Chapter 7
Ten months later when a knock fell at the back door, Joanna expected Ike. Instead, she found Adam standing on the porch with a box of food and snow falling behind him.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.
Joanna’s heart skipped a beat. She was shocked—and unprepared—to see Adam. As she reached for the box her hand brushed against his.
He pulled the box back. “May I come in?”
She took a step backward. “Of course.” Dawdi Marcus had passed away a month earlier and Mammi Lu was deeply grieving. So was Joanna, for her grandfather mostly, but also because Jacob had broken up with her with no explanation six weeks ago.
Becky had invited Mammi Lu and Joanna to Thanksgiving dinner, but Mammi didn’t feel up to it. So Becky said she’d send dinner over for them.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Denki.”
Joanna led the way into the kitchen and Adam followed.
Mammi Lu turned toward them from the sink and smiled. “Adam. How are you?”
“Gut.” He shifted the box under one arm and brushed his bangs from his forehead with his free hand. “Sad for you and Joanna. Marcus was a good man.”
“Jah, he was.” Mammi lifted her apron and dabbed at her eyes. “How long are you home for?”
“I’ll take the bus back next week.” He put the box on the counter beside the peanut-butter-and-chocolate pie Mammi had made.
“Can you stay and eat with us?” Mammi Lu asked.
Before Joanna could intervene, sure he needed to get back to his grandparents and house full of relatives, Adam said, “I’d like that.”
“What about your family?” Joanna asked.
“There’s like a hundred people over there. All these second and third cousins I can’t keep straight. They won’t miss me.” He grinned at Lu. “I’ll go back in time for pie, or maybe I’ll have a piece here and another one there.”
There was no doubt Adam brought a little cheer to Mammi Lu.
And to Joanna too. He carried the conversation, telling stories about Pinecraft and his work.
After they finished eating their pie, Joanna sent Mammi Lu to the living room to rest. She assumed Adam would follow or go home, but he stayed in the kitchen and helped Joanna clear the table.
Once the leftovers were put away, Joanna said, “I’ll wash up Becky’s dishes and send them back with you.”
Adam reached for a towel. “I’ll dry.”
As Joanna put the first serving bowl in the rack, she asked, “How’s Ruthie?”
Adam paused. “Who?” He appeared to be stalling.
“Ruthie.” Joanna hoped she didn’t appear as exasperated as she felt. “Your girlfriend from Spartansburg. You were spending time with her in Pinecraft.”
“I’d see her sometimes in Pinecraft. We went for ice cream together once, before you came down. She went home soon after you did. Ruthie and I definitely weren’t meant for each other.”
“So you two were dating when I was in Pinecraft?”
“Nee,” he answered. “We weren’t.”
Joanna wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. Ruthie, standing at the front door of Adam’s cottage that night after he capsized the canoe, certainly looked as if she were in possession of him.
He placed the bowl in the box. “Denki for loaning me Sense and Sensibility.” He took out a book-shaped parcel and put it on the table. “I enjoyed it. I could kind of sympathize with them needing a home, but not knowing how it would work out and being dependent on others.”
Joanna hesitated a moment before asking, “Do you need a home?”
Adam laughed. “Jah, eventually. That half room I rent keeps getting smaller and smaller.”
“What about Spartansburg?”
He shook his head a little. Joanna didn’t press him. She wanted to ask if he was courting anyone now, but didn’t want him to ask if she was. She’d have to admit she wasn’t, that Jacob had broken up with her.
Adam said, “You should bring Lu down to Pinecraft. It would do her good.”
Joanna turned toward him, thinking of running on the beach with Mandy. How she’d love to wade in the water with her grandmother. “That would be lovely.” But she doubted Mammi Lu would want to go.
Adam said in a quiet voice yet teasing voice, “We could take her on a canoe ride.”
Joanna’s mouth dropped open. “I thought that was our secret.”
He smiled. “I haven’t told anyone.”
She lowered her voice. “I haven’t either, including Mammi Lu.” Why hadn’t she? She could have skipped that they capsized. Maybe she hadn’t said anything because she didn’t want to get her grandmother’s hopes up that perhaps, just possibly, Joanna could be interested in Adam.
“I heard you and Jacob broke up.”
