A Simple Autumn: A Seasons of Lancaster Novel (30 page)

“So many beautiful places that Gott created,” Mary said as she came into the room.
Katie was right behind her, dressed in footy pajamas. She crossed the room and paused
by Jonah’s side, where she peered up to the table. The little girl smelled of soap
and her hair was still damp around the edges of her face.

“Bath night?” Jonah asked.

Katie nodded without smiling. She reached her arms up to him, and he pulled her into
his lap so that she could have a perfect view of the scattered puzzle pieces.

Sam paused in the doorway, then hurried over when he caught sight of them. “I like
puzzles.”

Mary brought over two chairs for Sam and her. “This puzzle hasn’t been out of the
box for a long time,” she said. “I think Jonah is the only one with the courage to
take it on.”

“Either courage or foolishness,” he said, though he felt himself relaxing. He was
no longer sinking in a hole; with his family around him, he was on solid ground, Gott’s
good earth. Jonah felt the bitter disappointment ease. His family was a good distraction,
a true blessing.

“This is too many pieces,” Simon said. “I don’t even know how to start.”

Jonah understood that feeling.

But he had always loved jigsaw puzzles. It was the reason he had chosen his horse,
whose markings resembled puzzle pieces. Besides that, Jigsaw’s bad temper was like
a puzzle waiting to be solved—a wild horse who would find peace when all the chaos
around him settled into place.

“You start by turning the puzzle pieces over.” Susie’s nimble fingers flipped and
spread puzzle pieces as she spoke. “One piece at a time, that’s what Dat used to say.”

“I know that.” Simon rubbed his chin, reminding Jonah of himself. “But so many pieces
look alike. This one is blue. Maybe it’s the sky, or maybe the water. How do you tell?”

“Mmm. You might not know where it goes until later,” Jonah said. “But there are a
few ways to set it up. First, find all the pieces with a straight edge, like this
one.” He held up a piece. “Put these around the edge of the table. Those will make
the border.”

Busy hands sorted and shifted puzzle pieces on the worn table. Jonah found two border
pieces that matched, and he let Katie have the satisfaction of fitting them together.

“Good,” she said, smiling up at him.

Jonah let his gaze skim over his dear family as they tried to match up the right pieces
to make the border. Sometimes it took many tries to make things fit. All it took was
patience, and he had plenty of that. Working together, they would build something
out of these cardboard scraps.

One piece at a time.

G
abe let Mercury have plenty of line as he scowled at the road and gray skies looming
above. He dreaded the chore ahead, but it had been hanging over him like a dark cloud,
and he was eager to be rid of it.

He was headed into Halfway to apologize to Elsie Lapp. His excuse for coming into
town was to bring his sisters to work, since he didn’t want to open a can of worms
by explaining everything to Adam.

He tried not to listen to Leah and Susie’s chatter about their job at the tea shop,
but Susie’s voice was always so animated that it was hard to ignore.

“I hope Lovina wants me to work in the front today,” Susie said. “Talking with customers
is no work at all, and I like tending to the pastry case. Lovina lets me clean it
each morning and set up the muffins and scones just so.”

“You’re a good worker in the tea shop,” Leah told her twin. “The job suits you well.”

“You’re a good worker, too, but the tea shop isn’t your favorite thing, is it?”

“It’s a fine job, but I’m still hoping to be trained as a teacher. Remy said she would
help me, but she doesn’t know how things are done. Next time I see Emma Lapp, I’m
going to ask her if I could be her assistant for a while.”

Gabe felt a twinge of guilt at the mention of Emma’s name. If things were right between
them, he could have asked Emma about his sister. He could have been a big help in
fixing Leah up with a position at the schoolhouse. But now Emma wasn’t going to look
at any of his notions too favorably.

The horse slowed as they came to the edge of town, passing the Zooks’ old barn that
was now used as a market, then coming up on the bank where Mammi liked to take the
carriage through the drive-through. Next they passed the ice-cream parlor, where the
picnic tables would be pulled inside soon to save them from winter weather. In the
golden October sunshine with a brisk wind stirring leaves, it wasn’t hard to believe
that winter was around the next corner.

