Seasons of
the Heart -Book 3
Winter of Wishes By Charlotte Hubbard
Chapter 1
As Rhoda Lantz stood gazing out the window of
the Sweet Seasons Bakery Café, her mood matched the ominous gray clouds that
shrouded the dark, pre-dawn sky. Here it was the day after Thanksgiving and she
felt anything but thankful. Oh, she’d eaten Mamma’s wonderful dinner yesterday
and smiled at all the right times during the gathering of family and friends
around their extended kitchen table, but she’d been going through the motions.
Feeling distanced . . . not liking it, but not knowing what to do about it,
either.
“You all right, honey-bug? Ya seem a million
miles away.”
Rhoda jumped. Mamma had slipped up behind her
while she’d been lost in her thoughts. “Jah,
jah. Fine and dandy,” she fibbed. “Just thinkin’ how it looks like we’re in
for a winter storm, which most likely means we won’t have as many folks come to
eat today and tomorrow. It’s just . . . well, things got really slow last year
at this time.”
Her mother’s concerned gaze told Rhoda her
little white lie hadn’t sounded very convincing. Mamma glanced toward the
kitchen, where her partner, Naomi Brenneman, and Naomi’s daughter, Hannah, were
frying sausage and bacon for the day’s breakfast buffet. “Tell ya what,” she
said gently. “Lydia Zook left a phone message about a couple of fresh turkeys
still bein’ in their meat case. Why not go to the market and fetch those, along
with a case of eggs—and I’m thinkin’ it’s a perfect day for that wonderful-gut cream soup we make with the potatoes
and carrots and cheese in the sauce. I’ll call in the order, and by the time ya
get over there they’ll have everything all gathered up.”
“Jah,
Mamma, I can do that,” Rhoda murmured. It meant walking down the long lane with
the wind whipping at her coat, and then hitching up a carriage, but it was
something useful to do.
Useful. Why is it such a
struggle lately to feel useful? I wish I knew what to do with my life.
Rhoda slipped her coat from the peg at the door,
tied on her heavy black bonnet, and stepped outside with a gasp. The
temperature had dropped several degrees since she’d come to the café an hour
ago. The chill bit through her woolen stockings as she walked briskly along the
gravel lane with her head lowered against the wind.
“Hey
there, Rhoda! Gut mornin’ to ya!” a
voice sang out as she passed the smithy behind the Sweet Seasons.
Rhoda waved to Ben Hooley but didn’t stop to
chat. Why did the farrier’s cheerfulness irritate her lately? She had gotten
over her schoolgirl crush on him and was happy for Ben and Mamma both, but as
their New Year’s Day wedding approached they seemed more public about their
affections—their joy—and well, that
irritated her, too! Across the road from the Sweet Seasons a new home was going
up in record time, as Ben’s gift to her mother . . . yet another reminder of
how Rhoda’s life would change when Mamma moved out of the apartment above the
blacksmith shop, and she would be living there alone.
As she reached the white house she’d grown up
in, Rhoda sighed. No lights glowed in the kitchen window and no one ate
breakfast at the table: this holiday weekend, her twin sister Rachel and her
new groom, Micah Brenneman, were on an extended trip around central Missouri to
collect wedding presents as they visited aunts, uncles, and cousins of their
two families. Rhoda missed working alongside Rachel at the café more than she
could bear to admit, yet here again, she was happy for her sister. The
newlyweds radiated a love and sense of satisfaction she could only dream of.
Rhoda hitched up the enclosed carriage and
clapped the reins across Sadie’s broad back. If Thanksgiving had been so
difficult yesterday, with so many signposts of the radical changes in all their
lives, what would the upcoming Christmas season be like? Ordinarily she loved
baking cookies, setting out the Nativity scene, and arranging evergreen
branches and candles on the mantle and at the windowsills. Yet as thick,
feathery flakes of snow blew across the yard, her heart thudded dully. It wasn’t
her way to feel so blue, or to feel life was passing her by. But at twenty-one,
she heard her clock ticking ever so loudly.
