Christmas at Promise Lodge (5 page)

He sighed. The gray-haired Kuhn sisters were rolling a cart loaded with heaping plates of chicken, potatoes and gravy, and dressing toward the table nearest his mother and Preacher Amos. “You folks sit down and enjoy your meal together,” Beulah urged them as Ruby began setting plates in front of the chairs. “Oh, but this has been a big day! A happy day for one and all!”

Amos pulled out a chair for Mamm, and then he let his hand linger on her shoulder after he seated her. Mamm beamed up at him so confidently, so joyfully, that Roman almost couldn't stand to watch. Once again he wondered if love came a lot easier to men who'd been around the block before.

Chapter Five

Amos rolled out of bed with a burst of energy, even though the sun wasn't due up for another hour. Ever since Noah and Deborah's wedding, his head had been in the clouds and his heart had been on his sleeve. Mattie was all he could think about while he'd been working on houses the past couple of days, as well as when he'd gone to the lodge for dinner in the evenings. This morning he was picking her up in the rig and they were going for a long drive and having a picnic to enjoy the end-of-fall weather, and to discuss important details about their marriage without other interested parties listening in.

As Amos chose clean pants and suspenders along with one of his better shirts, he smiled. Someday soon he wouldn't have to do his own laundry, or rely upon lunchmeat and easy-to-heat dinners from the grocery store, or clean the bathrooms—
not
that he saw Mattie merely as a cook and housekeeper. His Anna had been very capable when it came to tending the household and raising their three kids, but she might have been a more joyful, adventurous wife had he encouraged her to think outside the traditional Amish box. And maybe if he'd made Anna happier, their twin girls and Allen wouldn't have moved back east.

He wouldn't—couldn't—follow that pattern with Mattie. She'd lived independently for long enough to know that she didn't really need a man, especially one who expected her to obey his every whim or else suffer the discipline he dished out. Amos's goal this time around was to have
fun
with his wife, to enjoy their time together in his new home—which he was going to allow her to decorate as she wished. The careworn furniture from his first marriage had served its time. New easy chairs and a sofa—and a new bedroom set—would be symbols of their fresh start together.

With Mattie, he wasn't going to be so frugal or stern. Amos considered her his equal. It was an uncommon mindset for a Plain preacher, but it was the only way their union would thrive.

Amos showered, shaved above his silver-spangled beard, and dressed quickly. After a fast cup of coffee and a fried egg sandwich, he went out to tend his two horses. On his way to the barn, he glanced toward the lodge and saw light in Mattie's upstairs apartment window. It was his fondest dream, his firm intention, to make light shine in her life for as long as they lived. He was fifty and she was forty-five, both of them fit and healthy, so they could look forward to a lot of happy years together.

When he drove his open rig down the hill toward the lodge, Mattie was waiting for him on the big porch. “
Gut
morning, Amos!” she called out as she hurried toward him with a picnic hamper.

He hopped down to relieve her of the basket. As his hand closed over hers, Amos brushed her cheek with a quick kiss. “It
is
a
gut
morning, dear Mattie,” he murmured. “I've been looking forward to this day with you ever since you suggested it at the wedding. You make me feel like a kid again, you know it?”

Mattie's laugh tickled his ears as he stuck the hamper behind the seat. He lifted her up into the buggy, enjoying the feel of her slender, sturdy body beneath the light coat she wore.

“I'll never be twenty again, but I'm fine with that,” she replied. “Now that all my kids are grown up—”

“Are you sure about that?” Amos settled himself on the seat. He raised his eyebrows, partly teasing but gazing straight into Mattie's wide eyes. “We know folks who've had kids at our age.”

“But it's been twenty-one years!” she protested. “My baby got married this week. And besides, you built a small house because your kids are married and gone.”

Amos clucked at his horse, not surprised at the alarm in Mattie's answer. He considered his response, treading carefully. It was too early to upset her on a day he wanted to go perfectly. “I could certainly expand the house, if need be. Children are gifts from God. We're to welcome them as blessings,” he reminded her gently. “And I do enjoy, um, what causes them.”

Mattie's cheeks flared. She gazed steadily up and down the road they'd reached, checking for traffic instead of looking at him. “
Jah
, I suppose you would.”

