Jenny's Choice (Apple Creek Dreams #3) (13 page)

As soon as she read it, Jenny rushed in and showed the letter to Jerusha. Her mama read the note and then took Jenny’s hand. “Jenny, I think we should pray.”

“Yes, Mama, I do too.”

Jerusha began. “Lord, it seems to us that You are opening a door to Jenny’s future, and we want to be sure that we are hearing You speak and that everything Jenny does as she goes forward will bring glory to You and lift up the name of Jesus in this world.”

“Amen,” Jenny answered.

Jenny stood at the post office window with the large brown envelope in her hand. The clerk was busy putting stamps on a box of letters the previous customer had brought in, so Jenny had a moment to think.

What am I doing? Am I really serious about this? What if he hates the writing? Who said I could write…

“Can I help you?”

Jenny stepped up to the counter, her hands shaking. For a moment
she almost turned and walked away. But then she felt a familiar prompting…

Mail it!

She slid the thick envelope over to the clerk. Inside were the first three chapters of her book. She had fretted about sending them in handwritten form and had mentioned it to her
daed.
Two days later Reuben brought her an old Underwood typewriter he found in a thrift store in Dalton. She sat up late for a week mastering the keyboard, and by dint of concentrated effort and with the help of some White-Out, she was able to produce a presentable copy. Now she was surprised to find her palms sweating as she handed her package over to the clerk. He took it from her and slid it onto a scale.

“Seventy-eight cents.”

“What?”

The young clerk looked at her with a bored expression. “Seventy-eight cents is the postage, ma’am.”

“Oh, yes, the postage.”

Jenny fumbled in her bag and pulled out her coin purse. Carefully she counted out the money. The clerk raked it into his palm, dropped it into the open register, and then printed out a stamp from the postage machine on his desk. He wiped the stamp across a damp sponge in a little plastic holder, slapped it on the envelope, and flipped the package unceremoniously into a bin behind him.

“Will there be anything else?”

“No, thank you,” she replied.

Jenny smiled sweetly at him, but inside her thoughts were in turmoil.
What about the trumpets and the angels and the voice from heaven? O Lord, please confirm this in my heart.

She stood there for a moment, resisting the desire to ask for the envelope back. The clerk grew impatient.

“Will that be all, ma’am? We have other customers waiting…”

Jenny glanced behind her at the line of people who looked as bored as the clerk. She gave one more longing glance at the top of her envelope, which was peeking up out of the bin. Then she took a deep breath and walked away.

It’s in your hands, Lord.

Jenny spent a very anxious two weeks. Just when she had reconciled herself to never hearing from Jeremy again, a letter came from Kerusso Publishing. She grabbed it out of the mailbox and hurried into the house. Jenny ran into the back room, where Jerusha was working on a new quilt, and held up the envelope.

“Mama! Look!”

Jerusha looked up with concern. “What is it, Jenny?”

“It’s a letter from Mr. King. Oh, Mama, I just want to throw it in the fire. What if he hated what I wrote?”

“Jenny,
springen Sie zu Beschlüssen nicht.
Now sit down there, take a deep breath, and read it to me.”

Jenny sat in the chair opposite her mother and tore open the letter. Inside on the Kerusso stationery was a handwritten note from Jeremy King.

Jenny gasped and held the letter against her chest. “He likes the story, Mama! Oh how exciting!”

Jerusha laid her quilt aside. “Let me read it, Jenny,” she said.

Jenny handed the letter over as Jerusha picked up her reading glasses from the small table beside her and perched them on her nose. She read it silently and then looked up at Jenny. “You should confirm it right away. You could ask Henry if you can use their phone.”

“Oh, Mama. Do you think I should do this?”

“Jenny, I’ve learned many things in my life, but the main thing is this.
Gott
is the director of our steps, and our times are in His hands. I can see
Gott
’s hand all over this. If opportunity is knocking, you need to answer the door.”

A week later, Jenny sat with Jeremy King at a small coffee shop in Wooster. He had the manuscript and was looking at some notes he had made. Jenny sat waiting impatiently while he read through them. Then he looked up at her.

“Okay, here’s what I’m asking. Can you make this story into a novel?”

“I hate to show my inexperience, but how many words are in a novel?”

“Eighty to a hundred thousand.” Jeremy smiled.

Jenny’s jaw dropped. She stared at Jeremy and then remembered Jerusha’s words. “
When opportunity knocks…
”

“Yes, I can.”