God, have Ya stopped
listenin’ to my prayers for a husband and a family? Are Ya tellin’ me I’m fated
to remain a maidel?
Rhoda winced at the thought. She gave the mare
its head once they were on the county blacktop, and as they rolled across the
single-lane bridge that spanned this narrow spot in the Missouri River, she
glanced over toward the new gristmill. The huge wooden wheel was in place now,
churning slowly as the current of the water propelled it. The first light of
dawn revealed two male figures on the roof. Luke and Ira Hooley, Ben’s younger
brothers, scrambled like monkeys as they checked their new machinery. The Mill
at Willow Ridge would soon be open to tourists. In addition to regular wheat
flour and cornmeal, the Hooley brothers would offer specialty grains that would
sell to whole foods stores in Warrensburg and other nearby cities. Mamma was
already gathering recipes to bake artisan breads at the Sweet Seasons, as an
additional lure for healthy-conscious tourists.
But Rhoda’s one brief date with Ira had proven
he was more interested in running the roads with Annie Mae Knepp than in
settling down or joining the church any time soon. Ira and Luke were nearly
thirty, seemingly happy to live in a state of eternal rumspringa. Rhoda considered herself as fun-loving as any young
woman, but she’d long ago committed herself to the Amish faith. Was it too much
to ask the same sort of maturity of the men she dated?
She pulled up alongside Zook’s Market. This
grocery and dry goods store wouldn’t open for a couple of hours yet, but
already Henry and Lydia Zook were preparing for their day. Rhoda put a
determined smile on her face as the bell above the door jangled. “Happy day
after Thanksgivin’ to ya!” she called out. “Mamm
says you’ve got a couple turkeys for us today.”
“Jah,
Rhoda, we’re packin’ your boxes right this minute, too!” Lydia called out from
behind the back counter. “Levi! Cyrus! You can be carryin’ those big bags of
potatoes and carrots out to Rhoda’s rig, please and thank ya.”
From an aisle of the store, still shadowy in the
low glow of the gas ceiling lights, two of the younger Zook boys stepped away
from the shelves they had been restocking.
“Hey there, Rhoda,” ten-year-old Levi mumbled.
“Tell your mamm
we could use more of those fine blackberry pies,” his younger brother Cyrus
remarked as he hefted a fifty-pound bag of potatoes over his shoulder. “That’s
my favorite, and they always sell out. Mamm won’t let us buy a pie unless
they’re a day old—and most of ‘em don’t stay on the shelf that long.”
Rhoda smiled wryly. Cyrus Zook wasn’t the only
fellow around Willow Ridge with a keen interest in her mother’s pies. “I’ll
pass that along. Denki to you boys
for loadin’ the carriage.”
“Levi’s fetchin’ your turkeys from the fridge,”
their dat Henry said from behind his
meat counter. “Won’t be but a minute. Say—it sounds like ya had half of Willow
Ridge over to your place for dinner yesterday.”
Again Rhoda smiled to herself: word got around
fast in a small town. “Jah, what with
Ben and his two brothers and two aunts—and the fact that those aunts invited
Tom Hostetler and Hiram and his whole tribe to join us—we had quite a houseful.”
“Awful nice of ya to look after Preacher Tom and
the bishop’s bunch,” Lydia said with an approving nod. “Fellows without wives
don’t always get to celebrate with a real Thanksgiving dinner when their
married kids live at a distance.”
“Well, there was no telling Jerusalem and
Nazareth Hooley they couldn’t invite
Tom and the Knepps,” Rhoda replied with a chuckle. “So there ya have it. They
brought half the meal, though, so that wasn’t so bad.”
“Tell your mamm
we said hullo.” Henry turned back toward the big grinder on the back table,
where he was making fresh hamburger.
“Jah,
I’ll do that. And denki for havin’
things all set to go.”
Jonah Zook stood behind his dat’s counter trimming roasts. Rhoda met his eye and nodded, but
didn’t try to make small talk. Jonah was a couple years younger than she, and
had driven her home from a few Sunday night singings, but he had about as much
sparkle as a crushed cardboard box. And goodness, but she could use some sparkle about now . . .
