INTERRUPTING his late afternoon coffee break, Aiden’s cell phone chimed on the dining table beside him with the generic ringtone. The caller was a stranger, or someone he hadn’t spoken with in quite some time. He knew this because each of his friends and Daniel had his or her unique tone, and his business contacts were recognizable by a “calling all cars” old police-radio dispatch.
The word “private” showed on the display. Whoever was calling wanted anonymity, as if he or she feared Aiden might disregard the call if he recognized the number. He was about to do just that, but his reporter’s inquisitiveness refused to let him reject the call so easily.
“Hello,” he said into the phone with a tentative voice.
“Aiden?”
“Yes, this is Aiden Cermak….” Hearing the name of the caller, Aiden stiffened. “How—how have you been, Conrad?”
“Okay, I guess.” Conrad hesitated and asked with an artificially light voice, “What’s new with you?”
“Where do I begin?” Aiden stared out the window into the milky whiteness of the Montana sky. “I have to be honest, I’m surprised to hear from you.”
“I wanted to talk. It’s been about two years. I contacted your parents down in Maryland and they gave me your cell number. Was that okay? Your dad said you moved again. Where’re you this time? Back in Chicago?”
“We’re living in Montana now.”
“We?”
“My partner Daniel and I. It’s a long story. So what makes you call after all this time?”
Aiden’s hand shook, and he wanted to click off the phone as he listened to Conrad’s simple yet incongruous reason. He wished he had ignored the call like his instincts had first told him. Yet he listened to each syllable, his mouth losing more and more elasticity.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said once he had a chance. “How are you doing otherwise?”
Conrad continued to express his issues, and Aiden stifled his shaking arm by bringing his elbow down onto the table. What Conrad said next left him befuddled, and he barely knew how to respond.
“Well, I—I don’t know,” Aiden said, trying to work spit into his mouth. “Are you sure about that?”
“If it’s too much to ask, I understand. I didn’t mean to put you into an awkward position.”
“No, Conrad, it’s just that I’ll have to ask Daniel, of course. Is it okay if I call you back later? Maybe tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“You’d better give me your number. It came up private on my phone, and I no longer have my old address list.” Aiden switched the phone into his right hand and reached for a notepad and stumpy pencil lying beside his laptop and scribbled the number. “Okay. I got it.”
“You’ll let me know? Promise?”
“Of course. Promise.”
“Great. Bye for now, Aiden. Nice talking to you again.”
“Nice talking to you too. Bye.”
Aiden snapped the phone shut and let his hand fall limp. Bewildered and shocked, he stared out the window. Lofty spruce and hemlocks framed the Salish Mountains barely visible in the western horizon. Winter still clung to the mountains, as new snow on the craggy peaks indicated, but the Flathead Valley temperature was expected to rise to seventy by midafternoon, setting a record high for late March. Snow runoff had begun to fill the slim creek next door. He could hear the faint gurgling whenever he walked outside.
The view was the main reason why he chose the fifteen-hundred-square-foot rancher west of Kalispell. It was a compromise once Daniel insisted they move to meet the needs of Daniel’s expanding carpentry business, which had outgrown their old red cedar cabin, no larger than a one-car garage. Aiden enjoyed their crumbling cabin in the shadow of the Swan Range. But he grew to love their new home perhaps more.
The first consideration to pass through his mind while he gazed outside was that he should have informed his parents not to give out his phone number to anyone unless he okayed it. He never imagined his old boyfriend Conrad Barringer might want to contact him after their last meeting. They ended their unexpected reunion on bad terms.
At that time Conrad was belligerent, even cunning. A moment ago, his voice came across the phone soft, near pleading. Never in a million years had Aiden imagined Conrad posing such a crazy request.
Conrad picked an awful time too, when spring burgeoned like a bison hoisting its robust snout from the snow, and Aiden and Daniel were settling into their new home together after so many hardships.
Aiden noticed his reflection in the windowpane. Lines pulled down the sides of his mouth, and his eyes, yellow from the glow of the overhead light, appeared wild with disbelief. He looked ill, frightened. Not the contented man he was a few minutes before.
With the phone still in his hand, Aiden traced with his eyes the snowy ribbons winding through the distant crags that would soon turn to massive waterfalls, which appeared to barely move from miles away. Life flowed like that, he thought. Slow and quiet. Until the final crashing.
Leaving the phone on the table, Aiden shoved Conrad’s number inside his pants pocket and moved to the kitchen. He washed his coffee mug and started fishing for something to make for dinner when their dog of four months scratched at the kitchen door. At the Flathead County Animal Shelter, they’d picked out the thirty-six-pound mixed breed, which Daniel aptly suggested naming Ranger, from among dozens of dogs. That was another one of Aiden’s conditions for caving to Daniel’s insistence they relocate to a home with more modern conveniences and closer to his new woodshop—a dog to love and care for.
Aiden wiped his hands on a dish towel and opened the door for Ranger. He squatted to greet him and graciously received his sloppy kisses.
“Did you go potty like a good boy?” Aiden picked grass and pine needles from Ranger’s thick yellow fur. “You’re a sweet fellow, aren’t you? Give Daddy kisses. That’s a good boy. What a sweetie you are.”
