A Wells Landing Christmas Read online

  “It’s the middle of June,” he said. “Don’t need no coat out here.”

  “Dawdi, it’s November. Remember? Yesterday was Thanksgiving. And you can’t hunt deer in June.”

  He stopped, mulling over her words as one studies a foreign language they are trying to learn. “Bah!” he said. He took his hat from his head and scrubbed his hand across his already frowsy hair.

  “Come on,” she said, running one arm through his. “Let’s go back to the house and get you some dry clothes.”

  He looked down at himself then, as if just realizing that he was wet and he wasn’t sure how he got that way. “Jah. Dry clothes,” he said, though his confusion was tangible.

  What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t let him go on believing things were the way he imagined, and she didn’t want to frustrate him by telling him the truth.

  But the worst thought of all was the possibility of coming up on him on a day like today and not being able to convince him of the real time and place. What would she do then?

  She thanked the neighbor and apologized to him once again, then she hopped back onto the tractor and pointed it toward home. Daryl lived less than a quarter of a mile from her and Dawdi, but when she thought about her grandfather walking it alone, thinking heaven knew what, alone, and without a proper coat . . . So many things could have happened.

  Thank the Lord none of them had.

  They rode home in silence. Ivy would have given almost anything to know what her grandfather was thinking, but she knew if she asked him he wouldn’t give a straight answer.

  She parked the tractor and hopped down, her grandfather already striding toward the house. She knew he was embarrassed. Maybe that wasn’t the word. He was frustrated, confused, and uncertain. As uncertain as she was herself.

  “Dawdi,” she called to his retreating back.

  “Bah.” He waved a hand behind himself, dismissing her questions without giving her a chance to ask even one.

  * * *

  He should have called, maybe written a letter. He should have told them he was coming.

  And what difference would that have made?

  They could have braced themselves for his return . . . ?

  Did they need bracing? Heaven knew he did. Zebadiah Brenneman had never planned on returning to Wells Landing. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure what led him to come home now. Christmas, he supposed. But that was still over three weeks away. He had missed Thanksgiving by a couple of days. Not that it was a big holiday at their house. Four bachelor men living together, they were lucky to get a hot meal, much less a planned feast.

  Three bachelors, he corrected himself. His brother Obie had married Clara Rose Yutzy earlier in the year. Zeb could have come home then, but he hadn’t. Should have for certain, but he didn’t. Because returning home would mean facing all the mistakes he had made. Mistakes that only one other person knew about. Ivy Weaver.

  So why am I here now? he asked himself as he hitched the strap of his duffel bag onto his shoulder. It wasn’t the kind of bag an Amish man took on trips, but it was handy and sturdy. Zeb figured if it was good enough for the Army, it was good enough for him. Or maybe some of that old rebellion was raising its head again. Who in Wells Landing carried a government-issue duffel bag? No one but him, he was certain.

  He looked around him at the run-down bus stop. It looked the same as it had almost two years ago when he’d boarded the bus to Florida. He needed it to be changed. He wasn’t the same person as when he left. He had moved on. Having everything the same suggested that maybe he hadn’t. If everything was the same, then leaving and coming back were just small hiccups in his life. Like that book he’d heard about where a man went back in time and lived for years only to return to the present and find out that he had only been gone for two minutes.

  He didn’t stand out. No one would call him different. Here, in Wells Landing, he was the same old Zeb, brother to Benjie and Adam, twin of Obie, and son of Paul.

  It wasn’t that he wanted to be different. Somehow, he simply knew that he was. Like he had been given a message before he was born. You will be . . . something. Something more? Something else? Something unrelated? He wasn’t certain. That was why he went searching. That was why he traveled to Pinecraft, Florida, and lived in a tiny beach house with three other Amish boys, all from different parts of the country. Pinecraft was as far as he could get without dropping off into the ocean. So he’d traveled there and stayed.

  Yet why was he here now?