“And do you think you could come up with two more stories and make it into a series?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Okay, then,” Jeremy said. “Here’s what I propose. If you can turn this idea into a book that will keep my attention all the way through, I would be willing to publish it, with a few caveats.”

“Caveats?” Jenny shifted in her chair.

“Yes, and here they are. You show a lot of promise as a writer, but you’re still rough around the edges. If you will let me work with you, give you suggestions, and edit the manuscript as we go, I would be willing to get involved in this project.”

Jenny paused. It occurred to her that Jeremy’s proposal involved spending time with him—a lot of time. For some reason the thought made her very nervous.

Part Two

T
HE
L
ONG AND
W
INDING
R
OAD

When you are with the ones who love you, anyplace can seem like home. But without the ones you love, even home can be a prison.

“Home Is Where the Heart Is”

from the journals of Jenny Hershberger 

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

An Open Door

J
ENNY CAME INTO THE HOUSE
, hung up her coat, and walked into the bedroom. Then she pulled off her shoes and flopped down on the bed.

The book was progressing, but in the process of learning to write better, she found Jeremy to be a relentless taskmaster. Many times he had handed her back chapters with whole sections marked through with red ink. The notes were mostly the same.

“Show, don’t tell, Jenny. Give me some internal dialogue if you have to, or break the narration up, but don’t just ramble on about what’s happening from your point of view. The reader needs to get inside the story, not stand outside and watch with you. Please rewrite.”

Occasionally there would be an encouraging comment, such as “You turn a phrase really well, Jenny. That’s your strong point.”

But mostly it was a grinding, brutal, humiliating process that often found her the way she was tonight—lying flat on her back in her bed, staring at the ceiling with uncomprehending eyes and not one thought left in her head. But still, in the crush of it all, when Jenny stepped back and looked at the places where Jeremy had drawn a small star in the margin by a section that he particularly liked, she knew that
underneath the incredibly hard work, she had discovered the thing that she really loved to do more than anything—writing.

So she kept at it. Her gift with words and phrases and her uncanny ability to get to the heart of things began to blossom under Jeremy’s skilled tutelage. The book began to unfold like a flower in her hands. Many times she felt as though she were reading someone’s personal letters to discover the story—and in a way she was. As she dug deeper into the story, she began to uncover things about her family she had never known.

One night she sat down with Reuben and asked if she could to talk to him about his part in World War II. At first Reuben was reluctant.

“Jenny, this is a part of my life that I’m not proud of. I was young and foolish and very rebellious, and the things I was involved in did not bring glory to Christ.”

“I know, Papa. And if it makes you too uncomfortable, I won’t press the matter. But I will say this. I think there’s something in your story that will help others in our church.”

Reuben looked puzzled. “How is that,
dochter
?”

“When you came back from the war, you believed joining the church and following the
Ordnung
as best you could would save you from the evil you had seen out in the world. But when Jenna died, you discovered that wasn’t true. In that terrible time, you learned that only a real relationship with Jesus Christ can save you.

“If there was one thing Jonathan learned from you, that was it. And it guided his life. He loved the Amish church, he loved working the land…he loved everything about his new life. But he used to tell me that those things only gave direction to his life. It was his relationship with Jesus that made everything real and true. I believe that many of our people need to discover that for themselves, and by telling your story, you can help them.”

Reuben sat silent. Then he reached up and wiped away a tear.

“Maybe you’re right, Jenny. I did learn about having a real relationship with Christ, and the sad thing is I didn’t learn it from the church, but from an old soldier on a mountaintop in Colorado. I will tell you my story. Maybe after I do, I’ll be able to put some of my phantoms to rest.”

For the next few weeks, whenever they could take the time, Reuben and Jenny sat together as Reuben told Jenny his story—how he grew up, how he met Jerusha, his life away from the church when he shared an apartment with Bobby Halverson, and how they both joined the Marines when World War II broke out. One night he told Jenny the story of his basic training.

“After we enlisted, we had a few days to get ready, and then we shipped out for basic training. The trip to South Carolina wasn’t easy. I had an argument with your mama the day before we left, and I thought I would never see her again, so all the way to Parris Island I had a chip on my shoulder. I’m afraid I was a little cranky with your Uncle Bobby, and we almost got into a fistfight on the train.”

Jenny put down her pencil in surprise. “You and Uncle Bobby?”

“Yes, Uncle Bobby and me. Back in those days he was a pretty no-nonsense kind of guy, and he certainly didn’t want to put up with a sulky kid like me.”