by Kelly Long
“Dat, can we put up Christmas decorations?”
Jess looked up from his evening reading. Constance, Hope, and Lilly Ruth stood at the bottom of the stairs three across, as if standing shoulder to shoulder could keep him from denying them.
They should be in bed already, but at least they were dressed to go to sleep in their plain white nightdresses, their hair all brushed and shiny, teeth clean and faces washed. A far cry from where they had been a week or two ago.
He shook his head. “There’s too much to do around here to mess with all of that.” He was proud of his girls and the changes they had made, but adding more to their chores right now just wasn’t a smart move. They had barely begun to see the light at the end as it were.
He did his best to make his words gentle, but tears welled in young Lilly Ruth’s eyes. “We didn’t have decorations last year, either.”
Because they had been in mourning, only having lost Linda Grace a couple of months before.
“Please, Dat.” Hope danced in place, then pushed her glasses back up onto her nose.
“Please.” Constance gave him that look, the one he had such a hard time saying no to. Well, the old Jess had. The new Jess had to stick to the plan. The house was clean and uncluttered for the first time in months.
He held his place in the Bible using one finger between the delicate pages. “I don’t know. We still have so much to do.”
Constance pulled herself to her full height, as if that would somehow convince him to change his mind. “The dishes are all washed. The floors swept. And the nice ladies keep bringing food. Everything is done. Why can’t we put up Christmas?”
Everything was done for now, but it would start all over again tomorrow. Despite the satisfaction he felt at having caught up his work, it wasn’t at the end. It would just keep on going and going and going. But he didn’t want to disappoint his girls. They had been through so much already. The thought was exhausting. Maybe he should wait to decide until he wasn’t so tired. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“Jah.”
His girls seemed disappointed, but they came over one by one, kissed him good night, and trudged up the stairs. At least they weren’t crying or hurt and that in itself was a good thing. True, they were all caught up in the daily chores and he vowed they would never get behind again. And yes, the eligible and interested ladies in the district had seen fit to feed them for the last several days, so cooking hadn’t been necessary. How long that would hold out Jess wasn’t sure. Maybe only until word got around that he had set his mind to Carrie Byler. As for decorating for the holiday, he couldn’t find any reason in his heart or mind as to why not.
When the girls got home from school the following day, Jess was waiting for them.
Together they ate a quick snack of cheese and crackers followed by the monkey bread someone had left on the porch while he was out walking the fences. There was no note, just the bread, his favorite.
Thankfully they hadn’t had any snow since that first set of flurries, but he knew it was only a matter of time. They needed it, though, if the farmers were going to have a successful season come the spring. But he couldn’t help but be a little appreciative to the dry ground as he plodded up and down the fences. There would be plenty of snow and mud soon enough.
After the milking, the four of them went back to the house and stoked up the fire.
“Are you ready?” Jess asked his girls.
“For what, dat?”
“To put up the Christmas decorations.”
Their faces lit up and Jess’s heart melted. They needed this. Normalcy, every day, just being together as a family. Even as he struggled this past year to provide for them and be both mother and father, he realized now he had failed on both accounts. He could never be their mother, and he had been too wrapped up in his own problems to be a gut vatter to them, as well.
The girls danced around as he opened the boxes he had taken down from the attic that very afternoon.
With more delight than he ever remembered seeing on their faces, the girls unwrapped the decorations: fat white pillar candles, strands of dried cranberries, anise, and cinnamon sticks, and silky springs of holly with bright red berries. Then the most beautiful decoration of all: a faceless nativity set carved out of delicate wood.
“We need pine branches,” Constance said. “Mamm always put out pine branches.”
“They smelled so good,” Hope agreed.
Jess’s throat tightened. So this was what it would be like to start to live again. There was pain, but happiness. He loved that the girls fed their memories of their mother. That they wanted to honor past traditions and keep them going still.
“Jah.” He nodded. “Pine branches, it is. Everyone, get on your coats. Let’s get out there before it gets dark.”
“Tell me again why I’m here?” Bernice asked Sarah. They were standing in the parking lot at the market waiting to load into the wagon. Bernice pulled her coat a little tighter around her and shoved her hands in her pockets to keep them warm.
“Because you love to go caroling?”
She shook her head.
“You love the elderly? I mean, we are going to the nursing home.”
“Not quite.”
“Because you love being around widows and widowers.”
Bernice shook her head. “See, that’s just it. I don’t like to sing, and I don’t belong with a group of people who have all lost their spouses.”
“But you do like old people.”
Bernice shot Sarah a look, the one she usually reserved for Johnny Lapp on those days when he couldn’t hold himself in check any longer. “Why am I really here?”
“Word around town is that Jess Schmucker is looking for a wife.”
“Jah. He told me as much.”
Sarah nudged her arm. “See?”
“See what?”
“He likes you.”
Bernice’s heart jumped a beat, then settled back into its normal rhythm. The scowl that Jess wore whenever she was around was a sure sign that he didn’t like her. Then again, she didn’t know if he scowled all the time or only when she was around. What difference did it make?