  He could blame it on one of his roommates, who decided to go back to Ohio. Or maybe even the one who fell in love with an Englisch girl and left the church for what he called a once-in-a-lifetime love. Zeb had thought he’d had one of those, but it wasn’t meant to be. How could two people be meant for each other when they had such different goals in life?

  With a last glance around, he adjusted his bag once more and headed for the sidewalk. The wind was cool, and he shivered against its chill across his skin. Florida had been eighty and sunny. Yet again he wondered why he had come home.

  Zeb sucked in a big gulp of that cool air and let it out slowly. He was here now, for whatever reason, and when he got whatever it was sorted out, he would leave. And that was all there was to it.

  He looked toward town. The bus station was at one end of the little community. He couldn’t see much of it as he stood there—just enough to know that two years hadn’t changed much. Kauffmans’ Family Restaurant. Esther’s Bakery; the narrow park that ran down the center of Main. And across the street, the little shops lined up like good little children, unshifting, unmoving, unchanging.

  Two days past Thanksgiving and they had already hung the Christmas decorations. Crisp green wreaths tied with fluttering red bows graced the tall black lamp posts. All they needed was snow to look like something off a Christmas card. But there wouldn’t be a white Christmas in Wells Landing. Some winters brought no snow at all to Oklahoma.

  Snow. That might be the thing to drive him back to Pinecraft. He had become something of a beach bum in his time there, if there was such a thing as an Amish beach bum. He worked, cleaned his part of the house, and did life’s other little chores, but his free time had been spent next to the water. There was nothing like it. There were those who didn’t believe in a higher power. He wondered if they had ever stood on the shoreline. How could anyone look upon the ocean and deny God? He found the feat beyond comprehension.

  The town showed more signs of Christmas. Holiday music slipped out of the doors of the shops he passed. Lights were strung, even if they weren’t blinking in the afternoon sun. At night the entire place would be sparkling like the stars in the sky, except these stars would be all different colors, some steady, others blinking to the tempo of recorded music. A large pine tree at the end of the park had been decorated as well. He didn’t remember that from before, and the one change gave him hope that maybe it could be different. But the feeling was short-lived. He couldn’t allow it to take root and leave him open for more heartbreak. He simply couldn’t.

  He reached the end of Main, where it shifted and wound through one of the oldest neighborhoods in town. He glanced back, over his shoulder. He felt like he’d been gone forever and he felt like he had just left. The mixed emotions tumbled inside him, each one fighting for dominance. One left turn and three more miles, then he would be at the road that led to his house. His father’s house, anyway. Maybe even Obie’s house. No one had told him what had happened after Obie and Clara Rose had married, and he hadn’t bothered to ask. At any rate, whoever lived there now would surely take him in for the night. He had no beef with anyone there. Just Ivy.

  “Zeb?”

  As if he had conjured her from his thoughts alone, there she was, sitting on a tractor waiting for him to return her greeting.

  “Ivy.” He nodded to distract from the choked sound of his voice. He hadn’t seen his family yet, hadn’t spoken to anyone in town, and she was the first. Always Ivy. Was it some kind of cruel
omen?

  “What are you doing out here?” she asked.

  “Going home.” It was a simple enough answer and yet it wasn’t simple at all. “You?”

  She jerked a thumb over her shoulder toward the Super Cost Saver “I just got off work.”

  “You work at the grocery store?”

  She nodded. “At least I did.”

  He cocked his head to one side and waited for her to continue. “Oh, jah?”

  “Dawdi . . . he keeps forgetting—” She broke off with a shake of her head, pressing her lips together as if she regretted telling him even that much. “I could give you a ride,” she said, the change of subject swift and unexpected.

  “Jah. Okay.” He wanted to tell her no, but the words wouldn’t come. He found himself nodding like a fool at her feet. But hadn’t it always been that way? He climbed up next to her, standing on the side and holding on to the back of her seat for balance.

  She shifted away, just barely, but he had expected that much as well. They had been close once, but not now. Never again.

