Christmas in Apple Ridge (28 page)

She spent all day making a beautiful Christmas cake to take to him, and she wrote a love letter as part of her Christmas present. She hired a driver to take her the twenty miles to his parents’ home in Plainview.

With his gifts in tow, she arrived at his parents’ place. Gideon lived in a tiny house less than a stone’s throw from his parents, but as a single woman, she couldn’t visit him there.

When his mother opened the door, she stammered something about Gideon not being around and reluctantly invited her in. Mattie tried to have their usual relaxed conversation, but Susie was obviously upset.

Mattie wondered what was going on. If Gideon didn’t feel well enough to come to her place on Christmas Day, why wasn’t he at home resting? She visited for a minute before leaving the cake.

She hadn’t been willing to leave her love letter with his parents, so she went to his little home across the yard, intending to shove it under the door. When she reached his doorstep, she heard voices. She started to knock on the window of the door but then caught a glimpse of him through the curtains. He was holding a woman with long, free-flowing black hair, dressed in jeans and a silky gold jacket. An Englischer.

Jealousy flew over her. Nothing was as insulting as a Plain man wanting a fancy woman. Mattie followed the ways of their people, and he was supposed to respect and honor that, not go chasing after something … someone different.

She opened the door. Gideon and the girl jumped, looking as guilty as forbidden lovers caught in the act. “What’s going on?”

“Mattie.” Gideon was breathless. “What are you doing here?”

“Answer my question. What is going on?” She said each word deliberately.

The woman began to cry. “Tell her, Gideon.”

He rubbed his forehead, a habit he had when trying to figure out what to do. “Okay, Ashley, I will.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “You’re finally going to tell her the truth?”

Finally? How long had Gideon been seeing this Englischer woman?

“Go on home and rest. I’ll be over later tonight.” He escorted Ashley to the door.

Once she was gone, he turned to Mattie. “I … I’d hoped we could get through the holidays before …”

Mattie’s head spun, and her body felt as if it had turned to lead. “Tell me now, Gideon. Right now.”

“I … I think it’s best if you see other people. You’ve never dated anyone else. And I need to be free too.”

Mattie shook all over, trying her best not to cry. “What? Why?”

“It’s the way it needs to be.” His voice wavered, and he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

He had feelings for her. She could see that even as he broke
up with her. But they weren’t enough for him. She’d seen him with Englischer girls before. She’d only been fifteen the first time she saw him getting out of a girl’s car. But he always had some excuse—she’d had a flat tire, and he’d helped change it before she gave him a lift, or she was a stranger dropping by his house to see if he wanted a free puppy.

The night she saw him with Ashley, she had no choice but to set him free and go live with her brother as quickly as she could pack up all her baking equipment.

For three years she’d put her heart and soul into building a new life. And she’d done everything in her power to avoid thinking about Gideon. But seeing him now, in the flesh, brought back memories of all she’d held dear. She’d loved him. But what can be done when the one you love doesn’t feel the same way?

Mattie looked up from the kitchen table, wishing she’d accepted that cup of tea after all. “I’ve met someone.”

Gideon’s jaw clenched. “I’m happy for you.” He brushed his hand along the edge of the table. “That being the case, can we let go of the past and get along as friends?”

“I’ll try.” She played with her empty cup. “I will.”

Verna came into the kitchen with a stack of used cake pans. “I’ve been collecting these for years. Didn’t know why, ’cause you had plenty of your own. But now maybe they’ll help.” She set them on the table in front of Mattie.

“Oh, Verna, this is so kind of you.” Mattie lifted each one. There were heart-shaped, round, rectangular, Bundt, square, and ring pans. “Denki.”

Tears clouded her vision. The pain of losing her shop and everything in it still rattled her very soul.

Gideon stared into his mug, looking uncomfortable. “I know you’ll consider that what I’m about to say are the words of a man who thinks everything and everyone can be replaced. But you’ll rebuild. Whatever the insurance company doesn’t cover, the communities—both here and there—will.”

