A Wedding for Julia (35 page)

J
ulia realized she had overreacted the night before.

And she even understood how Caleb could be tired of eating the same meals every day. The menu was predictable. The menu was…well, it was printed and laminated.

Food was for nutrition, but it could still be interesting. She had longed to open a café because she enjoyed cooking. What good was that if she made all of Pebble Creek happy but frustrated her own family? She was a little weary of eating the same things herself if she thought about it. She’d just been too busy and excited and tired to focus on the problem.

Caleb’s comment had surprised her, but wouldn’t she rather he be honest? She shouldn’t fault a man for that. Well, she could. However, Caleb had admitted several times that he was clumsy with words, and he had tried to apologize.

As for the bruises she’d seen the night before, she didn’t even want to think about those. She needed to talk to him about why they had frightened her. His health was important to both of them. That was a hard thing for her to admit. She was finding there were many things she didn’t like to admit. It was easier to make lists and mix casseroles and serve strangers.

Maybe she should talk to him about his mother’s letter. Her stomach turned once, like the special pork chops she was sautéing, and then it flipped and settled back down. She wasn’t ready to talk about the letter or babies. One problem at a time.

Sharon had agreed to eat at the Elliotts’, which completely surprised Julia. She wasn’t sure if Zoey and Victoria were winning Sharon’s heart or if Wess was. A budding romance between Sharon and Wess could be another problem, but not one she had to solve tonight. She should talk to Caleb about it, maybe tomorrow. She had an urge to start a list, just in case she forgot something.

That was ridiculous, though. Who made a list of their problems?

Ada had opted to eat leftovers earlier, and she was now reading upstairs. Maybe her mother had realized she needed a little time alone with her husband, or maybe the week had worn her out.

She heard the stamping of boots at the back door, and then Caleb walked into the kitchen.

“Where is everyone?”

“
Mamm
is upstairs. Sharon’s next door.”

“So we’re all alone?”

“
Ya
.” She glanced back at him and smiled tentatively. She had been rude the night before. Should she apologize for that now?

Caleb walked behind her, stepped close, and craned his neck over her shoulder. “Smells
gut
.”

“It does?”

“I haven’t had pork chops in a long time.”

“They’ll be ready in ten minutes. I only need to make the gravy.”

“Gravy too?” The smile on his face reminded her of a young boy, which reminded her of the letter from Betsy and the scar on his hand. She’d meant to ask him about it.

“I can clean up in ten minutes.”

They ate sitting next to each other with the last of the day’s light playing outside the window.

Caleb told her about his week. One order of groceries had been filled incorrectly, causing him to make a trip twice. Red had shied away from a truck, nearly tossing them both into a ditch. He’d spent twenty minutes calming the horse down, and that had made him arrive home later than he would have liked to. The highlight of his delivery days had been the large buck he’d seen standing at the side of the road, just watching and waiting.

She asked about Lydia, but there had been no change.

“Aaron says her last visit with the midwife went fine.”

“That’s
gut
.”

“Not that I know much about midwives.”

Julia thought of the letter, tucked safely in her drawer upstairs, but she still wasn’t ready to discuss babies and her hopes and fears. So instead she reached out and touched his right hand, between the thumb and forefinger, on the scar.

“I’m supposed to ask you about this.”

“
Ya
?” Caleb sat back, claiming her hand and running his fingers along her palm.

A light shiver ran up both of Julia’s arms. Would she always feel this way when he touched her?

“Your
mamm
wrote again. She said Aaron had something to do with it.”

“He did.” Caleb laughed. “I was
freinden
with Matt, Aaron’s older cousin. We’d been in school together and continued to spend time with one another as we grew older. The night of the accident we had been out of school for several years. We both worked on our
daed
’s farm all day and would sneak away to fish and hunt any time we could, though it sounds strange to say grown men were sneaking out at night. But you know how farm work is—there’s always something else to be done. So twice a week we would slip away to one of our favorite fishing spots. Aaron had just started school that year. He was a little runt of a kid who insisted on following us around, especially on weekends when he stayed at his
aenti
’s house.”

Julia tried to picture Aaron small and skinny, maybe the same size as Zoey.

“One night we were out fishing at this pond. It wasn’t our pond, and we probably shouldn’t have been fishing on it. But the old guy who owned it was a member in our district. He didn’t seem to mind. At least he never said so.”

“Did he know you were there?”

“Hard to say. We usually sneaked in the back of his property.”

“Why?”

“If you sneaked in the front, he’d put you to work. He claimed boys took too much time off, and he’d set you to helping in his field or his barn. We never dared say no for fear he would tell our parents we weren’t at school.”

“You skipped school?”

“Only once or twice. And only on days that nothing was really happening.”

