Reflection (11 page)

“It's been Spring Willow for a long time,” Michael said. “The town council voted to change the name around the time you left.”

He didn't say it. He didn't have to. Rachel knew she'd been the cause of that change. The name
Huber
, once so respected, had lost its positive association overnight.

She looked past him into the black-and-green mesh of the trees. “I love these woods,” she said.

“Did Helen tell you about the Hostetters' plan to raze this piece of land?”

“Yes, and she said something about you trying to stop it.”

He shook his head, mouth tight. “I'm trying, but I'm not too optimistic.”

“It's the bat woman, right? Remember how afraid we were of her?”

He gave a short laugh. “Yeah, and we were right to be. We just didn't know what it was we had to fear.” He looked at her with a question in his eyes. “Did you ever know why she was the way she was?”

Rachel shook her head.

“I don't think I found out till I moved back here, so you probably never heard the story. She was shot in the head when she was four years old by her mother, who then turned the gun on herself.”

“
What
? Oh, that's some kind of rumor.”

“No, it's the truth. She suffered mild brain damage. She was raised by her father, who died when she was twenty or so, and she managed to live by herself until last year.”

“Why would her mother have done that?”

“I don't think anyone knows the answer to that question.”

Rachel felt a wave of sympathy for the woman she'd viewed with such disdain. “So now she and her nephews are planning to make some money off the land, huh?”

“ ‘Some money' doesn't begin to describe it. They will be quite wealthy.” He looked up at the steeple on the other side of the pond. “My poor little church is going to be surrounded by office buildings.”

Rachel followed his gaze to the church. “I can't imagine it,” she said.

He suddenly smiled. “Remember the time you fell through the ice?”

Her eyes darted to the section of the pond near the gazebo. The boys had tricked her into skating there, knowing the ice was thin where the sun bathed it all day. She'd gone in. Gone under, actually. She could still remember looking up at the translucent ice above her head. She had not felt panic. She'd been mesmerized by the way the ice filtered and curved the light from above. Michael and Luke had panicked, though. She'd stayed under so long that by the time they'd pulled her out they were frantic and full of apologies.

“I got you guys back plenty of times.”

“Yeah.You were a vengeful little thing.”

They reminisced awhile, the thoughts flowing easily, about children who no longer existed. The fishing expeditions. Floating on inner tubes down the stream that cut through the woods. Riding their bikes out to the eerie, cavernous quarries. They'd been so young. So sure of the safety and predictability of their world.

“You know what was hardest for me?” Michael leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “The bond was always so strong between the three of us that I felt like we were one indivisible unit. A team. I knew you and Luke were destined to be more than buddies—I knew that from the start—but even when you guys started dating in earnest, you still included me in so much that I never felt left out. But when you finally got around to having sex, I was suddenly on the outside.”

Rachel laughed. “Well, come on, Michael, what did you want?” She was relieved that she didn't have to tiptoe around such delicate topics merely because he was now a man of the cloth. “We told you every graphic detail.” And they had. She and Luke had only been fifteen at the time, and making love had seemed the logical evolution of their relationship. It was calculated, premeditated. They'd made love for the first time close to where she and Michael were sitting, in these woods behind the pond, and they had told him their plans. Afterward they described to him, in clinical terms and at great length, exactly how it felt. Like Masters and Johnson, educating their public.

“The three of us had a bizarre relationship,” Michael said.

“I know, and I'm so glad. It was a wonderful way to grow up, having you two around all the time.”

Neither of them spoke as a sparrow flitted across the surface of the lake, dusting the water lightly with its feathers. The reflection of the white church quivered in the ripples for a moment before coming into focus again.

She wondered how far, chronologically, they would take their reminiscence. How far was safe? “Is there anyone left in town from high school?” she asked.

“Let's see.” Michael stretched out his long legs, his tennis shoes white against the grass. “Not many. Oh, you know who's still around? Becky Frank. She's a loan officer at the Starr and Lieber branch in Bird-in-Hand.You were good friends with her, weren't you?”

