Light Shines on Promise Lodge

by Charlotte Hubbard

  “Maybe it was her idea,” Phoebe suggested. “Maybe Gloria talked him into meeting her at the lake, and he had no graceful way out—although she hasn’t seemed as boy crazy since Rosetta hired her to manage the apartments and cabins.”

  “Time will tell. She’s a hard one to steer clear of when she’s got it in her head that—oh, Cyrus is untying the rowboat,” Allen murmured. “He looks like a man on a mission.”

  Phoebe leaned forward, intent on watching the pair across the lake. The days were already growing shorter and daylight was fading, so it was hard to distinguish Gloria’s and Cyrus’s facial features. “Shouldn’t he leave the boat tied until both of them are sitting in it? So it won’t shift from side to side that way?”

  “Jah, that’s the safest way to do it,” Allen agreed. “Cyrus might be showing off a little—”

  “Gloria’s not looking any too confident, stepping down the ladder to grab his hand before—they’ve overturned!” Phoebe cried. “What if they can’t swim?”

  “I’m going down there,” Allen said as he raced toward the front door.

  Phoebe ran right behind him. When she saw that Allen was heading down the hillside, which was covered with underbrush, she chose the dirt roadway as a safer place to run in her bare feet. It was a relief to see two figures thrashing in the water below, safely away from the overturned rowboat, and to hear Gloria’s cries. By the time Phoebe was down the hill, Allen was running around the lake to help the pair in the water—and Cyrus was swimming toward the shore with Gloria in the crook of his arm.

  “Are you all right?” Phoebe asked breathlessly as she reached her fiancé and their two friends. Allen was crouching low with his hand extended to help Cyrus out of the water—but Cyrus boosted Gloria toward the lake’s edge so Allen could help her instead. As she came up onto shore, Phoebe grabbed the poor girl’s hand.

  “Oh!” Gloria sputtered. “This was not what I had in mind when—”

  “I’m really sorry, Gloria!” Cyrus protested as he nimbly hopped onto the bank. “I thought you had your balance—”

  “My foot slipped before I could—” Gloria scrambled to her feet, appearing ready to burst into tears. Her dark red-orange dress and white apron, which were smeared with mud, clung wetly to her body. Her waterlogged bun was tumbling loose around her shoulders—and her kapp was bobbing slowly away from them in the water, its two strings curling and uncurling with the waves she and Cyrus had created in the lake.

  “How about if I jump in again and push that boat toward the dock, and you grab hold of it?” Cyrus suggested to Allen. “Between the two of us, we can flip it right-side up.”

  Phoebe slipped her arm around Gloria’s shaking shoulders. “Shall we get you back to your apartment and into some dry clothes?” she asked softly. “Lots of the wedding guests have left—and from the looks of the lights in the lodge, our neighbors are still in the dining room. Maybe we can slip into the mudroom and up the back stairs without anybody seeing you.”

  Gloria sniffed miserably. “Jah, let’s go,” she mumbled as they started walking. “It’ll be a while before I can face Cyrus again—or talk to him without bawling like a baby.”

  “Well, you got a shock when you fell into the lake,” Phoebe pointed out as they walked across the grass. “Anybody would be upset.”

  Gloria released a shuddery breath. “I feel so stupid,” she whimpered. “I was all excited about—I was so surprised when Cyrus asked me to meet him out here for a boat ride, and now this!”

  Despite the way Gloria had spied on her and Allen earlier in the summer—and had even tattled on them in church for kissing in Allen’s tiny home—Phoebe felt sorry for the drenched young woman. Allen, Cyrus, and Jonathan had constantly made fun of Gloria and the awful brownies she’d baked while trying to attract their favor. She hoped that Cyrus had sincerely wanted to spend time with Gloria, rather than playing a cruel joke on her to embarrass her further.

  “Let’s give him another chance,” Phoebe said gently. “Sometimes Cyrus gets gung-ho about an idea and he doesn’t realize that other folks aren’t as quick or as strong as he is.”

  “Jah, he’s a really gut swimmer. From my apartment window, I’ve seen him dive off the dock wearing nothing but English swimming trunks,” Gloria admitted with a hint of a smile. “He waits until nearly dark, when he thinks nobody’s watching.”