She should simply nod, but the need to tell someone who would understand pressed in hard. “I lost the notebook.”

It seemed that grief and disappointment ran through his eyes, and she found a measure of comfort in his compassion for her loss.

After he’d given her the notebook, they’d spent years going places to get ideas for creating cakes and had filled the book with rough sketches they’d drawn and pictures they’d cut out of cake-decorating magazines. She could feel his laughter wash over her as they went through museums, trying to draw ideas as they came up with them when neither one of them was any good at freehand art.

He used to take her to Front Street in Harrisburg, and they would stroll along the Susquehanna. Watching the river was
what gave her the idea for her rough-ride icing, which was a huge hit with customers. Then the two of them would eat at the Fire House Restaurant, a renovated fire station built in the eighteen hundreds. Between Gideon’s ideas and other sites in Harrisburg, she’d garnered a lot of her cake-making ideas.

As she sat across from him, remembering so many of their dates, she realized how self-absorbed she’d been. Did they ever do something he enjoyed?

She looked up and met his green eyes, wanting to acknowledge that maybe she had played more of a part in their breakup than she’d admitted. But she couldn’t say it, not without asking why he hadn’t talked to her about what bothered him in their relationship
before
he cheated.

“I guess the notebook was a little like us—years in the making and destroyed in just a few minutes.” Mattie gathered her pans. “Well, I’m just a bright spot right now, aren’t I? I think I’ll take my gloom elsewhere for a bit.”

Verna hugged her. “You’ll feel better in a few weeks, and you’ll get back on your feet again in a matter of months. You always do.”

Between her mother’s health issues and Gideon’s betrayal, she’d faced her share of difficult times in life. “You’re right. I always do.”

W
ind pushed against the enclosed buggy, making it rock unsteadily, as Gideon drove toward Zook’s Diner under the dark morning sky. He pulled onto the gravel parking lot, hopped out, and looped the strap around a hitching post.

The aroma of breakfast foods filled the air even before he opened the glass door. He walked through the tiny convenience store attached to the diner and headed straight to the pass-through that separated the restaurant from the kitchen. The place had the typical look of an outdated diner: cement floors, well-worn Formica tabletops, and a long counter with accompanying swivel chairs. It probably hadn’t had a face-lift in sixty years.

Roman, a strapping young Amish man a few years younger than Gideon, looked up from his wheelchair. “Finally, a customer!” He grinned. “Aden’s been cooking since four this
morning. But it looks like the weekend following Thanksgiving Day is going to be slow this year. What can we get for you, Gideon?”

Aden, Roman’s identical twin, gave Gideon a brief nod as he stood at the sink, washing pots and pans.

“I’ll take the house special.” Gideon wasn’t hungry, but how could he fail to support a diner that was so rural it had almost no business on the busiest shopping weekend of the year? The Hertzlers’ store stayed covered with customers on days like this, but Zook’s sat in the middle of nothing, ten miles away. “Five of them, to go.”

“Now we’re talking.” Roman wheeled himself to the takeout containers and placed five of them in his lap. Aden went to the icebox and pulled out a carton of eggs.

Gideon figured he could drop off the breakfasts at the Snyder place, where the crew of six men were trying to get the house dried in. Even though some were bound to have eaten already, they would still devour these breakfasts in no time.

“Aden, I have a proposition for you.”

Roman looked to Aden and then to Gideon. “What is it?”

Since Aden struggled with a stutter, Roman did most of the talking for him. Gideon wasn’t sure whether Aden liked it that way or the outgoing and talkative Roman just never gave his brother a chance to speak. But whatever the dynamics
of that relationship, Aden stayed in the shadows, cooking, and Roman waited tables and charmed customers. But Aden’s real skill wasn’t as a short-order cook. He was a quite talented artist.

Gideon pulled his billfold out of his pants pocket. “Remember when you drew some sketches of cakes for Mattie’s portfolio?”

