Clouds (21 page)

“I’m glad we got to spend this time together, too,” Shelly said sincerely. “You know, don’t you, that you’re marrying the last true hero on this planet?”

Elena beamed her appreciation at Shelly and then showered her warm approval on Jonathan.

“At least, that’s what my sister tells me,” Shelly added as she opened the door. She knew the remark had a twist, but she couldn’t resist getting in a final tease. Then, because she was full of red meat and feeling a bit aggressive, she said, “Bye, Johnny.”

Before she closed the car door, Shelly caught his final comment, which also carried a snap. “Feel free to write sometime,” he said.

She opened the tall, double wooden doors without looking back. When she entered Mike and Jana’s apartment, Shelly felt overwhelmed. She wanted to throw herself on the bed and sob over Jonathan’s driving away and out of her life forever. She hadn’t expected to feel this strong reaction and found it hard to keep her smile from quivering when Jana asked how the day had gone.

“Wonderful,” Shelly stated. “How’s Meredith feeling?”

“Better, I think. She went back to bed, and she might be asleep already. But she was up for a few hours this afternoon, and we had a good time finally catching up. Are you hungry?”

“Not at all. I’m ready to hit the sack. I could use a bath, though, if that’s okay. We ate at a smoky place, and I can’t stand the way I smell right now.”

“Go ahead. Make yourself comfy. I told Meri if she felt better tomorrow I’d take her to my favorite place for breakfast. Do you have plans, or would you like to go with us?”

“I’d love to go. I have no plans, no plans at all.” As Shelly headed for the bathtub, she added silently,
No plans at all for the rest of my life
.

Chapter Twenty
 

S
helly’s statement that she had no plans for the rest of her life didn’t turn out to be completely accurate. She stayed in Germany only two more days and flew home when Meredith went on to her convention in Frankfurt. Shelly didn’t think she could absorb any more stimulation than she had experienced in the last few days.

The decision to return when she did proved to be a good one financially because she was able to pick up another flight attendant’s schedule. During the rest of October, she worked the eighty-five hours allotted to full-time flight attendants for Sunlit Airlines.

During her downtime, Shelly painted her bedroom furniture, weatherized the front porch, and planted tulip bulbs. Busyness was her best friend. Meredith’s new job kept her on the go, and they ended up communicating mostly by notes on the refrigerator door. It made Shelly glad that she and Meri had
had the chance to spend those few days together in Heidelberg. In every way, Shelly was determined to start another chapter in her life. She was done with Jonathan.

She did okay until Christmas. Christmas at the Graham house had always been a festive occasion. Shelly’s grandparents on both sides were still living, and they came to Seattle for Christmas week. The oldest Graham daughter, Megan, and her husband and two daughters came for the week also. Mom and Dad’s house was a hub of yuletide activity.

Shelly was able to join in on only a fraction of the fun. She had four flights right before Christmas and wore her beeper through the Christmas Eve candlelight service as well as all Christmas day. Fortunately, no calls came. But being on call was starting to unnerve her. It made it difficult to relax, knowing that at any moment she could be buzzed.

On Christmas day, after the dishes from their big meal had all been washed and everyone had found a comfortable chair to flop into, Shelly sat down with her grandmother Rudi at the kitchen table. Grandma had been eager to see Shelly’s photos from Germany but said she wouldn’t look at them unless Shelly gave a comment on each one. They spent hours together at the kitchen table with mugs of cocoa and a plate of cookies. Her grandmother had never been to Germany, so she wanted to know every detail.

When they came to the picture of Jonathan standing in front of the church with his arm around Elena, Shelly felt a stab of remorse. It was the first she had let herself feel in months.

“This is Jonathan, isn’t it?” Grandma asked.

“Yes, that’s Jonathan. And that’s Elena. His fiancée or maybe his wife. I don’t know when they were planning to get married.”

Grandma Rudi peered at Shelly through her glasses with a
peculiar expression. “I didn’t know your Jonathan was getting married.”

“He’s not my Jonathan,” Shelly said quickly. “We’re still good friends. But he’s not my Jonathan.”

Grandma clucked her tongue. “Of course he’s your Jonathan. He was always your Jonathan, and you were always his Shelly Bean. It will always be so.”

Shelly swallowed her regret. “Not this time, I’m afraid. I’m nobody’s Shelly Bean.”

Grandma reached her wrinkled hand over and patted Shelly’s cool, clammy hand. “This is sad news to me, dear one.”

“It’s not so sad. I don’t want to look at it that way.”

“But, my dear, you have made so many deposits into this relationship for so many years. How can you not feel robbed?”

An impulsive tear slipped down Shelly’s cheek. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I just have to go on.”

With her thin eyebrows drawn together over the frames of her glasses, Grandma Rudi looked compassionately at Shelly. Slowly shaking her head Grandma said, “Two things in life should never be taken for granted. One is a godly heritage. The other is true friends.”

Shelly blinked hard and tried to force her tears back with a smile. “I don’t take either of those gifts lightly,” she said in a hoarse voice. Pulling out the next picture from the stack, she covered up Jonathan’s perpetually smiling face.

“This one is from the cemetery. Dozens of Rudis are buried there, but we couldn’t find a marker for C. C. Rudi,” Shelly said.

“Of course you couldn’t,” Grandma said matter-of-factly. “He’s buried in Texas.”

