Perhaps he wasn’t drawing at all. Could Aden be writing letters to Annie? If they were still communicating, their feelings for each other would grow stronger, and who knew where that would lead?
Roman had seen his brother stash sketchbooks in his footlocker for years. Whenever Roman had questioned him about the contents of his footlocker lately, Aden had told him to mind his own business.
What else might his brother be keeping in his private storage? Perhaps love letters from a Mennonite girl? Roman gingerly lifted the lid of the footlocker and peeked inside. He saw no envelopes—just neat stacks of sketchbooks, the top one sitting slightly askew. Roman reached in and picked it up.
This was the one his brother had been working on most recently. He recognized the cover—which had been slammed closed countless times whenever Roman came into the room. Unable to squelch his curiosity, he opened the cover. On the first page was a tiny tree in the middle of a large field, a circle of dirt around its trunk. He turned the page. In the second drawing, there were two trees—one just like the first, the other a little bigger. As he flipped through pages, each one had a new tree among progressively larger versions of the previous ones.
Finally he came to a sketch of a field full of stark, bare trees. In the next drawing, the trees had tiny buds. After that, just-opening blooms.
The last picture stole his next heartbeat. The page was covered with vibrant green trees bearing an abundance of cherry blossoms. The delicate shades of pink and vibrant tinges of red made the picture seem so real he could practically smell the orchard. Aden must have put a lot of time and work into this one.
Though Roman would have loved to linger on this drawing, he wondered what came next.
He set the book aside and picked up another one. In it he found drawings of Annie. Some were of just her face or a portion of her face. A few were of her hands, the back of her head with her Mennonite prayer Kapp, or a closeup of her eyes. In others she was standing in the orchard, sitting at the counter in their diner, picking up plates from the pass-through.
Shaking off feelings of guilt, Roman dug deeper in the footlocker, suddenly hoping to find drawings that didn’t have something to do with Annie. But book after book was filled with her. Aden had been drawing pictures of her as far back as the year Roman and his Daed were injured, when Annie and her grandfather had helped Aden keep the diner running during their rehab.
He discovered pictures of Mamm, Daed, Roman, and their siblings throughout various stages. Some depicted Christmas mornings, church baptisms, or weddings. But Roman couldn’t find even one of any other girl.
Was this how Aden had always felt—that Annie was the only one for him? He’d never said anything. Never pursued her.
Roman’s blood rushed through his body, making him feel lightheaded. Aden was trapped too?
Guilt mixed with self-doubt. He’d been selfish to try to keep his brother to himself instead of helping him find ways around the obstacles he faced.
His heart pounded, and he had to talk to someone. No, he had to talk to Marian. She was the only one with enough guts to tell it like it was. He put the sketchbooks back in the chest and wheeled himself through the house. He shouldn’t call her on a Sunday, but he went straight to the phone shanty.
He scrolled through all the numbers that came up on the caller ID, hoping her number was still listed. She’d called him a little over three weeks ago. If they’d received too many calls since then, it wouldn’t still be there.
Finally he saw it. Vernon Lee. Her father. He punched the Dial Display button and waited. Five. Six. Seven rings. One thing about the Amish and their phone shanties, they set their phones to ring as many times as possible before the answering machine picked up.
“You’ve reached the Lees. Leave a message.”
“Uh …” Roman couldn’t think of what to say. She was probably gone to a singing. That’s what the Amish singles did on Sunday nights, and some lucky guy would take her home on a long, scenic route. “This is Roman calling for Marian. If you will, please tell her I called. Denki.” He hung up. It was never easy leaving a message for a girl who lived at home with lots of siblings. The most he could hope for was that someone remembered to give her the message.
He sat in the dark shed, wishing he could pray. Wishing it made a difference. It’d been so long. Years, actually. If he could speak to God, he’d—
The phone rang, and he grabbed it. “Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Marian, I … I thought you’d be at a singing.”
