Promise Lodge

by Charlotte Hubbard

  To her left, a large garden plot had been tilled and hoed. Leaf lettuce, peas, and other early vegetables grew in neat, straight rows, their leaves shining a vibrant green against the dark soil. Beyond this planted plot, another garden was being plowed. When a Belgian came around from behind the fragrant honeysuckle hedge, following the contour of previous rows, Deborah’s heart stopped.

  Noah was driving. She would know his lean silhouette and the dark, wavy hair fluttering beneath his straw hat anywhere, for she’d memorized his handsome features all through school and during their yearlong engagement. This was the man she’d planned to spend her life and raise her children with—and when he fixed his eyes on her, even from a distance, Deborah stopped breathing. He gazed long and hard, his expression indiscernible as the horse plodded along and the plow blades churned up the black soil.

  Deborah dropped her suitcase and ran toward him, clapping a hand over her kapp so it wouldn’t fly off. Such hope—such joy!—danced in her heart. Surely he would feel compelled to give her another chance. She had to find a way to make amends. “Noah!” she called out. “Noah, it’s so gut to see you!”

  As he halted the horse and stepped down from the plow, Deborah stopped at the edge of the plot to catch her breath. Noah took his time, stepping carefully over the uneven, furrowed earth. His green shirt clung to his damp chest and his old Tri-blend pants flapped in the breeze as he walked. He’d lost some weight—

  But I can fix that! Maybe he’s missed me as much as I’ve longed for him! Deborah thought as Noah crossed the last several feet between them. He mopped his face with a bandanna and then stuffed it back into his pocket.

  “Deborah.”

  She savored the sound of Noah’s voice, the way he made her name sound so much sweeter than anyone else could, even if a wary silence stretched between them. When Deborah realized he wasn’t going to say anything else, she offered him the cookie tin. “I—I brought you some of those brownies you always liked,” she said with her best smile. “The kind with the peppermint patties in them.”

  Noah took the tin but he didn’t open it. Sweat was dribbling from beneath his straw hat down his cheeks, but she didn’t dare wipe it off the way she used to.

  “Why’d you come here?” he asked. “It’s a long trip from Coldstream.”

  Deborah winced. He was asking the questions she didn’t want to answer—but she might as well state her case. “I made a big mistake, breaking off our engagement, Noah,” she murmured, holding his intense brown-eyed gaze. “I’m hoping we can—hoping you’ll give me the chance to make up for my impulsive decision. I’m sorry for those things I said. Can you forgive me? Please?”

  His eyes widened. When someone asked for forgiveness, the Old Order ways demanded an answer, or at least an effort toward reconciliation. “I’ll have to think about it,” he replied tersely. “Why would I want to court you again, after you shot me down like a tin can off a fence?”

  Deborah turned so Noah wouldn’t see her eyes filling with tears. Their conversation wasn’t going well at all, but she had to get past this roadblock. She had nowhere else to go, and no way to get there. “I was wrong to doubt you, Noah,” she whispered. “I got too impatient, wanting answers—that house with a rose trellis we’d talked about—before you were ready to provide them.”

  “How’d you get that bruise on your neck?”

  As her hand flew to the mark her collarless cape dress couldn’t conceal, Deborah realized how guilty she must look. “I fell.”

  She closed her eyes against the memory of how Isaac Chupp had grabbed her in anger because she’d called the sheriff. It wasn’t a lie—she had fallen after the bishop’s son had shoved her into a ditch.

  But she couldn’t start down that conversational trail yet. Noah would want nothing more to do with her if she told him of the events that had led to her leaving Coldstream this morning after her dat had ordered her out of the house.

  Noah cleared his throat as though he didn’t believe her. He glanced at her suitcase. “How long do you figure to stay?”

  Deborah swallowed hard. She hadn’t been here ten minutes, yet Noah sounded ready to be rid of her. “This is such a pretty place,” she hedged, gazing out over the grassy hills that were dotted with trees and wildflowers. “And you’re planning to provide apartments? And open a produce stand? Your mamm and aunts are the perfect women for running those businesses.”

