Christmas in Apple Ridge (34 page)

“I understand.” He cleared his throat, trying to make his voice sound normal. “I’ll work in another room and leave you in peace.”

He hung shelves in one closet after another. Hours passed, and the house smelled of cake and frosting, but Mattie Lane wasn’t whistling. She used to whistle. Whenever he stopped making a racket, he heard her sigh and mumble.

A loud thud came from the front of the house, followed by a cry.

He rushed from the far end of the house into the kitchen. Mounds of frosted cake lay on the floor, and spatters of it clung to Mattie’s face and dress.

She had her hands on her hips, and anger flashed in her eyes. “I lost all my cake stands in the fire. No one owns anything nearly large enough for a cake this size, so I tried making my own.” She wiped cake off her face and pointed at the toppled stand. “I was sure it wouldn’t break, but I didn’t realize it was out of balance until I added the third layer.”

“It must have been somewhat balanced if it held up until then.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m missing too many things to do this. The right potholders. My cooling racks. Cake stands. The measurements may have been the same, but these pans are deeper and heavier than I’m used to. I haven’t reached for one thing that feels right. It’s all different and awkward …”

Gideon stepped around the cake mass and opened the cabinet below the sink. He pulled a disposable cup out of a package and then filled it with water. Putting a firm hand on her shoulder, he guided her toward a stool and passed her the water. She seemed on the verge of hysteria, and he wanted to assure her. “Mattie Lane, you are strong enough to—”

“Ohhh,” she growled, cutting him off. “Please don’t treat me like I’m going to break from stress. I’m not that fragile, Gideon.”

Her voice was filled with emotion, and pink tinged her cheeks. She’d been dealt a lot of blows in life, and he realized he’d always considered her fragile—a delicate, mysterious seedling in need of perfect soil, sun, and water.

She went to the sink, wet a washcloth, and began wiping splotches of cake and frosting from her dress, visibly shaking. But her emotional reaction didn’t make her weak, and he’d been a fool to think it had.

She sighed, and a gentle, sad smile graced her beautiful face as a tear fell. “It might be my fault the shop caught fire.”

“Whatever happened, it was an accident.”

Her chin quivered. “I think I may have left our notebook on the wood stove.”

Our notebook
. The phrase worked its way into the recesses of his loneliness, bringing relief.

How strange life was. As she opened up to him the way she
had years ago, Gideon saw more than the hurt and disappointment pressing in on her. He saw strength. Wide and high and deep. And so very tender.

She ran her hands over her wet cheeks and sniffed. “Okay, enough of this.” She pursed her lips. “Onward and upward.” She rolled her eyes and gestured at the cake. “Or onward and downward, as the case may be.”

He got a pan out of the sink to put the mounds of cake into, but Mattie Lane grabbed two forks and sat on the floor. She waved a fork over the highest area in the center. “None of this part touched the floor.”

Blinking, he took a fork and sat.

She wrinkled her nose. “Remember our first cake?”

He chuckled. “We thought it was supposed to be an upside-down backside cake, right?”

The smile on her face spoke of friendship. “The Bundt cake that we thought was called a Bum cake.” She laughed. “Mamm helped me bake it. After it cooled, we had the brilliant idea to make it the perfect Bum cake. I dumped it out of the pan onto a chair, and you sat on it.”

He tugged at his pants as if airing them out. “It needed to be a lot cooler than it was when I sat on it. I remember that much.”

Her laughter bounced off the walls of the empty home, refreshing his weary soul.

He pointed at her. “And again, I got in trouble, and your family thought you were adorable.” He hadn’t really gotten in trouble, but his grandmother did lecture him that at ten years old he should know to eat food, not sit on it.

She jabbed her fork into the cake. “Admit it, Gideon. You liked taking the blame, as long as it kept me out of trouble.”

He didn’t need to confess that, but he saw the truth of it more and more. If he’d seen her as the capable young woman she really was, would he have lied to her?

