Between Two Promises Page 9

  While Heidi’s cousin was lugged to the chair and blindfolded among his friends’ loud chatter and laughter, Aiden and Daniel exchanged glances. This time, Aiden shrugged. Daniel scowled and folded his arms across his chest.

  Chapter Nine

  SOILED hay spilled from the wheelbarrow as he dumped it into the compost by the horse pen. The smell of manure and decomposition reached to his nostrils. He held back a gag. It was around nine in the morning, the day after Mark and Heidi’s wedding. Temperatures hovered in the high thirties. To Aiden, it might as well have been in the nineties. Sweat soaked his clothes, despite his silver breath. He had been helping Moriah and David clean the stalls from the wedding guests’ stabled horses, and the stench of livestock dung hung so thick in the air he could taste it.

  The work exhausted him. His gloved hands labored to grasp the wheelbarrow’s wooden handles. He stumbled, pushing the wheelbarrow back to the barn. He hoped none of the children noticed his waning. Mark and Heidi were lucky enough to be out visiting relatives and friends. And he envied Grace and Elisabeth, who were helping Rachel scrub the house from top to bottom after its being muddied from the guests.

  Back inside the barn, Moriah and David raked dirtied hay from the stalls. Aiden gathered small piles into the wheelbarrow. He struggled to be useful. In his weakened state, he filled less hay in the wheelbarrow than he thought he should have.

  He stopped halfway to the compost and mopped his forehead. Slump-shouldered, he pushed the wheelbarrow to the pile and dumped the hay. An increasing soreness wrenched up in his neck and back. Stretching for a reprieve, he watched Elisabeth carry a basket of eggs from the henhouse. For a brief moment, Aiden wished he was inside with the girls, either baking or even doing the scrubbing, anything to get out of the rancid barn work.

  Normally, the smell of manure would not bother him. Now, he barely convinced himself to go back inside the barn. He was always a diligent worker, but today his resolve hung limp. His legs felt like wet towels wrung by powerful hands.

  He strived to will down the first spasms in his stomach. The labor needed to push the wheelbarrow back to the barn was no match for the strength it took to battle with mind over body. The cold breeze was a blessing on his hot face. He wiped the sweat from under his knit skullcap, wet, like a sponge.

  Watching Samuel approach him from the house with two thermoses, he realized his vision was fading. Samuel’s form wavered. He said something, but his voice sloshed in Aiden’s ears like a surge of hot waves. Tunnel vision pulled in on him. Samuel’s blurry hand reached toward him. The sickness inside gurgled upward.

  He let go of the wheelbarrow and pushed past Samuel to the side of the barn. He dropped to his knees on the cold, hard dirt and vomited. The stench of butyric acid mixed with livestock feces smacked his face, and he disgorged again.

  With the endorphins releasing in his brain, he had little care that he put his forehead against the soiled dirt. He wanted only to rest his queasy head and relish the coolness of the earth. He sat back on his haunches. Boris, the family hound, trotted up to him and sniffed at the vomit. Aiden made to swat at the hound’s snout, but his arm drooped like a wet noodle. As Moriah marched toward him, a new rush of hotness filled his cheeks.

  “Don’t worry,” Moriah said, pulling Boris back by the skin on his back. Her expression was sickeningly cheery and healthful. “Barn work can sometimes do that to you. I once got sick from it too, when I was about five.”

  Moriah’s words failed to lighten Aiden’s humor.

  “You need some hot coffee.” Samuel stood behind his daughter and thrust the thermos at Aiden again. Too weak to grab it, Aiden slouched forward. “Perhaps you best get inside,” Samuel said, handing the thermoses to Moriah.

  Aiden let Samuel escort him into the house. As he was led along the stone path through Rachel’s fallow garden, he noticed Daniel watching from the woodshop window. For now, Aiden did not wish to decode his boyfriend’s wrinkled expression.

  Heat from the two gas ovens working overtime filled the house. Baking never abated in an Amish woman’s kitchen. Samuel seated him at the oak table. He wanted to savor more of the aroma of the homemade baked bread, if only he wasn’t so sick.