  Noah let out a humorless laugh. “Mamm, Rosetta, and Christine love it here,” he replied. “Me? I’m not seeing Promise Lodge as the Eden they made it out to be when they declared we were all moving. But there’s no going back.”

  Deborah closed her eyes. Noah’s impatient tone suggested that he’d already written her off.

  “There’s no lack of work to keep me busy here, and to keep my mind off how things went sour between us.” He let out a long sigh. “I suppose that’s one gut thing.”

  The pain in Noah’s eyes sliced into Deborah’s soul. She’d had no idea how badly she’d hurt him, or of the bridges she’d burned by so recklessly ending their engagement. “I’m so sorry,” she said in a tremulous voice. “I—”

  “Jah, so you’ve said.”

  “—had no idea what I was tearing apart when I thought I wanted to—”

  “It was my whole life you tore apart, girl,” Noah blurted. “It’ll never go back together the way it used to be. Why would I take a chance on getting my heart ripped out again?”

  Deborah hung her head. Noah’s words sounded so final. It seemed her best option was to use a phone here at Promise Lodge to call that English driver’s cell phone before he got any farther down the road. But she had no way to pay him, and no place else to go now that her dat had cast her out.

  “I’ve got this plowing to finish,” Noah said, gesturing toward the Belgian that was standing in the partially tilled garden plot. “You’d best go on up to the lodge. At least Phoebe and Laura will be glad to see you.”

  * * *

  As Deborah trudged toward the buildings, her shoulders slumped and shuddering, Noah’s heart thudded. She’d never been much good at lying. Her cheeks flushed and her pretty green eyes clouded over—not that she’d ever really lied, that he knew of. But she’d dodged his questions a time or two during their courtship, and she hadn’t told him anything he needed to know just now.

  In that respect, Deborah was a lot like Mamm and his aunts. They minimized problems and forged ahead without thinking everything through, as they’d done when they’d sold their three farms, pooling their money to buy this abandoned church camp. Women were good at getting themselves into situations men found totally impractical. So now he was plowing and painting at Promise Lodge instead of continuing his welding apprenticeship with Deborah’s dat, Preacher Eli Peterscheim—not that he’d wanted to remain in Coldstream after Deborah had broken his heart.

  Excited barking made Noah sigh. His Border Collie, Queenie, was running up from the pasture to greet Deborah as though the prodigal daughter had come home. “Traitor,” Noah murmured, watching the dog wag her fluffy tail while Deborah stroked her black head and ears.

  Instinct told Noah to set the canister down, but his wistful memories were stronger. As he lifted the lid, scents of mint and chocolate brought back the days he and Deborah had spent together planning their future. Three brownies later, he kicked himself for caving in to sentiment, to the idea that Deborah had baked them just for him. Her brownies were only a temporary fix, a Band-Aid on a gaping emotional wound.

  “We’ve got a long row to hoe, Buck,” he muttered to the Belgian as he stepped up onto the plow platform. “Geddap, fella.”

  As the muscled horse pulled him around the end of the plot, Noah watched his cousins, Laura and Phoebe Hershberger, rush out the lodge door to greet Deborah. Their happy cries drifted out to him and he envied the way they took her into their arms, welcoming her so excitedly. Once upon a time he’d hugged her with the same enthusiasm, believing he could find no finer young woman on Go
d’s earth—believing the Lord had created Deborah Peterscheim especially for him. He’d loved her all his life. He’d never had eyes for anyone else.

  But Deborah’s cruel, unexpected words still rang in his head. It’s been more than a year, Noah. I thought we’d be married by now, in our home and starting our family. Maybe you don’t love me enough. Maybe our engagement is a big mistake.

  How could he possibly have responded to those words? What was the right answer, when the young woman to whom he’d given his heart had implied that he didn’t love her enough and couldn’t make her dreams come true fast enough? Hadn’t she realized that he couldn’t support a wife and a family before he finished his welding apprenticeship and found a steady job?

