Between Two Promises (5 page)

“Where’s the bride-to-be?” Daniel asked.

“Heidi’s been staying with her second cousin a few miles away the past month,” Mark said. “She should be over later. Her parents are there too. They only came up from Texas yesterday.”

“So I’m not that late?”

“Nay, you’re right on time.”

His heart thumped when he spotted eight-year-old Leah in her wheelchair. Powerless over her muscles from a rare genetic disorder, metachromatic leukodystrophy, Leah had been wheelchair-bound for a year. She looked a lot worse than when Daniel had last seen her in June. Ten-year-old Moriah, more watchful than a mother quail, pushed her down the porch ramp he and Mark had installed for Leah last spring.

“Hello, little Leah,” Daniel said, balancing in a squat to greet her. Her soft hand disappeared in his. Despite having almost no muscle coordination, her smile stretched near to her ears.

“She can barely speak anymore,” Moriah said matter-of-factly, “but we think she can understand us.”

His mother, her arms wrapped around the bib of her apron, descended from the house. “Daniel, Daniel Schrock.” She stepped up to Daniel and embraced him. “You’re here. Ach, I didn’t think you’d come, I didn’t.”

“Well, I made it.”

“How was the journey?”

“It was long, but lots of interesting things to see.”

Rachel and Aiden’s eyes met across the yellow lawn. At first, Rachel seemed unsure how to approach him. Then, walking up to him, she smiled broadly and embraced him. “It’s good to see you, Aiden Cermak.”

“It’s been too long,” Aiden said, flushing.

Daniel’s father strolled out of the barn next, wiping his hands on the sides of his broadfall pants. He wore a large grin on his face.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello, Dad.” The two shook hands. “Good to see you.”

Samuel’s eyes narrowed when he spotted the truck parked in the driveway. “What’s this beast?”

His cheeks heating, Daniel said, “That’s my truck I drove in from Montana.”

“It’s bigger than the Belgians,” his father said. “What’s the horsepower of this contraption?”

“Over three hundred,” Daniel said.

Finally, after scrutinizing the truck like he would a horse at auction, Samuel turned to Aiden. The patriarch stroked his long, grizzled beard. Aiden rocked from heel to toe, his hands in his coat pockets. Daniel imagined how awkward Aiden must feel, facing the man who’d banished him from the community a year ago. But Aiden had insisted on coming back to Illinois. He must face Samuel and brave the consequences.

After what seemed a penetrating stalemate, Samuel smiled. The discomfort of how things had been left last Thanksgiving seemed to evaporate into the pale sky. Daniel sighed with a grin when the two men grasped each other’s hands firmly.

Daniel wanted to shift attention away from Aiden now that everyone had had their chance to greet him. “Feels like it might make snow,” he said.

“The English weather reports say we’ll get the first major snowfall of the season tonight,” Rachel said. “Four inches.”

“We don’t need the English to tell us that,” Samuel said. “You can taste the snow on your tongue.” Samuel stuck out his tongue and pointed it toward the west, where the sky churned with dark-gray clouds. The children giggled at their father’s silly behavior. Except young David, who still stood on the porch, staring at the group as if they were strangers.

“Let’s get your suitcases into the house,” Samuel said to Daniel.

“I told you, Samuel,” Rachel said. “He explained in one of his letters he’s staying at a bed and breakfast.”

“A bed and breakfast?” Samuel raised his grizzly eyebrows at Daniel.

“You’ll have too many guests here as it is,” Daniel said. “What with the wedding, you won’t need any more hassles.”

“And Aiden?” Samuel asked. “Where will he be staying?”

“Same as me.” Daniel did not hesitate to answer truthfully. His family—and the entire community, no doubt—would find out soon enough who was staying where for Mark’s wedding. In this case, fudging the truth would be pointless. “We’re staying at the Harvest Sunrise Inn Bed and Breakfast.”

“Ach.” Samuel adjusted his eyeglasses over his bulbous nose. “Must be crowded there, more than here. Many of the friends and relatives are staying there, all over yet.”

