Christmas in Apple Ridge (32 page)

Mattie added notes about Jonah’s second choice. “Got it. Denki.”

“Look.” Beth set down her empty plate as she gazed out the window. “It’s snowing.” She grabbed Jonah’s and her coats. “Jonah, remember the year it snowed on Christmas Eve, stranding me at a motel, and you rescued me?”

Jonah grinned while putting on his coat. “Nope.”

Beth laughed. “You do too.” She took him by the hand. “Kumm.” The back door slammed shut as they went outside.

Lizzy laughed. “Omar, do you mind if we join them?”

He held her coat while she slid her arms into it. “Of course not.”

Lizzy turned to them. “Mattie, Gideon?”

“No, but denki.” Mattie wiped her hands on her white apron again, watching Beth try to catch snowflakes in her hands. “I need to clean up.”

Gideon shifted. “I think I’ll get a bit more work done too.”

Lizzy and Omar went out the back door.

Mattie focused on him, her light blue eyes reminding him of all they’d once shared.

Maybe he needed to address the Sabrina issue and put to rest her insecurity about why he broke up with her.

Gideon reached for his tool belt on the counter, then hesitated. “I think you need to know a few pieces of information I left out when we broke up.” Even as he said that, he wondered just how much to tell her.

Mattie placed the leftover cake on a clean plate. “Seems to me it’s long past time for you to clarify anything. But if you need some type of resolution, go ahead.” Now that she’d concluded her cake-tasting event, her tone reflected what she really felt—like moving a pan from a cold back burner to a heated front one.

She handed him the roll of paper towels. Then she took the empty cake containers down the hall and stepped into the wash house.

He followed her, leaving the door open behind them. The almost-finished room had two mud sinks, a wringer washer, and a couple of stools.

Now that they were alone, all the reasons he’d broken up with her echoed in his mind. He silently prayed, hoping the right words would come to him.

Mattie Lane dumped the cake carriers into one of the sinks. “We actually get along pretty well when I manage to forget about your dating habits, although they are a little hard to block out when I’m face-to-face with the newest habit.”

He stared at the paper towels in his hand. “That was Ashley’s sister. Sabrina.”

She wheeled around. “Gideon, how could you?”

“It’s not like that, Mattie Lane. For one thing, I joined the faith two years ago and wouldn’t go against our ways by dating outside the faith. Have you never asked anyone what I’m doing these days?”

“No,” she snapped. “And the other thing?”

“Ashley died, and—”

She gasped. “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

“Leukemia.”

Mattie’s brow wrinkled. “How awful. I’m truly sorry.”

“She had it when we met.”

She peered at him, and he could see the light of understanding
creep into her eyes. “Are you saying that you began to care for her … when she was sick?”

He shifted the paper towels into his other hand. “She was scared and needed a friend.”

“So you ditched me?” Her eyes flashed. “You tossed me out like an old shoe?” She yanked a paper towel off the roll with such vengeance he nearly dropped it.

He knew when he’d used her jealous nature against her that she’d probably walk off and never look back. But now he needed her to understand he hadn’t tossed her aside because he preferred someone else.

He rubbed the back of his neck. He should tell her he never thought of Ashley as more than a friend. But then what would he give as the reason he broke up with her? “The truth is—”

“Wait.” She held up a hand. “Just because I happen to have crossed your path again, don’t feel you need to make up a different story about what took place.”

“I’m not doing that.”

She wiped the cake carriers with a wad of towels, doing the best she could to clean without water. “The problem with liars and cheats is that they lose all credibility.”

This was not going at all the way he’d hoped. Instead of his assuring her the breakup wasn’t her fault, he was simply reopening old wounds.

Mattie finished scrubbing the cake carriers and set them in the sink. “I’m really sorry about Ashley,” she said, her tone less harsh. “But at this point, I’m not sure you’re even capable of telling me the truth.”

“I am, Mattie Lane. With all my heart.”

She tossed the frosting-covered paper towels into the second mud sink and looked up at him. “It’s ridiculous, but I still want to believe you when you tell me something. But I can’t. I just can’t.”

He avoided her steady gaze. “It won’t do any good for me to try to explain if you’re not going to believe me.”

“I do believe you about Ashley.” Her tone was typical Mattie Lane—a bit high-strung, yet tender-hearted and resolute. “And when I saw Sabrina, I noticed that she looked a lot like Ashley, so I believe you about her too.”

That was a start. Gideon took a deep breath, wishing he could reveal the secret he’d been harboring. “I need you to know that our breakup had nothing to do with your not being good enough or perfect enough.”

She scoffed. “Nearly three years after the fact, you’re going to give me the line ‘It wasn’t you; it was me’? You must think I’m vulnerable and frail because my shop burned down.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Ya? Well, what does suit me, Gideon? Because whatever
it is, you suddenly seem to think it’s your place to find out and fix it.”

A van pulled up in front of Hertzlers’ store, and a man got out. The lines of frustration faded from Mattie Lane’s face. “Sol’s here.”

Once again, Mattie’s beau showed up at an awkward time. “Were you expecting him?”

“He’s supposed to be hunting.” She pursed her lips together, suppressing a smile as she gazed out the picture window. “But whatever he’s doing, I trust him in ways I thought I’d never trust again.” She turned to Gideon. “Was there something else you wanted to tell me?”

He shook his head. “I suppose not.”

She tucked a few stray strands of hair into her prayer Kapp and hurried out of the room.

Mattie still thought he’d fallen for Ashley and broken up with her because of it. The only thing this conversation had accomplished was that she knew he wasn’t dating Sabrina.

He watched through the window as she slid into her coat while hurrying across the yard. Sol grinned and embraced her. Gideon’s knees threatened to go weak on him, but he refused them that right.

