Promise Lodge (12 page)

“That's how I see it,
jah
.”

“But why'd you stay there, Deborah?” Noah asked as he turned to face her. “You had to know Isaac would—he's got a reputation for getting too fresh with—”

“When somebody hollered that sirens were coming, the guys rushed out the door,” Deborah rasped. “Isaac saw me outside, stepping out of the way when his friends scattered toward the cars they'd parked out back. He grabbed hold of me—started hollering at me for calling the cops—”

Deborah's anguish made Noah's throat tighten, but he couldn't let her off the hook. Couldn't let the wetness shining in her eyes inspire his pity. “You surely could've broken away—or slapped him, or—”

“
Really?
” she blurted. “If
you
got a grip on my arm, how far away would I get? Isaac's taller than you, and—and maybe stronger.”

Noah didn't care to be reminded—especially by Deborah—of all the ways Isaac Chupp was superior to him, even if he didn't understand how the bishop's lazy son could be physically stronger than he was. Already the images in his mind were too vivid, and Deborah wasn't nearly finished with her story. “And then?” he asked, struggling to lower his voice.

She blinked fiercely to keep from crying. “He shoved me into his rig. Said we'd get away from the cops and then he'd set our story straight—tell me what I was to say if anybody asked about the fire.” Deborah sighed deeply. “I realized then that I'd gotten myself in too deep, and that when Dat found out what I'd done—and who I'd been with—there'd be no right way to explain my situation. But I was already along for the ride, and it was getting dark. I had no idea where Isaac was taking me . . . or what he might do to get back at me.”

Deborah's desperation made Noah's heart shrivel. He didn't really want to know any more, yet he had to hear her out. It would be one thing to forgive her, as his Christian duty, but it was another thing altogether to consider courting her again if she'd been . . . compromised.

“So he kept urging his poor horse along the back roads, going too fast in the darkness,” she continued in a resigned voice. “When he finally stopped, I didn't have a clue where we were. He told me I was to deny any knowledge of him and his friends being in the barn—and if Sheriff Renfro came nosing around his place, he'd know it was
me
who'd tattled,” Deborah added emphatically. “When Isaac said he wanted to seal the deal with a—a kiss—”

Noah clenched his jaw. The mere thought of Chupp kissing his Deborah made him crazy.

“—I slapped him, as hard as I could,” Deborah went on doggedly. “That made him really mad. He threw open the buggy door and hopped out. Told me I was getting out, too—which was fine by me, until he grabbed hold of my neck and shoved me down into the ditch. And then he drove off.”

Noah could hardly breathe. He was grateful that Deborah had avoided Isaac's advances, but there had to be more. Preacher Eli hadn't banished his daughter on the basis of what Deborah had said so far. Had he?

Resisting the urge to take Deborah's hand, he gave her a moment to collect herself. “So how'd you get home?”

Deborah's expression turned bleak. “Started walking,” she replied heavily. “But I'd scraped my knees on some rocks in the ditch, so my stockings were torn, and once I finally reached a paved road, I still had no idea which direction to go. It's really dark out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. I got so scared I cried out for God's help.”

Noah looked away. Why was he putting Deborah through this ordeal again? Why couldn't he just take her in his arms and comfort her?

“And then a car came along. It slowed down.”

Deborah's voice had gotten so soft he could barely hear her. Noah decided he'd better withhold his affection until he'd listened to the entire story.

“It was that redheaded kid, Kerry,” she said.

“The one Isaac runs the roads with in that noisy old car?”

Deborah nodded. “He offered me a ride home. Said he'd been following the buggy from a ways behind us, figuring Isaac might . . . hurt me.”

“And?” Noah really didn't want to hear anymore, but maybe it would do her good to clear her conscience by confessing the whole truth.

A tear dribbled down Deborah's cheek. “I knew that as a member of the church, I wasn't supposed to get into his car, but—but I didn't know what else to do. I thought maybe God had sent Kerry to help me.” She sighed bitterly, swiping at her eyes. “Turns out he had the same ideas as Isaac, about how I could repay his favor. He—he got grabby in the car. I tried to open the door—”

“While the car was moving?” Noah's eyes widened as he imagined this scene.