“So I discovered when I made reservations last week,” Daniel said.

Samuel folded his arms across his heavy black jacket and stared at his son down his lumpy nose. “Where did you and Aiden run into each other?”

“He’s living out in Montana,” Daniel said, “like I wrote.”

Samuel narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. “That’s quite a coincidence.”

“Ya, for sure… for sure it is.”

He caught a glimpse of Aiden leaning over to play with Leah. His face seemed to tighten with what looked like annoyance when Daniel uttered his first fib, one that would become a string of many, Daniel was sure. Aiden looked even a bit betrayed.

Samuel did not have a chance to say more, for Mark, at that opportune moment, grabbed Daniel’s arm and ushered him toward the house. “Let Daniel meet baby Gretchen, Dad. Elisabeth’s inside with her,” he said to Daniel. “They can’t wait to see you.”

With the family heading for the house, Mark and Daniel moseyed behind. Mark expressed his gratitude again that Daniel had made it home for his and Heidi’s wedding.

“I’m glad I was able to come,” Daniel said.

“It’s good you brought Aiden too.” Mark did not request specifics of how or where Daniel had found him. He simply seemed happy both of them were there.

“It was no trouble,” Daniel said.

“Ach, danke for tossing me some of your woodwork,” Mark added. “It’s for sure coming in handy with extra money.”

“I’m glad I been able to do it,” Daniel said. “Things are for sure picking up. We got more orders in the past few months than almost all of last year.”

“Even the warehouse items were sold off,” Mark said. “We got lots of money from that, and we won’t have to worry about renting out the space no more.”

“Ya, Mom wrote me about that. That’s goot.”

“I’m working part time at the English wooden beam manufacturer too.” Mark lifted his head to his big bruder with a toothy grin. “So far it’s been a good job.”

Daniel recalled his mother mentioning in one of her letters Mark had started working there. “You like it? Not too restrictive?”

“It can be monotonous, but I like the money.”

“Is that all that’s important, money?”

“When you’re young with a new wife and maybe a baby soon, it is,” Mark said. “I still have to save up to buy some land so Heidi and me can build our own home. Living with Mom and Dad’ll be a good way to save, but we don’t want to overstay.”

Daniel nodded. He understood as well as anyone the difficulties of raising a family. He had been a young husband once, with a baby boy, and had endured the aches of worrying about keeping them well cared for. So much effort. But what had it all been for? Esther and Zachariah had been taken from him less than a year after he and Esther had wed, months before Aiden Cermak had ever driven into his world. Had it really all been God’s will?

He shook off his moody self-reflection and said, “Wood beam manufacturer is better than the last place you worked, I figure.”

They both shared a knowing, awkward chuckle. Mark had once worked for a stint at the infamous adult superstore off nearby I-57, until Daniel and Aiden had discovered him sneaking out of the place late one night last summer. Daniel had nearly wrestled him to the ground, forcing Mark to explain himself. Mark had confessed he was at the store as an employee since the owners paid handsomely. Furious, Daniel had made him promise never to step foot in that place again. In exchange, Daniel had kept his word to keep the ordeal between them. He had never gone back on his pledge.

“That seems so long ago, what with me about to get married,” Mark said, flushing. “I was a shussly youth, I guess.”

“Ya, I guess we were all silly youth once.”

Daniel and Mark stepped inside the warm house filled with the smells of home cooking.

Commotion in the household forced the two brothers to break off their intimate conversation. Daniel’s twenty-four-year-old sister, Elisabeth, lifted baby Gretchen from an oak bassinet in the kitchen near the busy gas ovens and laid her sleeping form in Daniel’s shaky arms. Nearly two years had passed since he’d last held his baby son, the morning before he and Esther had been killed.

“She’s an August baby,” Elisabeth said, grinning under her kapp at the eldest and youngest of her siblings. “Like you, Daniel.”

Gazing at his helpless baby sister snoozing in his arms, Daniel, at that moment, believed family was as good as it got.

