She made her way into the familiar lane and glanced at the house. All seemed quiet. Too quiet, really. Making her way around to the back door, she jiggled the doorknob, which often stuck.
Locked.
They never bolt the doors, she thought, dread beginning to pound through her veins.
She saw the family carriage parked where it should be, and the market wagon and pony cart, too. The sight gave her a bit of peace, but it didn’t explain the unnatural silence.
Peering in through the back door window, Leona noticed that the row of wall pegs for jackets was bare, as was the area beneath, where the family lined up shoes and boots.
“They’ve left,” she whispered, shocked. Just like that . . .
She heard Brownie barking from the stable and saw him coming, tail wagging. Gloria liked to pretend he was their watchdog, but as friendly as the dog was, Leona had a hard time thinking of Brownie attacking anyone.
“Hey, boy,” she called as he came to her. She rubbed behind his ears as he leaned his head hard against her, whining. “Are ya glad to see me?” Then her hand brushed against his collar—something was attached. She loosened the white paper next to his dog tag and held up her flashlight to see a scribbled note in Gloria’s handwriting.
Dearest friend,
Brownie’s yours now.
Good-bye till we meet again.
Your sister for always,
Gloria Gingerich
The note fluttered from her hand. Leona leaned down to reach for the beautiful dog, wrapping her arms around Brownie and sobbing.
There was nothing else to do but head home with Gloria’s dear pet at her side. Such a sinking, sad feeling Leona had never known.
CHAPTER
7
Winter came and went; then spring arrived in all its radiance. But it was late summer before Leona stopped dashing out to the mailbox every day only to find oodles of circle letters for Mamma, but nothing from Gloria. Month after month, and not a single letter. Why had the friend known for her thoughtful notes suddenly gone so terribly silent?
Leona’s parents seemed to know even less than she about what had transpired, merely advising her not to dwell on those days. “Gott knows what’s best,” her father reminded her.
Not even her sister-in-law, Maggie, could offer any leads those first miserable months as Leona’s disappointment continued to build. And when Leona had finally asked her brother, Mahlon made it clear this was not the sort of thing Leona should be holding her breath about, wanting news from a shunned family.
“Not all of them were put off church, remember,” Leona argued. “Just Arkansas Joe.”
“Even so, why would ya want to seek news of ’em?” Mahlon said, shaking his head in dismay. “The Gingeriches never really belonged here.”
Whenever Leona walked past the redbrick farmhouse where Gloria and her family had lived, she was reminded to pray. The striking house was rife with childhood memories: baking bread in the sunny kitchen, summer days spent playing with Brownie on the front porch till lightning bugs signaled the girls’ curfew, and the rainy Saturdays when they had played in the attic, Brownie ever near.
Mere memories now . . .
A year passed, then another. Leona made other friends, but none as dear as Gloria. Leona rarely checked the mailbox anymore, no longer expecting something from Gloria. Evidently their friendship hadn’t been as close as Leona had thought, even though Gloria and her family had saved her from her loneliness those six happy years. Leona continued helping at Maggie’s Country Store or around the house with the washing, cleaning, and cooking. She missed Gloria and prayed for her daily but tried not to focus on it. She couldn’t bear to.
“Life must go on,” her mother told her.
The warm scents of springtime—a beautiful bouquet drifting on the breeze—surrounded Leona as she glanced at the large metallic-gray mailbox at the end of the lane. More than three long years had passed since the Gingeriches’ sudden departure, and there were fleeting occasions when Leona still wondered about the family, particularly Gloria, most often when retrieving the mail. Indeed, the mailbox had become a painful reminder of what she’d once had and lost.
Adam, too, had failed to keep in touch. Yet he kissed my cheek, she thought. She recalled the unexpected stop in Jackson’s Sawmill Covered Bridge and imagined he’d found another girl to wed.
Losing Adam hadn’t bothered her as much as she might have expected. Attractive as he was, the idea of potentially being courted by him had partly been another way to stay close to her dearest sister-friend and the family that had once seemed to take her in as a bona fide member.