He took a bite of cake. “I remember the cake you made when we were teens. It was so hard that Beiler Construction used it as a cornerstone when we built a new house.”

She laughed. “It wasn’t that bad! Besides, you passed me the baking powder and said it was baking soda.”

“Oh, ya, sure. Blame me.” He swallowed a piece of cake, enjoying these few moments. Memories of them as children faded as ones of their courtship took over. “Remember when we came home all wet from our first canoe trip down the Susquehanna?”

Her eyes grew large, and she chortled. They’d gone down the river with a group of strangers, and a snake had dropped out of a tree onto an Englischer guy. The man panicked, tipping over the canoe. “We always were the talk of the community. What was it your grandmother used to call us?”

“Huck Finn and Becky Thatcher.”

“Ah, right.” Mattie lifted her chin to constrict her neck. “You kids remind me,” she said, mimicking his grandmother’s high-pitched, elderly voice, “of two peas in a pod. Life is just a blink, and you two sure know how to make it count.”

After a hearty round of laughter at her imitation, quietness surrounded them, and her blue eyes smiled at him.

She stretched out her legs and leaned back against the cabinet. “It’s good to see you laugh, Gideon. You’ve changed. Not so much in ways I can point my finger at, but it’s there inside you. A hardness of some type that rarely gives way to the man I once knew. I guess losing Ashley took a lot out of you.”

His heart palpitated, feeling as if weights were being lifted from it. “I’m so sorry, Mattie Lane.”

She tilted her head, studying him. “Ya, I believe you are. We could wipe the slate clean now if you like.”

“How so?”

“We can pretend you broke up with me the right way.”

He tried to imagine being barely twenty-two again with the news he’d gotten and what he’d do differently this time. But he didn’t know the answer.

She pointed her fork at him. “Regardless of how it happened, I’m actually glad I moved to Ohio to start my shop.”

He stared at her, waiting for her to say she was also glad she met Sol.

She stood and washed her hands and face in the sink and then grabbed a towel.

“You seem to really like living there.”

“Ya, I do. But I chose to start my business there for two reasons: it was far removed from you, and my parents peacefully accepted the change because I could live under the safety and affordability of James’s roof. Not sure there’s much calling me back now that the shop burned.”

He propped his forearm on his knee, trying to sense her thoughts. Since she hadn’t mentioned Sol, he wanted to believe that he didn’t matter that much to her, but maybe he was seeing what he wanted to see. Even if it was true, Sol was better for her. Gideon had broken her heart once. If she came back to him and the cancer returned, he’d end up hurting her even worse.

Gideon stood. “Mattie Lane,” he said softly, “if Sol’s not the one, please don’t settle.”

“What?” She locked eyes with him, confusion evident.

“You didn’t mention him as a reason to return.”

“Oh.” She got a large bowl out of the sink, knelt beside the mound of cake on the floor, and started tossing bits and pieces into it. “It’s just that his job could be done anywhere, so we wouldn’t have to live in Ohio.”

“He builds pallets for a corporation, right?”

She glanced up. “How would you know that?”

Gideon couldn’t stomach telling her another lie. “I asked your brother James about him once.”

She raised her eyebrows and waited, letting him know that his answer was not sufficient.

He shrugged. “I needed to be sure you were seeing someone safe.”

She returned to dumping cake in the pan, but a slight smile crossed her face. “I’m very safe with Sol. You don’t need to worry about that.” She stood and carried the bowl to the trash can. “I’m going to be here all night making fresh cakes. I’ll need kerosene lanterns.”

“I can get some at the dry goods store. You need anything else?”

“That should do it.”

“How about a new cake stand?”

“No, I’m fine. I’ll just scale back my fancy plans a bit this time.” Her eyes met his. “Denki, Gideon.”

Her thank-you seemed to hold a dozen messages—gratefulness that they’d patched up what they could between them and that he’d helped her release some of her frustrations over losing her shop. But it also seemed to carry a message of finality, as if they’d gone as far as they ever would in this relationship—two friends who’d go their separate ways all too soon.

