Reflection (15 page)

She closed her eyes and leaned back against the post, knowing she had to give words to the uncomfortable thought creeping into her head.

“Just tell me,” she said, “reassure me, that you're not wanting to be seen with me has nothing to do with the fact that I'm Rachel Huber.”

He understood immediately. “Of course not, Rachel.”

She looked down at the porch floor, running her hand lightly over the wood, back and forth. After a minute she asked, “Would you like to see a picture of my son?”

He brightened, either very pleased by the idea or relieved at the change of topic. “Yes. Go get it.”

She went into her bedroom and pulled three loose photographs from her night-table drawer. She'd brought the recent pictures with her, taken of Chris at his birthday party in May.

Out on the porch again, she handed the pictures to Michael. She sat down next to him on the step so that she could see them over his shoulder.

Michael looked at the first photograph, and Rachel felt his body tense. She knew why. After seeing those pictures of Luke the other night, she knew how startling the resemblance was between father and son.

“Oh, my God.” Michael couldn't seem to take his eyes from the picture. “My God,” he said again, shaking his head.

She heard him swallow as he took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with his fingers. Her own tears were close. She dared to rest her hand on his back, her cheek on his shoulder, and she was relieved when he put his arm around her waist.

“Whew,” he said finally. He shook his head again at the picture. “Oh, man. Makes me miss Luke something fierce.”

“The pre-Vietnam Luke.”

“That's the only Luke I knew.”

Michael studied the second photograph, then the third. “He has a ponytail?”

“Just a little wisp. And an earring.”

He laughed as he removed his arm from around her. On cue, she lifted her head from his shoulder and shifted a foot or so away from him on the step.

“You're lucky you have him.” He handed the pictures back to her.

“Yes, I know.”

He gave her a weak smile, then looked out at the garden. “Well,” he said, “I'd better get back to the trees.”

She watched him walk across the yard and climb the ladder before she lowered her eyes once more to the pictures of Chris. Michael's reaction to the photographs had touched, but not surprised, her. She doubted anything he did could surprise her. She'd known him far too long. And she knew him very well.

LILY LOADED MULE AND
Wiley and the three foster dogs into the back of her van. The dog-adoption service had found homes for two of the dogs she'd had the week before, but they'd quickly brought her two more. Huge animals, these new ones, and she didn't trust the two males together. They snarled at each other as they sat in the back of the van, and Lily changed her mind about the seating arrangement. She took the shepherd mix out of the back and placed him in the passenger seat before setting off.

She'd gotten out of work early for a Saturday afternoon. She didn't particularly want to spend her free time on the task ahead of her, but she felt as if she had little choice. She wished she could talk to Ian about it. Ian knew all there was to know about her, but he didn't know about this. She'd decided a long time ago that it wouldn't be fair to tell him, to make him carry that burden. So she'd made the decision to drive out to Fair Acres today on her own. She could take the dogs with her. Make it a real outing.

Fair Acres was fifteen miles from town, through farm country. She had to slow down twice to circumvent buggies plodding along the edge of the road, but otherwise the drive was easy. Pretty. She kept the air-conditioning blowing. The dogs were clean, but still, you put five furry bodies in an enclosed space on a warm day, and it could get kind of gamy.

She'd never been to Fair Acres, although she'd driven by it several times. As she neared the wide front gate, she wondered if she should have called first. Would Jacob Holt be home? He'd retired out here three years ago after working as a school principal for most of his long career. He'd been the principal of Spring Willow Elementary when she was a student there, then he'd transferred over to the junior-senior high just as she was entering the ninth grade. In his retirement speech, he'd talked about how he'd always longed to be a farmer. It was his dream, he'd said in that deep, bellowing voice.

The gate was open, and a curved wrought-iron sign that read FAIR ACRES formed an arch above it. Lily drove up the driveway toward the farmhouse. Her palms were sweating.

