Abby Finds Her Calling (33 page)

“So is it true, what Zanna told me? That you said you’d marry her anyway when you found out about the baby?” Jonny blurted out when the saw fell silent.

“Why do you think she’d lie about that?”

“I didn’t say she’d lie! I just—” Jonny let out a frustrated sigh as he stepped out of James’s way. “I can’t feature you raising another guy’s kid, let alone marrying a woman who got herself pregnant while she was engaged to you!”

“She didn’t do that to herself, Jonny,” James snapped. “And, here again, if you have to ask such a question, you have no concept about what it means to truly love someone.” He drew in a deep, steadying
breath and then fitted a dowel cutter on the end of his saw. “Why are you here? I’d like to finish this carriage for your family.”

Jonny’s stiff shoulders dropped. He studied the dark gray fiberglass body and the assembled undercarriage with new interest. “That’s another thing I don’t get,” he remarked in a quieter tone. “Why did the Lambrights invite my mamm and sisters to stay there, after the way Mamm badgered Zanna about having a baby? And now you’re replacing the carriage that burned up because Dat didn’t clean the chimney?”

“Jah, because it’s the right thing to do. Like I’ve told you before, we Amish look after each other.” James positioned the first spoke so he could cut the cone-shaped end into a dowel peg that would fit into the outer rim of the wheel, but he held off on flipping the power switch. At least Jonny seemed to be listening now. “Is there anything else you want to know?”

The iciness in Jonny’s blue eyes melted a bit. “Okay, so maybe I’m being a pest and getting way too personal,” he admitted in a lower voice, “but now that the shock of Zanna’s big news is wearing off, maybe… maybe I’m trying to figure out if I could ever be the man she could marry. I—I have no idea how to be a husband, or a father.”

“And you’re asking me?” James drew another deep breath to still the painful throbbing of his heart. Jonny’s question had struck a deep nerve, reminding him again of how much he’d lost when Zanna left him. “I was ready and willing—twice—to take on those roles. But now?” He sighed. “That opportunity has passed me by. Maybe you should ask somebody with more experience. Seems to me Sam Lambright knows what it takes to hold a family together.”

James guided the first spoke into the dowel cutter, easing his ruffled emotions with the steady, systematic rhythm of a job he’d done hundreds of times. Abby was right: work was the cure for a lot of ills because it gave his mind something productive to focus on. He had, indeed, forgiven Zanna for the hurt she’d caused him these past
couple of months, but dealing with Jonny Ropp’s questions was another challenge altogether.

At least the kid was considering Zanna’s needs now. It was an improvement over roaring through Cedar Creek on his noisy motorcycle, stirring up the chickens and the sheep. James continued cutting dowels, wondering how long Jonny would hang around watching him. When he had completed that task, he reached for two arcs of wood on the workbench, which would form the outer rim of the wheel.

“Okay, well—sorry to be a bother,” Jonny murmured as he glanced toward the door. “I figured you’d be the easier one to ask about all this stuff, after the way I skipped out on Zanna at the hospital. Maybe it’s her I should be talking to.”

James felt a smile warming his face. “Sounds like your best idea yet. Gut luck with that.”

Jonny’s lips twitched. “Yeah, I’ll need it, probably. Later, dude.”

Resisting the urge to protest that slang label, James picked up his pneumatic drill to make the holes in the outer rim of the wheel, where the doweled ends would fit. The wind whipped into the shop, blowing wood shavings around his feet, and he glanced toward the door. Jonny was looking at him with a softer… downright grateful expression as he stood half in and half out of the shop.

“Thanks, Graber. For everything.”

James nodded, struck by what a decent kid Jonny could be when he gave it a shot. “You’re welcome. I hope it all works out, and I hope your dat’s feeling better soon.”

A week later, Abby sat at their second sewing frolic, where several of the women and girls had gathered around Barbara’s big kitchen table to make a crazy quilt. With tea, cocoa, and Mamm’s sticky buns on the sideboard, quilting for the Ropp family was a perfect way to spend a snowy mid-December afternoon. Abby and Emma sat together, and Marian Byler had joined them today, bringing baby
Elizabeth in a carrier. It was good to see Zanna and the Coblentz twins, Mary and Martha, huddled together, too, over the odd-shaped scraps of calico and twill they were arranging on squares of quilt backing.

