Between Two Promises (8 page)

“What makes you think the Millers don’t like you?” Daniel kept his gaze fixed on the snowy shoulder in front of them. Since checking on the animals in the barn, he’d been in a gruff mood too. Everyone was in a temper. Even baby Gretchen had fussed most of the day, squealing and squirming from one set of arms to the next, until finally falling off to sleep in her bassinet right before they’d left. Maybe the hubbub of preparing for a large wedding had set off a chain of bad temper. Nonetheless, Aiden sensed something deeply disapproving from the Millers, and he didn’t like it.

“They were speaking German the whole day, not realizing I understood,” Aiden said, hoping to find a confidant in Daniel, who had been acting more aloof than he cared for. He followed behind him along the shoulder, careful to place his steps in Daniel’s sturdy boot prints to avoid struggling in the berms left by the snowplows.

“What kinds of things did they say?” Daniel murmured, although Aiden speculated he did not really want to know. His gloved hands clenched into tight fists by his sides, and his shoulders pressed against his exposed ears. He seemed less uncomfortable with the cold two-mile walk than he did with their conversation.

“Well, for one,” Aiden said, despite his misgivings, “they asked why an Amish family would be friends with an Englishman.”

“That’s not such an unreasonable question.” Daniel wiped his nose with the back of his gloved hand. “The Amish being friends with Englishers is uncommon.”

“It was their tone,” Aiden said, eyeing the backs of Daniel’s heels kick up snow. “They seemed judgmental.”

A column of smoke rose from the chimney of an English farmhouse. The windows glowed yellow. Aiden savored the smell of the wood fire. An ornamented Christmas tree, sparkling with tiny red and white lights, adorned the bay window of the sitting room. He almost longed to be inside with the English family. With iciness coming at him from every angle, Aiden grasped onto warmth wherever he encountered it.

“And why does their disapproving tone bother you?” Daniel said. “You always say you don’t care what others think.”

“You weren’t even around to see it,” Aiden said. “You were hiding out most the day. Reminded me of old times, the way you used to avoid me before you accepted you cared for me. It’s bad enough David’s been treating me like a minotaur.”

“A minotaur?”

“It’s a mythical man-eating creature.”

Daniel blew out a steaming snigger. “You’re the one who insisted on coming back here.”

“I feel left out, like you’re alienating me.”

“I can’t hold your hand, if that’s what you want.”

Daniel’s words brought Aiden to a stop. An oncoming car passed slowly. The headlights momentarily blinded him. Was he acting like a child? A child who needed his hand held? Everything seemed to be bothering him lately. His head ached, and even the snow crunching under their boots agitated him.

Disgusted with himself, he clumped ahead to catch up with Daniel. They kept silent the remainder of the way to the inn. Yet pestering worries stalked Aiden—Daniel wanted him far away.

A
PIERCING
scream forced Aiden to sit up in his bed. He switched on the night table lamp. At first, he wondered if the scream hadn’t come from a dream. But Daniel had apparently heard the sound too. He was leaning against his headboard, staring at the door with his eyebrows arched high on his forehead. Another scream. Daniel and Aiden bolted out of their beds, pulled on pants, and raced for the door.

A middle-aged woman was scurrying up and down the hallway barefoot, her hands whirling above her curler-covered head, her robe flailing behind her, shrieking like a badger. For a brief moment, Aiden wondered if Grace had spoken some truth when she’d said the ghost of the original owner haunted the inn. Perhaps the woman had seen some kind of apparition. Aiden, too practical to believe in ghosts, understood the power of suggestion. The mere rumor of a haunting was enough for people to see and hear things.

The innkeeper on duty rushed over to investigate the uproar.

“What is it? What is it?” he asked, panting, his eyes wide. Other guests on the first floor, some Amish wedding guests, others English holiday tourists, peeked out their doors, their sleepy eyes filled with bewilderment.

“A rat!” the woman wailed, still darting about the hallway like a marble let loose on a wood floor.

“We have no rats here,” the innkeeper said, imploring the guests with his ever growing eyes. “No rats, I guarantee.”

“But I saw it. It’s in there.” The woman pointed to her room as she passed in her latest lap up and down the hallway.

