Loving Jenna

Book 9: Wells Landing Romance

by Amy Lillard

Genres: Amish & Mennonite; Christian Romance; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

In this new novel set in the beloved Oklahoma Amish community of Wells Landing, three generations of women challenge themselves and each other to make a fresh start in faith, family—and love.



Jenna Burkhart is tired of being "special" and hearing about what she can't do. Even though she suffered a head injury in a childhood swimming accident, she wants a life of her own just like any Amish woman. But now that she, her mamm, and her mammi have moved to Wells Landing, she's having a hard time fitting in . . . Until she meets Buddy Miller, a boy just like her, who gives her the confidence to reach for the impossible . . .



Like Jenna, Buddy is used to being the boy no one expects much from, the one people see as "different." Still, being around Jenna's lively, kind-hearted ways makes him strive ever-harder to become the self-sufficient Amish man she deserves. But in the face of family disapproval and their own fears, will Jenna and Buddy's courage be enough to give them a forever happiness together?

Release date: February 25, 2020

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

Jenna Burkhart looked past the rows of prayer coverings to the sea of faces in the room. None were familiar. She didn’t recognize any of the ladies in front of her. But she could only see the back of their heads. And none of the men staring at her from across the room were known to her either. They weren’t exactly staring, but it felt like it. Everyone wanted to look at the new people. Which this time was her family—her, her mamm, and her mammi.

She hadn’t wanted to come to church today. They had only been in town a couple of weeks and she thought it would be best for them to skip. God would understand. But her mother wouldn’t hear of it. And Mammi went along. She always did.

Jenna had begged. Her mother had told her that she needed church. Jenna had pleaded with Mamm to let her stay home by herself. But her mother told her she wasn’t allowed to be home alone. She had claimed her apron had a stain on it too big to ignore and her newest, cleanest, whitest prayer covering was smudged. How could she worship God all dirty like that? Her mother had told her to stop making up stories. She only wanted to stay home because she didn’t like change. But once she went to church a couple of times, it wouldn’t be a change. It would be what was normal.

So now, here she sat, at church, in someone’s house she didn’t know, listening to a preacher she had never met. And people were staring at her. She didn’t like when people stared.

Back home things were different. Everyone knew about her and her condition. No one would ask questions that she didn’t know how to answer. No one would want to know the story. Everyone had already heard it. About how she almost drowned. How she did drown, she supposed.

She and a group of friends had gone swimming in the creek. The same creek she had been swimming in her whole life. Then the accident happened. They said she wasn’t breathing when they pulled her from the water. But one of the group she was with knew CPR. He was older and wanted to be a volunteer EMT, but Jenna wasn’t sure if he ever got to be. His family had moved away not long after. She was able to tell him thanks, but just barely.

She was twelve at the time. But she had been blessed that day. Mammi always said that. And Jenna supposed that was true too. She really didn’t remember. She only knew what she knew because everyone had told her. She had jumped off the bank of the creek into the water, then hit her head on something at the bottom. Most believed it to be a rock, and said so often how it was a wonder that she hadn’t broken her neck and gone on to her reward, but she hadn’t. She had just stayed under the water too long. The oxygen was cut off to her brain—that’s what the doctors all said—and because of that she would never be the same again. She felt the same. But she could remember sometimes, when she was younger, when she had felt a little different, like she was normal. She went to school with the normal kids and talked about boys, and reading books, and what they would do when they finally got to run around. But she never got to run around. Now her mother said she was special and therefore couldn’t do those things like the other kids. She hadn’t called them normal, but Jenna knew what she meant. Other meant normal or special. Depended on who was talking.

She glanced down to her left where her grandmother sat. Mammi had her hands folded in her lap. Age-wrinkled hands that had seen a lot. Had helped pull Jenna into this world. But her grandmother wasn’t that old, she supposed. Sixty-something maybe. They really didn’t talk about such things unless to say, “Jenna, you are twenty years old,” followed by whatever they wanted her to stop doing or start doing. Depended.

Her mother sat on her right, hands folded in much the same manner as her grandmother. Mammi wasn’t Mamm’s mamm. She almost snickered at the thought but knew Mamm would disapprove. Mammi was her dat’s mamm. He had passed a few years before. So here they were. All Burkharts. All new to this town called Wells Landing.

Jenna had never wanted to move here, but neither her grandmother or her mother had bothered to ask her. They had simply come in one day and announced that it was time to start over. Actually, Mamm had done the announcing; Mammi had just gone along. Jenna had protested that she didn’t want to start over. She didn’t see the need. Seemed to her that she started over eight years ago when she had been brought back from the brink of death.