  “He’s got the flu, I can see,” Rachel said as she wiped her hands on her black apron, dusted lightly with flour, and scurried to the gas-powered refrigerator. “I’ll get some ice water. Elisabeth, go get some tea towels from the hutch.”

  “Is that what it is, the flu?” Aiden mumbled. “I was wondering….”

  Everything made sense. The fatigue, the irritability. The nagging headaches he’d had lately. He should’ve gotten a flu shot back in Kalispell. Now he had made himself look like a fool in front of the Schrocks.

  “Should we take him to the doctor’s?” Rachel asked Samuel. She filled a bowl full of ice with tap water.

  “No,” Aiden said before Samuel could answer. “I’m fine. I need a break, that’s all. I’ll be okay. It’s this darn flu.” He longed to lean against something solid, but the wooden bench had no backrest.

  “Here.” Elisabeth handed her mother the tea towels, and Rachel quickly dropped them into the bowl of ice water. Seconds later she stood by Aiden’s side.

  She pressed a wet towel to Aiden’s forehead and neck. Despite being embarrassed by the fuss, the wet, cold towel invigorated him. He shivered exultantly. Normal blood flow returned to his face.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. “Feels better.”

  “Maybe you should rest here a bit,” Rachel said. “A bed and breakfast is no place to recover from the flu, don’t you think, Samuel?”

  “Should he be around the baby?” Samuel asked.

  “Yes, he’s right,” Aiden said. “I shouldn’t be around Gretchen. I’m sure I’ll be okay; give me a minute.”

  “The baby’s been around hundreds of people already since yesterday,” Rachel said. “Some most likely carrying around the same bug.”

  Aiden appreciated Rachel’s attempt to care for him, but he worried about more than the baby. Tension in the house had been building since he and Daniel had arrived on Sunday. Yet he ached to lie down. Rachel took notice of Aiden’s trembling and instructed Moriah to draw Aiden a hot bath.

  “Is he real sick?” she asked.

  “He’ll be fine soon enough,” Rachel said. “Now go do what I ask.” She gave Aiden the towel and grabbed a bottled water from the refrigerator. Aiden took the water from Rachel and savored the coolness washing down his throat, still stinging from the vomit. He winced from the acrid taste.

  “You’ll get a nice hot bath,” Rachel said, “then we’ll get you into bed. You can rest in David’s room. Abraham and Wayne left last night, on the midnight train.”

  David grunted in the utility room where, alongside his father, he had been studying everything with screwed eyes. Between Rachel’s caring hands, Aiden watched him brush past Samuel and stomp out of the house. That was when Daniel stepped in. Worry still creased his face.

  But Aiden believed Daniel’s fretful expression stemmed from more than Aiden’s taking ill. Like young David, Daniel did not want Aiden staying at the house.

  AIDEN was lying in bed staring at the white ceiling, feeling useless and humiliated, when he heard a tap at the bedroom door. Using his phony upbeat voice, he told whoever had knocked to enter. A smiling Elisabeth stepped into the room, nimbly holding a tray with a ceramic tea set and a tea towel. Aiden had hoped Daniel would be the one at the door. He hadn’t seen him since Rachel had brought him upstairs after his hot bath, two hours ago.

  “I brought you some herbal tea.” Elisabeth’s admonishing stare told him to stay put when he went to sit up on his elbows. “We put ginger in it. Good for bellyaches.” She set the tray on the night table and poured some tea from the pot into a ceramic cup. The amber liquid tinkled like tiny brass bells while she poured.

  “I’m really embarrassed about getting sick,” Aiden said.

  “You shouldn’t be.” She held the teacup t
o Aiden, and he obediently took it from her and sipped some of the hot liquid. “Everyone gets under the weather now and then, especially this time of year. We got word Aunt Frieda has the flu too. She called the Martins across the street just after she got home to Indiana and warned us, in case anyone else got sick.”

  Despite Elisabeth’s assurance, he didn’t much care to be compared to a feeble old woman. He had been lying in bed most of the morning, feeling enough like a complete fool. Health-wise, he felt better, although still a bit shaky. Psychologically, he was a wreck. He wanted to evaporate and disappear like the steam from his tea.