“I wouldn’t waste my time, not around here anyway. And Mamm wouldn’t let me go elsewhere with it being Easter. What’s on your mind?”
“I needed to talk to someone.”
“Then talk.”
“I’m going crazy here. I wanted to break up Aden and Annie, and now I’m starting to think that maybe they were meant to be together. That makes no sense. Why would God want me broken and want to give Aden a girl that will destroy the family business and the family?”
“Wait. You’re mad at God because you think He wants you broken? Golly, Roman, so you think every time someone gets a virus or a bug bite or loses their kerosene lighter, it’s God doing it?”
“He could prevent those things.”
“Open your eyes, Roman. After Christ was born and Herod killed all those babies while trying to kill Jesus, it wasn’t God choosing to devastate those mothers. He brought salvation into the world, and a selfish, power-hungry man thought he could stop God. I don’t know why God didn’t just wipe out Herod. I do know that scene is an image of the constant battle between good and evil—and it takes place all the time. For now. Read Hebrews chapter two, verse eight. See if you see what I do. I believe God is telling us that even though everything is under His feet, we don’t see that as our full reality right now.”
Roman couldn’t answer. It was all too much to think about. He could read that chapter and verse she’d mentioned a thousand times, and he knew he’d never figure out God. But could he believe that his brokenness wasn’t plotted by God?
That aside, one thing in all she’d said stood out very clearly. In this mess with Aden and Annie, he was Herod—a selfish, mortal man who thought he could control his future.
“Hey,” Marian whispered, “you still there?”
“Barely.” His eyes burned with tears. “Can we talk about something else? I think I may like that stupid joke book more than I thought.”
“Ya? Well, remember this, a day without sunshine is like … night. Oh, and I read this on a bumper sticker the other day: what happens if you get scared half to death twice?”
He chuckled, feeling closer to God than he had in a really long time. He knew he and Marian would never be more than phone friends, but it seemed to him that he could at least ask about her life once in a while. “Hey, what was Easter like over there?”
Annie reached into the laundry basket of clean, wet clothes and pulled out a twin-sized bedsheet. Warm rays of light stretched across the land like angelic fingers from heaven as she hung item after item on the clothesline. The scene did not match her mood, but she kept plodding forward.
The phone rang, jolting her. She refused to drop the wet shirt into the basket and run for the house. She’d given up on Aden calling her. If he hadn’t called or written in the three weeks since she’d come home, he wasn’t going to. How could he? If he reached out to her, her grandfather would withdraw his partnership in the diner.
She’d reapplied for her job at the market, and the owner said he hoped to call her next week with an opening for her. He wouldn’t call on a Saturday, not on the busiest market day of the week.
“Annie.” Mamm stepped onto the back porch. “Phone.”
Her heart turned a flip, foolishly unconvinced to give up on Aden.
“Who is it?”
“It’s your Daadi.”
She didn’t want to talk to him, but she needed to at least be an adult about it and tell him so. Leaving the items behind,
she hurried into the house and picked up the corded phone. “Hello.”
“Happy birthday.” He broke into singing a crazy, out-of-tune version of the birthday song. She’d forgotten she turned twenty today. This annual ritual always seemed out of character for him, a lot like his planting all those cherry trees. After a full round of the song, he stopped.
“Denki.”
“Feel any older?”
“No. And it was nice of you to remember, but I’m not interested in—”
“Hey.” He interrupted, sounding more hurt than angry. “You were wrong to disobey me, to ignore the vow you’ve taken. Actually, it’s me who should be avoiding you.”
“Okay. That works too, I suppose. Bye.”
“Annie, wait.”
“No, Daadi. You embarrassed me in front of everyone and threatened to ruin the Zooks. But I’m the only one who’s wrong? Why, because you say so? If Mammi Esther had been Amish, would you have walked away from her?”
His momentary silence indicated that she’d struck a nerve.
“You’ve taken a vow, Annie. You can’t walk away from that.”
