Chapter One
As Isaac Chupp entered the bulk store at Promise Lodge, he was immediately aware of how bright and clean it was—and that all the aisles ran perpendicular to the checkout counter. Compared to Coldstream’s tired old market, it was a step into the twenty-first century: the glass-front refrigerator units and overhead lights were electric, and their radiance was reflected in large mirrors that covered the upper walls. The owner, Dale Kraybill, was Mennonite—
And he’s savvy. From the checkout counter, he can see everyone in his store.
In the mirrors, Isaac noted that several shoppers, Plain and English alike, were pushing carts along the well-stocked aisles. He stepped away from the front door to browse while the storekeeper helped a young woman in an Amish-style kapp set up a display of the most colorful pottery dishes he’d ever seen. He wanted to know something about the store’s organization before he introduced himself to Kraybill, who’d recently run an ad for help. The store’s owner had spoken at length with Isaac over the phone yesterday before inviting him to come for an interview.
If he got the job, today—July fifth—could be his personal declaration of independence. He’d step into a whole new world, leaving his narrow-minded dat behind—
“Vera, your pottery will fly off the shelves!” Kraybill said to the young woman. “I’m glad you’ve decided to sell your pieces here.”
Isaac’s eyes widened. If his father, Bishop Obadiah of Coldstream’s Amish community, were here, he’d order the girl to pack up her colorful wares and confess before the congregation because she was sinful—too artistically inclined. The way his dat saw it, God would never accept her because she’d broken the conservative mold of Amish conformity.
Vera blushed modestly at Kraybill’s compliment. When she smiled at Isaac, the nerdy, endearing way she pushed up her glasses made his heart turn a flip-flop.
“Denki, Dale, you’re very kind,” she said in a low voice. “You’ve given me quite an opportunity to display my work.”
Opportunity? Have I got an opportunity for you, Miss Vera!
Isaac sucked in his breath, hoping she couldn’t hear his hammering heart.
I have to get this job! I have to convince this beautiful, unique girl that I’m the man she wants to marry!
Where had the idea about marriage come from? At nineteen, he’d never given a thought to a permanent relationship, yet just one look—and the sound of Vera’s voice and her thick glasses—had sent him off the deep end.
While Dale and Vera finished the pottery display, Isaac forced himself to focus. He could not come across as a lovesick puppy who would moon over Vera. He reminded himself of the experience he’d acquired while clerking for his father’s auction company—not to mention his expertise at setting up the sale barn’s computer and recordkeeping system. He rehearsed all the positive-sounding reasons he was ready to come to work for Kraybill at Promise Lodge, three hours away from his family in Coldstream.
After smoothing his shirt beneath his suspenders and putting on his best smile, Isaac stepped forward with his hand extended. “Mr. Kraybill? Is this a gut time to talk?” he asked enthusiastically. “I’m Isaac Chupp, and we spoke over the phone—”
“Isaac! Happy to meet you, young man,” the steely-haired storekeeper said as they pumped hands. “And I admire a potential employee who shows up early to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Let’s step back to my office. This young woman coming to run the cash register is Marlene Lehman—”
Isaac held Marlene’s wide-eyed gaze, challenging her with his confident smile.
Yeah, it’s me—looking for a new life, same as you were when you sold your farm in Coldstream without telling anyone.
He’d known Marlene all his life because she and her brother had recently moved here to escape his father’s narrowmindedness, as had many of the residents of Promise Lodge.
“—and you’ll be answering to her while I’m away for a few days, after I marry Irene Wickey,” Kraybill continued jovially. “As I told you over the phone, I’m looking for—”
“Is that Isaac Chupp?” a woman behind them asked loudly.
“Lo and behold, it is Isaac,” another woman replied. “After our last run-in, I didn’t figure he’d ever come back.”
Isaac hadn’t seen the women in the large mirrors, but he recognized their voices. He reminded himself that he’d been invited to interview—that he had every right to be in Dale Kraybill’s store—yet his confidence sagged. Isaac had no choice but to turn and face two of the three sisters who’d transformed a deserted church camp into the thriving community of Promise Lodge.
Rosetta Wickey and Christine Burkholder stood beside another familiar young woman from his past, Deborah Peterscheim Schwartz. She held his gaze unflinchingly as she bounced a toddler on her hip.
Never one to beat around the bush, Rosetta crossed her arms. “What brings you to Promise Lodge, Isaac? Did I overhear Dale calling you a potential employee?”
“I hope you’ve left your beer—and your matches—at home,” Christine chimed in. “I’ve just built a new dairy barn and I don’t want to look out some evening and see it engulfed in flames.”
