When Moriah drifted off toward a group of women, Jesse headed toward Noelle. In her experience, no one was as determined as Jesse King when he put his mind to something.
“Could we talk?” He nodded toward the window seat on the enclosed porch, in the nook that used to be their special spot.
As much as Noelle wanted to flee, she was curious to hear Jesse’s side of the story. She followed him to the window seat but sat as far away from him as possible and crossed her arms.
Jesse exhaled. “I need to know why you didn’t want me to come back.”
Was he trying to pin their breakup on her? “You chose to stay in Montana.”
“You were angry with me,” he said.
Noelle shook her head, baffled. “Of course, I was angry with you. We’d had a fight and you left in the middle of it.”
“I had a train to catch.”
Noelle stared at him until he looked away.
“Jah, I shouldn’t have gone. I see that now. I didn’t realize how bad your Mamm was at the time.” His eyes stayed on the floor.
She tried to choose her words carefully. “Even though we’d had a fight, I expected you to come back.”
He crossed his arms and met her eyes again. “That’s not what I heard.”
She stood.
“Noelle.” His voice sounded defensive.
The Jesse she used to know was honest and willing to take responsibility for his actions. Now he was being deceptive—and manipulative.
She fled, slipping into the kitchen. Ten minutes later she managed to eat with the first sitting. Thankfully, Dat did too.
After the meal, he was tired and wanted to go home. Relieved for an excuse to leave, Noelle told Barbara good-bye, ignoring the baby still in the woman’s arms. Barbara gave her a sympathetic look but didn’t say anything. Noelle’s face grew warm, and the shame burned straight through her all over again. Why hadn’t Barbara told her he’d married? And then that his wife had died?
Dat was quiet on the way home. When he closed his eyes, Noelle assumed he’d fallen asleep. But then he said, “If we love, we grieve. It cannot be helped.”
Had he seen her outburst? When Dat didn’t say any more, Noelle’s thoughts returned to Jesse. She had loved him. Then grieved him. And then here he came, stirring everything up again.
“The challenge,” Dat added, “is not to close off our hearts to love. We have to find ways to embrace hope and joy in our lives.”
Noelle stared straight ahead at the horse’s sloped back. Hope. Joy. Love. All included in Dat’s brief words—all included in Holly’s Advent story. Wise words. But also impossible words. She couldn’t imagine what it would take for her to open her heart again.
After Dat had settled down for a nap, Noelle wished she could get started on unpacking the Kicha, but no work was allowed on Sunday. Dat might not notice when he woke up, but Ted could stop by at any moment. Or Salome. Both would rebuke her for her sin of working on the Sabbath, with no hesitation.
Instead, she stood at the living room window and watched the sunlight sparkle on the brilliant landscape. Out in the field was the frozen pond where she and Jesse used to skate. She thought of the snowmen they’d built and the snowball fights they’d had. Racing across the ice. Making snow angels. Going for moonlight rides in his sleigh. There was no season she loved more than winter, and nothing she’d loved more than spending frosty days with Jesse.
She’d feared Jesse would grow bored with her, since she was so quiet and shy. Because he was so gregarious, outgoing, and such a people person, she was always surprised that he wanted to be with just her. But, at the time, it seemed he genuinely did. It wasn’t that they didn’t spend time with others. They did. At Jesse’s side, she enjoyed the interaction with others.
But it seemed he’d been bored with her all along, causing all of her hopes and dreams to shatter. Without even an explanation.
Her mother had told her, in the unsteady way she spoke after her stroke, that the pain would ease with time, and it partly had. Noelle had stopped thinking about Jesse every moment of the day, stopped mulling over the fight they’d had that morning he came to take her to the train station. Stopped searching her memories for what had gone wrong.
But as she stared across the frosty expanse, it all came tumbling through her mind again.
Mamm had her stroke the day before, and Noelle had left a message for Jesse saying she couldn’t go and asking him to stay too—but he hadn’t received it. He came bouncing up the sidewalk to the Dawdi Haus, excited for their trip together. A cousin on his mother’s side had moved to Montana the year before and had asked Jesse to ranch with him. Jesse wanted Noelle to see the place, to decide if she thought she could live that far away from her parents. If so, once they returned, the two of them planned to join the church, marry, and move to Montana. If she didn’t think she could live that far from home, they would still come back and join the church and marry, but figure out a way to make a living in Lancaster County.
But once Mamm fell ill, Noelle couldn’t leave. That morning, she’d asked Jesse not to go, but he insisted he should. He believed because her mother had survived her stroke that everything would be all right. “I need to do this for us,” he said. “I’m fine with you staying, but I need
