The Promise Box Read online

  THE

  PROMISE BOX

  TRICIA GOYER

  Dedicated to Linda Martin

  Your handwritten notes through the years have been a special

  treasure! Thank you for your love and encouragement, Mom.

  In returning and rest shall ye be saved;

  in quietness and in confidence [trust] shall be your strength.

  ~ISAIAH 30:15

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title page

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  NOTE FROM EDGAR

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  GLOSSARY

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  CHAPTER

  1

  Lydia Wyse shook rain from her red curls, wishing she could as easily shake memories of the last time she’d seen Mem’s lowered kapp and bowed head, praying for her daughter’s return. Return not only to West Kootenai, Montana, but to the Amish. Lydia was returning all right, but not in the way Mem had wished. Tomorrow was Mem’s funeral, and during the nine hours of driving—from Seattle to Montana—each minute had brought her closer to home. To heartache.

  Lydia had stopped for gas in Eureka, about an hour from her parents’ house, and rain now drenched her long curls. Soaked, standing in line to pay, she spotted a few Amish women climbing from a white van and hurrying into the grocery store attached to the gas station. Seeing them, a twinge of familiarity—of longing—filled her heart, but she stuffed the emotions down.

  “Are those Amish from West Kootenai?” she asked the gas station attendant who took her cash.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. Just Amish. Not really sure where they’re from.”

  “Just Amish.”

  She walked out of the gas station and got back on the road, thinking about the phrase. All her life she’d wanted to be anything but “just Amish.” Even when she wore the same type of dress, the same type of kapp as the other girls, she’d felt different. When she was sixteen, she’d discovered why.

  The rain stopped its patter on the windshield. Lydia cracked the window, letting the cool, pine-scented breeze filter in, spreading a spray of curls across her cheek. She pressed harder against the gas pedal, wishing she could leave the memories behind. But she could never outrun the dark clouds of her past, no matter how hard she tried.

  Picking up speed, her yellow Volkswagen Beetle snaked along the narrow country road. As she grew closer to West Kootenai, tall mountain peaks pierced the thinning clouds, rays of sunlight splitting the firmament.

  Her mother’s death hadn’t come as a surprise. What had surprised her was the faint excitement at seeing those women in their kapps and Plain dress. How could being raised Amish seem so familiar, yet foreign? Painful.

  She’d never be “just Amish.” Mem, her adoptive mother, had finally disclosed that when she’d turned sixteen. Lydia should never have been born. How horrible that her birth-mother had been traumatized twice—first by her conception and second from her birth. Since knowing the truth, Lydia had been running, searching for who she was apart from the Amish community. After all, her birth father was anything but Amish.

  Running until now. Her mother’s funeral had forced her to return. Return to her parents’ home. Return to the quiet Amish community where her parents had found healing after Lydia walked away from their lifestyle and beliefs.

  Alongside the road, black—and-white cows dotted a field, bright green from summer sun and rain. A few lifted their heads when she passed, as if surprised by the sight of her red hair through the window.

  Rain always gave her a fuzzy silhouette. With one hand Lydia held a death grip on the steering wheel and with the other she pushed the mass of curls back from her face for the hundredth time that day, wishing she’d had enough foresight to grab a hair band. That had been the only good thing about wearing a kapp during her growing-up years. She could pin her hair up with a dozen pins, tuck it under the starched white head covering, and forget about it.

  A kapp. One thing that wasn’t so bad about being Amish. That and the fact she’d had plenty of time to daydream stories as she mucked stalls, hung clothes on the line, and stitched perfect designs on dishcloths.

  If only life was so simple. She’d told herself she wouldn’t look back—and she rarely did. But now she had no choice. Like a hook caught into her heart, the truth of who she was, how she’d been raised, reeled her in.

  Truth. She could only run from it for so long.

  Gideon Hooley approached the gelding with easy steps. The horse didn’t cast one look, but from his perked ears Blue knew he was not alone in the pasture. The horse’s brown coat shimmered in the sunlight, muscles rippling as he took one step forward. Tense. At any moment he could turn, chase Gideon down, and trample him. Gideon had seen it before. But something deep down in his gut told him Blue was different, no matter what others said.

  “Untamable” was how Dave Carash described him. The Englisch man blamed it on the fact he’d had to pull the foal after the mother died in labor. “Poor thing was without oxygen and as blue as the Montana sky,” Dave had said, and the name had stuck. The problem was the Englisch man worked hard to provide for his family and hadn’t given enough time to the temperamental creature.

  Gideon had seen it before. Horse owners often had better intentions than time and skill, and sometimes Gideon felt that instead of helping people with horse problems he was actually helping horses with people problems.

  He took another step forward. “Beautiful day, isn’t it, Blue?” He walked a wide circle to approach Blue straight on. Many horses were nearsighted. Things far off scared them. They needed to see them up close to trust them. But letting anyone come close was hard. Gideon understood.

  The horse tossed his head.