Mamm brushed away all her arguments as if they were nothing more than pesky flies. Then her voice took on that tone that Jenna hated. It always made her feel like she was dumb. Dumber than everyone else. Maybe even dumber than she had been before the accident. But she would never say as much. Mamm just went on about how she and Mammi knew what was best for the family—though all the decisions were Mamm’s—and how Jenna needed not to worry about such matters. The two of them would take care of life’s hard decisions and Jenna need not concern herself. But she was concerned, and no one cared. That’s how she found herself in a strange person’s home, having church, surrounded by people she had never met. She would never be able to remember everyone’s name. She would never be able to make friends. How was she supposed to make friends with people who hadn’t known her before the accident? Who didn’t know that she had been a different person but that she was still Jenna? How?

The congregation stood. That was one good thing about it, she supposed. She might not know anyone there but Mamm and Mammi, but for the most part church was just the same. Announcements were at the same time, songs at the same time, preaching, prayer, and release. It all happened in a so-familiar rhythm that eased her nerves. She wouldn’t make friends, but God was still the same.

After the final prayer, Jenna followed Mamm and Mammi outside with the other women in the congregation. As usual, the men would set up the church benches and turn them into tables and seats so everyone could enjoy the after-church meal. The men first, then the women and children. Once again there was comfort in the certainty of tradition. The same food was served here as was served in Kansas. The women wore the same kind of prayer coverings. Jenna had once commented that they looked a little like paper funnels on the backs of their heads, but her mamm had fussed at her but good. She told Jenna how disrespectful she was being and made her say extra prayers to ask the Lord’s forgiveness. Jenna hadn’t meant to be disrespectful. Just sometimes the things that came into her head were coming out of her mouth before she had a chance to think them over. Most times it was okay. Her thoughts were usually happy ones. But other times, like with the prayer coverings . . . Mamm had gotten so upset that to this day, Jenna still prayed for the Lord to lead her path straight. It had been nearly eight years since she had made the mistake. Eight years and it still weighed heavily on her heart and in her thoughts.

“Jenna Gail.” Her mother nudged her with one elbow, pulling Jenna from her thoughts. “No woolgathering. We’ve got a church to feed. Get that package of cups and follow me.”

A familiar woman swooped in and grabbed the cups before Jenna could even blink. She had seen her before. Blond hair, pale blue eyes. Much like Jenna herself. But she was . . . Jenna thought hard, even though she knew her mother would think that she was “woolgathering.” It was a saying. It meant daydreaming, not really gathering wool. Think, Jenna. She set her mind back to remembering. Helen. That was the woman’s name and she was . . . the bishop’s wife. Jenna had met her at the quilting circle meeting on Tuesday.

“Jenna Gail,” Mamm called.

“Coming.” She picked up a stack of paper plates to feel useful and went to stand next to her mother. If they were going to have to stay in Oklahoma, she might as well start trying to like it. Or the people. Not that she thought she ever would. And maybe one day, when she was grown enough, she would go back to Kansas and live. Maybe even by herself. It was a thrilling thought. Though she knew it would never happen. Mamm told her often that she wasn’t like the other girls. She would never be like the other girls. She was simple in the brain, but also had simple needs. And she would live with Mamm and Mammi for the rest of her life.

Jenna loved her mamm and her mammi. And she supposed that if it was God’s will that she had the accident that caused her to be simple in the brain and only have simple needs, then it was also God’s will that she live with her mamm forever.

She was an angel. He was sure of it. Buddy Miller stared at the girl he had never seen before. She was all the way across the yard and still he had noticed her. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was beautiful like an angel. She had to be one. Just had to.

Buddy wasn’t his real name, though that’s what everyone called him. His real name was Ivan Dale Miller. It was a good name, so he never understood why he ended up with a nickname. But the Amish people seemed to like to call others by names not given to them at birth. Like Bacon Dan and Baby Holly, whose real name was Hollis. He was the Andrew Fitches’ boy.

The girl stood on the far side of the yard next to Helen Ebersol, the bishop’s wife, and another woman he didn’t know. There was a golden glow about the girl’s shoulders, and even from this distance Buddy could see her eyes were as blue as the sky on a perfect summer day.

He tugged on his brother’s elbow. Jonah was married now and had a baby, but he still hung out with Buddy after church. He had promised after he and Sarah got married that he would always be Buddy’s best friend and so far, Jonah had lived up to his word.

“What is it?” Jonah turned his attention away from the group of men gathered at one end of the pasture.

They were at the Fitches’ today. Buddy loved when church was at the Fitches’. Andrew Fitch had a beautiful farm and kept horses for other people. He also bred some of his own. That’s when a farmer made two horses have a colt—that’s what a baby horse was called. Buddy knew. He had a notebook where he wrote down everything he wanted to remember. A long time ago, he had written all that in his notebook and he hadn’t forgotten it. Since then he had come out with Jonah a couple of times to help Andrew with birthings. It was messy business, but that was just part of being a farmer. A fact of life, Jonah called it.

