An Amish Country Christmas (31 page)

Read more heartwarming Christmas romance from Charlotte Hubbard in her third Seasons
of the Heart novel,
Winter of Wishes
, available now.

 

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 left 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.

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 the mare’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 mantel 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-two, she heard
her clock ticking ever so loudly.

Rhoda winced at the thought. She gave the horse 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, and supplied by local farmers.
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 health-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 nearing 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 carriage, 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,” twelve-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,” 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, so 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.

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 in his home. He apparently had no wife—

—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 surely no one would object
if she gave him a call and started working there, why—as soon as tomorrow!

Pulse pounding, Rhoda stepped outside to the carriage. “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 older and ornerier of the two, poked his head around the back of the carriage.
“Got a train to catch, do ya? Big 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 take it too well 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 sturdy boxes loaded with other staples Mamma had ordered, and decided she was
ready to go. She chuckled at the two boys’ outcry when she playfully backed the carriage
toward them. Then she urged the mare 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—

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. “Could be you can 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 ya 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 Naomi, 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 she sat down in the phone shanty and
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—