The Promise of Palm Grove (16 page)

Zack sighed. “Thanks, Mamm.
Danke,
everyone. I'm really glad we talked.”

“Wait a minute,” Effie blurted. “I haven't said my part yet.”

“And what do you have to say, little sister?” Karl teased.

“Well, I just want to point out to everyone that I am twelve years old. I don't have to be watched over like I'm a small child.”

“That is true, but it's your legs I worry about,” Mamm reminded her. “Plus, sometimes you get too tired.”

“If I get tired, I'll sit down. Or I'll trip,” she said with a shrug. “It won't be the end of the world. I'm going to have this disease the rest of my life. I need to manage it, and the physical therapists say I'm doing pretty
gut
with it, too. You need to let me be more independent.”

Their father pursed his lips. “Watch your mouth, Effie. You are sounding a bit too full of yourself.”

To Zack's surprise, it was Violet who became the voice of reason. “Boy, I seem to remember being told the very same thing when I was twelve,” she murmured before looking her parents in the eye. “And when I was that age, I looked after Effie.”

Effie looked triumphant. “See? I am old enough.”

“Give us a little bit of time to get used to that idea, Effie, but I do see your point,” their father said. “We'll start giving you more freedom. But for the present, we need to think about Zachary. It's time we let him have a bit of freedom of his own.”

“I don't know if freedom is what I'm looking for,” Zack protested.

Violet chuckled. “I don't think you need more freedom at all.”

Their mother turned to her in surprise. “But, Violet, we just agreed to step in for Zack.”

“Oh, I'm not disputing that,” Violet replied with a mischievous look. “I'm simply pointing out that Zachariah isn't really looking for ‘freedom.' Instead, I think he's going to be looking for a certain brown-eyed, blond-haired girl.”

When everyone started laughing, even Effie, Zack felt his cheeks heat. “I'm out of here,” he said over his shoulder. “I've got some things to do.”

“Oh, I bet you do,” Karl quipped as Zack walked out the door.

Only when he was well and completely alone did Zack smile. His siblings were irritating, but they also had been right. He did have some things to do, and they all happened to revolve around Leona.

I
t took a bit of convincing, but Leona persuaded Mattie and Sara to let her go downstairs to greet Edmund by herself.

“Just give me fifteen minutes, then you two can come down and join us,” she'd said, trying her best to look far more optimistic about the upcoming meeting than she had felt. The truth was she'd felt a little sick.

Mattie hadn't been for it. At all. “Leona, he is my
bruder
. I know how he's going to be feeling, and it ain't going to be
gut
.”

“It will be fine.” Hopefully, she'd thought.

While Sara had looked extremely skeptical, Mattie simply shook her head. “I think it would be a good idea if we both talked to Edmund, at least at first. He's going to be on a mission to talk some sense into you. When he gets that way, it can be a bit overwhelming.”

“Believe me, I know how he gets. Don't forget that I've known him for quite a while and have had many conversations with him, including breaking up over the phone. Right now I think I can handle just about anything he throws me,” Leona
replied, almost proud of herself for holding firm. Actually, she was mighty sure that every word Mattie had said was true; she wasn't looking forward to being lectured by Edmund.

But there were some things a person had to do herself, and this was one of them. “Mattie, I know you are his sister. But no matter how close you two are, I'm pretty sure he came all the way to Pinecraft in order to talk to me. I need to give him that chance.”

“Leona has a point,” Sara had said.

“All right, but I'll be watching the clock,” Mattie grumbled.

“Watch all you want,” Leona had replied.

Now, as she walked into the gathering room and saw his back to her, recognized the way he held himself, noticed that he was wearing his favorite blue shirt—the one she'd sewn for him as a birthday gift—Leona was scared to death.

“Edmund?” she whispered.

He turned around immediately. Examined her from top to bottom. She might have thought his close inspection would've made her feel a bit more attractive. Or maybe that he had been so anxious, he would have wanted to make sure that she was all right.