Amos wasn't surprised that this subject wasn't her favorite, considering that Marvin Schwartz had once broken her nose. “We'll figure it out, sweetheart,” he assured her as he reached for her hand. “But I might as well confess that when you're out working in the garden plots, leaning over to pick beans or pumpkins or whatever, I stop what I'm doing to look at your nice backside.”

Mattie's quick intake of breath made him chuckle. He hoped she wasn't ashamed of her body, as so many Plain women seemed to be.

“Puh! I'll be sure to figure out where you're working, then, and point it in the other direction,” she said. But a hint of laughter had crept into her voice. “Maybe you should concentrate on your carpentry, Amos Troyer. You've been working a couple stories high, and that's a long way to fall if you get distracted by the view.”

“True enough,” he replied. “On Friday, we put the roof on the Kurtz place and then shingled it, so now the house is enclosed. Lester Lehman's going to install the siding as soon as he's finished bidding some jobs in Forest Grove. Seems the post office and mercantile want new windows.”

“
Jah
, the Lehman brothers are more in demand than Floyd figured on when he was first checking us out,” she remarked. “And it's a
gut
opportunity for Lester to complete his house before he moves his family here from Ohio, too—although his wife surely must miss him.” Mattie's smile had returned now that he'd changed the subject, and she squeezed Amos's hand. “It was a fine thing to see the walls of Roman's house going up yesterday. Of course, while you were on the ladder I was mostly noticing how you have such broad, strong shoulders and hardly any backside at all.”

Amos burst out laughing so loudly it startled his mare. “Easy there, Mabel,” he said, tightening the lines until the horse settled down. Then he smiled at Mattie. “What's
gut
for the goose is
gut
for the gander, I guess.”

“No guessing about it, Amos. You have the flattest pants I've ever seen—but your other endearing qualities make up for it.”

“Glad you see it that way. Glad you look,” he added softly. It relieved him that Mattie's sense of humor had returned, and that she'd left the conversational door open a crack on the matter of revisiting the way husbands and wives behaved behind closed doors. He would never, ever force her . . . might have to entice her past whatever fear or displeasure she'd experienced with Marvin.

But for now, Amos wanted to concentrate on topics they both took pleasure in. “I enjoyed working with your boys yesterday,” he said. “Noah's fast with a hammer—has such a deadly aim, I almost felt sorry for the nails.”

Mattie chuckled. “Comes from his hours of welding—drawing a bead of solder so accurately—”

“Not to mention his being a crack shot with his rifle. I doubt Rosetta would have any chickens left by now, had Noah not kept the coyotes in check.” Amos steered the horse onto the county highway and then over to the shoulder of the road, to stay clear of any cars. “I know he and Deborah were looking forward to their first weekend of collecting wedding gifts. It's an exciting time for them.”

Mattie nodded, a wistful expression on her dear face. “They're a well-suited pair. I hope we'll soon settle this matter of wives working at home, because Noah installed an extra-large double oven so Deborah could continue her baking business this winter.”

Amos nodded, hoping to avoid the topic of Bishop Floyd's ultimatums—which would put both of them in an unsuitable mood for such a fine autumn Sunday. The breeze was crisp enough that Mattie pulled her coat a little tighter, but she was gazing at the maples and oaks along the roadside, reveling in their crimson, gold, and orange foliage.

“Seems she's not the only one baking lately,” he remarked. “While we were working on Roman's place yesterday, Gloria brought over a pan of bars, still warm enough that the chocolate chips were runny. It was a shame that when she took the first ones out of the pan, they either stuck to it or broke all to pieces.”

“That happens when you don't let them cool long enough.” Mattie chuckled. “I can just see Gloria getting frustrated and whiny while Roman made out as though he didn't care one way or the other about her goodies.”

“He didn't encourage her, that's for sure. Seemed put out that Gloria expected us to stop what we were doing and climb down from our ladders.”

“Had it been Mary Kate bringing treats, Roman would've fallen all over himself and gobbled half the bars,” Mattie said with a soft chuckle. “But don't tell him I said so. He thinks I don't notice the way he gazes at her.”

“Oh, to be the man all the young ladies adore,” Amos teased.

