Reflection (27 page)

“Oh, Lily.” Rachel pointed toward a table stacked high with corn. “I have to take a look over there.”

Lily automatically looked to see who was selling the corn. No one she knew. Rachel should be all right. She turned back to the stand in front of her and started filling a bag with peaches.

“How are you today, Sally?” she asked the woman standing behind the table.

“All right.” Sally spoke through tight lips. She took the bag from Lily, set it on the scale. “See you've made a new friend,” she said as she marked a price on the bag.

It was rare for Lily to be at a loss for a response, and she hesitated long enough to swallow those that might be sarcastic. Sally had her reasons for disliking Rachel. Sally had her pain.

“Yes,” she replied simply. “I have.”

“How long's she going to be here?” Sally had her eyes on Rachel, who was handing a few dollar bills to the man behind the corn.

“Probably just for the summer.” Lily counted out some change and dropped it into Sally's palm. “Just until her grandmother is better.”

“Long enough,” Sally said.

Barbara Jasper suddenly appeared at Sally's side, having left her own vegetable stand to get in on the gossip. “Just here for the summer, you say?” she asked Lily.

“Probably.”

“My sister said she's having an affair with Michael Stoltz.”

“No!” Sally looked shocked.”He would never!”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Come on, you two. Of course Michael's been seen with her. They went to school together. Their families lived in the same triplex. They grew up like brother and sister, for heaven's sake. Give me a break.”

That seemed to shut them up, at least until Lily had walked away and was out of earshot. She bought a few more things, and although people seemed a little stiff with her, it might have been her imagination. Maybe she was the one who was on guard.

She searched the market for Rachel and spotted her walking in the direction of the tomato stand tucked into the shade of the warehouse.
Uh-oh
. George Holland's stand. Could be trouble.

Lily darted through the crowd as unobtrusively as possible until she reached Rachel's side, but she was a second too late to cut her off.

Rachel smiled at her. She was already carrying a few sacks of produce in her arms, and she pointed toward George Holland's beautifully arranged tomatoes. Mr. Holland himself was nowhere in sight. “Aren't these gorgeous?” Rachel asked her.

“Yeah, they are,” Lily replied.

Mr. Holland suddenly appeared from behind the corner of the building.

“Hello, Lily!” He spoke so jovially that she knew no one had told him she was traveling with Rachel Huber today. But then his eyes fell on Rachel, who was holding one of his tomatoes to her nose. He looked at Lily again, eyes narrowed, glaring.

“You bring her here?” he asked. “To my stand?”

Rachel looked at him in surprise, then at Lily.

“Not specifically, Mr. Holland. But yes, I brought her to the market.”.

Rachel spoke, her voice uncertain. “I'm Rachel Huber,” she said unnecessarily. “Was there…did you have someone in my class?”

“His daughter.” Lily spoke for him.

“I'm so sorry,” Rachel said.

Mr. Holland grabbed the tomato from her hand, throwing it into the garbage can at his side. It landed with such force that seeds flew through the air and splattered on his white apron. Rachel looked as if she were about to speak again, and Lily gave her a little shove.

“Go, Rachel. I'll catch up to you.”

Rachel seemed rooted in front of the tomatoes. “I'd like to talk with you,” she said to Mr. Holland. “I'd like to understand—”

“You shouldn't have come back,” he said.

“Go, Rachel.” Lily prodded her. She wasn't sure who she wanted to protect more, her unjustly accused second-grade teacher or her old neighbor, whose pain she understood well because she shared it.

George Holland leaned close to Rachel. “I've been saving a bullet for you,” he said.

For one brief moment, Rachel's eyes registered their shock. She glanced at Lily, then turned on her heel and walked away.

Lily looked at Mr. Holland. His face was as red as his tomatoes, but the color faded quickly, and he seemed to deflate before her eyes like a balloon stuck with a pin. He leaned his beefy hands on the table and sighed.

