always been rather busy affairs. It was a time when everyone caught up on the news of the day. Sheer numbers guaranteed a small degree of chaos. After all, with seven children there was bound to be a certain amount of jostling for the last biscuit, the occasional frog sneaked into the house by way of someone’s pocket, and once in a while a tense situation because one or the other of them had managed to find themselves in trouble.

  The Elliotts’ dinner table was similar as far as the chaos factor, but it was different in other ways. Soft music continued to play from the living room. The girls ea
ch wanted a special place for their dolls at the table, but Jeanette convinced them that all of the baby dolls were full from their late afternoon tea. Tim blessed the food with a short, simple, and verbal grace. Amish prayers were always silent. Then there was Wess, glancing at her every few moments, offering to refill her glass of water, and touching her hand when he asked her to pass the basket of bread.

  Conversations started and stopped before bouncing from one topic to another. Sharon finally learned the story behind Wess’s long hair, which oddly enough was connected to Victoria’s bracelet.

  The older Elliott girl was sitting on Sharon’s left, and Wess was sitting on her right. Each time Sharon passed Victoria a dish, she noticed the plastic bracelet on her arm and the words “Race 4 a Cure.”

  “Tell me about your bracelet, Victoria.”

  The young girl pushed a forkful of spaghetti into her mouth and said, “It’s—”

  “Chew and swallow first.” Jeanette delivered the reminder with a smile, and Victoria moved her head left, right, and left again as she followed her mother’s directions.

  “It’s for my Aunt Noreen. She has cancer, so we’re racing for her.” Victoria smiled and popped another forkful of spaghetti into her mouth.

  “My sister,” Jeanette explained.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, and actually she’s in remission. The treatments have worked very well.”

  “That’s why Wess is growing hair like a girl,” Zoey explained, giggling when he sent her a warning look. “It is like a girl. You have a ponytail.”

  Sharon glanced at Wess, but he only shrugged.

  “The program is called Locks of Love.” Jeanette sat back and sipped her iced tea. “Have you heard of it?”

  “Nein.”

  “They make custom wigs and hairpieces for children who have lost their own hair due to various diseases.”

  “Like cancer.”

  “Yes, or the radiation therapy and chemotherapy that accompanies cancer.”

  “There are other reasons too, though.” Wess set his fork down and reached for more bread. “When we visited Aunt Noreen at the hospital, she took us to the children’s ward.”