CHAPTER
3

Halfway through the two-hour Sunday Singing, refreshments were served: cookies and cake, and cups of hot cocoa. Leona again scanned the crowd for Adam and Gloria, yet there was still no sign of them.

They must’ve changed their minds. . . .

Not long after, Orchard John walked over and asked Leona, “Know anything ’bout Gloria and Adam?”

“Last I heard, they were comin’,” she told her cousin.

Deacon Mose Ebersol’s eldest son, nineteen-year-old Thomas, joined them, his light brown bangs cut straight across his forehead. “Are ya lookin’ for the Gingerich girl?” he asked Orchard John.

John nodded right quick. “I thought for sure she’d be here.”

Tom shook his head. “I doubt she’s comin’ tonight.” He took a sip of his cocoa. “Not after . . . well, not now.”

Neither of them questioned him. Being a minister’s son, Tom had always been close-lipped, but something in his expression revealed concern.

“I doubt she’s comin’,” Tom had just said. What did he know?

Leona recalled Preacher Miller’s unexpected visit last week to see Arkansas Joe, and Gloria’s and Jeannie’s peculiar reactions. And now, Adam had stood her up for their date tonight. She couldn’t help wondering why.

Even after nearly all the fellows and girls had paired up and ridden away in courting buggies, Leona paced the cement barn floor, continuing to wait for Gloria and Adam. Tom had lingered as well with his deaf brother, eighteen-year-old Danny, the two of them standing outdoors for a time. Probably Danny had ridden with Tom tonight. Plenty of brothers liked to double-date in one buggy.

Eventually Tom stepped back inside and moved toward her as if wanting to say something. Partway there, though, he turned back and left without speaking, slipping out into the night to drive Danny home.

Alone now with only the sound of a horse neighing, Leona went to stand in the barn’s wide doorway and stared out at the glimmering stars. She still hoped her dearest friend might yet arrive, if only to clear things up . . . to soothe Leona’s worries as a dreadful feeling grew in her chest. “It’s nothing,” Gloria might say. “Nothing at all.”

Disheartened, Leona waited another half hour before heaving the barn door closed and trudging toward the dark road. Alone.

Tom Ebersol arrived home early after the Singing, signaling once more that neither he nor Danny had invited a girl to go riding—something that had been the case for Tom for several months now. His father didn’t come right out and inquire, but Tom presumed he was thinking, No girls caught your eye . . . again?

Of course that was far from the truth, though it was okay for Dat to think it as the two of them sat hunched over the kitchen table, chins on fists, playing a serious game of checkers and making short work of Mamma’s pumpkin walnut bread. Danny had already headed for his room to read, not as interested in table games.

Tom strategized his next couple of moves, trying to keep his focus on the wooden checkerboard instead of on pretty Leona Speicher. She had been even more pleasing to him without Adam Gingerich waiting on the sidelines.

“Ready to make your move?” Dat’s question jolted Tom back to the game.

He sat there a minute, redirecting his thoughts, hard as it was. “Es dut mir leed—I’m sorry.”

“Your mind must be elsewhere, son.”

His father was right, but now wasn’t the time to come clean. So Tom made the best move he could, given Dat’s imposing line of black checkers, including two kings.

Dat reached for one of the kings, gripping it between his callused fingers while he murmured in Deitsch. Tom gave in to musing about Leona once more; anyone could see she was enamored with the Gingeriches, including, it seemed, Adam, which made it nearly impossible for Tom to get her attention. Tom recalled how very much like a loving father, and upstanding church member, Arkansas Joe had appeared to be today, after church. He wondered if she had any inkling that Joe wasn’t always as pleasant and engaging as he appeared to be. The man could also be hotheaded. Joe had talked up to Preacher Miller here recently, which was unwise. Tom had long had a feeling about the man that he couldn’t put his finger on. Over the years, he’d heard rumors that certain tools Joe had “borrowed” from fellow farmers sometimes had a way of disappearing. More recently, Joe had joked about the length of the second sermon. “Too bad the seats are so hard—I could have taken a gut long nap!”

Yet if trouble was brewing, Tom secretly hoped the Gingerich family might return to Arkansas, unlikely though that was. Church members who got themselves in hot water rarely held a defiant stance for long.

Truth be told, it wasn’t Tom’s place to sit in judgment of Arkansas Joe or anyone else, for that matter. But he couldn’t forget that sitting across the checkerboard from him was his deacon father . . . a silent source of knowledge on any members who might be misbehaving.

He was worried for Leona, and for what might happen if she ever learned the truth about the family she so loved.

———

Dat won two out of three games before Tom called it a night and headed just around the corner of the kitchen to his room. In the stillness, he sat on his bed and bowed his head in prayer.

Later, he considered again the notion that Adam might not be such a good choice for Leona, considering his uneasiness about Adam’s father. After all, she’d grown up here in Colerain and was known to hold fast to the Old Ways, like the rest of her family.

He pulled on his pajamas and then raised the shade to see the moon rise. The stars seemed exceptionally bright against the ink-black sky. He recalled seeing Adam with Leona after the Singing two weeks ago, observing how she had responded with a smile when Adam spoke to her, and the way they sat close in his open carriage. Am I wrong to care, when she’s not mine to love?

After a moment, he got into bed and reached for the quilt, wondering how long Leona had stayed around by herself after tonight’s Singing before going home. He’d come close to offering her a lift, but he’d chosen to do the right thing and back away.

Still, as sleep eluded him, Tom wondered if he shouldn’t have made an attempt.

I’ll keep biding my time.