  Phoebe laughed softly. “So even though you fell in, and you feel really stupid about it, you probably weren’t in any real danger?” she asked. “I mean—at least the boat didn’t hit you on the head when it capsized.”

  “Well, maybe after I change into some dry clothes and settle down, I can think about how it felt to have his arm around me,” Gloria murmured. “Strong as he is, Cyrus was swimming toward the shore and tugging me along as though I didn’t weigh a thing.”

  “Not a bad way to look at it,” Phoebe remarked as they approached the back of Roman and Mary Kate’s house. From this point, the lodge was a straight shot across the road and between Mattie’s produce plots.

  When they reached the front yard, Gloria looked to the right and the left. “I can make it from here,” she said. “If I stay behind that big patch of Mattie’s Indian corn, the stalks will hide me until I’m just a few yards from the lodge’s back door. Denki, Phoebe,” she added, clasping her hand. “You’re a gut friend to look after me.”

  Phoebe squeezed her fingers. “I’m glad nobody was hurt. See you later, Gloria.”

  She watched as the slender young woman jogged across the road, clutching her wet hair to keep it from unwinding further. Luckily, Mattie had left the stalks intact after picking her sweet corn—before long she would cut them so she could sell them as dried autumn decorations. When Gloria disappeared around the far edge of the produce plot, Phoebe strode along the new dirt road that wound its way up the hill toward the almost-finished house where she and Allen had been painting.

  She’d lit a lamp in the kitchen and was wrapping their paint rollers in aluminum foil when she heard the front door open and close. When Allen appeared in the entry to the kitchen, Phoebe smiled at him.

  “What was Cyrus’s version of the story?” she asked. “Gloria was pleasantly surprised that he’d asked her to meet him at the lake, as though this was their first outing.”

  Allen joined her at the counter and ran water into a plastic pail to clean his paintbrushes. “I think he intended to take Gloria for a nice, quiet ride around the lake—but when she fell in, he didn’t mind playing the hero, either,” he said with a shake of his head. “Said something about pulling her up against him as he swam to shore with her. You know how it is with us guys, looking for any opportunity for a little togetherness.”

  “Jah, I do know,” Phoebe replied softly.

  When Allen slung his arm around her shoulders to pull her close for a kiss, she dreamed that their marriage would always be this affectionate. This perfect.

  * * *

  Jonathan stashed his binoculars inside the cabin door and sat on the small front stoop with a hunting magazine, thinking of what to say when Cyrus returned. He couldn’t let his brother know that he’d witnessed the entire five-minute fiasco of his date with Gloria—but he couldn’t pass up the chance to razz him, either. Jonathan envied his younger, more athletic sibling because he’d always had such an easy time of impressing females of any age. Alongside Cyrus, Jonathan felt clumsy and slow. He was much better at keeping the books for the nursery than he was at keeping company with girls.

  He had no idea how to convince anyone to go out with him, much less agree to marry him in the next month and a half. He’d squirreled away a couple hundred bucks in the bank in Forest Grove, so maybe it would be easier to hand the money over when Cyrus got engaged than to worry about—

  Hey, it’s not a done deal. Cyrus could blow it. And maybe it’s time you put yourself out there. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life alone?

  Jonathan stifled a laugh as his kid brother crossed the grass
. With his shirt and pants clinging to him and his dark hair plastered wetly to his head, Cyrus didn’t look like such a hotshot. “What happened to you?” he called out nonchalantly. “Did you make a smart remark and Gloria pushed you in?”

  Cyrus laughed. “For somebody who said she loves to be on the water, Gloria wasn’t so good at getting into the boat,” he replied as he sat down beside Jonathan. “When she turned us over, I made gut on a bad situation, however. Got her to shore with my best lifesaving technique—got up close and personal with her, if you know what I mean.”

  Jonathan sighed inwardly. The only females he’d come into close bodily contact with were old enough to be his mother. “So does this mean you’ll be taking her out again? Or did the whole ordeal scare her off?”