Rhoda glanced out the store’s front window. Levi
and Cyrus were taking their sweet time about loading her groceries, so she
wandered over to the bulletin board where folks posted notices of upcoming
auctions and other announcements. No sense in standing out in that wind while
the boys joshed around.
The old corkboard was pitted from years of use,
and except for the sale bills for upcoming household auctions in New Haven and
Morning Star, the yellowed notices for herbal remedies, fresh eggs, and local
fellows’ businesses had hung there for months. Rhoda sighed—and then caught
sight of a note half-hidden by an auction flyer.
Need a compassionate,
patient caretaker for my elderly mother, plus after-school supervision for two
kids. New Haven, just a block off the county highway. Call Andy Leitner.
Rhoda snatched the little notice from
the board, her heart thumping. She knew nothing about this fellow except his
phone number and that he had an ailing mother and two young children—and that
he was surely English if he was advertising for help with family members. Yet
something about his decisive block printing told her Mr. Leitner was a man who
didn’t waffle over decisions or accept a half-hearted effort from anyone who
would work for him. He apparently had no wife—
Maybe
she works away from home. Happens a lot amongst English families.
—and if he had posted this
advertisement in Zook’s Market, he surely realized a Plain woman would be most
likely to respond. It was common for Amish and Mennonite gals to hire on for
housework and caretaking in English homes, so if she gave him a call she could
start working there, why—as soon as tomorrow!
How
many of these notices has he posted? Plenty of Plain bulk stores to advertise
in around Morning Star, plus the big discount stores out past New Haven. And
if he had run ads in the local papers, maybe he’d already had dozens of gals
apply for this job. But what could it hurt to find out?
Pulse pounding, Rhoda stepped outside.
“You fellas got all my stuff loaded, jah?”
she demanded. Levi and Cyrus were playing a rousing game of catch with a huge
hard-packed snowball, paying no heed to the snow that was falling on their
green shirt sleeves.
Levi, the ornerier of the two, poked
his head around the back of the buggy. “Got a train to catch, do ya? Busy day
chasin’ after that Ira Hooley fella?” he teased. “Jonah, he says ya been tryin’
to catch yourself some of that Lancaster County money—”
“And what if I have?” Rhoda shot back.
“Your mamm won’t like it when I tell
her you two have been lolligaggin’ out here instead of stockin’ your shelves,
ain’t so?”
Levi waited until she was stepping
into the carriage before firing the snowball at her backside. But what would
she accomplish by stepping out to confront him? Rhoda glanced at the two huge
turkeys, the mesh sacks of potatoes, carrots, and onions, and the sturdy boxes
loaded with other staples Mamma had ordered, and decided she was ready to go.
“Back, Sadie,” she said in a low voice.
The mare whickered and obeyed immediately. Rhoda
chuckled at the two boys’ outcry as she playfully backed the buggy toward them.
Then she urged Sadie into a trot. All sorts of questions buzzed in her mind as
she headed for the Sweet Seasons. What would Mamma say if she called Andy
Leitner? What if a mild winter meant the breakfast and lunch shifts would
remain busy, especially with Rachel off collecting wedding presents for a few
more weekends? Hannah Brenneman had only been helping them since her sixteenth
birthday last week—
Jah,
but she got her wish, to work in the café. And Rachel got her wish when she
married Micah. And Mamma got more than she dared to wish for when Ben Hooley
asked to marry her! So it’s about time for me to have a wish come true!
Was that prideful, self-centered
thinking? As Rhoda pulled up at the café, she didn’t much worry about the
complications of religion or the Old Ways. She stepped into the dining room,
spotted her cousins, Nate and Bram Kanagy, and caught them before they went
back to the buffet for another round of biscuits and gravy. “Could I get you
boys to carry in a couple of turkeys and some big bags of produce?” she asked
sweetly. Then she nodded toward the kitchen, where Hannah was drizzling white
icing on a fresh pan of Mamma’s sticky buns. “Ya might talk our new cook out of
a mighty gut cinnamon roll, if ya
smile at her real nice.”
