A Simple Autumn: A Seasons of Lancaster Novel Read online

  Jonah wanted to continue the conversation, but he couldn’t think of another thing to say. Had he just grunted? He wanted to kick himself.

  There was an awkward silence. Well, awkward for him. Annie was gazing off in the distance, and Mary was smiling at Five, her eyes the color of warm honey.

  What a fool I am, Jonah thought. He was a grown man in his twenties and still he didn’t know how to talk to a girl. He had no clue how you get a girl to like you. How do you even know what to say to her?

  Annie was looking over his shoulder, already distracted. “They’re setting up for volleyball.” She looked up at the sky. “We’d best begin now, before it gets dark. Soon it’ll be too cold for outside activities.”

  “Let’s get on a team together,” Mary told her best friend.

  When the two girls headed over to the net, Jonah could only follow and hope that his skills in volleyball would help Annie see him as a man with strength instead of a bumbling fool.

  The teams were already forming. Quickly, Jonah moved to the side of the net where Annie and sister Mary stood, so that he’d be on their team. Volleyball was his game. Although pride was a sin, he liked to think that his patience and accuracy were a blessing here. Gott had made him good at waiting for the ball and popping it over to the right spot.

  He rubbed his hands together, trying to push down the nervousness that boiled from having Annie just off to his left.

  The game was off to a good start when the ball came to Jonah. He popped it up gently, and Annie moved in to smack it over the net.

  “Good one,” he said.

  Her casual smile made his insides melt, but there was no time to bask in the feeling. The second serve was heading his way.

  The ball passed back and forth over the net, and Jonah had a few chances to knock it into the right spot. Some of his teammates complimented him on making good shots. Did Annie notice?

  When he jumped high to send a hard-hit ball back over the net, she looked up at him with eyes of wonder. “Wow, Jonah.”

  He bit back a grin, trying to shrug it off, though he felt sure he’d never forget those words.

  Wow, Jonah.

  He was still smiling down at her when the ball sailed over the net, right toward them. Annie held up her fists as Jonah, desiring to protect her, lunged toward the ball. He jumped up and smacked the ball back.

  But as he landed he crashed into Annie. She was such a little thing compared with him, and the force of his weight knocked her over.

  With a little cry of anguish, she fell.

  By the time Jonah had regained his footing, she was on the ground beside him, crumpled in a heap like a sack of potatoes.

  It was a game-stopper. All the girls rushed in to help Annie to her feet. They sat her on a chair and gathered round her, coddling and soothing and lending her a handkerchief to dry her tears.

  Arms folded, Jonah hung back with the other young men. “Is she all right?” he called to the cluster of girls.

  “She’ll live,” Mary reported, “but she’s going to have a fat lip.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jonah called. “Sorry, Annie.” He looked down at the ground, wishing that he could be the one to pat her back and soothe her.

  Surrounded by Mary and the other girls, Annie went over the crash. “How did that happen? I was just reaching up to hit the ball, and something barreled into me like a charging bull!”

  “Oh, dear Annie!” one of the girls cooed. “That was Jonah King who banged into you.”

  “The game is not fun with one who’s so competitive,” someone else said.

  Jonah’s ears burned. Competition was frowned upon in Amish groups. Competitors were out to prove that they were better, and that was a sign of pride … hochmut. It was not a good thing.

  “It was an accident,” Remy pointed out in Jonah’s defense.

  “But it’s always the men who fight too fiercely to win,” Annie said.

  Jonah frowned. Of all people to say that—Annie was a tough competitor in any game.

  “Sometimes I think it’s too dangerous to play with the men,” Annie added.

  Did other people agree with what she was saying? He looked around, but found that the guys had lost interest in what the girls were saying. They were already lobbing the ball back and forth, talking about how it was getting hard to see in the gathering dark.

  Jonah’s heart sank. At last, Annie had noticed him, but in all the wrong ways.

  “Let’s go back inside and do some more singing,” Adam suggested. “It’s getting too dark out here for more games.”