  It made no sense. And to add grease to the fire, a short time later his mamm had announced they were pulling up stakes in Coldstream to move to Promise. While he agreed with Mamm and her sisters that Bishop Obadiah Chupp’s attitude had become intolerable, he’d obviously underestimated the depth of their disagreement with the bishop’s opinions. And who had ever heard of women starting a new colony? Why had Mamm and her sisters ever thought they could make it work?

  Noah exhaled to release his rising resentment but then his anger came at him from a different direction. Who had grabbed Deborah’s neck hard enough to leave a bruise in the shape of a purple handprint? True enough, her dat had a temper when he got frustrated, but had he slapped her around? If so, what had gentle Deborah done to provoke him?

  What if it wasn’t her dat? But then, why had she been standing close enough for any other fellow to touch her? Unless . . .

  Noah finished the plowing. His stomach churned with suspicion as he unhooked Buck and led him behind the stable. What if Deborah had ended their engagement because another guy had caught her eye? And if that was the case, how long had that been going on? Had she fled Coldstream to kiss up to him because she’d been mistreated? Or had she gone astray?

  Noah led the horse into the corral and topped off the water trough. The steady pounding coming from the barn told him that either his brother or Preacher Amos was inside. Until new families arrived, they were the only three men at Promise Lodge, and he felt more like talking with one of them than subjecting himself to the hens in the lodge—not to mention facing Deborah again so soon.

  As Noah entered the shadowy structure, where cracks in the weathered lumber allowed some daylight through, his older brother, Roman, looked up from the stanchion he was constructing. When this property had been a church camp, riding horses, tack, and hay had been stored here, so he and Amos were renovating it into a dairy barn for Aunt Christine’s Holstein herd. After her husband died last fall, Roman had taken over the milking and the care of the cows.

  “Problem?” Roman asked. “By the look on your face, your mouth was open when a bird flew over.”

  Noah grimaced. “Deborah’s here. Begging for my forgiveness.”

  His brother’s eyebrows shot up. “And you said—?”

  He thrust the canister at Roman and then walked around, checking out the progress on the remodeling. “I told her I wanted no part of courting her again.”

  “Gut answer! Amos brought five more letters from the post office this morning, from families wanting to come to Promise Lodge,” his brother said in an excited voice. “Three of those families have daughters. They’re looking for affordable land and fresh bloodlines to marry into. So here we are, brother. The answer to their prayers, right?” Roman pried off the canister lid, inhaled deeply, and then stuffed a brownie into his mouth.

  Noah sighed, allowing the thrum of the agitator in the bulk milk tank to fill the silence. Before fall, they needed to construct a separate stable for their horses, and within the next week or two they’d have to build a roadside stand where the girls could sell their produce. So much work, so little time.

  “Still can’t argue that Deborah’s brownies are the best, though,” Roman remarked. “Looks like you’ve eaten a few.”

  “Jah, they were a peace offering. But once the sugar wears off, you’re only hungrier for something more substantial.”

  Roman chortled. “That’s where these new girls might be just the ticket. But if Deborah has asked you to forgive her, you know Mamm and the aunts will side with her,” he pointed out. “And Preacher Amos’ll be reminding you about that seventy-times-seven thing, when it comes to letting go of old grudges. Even if you don’t want to marry her anymore, he’ll tell you to forgive and forget.”

  It was true. Preacher Amos was an admirable man, even if he’d come to Promise Lodge mostly because he was a widower and he had his eye on Mamm. He was more laid-back than Preacher Eli or Bishop Obadiah Chupp, but he insisted on following the rules Jesus had taught. There would be no wiggling out of forgiving Deborah, no crying foul just because she’d jilted him. Forgiveness was the cornerstone of the Old Order faith. They had both joined the church last year, so he couldn’t ignore Christ’s most important commandment: Love one another.

  But he couldn’t forgive Deborah. Couldn’t let go of the pain that gave him a reason to get up in the morning. If he was hurting this badly, he was still alive, right? It was proof he hadn’t curled up in a ball and rolled into a hole.