“In Texas!”

“Yes, didn’t you know that? Carl Christian Rudi was the
first one from our family to immigrate to the U.S. He was a circuit preacher in Texas for many years.”

“I searched all over for his grave. I thought he was buried in Hilsbach or Weiler,” Shelly said. “All the information I had was this.” She pulled out the slip of paper with the pertinent details Grandma had jotted down before the trip. When Shelly unfolded the sheet, a perfectly pressed leaf fluttered to the table. Its amber brilliance had faded, but it remained intact.

Grandma Rudi reached across the table and, with a slightly trembling touch, picked up the maple leaf by its dry, spindly stem. “From Germany?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Shelly remembered how she had kidnapped the frail leaf at the church wall and had kept it from being swept away by the wind.

“It’s from the church,” Shelly said, “the one with the date 1509 over the archway. This one.” She turned back to the photo of Jonathan and Elena. “I picked up this little orphan leaf by the stone wall that surrounds the church grounds.”

At the time it had reminded Shelly of the “last gasp of Love’s latest breath.” This evening it gave her the “wonders,” as Elena would say. It was amazing to her that the leaf was still so finely preserved.

“Would you like it?” Shelly asked as Grandma held the frail skeleton up to the light.

“I would.”

“I wish I’d brought you back something better,” Shelly said. “I should have bought you some kind of special souvenir from Germany.”

“This is the best gift you could give me,” Grandma said. “This was once living in the homeland of my ancestors. You preserved it perfectly. Your visit to the church and the cemetery paid a great honor to my family. Thank you, dear.”

“I only wish I’d had a better idea of what I was looking for when I was there. These clues were pretty vague.”

Shelly’s grandma looked at the list. “This is all I had from my mother’s Bible. I believe the significance of the church in Hilsbach was that Carl Christian Rudi was christened there.”

“What about St. Annakapella?”

“I don’t know. I think he was married in the States.”

“It’s a beautiful little chapel with a gorgeous view of the valley. You have to walk through the woods to get to it,” Shelly said, smiling at the memory. “I’ll never forget how I felt when I walked though the hushed woods. It was as if I had entered a private domain, and yet I was welcomed by all the woodland creatures. And the fragrance! Oh, the scent of those trees—I’ll always remember it.”

Grandma Rudi smiled. “Then you have your answer. All you ever need to know about St. Annakapella is that you were drawn closer to God through his creation on your journey to it. It doesn’t matter what it meant to someone from our family’s past. It has meaning to you now. Write it down so your children will know.”

Shelly felt the corners of her heart squeeze in.
My children! What if I never have children? Then what will it matter a hundred years from now that I walked in a distant woods with the only man I’ve ever loved, but all we shared was the breathing in and out of the same air?

The visit with her grandmother ignited in Shelly a fear that life was going to pass her by. Everyone was going to get married and leave her in the dust. In the days that followed Christmas, her mind kept repeating the first line of the poem Jonathan had sent her so long ago: “Since there’s no help.”

She added her own twist to it.
Since there’s no hope
.

As the after-Christmas depression set in, Shelly felt even more abandoned. She longed for busyness to keep her mind
occupied, but it kept running in the same circle of hopelessness. Shelly was emotionally fatigued.

Through it all, she learned that her fear of never marrying was only fed by encountering women who were married or engaged. She learned it was better to hang out with women who weren’t getting married. Women like Meredith.

Chapter Twenty-One
 

I
‘m serious,” Shelly said one chilly January night as she and Meredith were sitting by the fire in their cozy cabin. “If you fall in love, I don’t want to hear about it. If you decide to get married, don’t tell me.”

“Did you get another wedding announcement from one of your high school friends?” Meredith asked. She was sitting on the floor with a shish-kebab skewer and a bag of marshmallows. “How many do you want? Two okay?”

“Sure. Two is good for starters. And no, I didn’t get another invitation. I’m not looking for wedding invitations in the mail.”

“That’s not what I think,” Meredith said in a teasing voice. “I think you’re waiting for the invitation from Jonathan and Elena, and every day it doesn’t arrive you wonder all over again if they’re still engaged.”

“That’s not what I was thinking,” Shelly said. Meredith’s surmise was only half true. She did wonder every now and then if Jonathan and Elena were still together. But she didn’t
think about it every single day.

The airline’s business had picked up over the holidays, and Shelly had worked a full schedule in both November and December. Her bank account was in the pink again, which meant it was a shade above red. Because of her hectic flying schedule during November and December, Shelly hadn’t found much time to relax, let alone to feel sorry for herself or to ponder the state of Jonathan and Elena’s relationship.

However, now that January had brought a slower schedule, Shelly was afraid the loneliness and restlessness would drive her crazy.

“I think I need a hobby or something,” she said. “I don’t have enough to do, and I’m certain I won’t be working many hours until the summer. Do you want to take a tole-painting class with me?”

“What would we tole paint?” Meredith asked, carefully turning the marshmallows in the fireplace.

“I don’t know. What about ballroom dancing? Didn’t you always want to learn to dance?”

“Where are you coming up with these?” Meri asked.

“The community college adult electives classes. We received a catalog in the mail today for next semester’s classes.”

“Here,” Meri said, holding out the skewer. “Take the top two. Careful.”

Shelly extracted the gooey wads of toasted sugar and popped one in her mouth.