Jonah tapped on the open door. “I saw Mattie out there. I suppose that’s Sol.”

“Ya.”

“You doing okay?”

Gideon collapsed onto the stool in the corner of the wash house. “I wanted to tell her the truth.”

Jonah closed the door. “What truth?”

Gideon rubbed clammy hands down his trousers. Even though he hadn’t known Jonah much more than a year, he considered him a trustworthy friend. And it’d feel good to share his secret with someone. “Three years ago, in the fall, I started feeling strange. I was tired all the time, had night sweats, couldn’t get rid of a cold, and spiked a high fever regularly for no apparent reason.”

“Serious stuff.”

“Ya The first time I mentioned my symptoms to Mattie, she was alarmed, practically beside herself with concern, so I downplayed how I felt. Her mother has had health issues all of Mattie’s life, and when she almost died about six years ago, Mattie struggled. She barely slept, and when she did, she had nightmares.”

“Beth told me about that.”

He scratched his brow, remembering how dark and confusing life was when he couldn’t share his concerns with the one person he needed most. “After going in circles with doctors who couldn’t figure out what was wrong, I went to a new doctor.
He diagnosed me to be in the chronic phase of a rare form of leukemia.” His throat closed up.

Jonah shifted his cane from one hand to the other. “I … I didn’t know.”

“No one does, except my family, and I swore them to secrecy.” He cleared his throat. “I told people I had out-of-town jobs, and I went to a cancer center in Philadelphia for treatment. That’s where I met Ashley … Sabrina’s sister. She’d had leukemia for years and was a volunteer at the clinic. We became friends. She believed we’d both get well, and I was almost convinced. But rather than me getting better, the cancer jumped to the worst possible stage—the blast phase.”

“But you didn’t tell Mattie what was going on?”

“I hated the idea of telling her. Still, I decided to tell her after the holidays. But on Christmas Day, Ashley came to my house, needing to talk. She’d received new test results, and her prognosis was grim. She’d been positive of a cure, regardless of the nightmare roller coaster she’d been on for so long. While I was consoling Ashley, Mattie walked in. She saw us hugging and wanted answers.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That she needed to date others.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Ashley’s type of cancer was much easier to beat than mine,
and when her cancer returned, her whole family went into a tailspin. I knew I didn’t want to drag Mattie down that road with me. Letting her think I cared for Ashley freed her to build a life of her own rather than watching mine deteriorate.”

Jonah took the stool beside Gideon. “All this time you’ve let her believe you care for someone else?”

“I couldn’t see any other way of protecting her … so I lied. I said I wanted to be free.” But he hadn’t been free. His heart had remained her captive. “Even though I’m in complete remission right now, the disease could return tomorrow. Or next year. Or a decade from now.”

“Or never,” Jonah took off his jacket. “You should’ve let Mattie make her own decision.”

“She’d just turned nineteen the day before. A kid, really.”

“And what were you, all of twenty-two?”

“Barely. I have no doubts that if she had known the truth, she would have stayed by my side.” Gideon clenched his fingers together. “I’d never try to get her back. But watching her with someone else is killing me more than the cancer.”

Jonah folded his hands together and stared at them. “Remember when you told me you found it odd that Beth, who’s spent more than a decade making her own decisions, constantly asks my opinion about things?”

Gideon nodded. “You said that when two people are a couple,
they need to get each other’s opinions before making any decision that impacts both, or they’ll store up trouble for their future.”

“Regardless of the purity of your motivation, you’ve brought problems on Mattie and yourself.”

Gideon shook his head. “I know I’ve hurt her. But staying with me would have brought her even more pain. There’s no telling what it would have done to her.”

“You think you were guarding Mattie’s heart. But it sounds to me as if the only thing you protected her from was making her own choices.”

Like a workhorse whose blinders had been removed, Gideon saw beyond the narrow path directly in front of him. He viewed a landscape that had once been fertile soil growing lush greenery but now was parched and desertlike with multiple shades of brown.

The cancer hadn’t done that. He had.

And because of his actions, Mattie had moved away, found good soil, and replanted her life.

One question remained. What should he do now?

A
fter embracing Sol, Mattie waited in the yard of Beth’s home while he took his overnight bag to her carriage tied outside the store.

A light snowfall swirled around her, making everything look peaceful and charming, but Gideon’s confession had rattled her. On the one hand, relief that he wasn’t nearly as shallow as she’d thought lapped over her. On the other hand, disappointment that he’d chosen Ashley over her still stung—even if he had bonded with the Englischer girl out of compassion. At least his sketchy account of what had happened between the two of them lined up a lot better with who she’d always thought him to be, a kind and deeply caring man.

He should have told her the truth about Ashley
before
she caught them together. And when he broke up with her, why didn’t he tell her about Ashley’s illness? What had he been thinking?

Gideon had always been complicated. She used to think of
him like an oak tree—the magnificent, stretching limbs didn’t compare to the complex root system.

Sol walked toward her, and she tried to clear her mind, not wanting Sol to see the conflicting emotions on her face. She wished she felt nothing for Gideon. But wishing it didn’t make it real.

The man in front of her was the opposite of Gideon in every way. He said what he thought, always simple and straightforward. She liked that about him. He wasn’t full of twists and turns that could confuse or hurt her. She wished she could return to Ohio with him now and not look back. Since the cake-tasting was over, maybe she could pop back in and tell them a quick good-bye. Then she’d leave and keep right on moving … in every possible way.

She opened her arms, gesturing across the land. “Welcome to Apple Ridge.”

“Denki.” He glanced at the road. “I’m so glad you’re here. Do you realize I don’t have the address to your house?”