  “Gloria?” Cyrus joked. “Have you ever known her to be put off by any type of attention a guy paid her? She was embarrassed about getting soaked, but she’ll come around.” He grabbed the cover of Jonathan’s magazine, shaking his head. “So you’re studying up on hunting strategies—when it’s too dark to read? At this rate, you won’t get a girl or a deer this season.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Jonathan countered. “I can recall times when I put meat in the freezer and you missed your shots because the deer heard you rustling around.”

  “Puh.” Cyrus pushed his wet hair back from his face, one eyebrow rising. “You’re not backing out of our bet, are you? You’ve let a perfect evening go by, sitting at home like a maidel instead of—”

  “Some girls prefer the strong, silent type,” Jonathan put in. “I’m making my plans, figuring out the best way to approach the woman of my dreams.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Why would I tell you?” he fired back. “With five hundred bucks riding on this deal, you’re probably desperate enough to talk trash to her before I even ask her out.”

  “That’s a lame excuse and you know it—wetter and soggier than these clothes I’m going to get out of,” Cyrus said as he stood up. “Gut luck with your plans, ’cause you’re gonna need it. Gloria and I are tight, man. You don’t stand a chance.”

  As the door closed behind his brother, Jonathan sagged against the side of the cabin. As always, his little brother had seen right through him. He didn’t have a plan, and he had no idea about whom to approach for a date. He didn’t know any girls in Forest Grove, and although he’d joked around with Maria Zehr when she’d lived at Promise Lodge, she’d paid more attention to Allen and Cyrus than to him. Laura Hershberger was cute, but at seventeen, she was way too young—and now that her mamm had married the bishop, any guy who asked her out would have to toe a higher mark.

  He thought about the girls he’d waited on at the nursery, but most of them were English—and he’d soon be joining the Old Order. What with Bishop Monroe and three preachers leading the sessions about their religion and the responsibilities of church membership, there was no backing out at this point, especially on the off chance that he could attract a young woman from the outside world.

  Jonathan sighed as darkness fell, filled with the calls of cicadas and the frogs at the lake. Summer was over, fall would speed by with work at the nursery—and then Thanksgiving would be upon him. Winter would bring him more time to socialize, but by then his kid brother would have one hand on his fiancée’s shoulder and the other hand out for the money they’d wagered.

  Shake a leg. There’s got to be somebody out there, and some way to convince her you deserve her time . . . her heart.

  Chapter Five

  On Saturday morning, Annabelle took special care to be sure her dark blue dress, black apron, and heart-shaped kapp looked their best before she went downstairs to breakfast—or was she stalling, nervous about facing Phineas? Even though she could remain surrounded by her supportive friends whenever he was present, she hadn’t slept well. She felt uneasy about the tactics her husband might use to persuade her to leave Promise Lodge, because he’d always had a power about him, a presence that commanded respect and submission . . . and after the past months of not answering to him, Annabelle wasn’t sure she wanted to start up again.

  But Phineas was her husband. No matter what he’d done, she’d made a vow to be his wife until death parted them.

  Annabelle slowly went down the back stairway to the kitchen, trying to compose her thoughts and her nerves. Aromas of percolating coffee, cinnamon rolls, and bacon ordinarily made her excited about starting the day, yet she hesitated. Maybe a cup of that coffee and the company of the Kuhn sisters would prepare her for meeting with Phineas, whenever he chose to make his appearance—

  But he was already in the kitchen. Waiting for her to descend the last few stairs.

  Annabelle gripped the handrail. The last thing she wanted was to stumble, to lose the shred of composure she’d mustered as she’d left the safety of her apartment. As always, Phineas expected her to speak first.

  “Gut—gut morning,” she stammered. Why was he in the kitchen? Had he barged in on Beulah and Ruby, not caring that he’d interrupted their morning routine?

  After Beulah had pulled a pan of puffy, perfect cinnamon rolls from the oven, she glanced apologetically at Annabelle, confirming her suspicion. “Gut morning, Annabelle,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “Seems our guest was up before the chickens—”

  “Jah, he was already here when we came downstairs,” Ruby put in as she turned the bacon in the skillet. “Says his body clock is still on eastern time, so he’s ready for breakfast.”

