Reflection (22 page)

“Ah,” Helen said, as if that was news to her. “You fell in love.”

Rachel nodded. “But I was married to Luke at the time, and so we…we
acknowledged
our feelings for each other, but we never acted on them.” She glanced at Helen as if trying to discern whether or not the older woman understood what she was talking about.

“You didn't become lovers.” Helen hoped her bluntness would rid Rachel of her trepidation in speaking so openly to her.

Rachel shook her head. She was studying her hands, knotted together in her lap. “No. And when I got back here…well, you know what happened then, and I guess Mom and Dad sort of spirited me away and I sort of let them—”

“You must have been in shock, Rachel.” Finally, the poor girl was talking about it. “You probably didn't have much of a choice but to let someone take over for you.”

“And then I lost touch with Michael. Until now. This summer. And now—”

“Those old feelings are still there.”

“Yes, but now
he's
married, not to mention a minister.”

“He married the wrong woman.”

Rachel looked up from her hands, a stunned expression on her face. “Well, I don't know about that. She helped him find his faith.”

Helen shook her head with the certainty of her convictions. “She's the wrong woman for him. I've known that for a long time.”

Rachel narrowed her eyes at her. “What do you mean?” she asked. “And how do you know Michael so well?”

Helen moved her book from her lap to the small table at her side. “I know all about you and Michael in the Peace Corps,” she said. “After Michael got back from Rwanda, he came here to see if we knew where you'd gone. We didn't, of course. He was very upset. He told Peter and me about how close the two of you had gotten. He said he'd always loved you, even when you were just kids, but he never did anything about it because it was so obvious that you and Luke were going to end up together.”

Rachel lowered her eyes at this, as though Helen had exposed too many of Michael's secrets.

“He cried, sitting there in our living room,” Helen continued. “We cried, too, because we knew how it felt to lose you. We'd already lost you years before, when your mother and father cut us off from you.”

Rachel's eyes glistened. “I never understood—”

Helen waved her comment away before it could turn into a question. She wouldn't get into that now. “Michael told us he married Katy to try to make himself forget you. Love doesn't work that way, of course, and he was quickly figuring that out, but it was too late. If I'd known where you were, I would have told him to tell Katy he'd made a mistake and go find you. Claim you.”

A small smile passed across Rachel's lips at Helen's choice of words.

“Katy was young. She would have gotten over it. Just like she'll get over it now if Michael chooses to—”

“
Gram
.” Rachel's head darted up.”I couldn't. I couldn't do that to another woman. And Michael wants to keep his marriage together. He has to. It hasn't been a great marriage, but Katy called him last night from Moscow and said she wants them to go to a marriage counselor when she gets back. And he loves being a minister. It's his life. He's passionate about it. But he couldn't be a Mennonite minister if he were divorced.” She shook her head. “There's simply no way to—”

“You know.” Helen shifted in her seat with a sigh. “I admire that you want to be true to your values, but some things in life are too precious to let slip by. You and Michael are soul mates. You have been all your lives. Can you just walk away from that? Some things are worth fighting for.”

Rachel shook her head, clearly appalled by Helen's disregard for the bond between Michael and his wife. “Yes, I can walk away from it. I have to. Maybe that's hard for you to understand because you were lucky the first time, Helen. You and Peter were…soul mates, as you say, and you didn't have to hurt anyone to be able to be together. I can't—”

“Peter and I were never soul mates, Rachel,” Helen said quietly. “Not at all.”

Rachel frowned at her. “I thought—”

“Peter and I loved each other dearly. We respected each other, and I was tremendously grateful to him for all the help he gave me. But we didn't have the sort of…bond of the heart that you and Michael share. And that's just too precious to let slip by. Your marriage to Phil—am I right in guessing that also lacked something?”

Rachel looked briefly defensive, but she answered honestly. “Yes,” she said, “but all marriages lack something. Our marriage was good, though. I was content.”