Would Blake let them ride the motorbikes in the winter? He hoped so. It would be a
long, boring winter without the dirt bikes. The ice could be slippery and treacherous
on a bike, but in Blake’s magazines Gabe had seen pictures of riders flying over mounds
of packed snow. He would like to try that.

There was a nudge on his shoulder. “Gabe! Are you dropping us at the tea shop or not?”

He jerked to attention just as the tea shop passed by. “Whoa!” Slowing the horse,
he guided the carriage toward the right and turned down the next side street. “Sorry
about that,” he called back to his sisters as he reined Mercury in.

“Daydreaming again?” Leah teased. “If Susie didn’t nudge you, we’d be on our way to
Paradise.”

The girls climbed out of the carriage and thanked him for the
ride. Gabe watched them link arms and make their way toward the tea shop. They were
so caught up in chatter that they wouldn’t notice him tying up his horse to the hitching
post and stopping in at the Country Store.

His shoes felt heavy as he stepped over the threshold and plodded toward the moment
he dreaded.

The shop was brighter than he remembered it. Tourists moved down some of the aisles,
hovering over displays of soap or apple butter like bees over flowers. He glanced
toward the old cash register, looking for Elsie, but the tall chair was empty.

He took his hat off but hesitated by the hat rack. What if Elsie wasn’t here today?
Maybe her dat or her brother Caleb was working. That would be awkward, trying to explain
himself to them.

Looking for Elsie, he moved up the candy aisle, where there were now displays of homemade
candy—taffy, candy apples, and fudge made by Amish families in their district. The
sight of butterscotch fudge made Gabe’s mouth water. This was a lot more appetizing
than the candy bars they’d been selling in the past few years. The shop was starting
to reflect Amish folk again, the way it had when Emma and Elsie’s mother ran it.

On the next aisle, he found Elsie with two Englisher ladies who didn’t even spare
him a look. They were riveted to her description of how apple butter was made. “I’ll
take three jars,” one woman said, filling her basket. “It will make a wonderful gift.”

Just then Elsie glanced up at Gabe with a look of surprise. “I’ll help you at the
register whenever you’re ready,” she told the women, then headed back to the counter,
motioning Gabe to follow.

“What can I get you, Gabe?”

“I’m not here for buying,” he said, glad to move away from the other customers. “I’ve
come to ask your forgiveness.” His throat was dry as autumn leaves.

Elsie eyed him curiously as she climbed onto her stool by the register. “For what?”

He turned his hat in his hands. “When you arrived at our house for church the other
day. I’m sorry, Elsie. I … I never meant to be mean to you, and I was less than a
man, running from your carriage. But I wasn’t running from you. It was Emma.…” What
kind of chickenhearted man ran away from a girl? It made his face flare with heat
just to think of it.

“I didn’t take offense,” she said, her round eyes earnest. “Emma told me what had
happened with the two of you. I knew.”

“Something just snapped inside me when I saw that she was in the carriage.” He pinched
the brim of his hat, not wanting to say too much.

“It’s sad, the things that are keeping you two apart. I wish there was something I
could do to help.”

He smacked his hat against his thigh. “There’s nothing that can be done. Emma’s a
baptized member of the church now. She can’t be seen with the likes of me.” He knew
that wasn’t completely true. As a baptized member, Emma had promised to follow the
rules and regulations, but she was allowed to court a fella who wasn’t baptized. The
problem was the things that Gabe was interested in … bike racing and a souped-up buggy.
Emma couldn’t get tangled up with a fella who broke the rules.

“You make it sound like there’s no hope at all,” Elsie said. “Don’t tell me you’re
giving up on Emma.”

Gabe swallowed back the knot of emotion in his throat. “It’s Emma who’s giving up.
And I understand why. I think she’s figured out that I’m no angel.”

Elsie folded her arms across her chest and sighed. “She told me about the motorbikes.”

Gabe rolled his eyes toward the heavens. “Ya, I figured.”

“Don’t tell her I talked to you, but she’s heartbroken. Since you two parted, she
hasn’t had much appetite, and I haven’t heard her laugh once. My sister has always
been a serious person, but this is different. She looks like there’s a bitter taste
on her tongue all the time.”