Aden gave a lopsided grin. “Y-ya.”

“You heard about her cake shop burning down, right? And that she’s come home for a bit?”

“We heard,” Roman said. “Is she doing all right?”

He wasn’t so sure she was. “Considering everything, ya, I think so. But the portfolio, which she’s been adding to since she was a kid, burned in the fire.”

Aden stopped scrambling the eggs. “I’m sor- sor-”

“Ya,” Roman interrupted. “He’s sorry to hear that. We both are.”

Aden flashed a look from Roman to Gideon. Roman nodded. “Oh, ya. So what can he do for you?”

Gideon rested his forearms on the counter. “I was hoping you could remember some of the things you drew, and anything else you remember seeing in her portfolio, and would draw them again fresh.”

“Sure,” Roman said. “He’d be glad to. I bet he remembers
everything he saw in that book, but it’s been a while since he looked at it.”

“I’m pretty familiar with what all was in there, so I might be some help.”

He’d looked at her portfolio several times since they’d gone their separate ways—not that Mattie had a clue. Her brother James did, as well as Dorothy. But he was confident neither of them had ever mentioned his visits to Mattie. She didn’t want to know anything about him, and they respected that. He had no desire to alter the course of her life, but in his pitiful stabs at protecting her, he couldn’t help but keep up with her life.

Roman rolled his wheelchair out of the kitchen, carrying five takeout boxes stacked on top of one another. “Why don’t you give him a few days and then you two get together and take a look at what he’s got?” Roman went to the cash register and rang up the food items.

“If that sounds good to you, Aden, that’s what we’ll do.”

Aden nodded.

Gideon passed Roman two twenties.

“What I don’t get is why you’re helping her out. You two ended things years ago—and not on very pleasant terms.” Roman grabbed a roll of quarters and broke them open into the change drawer.

“Sometimes a man needs to redeem his past. And for the
record, this transaction is just between us. When the portfolio is complete, Aden, you can take it or mail it to her, and leave my name out of it.” He eyed the talkative one. “Okay, Roman?”

“People always think I share everything I know.” He counted out the change and passed it to Gideon. “I can keep a secret just as well as my brother.” Roman pulled bills out of the register and laid them on the shelf above the cash drawer. “Just you—” As the door to the restaurant opened, he dropped his sentence and froze in place.

Gideon turned to see the distraction. A young woman stepped inside, carrying what appeared to be a very heavy cardboard box. She looked a little familiar, but Gideon couldn’t place her. Her small, circular prayer Kapp and her flowery blue cape dress that showed below her heavy coat told him she belonged to the Old Order Mennonite sect.

He glanced at Roman and saw insecurity in his eyes, erasing all hints of his outgoing personality. He backed his wheelchair away from the cash register.

Gideon looked at Aden, and his usual lack of confidence faded as he caught her eye. Smiling, Aden came out of the kitchen and walked directly toward her.

“Morning, Aden.” She returned his smile.

Aden took the box, his eyes fixed on hers. “M-m-morning, Annie.”

Clearly, Aden didn’t want Roman speaking for him when it came to this young woman.

She lowered her head, a pink blush rising in her cheeks before she peered around him. “Hello, Roman.”

Roman’s fingers tightened on the hand rim of his wheelchair. “Is something wrong with Moses?”

Now Gideon remembered who she was—one of Moses Burkholder’s granddaughters. She didn’t live in Apple Ridge, but she came here when her
Daadi
Moses needed her.

She took off her coat. “He’s down with bronchitis, but the doctor says he’ll be fine in a week or two.”

Moses was a silent partner in the diner. Without him, the Zooks would have lost their family restaurant. Aden and Roman’s grandfather had built this place years ago and had run it without electricity. When regulators mandated that electricity had to be installed to meet new legal codes, Moses stepped in and became a partner. Members of the Old Order Amish church couldn’t have a business with electricity, but they could co-own a place with a Plain Mennonite, who could have electricity installed.