“Sleep deprivation? You’re telling me that missing out on a few hours’ sleep was what was making Rudy so crazy?” Bessie Mast paused to thread her needle, which allowed Barbara to explain the diagnosis.

“It’s a serious situation if it goes on for long—and you know how men tend to ignore the signs that their body is out of kilter,” she added with a wry grin. “The surgeon said Rudy’s pulse was so low, a part of his mind was
afraid
to go to sleep for fear he wouldn’t wake up. So he wasn’t getting much oxygen, either, which made his heart condition worse.”

“So that pacemaker will fix him up?” Eva Detweiler had been following the conversation closely while she’d featherstitched over the seams of a pieced square. “Could be my Zeke needs to get checked. He’s not old enough to be feeling so tired—and his dat passed from heart failure at an early age.”

“What we need at our house is a cure for Abe’s snoring,” Beulah Mae chimed in. “If he’d quit sawing logs all night, I’d get so much beauty sleep, why, who knows what a kind, polite—and gorgeous!—gal I might become?”

Abby laughed along with all the other women. She and Emma glanced over to where Eunice sat at a small table with Eva’s two little girls, cutting the larger fabric scraps into pieces for the rest of them to stitch together. “It’s gut that your mamm’s helping us even if she can’t see well enough to sew,” Abby remarked quietly.

Emma smiled as she seamed a scrap of red gingham to a piece of yellow twill. “Jah, she was happy to get out today—and the way Eva’s girls, Polly and Laura, are chatterin’, Mamm can’t dwell on her aches and pains,” she added. “James took Dat to the shop today to count out bolts and whatnot for the wagon they’re making the Ropps.”

The kitchen door opened and Lois Yutzy stepped in, her black coat speckled with big white flakes. “Well, I wouldn’t believe it, except I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” she exclaimed as she hung her bonnet on a peg. “I took the stew and biscuits out for the men’s dinner, and they got the Ropps’ new roof on this morning. They’ll have the house enclosed by tonight.”

“Jah, when Amos and the bishop take charge of a project, you’d better believe it’ll scoot along ahead of schedule,” Mamm said, sipping her tea and nodding in approval. “Awful nice of those Mennonites to bring out a generator and lights so the crew can work longer hours on these short days.”

“Well, the Fishers appreciate Adah’s working there as much as she and Rudy depend on selling their milk to the cheese factory.” Lois eased into a chair Abby had pulled up to the table for her. She glanced toward the end of the table, where Barbara’s three daughters, as well as Zanna, Mary, and Martha, sat. “Also a nice surprise to see Jonny there, putting his mamm’s new cookstove together,” she remarked brightly. “Amos told me Jonny drove past the farm last week, and when he saw how the fellas were building a new house, he stayed to help them. Guess he did some tall talking, and Gideon’s come back, too, to keep the cows milked while their dat’s laid up.”

“Well,
that’s
a gut sign,” Abby replied. This information was such a positive surprise that it took her two tries to thread her needle. “Maybe it’s finally dawning on him that he could’ve lost his family in that fire.”

“Goodness, how long has it been since we last saw Gideon?” Bessie asked.

Eva snipped the end of her embroidery floss. “Wouldn’t it be a wonderful-gut thing if those boys came home to stay?”

“You know it’d be a load off Adah’s mind, having them back,” Barbara remarked.

Abby glanced up in time to see Zanna nip her lip. A week had passed since her sister had told Jonny about the baby, and he’d made
himself scarce ever since. Abby’s heart went out to Zanna as she remained focused on her sewing. Why was it, when Zanna did what was right, the wrong things happened next? If Zanna’s expression was anything to go by, hearing that Jonny was working in Cedar Creek only made her feel worse, even though everyone was pleased that he was helping with the new house.

“Just so happens I’m signed up to deliver their noon meal tomorrow,” Gail said with a sly smile. “I could use a hand, Aunt Zanna. If you get my meaning.”

Emma giggled. “What
you
mean, Gail, is that you’re going out to see if Gideon Ropp’s as fine and feisty as you remember. No secret you were sweet on him before he left town to tend all those chickens.”

The Coblentz twins snickered, elbowing Zanna and provoking a smile from her. Abby felt grateful to Mary and Martha for pitching in on these sewing frolics, and especially for their acceptance of Zanna now that her life had spun outside the lines that defined their own futures. As she looked around the table, at familiar faces lined with love and laughter, Abby realized that gatherings like these were the batting and backing that held the crazy quilt of their lives together. Every one of these women had her own talents and strengths—added her own colors to the community—yet despite differences of opinion and age, they fit together all of a piece, like the multipatterned squares of this crazy quilt they would complete today.