“Her.” Buddy pointed to the girl across the yard. “I’ve never seen her before. Is she an angel?”

Jonah laughed, but Buddy knew that he wasn’t laughing at him. Jonah would never laugh at him. “It’s just the way the sunlight is surrounding her,” he explained. But Buddy wasn’t convinced. She sure looked like an angel to him. What he could see of her hair was as golden as the sun. And he had never ever seen her before. He didn’t know any angels either.

“What do you think, Buddy?”

Reluctantly, he pulled his attention away from the girl and back to the men he stood with. They were all Jonah’s friends, but Jonah told him they were his friends too. They liked Buddy, though they weren’t like him. Buddy was special.

Well, that’s what his mom said. He wasn’t exactly sure what that meant. He wasn’t special. Ice cream in the afternoon was special. That chocolate cake with mint frosting at Esther’s Bakery was special. Ivy Weaver had told him so. Though Ivy’s last name was Brenneman now and she had moved away with her grandfather and her husband, Zeb. Before she left she had told him it was special and that’s why they only made it at Christmastime. Buddy wasn’t like ice cream in the afternoon and he was around for every season. So he couldn’t really be special even if he wasn’t like everyone else.

“Huh?”

Jonah chuckled again. “Caught you looking at the girls.”

“No, no.” Buddy shook his head. “I was just looking at her. Just the one girl.” The prettiest girl he had ever seen.

“What do you think about the horse?” Jonah asked again. He still wore a big smile, and Buddy knew that he must have found something Buddy said funny. Because Jonah would never laugh at him.

“He’s beautiful.” And he was. The beast was a paint horse, that’s what Buddy thought they called them. He was white and brown like swirls in the ice cream he liked. He was strong and solid and knew of his beauty as he pranced around the corral showing off for them. Paint horse. That was something else he had written down in his notebook. “He knows it.”

“A vain horse?” Andrew said. Andrew was married to Caroline, Baby Holly’s mother. She had just had a new baby late last year, so Baby Holly had just become Holly. Buddy thought it was a strange name since holly was a plant. It seemed better suited for girls, like the brown-haired Holly who worked at the grocery store in town. She was Englisch.

“He’s proud,” Buddy said decisively.

“You know what the Bible says about pride,” Danny Fitch said. He was Andrew’s cousin.

“Does that count for horses?” Buddy had never given it any thought. And it wasn’t something he wanted to think about now. He wanted to look back and see if the girl was still standing there or if she had disappeared like he supposed an angel would.

His gaze trailed back across the yard. She was still there, though the sun had shifted, and she no longer looked like an angel with the light pouring out of every bit of her. But she was still just as beautiful. Maybe even more so, because now she looked like someone he could go up and talk to.

Not that he would. He was different. Not normal. Not like Jonah and Danny and Andrew. Girls liked them. At least they had before the three men settled down to “family living.” That’s what Jonah called it. No, Buddy wasn’t the same even if he didn’t like it when his mother called him special. He hadn’t gone to a special school, but no one else there had looked like him. He didn’t wear special shirts or a special hat. And there was nothing else about him that would be considered special. But he wouldn’t go talk to the girl. She was probably just visiting anyway, even if she wasn’t from heaven.

“Why don’t you invite her to the singing tonight?” Jonah asked.

Buddy shook his head. “I’m not going.”

“You haven’t been in a while now.” Jonah stopped hitching up his horse to give Buddy a direct look.

Buddy shrugged. “It’s not much fun without you there.”

“What about a girlfriend?” Jonah went back to his work. Church was over, eating was over, and everyone was getting ready to go home. All the youth were getting ready to have a singing. Buddy wouldn’t go. He wasn’t really young anymore and he had joined the church, so he wasn’t running around. What else was there to do at a singing except find a wife? And that wasn’t something he had ever let himself think about.

Buddy felt the heat rise into his face. He was probably pink like the petunias his mother planted each spring. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“And how are you going to get one if you don’t go to the singings?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Won’t, I guess.”

Jonah finished his task and slapped his horse on the rump. “That’s what I mean. You should invite the new girl. Get a leg up.”

Buddy didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure what his legs had to do with anything, but more than that, Jonah wouldn’t understand. He might be the best brother in the whole world, but he didn’t know what it was like to be Buddy. Buddy didn’t want to say what he had known for some time now. He didn’t like to be called special, but he knew he was different. He wasn’t as smart as everyone else. The only other person he knew like him was James Riehl. But James was different. He found a woman and married before he became “special.” Buddy had been this way his entire life. And girls had never liked him before. Why would this one be any different? She would be smart like the teacher and his brothers and sisters. She would want someone smart like her. She might be as pretty as an angel, the prettiest girl he had ever seen, but she wouldn’t feel the same. She wouldn’t want to be his girlfriend because he wasn’t like everyone else.