Leona wished she could have written to Gloria. She’d composed numerous epistles in her head, some chatty and caring, others quite direct, even angry. Writing them down would have been pointless, since she had no idea where to send them. Even so, it was one of the ways she’d managed her nagging doubt: Did I ever really know Gloria?
With a sigh, Leona turned to the simple chore at hand and began hammering a nail through her homemade sign—Seasonal Wreaths For Sale—and into the fence post. She hoped to attract additional customers between Mamma and Aunt Salome’s market days to bring in extra money.
Has Gloria had her baptism, wherever she is? Leona wondered. After all, her friend would have turned twenty-one this March and would quite probably be married. Unlike me.
Of course, it wasn’t as if Leona didn’t have a serious beau. Tom Ebersol had been seeing her home from Singings these past two and a half years. Much as he had always cared for her, he confessed he had waited for the Lord’s timing before asking her to go steady. “My job for Uncle Alan was so demanding at first that I wanted to get established before seriously courting. And the wait was worth it,” he’d added, a twinkle in his eyes.
Leona recalled again how pleased she’d been when Tom finally approached her at that fall cornhusking bee, his brother, Danny, grinning nearby as Tom asked Leona if he could walk with her. Oh, how she smiled when he’d asked if she might be his girl! The deacon’s handsome, hardworking son could be counted on to keep his word, and Leona was thankful for his thoughtful attentions. My closest friend since Gloria . . .
While they rarely spoke of the Gingeriches, Tom had made it clear early in their relationship that he understood what the loss had meant to her. Truth be told, it was more sympathy than she’d gotten from anyone else, and it had endeared him to her all the more. She wondered if he or any other church members gave any thought to Gloria’s family anymore. Certainly no one else ever mentioned them.
Presently, Leona glanced down the long, narrow road, hoping Tom might happen by in his father’s buckboard wagon on his way to Quarryville. Now that he was his uncle’s full-fledged business partner, she assumed Tom would take over the business once Alan Lapp retired in a few years, though Tom had not discussed any specifics with her during their weekend dates.
Pulling a few stray weeds along the bed of irises, Leona was, once again, caught off guard by random memories of Gloria Gingerich. A slew of questions still weighed on her heart.
I believed she was my sister for always. . . .
Tom glanced toward Pete Speicher’s farm, noticing Pete’s farmhand out plowing with the six-mule team. The next field over would lie dormant next year, Pete had told him, in keeping with the land sabbath some Plain farmers adhered to every seven years. Not all followed the Old Testament practice, but those who did seemed to reap the benefit of heartier crops.
The morning was warm and humid, and coming closer to Leona’s house, Tom spotted a sign for homemade wreaths. Leona’s handiwork . . .
Impulsively, he turned into the winding lane to see about purchasing one, hoping he might run into Leona. The white clapboard home stood out against a backdrop of fertile green fields and meadows, with the woodlands in the near distance under a wide sweep of sky. Pete Speicher had always made Tom feel welcome, but he also felt a bit nervous around Millie, never sure what she was really thinking, so reticent
she seemed. Still, his mother had often spoken of devout and dependable Millie Speicher, an impression that Tom decided meant more than his own brief interactions.
Here lately, Leona herself had been quieter than usual when they were out riding together or playing doubles Ping-Pong. Tom wondered if she might be discouraged at his lack of a marriage proposal thus far.
Or was something else bothering her? He assumed Leona had never quite recovered from the loss of her friend. Then again, he would be the first to say it was challenging to guess what a young woman was thinking, and he’d had plenty of practice growing up with three younger sisters.
He smiled—his sisters would be delighted to welcome sweet-spirited Leona into the family. Tom had wanted to move from courtship to engagement for more than a year, but his bank account had lagged behind his romantic intentions. However, now that he was Uncle Alan’s full business partner, Tom was ready to make plans to that end for next year’s wedding season. Lord willing.