She parked around the side of the house and walked up the porch steps, where she knocked on the wood trim of an old screen door. The porch was bright in the afternoon sun, making the inside of the house look dark and shadowy through the screen. She knocked again, and after a moment someone appeared in the shadows, walking slowly toward the door. An elderly woman. She'd forgotten that Jacob Holt lived with his mother.

The woman waited for Lily to speak.

“Hello,” Lily said. “I'm looking for Mr. Holt?”

“He's in the barn yet,” the woman said, and even with those few words Lily could hear the Pennsylvania Dutch accent.

“Thanks,” she said. “And do you think it would be all right if I let my dogs out here? There are five of them. They won't bother the farm animals.” At least she hoped they wouldn't.

“Ach.” The old woman smiled. “Leave ‘um run.”

Lily walked back to the van and opened the door for the dogs. Thrilled with the sudden freedom, the wide spaces, they began running in wild circles around her, making her laugh as she started walking toward the barn. The pasture on her left was dotted with cows—Black Angus—grazing lazily, and a chicken scooted across the driveway just out of reach of the dogs.

The wide barn doors were open, and she stopped outside, peering into the darkness, the powerful smell of hay and manure filling her nostrils. “Mr. Holt?” she called.

“Around here.” The voice came from somewhere to her right. She walked around the corner of the barn to find him working on his tractor.

He raised his head at her approach and stood up straight, wiping his hands on the rag hanging from the pocket of his overalls. She was struck by how young he looked—younger than he had at his retirement ceremony. His skin had a healthy glow, and smile lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes. He was not smiling now, though. Not at all.

“Lily,” he said, his eyebrows arched in surprise.

“Hi, Mr. Holt.” Even though she'd known Jacob Holt for most of her life, she would never have felt comfortable calling him by his first name. “You look terrific,” she said. “The farming life agrees with you, huh?”

“Sure does. Should have retired years before I did.”

Mule suddenly bounded around the corner of the barn and jumped up on the old principal, his huge front paws flat on the man's chest. Lily cringed, but Mr. Holt laughed, burying his hands in the dog's long black coat. “Whoa, boy,” he said. “Aren't you a beauty? And there's more of them!”

Lily turned to see Wiley and the foster dogs tear around the corner toward them, the two males snarling at each other.

“I hope you don't mind that I brought the dogs with me,” she said. “I asked your mother, and she—”

“No, that's fine.” Mr., Holt was down on his haunches, patting, stroking, getting his face licked, and laughing. She'd never known he was a dog lover, a fact that only muddied her already conflicted feelings about this man.

She watched him play with the dogs for a moment, then drew in a breath. “Rachel Huber's in town,” she said.

Jacob Holt looked up at her, his face dark and unreadable in the shade of the tractor.

“Just for a while,” she continued. “She's nursing her grandmother.”

Holt got slowly to his feet, wiping his hands on his overalls. “I heard Helen took a lightning strike,” he said.

“Yes.”

He nodded as though the conversation was over and turned his attention back to the tractor, reaching deep inside the hood. Was that it? Wasn't he going to say anything else?

“People are talking,” she said. “I'm afraid they're going to be mean to her.”

He frowned at the workings of the tractor, tugging at something that refused to come free. He was ignoring her, pretending she wasn't there. Hoping she'd go away, the way he surely had to wish Rachel would go away—leave Reflection and never return.

“Mr. Holt?” Lily dug her fingers into the thick fur behind Mule's ears.”I want to—”

“Lily.” He straightened his spine again. “It's water under the bridge. Leave it alone.”

She was tempted to argue, but what right did she have? It was one thing for her to make a decision that would affect her own life, quite another to do harm to his. And maybe he was right. Maybe she would only be making things worse.

Mule nudged closer to her, trying to get her hands moving, his fur trapped in the tight confines of her fists. “Don't you ever…” she began, then stopped herself with a shake of her head. “Sometimes, when I'm by myself, I remember what happened, and I feel so…alone with it. Kind of like it's this weight sitting on my chest, and it's so heavy I can't breathe.”

He wasn't listening. His attention was riveted on his tractor.

