Abby Finds Her Calling (14 page)

“Do… do you think I’m a bad person for letting Jonny… do what he did?”

Abby smiled sadly. “I think you’re young and you’re human—and Jonny is, too,” she added with a hopeful rise in her voice. “Maybe you’re both getting your wayward streaks behind you now so you’ll have an easier road later on.”

“It won’t be
easy
, raising a baby by myself.”

“Do you really think I’d make you do that?” Abby asked gently. “Barbara and even Mamm will come around once that little punkin’s born. Suckers for the wee ones, they are.”

They walked for a while before Zanna stopped in the shade of an old oak tree. Her face shone pink with sweat and she looked done in. “I made a mess of things with James, Abby. How can I ever make amends?”

“Well, you could start with an apology. And follow it up with the truth.” Abby smoothed her sister’s kapp into place again. “James suffered a big hit. It may take him a while to come around.”

“He won’t want to hear about Jonny and me. What else is there to tell?”

Abby shrugged. “All you can do is apologize. You can’t make him accept it, or expect him to be your gut friend again—leastaways not in the near future. For now, you have to keep yourself healthy, and serve out your six weeks so you can be reinstated in gut standing.”

Zanna nodded forlornly. “It’s all so scary now… and my feelings jump around like grasshoppers, sky-high happy one minute and lower than mud the next. Just when I decide something would be a gut move, everything changes. And then I do something stupid. Or I throw up.”

“Oh, Zanna, I can’t imagine what your body’s going through, not to mention your mind.” Abby looked around, but the nearest hydrant was at the Detweiler place a half mile down the road. “Do you want to wait here in the shade while I fetch you some water? Or can you—”

“Don’t leave me, Abby.
Please
.” Zanna’s eyes widened as she clutched Abby’s hands.

Where had such fear come from? They’d walked this road since they were kids—knew every place around Cedar Creek and all the families who lived there. Did the poor girl think Adah or James had followed them to lecture her some more?

“I’m right here,” she replied.
Please, dear Lord, let me see the next right thing to do so Zanna doesn’t collapse before I get her home.

Her sister nodded, and then tilted her head. “There’s a buggy coming. Hope it’s somebody likely to give us a ride.”

“And who wouldn’t?” Abby gazed back the way they’d come, hoping the driver would be sympathetic to their plight. She, too, had grown weary of raised voices and constant stress. Some quiet time in her porch swing with a glass of cold lemonade would bring her closer to God than she’d felt all day. And how she needed that chance to listen for the still, small voice of calm that might guide her in the coming weeks.

“Well, now, would you look at this,” Abby murmured. “It seems our Phoebe has hitched a ride with Owen Coblentz.”

“High time, too.” A sly grin brightened Zanna’s face. “All the while Owen was building your new place, Phoebe could hardly keep her eyes in their sockets.”

“Took Owen a while to figure that out, did it? He seemed mighty intent on his work all those months—like maybe he felt her watching but didn’t know what to do about it.” Abby stepped closer to the road, waving happily as the buggy halted beside them. “Going our way?”

The young couple’s two bright smiles lifted her spirits. “When we noticed how puny Zanna was looking, I took it as my cue to leave—not that I told anybody we were coming after you two.” Phoebe scooted closer to her handsome driver, reaching for her younger aunt’s hand. “I tucked some sandwiches and a couple slices of pie into the basket for you, and Owen poured a big jar of water.”

“Best news I’ve heard all day—right, Zanna?”

“Jah, I’m parched and starving after all the goings-on at the service,” Zanna replied as she clambered into the backseat. “I wasn’t going to make it one step farther. Denki for thinking of us.”

“Jah, double that denki.” Abby joined Zanna in the back and then lifted the picnic basket between them. “Just goes to show how the Lord truly does provide. You’ve got to love a cold drink, fresh pie, and a ride home—and gut company. Ain’t so, Phoebe?”