“And with Michael?”

Rachel smiled wistfully. “I think it could have been different with Michael.”

“Don't give up then, Rachel.”

“Gram, you're asking me to hurt people. To hurt
him
. He doesn't want this. He wants to stay in his marriage. He wants to feel good and honorable about himself.”

Helen slumped slightly in her chair. Rachel was right, and she was interfering. It was so easy to disregard Katy Stoltz. Katy was a bright woman, respected and depended upon by Reflection's parents who knew they could call her in the middle of the night with a feverish child. But still, Katy had never elicited in Helen much in the way of warmth or concern.

Rachel stood up. “I have to say this, Gram.” She smiled. “You have been and continue to be a big surprise to me. And I love you for caring so much.” She bent over to kiss Helen's cheek before leaving the room.

Helen picked up her book from the floor and turned to face the window again. The sunlight was full on the garden now. She could see the healing wound in the side of the maple where Michael had severed a branch.

They were meant to be together
.

She shook her head to clear away the thought. She would have to let go of their dilemma. It was not hers to solve. Besides, she reminded herself, she had not done a terribly good job of solving her own.

HELEN HAD BEEN TWENTY
-six years old and the mother of a six-year-old son when, at Peter's invitation, pianist Karl Speicer visited the house in Reflection for the first time. Karl had been born in Germany and spent his teen years in England before moving to New York at the age of twenty-one. His accent was impossible to place. Helen was instantly drawn to his rich voice and its quirky intonation.

Many other musicians and composers had visited them since they'd lived in Reflection, but the moment Karl—or Hans, as she came to call him—stepped inside her house, Helen knew it was destined to become his haven. It was late spring, and she had opened all the windows so that the forest and the sky seemed a part of the house itself. Hans walked from room to room, looking out at the trees, stroking the wood paneling, and she saw the delight in his eyes as he drew in deep breaths, filling his lungs with air that was clean and welcoming.

He looked over at her and Peter after his self-led, uninvited tour of the house. “I feel as though I've come home,” he said.

“I can see that.” Helen smiled. She didn't mind the proprietary nature of his words at all.

Peter put his hand on Helen's back. “I knew you'd love it,” he said. “You'll love the town, too.”

Hans stretched his arms out as if to encompass the house and the trees and country air. “Can I bottle it up? Take it back to the city with me?”

“No,” Helen said, “but you may visit as often as you like.” She had known him less than five minutes, and yet she felt certain she would not tire of this houseguest.

Indeed she didn't. The following day, while Peter worked at perfecting a new sonata—one he'd been developing for several weeks—Hans and Helen and Johnny wandered around town. She liked to be away from the house whenever Peter worked on a piece. Peter was the dearest soul, but he made her nervous when he was “perfecting” something. Sometimes he didn't know when to leave well enough alone.

Hans was attracted to the Pennsylvania Dutch influence in and around the town, and he was fascinated by the Amish. He loved talking to those shopkeepers who still spoke German, and they enjoyed his genuine interest, nearly forgetting about their other customers. In the very first store they visited, the elderly shopkeeper excitedly hugged him, mistaking him for an old friend he'd known in Germany named Hans Schulmann. Helen laughed at the idea of dark-haired Karl Speicer being a Hans. She teased him, calling him Hans for the rest of the morning, and by noon that was who he had become to her.

That afternoon they built a tree house.

They'd had lunch with Peter in the kitchen, after which Hans said he wanted to go for a walk through their woods. She and Johnny accompanied him. They'd been walking for a short time when Hans spied an enormous oak, two broad branches set perpendicular to its trunk. He immediately suggested the tree house to Johnny, who was enthralled with the idea. So was Helen, and the three of them drove into town to buy the lumber they would need.