  Funny how some things changed and others remained stubbornly the same. He could remember every freckle on her cheeks, but not the frown that pulled at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were just as blue as the sky, her hair like fire pulled back and somehow tamed under the cover of her prayer kapp. She looked the same, she smelled the same. Perhaps she was a bit thinner than he remembered, but everything had to change a bit. Nothing could remain entirely the same.

  He held himself stiffly, willing his knees to hold him back, not lean into the vanilla warmth that was Ivy Weaver. Oh, how he had missed her. Not that it changed anything. Not one thing.

  The sound of the tractor engine made conversation next to impossible. They could have hollered over the roar. They had done that more times than he could count. But not today. That Ivy and Zeb were gone, leaving new ones in their place. Two years older, and hopefully wiser. Whatever had been between them long ago had died out, leaving the ashes of what could have been love.

  Could have been.

  She didn’t say a word as she turned her tractor onto the road that led to his house. There was no catching up on the community. No chitchat about who had a baby and who got married, who died, who still lived, or who made her happy these days.

  Not that he cared. He and Ivy were long ago and never again.

  The house looked the same as he approached; maybe even a bit better. The paint wasn’t fresh, but it was a newer coat than had been there when he left. The yard was well maintained, even in late November. The garden plot was covered in black plastic. Mums had been planted in the front flower beds, their yellow faces reaching toward the sun, holding on to the fall as long as they could. They testified that there hadn’t been a hard frost. Not yet, anyway. The barn was strikingly red, the laundry line laden with towels and sheets. It was the perfect scene of quaint Amish living, and it brought tears to his eyes. It hadn’t looked like this since his mother died.

  A small mobile home had been positioned behind the house. There was no dawdihaus and Zeb realized that this was the closest thing. Only it wasn’t just for his father but his two younger brothers as well. It should have looked out of place, but it didn’t. Somehow it fit with the landscape and the redone two-story where he had grown up.

  He had thought perhaps he and Ivy would be the ones to make it a home again and not just a dwelling for four men who had too much on their minds to plant flowers and sweep the porch. But it had been Obie and Clara Rose, of that he was certain.

  He hopped down from the tractor. Ivy kept the engine idling while he walked around the nose and stopped, turning between her and the house. “Thanks for the ride.”

  She dipped her chin, the gesture almost stern, then shifted gears and chugged back down the narrow lane.

  Zeb looked back at the house. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Genius or folly. He had come home.

  Chapter Two

  Zeb cut his eyes to the side, doing his best to appear as if he was still looking forward though his attention was settled firmly on Ivy.

  She had brought him home and immediately driven away, but never left his thoughts. Even here, at church, she was all he could think about.

  Once he had knocked on the door of the house, he’d been dragged in by Clara Rose, who cradled three-month-old Paul Daniel in her arms. She’d called out the back door to Obie, and before he could wipe Ivy from his mind, he had been surrounded by his family.

  There had been lots of hugs, assessments, and back clapping, but they had caught up. It had taken most of the evening to recount his trip back, what he had missed in Wells Landing, and what he had been doing in Florida. Not that he had told them all. He hadn’t admitted to the reason why he had left or why he had stayed away so long. Just as he couldn’t explain why he had come back, it was something he just didn’t know.

  Ivy moved, and he looked away as if she were about to catch him watching her. If anyone were to ask him tomorrow what the preacher had talked about today he wouldn’t be able to give an answer, at least not one that would be accurate.

  His gaze shifted, and she was in his line of sight yet again.

  Just as he had thought the day before, she was slimmer now than she had been two years ago. Had she tried to lose weight? It wasn’t like she was vain, or even needed to shed the pounds, but she had. Had she been worried? Sick? Worried sick?

  Why did he care? She had made her feelings clear when he had left. Why should anything be different now?

  The entire congregation shifted, and once again, Zeb turned his attention front. Time to go, last prayer.