Rachel pictured the bubbly redhead instantly. “Fairly good,” she said. “I'd like to see her. Is that still her name? Do you think she's in the phone book?”

“Let me call her and have her call you, all right?” Michael suggested quickly, and Rachel agreed, although it seemed like an unnecessary step in the process. “So, tell me about your son and your husband,” he said.

So that was how they would handle the difficult years, she thought. Skip over them, at least for now. She was relieved, not quite ready to dive into that pain.

She told him about Phil, how he'd hired her when she arrived in San Antonio, what a fine, supportive husband he had been. Michael frowned as she talked about his long illness and his death.

“I miss him a lot,” she spoke softly. “I wake up in the morning sometimes and forget that he's gone, and then reality suddenly whacks me on the head.” She smiled. “I can't quite get used to the idea of being single again. Not an easy adjustment to make.”

“No, I'm sure it's not.” Michael shook his head. “You've been through more than your share of trauma, Rache.”

“Oh, I've had plenty of good times, too.” She didn't want to give him the impression her life had been filled with sorrow. She told him about the teaching awards she'd won, about the trips she and Phil had taken over the years. She told him about the bicycle race she and Chris had competed in the year before.

“Really?” He looked surprised. “I was in a race last year, too. Came in close to last, but I had a great time.”

“You never were particularly competitive,” she said.

“Or athletic.” He laughed. “But I love cycling. Maybe we could go for a ride together someday.”

“That'd be great. I have my bike with me.”

“You said your son was in the race with you?”

“Uh-huh.” She began talking about Chris, about his achievements and his good-heartedness, but her mounting concerns about her son quickly got in the way. She suddenly realized how much she missed being able to talk to Phil about Chris. It felt good to have a chance to air the problems.

She'd spoken to Chris on the phone that morning, listening to his enthusiastic recitation of everything the band was playing, feeling, thinking. She'd tried to listen patiently, but when he told her he was considering skipping school this coming year to play with the band instead, she lost her cool. They argued for several minutes without resolution until he told her not to worry about it; he hadn't made up his mind yet for sure. Later in their conversation she heard something in his voice she had never heard before. Concern. Was she okay, he asked her? Was she lonely? Her twenty-year-old son was worrying about her. She'd been touched. It made her miss him more than she already did.

“He looks like Luke, Michael,” she said quietly. “He looks exactly like him. I was looking through my old wedding pictures last night. Luke was only twenty-one in them, and Chris is twenty, and God…” She shivered, blinking against the surprise of tears. “It really shocked me to see the resemblance.”

“Do you have a picture of him?”

“At my grandmother's. I'll show you when you come over.”

Michael talked about his own son, Jason—Jace, he called him—who was going into the seventh grade and loved computers. “You think you've got worries with Chris.” He shook his head. “Jace is me, thirty years ago. Awkward, skinny, unpopular. The big difference is that I had you and Luke. You two really saved my life, you know that?”

“Oh, you would have eventually come into your own.”

“I don't know about that. I hope you're right. I hope Jace will blossom one of these days. Poor kid is the product of two nerds.” He laughed. “You don't know how many times I've lain awake at night wondering how I could conjure up a couple of friends like you two for him. I was very lucky.” He took her hand, squeezing it lightly before letting go.

“All three of us were,” she said.

“I need to spend more time with him.” Michael wore a faraway look, the expression of a man who was not certain he was doing a good job with his son. “I work late a lot, and the Pelmans—our next-door neighbors—let him stay over there in the evening when I'm gone. They have a grown son who's into computers, and he and Jace have a great time together. Jace gets along extremely well with adults.” Michael took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose before putting them on again. “I'm going on a church trip with him for a few days, starting tomorrow. It's with one of the youth groups, and they'll be spending a week and a half in Philly helping to refurbish some low-income housing. Jace asked me to go with him, which I think is a pretty good indicator of how out of it he is socially. I can only stay the first couple of days, but I hope by then he'll be feeling more comfortable. He's never been away from home that long, and he seems very needy since Katy's been gone.”