He stopped to pet Brownie before knocking on the back door.
Millie appeared in less than a minute and invited him inside the warm house. “Hullo, Thomas,” she said. “Is it one of Leona’s Easter wreaths you’re after?”
He nodded. “My mother will enjoy havin’ one, I’m sure.”
Millie eyed him with a twinkle in her eye, her round face moist with perspiration.
She knows why I’m here. . . .
He fished for his wallet and smiled at the woman he hoped would be his future mother-in-law. “Why don’t you pick out the prettiest wreath.”
A quick smile and Millie agreed.
He wondered if Leona was working at Maggie’s shop and craned his neck to look when Millie stepped away just inside the mudroom to remove one of several wreaths hanging on the wall. She slipped some plastic over it and carried it back to him.
“Here ’tis,” Millie said.
A pressure cooker began to squeal around the corner in the kitchen, and just when Tom was sure there would be no laying eyes on Leona, she came rushing to the gas range from another part of the house, her white Kapp strings wafting over her slender shoulders.
“Oh dear,” Millie said. “Excuse me a moment.” And she rushed to assist Leona, leaving Tom standing there with the wreath and the money still in his hand.
He watched the two women scurry about. Millie seemed to have forgotten him, so he placed the bills on the small table and slipped out the back door. “Wasn’t the best timing to plan another date,” he murmured, walking back to the buckboard and climbing in, glad at least for the fleeting glimpse of his sweetheart.
Tom set the wrapped wreath behind the seat and reached for the driving lines. Next time, he thought.
“Ach, Mamma, I wish you’d told me Tom dropped by,” Leona said later, all aflutter when she heard.
“Sorry.” Mamma looked equal parts remorseful and befuddled. “It just slipped my mind.”
“Well, I’ll prob’ly see him at Singing in a few days . . . Easter Sunday.” Though disappointed, Leona was touched that Tom had come on the very morning she’d been thinking of him—not that he could have had any idea of that, of course.
“Your brother says Tom’s a fine young man,” Mamma said, carefully removing the lid from the pressure cooker once it was cool. “Your father thinks so, too.”
So I would have their blessing, thought Leona. “I’m sure the deacon thinks a lot of Tom, too,” she said mischievously.
Her mother offered a smile. “Well, Tom is his son.”
Leona nodded. “Parents tend to think highly of their children, sometimes even when one of them wanders away.”
Right quick, Mamma turned her head, the ladle in midair as she stopped removing the stew meat and vegetables from the pot, the broth dripping onto the gas range. “I don’t understand, Leona. Your beau ain’t thinkin’ of—”
“Nothin’ to worry about,” she said, surprised by her mother’s talkativeness this morning. “Honestly, Mamma.”
Mamma set aside the contents of the pressure cooker and added a bit of salt after tasting the carrots and meat. “You’ve been seein’ him for a while now, jah?”
Leona hadn’t expected her mother to inquire. “We’re very gut friends,” she said. Except for reaching for her hand, Tom had been discreet about showing physical affection even when they were alone together. Even so, the thought of his strong hand holding hers made her heart beat faster.
Mamma’s blue eyes were serious now. “Friends, ya say?”
Leona shrugged. “We’re courting, but he hasn’t popped the question just yet. Not sure why he’s waiting . . . but it’s all right, as long as we end up together.”
“Well, bein’ solid friends is a gut place to start.” Mamma gave her an encouraging smile.
Leona paused and recalled a similar conversation with Gloria and her mother, Jeannie, about fellows and courtship in general. And after their playful discussion, Jeannie had reached for Leona and hugged her, whispering in her ear, “Any young man would be delighted to court you, I hope ya know.”
Standing behind Mamma, Leona remembered that long-forgotten moment, and tears sprang to her eyes. “I’ll be in my room for a while,” she said, wishing very much that the Gingeriches still lived next farm over.