  Elisabeth carried over a ladder-back chair from the window, where Aiden noticed a light snow had begun to fall. The flurries swirled in front of the pane like a snow globe. Sitting next to him, she applied the wet towel to his forehead and flushed cheeks. She stated her pleasure Aiden had come to Mark and Heidi’s wedding.

  “I was touched that he invited me,” Aiden said, flushing under the cool compression of the towel.

  “We’ll never forget what you done for us, saving us from that drunk driver.” Elisabeth shook her head decisively. Dark blonde tresses dangled like ribbons from under the front of her kapp. “No, we’ll never forget, no matter what. We had much tragedy in our family already and didn’t want any more. Are you close with your family?”

  “Yes, I guess so. There’re only my parents and my sister and me. I’m the baby.”

  “I know how the English don’t have many kinner. But you would know how horrible it would be to lose someone in your family?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Elisabeth’s face softened, and she smiled lightly, like someone resigned to a sad truth. “We’ll lose Leah soon someday too.”

  Aiden lowered his eyes. Suddenly, his bout with the flu seemed silly. He realized how foolish he’d been, lying in bed, grumbling like an idiot. Eight-year-old Leah never showed frustration about being strapped in a wheelchair while she slowly died from an incurable illness few people could pronounce. Pride had made him worry how the family viewed him. His attitude was shameful, not his catching the flu.

  There was much to learn from such a resilient little girl like Leah.

  “Don’t you think there’s a chance she’ll ever recover?” he said, wanting to infuse optimism into the conversation.

  Elisabeth shook her head. “She’s strong, for so little, but most likely she has only a few months left. Few ever survive MLD after they been diagnosed as young as her.”

  Noticing her faraway expression, Aiden said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make light of her condition.”

  She smiled at him and shook her head gently. “I understand you wanting to be encouraging. I guess I’m the one who brought up so much talk of tragedy, after all.” Blushing, she gazed out the window, where the flurries continued to dance in circles. She stared silently, hypnotically, toward the bare branches of the elms and hickories trembling in the breeze. She turned and looked at Aiden straightly.

  “We don’t talk much about it.” She reapplied the towel over his forehead. “It’s good to have someone to talk to about these things. That’s partly why I’m glad God placed you in our lives. I like talking to you about things. Isn’t it right to want to have someone to confide in? For all of us, not only for Daniel.”

  Taken off guard by her underscoring Daniel, Aiden blinked. “I… I think it’s right to want to talk about things with people.”

  “Daniel’s always lived in a shell,” Elisabeth said. “But ever since Esther and the baby died, it only got worse. You do know about Esther and Zachariah, don’t you?”

  Aiden nodded. He looked into her gray-blue eyes. She spoke to him the way she most likely did her students at the one-room schoolhouse where she taught. For the moment, her gentle manner calmed him. Nice having someone care for him rather than push him aside like a nuisance, the way Daniel and some of the others had lately.

  “Daniel can be as closed-mouthed as any of us,” Elisabeth said. “I’m glad you two are friends. He needs someone to share his feelings with, considering all the tragedy he’s been through.”

  In the ensuing silence, Elisabeth applied the damp towel to Aiden’s face. He wondered how much Elisabeth grasped. Had she guessed he and Daniel were living together in Montana, like a married couple, like Mark and Heidi now were in Daniel’s former bedroom across the hall? Had the rest of the family pieced everything together too?

  Elisabeth had never married. Daniel had said she hadn’t even courted anyone since she was a teenager. Young and pretty, surely Elisabeth attracted many men. They must argue among each other on Church Sundays who got to drive her home from the gmays. There was no reason Elisabeth would want to refuse them all. Perhaps there was something about her that gave her more insight than he had assumed.

  “Are you bothered that Daniel and me moved to Montana?” He reddened, thinking how bold he’d been to leap straight to the heart of the issue, as indirectly as his words might have come. But between the two of them, he sensed there was little doubt what he’d alluded to.

  Elisabeth paused. She looked away, cheeks pink. Standing resolutely, she walked into the hallway, where he observed her opening the bottom drawer of a pine sideboard and reaching her hand deep underneath folded linens. She brought back into the room what looked like a sketchpad. Her arms trembled slightly as she cradled the pad to her chest.