  He intended to move on. To love again and marry someday.

  But Deborah no longer figured into his plans.

  Chapter Two

  As Deborah hugged Laura and Phoebe Hershberger, her two best friends in the world, the sound of their voices healed some of the pain Noah had inflicted with his tough talk. She had really missed these girls since they’d moved away from Coldstream to make a fresh start with their widowed mother.

  “Deborah! What a fine surprise,” Laura said.

  “Just yesterday we were talking about you, wishing we could see you again,” Phoebe chimed in, “and here you are! The answer to our prayers.”

  They all laughed as Queenie yipped in agreement, prancing in a circle around the three of them. Deborah clutched the girls’ shoulders, savoring their togetherness. Why ruin this happy moment by telling them the real reason she’d come to Promise Lodge? There would be plenty of time to share the disturbing news of what was happening in Coldstream. “This is quite a place,” she said. “I can’t wait to see it, and to hear about what you’ve been doing.”

  “Oh, we haven’t had an idle moment, what with planting the garden plots and fixing up the guest cabins,” Phoebe replied. She was twenty, and her slender face and angular body closely resembled her deceased dat’s.

  “And you can be our first guest.” Laura, the younger of the sisters, had the sunnier disposition. Her blue eyes glimmered as she gestured toward the nearest cabin. “Mamm’s finished the curtains and we’ve put a new mattress on the bed in the cabin closest to the lodge. You showed up at just the right time.”

  “Come on inside,” Phoebe insisted. “Mamm and the aunts will be glad to see a face from back home.”

  As they stepped up to the lodge’s wide front porch, Deborah could tell the building needed some maintenance, yet she knew immediately why her favorite neighbors had fallen in love with the place. Large old trumpet vines grew on either end of the porch, loaded with bright orange flowers. The shade from enormous maple trees felt twenty degrees cooler than the garden, and the homey creak of the screen door welcomed her into a lobby that rose two stories high. Curving stairways framed the spacious room, with sturdy bannisters that joined to form the railing of an upstairs hallway. Above her, a huge chandelier of antlers gave the entryway an aura of rustic elegance.

  “Look who’s here!” Laura called out as they hurried past a massive stone fireplace. They entered a dining area filled with long wooden tables and chairs—enough to seat nearly a hundred people, Deborah estimated. The lingering aromas of fresh bread and fried chicken reminded her that she’d missed dinner while she’d been on the road. When Rosetta Bender peered out from the kitchen, however, Deborah forgot how hungry she was.

  “Oh, but you’re a sight for sore eyes!” Rosetta
cried as she rushed toward Deborah with a dish towel flapping in her hand. “Mattie and I were just saying that we should write to you and your mamm—”

  “But hearing the news from you in person is so much better,” Mattie Schwartz joined in from the kitchen doorway. “Did you eat along the way? We’ve got chicken and some rhubarb cake left—which is a miracle, considering how my boys and Amos are packing away the food these days.”

  Once again Deborah gloried in the warm hugs and smiles from friends she’d missed. Both women’s aprons were smudged with flour and their cape dresses of brown and gold felt damp from spending time in a hot kitchen, yet their smiles were as refreshing as lemonade on a summer day. Deborah was grateful that Noah’s mamm and aunt had never seemed to hold their broken engagement against her.

  “A piece of chicken would hit the spot,” she replied. She smiled at Laura and Phoebe, who were already fetching her a plate and pulling out the chair at the worktable. “Wow, this must be three times the size of our kitchens back home. I’ve never seen such big stoves and refrigerators.”

  “They’re perfect for feeding the families coming to our new colony, and for the apartments I hope to open this fall,” Rosetta replied. She plucked bread from a covered basket and placed it on Deborah’s plate. “You’ll hear the fellows talk about how decrepit the buildings are, but all these appliances are gas and they work just fine.”

  “We’re lucky because the church that owned this place left all the utensils, furnishings, and linens, too,” Mattie said. “With time and hard work, we can salvage most of those items and save a lot of money, which we can spend for the repairs and new buildings we’ll need.”