  The girls surrounding Annie began to move, a slow herd. At their center, he could see Annie holding on to Mary’s arm.

  “Sorry about that, Annie,” he said, making sure to meet her eyes for this second apology.

  “Ya.” She waved a hand at him, as if swatting a pesky gnat. “I think we’d best keep our distance, Jonah. You and me, we’d best stay far, far away from each other.”

  “That might be safer for both of us.” Jonah rubbed his elbow, trying to make a little joke of it.

  Annie winced as she pressed her fingers to her swollen lip. “It’s going to hurt when I try to sing.” Although she didn’t say the words, Jonah knew she was thinking: And it’s all your fault.

  Sick inside, he stopped walking. Quickly he dropped to the back of the crowd as he wondered how he could bungle such a simple thing as a volleyball game.

  As night fell, most young people wandered back into the barn for some more singing. Some couples, like Remy and Adam, stayed outside to talk in the privacy of the gathering dark.

  Wounded in spirit, Jonah sat on a hay bale outside the door. How many singings had he come to with high hopes, only to have them crash to the ground?

  This love for Annie bordered on crazy. But the Bible said love was God’s greatest gift. Wouldn’t it be a sin to ignore the love that God had planted in his heart?

  The night air cooled his burning face as he leaned forward and let the song from inside wash over him.

  “Good Lord,” the group sang out, their voices big and bold, “show me the way.”

  Good Lord, he thought, show me the way. Jonah sat alone, thinking that he should just go home now. Once again, he would be leaving the singing without Annie beside him in the buggy.

  “Jonah?” He felt a hand on his arm. His sister Mary sat down beside him. “Can’t you just tell her you’re sweet on her?” she asked.

  Jonah sat upright, staring at his sister. “I was hoping no one noticed.”

  “I always knew you were sweet on someone,” she said. “I didn’t know who until tonight.”

  “Can you keep quiet about it?”

  “Sure. Gossip is a sin. But, Jonah, this is Annie we’re talking about. She’s like a sister to me, and you know her well.”

  “Ya.” Maybe he knew her too well. “All those years we played together as kids … ice-skating and horseback riding. Singing around a bonfire and picking apples. Sometimes I wonder if she thinks of me as a brother.”

  “Just talk to her.”

  “No,” he answered flatly. “I’ve felt this way for a long time, but I don’t have the gift of gab she has. I can’t say the first word to her, even about the simplest things like the weather.”

  Mary nodded sympathetically. “You’ve always been the Quiet One.”

  He winced, as if burned by the old nickname.

  “Well, I think you and Annie would make a very good couple.”

  “Didn’t you hear her just now? She hates me.”

  “She’s upset. And acting stubborn as a mule, if you ask me.”

  “Stubborn or not … she doesn’t see me as a beau.” He drew in a breath, forcing himself to face the truth. “She probably never will.”

  “Maybe she just needs a little push.” Mary touched his arm. “I could drop a few hints.”

  “Don’t say anything,” Jonah warned.

  “I won’t give you up. But I am going to say something about her fit of
temper. It’s not like Annie to be so downright mean.”

  “She’s just upset because she got hurt,” he said.

  “Even so, that’s no excuse for snapping at you that way.”

  “She’s upset,” he said. “I can forgive her.”

  “Dear Jonah.” Mary squinted at him, shaking her head. “There you go sticking up for her again.” She squeezed his arm. “You’ve got it bad.”

  That was the truth. Leave it to Mary to hit the nail on the head.

  And sometimes the truth was a very heavy hammer.

  EIGHT

  What were those fellas saying to Emma?

  Gabe King twisted away from his cousins Ben and Abe King to get a look. Emma was over by the line of buggies, talking with David Fisher and Ruben Zook. Both boys were older than Gabe, and neither one of them had a steady girl.

  They’d better not set their sights on Emma, Gabe thought as he leaned against the cart of hay that the horses were feeding from, to get a better view of what was going on outside the barn.

  People were starting to leave the singing. Adam and Remy were pulling out in a buggy. Lizzy Mast was climbing into an open carriage with Amos Lapp.