“That was you once upon a time, Amos. All of us girls were so envious of Anna when she caught you.”

His eyebrows rose. “Even you, although you'd married Marvin with his fine farmhouse?”

“Especially me,” she murmured in a faraway voice. “You have no idea. From the first day, my marriage felt like a cage, and I felt like Marvin had thrown away the key. It . . . it wasn't the life I'd hoped for when I was growing up.”

Mattie's haunting words made Amos's throat tighten. Although it was pointless to relive their regrets from all those years ago, he still felt deeply sorry that he'd not been able to amass enough money to impress Mattie's ambitious
dat
. Back in that day, so many young men had taken up carpentry that he'd been hard pressed to land enough jobs to keep body and soul together, much less support a wife. He and Anna had lived with her parents for nearly two years before he could afford a one-bedroom rental home down the road a ways from Coldstream.

“I couldn't have provided the life you deserved, Mattie,” he murmured. “No matter how much we loved each other then, it wasn't meant to be. But now that we've done right by our first spouses, and endured our time of mourning, God's brought us together again under much better circumstances. So, see?” Amos said in a brighter voice. “It all works out to the
gut
for them who love the Lord and keep His commandments.”

“And what about Bishop Floyd's commandments? What do
you
think I should do about my produce business, Amos?” Mattie asked as he steered the rig down a pathway into the woods. “As a preacher, you're supposed to toe a higher mark than other folks. And as your wife, I'll be expected to go along with whatever the bishop sees as God's will for Promise Lodge—no matter how I envisioned our new colony when you and I and my sisters bought the property.”

Amos considered his answer carefully as he parked the rig in an open area surrounded by cedar trees and crimson sumac bushes. He went around to help Mattie down, pleased that she'd waited for him when she was perfectly capable of stepping to the ground by herself. He stood before her for a moment, his hands remaining lightly at her waist as he gazed down at her. She smelled fresh and looked particularly pretty in a deep green dress that made her complexion glow—truly a temptation to a fellow who'd lived alone for too long.

“I love you, Mattie,” Amos murmured. “I'm going to indulge in a single kiss and then I'll behave myself while we talk this morning. So for now, clear your mind of all those things the bishop said at the wedding, all right?”

Delight lit Mattie's eyes as she reached for him. For a few blissful moments, Amos pressed his lips to hers and held her close, savoring her warmth . . . her eager response to his kiss. Too soon he released her, while his resolve remained strong.

Mattie's sigh told him that she, too, wanted more of such close contact, but she stepped away from him. “What a pretty spot. Sort of secluded,” she remarked as she looked around. “I've not explored this area much, so I have no idea where any of these trails in the woods might lead.”

“It's a guy thing, to look for potential spots where you can spend time alone with a special woman. And if you follow this trail a little farther, you'll see a surprise.” Amos took Mattie's hand, eager to show her what he'd discovered the other day when he'd followed a hunch. Two rabbits sprang from the underbrush at the side of the path, and a woodpecker hammered a nearby tree, far above them. Amos held up a low branch so Mattie could walk beneath it. About twenty feet farther along the trail the view opened up.

“Be careful—the ground drops away on the other side of that outcropping,” he warned as he squeezed her hand. “But tell me what you see.”

Mattie took notice of the rocks he'd mentioned and leaned forward to gaze out beyond the woods. She sucked in her breath. “Why, there's the lodge! And the cabins, all in a row,” she said with awe in her voice. “And there's Rainbow Lake and the orchard, and the new road winding around between the plots we've sold to our new neighbors. Hah! And Queenie's herding Harley's sheep toward his new barn—just for the fun of it, I suppose.”

Amos chuckled. “Harley had no idea he'd be getting a four-legged flock manager as part of the deal when he came here, but Queenie's an instinctive sheepdog, it seems.”

“It looks like a little toy town from this distance, ain't so?” she whispered.

“Our own little slice of paradise,” Amos said. “You probably didn't realize that our property extends this far, to where we're standing. When Truman and I staked out plots and drew our map to show potential residents, we didn't include this rocky hillside or these woods because we figured no one would buy it. Gives us a nice buffer from the traffic and the adjoining property.”