Her niece’s cheeks turned a pretty pink. “You and Zanna are the
best
company, Aunt Abby,” she teased. “Owen’s a lucky fella to have the three of us along.”

M
onday afternoon James slipped into the back room of his carriage shop. The
CLOSED
sign would stay in the front window because he wasn’t ready to deal with people, but coming here to work offered his only chance at regaining some peace… some perspective, after all the surprises of the past weekend. Running the Members’ Meeting through his mind again and again was driving him crazy, yet he couldn’t stop. Zanna’s confession filled his memory: the way her hand shook as it covered her face… his name on her lips as she admitted she’d been wrong to betray him, to forsake the love he’d shown her.

Jonny Ropp. Jonny Ropp! Of all the fellas she could have chosen…

James walked through his large back room, where he parked wagons awaiting repair and the buggies and carriages that he was constructing for customers. It was a senseless exercise, second-guessing why Zanna had succumbed to such a hellion as Jonny Ropp. What James needed was work to occupy his mind, his hands. He perched on the stool at his workbench, where a large piece of creamy white upholstery leather awaited the clear beads and fake jewels that would
transform a basic rig into a carriage fit for an amusement park princess.

Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

James frowned as he tried again and again to thread a large needle. “So why weren’t You with Zanna, that moment when she forgot her promises?” he muttered. It was wrong to challenge the Scripture that ran through his mind—probably a form of blasphemy akin to contradicting Christ—but the words had come out before he could stop them.

It might have happened just that fast for Zanna, too. In the heat of the moment with a silver-tongued devil, she forgot the Old Ways she’d been raised with—just as Eve succumbed to the serpent.

James blinked. He was no more immune to a lingering kiss and deep eye contact than Zanna was. And had he been alone with her when he was Jonny’s age, before he’d joined the church… oh, temptation would have been so easy to fall into.

The memory of Zanna’s kiss made him knock the open box of beads off his workbench. He cried out in frustration as dozens of shiny fake diamonds rolled all over the floor and underneath his equipment. What he didn’t need was another mess to clean up—and was that someone tapping on the window?

He looked up to see Abby… dear, dependable Abby Lambright, peering in at him. He wasn’t in the mood to talk, but he could hardly send her away, either. He opened the side door. “Be careful as you come in,” he warned her. “It’s one of those days when every little thing’s getting on my nerves. A whole box of beads just scattered all over the floor.”

“Goodness, James, I’ve never seen your shop when it had such a sparkle! Here.” Abby handed him a small brown bottle and then laid aside the clothing draped over her arm. “I’m on my way over to see Emma, with a couple of new dresses I’ve started for your mamm. I noticed you hadn’t come to the mercantile for your break this afternoon, and I thought some homemade root beer might hit the spot.”

“No need for a break when I haven’t been working—and my shop fellas are on paid vacation for a few more days yet.” He tipped the bottle to his lips to savor the cool, spicy sweetness of a beverage Barbara Lambright was especially good at making; at any given time, several bottles of root beer sat brewing in Sam’s cellar. “How’d you know I’d be needing this?”

Abby snatched the whisk broom off his workbench and began sweeping beads into the dustpan. “Even without what’s been going on with Zanna, it’s a mighty warm Indian summer day. I’m hoping this heat won’t come between us, James.”

James blotted his mouth on his shirtsleeve. He admired her for being the one to offer an olive branch, even though he certainly didn’t blame Abby for her sister’s waywardness. Before he’d downed half the root beer, Abby had plucked a polishing rag from his shelf and emptied most of the beads onto it. With quick, efficient grace she rolled the fake gemstones up in the cloth and used the bundle to wipe the dust from his floor. “You’re a saint, Abby.”

Abby’s face turned a pretty pink. “Nah. Just your average garden-variety sinner. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my day and I’ll make lots more.” She smiled up at him, looking so serene and wise. Her gentle friendship, along with the sight of her glossy brown hair, tucked neatly under her kapp, and her sparkling brown eyes made James feel a lot better.

