Between Two Promises Read online

  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

  THE 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 yell
ow 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.”

  “No one will hear behind these old, sturdy walls.”

  “Still not proper, not here.”

  Aiden sighed. “You know, Daniel, I don’t like hiding things.”

  “Hiding?” Daniel nudged Aiden’s hand from his chest, sat on the edge of the twin bed he had claimed, and rebuttoned his shirt. “What are we hiding?”

  “We’re hiding who we are.”

  “Aiden, not that again.”

  “I know how hard coming out to your family would be. But how fair is it to pretend, to either of us, to go on hiding like this? How long will we have to do it?”

  “You act like you’re the only one who never hides things.” Daniel lay back on his bed and eyed Aiden. “You’re not always so open.”

  Aiden plopped down on the quilt beside him. “What do you mean? When have I ever hidden anything?”

  “What about those threatening messages you got last year, when you still lived in Henry?” Daniel said. “You never told me anything about those until after we ran into each other in Glacier. You kept that from me for how long?”

  Aiden rolled to his back and stared at the ceiling. He’d been leery when he’d first told Daniel about those threats. Shortly after Aiden had saved the Schrocks from the drunk driver, he had accepted a position with The Henry Blade, the town’s only newspaper. While there, he uncovered the suicide of a seventeen-year-old Amish youth from eight years before, Daniel’s second cousin, Kyle Yoder. His subsequent investigation into the unusual death led Aiden to believe he had been murdered. Pressure from his boss about the investigation forced Aiden to resign from the newspaper. But not before he received three mysterious threats. He guessed the threats most likely stemmed from his investigation into Kyle’s death. Either that or someone in the community suspected Aiden of being gay and resented him.

  After their unexpected encounter at Glacier National Park in June, Aiden had shown Daniel the stored pictures of the threats he’d taken with his digital camera. The pumpkin someone had smashed against his bungalow and the message someone had spray painted in red block lettering on his front door: GET OUT OF TOWN. And there was the note someone had left in his mailbox, with the same threatening message as the one on his door, punctuated with the homophobic, although archaic, name-calling “to the Sodomite.”

  In typical Amish fashion, Daniel had remained impassive while he examined the photos. When he finished, he handed Aiden the camera without a word. But the mechanisms in Daniel’s mind were churning. His temples crinkled with thick, twine-like veins, his eyebrows fused together. And the incessant beard tugging. Ultimately, he seemed to want to forget Aiden had ever mentioned it. Bury another ugly reality under a mound of dirt.

  And in that case, Aiden agreed.

  “Totally different situation,” Aiden said, leaning on his elbow to stare at Daniel’s tense face. “We weren’t even together then. Besides, you already had enough burdens, with me digging up Kyle’s death. I decided to show you those stupid threats so many months later because… well, I didn’t want any secrets between us. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done about it, anyway.”

  Daniel glared at Aiden. “There was a lot I coulda done.” He pushed himself off the bed and, grabbing a handful of sleeping clothes from the dresser, marched into the bathroom.

  Chapter Five

  AIDEN gazed out of the window above his bed as the sunlight lifted over the distant creek. About four inches of snow had fallen overnight and softened the harsh landscape. Shades of pink and orange dusted the snowy field. A sense of newness filled him. The stress from yesterday seemed to have lifted.

  He let the curtain dangle back into place and turned to Daniel, who, at that moment, had stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. “Should we eat breakfast here?” Aiden slumped back under the covers and shivered with contentment. “It is called a bed and breakfast, after all.”

  “I think we should head over to the farm.” Daniel unraveled the towel and dried his hair. Quivering with anticipation, Aiden watched his boyfriend’s muscular arms work the towel over his bowl cut. Tall and brawny, Daniel’s nakedness always sent bolts of fire through Aiden. He liked that their modesty had ebbed.

  “You want to go right now?” Aiden smiled, widening his eyes. “Or you want to hang out here a while longer.”

  “Best we go.”

  “I thought the Amish slept in a little later in the winter,” Aiden said.

  “Not much later,” Daniel said. “There’re still chores to get done, animals to care for.”

  “I’m sure they’ll understand if we show up a little later.” Daniel was not always swift catching on to Aiden’s flirting. Often, Aiden would have to stroke him with more forwardness. Throwing back the bedcovers, he exposed his morning arousal.

  Daniel came up to him, bent his head down, kissed him on the lips. His whiskers, still damp from his shower, tickled Aiden’s chin. “We best get going,” he said. “They’ll most likely be waiting for us. Breakfast was probably eaten an hour ago.”

  Aiden reached for Daniel, whose dark pubic hairs were coarse and wet. “Then they won’t miss us.”

  Daniel pushed Aiden’s hand away. “Stop being so shussly and get dressed.” He moved to his side of the room and yanked clothes from a drawer with a rush of frustration. “It was your idea to come back here. We might as well be useful. For sure they’ll want the extra hands setting up for the wedding. And best we keep the Suburban here. We can walk
to the farm.”

  “Walk? Why?”

  “It’s not proper to be parking that mammoth vehicle in front of the farm, especially with all those guests coming.” He pulled on his underwear and broadfall pants. “Mom and Dad were eyeing it out the window last night like it was some kind of monster. The farm’s only a few short miles from here. We’re used to hiking. Now get dressed.”

  At the cabin, Aiden had never worried much about Daniel’s wearing his Old Order Amish clothes (Aiden thought he looked sexy in them), but now, as Daniel dressed in the clothes his mother had probably made for him years ago, the same pestering lump rose to his throat. Daniel fastened the hook-and-eyes on his cornflower-blue collarless shirt, tucked in the hem, and strapped on his suspenders, the way he must’ve done a million times before.

  Sighing, Aiden dragged himself out of bed and went about dressing. The sense of lightness and warmth he’d welcomed a moment ago while staring out the window at the wintry landscape suddenly felt like a weighty block of ice on his chest.

  DRESSED in brown clogs and a black winter coat, a pretty young woman strolled out of the house to greet Aiden and Daniel as they walked up the snowy driveway. Mark, hands deep in pants pockets, followed behind, smiling like someone with a happy secret.

  “This is Heidi Miller,” he said. “She’s going to be my wife.”

  Pink cheeked, with winterberry blonde tresses falling from the front of her white kapp, Heidi looked all freshness, like a bride-to-be should. But her demeanor, confident for a young Amish woman, surprised Aiden.

  She thrust her hand to Daniel. “You must be Mark’s brother, Daniel. I’m so glad to meet you. Sorry I wasn’t here to welcome you yesterday, but we had so many other relatives to visit.” Aiden inwardly giggled, watching Daniel squirm at Heidi’s unexpected gregarious nature. “And you’re Aiden.” She turned her hand to Aiden. “You’re the one who saved the Schrocks when you drove your car in the path of that drunk driver. Mark told me all about it.”