  “The ministers say to draw people’s faces is hochmut,” she said. “But one day, I figure my pride got the best of me. No one was around, so I took out my sketchpad, and I drew Daniel and Esther from memory, a few months before they married. I used the light coming through my bedroom window.” She gazed at the sketchpad. Slowly opening the cover, she held the pad at arm’s length and revealed the drawing to Aiden.

  Aiden remained still. He merely admired the drawing from bed. The sketch showed an amazingly accurate portrait of Daniel before he had grown a beard. Next to him, Aiden gathered, was his deceased wife, Esther. He had never seen any images of her before. Since the Amish eschew photographs, no pictures of her hung from the walls or were tucked away inside family photo albums.

  Esther appeared rather attractive. Her face, framed by her bonnet, showed soft features, naturally pretty. A light smile curled her lips. She looked deferential and happy. This time, the pang of sadness for the loss of her short life came not for Daniel’s sake but for hers.

  Unlike Esther, Daniel looked forlorn. Elisabeth had drawn him stern, sad. Surprised at the sharp detail, Aiden was riveted on Daniel. She had captured him perfectly, perhaps too perfectly. The somberness in his eyes cut into Aiden, as if Daniel were standing before him.

  “You have much talent,” he said.

  “I drew them, thinking the way I saw Esther and Daniel together,” Elisabeth said. “You can see how sweet Esther looks. But Daniel, I was surprised myself how I had drawn him. Maybe God was working through me, wanting me to see firsthand what I was afraid to admit. I suspected Daniel was unhappy, that he didn’t really want to marry Esther. It was only after looking at what I had drawn did I realize I’d been right.”

  She gazed at the drawing, held the pad to her side. “I hid the pad away in the sideboard in the hallway. I know it was wrong, but, like I said, I couldn’t help but draw them.”

  Turning resignedly for the sideboard, Elisabeth tucked the sketchpad back in the bottom drawer, careful to lift the linens without ruffling them, and returned to Aiden’s bedside.

  “Promise you won’t tell anyone,” she said, smoothing the front of her apron.

  “I promise.”

  Someone moved by the door. Aiden sat up, expecting Daniel to walk in. Dejected when Rachel poked her head into the room, he slumped farther into the bed.

  “Everything okay in here?” Rachel asked.

  “He’s doing better,” Elisabeth answered on Aiden’s behalf, as if he were one of her fledgling students. “His fever broke.”

  “Goot.” Without another word, Rachel left. Aiden and
Elisabeth exchanged questioning looks. Uncomfortable, he turned away and sipped more of the herbal tea.

  Chapter Ten

  “IF YOU’RE driving into town, do you mind stopping by Kevin Hassler’s newspaper office to pick up some labels for me?” Rachel had stepped off the stairwell and was giving Daniel a weary look. “I had him print up some labels for my baked and canned goods last week,” she said. “He should have them ready by now.”

  Daniel stood by the front door, black felt hat in hands, his fingers massaging the brim. He was on his way to the hardware store in Henry to buy a few supplies for the woodshop, since he’d noticed Mark had run low on some items, most likely forgotten with the chaos from the wedding planning. He’d felt a bit self-conscious his mother had noticed that he and Aiden had driven the Suburban to the farm. (Aiden had complained about feeling too tired to trek the two miles from the inn.) But now that she wanted to take advantage of his having a truck—and apparently, she had even employed Kevin Hassler’s modern printer—the awkwardness had lessened.

  “Your goods must be selling fast if you need to print out your labels,” he said. “You used to handwrite them.”

  “Ach, takes too much time now,” she said. “Things really started to pick up at the flea market, especially with the holidays. And now with Gretchen and Leah, my hands are never free for myself.”

  “I can imagine how hectic. At least the wedding is over and done with.”

  Rachel arched her eyebrows. “Ya, this one. But soon it’ll be Grace’s turn, then David’s. Who knows, maybe someday you’ll even get remarried.” Her kapp framed that same passive-aggressive stare Daniel remembered getting as far back as when he was a toddler and had done something to earn her disapproval.