Aiden stood and Ranger circled him, wagging his tail, which threatened to knock over anything below table height. Aiden fetched a doggy treat from Ranger’s special cupboard, crammed with items to spoil their three-year-old, and tossed him a pig ear. Ranger absconded with it to his favorite spot by the fireplace and soon the sounds of gnawing filled the house.
Their energetic hound complemented their home. Aiden had everything he could imagine. And at only twenty-eight, who could ask for more?
He remembered the roast in the freezer. He filled the sink with cold water, allowed the wrapped roast to bob up and down like a football, and sat on the sofa. With his mind stuck on one issue, he took out Conrad’s phone number and analyzed the shaky scratch.
Should he make good his promise or flush the number down the toilet?
Ranger tired of his pig ear and jumped up beside Aiden. Almost by instinct now, Aiden rubbed Ranger’s head and patted his back with his mind on more weighty concerns. The dog’s insistent kisses and friskiness eventually drew Aiden away from his sober thoughts. He smiled and brought Ranger nearer to his chest.
“You’re a good boy, aren’t you? Poppy and I love you.”
Ranger responded with more rigorous licking. He leapt on and off the sofa. Aiden winced from his tail whacking him in the face, but he laughed and pulled him even closer. Aiden’s hands paused over Ranger’s fur, and Aiden fell inside himself again, imagining what life might be like for him and Daniel—and Ranger—if he agreed to Conrad’s desperate appeal.
INTERMITTENT puddles sloshed under the tires of Daniel’s sturdy Chevy Suburban. The atypical warm weather had melted much of the snow, and the spruce boughs that seemed to hold on to it like a catcher’s mitt held a baseball, dripped with heavy slush. Hemmed in by cottonwoods and hemlocks, he turned on his windshield wipers to clear the sporadic splashes.
He appreciated the lush canyon-like drive from his woodshop in the village of Rose Crossing, where he worked crafting furniture for people around the world. The shop had been the main draw for him and Aiden to move. He needed the space, and liked the idea of working within a few miles from home. When he had come across the shop and rancher for sale, he knew God drew him to them.
Nice to once again put a “Schrock Furniture” sign above a shop he owned. He’d closed the one in Illinois he ran with his family before the economy bottomed out. Rent in Rose Crossing was a minor pinch to their pockets since he liked having a shop to commute to where he could focus on his work away from home.
The radio was switched to its usual “off” position. Despite having fallen in love with his two-year old Suburban, the Amish in him still insisted he forego too many fancy things, like loud music. The frenzied whistling from the wind blowing through the partially open window played as his musical backdrop and buoyed his already high spirits.
He cleared the canyon and came into the familiar high ranch country. Under the canopy of the darkening sky, the Salish Mountains glowed in the distance. Silhouettes jetting into a sky as wide and encompassing as anything Daniel had ever known from his boyhood home of central Illinois. Montana was a place he saw as a spiritual retreat, long before meeting Aiden Cermak.
The mountains inspired him, brought him closer—literally and figuratively—to God. When he sat atop the world, answers seemed to fall into his mind, like cottonwood snow fell upon the earth in summer. Seedlings, white and tickling, sprouted fresh ideas. Indecision burgeoned into concrete action. What loomed as agony would suddenly appear clear and expectant.
He and Aiden survived their first winter in their new home. Luxury compared with what he experienced growing up in an austere ultraorthodox household. And certainly nicer than the tiny cabin he and Aiden once rented on the other side of Kalispell.
Daniel brought in more and more money for his furniture and cabinetry. He was perhaps wealthier than ever. Money only meant as much as it should—providing independence, security, and a sense of accomplishment. Handsome recompense was never frowned upon by the Amish for a job well done.
Riches revealed themselves in more ways than financial, he speculated, detecting a grin creeping above his moustacheless beard. He valued his time with Aiden. But a healthy relationship required time apart, when a man could work hard and return home satisfied, filled with self-worth. In Amish Country, he might have spent his days out in the oat field, or at the family shop, but without the need to toil the land, Daniel sought his sowing elsewhere. In a small, suitable shop, and a life partner who, when not helping in the store, waited for him at home.
Now that spring showed the first signs of emerging, he went through the mental checklist of chores needing done on the house. Next to their porch, a cottonwood branch that had been poised to collapse on their heads throughout the winter needed sawed down. There was also the garage wanting a good cleaning. And he must remember to ask their good friend and neighbor Nick Pfeifer to borrow his ride-on mower. But that could wait until the snows stopped for good. His farm-honed nose predicted a few more inches before the end of April.
He turned the last bend and smiled at the pillar of gray smoke rising from their stone chimney, along with the rustic scent of the smoldering pinewood. Aiden must have felt the need to light a fire despite the unusually warm weather. Perhaps he had done it out of habit. Daniel liked to keep power heat low, and Aiden loved the cozy fires and couldn’t wait to light one at the first sign of cold weather, even if it came on a July evening.
But the moment he stepped inside the house, Daniel’s good feelings sunk deep into his gut, and a sensation of foreboding enveloped him. Aiden peered at him through the kitchen’s pass-through. In an instant, he detected something in his expression that threatened their peaceful home, and he knew a major change was heading their way.