“Well, if you’re a garden-variety sinner, you must be a daisy or one of your mamm’s mums,” he remarked. “Me, I’m surely a weed. Pesky as a dandelion.”

She shrugged. “Dandelions make mighty gut wine, they say—and greens—you know. And truth be told, there’s nothing that brightens a spring day like a hillside dotted with those little yellow flowers.” Abby picked up his needle and threaded it without a second thought. She studied the crisscross of lines on the white leather, which marked where the beads should be stitched on the back of the carriage’s seat.

Her smile soothed him. James exhaled some of his tension, realizing he felt better just being in her presence. Wasn’t it just like Abby to see something as lowly as a dandelion in such a positive light?

“And I reckon Zanna’s like a morning glory,” Abby continued in a wistful voice. “Lovely and fresh. Able to take hold and grow just about anywhere.”

James swallowed more of his root beer. He had no idea where Abby was going with this line of thought, but he allowed his mind to follow her easy talk because it surely was an improvement over his previous fretting. She pulled the needle up through the leather… dropped two of the sparkly hollow beads down the length of thread, and then poked the needle through the heavy upholstery material again.

“But like the morning glories out amongst our crops,” Abby went on, “Zanna tends to grow best where she’s not supposed to, and twines herself around every plant and post until it’s a real effort to get rid of her.” Her smile went lopsided. “Not that anyone wants to see Zanna gone. Even if she’s caused us more trouble lately than we’d like.”

And didn’t that perfectly sum up Suzanna Lambright? James sighed, aware of how Zanna’s blue eyes brought to mind the shade of the morning glories his mamm trained up the trellis alongside the porch. “You make it hard to hate her,” he murmured, “even if I want to.”

“So maybe you can find it in your heart to forgive her?”

James pressed the cool glass bottle against his lips.
Abby nailed you with that one
, his conscience taunted. “Doesn’t she have to ask me to forgive her?”

“Why?” Again Abby shrugged. James didn’t see how she could have planned this conversation, but she was playing it to her best advantage. “It’s up to us older ones to lead by example. It’s a bothersome thing my sister’s done, throwing her life and everyone else’s into such a tailspin, but in six months it’ll bring us a miracle. Maybe God thought we needed one.”

His jaw dropped. Once again Abby had brought him to a point he couldn’t refute, and while he didn’t feel overjoyed, he was at least more settled and able to see beyond his wounded pride.

After all, hadn’t he been proven innocent at church yesterday? And while Zanna had ripped out his heart with her unfaithfulness, at least she hadn’t married him and then tried to pass off the baby as his. She’d called the wedding to a halt in her own way. And once he got past this wild ride, driven by such intense emotions, he might find out it was the best thing that could have happened to him.

“Did I say something that rubbed you the wrong way, James? That wasn’t my intention.” Abby looked up from her sewing. Somehow, while he’d been lost in thought, she’d covered an entire diagonal line with beads. She knotted the heavy thread and began on the next line over.

“No, Abby,” he murmured. “You just gave me plenty more to think about. I guess we’ll see how it all works out as time goes along.” James found a smile for her then. “Thanks, Abby—for the root beer and your quick stitching, too. I’m not nearly as handy with a needle and thread as you are.”

“Do you suppose that’s why I call my business Abby’s Stitch in Time?” she said in a teasing tone. Her brown eyes sparkled, and in a few more minutes she had completed a job that would probably have taken James the rest of the day. “I’d best be getting over to visit with Emma about these clothes for your folks. She’ll wonder what’s happened to me.”

And what’s happened to me?
James thought. Whereas he had been feeling antsy and out of kilter, mad at the world, he now had a more positive outlook, a reason to let go of his anger—or at least some of it.

“Have a gut afternoon, James.” Abby picked up the clothing and started for the door. “Just leave that empty bottle at the store—or bring it over to the house. We’d still enjoy seeing you, you know.”

He returned her smile. “Denki again for the root beer—and the gut advice,” he called after her.