  They rose, turned, and faced the bench where they had been sitting. His gaze snagged Ivy’s. Her blue eyes were like ice, her chin set as if she had been preparing herself for the inevitable confrontation. Then the moment was gone. She was kneeling, out of sight and out of reach.

  Zeb knelt and bowed his head, but no prayers would come. The thing he wanted to pray for the most was the one thing he couldn’t have. Ivy.

  * * *

  “She’s trouble.” Thomas Lapp sidled up next to him, and Zeb realized once again that he was staring at Ivy. He couldn’t seem to help himself. No matter where she was his eyes seemed to follow her.

  “Hi, Thomas.”

  The young man shook his head. “It’s good to see you back.”

  Zeb gave the expected nod.

  “You’ve been gone, so you don’t know,” Thomas said, casting his own glance in the direction Zeb had just been looking. Church was over and the meal had been served. It was a pretty enough day for late November, and only a coat was necessary to stand out and visit. Even after so much time in Florida, the day was mild and sunny.

  “Know what?” he asked.

  Thomas nodded toward Ivy. “I guess it was just after you left,” he mused. “She just sort of went off the rails, so to speak.”

  This was the first he was hearing about this. What hadn’t anyone told him? “What exactly does that mean?”

  Thomas gave an elegant shrug. He was like that, fluid and graceful. As a member of one of the most prominent families in Wells Landing, Thomas had a delicate demeanor. All the Lapps did. Thomas wouldn’t say anything bad about anyone unless the comment was one hundred percent true. “She’s been running around with Englischers, driving a car, and wearing jeans.”

  “Wearing jeans?” He wasn’t sure he had heard right. This wasn’t like the Ivy he knew. Oh, she could be a little opinionated and a bit strong-willed, but she wasn’t openly defiant. At least she hadn’t been before.

  “That’s what bothers you most?”

  Zeb shook his head and tried to get his whirling emotions to slow down enough that he could snag one and reply. He latched onto indignation, then let it go. “Englischers?” he finally managed.

  Thomas nodded. “Luke Lambright, mostly.”

  But Luke Lambright wasn’t really an Englischer. Sure he had left their district for all the freedoms and opportunities in Tulsa, but h
e was Amish born. It wasn’t like he was a stranger.

  Yet one look at Thomas’s frown and Zeb knew that anything he said in Ivy’s defense would go unacknowledged.

  “Is that where she got the car?” he asked instead. She had been on a tractor when he had seen her before. But there was no mistaking what he was hearing now. A car! What was she doing? Did she want everyone in town to think she was wild and unruly? That was all such behavior was worth in their small community.

  “I believe so, jah. But I didn’t ask. I just thought you should know since you had been gone and all.”

  Zeb nodded and thanked Thomas, another lie that slipped into being so easily. Last night over supper Obie had caught him up on all the happenings since he had been gone, but he hadn’t said one word about Ivy. And he hadn’t since last year when he took her on a hayride to make Clara Rose jealous. Maybe that was it. Maybe Thomas was jealous because Clara Rose married Obie instead of him, and Ivy just got caught in the middle. That seemed logical enough, but somehow he knew it was more than that. There was only one way to find out.

  “Thomas.” He nodded toward the man, and ignoring his startled look, he walked away.

  He would ask. It was as simple as that. It was a beautiful day—a little chilly for his tastes, but beautiful all the same. December was in the air, an expectant hush, despite the playing children and chattering adults. Christmas. He didn’t know if he could make it that long. Funny thing was, no one had asked him if he was going to stay. They had just assumed he was—the prodigal son returned.

  “Ivy.” He spoke her name before he got too close. He didn’t want to startle her. Or maybe he just wanted her to know that he was coming. He would talk to her, and anyone within hearing distance would know if she spun and walked away.

  Her eyes widened at his approach, then narrowed. She knew what he was doing. She was smart that way. Always had been. She pasted a bright smile into place as she greeted him. “Zeb Brenneman. So good to have you back. When did you get into town?”