A Wedding for Julia (27 page)

S
haron 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.”

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 ignored 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?”

“Only two classes. I’m a senior this year, so I go half days—well, not even that long. I’m out by eleven.”

Sharon nodded as if she understood, but to her what he’d just said didn’t make any sense. She thought all
Englisch
students went to school through the twelfth grade.

Wess stood up and stuffed the money in his pockets. “At this rate, I’ll be able to buy—”

But before he could finish, the front door opened and a woman walked in with two small girls. The mother was probably Julia’s age but with short red hair. The girls were young. One looked to be five or six. She had brown hair pulled into two ponytails and was holding a baby doll. The other was a few years older and had red hair like her mother, which she wore in a single long braid. She was holding a small dog, who was wearing a sweater.