From the corner of his eye, Isaac caught Vera’s startled expression as she gathered her empty boxes. He couldn’t miss the way Kraybill’s face had tightened, either, as he turned toward the three shoppers.
“What are you ladies saying?” he asked carefully. “I’m guessing you knew Isaac when you lived in Coldstream—”
“Jah, back when he used to smoke and drink with his English friends in our barns before they burned to the ground,” Christine put in sternly.
“And let’s not forget that Christine’s husband died in their fire, trying to save the livestock,” Rosetta said as she slung her arm around Deborah’s shoulders. “And he shoved Deborah into a ditch out in the country because she’d called the sheriff when she spotted him in my family’s burning barn.”
“Isaac’s behavior was the main reason my family left Coldstream a couple years ago,” Deborah remarked quietly. She swayed with her child, a far cry from the frightened, vulnerable teenager who’d suffered Bishop Obadiah’s vengeance after she’d reported Isaac’s wrongdoing.
“And since we’ve come here, we’ve heard stories about money gone missing from his father’s auction receipts, and we’ve caught him red-handed at forging his mamm’s handwriting in a letter,” Rosetta added as she gazed purposefully at the storekeeper. “Be sure you’re satisfied with Isaac’s response to these issues, Dale. We hope you’ll hold him accountable—and we hope you won’t be sorry if you hire him.”
Isaac’s confidence bottomed out. His throat was so dry it clicked when he swallowed. But he had to defend himself. If Kraybill—and Vera—believed only what his accusers had said, he’d be going back to Coldstream with his tail between his legs. And he refused to do that.
“I came here hoping for a second chance—a fresh start with some of that forgiveness you Promise Lodge folks are known for,” he stated in the firmest voice he could muster. “You and your families left Coldstream and moved on. I want to do that, too.”
After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Kraybill gestured for Isaac to follow him through the swinging double doors into the warehouse. They entered a small office with ledgers on the bookshelf and a computer on a side table. The storekeeper nodded toward the straight-back chair and then seated himself behind the modest desk. He looked at Isaac with calm blue-gray eyes that saw everything and gave away nothing about what he was thinking.
“Isaac, have you ever stolen anything from a store like this?”
Isaac’s body tensed. Was that a trick question? Or was it a test?
He knew better than to drop Kraybill’s steady gaze. The longer the silence stretched between them, however, the more the man behind the desk would figure out about him—in addition to what the Bender sisters and Deborah had revealed moments ago.
“Yeah, I have,” Isaac admitted softly. “When I was a kid, I took odds and ends from the market in Coldstream—not because I really wanted the stuff, but because I wanted to get away with it. The old guy who owned the place back then was clueless.”
“I imagine the store has changed since Raymond Overholt and his new bride, Lizzie, took it over earlier this year. I was sorry to see those kids go—but I’m sure the Overholt family’s delighted that they’re living in Coldstream.”
As he spoke, Dale Kraybill’s gaze didn’t waver. His voice remained as cool and smooth as a shaded lake.
But still waters run deep. He knows more than he’s saying—and he’s going to hold it over me.
Isaac looked around the office, grasping for straws of a conversation that would save his bacon. “Look, about what Rosetta and Christine and Deborah were saying—”
“Your reputation has preceded you, Isaac. More than half the families here came from Coldstream, after all, and they’ve known you all your life,” Kraybill put in as he leaned forward on his desk.
Isaac braced himself. Although the storekeeper’s voice and gaze remained unthreatening, he was about to dismiss Isaac without further ado—and Isaac understood why. After all, his older brothers had informed him last week that he wouldn’t be clerking any more auctions. Sticky fingers, they’d called it.
And even though Raymond Overholt was hopelessly in love with his ditzy bride, Lizzie, Isaac was pretty sure Raymond wouldn’t even talk to him about working in Coldstream’s bulk store after enduring so many years of teasing and . . . well, bullying, Raymond’s mamm had reported to Bishop Obadiah. Isaac had enjoyed razzing the artsy, red-spectacled Overholt kid because—before he’d joined the church and married Lizzie—he’d worn colorful, mismatched English clothes from the thrift store.
“After I spoke with you on the phone yesterday, I chatted with Amos and Mattie Troyer,” Kraybill continued matter-of-factly. “And I asked Marlene how she’d feel about you working here—especially while I was away.”
Isaac swallowed hard. Preacher Amos and Mattie—even when she’d been married to her first husband, Marvin Schwartz—had always been on his case, watching him as though they’d suspected he was up to something. Which had usually been true.
And Marlene was gawking at me in disbelief just now, wondering why Kraybill had even considered me for this interview.
