Promises of Tomorrow Read online

  Things were different now. Many of the Eight were now in pairs. And Andy was gone. But in his place, God had given them more close friends. And in some of their cases, children.

  “I bet you can’t wait to see Roy and Jemima,” Marie said, speaking about E.A.’s adopted children.

  E.A.’s expression softened. “I can’t. I’ve really missed them. And I can hardly wait to spend our first Christmas with them. Plus, as much as Will and I have enjoyed this little break, we haven’t been able to stop thinking about those two. The last thing I’d ever want was for them to worry about us not wanting to be with them or, even worse, not coming back.”

  “You and Will have sure taken on a lot.”

  She shook her head. “Nee. We’ve been given a lot.” Glancing over at Beth, who was helping Kendra carry some boxes out to their cars, she said, “Every time I’ve wondered why things happen, I’m reminded that it’s not my job to wonder why. All I need to do is simply keep an open mind.”

  Marie nodded. “Well said. I’m embarrassed about how much I didn’t want Beth here. But in some ways, I don’t think this weekend would have been the same without her.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing. She’s a nice person, but her grief reminded me of how far we’ve all come. I hope and pray that one day she’ll feel about Joel like we do about Andy. We miss him but we haven’t decided to honor his life by giving up either.”

  “Hope is a good thing,” Marie said. Peeking at the clock, she realized it was already almost ten. “Come on, everyone! Let’s get organized so we can all get home.”

  “We’re ready,” Nate said. “Our driver said he’s ten minutes away and that the roads are fine.”

  E.A. frowned. “We only have ten minutes to get all our things sorted and out of this cabin.”

  “We don’t all have to leave at the same time, E.A.,” Will reminded her.

  “Sure we do,” Katie said. “I don’t want to leave if the rest of you are here. We Eight need to stick together—even when we’re a bit more than ‘eight.’ ”

  Marie grinned at Will’s facial expression. Like Will, the rest of the men seemed completely confused by Katie’s statement, but like herself, the women were all smiling. Some things never changed, she guessed.

  * * *

  Two hours later, Marie was pulling onto Beth’s street. She, John, Kendra, and Nate had elected to follow Beth home in case her parents had questions for them. The others had crammed into the driver’s large van, which would drop them all off at their houses.

  They’d separated with a chorus of hugs and promises that they’d see each other on New Year’s Eve, if not before.

  Now, as they parked right outside of Beth’s house and got out of their cars, Marie noticed that Beth looked tense.

  “Hey, are you all right, Beth?”

  “Yes.”

  Kendra said, “What did your parents say when you called them?”

  “They sounded both excited that I was coming home and annoyed about the trouble I’ve caused them. It turns out that they had heard I’d left school on Thursday. When I didn’t show up or call them, they got worried. I should have thought about that.”

  “Perhaps if you talk to them about how you’ve really been feeling, they’ll understand?” Marie asked.

  “Maybe.” Visibly steeling herself, she said, “Well, let’s go get this over with.”

  They started walking up the driveway. “Is this your family’s sleigh?” Kendra asked. She stopped and ran a hand along one of the runners.

  “It’s my father’s. He built it.”

  It was a lovely sleigh, indeed, shiny and black. Someone had fastened a beautiful wreath to the front of it as well, with shiny brass sleigh bells attached to its bright red ribbon. Marie thought it was beautiful.

  “That’s a fine-looking sleigh,” Nate said.

  Beth chuckled. “If you told my father that, it would make his year. He built it himself.”

  “What?”

  “He’s always wanted to be a woodworker.”

  “I think he already is.”

  The moment they reached the walkway leading to the door, the front door opened and Beth’s parents came out, along with two teenaged boys. “I didn’t know you had brothers,” Kendra said.

  “Yeah. Richard and Evan. Seventeen and fifteen,” she said. “They… well, they’re great, if you can believe that,” Beth added as she opened the door and got out.

  “Elizabeth!” her mother cried before engulfing her in a hug.

  “Something tells me that everything is going to be all right,” John murmured.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Kendra said as she took Nate’s hand to help her out.

  By the time Marie joined the group, everyone was shaking hands and introducing themselves.

  “Mom, Dad, this is Marie Byler. She’s John’s wife.”

  “Nice to meet you. Thank you for helping Beth,” her father said.

  “I’m glad we were there. And, I have to say, we all enjoyed getting to know her. After spending two days in a cabin together, I think we’re all officially friends now.”

  Beth blushed but looked pleased.