So Michael would be gone for a few days. Rachel swallowed her disappointment. “Tell me about Katy,” she said.

He clasped his hands together and raised them above his head in a slow stretch. “Oh, boy,” he said. “Katy. Where do I begin? In some ways, she's the best thing that ever happened to me. She's the reason I ended up here.” He nodded toward the church. “As a minister, I mean.”

Rachel drew her legs up onto the bench. “Tell me,” she said.

“Well, after everything happened, with you and Luke and the children and…everything, I really fell apart. I felt as though I was to blame.”

“You? How could you possibly have been to blame?”

“Because of the letter.”

She sucked in her breath. She had completely forgotten. “But you married Katy before anything happened,” she said.

“Yes, I did.” He looked at her. “And you know why I married her, don't you?”

She could picture the black handwriting in that brief, terrible letter. “I know what you said in your letter, but—”

“No buts. I wrote that I married Katy to forget you, and that was the truth. I did love her, in a way, but I hadn't seen her during that entire first year in Rwanda. I was so down when you left, and suddenly she was there. She looked great. Seemed wonderful, and I needed her. There were so many things I'd wanted to express to you and couldn't, and suddenly Katy was there and it was safe to…love her, I guess. It was very impulsive of us, getting married. Her parents were furious.” He smiled at some memory. “So anyhow,” he continued, “she changed her plans and stayed with me until November. She skipped the beginning of medical school for me. Though I have to say, life in Katari didn't suit her too well.” He laughed. “She didn't know how I felt about you, of course… Does this bother you? Me talking about this?”

Rachel shook her head, although little slivers of glass seemed to be crackling just below the surface of her skin.

Michael continued. “Katy knew we were close friends, of course, and she probably guessed I felt more for you than that. I don't know. We never talked about it.” He shook his head. “She's not a talker. I guess that relieved me at the time. I didn't have to deal with anything. But it's made our marriage a little bit difficult.”

Rachel could see him carefully selecting his words.

“So, Katy was there in Katari when I got the word about Luke and the kids in your classroom. I was devastated. I couldn't make any sense of it. How could something so terrible happen to so many good, innocent people?”

He stretched again, and Rachel waited tensely for him to continue.

“Well, Katy was raised in a Mennonite family—I don't know if you remember that.”

“Yes, vaguely.”

“She essentially took me on as a project, I think.” He chuckled. “She could see I was ripe for conversion. She taught me how to pray. It took a long time, but I eventually began to feel some solace in prayer. In God.”

Rachel said nothing. He was moving into unfamiliar terrain.

“I thought about you so much,” he said. “I worried about you. I wondered how you'd ever be able to find peace for yourself after going through something like that.”

“It was hard,” she said in a whisper.

“Are you still Lutheran?”

She shook her head. “Unitarian, if anything. I guess I'm basically a heathen.”

He smiled. “You live a good life, Rachel. A thoughtful life, whether or not God's a conscious part of it. I can understand the doubts of others. I'll never stop questioning, but I do believe there's a God—a powerful love greater than anything I can comprehend.”

“It must feel very comforting to have that sort of faith.”

“It is.” He nodded, then continued. “So, when I came back to the States, Katy and I lived in Philly. I was teaching there and Katy was in school, but we came down here every Sunday. She got me going to church. Got me to talk to the minister and, more important, to one of the elders, Lewis Klock, who's a wonderful man and still with us, thank the Lord. I finally began to find real peace. The whole situation with Luke still didn't make sense—I don't think it ever will—but through faith I found a way to cope with it. And I was very attracted to the Mennonites, especially to their commitment to relief work and their pacifist philosophy.”