“Wh-what’d they say?” Isaac rasped. If his former neighbors had all expressed their negative sentiments about him, he’d been doomed before he’d arrived. His instant, smoldering attraction to pretty Vera was going nowhere.
“They all echoed Rosetta, Christine, and Deborah,” the storekeeper replied. He was still leaning on his elbows, observing Isaac so calmly, yet so intently, that Isaac started to sweat. Why didn’t this guy just send him packing and get it over with?
“But I figured you knew what you’d be up against when you applied for this job, Isaac,” Kraybill continued. “You anticipated being under everyone’s scrutiny, yet you took a chance and answered my ad—because you surely realized I’d know about your past.”
Truth be told, Isaac had been in such a rush to get out of Coldstream he hadn’t considered his former neighbors’ reactions—and on that count, he’d fallen short. He’d also underestimated the man sitting across from him.
“To me, that means you’ve got moxie—if you’re truly looking for a fresh start.”
Isaac’s eyes widened. The people who’d told him to move on hadn’t put any sort of positive spin on his situation. The word moxie had never figured into their conversations about his misdeeds. Isaac waited for Kraybill to speak next—waited for the proverbial other shoe to drop—because the man had an unnerving knack for manipulating Isaac’s responses with silence.
The storekeeper rocked back in his wooden chair. “Were Rosetta, Christine, and Deborah correct, Isaac? Did you burn down the two families’ barns and leave Deborah in a ditch to walk home in torn clothing, after she called nine-one-one to report the barn fire at Rosetta’s place?”
Isaac sighed. “Jah, but the fires weren’t intentional. My English friends and I were drunk, and the lanterns must’ve gotten kicked over—”
“But you did nothing to make up for the damage you caused?”
Isaac glanced down at his lap. “No. I—”
“And your father, the bishop, didn’t make reparations to those families, either? And he didn’t hold you accountable?”
“Don’t ask me to explain my dat’s behavior!” Isaac blurted out bitterly. “I have no idea why he didn’t punish me or—”
“And the way I understand it, Deborah bore the brunt of her father, Preacher Eli’s, judgment as well as the other church leaders’ disapproval because she reported the fire?”
“They didn’t like it that she got the cops involved. The Amish prefer to handle such matters themselves.”
“You haven’t yet joined the Amish church, correct?” Kraybill asked. “But being in rumspringa does not excuse you from acting like a decent human being and apologizing to those you’ve hurt.”
Gripping the sides of his chair seat, Isaac knew better than to smart off—or to storm out, as he’d done when his father had lectured him. How had the storekeeper known that Dat had used rumspringa to gloss over his youngest son’s errant behavior—even though no one in Coldstream had accepted that excuse, any more than Kraybill had? Isaac couldn’t explain it, but the steely-haired storekeeper deserved a different level of respect than his father, who had tried—and failed—to demand Isaac’s absolute obedience.
“If you’re sincerely interested in a fresh start—and if you’re going to work in my store,” Kraybill added purposefully, “you’ll have to earn forgiveness from Rosetta, Christine, and Deborah. And you’ll have to ask them for it, Isaac. You can’t expect them to wipe your slate clean just because you say you’re starting over. That moxie I mentioned earlier means nothing unless you prove you’ve become a different, more responsible person.”
The tiny office rang with silence. After being lulled by the storekeeper’s quiet conversation in the interview’s beginning, Isaac now felt nailed to his chair by Kraybill’s sermonette.
He was in a tight spot. Mamm’s words still stung, and there was no way around them: if your brothers no longer want you clerking for them, you’ll have to find your own way, Isaac. I won’t have a thief hanging around the house.
The thought of facing Deborah, Rosetta, and Christine—begging them like a whipped dog to forgive the damage he’d done to their barns, their families, and Deborah’s reputation—made him queasy.
But he couldn’t go home.
He could fake his way onto an unsuspecting boss’s payroll under another identity, in another town where they didn’t know him. But constantly looking over his shoulder to see if anyone had caught on would be exhausting. It would also mean a life on the run, and that’s not what he wanted.
Especially now that he’d seen Vera. He didn’t know her last name or anything else about her, except that she created outrageously colorful pottery, but Isaac wanted to know her. He wanted to believe Vera could save him from himself.
I’m asking for a miracle. What’s the chance of that happening when I’m not sure I even believe in God?
With a sigh, Isaac met Kraybill’s gaze again. Wasn’t it a minor miracle that the storekeeper, knowing what he’d known, hadn’t already shown him to the door? Isaac widened his eyes slightly, putting on an earnest expression as he assumed his most sincere tone of voice.
“So . . . if I’ll ask those ladies for their forgiveness, and they accept my apologies, will you hire me?”