But instead, it felt vaguely like he was inspecting her for flaws.

“You are getting a tan.”

She nodded. “
Jah
. I am.”

“Must have been from your day at the beach.”

Though she felt herself getting defensive, she tried to push through it. “Perhaps.” Then, when he stayed where he was, merely looking at her intently but not offering any more hints about why he had come, she knew she was going to have to take the first step.

“Why are you here?”

“We needed to speak, Leona. Obviously.”

“You could have simply called.”

“I didn't have your phone number.”

“You could have gotten the inn's number from your parents or my folks.”

“I didn't want to talk to you on the phone.” He sat down on the sofa, his long-sleeve blue shirt, dark pants, and heavy boots looking completely out of place in the bright and airy room. “May we speak now? Or would you rather we went somewhere more private?”

There was no way on earth she was going to go anywhere with him. Plus, he didn't realize it, but his sister and her cousin were just minutes away from joining them. “Here is fine.” She sat down beside him.

After a generous exhalation, he blurted, “When we got off the phone the other night, I was pretty angry.”

“I know you were.”

“Leona, you played me for a fool. And no matter what you said about wanting to make friends in Florida and such, we both know that you should have never, ever considered accepting that man's invitation to go to the beach.”

“I know how it must have made you feel.”

“
Nee,
you have no idea. I felt betrayed. I was hurt, too.” He ran a hand through his brown wavy hair. “But now that some time has passed, I've decided to forgive you. If you promise to never do such a thing again, if you vow to never act so impulsively, I will forgive you and we can be engaged again.”

Leona felt a lump lodge in her throat, but she wasn't sure whether it was dismay that he could still think she'd want him back, or that she'd been mere months away from living with such a man for the rest of her life.

What she knew, without a doubt, was that if she still loved him,
nee,
if she had
always, truly
loved him, she would have agreed to his request right away. She would have promised to never accept another invitation because she wouldn't have ever wanted to be around another man besides him for the rest of her life.

But, in that moment, there was no way on earth she was going to put up with such a statement.

“Edmund, you were mad enough at me to break things off on the phone.”

“You caught me off guard.”

“I did? Is that why you didn't want to hear my explanations?”

“I told you, Leona. I have now changed my mind.”

“Well, so have I. I've decided that I'm mighty glad this happened.” When his head popped up, she felt a little bad, but she soldiered on. “I am grateful that we are no longer engaged. Obviously, God has been working overtime with us. He brought me here, He encouraged me to have new ideas. Marrying each other would have been a terrible mistake.”

“What happened with that man at the beach?”

“Nothing.” Then, remembering how she hadn't wanted to leave Zack's side, she amended her words. “I mean, nothing really. But I would be lying if I said that he doesn't mean anything to me.”

“Leona, I came all the way down here on the bus to make things right.”

To him “making things right” meant her giving in. Again. Yet again, he'd ignored everything she had told him and instead concentrated on only what he wanted to hear. That realization made her frustrated and sad and confused.

Why had she ever thought he was the man for her, anyway?

She was saved from coming up with a satisfactory comment when Sara and Mattie came barging into the room.

Leona turned to them, relieved. “Oh! Look who is here,” she chirped.

“Edmund,” Sara said graciously. “It's nice to see you here in Sarasota.”

He got to his feet. “
Jah
.”

Mattie, on the other hand, was looking at Leona, asking her without words how it had been going.

Since it hadn't been going well at all, Leona tried to express just how frustrating the conversation had been through her eyes.

When Mattie's eyebrows rose and Sara visibly winced, Leona figured she'd done a pretty good job of that.

“Mattie, you are looking well,” Edmund said.

“
Danke,
” Mattie said as she walked across the room and gave him a hug. “What a nice surprise to see my brother. We'll have to have a nice chat about why you are here. Unannounced and uninvited.”

Edmund's eyes narrowed. “Mattie, now isn't a
gut
time.”