Deborah's dejected gaze told of a desperation he couldn't fathom. “Well,
jah,
” she rasped, “but I couldn't unlock my door. Then we swerved off the road on my side. Kerry was so drunk he cranked the wheel hard to get the car back on the pavement, but it went too far. He hit a guardrail.”

“
That
made him mad,” Noah murmured.

“He tried to back up, to steer the car off the guardrail, but it didn't move. When he shut off the engine, I jumped out. Ran as best I could, until I could see Kerry wasn't following me,” Deborah went on breathlessly. “I must've still been a couple miles away from Coldstream, and I couldn't walk very fast. I was coming up the lane at home when Dat was heading to the barn to tend to the morning horse chores. He took one look at me and assumed the worst.”

Noah had no trouble imagining Preacher Eli's reaction. With Deborah's
dat,
things were either black or white—not much tolerance for shades of gray or for teenage boys who drank too much.

“He saw that my
kapp
was gone, and my hair had fallen down. My stockings were tattered, too,” she went on in a raspy voice. “Sheriff Renfro had stopped by the evening before to ask about the fire and the nine-one-one call, because they'd traced it to our phone, so Dat knew I'd made the call. He told me that was the
first
of my bad choices. Said I was setting a bad example for my younger brothers and sister, so—so he ordered me to leave.”

Deborah looked away, as though searching the woods for a solution to the mess she was in. “If Mamma hadn't stepped in, Dat wouldn't even have allowed me to clean up and pack, he was so mad at me.”

“So you hired a driver—Dick Mercer, most likely—and came to Promise Lodge.”

“Mamma called Dick and slipped me some of her egg money for his fare. She gave me that tin of brownies from the freezer, but—but she didn't try to change Dat's mind.” Deborah hung her head. “She didn't ask me where I was going, or give me any ideas. It was Dick who suggested Promise Lodge, because he'd helped you folks move some of your furniture and stuff.”

“Which means you didn't really bake those brownies for
me,
” Noah muttered.

When Deborah looked at him with her red-rimmed eyes, he kicked himself for saying that.

“So on top of my other mistakes—my
sins,
as Dat saw them—you think I lied to you about those brownies and about why I came here,” she remarked ruefully. “I'd baked them a while back, hoping to find a way to win your heart again—but then you moved away without even saying
gut
-bye. And now you don't believe me. You think everything I've told you is one big lie—a story I made up so you'd feel sorry for me.”

Noah kept his mouth shut. Not that it improved the situation or Deborah's mood.

“Maybe you should take me back—to the lodge, I mean,” Deborah clarified in a shaky voice. “Now that I've told you what happened, and I've heard it out loud for myself, I can see why you wouldn't want to court me again, Noah. What a mess I've made. What a stupid fool I've been.”

Noah cringed. Until he'd initiated this gut-wrenching conversation, he'd been assuming all the wrong things, and
he
had been the fool. It was serious business when an Amish girl's father cast her out because he believed she'd been compromised. Folks would question Preacher Eli's effectiveness as a parent—and as a church leader—and Deborah's reputation would be ruined, as well. She had come to Promise Lodge because she believed she had nowhere else to go.

The defeat in Deborah's voice told him she now believed that the events she'd confessed had been all her fault, as well. He searched for the right thing to say, because the tables had turned. Now Deborah was placing the blame on herself while he was left in utter amazement that she'd escaped her ordeal with only a bruise and two scraped knees—

Once again it was Preacher Amos's persuasive voice Noah heard in his head, trying to help him out of this awkward conversational corner he'd painted them into. After all, Deborah had been smiling when they left the campground.

“Deborah, I—I'm really sorry about what happened to you,” Noah murmured. He reached for her hand, but she tucked it under her arm, hugging herself as though she were trying to hold body and soul together.

“
Jah,
well,
sorry
isn't going to fix anything,” she murmured. “Maybe when the others hear everything I've done, they won't even let me stay.”