“I shouldn't have said that,” he said. “Just took me off guard, seeing her here. How can I treat her decent, Lily, you tell me that? How do you do it?
Why
do you do it? What would your mother say if she could see you walking around here with the schoolteacher, eh?”

“It was Rachel's tragedy, too,” Lily said, but he didn't seem to hear her.

“At least my Sarah's still alive,” he continued. “Pretty ruint, I'd say, with the scars and all. But alive. Your Jenny…” He shook his head.

Lily looked to the spot where Rachel had disappeared in the crowd. “Maybe I was wrong, bringing her here. She wanted to see the farmers' market. I was coming today; it seemed logical. But…” She sighed. “Maybe it was a mistake. I'm sorry I got you upset.”

“She put Arlena Cash in the hospital, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Arlena's been sick ever since that day she looked up and saw the schoolteacher standing in the middle of her store. Went in the hospital with chest pains Tuesday.”

“That might have happened anyway,” Lily argued.

Mr. Holland cocked his head at her. “I look at you, Lily. You're a beautiful girl. Full of life. And I think about Sarah. She used to be beautiful, too. Men would have fought over her. She should be married and have little ones. She deserved that. I can't look at you without thinking about
my
little girl.”

Lily stepped forward and wrapped her arms around George Holland's bulky mass. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. He was the proverbial salt of the earth, this man. Everyone here was. She'd known most of these farmers all her life, and she loved them all. They were good people who would do anything for her, for each other. Good people who, in this one regard, had grown bitter and full of venom.

When she pulled away, she saw the sheen of tears in Mr. Holland's eyes.

He didn't look at her. He busied himself opening up one of the small paper sacks on the table. “Two wrongs don't make a right,” he said. He put three tomatoes in a bag and handed them to her. “Give these to the schoolteacher,” he said. “Tell her it was just too much, seeing her here like that.”

“All right,” Lily said softly. She turned around.

“And Lily?”

She looked back at him.

“Tell her I haven't owned a gun in ten years.”

Lily gave him a smile. “I will,” she said.

She'd been wrong to bring Rachel here, she thought as she walked back to the parking lot. People were still too unforgiving, and Rachel was too trusting. Rachel tromped around the farmers' market, around town, with a courage borne of ignorance. She stepped into the fire not knowing it could burn. She had probably seen more of the world than Lily had, but she still didn't understand this little corner of it.

She found Rachel sitting inside the unlocked van, the door open to catch the breeze. Lily climbed into the driver's seat, leaving her own door open as well. Rachel's eyes were rimmed with red.

“He said for me to give you these.” Lily handed the bag to her.

Rachel peered inside. “Why?” she asked.

“He regrets what he said. And he said to tell you he doesn't even own a gun.”

A half-smile crossed Rachel's face. “You've been very kind to me, Lily.”

Lily hesitated. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry people think the worst of you. But I understand how they feel.”

Rachel nodded. “You did lose your sister,” she said.

Lily's tears surprised her, and she turned her head to look out the open door of the van. “We weren't alike in any way,” she said. “Not in looks or anything. But there was a connection between us. It went way beyond anything conscious.” Sometimes even now she would hear the word
twin
, taken totally out of context—”Where's the twin to this sock?”—and feel a sharp pain south of her breastbone.

“I don't remember Jenny well,” Rachel said. “I remember you though. You were going to be my challenge for the year.”

Lily smiled. “I was every teacher's challenge.”

“Now I've learned to nurture that trait in my students. Instead of being afraid of it I try to help them use that creativity. But with you it scared me. I was too new. I didn't know what to do with you.”

“You weren't the only one. I can't recall any teachers I had who nurtured that side of me.”

They were both quiet for a moment.

“I remember your husband,” Lily said softly. “I can picture him very clearly. I'm not sure if that's because I actually remember what he looked like or if it's just that I've seen his picture so many times over the years. I thought he was very handsome.” She suddenly recalled seeing a bloodstained shred of Luke Pierce's camouflage shirt on the corner of Rachel's desk after the explosion. Another shred on the ledge below the chalkboard. The visual images were still sharp and clear, too clear, and the heat of the van suddenly seemed to press all the air from her lungs.