W
ith a pastry bag in hand, Mattie stood in Beth and Jonah’s finished home, working on their wedding cake. The pleasure of creating and decorating it bounced around inside her with as much energy as was displayed in the rest of the house. Voices echoed off the walls as people came in and out like travelers at a train station.

Lizzy and Omar had married last week, and their wedding cake had been lovely. She’d used dark beige fondant with light beige icing for their apricot-praline cake. The rope design she’d run along the sides and the flowers of the same color on top had accomplished the desired look.

Beth and Jonah had chosen the strawberries-and-cream vanilla cake with chocolate ganache and vanilla pastry-cream filling, so Mattie had used a white fondant with deep red flowers draping down the side.

But it was the cake she’d made for tonight’s prewedding
dinner that pleased her most. Unlike the other cakes, she’d been able to work on this one with her Mamm, keeping the hours to a minimum and spread out over a week. She expected Beth and Jonah to get a kick out of how she’d decorated tonight’s cake.

Gideon had come to the house one evening on an errand for his grandmother, and even seeing it in the early stages, he seemed awed by her imagination and skill.

Tomorrow was Beth and Jonah’s big day. As excited as Mattie was to be a part of their wedding, she and Gideon had already spent too much time together. And neither would get away with disappearing during any part of the festivities. Jonah had chosen him to be the Amish equivalent of a best man, and she was Beth’s equivalent of a maid of honor. By Amish tradition those positions had to be filled by unmarried people. Since all of Beth’s and Jonah’s siblings were married, that role fell to cousins and close friends.

She had to get away from this place as soon as possible.

Lizzy backed in the door, carrying armloads of folded white tablecloths. Another round of cold air surged inside. “The bride’s table goes there.” Lizzy directed the half-dozen men helpers as easily as she ran her store. They quickly set up lacquered wooden picnic tables and benches in the main living area, and Mattie helped Lizzy dust them until they virtually glowed in the light of the kerosene lanterns.

Several men entered, carrying stacks of folding chairs.

“Those need to be set up in the basement, leaving a center aisle for the couple to walk down,” Lizzy ordered.

At Lizzy and Omar’s wedding last week, Mattie had managed to avoid being around during the Choosing—a time late in the afternoon when single girls of the age to be courted lined up in a room, and the single men entered one at a time, from oldest to youngest, and chose a girl to pair up with for the rest of the festivities. She’d disappeared during that time, using the excuse that her Mamm and Daed were exhausted and she needed to take them home. Her Mamm told her that when Gideon attended weddings after Mattie left, he’d used that same trick, taking his grandmother home.

Had he not dated anyone since Ashley died? Since he’d joined the faith, he wouldn’t have dated an Englischer women. And part of joining the faith was agreeing to seek a wife within the Amish community. She pushed those thoughts aside, demanding her mind to get off Gideon and what his life had been like the past three years. All she had to do was get through the wedding tomorrow and the cleanup the next day, and she could keep her distance from him until she boarded the train at midnight on Monday, which would put her in Ohio a full four days before Christmas Eve.

Mattie helped Lizzy spread the white linen cloths over the long rectangular tables set up in the main room. They lit
kerosene floor lanterns as the evening grew darker, making the rooms much brighter.

“Hey, Lizzy,” someone called from another part of the house. “Could you come here?”

“On my way.”

Lizzy hurried off. Mattie easily tuned out the goings-on around her so she could remain focused on putting the final touches of frosting on the cake. She wished tuning out her thoughts about Gideon were as simple. She’d forgiven him for his misconduct, and now they got along just as well as they always had. Too well.

He’d been really helpful lately, designing and building cake stands to her specifications. He’d also built her a set of professional cooling racks that he said he’d ship to Ohio when the time came. He was the man she’d fallen in love with—giving and caring.