“Doesn't it ever get to you?” she asked. “Don't you feel any guilt?”

“Guilt?” He looked up at her. “Over what?”

She couldn't respond. He knew. He knew perfectly well over what.

“Leave it alone, Lily,” he said again. “That's the best advice I can give you.”

He pulled the rag from the pocket of his overalls and wiped it across his forehead before dipping his hands back into the tractor again.

Lily studied his face a moment longer before turning to go. Maybe it was only her imagination, or maybe the angle of the sun had shifted while she'd been standing there, but she could have sworn that the lines in his face had deepened in these last few minutes and that his skin had taken on a faint gray hue. She could have sworn that Jacob Holt had aged ten years in the space of her visit.

IT WAS SUNDAY MORNING
, and Michael sat at the desk in his church office putting the finishing touches on his sermon. The scent of the freshly baked bread resting on the edge of his desk made him hungry. He'd found the wrapped loaf sitting outside his office door along with a bag of ripe tomatoes and a few ears of corn—one of the special benefits of serving in a community where farms were abundant.

His office was in the basement of the church. The ground sloped away from the corner of the building, allowing the large room to have several good-sized windows and a sunny interior. The walls were lined with his treasured collection of reference books. He could easily lose himself in here.

He'd come into the office very early that morning, as he did every day of the week. He liked to spend some time in the sanctuary, where the dawn light fell warm and soft across the pews. It was his quiet time for prayer. Usually he prayed for other people in his life, for members of his congregation, for his family. Today, though, he had prayed for himself. He'd asked God to guide him in his relationship with Rachel so that his friendship with her would bring harm to no one. He'd asked for the wisdom to know how much time together was too much.

Then he'd come down here to his office for those few final minutes of solitude before the hectic activity of Sunday began. The church service would be followed by Sunday school, after which he would visit a few of his parishioners who were either hospitalized or homebound. Then he had promised to make an appearance at the fiftieth-wedding anniversary celebration of two longtime members of the church. He loved the whirlwind pace of a typical Sunday. It would be nice, though, to end the day with a bike ride with Rachel, especially with Jason still in Philadelphia. He missed his son badly.

He was jotting notes in the margin of the sermon when his gaze fell upon the green flyer stuck in the corner of his blotter. He held it into the light from the window. It was an announcement of the September sixth hearing, and he knew it had been designed by one of the teenagers in the youth group, Donna Garry, who must have left it on his desk the night before. She'd done a good job, adding a border of trees around the information to remind the reader exactly what would be lost if the land were developed.

He hoped Donna would be in the Reflection Day ceremony this year. It was the Mennonite church's turn to plan the program, and he'd volunteered to take responsibility for it. He had an ulterior motive in doing so, but as the day neared, he realized he might have made a mistake in taking it on. There was little more than a month left until Reflection Day, and he hadn't even met with the kids yet. The thought made him groan out loud. He was not looking forward to putting together a program for an event he detested—the forced remembrance of an ancient tragedy. For Rachel's sake, he hoped she would be gone by then.

There was a terrible snag in Reflection's makeup, he thought. A fatal flaw. The town simply couldn't let go of the past. He knew people who couldn't drive by Spring Willow Elementary without remembering. He knew people who still heard the sobbing, the keening that had filled the school yard that long-ago September morning.

One of the kids in the youth group had asked him if he knew Rachel. Her mother had said she'd seen Rachel in town, “walking around like she belongs here.”

“She
does
belong here,” he'd replied. “This is her hometown, just like it's yours.”

“Most people really don't want her here, though,” the girl had said.

I do
, he'd thought. People had blown Rachel's role in what happened way out of proportion, he told the girl. Although he'd always wondered about that himself. If he'd had a child in Rachel's classroom that day, he wasn't certain he could have forgiven her, either. When Jason was in the second grade, he'd thought about it almost daily. What would it be like to send your child off to school in the morning and never be able to see him or touch him again? Would he hold the teacher responsible? Yes, he probably would.