CHAPTER
8
Easter Sunday evening, after Singing, Tom invited Leona to ride in his spanking-clean courting carriage. She thought he seemed especially upbeat as he helped her into the buggy.
“Did your Mamm mention that I stopped in to buy one of your wreaths for my mother?” he asked, grinning as he took his seat next to her.
“She did, jah.”
“It’s real perty, and Mamm was ever so surprised and pleased.”
“Aw, gut to know she likes it.”
“She also likes your peanut butter spread, so I’ll have to get some at your mother’s market stand.” He reached for the driving lines but not before giving her a wink. “Mamm says it’s sweeter than any she’s tasted. It sure goes mighty fast at our house,” he added with a chuckle.
As the horse stepped onto the road from the drive, he said, “I’d like to take you to a nice restaurant tomorrow night . . . for supper. Okay with you?”
“Sounds just wunnerbaar.”
“I want it to be an extra-special evening for us.” He looked at her, his features clearly visible in the moonlight as he reached for her hand.
She felt her heart flicker and smiled, not daring to let herself assume what he had in mind. Still, she could hope.
Leona spent Easter Monday, a day Amish businesses were closed, visiting with Bishop Mast’s teenage granddaughters, Mary Sue and Sarah Ann, after an invigorating game of volleyball with other courting-age girls in the neighborhood. Mahlon had dropped by for Dat and Dawdi Benuel, and they’d all gone fishing, their annual tradition. Mamma, for her part, had been content to visit Maggie and the children for the day.
As each hour passed, Leona found herself preoccupied with the special supper date that evening. Oh, she could scarcely wait to see her beau again!
The quaint restaurant Tom chose was quiet at this hour, old-fashioned-looking candleholders on each table, the candle on theirs already lit. It was a lovely place, one Tom had not brought Leona to before, but she had always wondered what it was like inside, and here she was, sitting across from her darling beau. His eyes shone as he invited her to order whatever she’d like.
“Are ya sure?” she asked, wanting to follow his lead and not overspend.
“Absolutely. Whatever you wish.”
His eyes searched hers, and she reveled in his attention.
Another couple, older and not Amish, came in and took a table in the far corner, and Tom glanced at them, then back at Leona, smiling as if glad their own nook remained private.
The background music was soft and pretty, and the delicate, melodious strains reminded her of something she’d once heard in a driver’s van while going to the Lancaster Central Market.
“
Do you like it here?” Tom asked, making small talk after the waiter came to take their order.
“Real nice, jah. How’d ya hear ’bout it?”
“Well, Orchard John told me.”
She wasn’t surprised, considering Tom and her cousin had become fast friends during the past few years.
“Orchard John’s awful nice.” She paused, then forged ahead. “Does he ever mention Gloria?”
Tom shook his head. “Rarely, but I’m pretty sure he still misses her.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He hardly ever dates, for one.”
“Has he heard from—”
“No letters that I know of.” Tom smiled kindly. “You’d think, as fond as Gloria was of writing and all, she might’ve let one of the two of ya know where her family ended up.”
It was still a tender issue, so Leona was rather glad when their orders came—meatloaf and mashed potatoes for her, and a hot turkey sandwich for him. Leona bowed her head as Tom offered a silent prayer of blessing.
“Before we start,” he said, leaning forward, “there’s something I’d like to ask ya, Leona.”
She set down her fork and folded her hands in her lap, not sure what to make of this.
“Ya know I’m in love with you. And not only that but committed to lovin’ you for all the rest of my days . . . if you’ll have me for your husband.”
Oh, she thought her heart might pop right out of her chest. She’d long hoped this day might come, but nothing had prepared her for the rush of emotion she felt now. “Jah,” she managed to get out, her mouth suddenly as dry as a wad of yarn. “I love you thataway, too, Tom. And I would be happy to be your bride.”
A smile encompassed his handsome face, and he clapped his hands once softly as he leaned back in the chair. “I’ve wanted to ask you for such a long while now.”
“Must we keep it a secret from our families, or—”
The Wish Page 4