Aiden and Daniel stood shirtless in the doorway, staring at the scene. One of the guests screwed her eyes at them before she finally shut her door and returned to the privacy of her room, probably realizing the woman’s screams meant nothing. Aiden dismissed the woman’s glare and suggested the innkeeper go and look in the wailing woman’s room. The innkeeper stepped inside. One minute later, he came out, snickering.

“It’s only a field mouse,” he said. “They sometimes sneak indoors in the wintertime. He won’t hurt you. Right now he’s more scared than you, cowering under the furnace.”

“Can’t you catch it?” the woman said.

“We’ll set some traps in the morning.”

“Catch it now. I insist.” The woman pulled at her curlers and scrunched her face to look like an emaciated gourd.

With a heavy sigh, the innkeeper returned to her room. A few moments later, the mouse came running out, followed by the innkeeper chasing after it, clapping his hands and shooing it away. Breathing heavily, he said, “Well, that’s the best I can do. At least he’s gone. You can get back to sleep.”

“I… I can’t sleep in there. What if there’s more? What if he has a family?” The woman cringed frantically and began yanking on the sleeves of her bathrobe. “What if there’s some hole he uses in my room?”

“But we’re all filled up, ma’am,” the innkeeper said. “We have no other rooms.” Desperation filled his weary eyes. He looked to Aiden and Daniel, the only two left peering into the hallway. “Do you two mind switching rooms?”

Suddenly, the woman calmed. She eyed Aiden and Daniel, as if they were the anomalies and not her. She scrambled closer to them and peered around Aiden’s shoulder. “Switch rooms? But their room has two beds, and mine only has the one double bed. I don’t think that’ll do. Where will they each sleep?”

“But ma’am, there’s nothing else I can do for you,” the innkeeper said. “We’ll set traps in the morning.”

“We really wouldn’t mind,” Aiden said. Daniel gaped at him. He sensed Daniel had wanted to pull him back inside the room.

“No thank you, young man,” the woman said. She tugged the collar of her bathrobe to her chin. “I’ll stay in the room I have.”

“What about the mouse?” Aiden said.

“I suppose I was acting rather foolish.” The woman looked to the innkeeper. “Are you sure only that one?”

“Yes, yes, it was only that one mouse,” the innkeeper said. “We’ll make sure to set traps first thing in the morning to catch him, if he hasn’t already run off back outside.” He ushered her into her room, smiling and nodding at Aiden and Daniel.

Back in their room, Daniel climbed into his bed, yet his eyes remained open. He stared at the ceiling, his thick lips pursed. Something had irked him. Outside the window, morning twilight was coloring the snowy landscape a murky blue.

“You want to get some breakfast somewhere,” Aiden said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get back to sleep after that. We’ll have to get up in a little bit anyhow.”

At a corner diner on Ivy Street in town, Daniel fiddled with his silverware while they waited for the waitress to bring their orders. Snug in their booth, the craziness with the mouse receded. Yet Daniel’s aloofness remained. A small consolation: Daniel had thrown on his English clothes so that Aiden didn’t feel like an outsider.

“What’s wrong with you, Daniel?” he finally asked.

Daniel set down his fork with a thud on the Formica tabletop. “You shouldn’t have been so willing to switch rooms with that woman. How would things look if she accepted, us staying in a room with only one double bed?”

“Daniel, for crying out loud, it’s no big deal. You’re really becoming paranoid.”

“No need to give the community any reason to suspect,” Daniel said. “No more than they already do.”

“You mean like us sitting together in a booth?” Aiden whispered sardonically.

Daniel took a sip of his orange juice, his eyeballs darting from side to side over the rim. “It doesn’t help.”

Suppressing a guffaw, Aiden said in a low voice, “Why are you worried? It’s not like we’re advertising. Look around. Lots of men are sitting together. No one is assuming they’re boyfriends, not me anyway.”

“Aiden, you don’t understand.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” They were quiet a moment, the subdued murmur of morning chatter around them. “I know it’s complicated to come out,” Aiden said. “Especially in the Amish world, but you act like you want to protect the community’s feelings more than mine.”

“You cut everything down to your feelings,” Daniel said into the window above their booth, where outside enough darkness lingered that Aiden could see their reflections in the glass. “If you listened to yourself, you’d hear how selfish you sometimes sound.”

“Selfish? Daniel, I’m only worried about you being unhappy, about you being so uptight all the time, about how it’s unfair to the both of us the way you’re afraid of what others might think.”

“Shtill, here comes our food.”