  “Beth told me you built that sleigh, Mr. Trainor,” Nate said. “It’s a beauty.”

  “Thank you! It took me three years to fashion the wood in my workshop.”

  “I kept telling him that it was good enough, but he wouldn’t listen,” Beth’s mother said. “It had to be just right.”

  “It’s not as good as an Amish-made one, of course, but I’m really proud of it,” her father added. “The boys here helped too.”

  “Can I take a look at it?”

  “Oh, sure.” Mr. Trainor walked Nate and John to the middle of the yard, chatting about pine as he did. Beth’s brothers joined them. Marie figured they were probably glad to talk about something besides their sister.

  That left Beth, her mom, Marie, and Kendra standing together.

  “Oh, where are my manners? Would you girls like to come inside and relax for a spell? I could make a fresh pot of coffee.”

  “Thank you, but we’re going to get on our way soon,” Marie said. “As nice as the cabin was, I know we’re all ready to take showers in our own homes.”

  Kendra giggled. “And by ‘nice,’ Marie is being sarcastic. The cabin wasn’t all that nice at all. More like a wreck disguised as a cabin.”

  “It was still better than the place I spent Thursday night in,” Beth said.

  “I canna disagree with you there. It was a spider-infested mess, for sure.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got a lot to tell us, Beth,” her mother said.

  “I know I do. But, I promise, it’s not all bad news. In spite of how my trip started out, a lot of good happened.”

  Looking at them all, Mrs. Trainor said, “You know, I can hardly believe Beth got so lucky to find all of you. I think I’m going to shudder every time I think about who she could have stumbled upon. Or, if she never had found shelter.”

  “Mom, don’t think about the worst. I’m fine.”

  When the men joined them, John said, “I think we need to get on our way now.” Holding out his hand, he said, “It was nice to meet you.”

  “It was nice to meet all of you. Thank you for saving our daughter.”

  Just as Marie was about to refute that bold declaration, Kendra replied, “You’re welcome. Merry Christmas.”

  After another round of goodbyes and hugs, the four of them were back in the vehicle and on their way again.

  When Marie got on the highway, she said, “Kendra, why did you say ‘You’re welcome’? Thanking us for saving Beth was a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. In some ways I think we did save her.”

  “You really think she could have died?”

  “Maybe, but I wasn’t talking about the elements. I was thinking instead about how she was emotionally. Beth was in a bad place. She was out of hope and spiraling. Now, I see some
thing in her eyes that I like.”

  “I saw that too,” Nate said. “It was acceptance and maybe a little bit of hope.”

  “We gave her that,” Kendra said softly. “Elizabeth needed to be reminded that life may not always be fair and that sometimes it’s just really hard and painful. But that there’s always another day.”

  “Well said, Kendra,” John said.

  Marie couldn’t have agreed more.

  “Stephanie’s announcement made one of the guinea pigs peek out, which made several people reach for it… which made the tree fall down. Since Stephanie refused to move, one of the branches hit her face. Next thing you knew, Stephanie had a black eye and was yelling at everyone.

  “I would have felt worse for her if I wasn’t so worried about all of my mother’s special spun glass ornaments.”

  “To be fair, all of us tried to help the girl, except for Andy,” John said. “He seemed content to simply sit and hold the guinea pigs.”

  “They seemed mighty pleased to be there,” Will said.

  “Twenty minutes later, Stephanie had not only broken up with Andy, but she’d also called her mother to pick her up. After she left, not a one of us knew what to say. But instead of being upset, Andy started laughing.

  “ ‘I’ll never forget this moment,’ he said. ‘This might be the best Christmas we’ve ever had.’ ”

  Marie looked at everyone and smiled. “You know what? I think, in a lot of ways, Andy was right. It’s one of my favorite Christmas memories. Guinea pigs, Stephanie, and all.”

  CHRISTMAS DAY

  Climbing into her bed, Beth stretched out her legs and snuggled deep into the flannel sheets that her mother had bought for her when she still had braces on her teeth. The sheets were light blue and decorated with all kinds of dancing penguins. Boy, she used to love these sheets!

  Rubbing her thumb against the soft cotton, now worn to a smooth finish after so many washings, Beth smiled softly. Maybe she still did love them. They made her feel comfortable and cozy and brought back a thousand memories of simpler times. Moments when she’d climb into bed thinking about gifts she wanted to receive, friends she wanted to see, even boys she wanted to date.

  Now, although she wasn’t all that much older, she felt like she’d certainly moved beyond those times.

  But, to her surprise, she hadn’t moved past Christmas.