They didn’t know it, but he heard his parents talk when they thought he wasn’t around, or maybe that he couldn’t hear them. They talked about how he would always live on the farm, how they hoped that Jonathan, his younger brother, would take care of him as he grew older. It had never bothered Buddy before, but now for some reason it did. It bothered him in a way that left him wanting. For what? He had no idea. But it was still there, this big hole inside him that needed something.

“Maybe I should get me a dog.”

Jonah laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, much like he had done to his horse.

“What?” Buddy asked.

“Nothing,” Jonah said.

But he thought his brother wasn’t telling him the truth. “Obie’s got some good ones. And Gabe Allen Lambert is making dog houses now. I could get a dog and get that dog a house.” And show Mamm and Dat that he . . . that he . . . well, that he could take care of something else. And maybe then, they would know that he would be able to take care of himself. And they wouldn’t talk about him when they thought he couldn’t hear. Buddy didn’t know why that felt important. It just did.

“Jah,” Jonah said. “I’ll go over there with you if you want.”

“Sure.” Buddy grinned, happy to be back on what felt like familiar ground with his brother.

“But what about the singing?”

“I’ll go, I guess.”

“Will you invite the girl?”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t want her to think it means something that it doesn’t.” Besides, now that he had plans to get a dog, why would he need a girlfriend?

Singings are stupid! Jenna wanted to shout those words at the top of her lungs. But her mother would say she was having a fit and make her go anyway “out of principle.” Whatever that meant. When her mother said that, Jenna knew to give up. Her mother was going to win the argument and she should just settle herself to making the best of the situation.

“Are you ready?” Rose Ebersol smiled at her and Jenna tried to return it. Two of the bishop’s daughters had promised to stay with her at the singing and help her meet people. Mamm had readily agreed. Now they were standing outside the barn at the Fitches’ where today’s church service had been held. Jenna had made a point to memorize the name, but she couldn’t remember who the Fitches were. She had simply been introduced to too many members of the community in one day. She would have to work on that another time.

“Of course she’s ready.” Susannah Ebersol tucked Jenna’s arm through her own and patted her hand. “Stay with me. I know how to have a good time at these things.”

Rose rolled her eyes at her sister. “Don’t pay any attention to her. She’ll get you into trouble.”

Susannah smiled, but didn’t bother to deny her sister’s words. “But you’ll have a good time.”

Jenna tried to smile once more. She didn’t want to have a good time. She didn’t want to go. But her mother said she needed “to meet people her own age.”

Like anyone there would be her age. She turned twenty on her last birthday and she might not know a lot of things, but she knew that by twenty most of her friends back home were already married and having babies. And that was something she didn’t think she would ever get to do.

Not because she wasn’t a good person, or she wasn’t pretty enough to have a suitor. She wasn’t smart. She knew it. She had heard people talking about it when they thought she couldn’t hear. “My brain is simple,” she wanted to tell them. “But my hearing is fine.” And when they talked, these people would say what a shame it was. “She’s such a pretty girl.” Then they would shake their heads and make that sound people made when they sucked on their teeth. “Such a shame.”

She supposed it was, a little. Once she had been smart like everyone else. Her brain hadn’t been made simple yet. But long ago she had accepted that her different brain and different way of thinking were part of God’s plan. Sometimes God’s will was a shame. Like hurricanes and those big waves they had on the other side of the world. And sometimes it was a blessing. Now that she was changed after her accident, she wasn’t sure which to call it. For now she was neutral. That meant she wasn’t picking a side. She was right in the middle.

Susannah patted her hand again. “Don’t worry; I won’t let her bore you to death.”

Jenna was about to tell the girl that she didn’t think that was possible, when Susannah dragged her into the barn.

It had already been set up for the singing. The church benches faced each other in rows and rows, much like church itself. The boys had already started to gather on one side and the girls on the other. Jenna had been to a singing before, though it had been a while. She didn’t like them.

She had waited her whole life to turn sixteen and start running around. She and her friends had talked about it as young as ten years old. Especially those with older brothers and sisters who were already in rumspringa. Even after the accident, she had been excited at the prospect. Then she actually went to a singing and it wasn’t anything like she expected. Or maybe it was. The boys were looking at the girls, wondering which one of them they would marry. And the girls were looking at the boys, wondering which one of them they would marry. But nobody had been looking at Jenna.

She had cried when she went home. She couldn’t deny the evidence that she was different any longer. It had been easier before, especially after she finished school. She spent two years learning how to cook and clean and take care of a house. To do that she needed to be home, so she had tucked herself away, only getting out for occasional trips to town for groceries and such and to go to church every other week. If she wasn’t around other people, it wasn’t so noticeable that she was different. But at that firs. . .