“That's not true! We're your friends, Deborah—
all
of us,” he insisted as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

Deborah bowed her head and shut her eyes, too dejected to respond to his reassurance. Noah wished he were better at coming up with the right words. It seemed she'd become so lost in her depressing thoughts that she'd forgotten he was sitting beside her.

After several more painful moments, Noah released Deborah and took up the leather lines. “Geddap, Jane,” he murmured to the mare. He saw no point in prolonging their agony by sitting out here, not talking to each other.

Chapter Ten

As Deborah slouched on her bed later that afternoon, staring at the cracks in the cabin's floor—believing she was as deeply, unfixably flawed as the old boards—someone knocked briskly on the door.

“What're you doing in there all by your lonesome?” Laura asked through the screen.

“What on earth did Noah say that's upset you so badly?” Phoebe demanded. “We're about ready to have some sandwiches, and we didn't want to eat without you.”

If you knew all the things I've done . . .
“Go ahead with your supper,” Deborah insisted. “I couldn't eat a bite.”

“Now we
know
something's wrong,” Rosetta teased, but her voice was gentle and caring. “Can we come in and talk about it? Misery loves company.”

“And if Noah's the reason you're so upset, I'll certainly be giving him a piece of my mind,” Mattie stated.

“Remember how you came over after Willis passed, bringing us little gifts and cheering us up?” Christine asked without missing a beat. “It's our turn to listen now, Deborah. What're friends for, if not to help each other along?”

Deborah sighed. If all the other women at Promise Lodge were peering in at her, there would be no dismissing them until she'd satisfied their concerned curiosity. Like it or not, she'd have to repeat what she'd told Noah—finish the story she'd started for these ladies a while back—and endure whatever they dished up. And if it meant they no longer wanted her here, she'd have to go. She'd known that all along.

“All right,” she murmured. “I don't want supper to be late on my account. We'll have the fellows over here asking
why
.”

“Puh! Like we can't handle them,” Laura said as the screen door creaked.

When Deborah swung her feet to the other side of the bunk to face her incoming guests, Phoebe and Laura immediately sat down on either side of her while Rosetta, Christine, and Mattie pulled up the other chairs in the room. The love and concern on their faces touched her.

“Don't go thinking Noah has upset me,” she murmured to Mattie. “This was my doing, mostly, and rather than mislead you, I'd better tell you the rest of what happened the other night when the barn burned. That's what Noah and I were discussing, and why we've gone our separate ways.”

The women leaned closer, their faces furrowed. Phoebe patted Deborah's arm and Laura grabbed her hand.

“Well, I told you how Isaac shoved me into the ditch and left me,” Deborah began in a low voice. “After that, when I'd finally found the paved road, Isaac's buddy Kerry drove up in his car. He offered me a ride home, and even though I knew he was drunk—even though it was wrong for me to ride with him because he's English—I got in. Big mistake.”

“You were lost!” Laura protested.

“And you'd been hurt, too,” Phoebe pointed out.

“Let Deborah finish,” Rosetta suggested gently. “This can't be easy for her.”

Deborah looked at the sturdy hands of the stalwart friends who sat beside her. She tried to take comfort from the girls' insisting that she'd done nothing they wouldn't have done. But would they
really
have been foolish enough to get into Kerry's car? “It seems Kerry wanted me to repay the favor of his ride with—well,
you
know,” she murmured. “I said no, but he grabbed hold of me anyway, while he was driving. When I slapped him, the car swerved off the road—”

Her friends sucked in a sudden breath.

“—and then he steered too hard in the other direction and crashed his car into a guardrail,” she continued in a rush. “I got away from him—probably because he was more worried about his car than about me—but now he and Isaac both have it in for me. If I hadn't been so stupid—if I hadn't defied the
Ordnung
by getting into an Englisher's car, on top of calling nine-one-one and then snooping in the barn when—”

“But you were trying to save the barn,” Christine insisted. “Probably because it had been
ours
.”