Gabe knew that taste. Like a sour lemon that brought tears to your eyes. Nothing was
quite right without Emma. Food tasted flat, his bed seemed hard, and the sun had refused
to shine for days. Even the cows were cranky. In his logical mind he knew the sun
would shine again, but he wasn’t so sure he would ever enjoy it in the same way.

But he couldn’t tell Elsie any of this. Any fella would be hard-pressed to admit how
much he’d fallen for a woman, and Gabe was no exception.

“Ya, Emma has been worrying me lately,” Elsie said.

Gabe didn’t want to think of Emma, so solemn and hurt and all because of him. The
girl didn’t have a spare ounce on her; it wasn’t good that she wasn’t eating. He put
his hat on, ready to leave. “Give her my best,” he said formally, then leaned forward
to add: “I miss her, too.”

Elsie nodded. Wisdom shone in her dark eyes as she looked up at him. “I’m not giving
up on you two. I never give up on happiness.”

Such a girlish thing, to believe in happy endings and true love
. Gabe imagined that Elsie would get along well with his sisters, but as far as he
was concerned, hope was a foolish thing. Light as birdsong, it could make you feel
good, but it faded fast.

W
ith a wire basket of eggs in one hand, Annie rounded the henhouse just as a wind gusted
through, swirling orange and brown leaves around her. Just days ago October had blown
in with blustery winds and more rain, a warning of the colder season to come.

Autumn was in the air, and as Annie buttoned her sweater at the neck she was struck
by the changes all around her. Not just the fiery colors of the foliage, but the fact
that her sister Sarah wasn’t here to enjoy it. Sarah, Perry, and Mark were settling
in up in New York, in a district that would soon be Annie’s home, too.

The thought of leaving Halfway brought a flicker of worry to her heart, but she kept
reminding herself that things were changing here, too. The earth seemed to be shifting
beneath her feet. Her sister Hannah was baptized now and courting Ben King. Although
Annie was happy for her, she was getting a little tired of hearing about Ben-this
and Ben-that every single night as they lay in bed.

And then there was Mary, her very best friend. Mary would wed
Five soon and start her life as a young wife. Of course, Mary would stay nearby, but
things would be changing. In the blink of an eye, she’d be pregnant, and starting
her family with Five.

Annie bit her lower lip as regret tugged at her. Ah, well, there was nothing to do
but look forward and make her plans for New York. She had promised Mamm she would
wait until the end of the busy harvest season, another month or two, and then she
would go. If everything was changing around her, she wasn’t going to stand still like
a stick-in-the-mud.

As she passed the barn, Annie was stopped by her father.

“I’m going to drop a broken harness off at Daniel’s shop in Halfway,” Aaron informed
her. “Then I’ll ride over to the seed shop in Paradise. There’s a discount if we get
our spring seed order in early.”

“That’ll take a few hours.” Annie shifted the eggs to her other hand. “Do you want
me to go with you, Dat?”

“Why would you do that? You’re needed here, Annie girl.” He looked a little pale,
and since he had been slowing down lately, she worried that it wasn’t only his age.
He was just over fifty years old—not an old man—but lately he seemed tired most of
the time and his skin was as gray as ashes. “Besides, a ride into town is nearly a
nap—all that sitting.”

“Well, don’t be falling asleep in the carriage,” Annie said as he continued into the
barn. Heading into the house with the eggs, she looked back at her dat, recalling
his reaction when she had told him she would be going to New York. “First, we must
both sit,” he’d said, finding a spot on a hay bale. “And now, tell me why you want
to leave this wonderful good farm Gott has blessed us with.”

Telling her dat had been one of the hardest things. It was important for Dat to know
that she was grateful for Gott’s bounty, for the farm and the home and the love that
had always been here. “But I need to find a husband, Dat, and there’s none left here
in Halfway.”

He had nodded sagely. “You missed the harvest season, Annie girl. I don’t want you
to go, but I understand if you need to move on and try another crop.”

Those had been his exact words—another crop! Why did Amish men always compare things
to farming and herding? His little joke had endeared him to her all the more. It would
be hard to say good-bye to both her parents, but she reminded herself that there would
be a new life to look forward to in New York.