  “Now, that’s a new one—Amos and Lizzy,” Ben said, scraping a toe through the dirt. “But I don’t think it will last.”

  “Are you feeling bad because she’s not riding home with you?” Abe teased his brother.

  “I didn’t even ask her!” Ben protested.

  Abe shrugged. “Your loss.”

  As his cousins teased each other, Gabe shot another look back at Emma. Still there. He wanted to leave, but he didn’t want to get too far ahead of Emma. He would have to pull off to the side of the road ahead and wait for her, and it wouldn’t do to have everyone from the singing pass him by, stopping to ask if he was okay.

  If only they could leave together like a normal couple. But no … he had to be dating the schoolteacher, a girl who was stern about her reputation. “I have to be a model for my students,” she always said. They had to court in secret. Sometimes Gabe wondered why he didn’t go for a normal girl who worked on the family farm, scraping honeycomb or baking pies.

  What would Emma do if one of them asked if she wanted a ride home? There was a good chance of that. With her bright eyes and smooth skin, Emma Lapp was a beauty, and she had a smart way about her. And not just smart like a roomful of books. Emma saw the light burning inside other people. She had a quick way of figuring out the things a student could do well. She helped build up the good aspects of a person.

  No one could make a person warm up inside the way that Emma did. Gabe understood why fellas gathered around her at singings. They were on her like honeybees on a flower, and he didn’t like that one bit.

  He had known Emma Lapp since her family moved here. He’d been in the third grade when she came to the one-room schoolhouse for the first time, with a tooth missing from her smile and a quiet manner. Back then Emma and her brother Caleb didn’t get much attention because their sister Elsie took it all. The small girl had a very big personality that made the other children want to play with her.

  But that first day he had watched Emma as she finished her work in the blink of an eye. A smart one. But instead of showing off to the teacher, she had turned to help Sadie with her arithmetic.

  He had seen that she was good at heart, but he’d always thought she was too prim for the likes of him. She would be lost in a book, while Gabe would be looking out the window, longing to be home to do real work like cleaning the horses’ hooves or mending the fence.

  When he thought about it, it was surprising that he and Emma had gotten together at all. For Gabe, math was for keeping records on the milk cows. And reading and writing? He’d learned just enough to manage the farm if he needed to. But for Emma, every day was about words and arithmetic problems and teaching children to read from the primer.

  There couldn’t be two more different people under Gott’s big heaven. Even so, she was the one girl who stuck in his mind.

  It was his parents’ death that had brought them close.

  It had happened during a cold spell in winter; those short, dark days when everyone wants to sleep more. Even the cows.

  A local man they trusted had turned on Levi and Esther King, killed them just like that. Gabe didn’t like to think on those days much. The grief that fell over his family was like a winter that refused to end, a coat of sadness heavy on the whole community.

  Through it all, Gabe remembered Emma there, her brown hair pulled back neatly under her kapp, her eyes shining silver as the moon during their darkest hours. She had stood with the children in the cemetery as the simple funeral prayers had been said. She had visited the house, bringing a covered dish and showering Leah and Susie and Ruthie with attention. She had been especially good with Simon, talking to him even when the terrible memories stole his voice and sent him sleepwalking through the house at night like a verhuddelt person.

  And when Simon wanted to believe that bears had killed their parents because it made more sense than the terrible truth, Emma had bought him a book about bears. “So he can have the facts,” she’d said. Sometimes the things she said made her sound wise like Mammi Nell instead of a young girl not yet nineteen.

  “We best get going,” Abe said, drawing Gabe back to the present. Abe untied his horse from the cart of hay that had been nearly emptied by the grazing animals. At singings most couples tied their horse up to graze and left it hitched to the buggy because it was too hard to hitch up a buggy in the dark.

  Ben tipped his head closer to Gabe’s face. “You’re daydreaming. Thinking about the need for speed?”

  “What? No.” Gabe saw that Emma and the guys were gone, and his pulse beat a little faster. Had she taken a ride? No … she wouldn’t have. But where was she?