Johnny soon tired of the work. Helen took him into the house, where Peter agreed to make him dinner and put him to bed, and so it was actually Hans and Helen who did most of the building. They worked into the night and through the following day as well. And they talked. He told her he had never done anything like this before. “Never built a thing in my life,” he said. She wouldn't have guessed. He was careful, yet inventive, and he seemed to have great confidence in what he was doing.

He told her how much he admired Peter. “I became a pianist to play the sort of music Peter's producing,” he said.

“I want to hear you play,” she said, and she was surprised by the hunger in her voice. She watched his hands as he hammered, as he sanded boards. He didn't treat his hands as though they were delicate instruments in need of protection, as many pianists did. Yet, with their long, quick fingers, they looked as though they could dance gracefully across the keys.

The little tree house rose up around them, and they closed themselves in as night fell, working by lantern light. Helen didn't care about the aching in her shoulders, the stiffness in her knees. The space was small, and she could hear Hans's breathing, feel his nearness. Even when they were not speaking, she felt connected to him by a network of thoughts, and she knew that she was feeling what some people called
chemistry
. Something she had never felt before. She loved Peter; she was quite clear in her mind about that. She adored him, but her blood had never surged at his closeness, as it was doing now. She had never felt the longing to stay up with him all night, talking with him, wanting to touch him. No man had ever had that sort of power over her, until this night.

When they returned to the house, they found Peter still hunched over the piano. Helen was eager to have Hans hear the piece on which her husband was working, but Peter was not yet ready to share, and so she made her guest a glass of iced tea and sat with him on the porch.

“I've never lived outside a city,” Hans said. He was mesmerized by the noisiness of a summer night in the country, closing his eyes to listen to the frogs, the cicadas, the crickets. When he had finished the tea, Helen got a flashlight and led him out to the lane behind the house. They walked in darkness all the way to the creek, where she shone the flashlight on the bullfrogs, which darted away from the intrusion.

Hans spotted the rope that had long hung from a tree at the water's edge, and he swung out over the water with a whoop. Helen sat on the bank, laughing, wondering how he had any strength left in his arms after the work they'd done on the tree house. When he joined her on the bank, she began telling him about the sonata on which Peter was working. She told him about the introductory flourish that heralded the principal themes. She hummed the biting scherzo for him, and Hans listened quietly.

“Peter never told me you knew anything about music,” he said when she had finished.

She felt a stab of betrayal. “And just how does Peter present me to the rest of the world?” she asked.

“He says you're a wonderful wife and mother. Very supportive of his career.” Hans took the flashlight from her hand and shone it into the dark water. “He never said how beautiful you are though.”

Taken by surprise, she could think of nothing to say.

“I'm sorry,” he said, turning off the light. “I didn't mean to embarrass you. It's just that it's impossible to look at you and not think about it. I'm astounded Peter never mentioned it. But then, Peter is a different sort of man, isn't he?”

“How do you mean?” She agreed completely but wondered exactly what would make Hans say that.

“Well, he's devoted to his work. And consumed by political issues. Not the type to be swept off his feet by beauty in a woman.”

That was true. Peter had never seemed interested in her for her looks. He'd liked her mind, her talent, her convictions. He had certainly never told her she was beautiful.

“He's very lucky,” Hans continued. “He can travel around the world and come home to a wonderful family. I hope I'm as lucky someday.”

THE FOLLOWING MORNING HANS
fashioned a seat for the old rope swing, using leftover lumber from the tree house. He and Helen took Johnny and one of his friends to the creek for a picnic, leaving Peter behind at the piano. The children swung for hours, propelling themselves into the water, while Hans and Helen talked on a blanket.

At supper that night Peter announced, with a smile and a toast, that he was nearly finished with the sonata. It needed just “a few final touches,” he said. He was so relaxed that after the meal he pulled out some of his books on ciphers and codes, and he and Hans bowed their heads together over them in the library while Helen cleaned up. She remembered Peter telling her that Hans shared his fascination with ciphers, and she could hear them in the other room, giggling like children as they competed in solving various puzzles.