Julia rolled her eyes. He’d feel differently if it were his son ditching class. The thought popped into her mind before she had time to squash it.

“We were too old to be told on by this point, but still we’d fish at his place occasionally, always at night. Less chance of getting caught that way.”

“I’m shocked.”

“We’d always leave him some of the fish on his back porch in his icebox. I think we were doing him a favor.” Caleb scrubbed a hand across his jaw. His beard had come in nice and full, completely brown, unlike the hair on his head, which had a peppering of gray.

“The night
mamm
wanted me to tell you about, Matt and I had been fishing maybe twenty minutes when we heard something behind us. I thought it was a wild dog, but
nein
—it was Aaron.”

“He’d followed you.”

“Exactly. He was no taller than my waist, but he’d followed us and hid until it was too late for us to send him back. So we let him stay. And he whined so much we finally let him fish. Only thing was, he couldn’t cast so well yet.”

Julia pulled in her breath. “A fishhook?”

“Right through my hand. I reached out to swat it away. The thing was headed straight toward Matt’s head. Instead of dropping the tip of his rod, Aaron jerked on it, and pulled the hook right through the flesh of my hand.”

Julia traced the scar with her index finger. She thought of the bruises she’d seen the night before, and she knew the answer to her next question before she even asked it.

“Did you go to the doctor?”

“
Nein
. Then we would have had to explain what we were doing, and why we were acting like schoolboys. Matt cut the hook with a pair of pliers we kept in the tackle box, and then he pushed it out. The incident completely ruined our fishing as my hand wouldn’t stop bleeding, so we had to leave. When I got home I found the basket of medical supplies my
mamm
kept—”

“Tell me this wasn’t an everyday occurrence.”

“Not exactly, but it wasn’t rare, either. With six boys medical supplies were always coming in handy. I poured some of the bubbly stuff on it—”

“Hydrogen peroxide.”

“Right. Then I slapped some cream from a tube over that and bandaged it up.”

“Did you even think you might need a tetanus shot?”

“I had one the year before.
Mamm
made sure she kept our shots up to date, especially the tetanus shot.”

Julia closed her eyes. Maybe there was a reason Betsy had told her to ask about the scar. Possibly Betsy had guessed there were things about Caleb she needed to understand.

Caleb leaned forward. With his fingertips he traced a path from her eye to the tip of her chin. “It’s only a scar. Everything healed fine.”

He kissed her softly. Instead of pulling away, she scooted closer. Caleb’s hand went to her
kapp
, releasing the pins which held it, and then he worked his fingers through her braid.

Closing her eyes, Julia allowed her tension and her worries to melt away. She nearly groaned when Caleb began massaging her scalp, then her neck, and finally her shoulders.

“We can soak the dishes.” He nibbled on her ear.

“I made dessert.”

“It’ll be perfect for breakfast.”

How could she argue? Suddenly washing dishes didn’t seem to matter, and there were only the two plates. They would keep, but moments like this? Something told her they might be rare. So she followed Caleb to the kitchen, placed her dish into the sink, and added soap as he ran enough water to cover them.

He turned and kissed her once more, and then he reached to turn out the gaslight.

“Leave it for Sharon,” she whispered.

“
Gut
idea.”

Caleb led her upstairs to their room, to the one place she could put aside every single thing on her list and just be. She didn’t protest when he helped remove the few remaining hairpins. In the darkness, he rubbed away the knots in her shoulders and left a trail of kisses as he brushed her hair away from the back of her neck.

Julia felt like her garden—tenderly cared for.

She realized she might not understand all of Caleb’s past. She certainly didn’t know their future and whether it would or would not include children. But she couldn’t doubt his feelings for her as he joined her in the big bed under the double wedding ring quilt.

Chapter 29

D
inner had been the same and also very different from what Sharon was used to. With the three Elliott kids, herself, and Tim and Jeanette, the table was more crowded than at Julia’s. It was more like home.

Many people thought the Amish ate quietly with no one speaking, but at Sharon’s house mealtimes had always been rather busy affairs. It was a time when everyone caught up on the news of the day. Sheer numbers guaranteed a small degree of chaos. After all, with seven children there was bound to be a certain amount of jostling for the last biscuit, the occasional frog sneaked into the house by way of someone’s pocket, and once in a while a tense situation because one or the other of them had managed to find themselves in trouble.

The Elliotts’ dinner table was similar as far as the chaos factor, but it was different in other ways. Soft music continued to play from the living room. The girls each wanted a special place for their dolls at the table, but Jeanette convinced them that all of the baby dolls were full from their late afternoon tea. Tim blessed the food with a short, simple, and verbal grace. Amish prayers were always silent. Then there was Wess, glancing at her every few moments, offering to refill her glass of water, and touching her hand when he asked her to pass the basket of bread.