Shelter Somerset - Between Two Promises

Copyright

Published by

Dreamspinner Press

382 NE 191st Street #88329

Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Between Two Promises

Copyright 2011 by Shelter Somerset

Cover Art by Catt Ford

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 382 NE 191st Street #88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

ISBN: 978-1-61372-162-9

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

October 2011

eBook edition available

eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-163-6

Dedication

To Candice

Between Two Promises

Chapter One

DANIEL SCHROCK stepped out of his garage-converted woodshop and pulled the overhead door shut with a rusty screech. He adjusted his wide-brimmed straw hat to prevent the sun, hovering above the crowns of the hemlocks and cottonwoods, from scratching his eyes. Gravel crunched under his heavy boots as he made his way down the driveway. He caught the whiff of spaghetti and meatballs drifting from the rustic cabin he shared with his boyfriend. Supper would be ready by the time he returned from collecting the mail at the bottom of the lane.

Lofty trees leaned into the steep lane and allowed only a slim view of the Swan and Flathead Mountain Ranges. The first dusting of snow had already fallen on the higher elevations. Although hot and muggy in the Flathead River Valley, mid-August above ten thousand feet meant early winter. He headed down the steep lane carefully, mindful of the loose gravel. In winter, he figured trekking to the mailbox would be easier with the snow. He wondered how his brand new Chevy Suburban would handle the snowy terrain. A reliable horse pulling a buggy might have an easier time. He hadnt driven a buggy since hed lived in Illinois. That was about two months ago. An entire lifetime seemed to have passed since.

Most of that Amish world hed left behind, ever since he and his boyfriend, Aiden Cermak, had set up housekeeping together in northwestern Montana. They rented the cabin from a middle-aged Missoula couple who had used it as a vacation home. Aiden had wanted to be truly rugged, to live in the woods without any public utilities. But Daniel knew his modern-raised boyfriend would have a harsh time surviving the winters without at least gas heat. In some ways, the plucky Englisher embodied the plain life more than he.

Shelter Somerset

He realized Aiden was frustrated Daniel had yet towhat was the term Aiden always used?come out to his family and explain that they were a couple. Things were far too complicated in the Amish world to toss tradition aside, like oat sheaves into a threshing machine.

Daniels family knew he was living in Montana, but Daniel never mentioned to them anything about Aiden Cermak living with him.

Aidens parents, visiting from Maryland for a week during the Fourth of July, had only stoked Aidens desire for openness. Easier for him, having grown up in the modern East Coast suburbs. Aiden had been out to his parents since college. Daniel, unaccustomed to anyone knowing the intimate details of his life, had counted the days until Mr.

and Mrs. Cermaks departure. If they had found their only son living with a man improper, they had done a wunderbar goot job concealing their uneasiness.

Daniel could never invite his own family for a visit. Not in a million years. Couldnt imagine any of them being accepting of his lifestyle. He did miss them though. His large family was on the verge of expanding, with his mother expecting her eighth child any day.

Maybe there would be a letter informing him of the babys entrance into the world. He picked up his pace to the mailbox in anticipation of good news.

But he slowed. Most likely someone would call him from the phone shack down the lane near the family farm. Such news warranted more than a sluggish post. Aiden had given him a much needed cell phone for his twenty-seventh birthday last week, and hed made his first call to his parents Mennonite neighbors, where he had left them instructions to give the family his new number. No one had yet called him. Perhaps they were troubled he was embracing so many of the modern ways.

No, impossible for him to tell his family he was gay and living with Aiden Cermak like any married couple.

Twelve mailboxes formed a haphazard row in a turnoff by the junction with the paved county road. They rarely ran into their neighbors. Their cabins were spread out, about one hundred yards apiece, yet sometimes a chance encounter by the mailboxes would force a simple, uncertain greeting. Most of the people living up in the hills, away from the expanding city of Kalispell, were loners, aiming 2

Between Two Promises

for a life apart from others. Just as good. Daniel sought refuge away from the prying eyes of society too.

He found four pieces of mail. Two were from his Uncle Eldridge, with more orders for furniture, he speculated. Things were picking up from the lackluster past few years. He already had five pending orders for his handcrafted furniture he sold through a website set up and administered by his uncles Englisher friend. Another was a water bill.

He shook his head. Bills. No matter how semi-subsistent a person lived, few people could escape bills. The last piece of mail surprised him.

There was no return address, but he recognized the sloppy handwriting.

It was from his nineteen-year-old brother, Mark.

Mark had never written him before. Only his mother and twenty-four-year-old sister, Elisabeth, a teacher back in Illinois, wrote him regularly, sometimes twice a week. Surely one of them would have written him about his new siblings birth, not his brother. Curious, he opened the envelope with his thumb while he hiked back up the hill.

The heat rising from the hot white gravel of the sloping lane stung his eyes, but the letters contents smarted more. Worry and anxiety wrenched in his throat. He slipped a bit on the gravel, collected himself.

He reread Marks letter twice more before stopping at the bottom of the driveway.

Tugging at his beard, he gazed at the log cabin, ironically built twenty years ago by the Amish from a nearby settlement. Made from the surrounding red cedar, the nine-hundred-square-foot cabin fit him and Aiden perfectly. Inside, Aiden was probably already setting the table, the spaghetti steaming on plates. Their lives were good. They had made a comfortable existence for themselves in the live-and-let-live culture, thirty miles south of Glacier National Park. No reason to invite any unnecessary trouble.

He refolded the letter, slipped it into the envelope, and shoved it deep into the front pocket of his broadfall pants. Best to keep the letter from Aiden. No point letting him know Mark had written at all. Yes, that was the proper decision. For everyone. He would dispose of Marks letter next chance.