“Sure it is.” Looping her arm through his, she gave a little tug. “I'm starving, and we need to find you a place to stay. How long are you staying in Sarasota?”

“Only until the bus leaves tomorrow.”

“That means we'll have to take you to Yoder's right now,” Mattie said, just as if they were on the verge of an emergency.

“Goodness, yes,” Sara said with a nod. “I'll join you. We'll give you a tour around Pinecraft, too. We're practically experts on the area now.”

“I'm not here to see Pinecraft,” Edmund said. “I came to talk to Leona.”

“We've already talked,” Leona blurted.

He turned to her. “Leona, you mustn't be so stubborn.”

“I think I must.”

Just as Mattie and Sara looked like they were tempted to yank Edmund out to the front porch, Miss Beverly entered the room. “I'm sorry to interrupt, but you have another visitor, Leona,” she said, looking a bit apprehensive.

Leona gaped at the man behind the innkeeper. “Zack?”

“
Gut matin,
Leona. Sara. Mattie.”

“Hi, Zack,” Mattie replied. She stepped forward and not-very-subtly looked just beyond him. “Are you alone or is Danny here?”

Edmund's eyebrows rose. “Danny?”

“Zack's friend,” Mattie supplied under her breath. “And mine.”

“Yours?” Edmund blurted.

“I'm sorry, but I had to come alone,” Zack said to Mattie. “Danny's working.”

Mattie frowned. “That's too bad.”

Zack's lips twitched. “
Jah
.”

Edmund crossed his arms over his chest. “What is going on?”

Zack looked from Leona to Edmund and back. “I hope I'm not intruding. It's just that, well, I remembered telling you how good the fruit was at Yoder's Market. So I picked you up a couple of pieces.”

Leona couldn't have stayed on the other side of the room from him if she'd tried. “This is so nice of you.”

“It was nothing.” He smiled at her, then looked at Edmund again. “Zachary Kaufmann,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Edmund Miller. I'm Leona's fiancé.”

Zack's look of amusement faded. “Leona, I thought you two were through?”

“We are,” Leona said.

“Have you already gotten back together?”

The expression on Zack's face mirrored the moment of panic she'd just felt in her stomach. “
Nee,
Zack,” she said gently. “Although I feel mighty bad about how things happened, Edmund and I are no longer engaged.”

“Then why did he say such a thing?”

“It's a mystery,” Leona said, “because we definitely broke up.”

“But he still came down here?” Zack asked. He was staring at her intently. As if they were the only two people in the room.

“It seems so.” Her words were tart, but Leona knew what Zack meant. There was no way one could ever describe the twenty-hour bus ride to Pinecraft as something one did in the spur of the moment. The trip was long and it wasn't exactly inexpensive, either.

“You really had no idea—”

Edmund, however, didn't appreciate being ignored. “Leona,” he interrupted loudly, “we still need to talk.”

She glared at him. “We do not.” Then she stepped closer to Zack and lowered her voice, almost to a whisper. “I promise, I didn't know Edmund was going to come here.”

“I hope not.” For once, there wasn't a bit of humor in Zach's expression. Instead, his gaze was serious, his posture protective, making her feel warm.

Making everything between them seem a little more sincere, a little more intent. Leona had the feeling if they'd been alone, Zack would have pulled her into his arms by now. She would have also stepped into those arms willingly.

“Leona,” Edmund's voice was louder now. “You are being rude.”

“
Nee
.
Nee,
I don't think so.” Taking a deep breath, she said,
“Edmund, I think it would be best if you went with Mattie and Sara to Yoder's and looked for a place to stay tonight.”

“Leona, I'm going to tell your parents about how much you've changed. They're not going to be happy.”

Since she'd already talked to them, she knew they weren't thrilled about the change in plans. But she knew they were also not going to be happy with Edmund and his high-handed behavior. Moreover, they had made it clear that they loved her and wanted her to be happy. Therefore, she didn't say a word and let her silence speak for itself.

Sometimes there was simply nothing more to say.