Gail grinned. “Jah, well, the fella you’re setting
your
hopes on smells like sheep most of the time, Emma. And Matt’s no more aware of how you feel than Gideon’s thinking about me.”

“Got to poke men with a crochet hook to get their attention, most days,” Phoebe remarked. She smoothed the large square she’d just completed, smiling at the way the colors and patterns went together. “I might go with you tomorrow—”

“Ooooh, going to gawk at Owen, swinging that hammer with his sleeves rolled up,” Mary teased.

“Jah,” said Martha, her freckled face alight with mischief, “but instead of that crochet hook, I’d take a big pan of cherry cobbler. Owen’s holding out for a girl who’s as gut a cook as our mamm—”

“And who picks up after him, same as she does,” Mary added with an emphatic nod. “Wants his things all neat and tidy—shirts pressed just so—but he shows no inclination to lift a finger when it comes to keeping his room neat.”

“Blames it on Noah, that their room is such a sty.”

Abby and the older women smiled at one another as the Coblentz twins chattered on. Hadn’t they all had similar conversations when they were girls gathered around a quilting circle?

Abby wondered if things would be different now with James if she had baked him more cherry cobblers—or poked him straight out with a crochet hook of words about her feelings for him?

Thoughts like that took her nowhere, of course. The last time Abby had spoken with James, he’d shared his frustration over the way Noah often showed up tardy and sleepy-eyed—sure signs that the young redhead was out late, pushing his rumspringa to the limit. James felt Noah showed an aptitude for painting and restoration, though, and he had a good eye for welding. It had hardly been romantic talk.

But James was moving forward. He’d adjusted the expectations he’d had about being married two months ago, just as Abby had reached that moment last year at about this time, when she’d asked Amos and Owen Coblentz to draw up plans for her house. If folks were to find any contentment in life, they had to stop looking wistfully backward so they could forge ahead with a clear vision.

And how could she help Zanna move on, too, now that Jonny Ropp seemed to be ignoring her?

“I don’t see how taking these rugs over with the men’s dinner will change anything,” Zanna protested as she dressed to go with Phoebe and Gail the next day. “I made that first one with the blue dress fabric for Adah, jah, but the rest were for selling in the store.”

Abby gazed into her sister’s cornflower eyes, wondering how best to explain her theory. “Six rugs you’ve made over the past couple months, but you’re keeping them around… like you can’t quite let go of them. Maybe because each one turned out prettier than the last,” she added with a smile. “Maybe if you consider this your goodwill offering, and let Jonny and the other fellas see how you’re giving the work of your heart and hands, just like they are, it’ll show how far you’ve come in forgiving the woman who railed at you the loudest when you decided to keep your baby.”

Zanna considered the suggestion, looking doubtful. “But isn’t that being prideful?”

“No more prideful than those men sharing their best talents, knowing they’re good at what they do,” she said with a laugh. “Maybe Jonny will realize how much Sam and James and the others are donating—not because Rudy’s been nice to them but because they believe in helping folks who are in a bad way. Your rugs would be especially for Adah, too. More personal than a house, even though that’s the bigger gift.”

Zanna said thoughtfully, “Like the woman in Jesus’ story who put in the two coins, and He said it was the greater gift because it was all she had?”

“Jah, that’s a gut way to think of it—as long as you don’t go telling folks about it. That’s where the prideful part would come in.”

Zanna went to her room and came back with three of her rugs rolled up. She picked up the tin of decorated Christmas cookies she’d made the day before. “I’d better be scooting along. We’ve still got to stop by Beulah Mae’s café to pick up the roast beef.”

As she walked down the path that Abby had shoveled to Sam’s house, Zanna hoped her older sister was right: maybe donating her rugs would show Jonny that her heart was in the right place. And if he didn’t take the hint, or wouldn’t talk to her, well… she had planned to live without his help, anyway. For all she knew, he would disappear again after his dat came home from the hospital.

When she reached the carriage her nieces had loaded, Zanna tossed the rugs into the backseat and then climbed in beside them, careful not to disturb the two pans of cobbler on the floor. “Morning to you, Aunt Zanna!” Gail said from the front.