Nate rolled his eyes, but Bram’s
handsome face lit up. “Jah, I noticed
how the scenery in the kitchen had improved, cuz—not that it isn’t a treat to
watch you and Rachel workin’,” he added quickly.
“Jah,
sure, ya say that after you’ve already stepped in it.” Rhoda widened her eyes
at him playfully. “Here’s your chance to earn your breakfast—not to mention
make a few points with Hannah.”
Rhoda went back outside to grab one of
the lighter boxes. Then, once Nate had followed her in with bags of onions and
carrots, and he was chatting with Hannah and Mamma, she slipped out to the
phone shanty before she lost her nerve. Common sense told her she should think
out some answers to whatever questions Andy Leitner might ask, yet excitement
overruled her usual practicality. Chances were good that she’d have to leave
him a voice mail, anyway, so as her fingers danced over the phone number, her
thoughts raced. Never in her life had she considered working in another
family’s home, yet this seemed like the opportunity she’d been hoping
for—praying for—of late. Surely Mamma would understand if—
“Hello?” a male voice came over the
phone. He sounded a little groggy.
Rhoda gripped the receiver. It hadn’t
occurred to her that while she’d already worked a couple of hours at the café,
most of the world wasn’t out of bed yet. “I—sorry I called so early, but—”
“Not a problem. Glad for the wake-up
call, because it seems I fell back asleep,” he replied with a soft groan. “How
can I help you?”
Rhoda’s imagination ran wild. If this
was Andy Leitner, he had a deep, mellow voice. Even though she’d awakened him
and he was running late, he spoke pleasantly. “I, um, found the notice from an
Andy Leitner on the board in Zook’s Market just now, and—” She closed her eyes,
wondering where the words had disappeared to. She had to sound businesslike, or
at least competent, or this man wouldn’t want to talk to her.
“You’re interested in the position?”
he asked with a hopeful upturn in his voice. “I was wondering if the store
owners had taken my note down.”
Rhoda’s heart raced. “Jah, I’d like to talk to you about it,
for sure and for certain,” she gushed. “But ya should understand right out that
I don’t have a car, on account of how we Amish don’t believe in ownin’—I mean,
I’m not preachin’ at ya, or—”
She winced. “This is comin’ out all wrong.
Sorry,” she rasped. “My name’s Rhoda Lantz, and I’m in Willow Ridge. I sure
hope you don’t think I’m too ferhoodled
to even be considered for the job.”
“Ferhoodled?”
The word rolled melodiously from the receiver and teased at her.
“Crazy mixed-up,” she explained.
“Confused, and—well, I’m keepin’ ya from whatever ya need to be doin’, so—”
“Ah, but you’re a solution to my problem. The
answer to a prayer,” he added quietly. “For that, I have time to listen, Rhoda.
I need to make my shift at the hospital, but could I come by and chat with you
when I get off? Say, around two this afternoon?”
Rhoda grinned. “That would be
wonderful-gut, Mr. Leitner! We’ll be
closin’ up at two—my mamm runs the
Sweet Seasons Bakery Café on the county blacktop. We can talk at a back table.”
“Perfect. I’ll see you then—and thanks
so much for calling, Rhoda.”
“Jah,
for sure and for certain!”
As she placed the receiver back in its
cradle, Rhoda held her breath. What would she tell Mamma? She felt scared and
excited and yes, ferhoodled, because
she now had an interview for a job! She had no idea about caring for that
elderly mother . . . or what if the kids ran her so ragged she got nothing done
except keeping them out of trouble? What if Andy Leitner’s family didn’t like
her because she wore Plain clothing and kapps?
What
have ya gone and done, Rhoda Lantz?
She inhaled to settle herself, and
headed back to the café’s kitchen. There was no going back, no unsaying what
she’d said over the phone. No matter what anyone else thought, she could only
move forward.
And wasn’t that exactly what she’d been hoping
to do for weeks now?
Protagonist Michael Bennett and his fun-loving clan return in GONE. While a follow-up to I, MICHAEL BENNETT, GONE is a standalone story.
Returning to the quaint town of Lucky Harbor is always fun and can also be a delight for newcomers visiting for the first time.