“
Jah,
that's true. But what was I thinking?” Deborah lamented. “Yet another sin was being so prideful that I believed God had sent Kerry to rescue me. And instead of turning the other cheek, as Jesus taught—instead of trusting that God would take care of me—I fought both of those boys. Is it any wonder that Dat got angry? I'd gone against everything he—and the church—have taught me all my life.”

“But what might've happened if you
hadn't
fought them off?” Mattie demanded in a terse whisper. “It was God who gave you the strength to defend yourself, and the sense to
run
when you realized the trouble you were in.”

“And you've recognized your mistakes and now you've confessed them,” Preacher Amos's voice came through the screen door. “Wherever two or three are gathered in His name, we believe Christ is present. As your preacher, I'm saying your admission is every bit as
gut
as kneeling before the members in church, acknowledging that you've done wrong, Deborah.
Go and sin no more,
Jesus would say. Your sins have been forgiven.”

Deborah closed her eyes, awash in a fresh wave of embarrassment that made her face hot. If Amos had been listening outside, Roman and Noah were probably out there, as well.
But now everyone knows the truth, and the truth shall set you free. The Bible says so.

So why didn't she feel better? Everyone at Promise Lodge was on her side. They all believed her confession.

Yet Deborah felt hollow; as fragile as the bone china cup and saucer Mamma had given her for her birthday. What would her mother say if she knew the whole truth? Would she defend her daughter, or allow Dat's decision to stand? Mamma, like most Old Order wives, had never been one to challenge her husband's opinions or decisions.

Deborah exhaled slowly. “You fellows may as well come in.”

The screen door creaked and Preacher Amos entered, followed by Roman and Noah. The little cabin felt crowded. As the three fellows stood behind Mattie, Christine, and Rosetta, Deborah couldn't miss the concern on their faces.

“I um, thought Preacher Amos should know about what Isaac and that Kerry fellow did to you,” Noah admitted softly. “I didn't mean to make you feel worse, Deborah. Really I didn't.”

“And now that I've heard the story from both you and Noah,” Amos said, “I'm even more concerned about what those boys are up to—and why. Isaac's in his
rumspringa,
but that doesn't mean he and his friends can terrorize our young women or destroy property.”

“Isaac used to torment Teacher Catherine something awful—left dead mice and other nasty stuff in her desk drawers,” Laura recalled. “But she could never catch him at it. And I suspect she didn't want to cross Bishop Obadiah by suggesting his son was a troublemaker.”

“I think Isaac's parents spared the rod because he came along so much later than the other Chupp kids,” Mattie pointed out in a disapproving tone. “What with already raising ten youngsters, poor Bertha was worn-out by the time Isaac was in school.”

“Obadiah kept so busy with his auctions and his duties as the bishop that
he
didn't always know what his youngest was up to, either,” Christine said with a shake of her head.

“That's a dangerous way to raise a boy.” Preacher Amos draped his arms around Roman and Noah's shoulders. “I'm pleased that you two Schwartzes have already committed your lives to Christ and His church, because I suspect it won't be long before Isaac jumps the fence.”

“
Jah,
I've seen him in that Kerry fellow's old car, learning how to drive it,” Roman said. “While I know a lot of guys who got drivers' licenses when they were his age, it was a passing fad to them. I figure to see Isaac behind the wheel of a much nicer car than Kerry's someday—”

“But where's he getting his money?” Noah blurted. “I can't think Obadiah pays him much for clerking at the auctions—especially since the two oldest Chupp sons partner with their
dat
and are raising families, needing a steady income.”

Deborah had been following this conversation with a heavy heart, hoping something these friends said would make her feel better about her run-in with Isaac. “Do you suppose he's got sticky fingers?” she ventured. “He might not
earn
much, but a lot of money passes through his hands during big livestock auctions. Don't most Amish buyers pay cash?”

The cabin got very quiet.

“I see what you're saying,” Preacher Amos murmured. “No one could ever accuse Isaac of being slow, so maybe he's figured out how to slip money out of the till and then adjust the sales records in the ledger.”

“Now
that
bothers me,” Rosetta muttered. “Isaac clerked at the last couple of benefit auctions we held for the Coldstream school, and a
bunch
of money was raised then. Thousands of dollars.”