  Gideon removed his brimmed hat and turned it over in his hands, letting the sun warm the top of his head. Mr. Carash had hired him to train Blue, but today was an introduction of sorts. Gideon hadn’t come with a rope or bridle. He’d come with a soft voice and an even softer hand.

  “I heard some guys tried to chase you down.” Gideon chuckled. “Would have liked to see that.” He smiled, eyeing the bay with its long neck; fine, clean throatlatch; and deep, sloping shoulders. The gelding watched him, curious.

  Intelligent eyes. With the right training he’ll be a fine horse.

  “Must be hard when you feel threatened.” Gideon’s throat tightened even as he said those words, and he glanced to his right and looked at the distant hills. “When yer scared fer your life, I understand. There were things I went through as a kid that scared me too.”

  His gut cinched, and his mother’s words came back to him. “Out of all the places to visit…why’d ja want to return to Mont
ana? It’s a schrecklich place.”

  “Scary for a little boy, ja, but I’m a grown man now,” he had told her.

  “Still…do you not mind what happened?”

  “Getting lost, being scared, ja. How could I forget?” Even as an adult he still dreamed about that night in the woods alone. And his parents had never let him forget it was his disobedience that had gotten him into so much trouble.

  “That’s not the only matter.” Mem’s voice had lowered, and she’d settled into the kitchen chair, preparing to launch into a story.

  His dat strode in with quickened steps, startling them both. “Leave it no mind, Lovina. It wonders me why you need to bring it up.”

  “Gideon needs to know the truth at some time,” she mumbled under her breath.

  “Not that truth.” The words fell from Dat’s lips like horseshoes from a hook. Flat. Hard.

  From the look in Dat’s eyes that day, Gideon had known he wouldn’t get his father to speak a word of it. Mem either. Fine. He didn’t need to hear their story. Something had happened in West Kootenai, Montana—more than just getting lost on the mountain when he was four. No one spoke of it, but the hidden truth had haunted his growing—up years.

  Gideon glanced at the skittish horse again. Sympathy caused his heart to ache. This horse was afraid of a heavy hand. Gideon, on the other hand, feared the truth would rope him up and cause him harm—not to his body but to his heart.

  He continued forward until he stood by the gelding’s side. The wild grasses blew in the breeze, feathering against his ankles. With a slow, steady movement he reached up and stroked the horse’s neck. “There you go, boy. Nothing’s gonna hurt you. You’re a strong boy. Smart too.”

  This morning he’d gone to the West Kootenai Kraft and Grocery and had a large stack of pancakes, chatting it up with some of the other Amish bachelors. But he’d wanted to be here instead, with this horse. Even as a kid he found safety and companionship with horses more than people. Mem said that would change when he met the right woman. He’d believe that when he saw it.

  Gideon had come back to Montana with his cousin Caleb to hunt. They’d arrived two months ago in April to be eligible for a resident hunting license in November. When hunting season rolled around and he headed up into the hills for sport, adventure, and provision, he could forget the past. But until the cold winds blew in and the season of hunting started, Gideon sought truth.

  Do I really want to know?

  CHAPTER

  2

  It had been a long drive from Seattle. The dreary weather had matched Lydia’s dour thoughts. Everyone, she supposed, ached when they lost their mother. Maybe her ache was greater knowing Mem had felt a death at Lydia’s leaving. Yes, they’d seen each other almost once a year, but it was hard connecting with a woman so opposite her. Or maybe, like her boss, Bonnie, had said, Lydia had focused on their differences so she wouldn’t feel so guilty about leaving.

  There were many times Lydia had wished she’d kept her mouth shut about her Amish parents and where she’d come from, but Bonnie was one of those curious types who sought people’s stories like a schoolboy sought change under a couch cushion when he heard the ice cream truck. And as she’d handed Bonnie the keys to her studio apartment so Bonnie could water her five houseplants while she was gone, Lydia hadn’t missed her boss’s slightly cocked eyebrow and narrow gaze. The look said, “A story’s going to come out of this.”

  Could Bonnie be right? The Amish community she journeyed toward consisted of twenty families who lived among the Englisch in a small mountain community only a few miles from the Canadian border. With only one store and not even a post office, going there was like voyaging back thirty years to a place where neighbors counted on each other, loggers felled tall trees by hand, and children caught fish in mountain streams with long sticks and twine.

  And then there were the bachelors.

  She’d been back only one other time during late spring, and the small community had been buzzing with the presence of almost thirty Amish bachelors. As her mother had explained, a group of young men arrived every spring to live and work for six months to obtain their residence license so they could legally hunt in the fall. Six months to scope the mountains for game. Six months to live in the crosshairs of young women who hoped a bachelor would return home with not only an eight-point buck, but her as a bride.

  The country music station Lydia had picked up played a mournful love song, and she reached over and flipped off the noise. Foolishness. All of it.