“Oh, God,” she said, her hand to her forehead.

“Are you all right?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah.” Lily pulled the van door closed. “Let's get out of here.”

She drove out of the parking lot and onto the street, trying to focus her eyes on the sunlit fields stretching out on either side of them, but all she could see were those bloody pieces of cloth.

Secrets were insidious, she thought. They started out easy to hold on to, but while you weren't looking, they turned as caustic as acid. And it was the person keeping them who was first to feel the burn.

MICHAEL WAS EATING AT
his desk, as he usually did before the support group meeting on Friday nights. He was not looking forward to the session. He no longer felt comfortable meeting the eyes of his congregation, as though people might be able to look straight inside him and see—what? He was guilty of nothing. Yet he was carrying guilt around with him like a sack of rocks he couldn't put down.

He felt safe with the youth group. He'd met with them today to talk about the Reflection Day observance, and he'd felt like his old self with them. Comfort and self-confidence coursed through his body with such jubilance that he knew how sorely he'd been missing those qualities in himself lately. He'd gotten into a long philosophical discussion with the kids about the meaning of Reflection Day, about Rachel's role, about what it meant to be human and fallible. The hope for Reflection lay in this generation, he thought. These kids had no memory of their own about what had happened that day. They could make up their own minds as to how to address the situation. He did his best to empower them, to let them know this was something important they could have a say in. Once they acknowledged that much of their resistance to doing away with Reflection Day had to do with losing a school holiday, they embraced the concept of making this year's observance the last one.

“It's not up to us, though, is it?” one boy had asked.

“No,” Michael had said. “It's not up to us. But we can influence it. We'll have to do a good job. We'll have to be convincing.”

“Hi, Michael.” Celine appeared at his office door. She wore a smile he couldn't read. “It's almost seven-thirty.”

He nodded, touched his mouth with his napkin. “Be right there,” he said.

Celine disappeared, and with a reluctant sigh, Michael stood up to face the unknown.

There were seven people in the group, but two were missing that evening. Next to Celine sat Ian Jackson, who like Michael had come to the Mennonite faith through marriage rather than being raised in a Mennonite family. Frank Howe sat on the other side of Celine. He was the father of the boy Michael had seen at Hershey Park when he'd been with Rachel. Next to Frank was Ellie Ryan, probably the most conservative member of his congregation. She had moved from Bird-in-Hand to Reflection and always made a point of the fact that she was merely trying the Reflection church on for size. Even though she'd been part of the congregation for two years now, she had not yet pulled both feet in the door.

“Hey, Rev.” Ian moved his chair to open the circle and let him in. No one in this church called him Reverend, except Ian. And with Ian he knew it was a term of affection. He'd met the young man five or six years ago, when Lily drew him into the church. He'd counseled the couple before they got married, and what always stuck in his mind was Ian's answer to his question about how they met. Ian had been doing volunteer work at the ASPCA when Lily came in to exercise the dogs.

“I watched her for a while,” Ian had told him, “and then I said to myself, ‘Ian, this woman is like a greenhouse.'”

“A greenhouse?” Michael had asked.

“Yes. She has a purpose, she's efficient, yet she's warm to the point of giving off heat and she's so open you can see clear through her.”

Michael had known right then that those two were a match. Since that day, every time he saw Lily he couldn't help but picture the clear glass and warm confines of a greenhouse.

Although none of them were assigned to lead the group, he or Celine usually got things rolling. Tonight it was Celine.

“Let's check in,” she said. “You want to start, Frank?”

Frank drew in a breath. “Well, things are better with Sean,” he said, referring to his son. He must have talked about Sean at the last meeting, the one Michael had missed.

“He caught Sean smoking,” Celine said to Michael.

“Well, I didn't make a big deal out of it, like you all said,” Frank reported. “And it's all blown over. I don't think he'll be doing it again.” He looked at Ian, who took the cue.