“Ouch.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, along with her pride, and plunged her hands back into the water.
“Sorry.” Adam’s voice was kind. “Taking some time to figure things out? Or is it for good?”
Did he think she’d broken up with Jacob? Not sure how to answer, she shrugged and said, “We’ll see.”
Adam put one of the bowls in the box. “So what are you reading now?”
“Jane Eyre.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Charlotte Bronte.”
“Oh. I thought maybe it was another one by Jane Austen.”
“Nee.” Joanna put a serving platter in the rinse water.
“Do you like the story?”
“Jah.” Joanna put the platter in the drying rack. “I read it several years ago and then started it again last week.”
“Then you must really like it to be reading it again.”
“Jah. I find it fascinating.” She wouldn’t tell him she’d had a nightmare the night before about the Feiyah at Thornfield Hall. The first time she’d read it was before her family’s home had caught fire.
Joanna expected to see Adam at church on Sunday, but he wasn’t there.
Perhaps he’d already left for Florida. Or maybe he’d gone to see his family in Spartansburg.
Miriam was at church but gave Joanna the cold shoulder.
Later she and Jacob talked in the corner of the Byer shed where the service was held.
Before Joanna could ask, Mandy assured her there was nothing going on between Miriam and Jacob.
“She’s courting someone in Berks County,” Mandy said.
Miriam had gotten a job there as a mother’s helper.
“She’s the one who broke up with Jacob. She doesn’t want him back. ”
Joanna didn’t tell Mandy that Jacob had told her he’d broken up with Miriam. One of them wasn’t being honest.
She thought about Adam several times over the next month. Thanksgiving dinner was the first time she hadn’t been aware of Mammi Lu’s deep loss since Dawdi had passed away. She hadn’t been grieving the end of her relationship with Jacob as much either since then.
Adam had been interested in her when they first met, but she’d rebuffed him, thinking she wasn’t ready for a relationship.
Would he be interested in her again? She wished she and Mammi Lu could go to Pinecraft on vacation.
It would do them both good. Ike and Becky would look after their home, and Joanna would do everything she could to make sure it was safe before they left.
She suggested the idea of going to Florida to her grandmother, who replied, “I’m not ready to go anywhere yet. ”
Joanna understood.
Instead of planning a vacation, Joanna focused on the Lord and others. She spent time reading her Bible and journaling and helping Mandy paint the interior of the farmhouse she and Caleb had recently moved into. She talked with Daniel about taking the class to join the church in the spring.
In February her Dat’s parents, Mammi Rhoda and Dawdi Hiram, moved across the county and retired near Strasburg in the cottage Mammi Rhoda’s parents had left her.
Joanna had never been as close with them as she was with Mammi Lu and Dawdi Marcus, even though they’d lived across the road from where she grew up.
Mammi Rhoda joined the quilting group that Becky, Elaine, and Mammi Lu belonged to. All three of the other women seemed to be going out of their way to make Mammi Rhoda feel welcome, which Joanna appreciated. Mammi Rhoda wasn’t exactly warm—yet it seemed her old friends accepted her as she was.
Regardless of Mammi Rhoda’s demeanor, Joanna tried to do little things for her paternal grandparents, such as take a plate of cookies or a pie by their cottage every other week or so.
Mammi Rhoda seemed minimally appreciative and Dawdi Hiram barely responded.
He was nothing like Joanna’s father, who was energetic and outgoing and also loud and controlling.
Joanna hadn’t told her parents that she and Jacob were no longer courting, but Mammi Rhoda did once she put it together. Immediately her Dat started writing her letters, first suggesting she move to Maine and then demanding it. She wrote back but didn’t address the issue at hand.
In April Jacob waited outside of the warehouse one evening after work. He hopped down from his buggy and smiled as if they’d last talked about something important that morning instead of six months ago. “Want a ride home?”
Joanna hesitated.
“Come on.” He motioned to the buggy. “You can get in on my side.”
She drew in a deep breath. What was he up to?
He took a step toward her and lowered his voice. “We need to talk.”
She had wanted to talk. She had wanted to know why he’d broken up with her. Was he courting someone else now?
He extended his hand. “Are you willing to talk?”
“Jah.” But she stepped away from him and to the other side of the buggy. She climbed up on her own.