“Why? Is that the unpardonable sin? It’s not ideal, and I confess it’s wrong. I’ll make sure I’m never again so foolish as to take another vow I can’t keep. But I’m not the only one who has some responsibility concerning that vow. I was sixteen, and you and Mamm were pressuring me to take that step. I wanted to please both of you. And although Aden had done nothing to encourage my feelings for him, I cared deeply for him even then, and I foolishly thought I could free my heart of him if I started dating. But I couldn’t date unless I took the vow first. All that aside, I believe God would forgive me. Not so sure about man though, including my own Daadi Moses.”
His breathing came with short, choppy sounds, as if … he were tempted to weep. It made no sense to try to reason with him. Even if he changed his mind completely, she and Aden were done. Young plants shriveled due to the intense heat of parental disapproval. If they couldn’t withstand that, they’d never have survived the condemnation of their churches or communities.
Mamm put her arm around Annie’s shoulders. “You’ve said enough now.” Tears brimmed in her mother’s eyes. “When I’m through here, we need to talk. Go finish getting laundry on the line.” She took the phone.
Her mother hadn’t known about Annie’s transgressions in Apple Ridge, not until she overheard this conversation. When Annie had returned home, Mamm let her in and took her traveling bag, quietly mentioning the sadness in Annie’s eyes. Annie didn’t want to talk about it, and her mother hadn’t pried.
Now that Mamm knew a little more, there’d be no avoiding a conversation. As Annie went outside, her mother was speaking quietly, almost respectfully, to her Daed. Annie hadn’t heard that happen in years, and she hoped the chat ended without their usual arguments.
It’d been just seven weeks since her mother had asked her to leave Seneca Falls. But so much had changed inside her that it seemed like a lifetime ago. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Aden. She couldn’t go back, and she struggled to move forward.
Annie returned to hanging laundry, and soon Mamm came out the door. She grabbed a pillowcase out of the basket and snapped it in the wind before putting it on the line. “I know we have our troubles, Annie, but I love you.” Mamm’s voice cracked. “Tell me what’s going on between you and your Daadi.”
Annie explained everything, including her sneakiness and heartbreak.
“I was nearly three years younger than you are now when I thought desire was the same as love. Unfortunately, that foolishness is what led to the last ten years of single parenting.”
Annie’s throat closed up tight. Her mother never talked about what drew her and Daed together or the trials of raising a family alone. Daed had left them almost ten years ago, just a few months after Erla was born. Annie never knew why. And she learned quickly not to ask. But whatever he was doing, he sent money on the first of every month.
“Your grandfather walked in on us kissing.” Mamm wiped a stray tear. “Your dad and I … were on the bed … fully clothed, mind you, but your Daadi Moses was furious. Soon rumors about me were flying through the community. I know now where those rumors started. Your dad had bragged about us making out on my bed to some of his close friends, and they told a few people, and so on. The ensuing scandal was awful. The church leaders came to see me, and your Daadi Moses insisted I get married. Later, when the marriage went sour, I blamed your Daadi Moses for making me marry your dad, but the truth was, at the time I wanted to marry him. I’m no longer sure what your father wanted.”
Annie thought about how respectful Aden had been of her people’s boundaries, barely taking her hand into his one time. Never trying to kiss her or put his arms around her. Even so, he was considered completely inappropriate for her.
She couldn’t imagine her Daed having any emotion other than grumpiness. He’d seemed miserable about everything. Was that why Mamm let her children do pretty much anything they wanted and let them avoid Daadi Moses? Did she want them to make their own choices because they had to live with them?
Annie shifted to look into her mother’s face. “Did you love him?”
“I thought so. But the truth is, I never took the time to get to know him. I knew how I felt when I was in his arms, and I let that blind me to everything else.” She ran her hand down a hanging sheet. “Have you made that same mistake?”
Annie’s insides quaked as they spoke of such delicate matters. “No. I’ve never been in his arms, and I’ve only dreamed of kissing him.”
“You were only gone a few weeks.”