  Ben checked the harness on his horse. “Are you going to stick around here and hold up that fence post all night?”

  Gabe pushed away from the fence and found his buggy. “I’m right behind you.” He turned on the boom box and a song filled the night. “Born in the USA!” the man’s voice crooned.

  “Nice.” Ben tipped his hat back, listening for a moment. “Just mind you don’t wake up the Eichers’ cows.”

  Gabe smiled, turning down the volume. “Or the Eichers,” he said under his breath. He waited until Ben rolled down the lane. Let the others go first, so they won’t see me stopping.

  At last, the lane was clear and only a few stray buggies were left behind. Gabe turned off the music—not wanting to call attention to their secret meeting. He signaled Mercury and they started in a slow trot so that Gabe could watch for Emma on the side of the road.

  In the pitch-black night, lit only by scattered stars, he felt that pulse of tension. It wasn’t safe for a young girl to be walking alone in the dark, especially with all these buggies passing her by. He had learned the terrible things that could happen along the side of a road. Sure, Amish youth walked and scootered these country roads all the time, often after dark.

  But thinking of Emma out here alone reminded Gabe of the dangers the night held. He wanted her by his side. Safe in his arms.

  A dark form by the side of the road made hope leap in his chest, but it turned out to be nothing more than a lonely tree.

  “Emma,” he called desperately. “Where are you?”

  NINE

  Annie shivered and tugged her sweater closed as Dapple pulled the open carriage away from the singing. The night was dark, but ahead of them a line of half a dozen red triangles seemed to float up the hill: the warning reflectors on the backs of buggies.

  Annie knew that most of those buggies were heading home with courting couples inside.

  She shivered again. “It’s cold. A sure sign that fall is really here.”

  “Where’s the blanket?” Hannah turned in the seat beside her, squirming to reach into the back of the buggy. “Got it.” Hannah unfolded the blanket and tucked it over their legs. “Is that better?”
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br />   “Much better. Denki.” The buggy in front of them turned off to the right at the fork in the road. “There goes Mary and Five.”

  Hannah pulled the blanket up to her chin as she turned to watch them. “But that’s not the way to the Kings’ farm.”

  “They’ll take the long way home,” Annie said. “Courting couples like to ride around for a while. Gives them a chance to talk.”

  “I wish I had a beau.” There was a sad note in Hannah’s voice.

  “It will happen for you, Hannah. Sooner or later.”

  “It’s already later.” Hannah sighed. “I’m eighteen and I’ve never courted anyone. I’m sure to be an Alt Maedel.”

  Annie laughed out loud. “You can’t be an old maid so young! You’re just beginning to court. If you were an old maid, then tongues would surely be wagging about me, with no prospects in sight and even older than you.”

  “You heard them?” Hannah’s voice was a whimper nearly drowned out by the clip-clop of horses’ hooves.

  Annie’s jaw dropped. “You mean …” She’d been joking, but now the joke was on her. Her good mood began to fade. Were people really talking about her because she didn’t have a beau? “Do folks say I’m going to be an old maid?”

  Hannah pressed her palms to her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have told you! I’m sorry. And now I have to close my eyes for the bridge. It always scares me.” She lifted the rough blanket and ducked her head underneath.

  Hannah had always been afraid to go over the Halfway Mill Covered Bridge. The echoing noises and darkness inside the wood structure had spooked her since she was a child.

  “I’ll tell you when it’s over.” Annie had always found the old wooden bridge to be comforting. The cozy wood overhead and the sound bouncing around made her feel like she was attending a singing in a barn.

  Tonight she was grateful to have a minute to sort through her thoughts. With her eyes on Dapple’s bobbing head, she mulled over her childhood dreams. Maybe it was her fault for pinning her hopes on Adam. They had never courted—not really—but she had spent a lot of time with him. Mary King was her best friend, and in their younger years the two girls had spent every spare moment with each other, playing games or running the summer produce stand or baking cookies and pies.