  The road straightened for a spell, and Lydia glanced at the pile of spiral-bound manuscripts sitting on the passenger’s seat. She edited nonfiction books and the occasional romance novel—not that Lydia knew a thing about that in real life. Bonnie called her old-fashioned. Bonnie meant her work style, but Lydia knew it was more than that. She had a television and a microwave and drove a car, but one thing Lydia hadn’t gotten used to was working on a computer. When giving her an editing project, Bonnie was gracious enough to print and bind the manuscripts. And after Lydia was done, Bonnie hired someone to enter all her work into the computer.

  “For anyone else, Lydia, I wouldn’t do it. But you’re good. Really good. You see words differently than others. You gather them like wildflowers and arrange them like a bouquet on the page.”

  It was a kind compliment, but it didn’t satisfy. Lydia enjoyed editing, but what she really wanted to do was write a book. She wrote little things for their company newsletter, but she waited for “the” book idea like a rooster watched for the first light of dawn. It hadn’t come, but it was out there…right over the horizon. And maybe returning to West Kootenai would spur an idea. After all, how many other book editors traveled to the mountains of Montana to bury their Amish mother?

  Mother. The word had caused more confusion than peace over the years. Ada Mae Wyse was the mother who’d taught her Scriptures on her knee, but the woman who birthed her haunted Lydia’s thoughts. Lydia’s conception—a secret she hadn’t told a soul since first hearing Ada Mae’s explanation of her birth—would make a tragic story, all right, but not one she’d write about. Not now. Not ever.

  The bridge over Lake Koocanusa glistened in the misty rain. Her vehicle was the only one crossing the wide expanse, and she glanced for the briefest second at the shimmering blue water below. When her parents had first moved to the area there’d been an accident on the lake, and an Amish woman had drowned. A shiver ran up Lydia’s spine thinking about it. She bit her lip, tightened her hands around the steering wheel, and focused her eyes to the road as a hollow ache filled her stomach. It pressed against her organs and lungs, making it hard to breathe. Tragedy struck the Englisch and Amish alike. She should know that. Her life wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for tragedy.

  Make that tragedies.

  She squared her shoulders and prepared for the jarring where the smooth pavement of the bridge ended and the road turned to dirt and gravel. None of the roads from here on out were paved.

  She climbed the mountain at a steady rise for the next fifteen minutes. Finally the road flattened out.

  Almost there.

  After another few minutes of driving, homes began to dot the roadway. It was easy to tell which were Amish. They were simply built, and all had white curtains in the windows; anything with color or pattern would be deemed too proud in their eyes.

  A small log schoolhouse sat in the distance. A warmth filled her chest as she thought about her favorite teacher in Ohio, Miss Yoder. She’d only taught for three years before getting married and starting a family. But Lydia’s memories included field trips to the cheese factories in Sugarcreek, softball games with neighbor schools near the end of the school year, and sleepovers with the other girls at Miss Yoder’s house. They talked about places Miss Yoder had traveled, visiting family. It had been the first time Lydia considered life beyond her small community.

  Lydia’s cell phone rang, causing her to jump. She hadn’t had cell service for most of the last
few hours—it had been spotty after leaving Kalispell.

  As a habit, Lydia pulled to the side of the road before answering.

  “Hello?”

  “Lydia, it’s Bonnie.”

  Lydia smiled. Her boss said the same thing every time she called. She’d worked with Bonnie for the last two years. She knew her number, her voice.

  Lydia put her car into Park and turned it off. “Hey, Bonnie, did the Murphy project get to the printers?”

  “Yes, just an hour ago. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Lydia tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. In her peripheral vision a horse galloped in the fenced pasture. That wasn’t something one saw every day in Seattle.

  “I’m excited.” Lydia pulled her attention back to the phone call. “It’s a great story. I couldn’t imagine trying to home educate three sets of twins.”

  “Didn’t you go to a school like that?” Bonnie asked.

  “Like what?”

  “A small Amish school with just a few kids.”

  “We had twenty scholars, and it seemed a lot to me, especially being an only child.”

  “An only child in an Amish home. Seems like an interesting book, don’t you think?”

  Lydia sighed, grabbed her camera from the front seat, and stepped out of the car. There was a large pothole filled with water right outside the driver’s door. She hopped over it and then juggled everything as she removed and placed her lens cap on the hood, turning around to where the sun bathed the high mountain peaks with golden light.

  To write about her family would bring up her adoption, and then someone might become curious about her birth. No, that couldn’t happen.

  Lydia tucked her cell phone between her shoulder and jaw and focused the camera on the mountains, snapping a shot. “Nothing about my life is typical Amish.”

  “Except for the fact you like to cook, which seems completely Amish to me.”

  “Yes, there’s that.”

  “Which is why I’m calling. I think you should write a book about being Amish.”

  “Um, except for the fact that I left the community, remember?” Lydia’s eyes swept the field. They fixed on a structure at the far end of the pasture. She gasped. Then, with a sad smile, she lifted her camera and pointed it toward the simple Amish homestead, snapping a shot. She’d never realized that her parents’ home could be seen from the main road.