“There he is.” Sarah elbowed her.
“Would you stop that?” She bumped Sarah’s shoulder.
“He’s looking over here.”
He was. And there was the scowl. She hadn’t noticed it before. That meant it was reserved for her.
“Go talk to him.” Sarah nudged her forward, and Bernice felt as if they had stepped back in time. They were fourteen again, and Bernice was trying to gain Jacob’s attention when he only had eyes for her sister.
But Bernice didn’t have time to decide before Jess Schmucker started their way.
CHAPTER 7
“Where are you going?”
Jess stopped and turned back to face Dan. Where had he been going? He hadn’t even realized that he had started walking until Dan called him back.
They had arrived at the meeting site a little later than everyone else. Typical Reba, his sister had shown up fifteen minutes late to stay with the girls. Then he’d spent ten minutes arguing with her about whether or not Bernice Yoder would be there. Why would she? It wasn’t like she was a widow. And he had no cause to believe that she would show up.
That had to explain why the minute he saw her he started in her direction without even telling his feet to carry him there.
“Jess?”
Jess frowned, shook his head, and turned his full attention back to Dan. “Nowhere,” he said. It was almost the truth.
For some reason he wanted to go talk to Bernice, which was ridiculous. Why would he want to talk to a busybody know-it-all who thought she could tell him how to raise his children?
Except that wasn’t really how it had happened. She had been concerned about his kids, worried that they needed help. And they did. But she had been the only one to see it and do something to help.
And what had he done? He had thrown it
back in her face and all but tossed her off his property. He repaid her by frowning and scowling and telling her to leave. Not once had he thanked her for taking the time to come out to his house and care about his family. That was something he needed to correct—and soon.
“There’s Sally.” Dan pointed toward the front of the group of carolers. Sally Esh was waiting for the driver like the rest of them.
“I thought we were watching for Carrie.”
Dan gave him a sly smile. “Sally was supposed to get Carrie to come.”
But Carrie was nowhere to be seen.
“Let me see what happened.” Dan brushed past him to meet up with Sally. The two talked for a few minutes before Dan returned at his side. “She’s not coming.”
Great. First he’d had to get a sitter, leave his children at home to come out to sing. Singing was not something he enjoyed. He just sang at church and only then when he had to.
“Maybe I can get her to—”
“No.” Jess cut him off before he could finish. “I can handle this on my own,” he said. And he would. Tomorrow he would head over to Carrie Byler’s and talk to her about courting. Until then, he had senior citizens to sing to.
“I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.” Though he wondered if his sister knew something he didn’t. It wasn’t like Bernice Yoder was in the group of widows and widowers who went caroling each year.
“Sarah.” She rolled her eyes. She didn’t need to say any more. He had known her cousin almost as long as he could remember. The woman had always been a bit mischievous. Too much like Reba for him to want to be around either of them for long. “She said I needed to come and sing.”
Thankfully they were inside now, going from room to room in the nursing home singing to the mobile and infirm alike. They had shed their coats and scarves in the lobby. Bernice wore a green dress that brought out the gold flecks in her eyes. Her dark hair gleamed under the artificial lights of the hallway where they stood.
Other carolers moved around them, but for a moment to Jess it seemed like they were all alone. He reached out a hand, for what he didn’t know. He reached toward her for the sole purpose of brushing against that pale skin. Was it as soft as it looked? Jah, it was. Not only was she nice, pretty, and good-smelling, she was soft, too.
Amazing how once he stopped being angry with her and she stopped trying to boss him around that the two of them could connect.
Jess retreated and cleared his throat. Bernice lowered her gaze and gave a little cough.
“I should find Sarah,” she muttered.
And he should find Dan, but he would rather spend time with Bernice Yoder than his longtime meddling friend. “Or we could go to the next room ourselves.”
She smiled and something in Jess’s chest tightened. “I’d like that.”
Her voice was like an angel’s, he thought as she stood beside him. His sounded more like caterwauling, but the Bible said a believer should sing, so he did. Plus there were enough of them that his off-key, off-pitch efforts weren’t completely obvious. He hoped, anyway.
After an hour and more songs than he could count, they headed back to the market parking lot. A few of the members milled around, while most got in their buggies straightaway.
Jess looked around for a moment, then started for his own buggy. He wanted to say good-bye to Bernice, but somehow that seemed a little too intimate. Like a date. Which this wasn’t.
“Jess!”
He turned as Bernice hurried across the parking lot toward him. The tails of her coat flapped behind her. “Jah?”
“It seems that, uh . . . Sarah may have forgotten that I rode here with her.”
The gentleman in Jess rose quickly to the surface. “I can take you home.”
“Are you sure? It’s out of your way.” Plus almost everyone had already gone home.
“Not really. We’re practically neighbors.” And they were. His back pasture butted up to the cornfield behind the little dawdi haus she shared with her cousin. He didn’t have to pass her drive to get to his, but it wasn’t so far out of the way.