Chapter Four

T
HE
Harvest Sunrise Inn Bed and Breakfast was a converted Victorian farmhouse on the southern outskirts of Henry. A sense of repression settled over Aiden as he and Daniel stepped inside the lobby. Decorated with rich, ornate furnishings, the inn contrasted sharply with the surrounding simple farmland.

But the unease pestering him came more from Daniel than the old house itself. While Daniel checked in at the front desk, Aiden worried Daniel was embarrassed about their sharing a room together. The innkeeper seemed unconcerned. With a kindly smile on his chubby face, he handed them a key and showed them the way to their room on the first floor.

The first things Aiden noticed were the two separate twin beds.

“Was this the only room they had when you made reservations?” Aiden asked once the innkeeper had left.

Daniel ignored his question. He tossed his suitcase onto one of the beds and began stuffing his clothes into the drawers of a cherry dresser.

Sachets of clover- and vanilla-scented potpourri lay on the pillows. Bowtie quilts were tri-folded at the bottom of each of the beds. Aiden thought it was all very quaint, perhaps too quaint for him and Daniel. Aiden understood how awkward staying at the Schrocks’ would’ve been, but he wondered if Daniel had purposely reserved a room with two beds instead of one.

“Maybe we can push the beds together,” Aiden said, letting his laptop case slide off his arm onto the other bed. He set his black duffel bag, with the wide turquoise stripe that always seemed to annoy Daniel, on the twill carpet.

“We should leave the beds as they are,” Daniel said after a pause.

“I’m sure the innkeepers won’t mind,” Aiden said. “We can move them apart before we check out next week.”

Daniel completed unpacking. “That won’t be a good idea.”

Aiden watched Daniel yank off his boots and nudge them against the canary yellow wall by the door. When he failed to say anything further, Aiden said, “Daniel, I want you to promise me you won’t brush me aside during our stay here.”

Without looking at him, Daniel said, “What do you mean, brush you aside? If you’re expecting me, in front of everyone, to take you in my arms and—”

“No, I don’t expect that, Daniel. But, please, don’t ignore me. Don’t treat me like I don’t exist.”

“Of course I wouldn’t do that.”

Aiden felt achy and tired. The long three-day journey from Montana had sapped his energy. They had driven near straight through, without stopping for sightseeing. Each morning by six, they were on the road. Snow through much of Minnesota and Iowa had made traveling slow and stressful. Supper with the Schrocks had gone smoothly enough. There was so much commotion in the house with preparations for Mark’s wedding, the baby, and visiting relatives that little focus seemed to be on him. He had been both relieved and disillusioned. Had he expected more?

When Daniel had presented the family with the furniture Daniel had crafted without saying they were from the both of them, including the stuffed animals Aiden had filled Gretchen’s toy chest with, Aiden had flinched. Already he felt pushed into the background, like the bare-limbed elms and hickories of the harsh winter landscape.

One concession was Samuel. He’d seemed sincerely repentant for having tossed Aiden out of Henry last year. Aiden was glad they’d put past unpleasantness aside, at least tacitly. Maybe the Amish do have a sense of forgiveness others lacked, Aiden considered. He tried to gather contentment from that thought while he unpacked in silence.

He wanted to mention his musings to Daniel but decided not to. Daniel’s brusque expression suggested he carried his own worrisome notions on his shoulders. Instead, Aiden edged behind Daniel while he hung his Sunday Amish suit in a closet.

Daniel’s muscles twitched under Aiden’s kneading fingers. Daniel relaxed and roved around his neck. Aiden hoped massaging him would assuage any hurt between them. “How’s that?”

“Feels good,” Daniel said.

Aiden walked his fingers down the side of Daniel’s neck and reached his hand over Daniel’s shirt, the one Aiden had bought for his birthday in August, and began unfastening the buttons. Daniel’s firm pectoral muscles twitched. He caressed his rippling abdominal muscles, naturally built from years of manual labor. He stood on his toes and swiped his tongue across Daniel’s ear.

“Best be careful. People might hear,” Daniel said. “I got relatives staying here.”