“I’ve always liked everything about Aden—who he is, how he handles life, what he believes. Over the years I’ve had some strong feelings for him. This time … our friendship changed. It was as if I pulled a familiar box of oranges off the shelf and discovered it was full of apples.”
Mamm gently took her by the shoulders and stared at her before embracing her. “I’m so proud of you.” She held her for a while and then took a step back. “Is it over between you and …”
“Aden Zook.”
“Ah, a Zook. I remember his father back in the day. Always nice and encouraging. Even when the rumors were at their worst and your Daadi wouldn’t speak to me, David and his then-girlfriend Ellen went out of their way to be polite and kind. They’d invite me to come visit at one of their homes. I never took them up on the offer, mostly out of guilt for the shame heaped on me, but it meant a lot. I hear they’ve had their share of troubles in recent years too.”
Annie nodded. “They have, and I won’t make it worse. It’s over between me and Aden.”
“And your heart is broken.”
She nodded, trying not to cry.
“Maybe you need to get out some. You know, date.”
“No thanks.”
“Leon has a good paying job, and his parents have money.”
“Mamm.” Annie hated the whine in her voice, but this was a ridiculous conversation.
“I’m not saying you have to marry the guy. Although if you ever saw the quality in him I do, I believe he’d make a good husband. But all I’m trying to tell you is that he has the money to make dating him a fun experience. Nice dinners. Day trips into the city. Time on their horse farm.” Her mother shrugged and grabbed another wet towel. “Could be fun and help you not hurt so much, but it’s up to you.”
Annie passed her a clothespin, appreciating her mother’s moment of outreach. “I’ll give Leon another try.”
Roman counted out change for the last customer paying his bill. “I hope you enjoyed your meal.”
“Actually,” the man said quietly, “my grilled sandwich was a little burned, and my wife’s spoon was dirty.”
“I’m so sorry. You should’ve said something. I’d have been happy to—”
“No problem. She didn’t use her spoon. And to be honest, I’m used to slightly burned sandwiches.” He shrugged. “Just not from here
.”
“Well, next time you’re in, dessert’s on the house.”
“I appreciate that, but it’s not necessary. Really.” He pocketed his change and joined his family.
“I hope you have a happy Mother’s Day tomorrow,” Roman called to the woman, who smiled as she ushered her four little children out the door.
After turning the Open sign to Closed, he rolled through the dining area, clearing tables. Since Annie had gone back to New York, his brother’s mind was always elsewhere.
Not wanting to ponder that any further, Roman thought about the gift he’d ordered for his mom: a porcelain teapot, white with tiny blue roses. The store owner had assured him it would come in today. As soon as he and Aden cleaned up here, he’d head over there to pick it up.
A loud, metallic crash from the kitchen startled him. What on earth?
When he reached the kitchen, he saw an empty busboy bin on the floor with dirty plates, cups, and silverware strewed everywhere. Aden’s face was red, and his lips were pressed together as he dumped the items into the bin.
“What happened?”
Aden shrugged.
“Let me guess. You weren’t paying attention to what you were doing. Big surprise there.”
Aden continued tossing dirty flatware into the bin.
Roman moved closer. “You want to talk about it?”
“Nothing to s-say that you d-don’t already know.” Aden moved the now-full bin into the sink.
While Annie was here, Aden’s stuttering had diminished. Since she’d been gone, it had gotten much worse. Usually Aden stuttered less when he was angry. Now it was more pronounced than ever.
“I c-can’t work here any-m-more.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. What are you going to do?”
Aden didn’t nod or shrug or anything. He wasn’t asking Roman’s opinion. His brother was informing him of the future.
Thoughts of Aden’s sketches nagged Roman. “If you’re going to leave the diner anyway, why not go after her?”
The taut lines across Aden’s face only hinted at all he was thinking as he removed his apron, folded it neatly, and laid it on the counter. “To pr-protect her. Do you understand anything about l-love?”
The Scent of Cherry Blossoms: A Romance from the Heart of Amish Country Page 12