“We shouldn't assume that Isaac's guilty of such theft,” Preacher Amos hastened to say. “With two older brothers and his
dat
managing the auction's operations, I'd think someone would've noticed any discrepancies between the ledger entries and the amount their auction items had sold for—especially if differences occurred more than once or twice.”

An uneasy silence settled over them again until Mattie sighed and stood up. “Not much we can do about Isaac's activities except pray over them—and we're grateful to God that Deborah is here safe with us, as well,” she added. “Let's have our supper. Tomorrow's a busy day, what with Truman and his tree-trimming crew coming over.”

* * *

As the women cleared away the dirty dishes after their simple supper of sandwiches and desserts left from their noon meal, Rosetta listened to Preacher Amos with particular interest. He was reading the latest letters they'd received, from folks who wanted to come to Promise Lodge—or at least visit their new settlement to see if it would suit them. He read two from families with young adults looking to marry into fresh bloodlines—a common reason for Plain families to relocate—and then his eyebrows rose as he unfolded another letter.

“The fellow who wrote this one says, ‘We believe the Lord is leading us to your new colony, to the new beginnings we've been reading about in your scribe's letters in
The Budget,
'” Amos read aloud in his melodious voice.

Rosetta couldn't help smiling, for she was writing the weekly reports that appeared in
The Budget,
a newspaper that served the Plain population all over the United States. “It'll be fun to see who shows up to stay, and who decides Promise Lodge won't be their new home,” she remarked. “Folks who come here just from reading my letters are either very strong in their faith, or very eager to leave where they've been living, I would think.”

“He's Preacher Marlin Kurtz,” Amos said as he skimmed the letter. “His family includes a married son named Harley, Harley's wife, Minerva, and Marlin's two teenaged kids named Fannie and Lowell. They live in Iowa, not all that far from here.”

“No mention of Marlin's wife?” Mattie asked.

Amos shook his head. “He's a widower, which might explain why he wants to move. Maybe he can't handle living with two kids who need a woman's guidance—”

“And a woman to keep the place clean and put meals on the table,” Rosetta remarked. She wiggled her eyebrows at Christine. “What do you think about taking on a couple more kids, Sister?”

“Puh! It could just as well be
you
filling that role, Rosetta,” Christine shot back.

“I don't think so,” Rosetta replied without missing a beat. “If I took up with a preacher, my plans for managing apartments would go out the window in a hurry.”

“It's
gut
that another ordained fellow wants to come here, though,” Amos remarked. “We could get our church district organized a lot sooner.”

“But don't you wonder why a preacher wants to leave the district he's serving? I'd think he could find a new wife to hitch up with easily enough,” Mattie said in a pensive voice. “Unless he's like you, Amos, leaving because he and his bishop don't see eye to eye.”

“We can ask him that when they come for a visit next month.” Amos stuffed the folded letter back into its envelope and waved a sheet of yellow legal-sized paper at them. Even from across the kitchen, Rosetta could see that the writer of this letter wrote with a firm, decisive hand and used a fine-tipped black marker rather than an ink pen or pencil.

“I saved this one for last because I'm not sure what to make of it,” Amos said with a chuckle. “It's from a Bishop Floyd Lehman, who hails from Sugarcreek, Ohio. He intends to bring his wife, Frances, and his daughters, Gloria and Mary Kate, to Promise Lodge because God has told him we need his leadership. They'll arrive as soon as he gets their property in Ohio sold.”

“Hmm,” Mattie said. “That's a pretty bold statement to make when he's not even met us, or seen the place—”

“And why would
he
be leaving his church district?” Roman asked with raised eyebrows. “Usually it's the bishop who stays to rule the roost while the unsatisfied district members go elsewhere. After all, God decided he would be that district's leader—not ours.”

Amos was nodding as he listened to Roman. “Floyd goes on to say that because his district has gotten so populated, folks are splitting off to form a new district—but there's no affordable land nearby. Sugarcreek's got a huge Amish population, so he's probably right about some of his people needing to relocate.”