“That would be gut.” She smiled at him gratefully.
Not many carolers were still in the parking lot when he helped Bernice into his buggy, but those who were had their gazes trained on him and the young teacher.
Mentally he shrugged it off. Let them talk. That was all it would be, just talk. Then how surprised they would be when he and Carrie published their intent to marry. Served them right, the gossips.
He and Bernice rode side by side in a silence that was somehow both comfortable and a bit tense. He supposed they were comfortable around each other because there was no reason not to be. It wasn’t like they were at the beginning of a budding relationship. But the strain came from knowing that he needed to thank her, an appreciation that was long overdue.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked.
She nodded, but shivered.
He reached behind his seat and pulled out a quilt. “Here. Use this.”
Bernice unfolded the quilt and spread it across her lap, leaving plenty for him to do the same.
Jess winced. There was a big hole in one end, but thankfully it was his portion that was destroyed. A mouse or something must have gotten into the barn and chewed clean through the fabric.
Bernice either didn’t see it or decided not to comment, but either way he was grateful. This was just one more reason why he needed to find a wife. Sad but true, he needed someone to look after him.
“Danki,” he said. His voice was quiet and rusty in the cold air between them.
“What?”
“Thank you,” he said again.
“I mean, for what?”
He cast a quick look in her direction. In the dim light from the moon and stars he could barely make out her features, but he couldn’t read the expression in her eyes or fathom the small frown puckering her brow.
He shrugged. “For caring enough about my girls to come all the way out to the house and talk to me about it.”
Her laugh filled the spaces between them. “Your girls.” She shook her head. “They are something else, jah?”
“Jah.” He returned her chuckle with one of his own.
“It was quite an honor to be chosen as a candidate as their new mamm.”
“Thank you for that, too,” he said. “For being so gracious about being deceived.”
“They mean well. They love you very much, you know.”
“I know.” He was well and truly blessed. His girls were gut maedel. They were deserving of a mamm who would love them and care for them just like their own would. That was why he needed to find them a mother, and quickly.
He pulled his buggy into the drive. “Looks like a party.” He nodded toward the row of buggies lining the drive.
“Jah. My aunt and uncle said they were having a few guests over tonight.”
It looked to be more than a few, but Jess didn’t say so. Christmas parties of that size tended to last long into the night with fellowship and games, lots of food, punch, and laughs.
Bernice lived in the dawdi haus back behind the main house. Talk was that she shared it with her widowed cousin Sarah King. The two were close to the same age, so he imagined it was a good arrangement. No doubt it gave her a measure of freedom but still kept her close to others. At least she wasn’t coming home every day to an empty house and faraway neighbors. Surely that kept her safer than if she lived on her own.
He pulled his buggy to a stop, then went around to help Bernice down. The scent of oranges and something spicy wafted from her, bringing back memories of better times.
The moonlight washed her in a pale glow that made her appear otherworldly, like an angel, a dream, a mirage of sweet beauty and all things good.
Time seemed to stop; even the wind didn’t stir as they stood there, facing each other. The urge to reach out and touch her, run his fingers down her cheek, was so strong he could almost taste it. He trembled with the longing. How easy it would
be to lift his hand and test the softness of her skin once again.
She was as caught in the moment as he was. Breath held as they stood there face-to-face waiting for what was next. A caress? A kiss?
“Thank you for the ride home.” Her softly spoken words broke the daze that surrounded them.
He blinked. “You’re welcome.”
It was better this way.
She nodded toward him, then turned and made her way to the house. He watched her climb the steps with relief and regret.
She was his daughters’ teacher, young, never been married. He supposed she was around the same age as him, but she held an innocence that belied that number.
He had been working too hard lately, that was all it was. And starting to think about getting married again. Those things worked together, against him, producing these crazy feelings he directed toward Bernice Yoder.
She turned back toward him at the door of the house, gave him one last look, then disappeared inside.
With a shake of his head, Jess swung back into the buggy and headed for home.
Bernice shut the door behind her and leaned back against it. She closed her eyes and stood there, trying to make sense of what just happened. Had Jess Schmucker almost kissed her? Magic had filled the night, like the English authors who wrote about love so often stated. Time suspended. And they were the only two people in the whole world.
Or maybe she had imagined the whole thing. What would Jess Schmucker want with an old maid like her?
“Bernice?”
“Jah?” She opened her eyes as her cousin came out of the kitchen.
“Did you have a good ti—Goodness! What happened to you?”
Bernice ran a hand over the scarf that covered her prayer kapp. “N-nothing.”
“That must have been some nothing. Kumm, let me get you a cup of coffee and you can tell me all about it.” In a flash she was across the room and before Bernice could protest, Sarah had dragged her into the kitchen.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Bernice said again as Sarah slid a steaming mug of coffee in front of her. She wrapped her hands around it, absorbing its warmth, though she was hot and cold at the same time. Maybe she was coming down with something.