  Annabelle fought a frown. Did Phineas figure these women would step to his beat just because he was a male guest? How rude of him! And what was he doing in the kitchen so early, in the lodge where only women were living?

  Was he rifling through the pantry, looking for whatever cash might be stashed there?

  The thought made Annabelle bristle. She stood taller on the bottom step, determined not to knuckle under to his arrogance—or to those light green eyes that had seemed so exotic, so bewitching, when she’d been a young woman in love. “So who’s been cooking for you since you left home?” she asked quietly.

  Phineas’s eyebrows rose, but before he could reprimand her for such an impertinent question, Annabelle continued. “Here at Promise Lodge, we serve our meals when everyone gets to the table—and that includes Gloria, along with Cyrus and Jonathan Helmuth,” she explained. “Now, if you’ll please move out of my way, I’ll help Ruby and Beulah.”

  After making her wait a few moments longer than necessary, Phineas stepped aside. “I was eager to see you, hoping we could talk before anyone else was around,” he murmured. “Can you fault me for the fact that I’ve missed you, Annabelle?”

  She blinked. Just like that, his face had softened with an endearing smile, and his voice thrummed with affection. His English haircut and clothing—a sage-green shirt and brown pleated trousers—complemented his lithe, lean body, and for a moment Annabelle was taken in by how handsome he looked.

  But he’s been living English. And he has a lot of explaining to do. You’d better not say you’ve missed him, as well, because you’d be lying.

  “I try not to find fault with anybody this early in the morning,” Annabelle replied as she went to the cupboard. “It gets the day off to an unfortunate start.”

  Feeling the weight of his gaze on her back, she took down seven plates and prayed she’d make it to the table without dropping them. Annabelle wasn’t surprised when Phineas followed her into the dining room, but she remained focused on placing each plate in front of a chair. She was relieved when Ruby bustled in moments later with their silverware. The sounds of the front door and voices in the lobby were music to her nervous ears.

  “Hope you ladies have cooked up a lot of that bacon I smell,” Cyrus called out as he came in with his brother. “I’m so hungry, I could eat the whole hog by myself!”

  “That’s because he had the shortest date in history last night, and he and Gloria ended up in the lake,” Jonathan teased. He paused to assess
the scene, smiling politely. “Gut morning, Phineas. Nice to have you joining us for breakfast.”

  “Jah, welcome to Promise Lodge,” Cyrus put in as he stepped forward with his hand extended. “Saw you come in yesterday, but we didn’t get introduced. I’m Cyrus Helmuth and I claim this guy beside me—Jonathan—as my older brother.”

  The tension in the room eased a bit as Phineas shook the young men’s hands and made conversation about their work at the nursery. When Annabelle returned to the kitchen, Beulah had finished drizzling thick white frosting over the pan of cinnamon rolls. She was talking softly with Gloria, who’d just come downstairs.

  “Fair warning—because the menfolk are talking about you out there,” Beulah remarked to the young woman as she nodded toward the dining room. Her face creased with a smile. “Did you really spend time with Cyrus last night? I think that’s a wonderful-gut—”

  “Let’s just say we got off to an awkward start,” Gloria said with a shake of her head. She listened attentively to the men’s conversation as she drew a bread knife beneath the rows of warm cinnamon rolls. “It’s much more interesting to wonder why our new guest was roaming the grounds at all hours last night. What with the full moon, I had no trouble seeing Phineas walk over to Christine’s barn, and then to Phoebe and Irene’s pie shop before he stepped into your cheese factory.”

  Annabelle’s eyes widened—but not nearly as far as Beulah’s and Ruby’s did. “What’s he up to?” she whispered. “Do you suppose we should tell Bishop Monroe about this? Phineas has no business snooping around, just because we don’t lock any doors. It’s not only impolite, it’s wrong!”

  Ruby thought about her response as she began to arrange the fresh rolls on a big platter. “Maybe he’s only curious. As long as we don’t find anything missing, there’s not much we can say—”

  “But I’m glad you mentioned it, Gloria,” Beulah cut in with a nod. “If we hear that folks suspect an intruder’s been in their homes and shops, we’ll know who it is.”