They talked, a little. Jacob said he regretted breaking up with her. She said he’d hurt her, but she couldn’t manage to explain how deeply. Jacob said he’d needed time to think about things and jah, he had taken someone out.
“Miriam?” According to Mandy, Miriam had broken up with the man she’d been courting in Berks County, although she was still living there and working for a family with ten children.
“It’s a big decision to stay with one person for the rest of your life,” Jacob said without directly answering her question, but she surmised that he had. “But I’d like it to be you.”
“I need to think about it,” Joanna said, miffed that he’d apparently gone out with Miriam again.
For all of Jacob’s talk about being friends when they first met, it hadn’t worked that way.
She’d decided it wasn’t as important as she once thought, and they’d gone straight to courting.
She wanted to backtrack and become friends, but when she told Jacob that, he said, “But we were more than friends. That’s what I want again. ”
She hadn’t planned to play hard to get, but perhaps that’s how it seemed to Jacob. She ignored him and took the class to join the church. She focused on her relationship with God and, after she finished the class, was baptized.
In June, Mandy told her that Miriam had broken up with a second boyfriend in Berks County. “I wish she’d settle down and get married and move back home,” Mandy said. “She drives me crazy, but I miss her.” Joanna didn’t ask if Mandy knew anything about Miriam dating Jacob again.
At the end of July, Jacob’s mother passed away and he went back to Ohio for her service.
Joanna’s heart hurt for Jacob, and she put a sympathy card in his box at work.
She’d never met his mother and Jacob hadn’t spoken about her much, so it wasn’t as if Joanna felt she knew her—but she mourned her for Jacob’s sake.
When he returned, Jacob didn’t want to talk about his mother, but he did continue to ask Joanna out every few weeks.
Finally, a year after he broke up with her, she accepted a ride home from church and then rides to singings.
Jah, she was guarded with him at first, but slowly she started trusting him again.
And the letters from her Dat, written by her mother, stopped.
She hadn’t told them she and Jacob were courting again, but someone had.
Enoch Byer or Mammi Rhoda—or probably both.
Mammi Lu was cold when Jacob came to the door for Joanna. One time she said to Joanna, “You haven’t dated anyone else. How can you know if he’s the right one?” Mammi Lu hesitated a moment and then asked, “Have you kissed anyone besides Jacob?”
Joanna’s face grew hot, and she wondered what things were like back in Mammi Lu’s day, all the way back in the 1970s. If anything, wouldn’t things have been even stricter than they were now? “How many boys did you kiss?” Joanna couldn’t help but ask. She was genuinely curious.
“More than just your Dawdi, I can assure you,” Mammi Lu answered with a little humph.
Joanna laughed. “Tell me more.”
Mammi chuckled. “I’ve already told you enough for you to get the idea.”
Once again, Joanna felt seen by the community when she was with Jacob.
Surely he would bring up marriage soon. Jacob would take over his uncle’s farm, but Joanna would still be close enough to Mammi Lu to see her regularly and help when needed.
No doubt she’d only grow closer to Mandy, considering Jacob and Caleb were friends.
Soon they’d all have children close to the same age.
Jacob would be a respected member of the community, and so would she. She would finally truly belong.
She was aware that she and Jacob didn’t seem as close as Mandy and Caleb, but surely that would come with time. On the other hand, she was sure they were already closer than her parents.
Just when she trusted him again, he grew distant.
In May, three years after she’d first met Jacob, she asked if something was bothering him on the way home from a singing.
He slowed the horse and said, without looking at her, “I’m mulling some things over is all.
” She assumed whatever it was had to do with his uncle’s farm or a work problem. She didn’t press him.
But then in the second week of July, as he gave Joanna a ride home from work, he stared straight ahead again and said, “I need to tell you something.”
She rubbed the sweat on the back of her neck as she waved goodbye to Becky.
It had been unbearably hot and humid for the last week.
“All right.” She guessed it was about work.
He sometimes found fault with a decision she’d made; usually he claimed she was too meticulous. She sighed, too tired to care.
“Joanna?”
“Jah?”
“This is serious.” His gaze darkened. “You need to listen to me.”
“I am.” She turned toward him.
He turned his head and stared at the road. “I’m breaking up with you. This time for good.”