Aiden hushed up like Daniel had warned, and the young waitress set their food on the table, smiling warmly, especially at Daniel. Keeping her gaze on Daniel, she asked if they needed anything else. When they refrained, she strolled to the counter and leaned against a stool, her smile at Daniel unabated.

“That waitress has been flirting with you,” Aiden said, cutting into his western omelet. Normally, a waitress’s flirting with Daniel would’ve struck him as cute. Now, he wanted to claim Daniel, but it was impossible at the diner. Or anywhere, apparently, other than back in Montana in their cabin, or deep in the backcountry, where he could drape an arm around his shoulder, lay his head on his chest, or even kiss him full on the mouth without Daniel flinching in horror.

“I don’t pay attention to those things,” Daniel said, pouring strawberry syrup over his buttermilk pancakes.

“It’s rude, if you ask me.” Aiden toyed with his food. Suddenly his appetite waned. He glanced out the window. Light filled the sky, slowly turning the bluish landscape pink and golden. “And you’re Amish, too. What a way for her to behave.”

“She has no idea I’m Amish.” Daniel chewed a forkful of pancake. “I’m wearing fancy clothes.”

“She can tell by your beard.”

Daniel shrugged. “I seen Englishmen with beards like mine.”

“Well, she’s still rude.”

Daniel rolled his eyes, his cheeks puffed with food. “Can’t we eat breakfast in peace? Things are going to be hectic enough today, what with preparing for the wedding tomorrow. I’d like to have a little peace while I eat.”

“I’m sorry.” Aiden wanted to ameliorate things between them. “I’m a little extra sensitive lately. You keep pushing me further and further away here, and you promised you wouldn’t.”

“Aiden, I won’t argue with you about this, not in a diner, especially when it’s barely seven o’clock in the morning. Now eat your eggs before they get cold.”

While Aiden had inwardly laughed at the woman back at the bed and breakfast for making a spectacle of herself over a measly mouse, a rush of empathy for her made him reflect. He, too, felt like he was being chased out of his comfortable world, overwhelmed by intrusive pests.

Or, he considered as he took a small bite of his omelet, perhaps he should empathize more with the field mouse.

A
FTER
breakfast, Aiden dropped Daniel off at the farm and said he needed to go back to the inn and do some writing. He wanted to avoid facing the Schrocks—and their houseguests. At least for a while. His head still ached, and he wanted to be alone. Daniel’s curt warning, “Be careful,” failed to alleviate the dull worry weighing on his mind.

Heading back to the bed and breakfast, he reckoned he’d drive around for a bit, clear his head, take in some of the landscape. He’d never seen Frederick County fully in winter. With snow blanketing the tawny fields, the farmland exuded a certain coziness, an idyllic charm. Different from the sublime, rugged beauty of western Montana, but attractive in its own subtle way. He only wished circumstances were different.

Away from the commotion of the Schrock farm, those feelings of alienation lessened. He didn’t mind being different. He relished it, like Daniel had said of him. He liked his individuality. But he feared his differences in the Amish community might destroy everything that he and Daniel had built together the past six months.

He disliked the mendacious games, the awkward glances. The questions, both spoken and implicit, of why he was there. He never understood why people would rather live in a world of pretense, yet Daniel—and the community—gave him little choice. And the more he had to lie, the more he faded away, a mere wispy cloud in their midst.

And Daniel did not seem to care.

He had hoped by coming back to Illinois their relationship might strengthen. But he feared the forces of family and community wielded too great an influence for Daniel. Instead of bringing them closer, Henry was forcing their relationship through a grinder, ripping apart all that joined them.

He turned down the street where he’d once lived. Slowing, he peered at the small white bungalow with the robin’s-egg blue shutters he’d rented for four hundred fifty dollars a month, back what seemed ages ago. Difficult to imagine only a little over a year had passed since he’d packed his old Aveo and headed back home to his parents’ in Maryland. Even if Daniel’s father hadn’t candidly suggested he leave town, he probably would’ve left on his own before the spring, anyway.

By Thanksgiving, Aiden had already learned of Daniel’s proposing to Tara Hostetler. If he had thought he and Daniel might have a future together, news of their engagement had doused any hopes for that. Samuel had told him he did not belong in Henry, and that he and Daniel came from two different worlds. Maybe Samuel had been the only one dealing honestly with things, and everyone else was living under pretenses.