  That was the biggest surprise of the day, she decided. For the last month, ever since she’d gone back to school after a really terrible Thanksgiving, all she’d been doing was living in dread of the next holiday. She hadn’t wanted to think about celebrating Christmas without Joel. She hadn’t wanted to even be reminded that she was still alive and he was gone forever.

  But today? Well, although she still had a number of moments when she missed Joel, she’d had far more when she’d simply been thankful. Thankful for her brothers and her parents and the fact that her mother decorated the house exactly like she always had. She’d found comfort in familiarity. In the lopsided artificial tree. In the cranberry Jell-O salad that her father hated but always put on his plate to make her mother happy. In the way her brothers griped and joked and called their friends and played Xbox in the basement while she helped her mother cook.

  None of it was perfect, but it was familiar. And it was another sign that time moved on even when sometimes she was sure she would not.

  “Hey, Bethy?” Richard called out. “You up?”

  “Yep. Come on in.”

  Her seventeen-year-old brother came in. As usual, he was dressed in a pair of sweatpants and one of his many high school sports T-shirts.

  “What’s up?”

  “Hmm? Oh, nothing.” He stopped at the edge of her bed. His hair was damp. He must have taken a shower right after they’d all gone upstairs.

  “Sure about that?” He didn’t usually wander into her room, not since he was in elementary school, anyway.

  After glancing at her sheets, he smiled and sat down on the bottom corner of her mattress. “Um, I was just thinking about you and…”

  “Joel.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about us?”

  “Well, you don’t seem as sad. I guess we all thought you were going to spend Christmas like you did Thanksgiving.”

  “Crying and moping and generally being miserable?”

  “Um, well, yeah.” He looked down at the sheets, then lifted his head again. “I guess you’re feeling better?”

  “I am. When I was lost in the woods and then found again—and then stuck in that cabin with all those people—we talked a lot.” She paused, trying to find the right words to describe their story. “Richard, it was the craziest thing. They’re all really different, but they’ve been friends forever. Some of them used to even call themselves the Eight.”

  “Sounds weird.”

  “I thought so too, until they started telling me about how close they all were. And how their unofficial leader was a guy named Andy. He died about two years ago. His death was sudden and unexpected. They were crushed.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. I guess hearing how honest they were about their pain and the things they went through made me realize that I wasn’t the only one who had experienced loss.”

  “So, talking about Joel helped you heal?”

  “It did. But what helped the most was what one of them said. She was talking about mourning Andy and feeling hopeless, but then events and new people and experiences came into their lives that made her look at everything in a whole new way. She said that even in the darkest of moments, light can shine if one bothers to notice it.”

  “Bothers?”

  She nodded. “She said something about how it’s easy to be so blinded by worries or pain that a person forgets to notice flowers blooming or babies crying or a good book or a smile from a friend… or even the miracle of Christmas Day.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. And that’s when I realized something else: no matter how bad something is, it doesn’t have to be that way the next day. That there is always, always the promise of tomorrow. And that promise, even when it isn’t Christmas or something special, or even something all that good? Well, it made me feel better. It started making me feel whole again.”

  Richard got up. “I’m glad. I… well, I’ve missed you, Bethy.”

  “I missed you too. But I’m here now. I’m back.”

  “Merry Christmas,” he said as he edged to the door.

  “Merry Christmas, Rick,” she said as he walked out into the hall.

  Turning off the light, she laid down again, closed her eyes, and thought about Joel and the friends she’d made.

  And then she realized for the first time in quite a while that she was eager for the morning to come.

  More from this Series

  The Patient One

  Book 1

  The Loyal One

  Book 2

  The Protective One

  Book 3

  The Trustworthy One

  Book 4

  A Precious Gift

  Friends to the End

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A practicing Lutheran, SHELLEY SHEPARD GRAY is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than eighty novels, which have been translated into multiple languages. During her years of researching the Amish community, she has depended on her Amish friends for gossip, advice, and cinnamon rolls. She lives in Colorado with her family and writes full-time.

  FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:

  SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Shelley-Shepard-Gray

  SimonandSchuster.com

  @GalleryBooks

  Also available from Shelley Shepard Gray and Gallery Books

  THE WALNUT CREEK SERIES

  Friends to the End*

  The Patient One

  The Loyal One

  A Precious Gift*

  The Protective One

  The Trustworthy One

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Shelley Shepard Gray

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  First Gallery Books ebook edition July 2020

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  ISBN 978-1-9821-0096-4