Not what he needs, she reminded herself. Tonight she would simply shield him, comfort him. She reached her arms up toward him, and he smiled as he got into the bed next to her.
He turned off the lamp on the night table and pulled her close. Her head was on his shoulder; she could feel the smoothness of his skin against her cheek. They lay in a comfortable silence for many minutes before either of them spoke.
"I'm sorry, Michael," she said finally.
"I feel responsible for letting him into the fight against the Hostetter project. People warned me against him, but I was so convinced he was…honorable. I'm worried now that he's hurt us badly."
"You're a trusting person. I love that in you."
"It's going to be very difficult to forgive him."
How could he possibly? "And what about Katy?" she asked. He had barely mentioned her role in all of this.
"Katy I can forgive with relative ease," he said.
"Why?" she asked.
"How can I be angry with her? She's only doing what I wish I were doing. What I've been doing in my head since the day you arrived."
"But you didn't do it."
"Right. She has more guts than I do. I can't blame Katy for figuring out that our marriage was an empty shell long before I did."
"Whew," she said. "I'm not sure I could be so understanding."
He stroked her hair, rested his palm against her cheek. "Thank God you're still here," he said. "I need you."
"You were upset with me last night, though. After Jace got beat up. I figured things had finally gotten to the point where I was more trouble than I was worth. And I would have understood that completely."
"No," he said quickly. "Just then I was feeling very protective of my son. But I need your friendship. He'll have to accept that."
She ran her hand lightly down the length of his back, then pulled herself closer to him. "It's funny," she said. "This is so comfortable. I feel as though we've been together like this a million times before."
"I know."
Sleep was creeping into his voice, and she held him as he drifted off, knowing she would sleep very little herself. She didn't want to. She wanted to feel him next to her all night long.
She must have dozed off toward morning, because she felt herself rising from sleep as Michael stroked her face with his fingers. For a long time she didn't open her eyes, didn't move. She didn't want to interrupt the delicious touch of his fingertips on her cheeks and chin, forehead and eyelids. When she finally did open her eyes, he was smiling at her, his face barely visible in the flimsy dawn light filtering through the curtains. She smiled back, and he leaned down to kiss her, the kiss gentle but insistent and deep. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and her body rose toward his, searching for more.
"Rache," he whispered, his voice husky. He sat back on his heels, motioning to her to sit up, and when she did, he drew off her shirt, then gently pressed her shoulders toward the bed again. But he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he sat next to her, the sheet drawn down to her hips, and stroked the tips of his fingers over her body. If it had been any other man, she would have pulled the sheet up, squirming with discomfort under his scrutiny. But she had no doubt that what she saw in Michael's eyes was love, and she closed her own eyes and let him touch her, let him make love to her in that slow, tantalizing fashion.
His hands grazed the sides of her breasts until she wanted more. He traced languid circles around her nipples with his tongue, his breath warm against her skin. She pulled him to her, but he extracted himself from her embrace to stand up and take off his shorts. When she reached for him again, it was with real hunger.
So long, she thought, sinking her fingers into his hair. So long since anyone had made love to her. He knelt between her legs and stretched over her, the touch of his skin against hers a temptation. Slowly, he kissed her lips, her throat, her belly. She gripped the pillow behind her head and raised her hips to him. She felt the soft touch of his mouth and tongue on the inside of her thighs, and she moaned as he turned his head to ease her craving.
The world behind her eyelids glowed fiery red, and she arched her back, clutching the edges of the pillow until suddenly he was inside her—or very nearly so, his movements teasing and shallow until she lifted herself up against him, begging for more. She thought he laughed as he rolled onto his back, taking her with him, and she pressed her greedy hips down on him, over and over and over again until her body bucked with the force of her orgasm. He didn't let her stop though. He held her tightly against him, moving with her until he came himself, with a cry and a shudder. Only then did she think of her grandmother sleeping on the other side of the wall. Could she hear them? Probably not. If Gram had heard, she would have applauded.
She leaned down to kiss him. They were both breathing hard, a thin wash of perspiration between their bodies, and although she tried to hold them back, her tears came. She let her body sink onto his as she wept against his shoulder.
"It's all right," he said, turning his head to kiss her eyes.
It was another minute before she rolled onto her side, and they lay still together, arms entwined, his lips soft against her forehead.
When he spoke again, his voice was light. "What is that suitcase doing by the door?" he asked.
She opened her eyes to see the packed suitcase waiting by the bedroom door. "I don't remember." It seemed like weeks since she had packed it.
He suddenly drew in a breath and tightened his grip on her. "I can't lose you again, Rachel," he said. "I won't."
She tried not to think of the impossibilities laid out in front of them. "I'm afraid I come with a very high price tag," she said.
"I'll pay for quality."
She stroked her hand across his chest with a sigh. "I just wish…" She didn't know where to begin. She wished that he were not a Mennonite minister, that he were not married, that Jason knew her and adored her, that the town forgave her. "I wish—"
"I know," he said, and she knew that he understood completely.
–34–
That morning they took a leisurely walk through the woods surrounding the house. Rachel felt safe being with him within the confines of her grandmother's ten acres. They found the tree house Gram and Hans had built. It was little more than a platform now, but they leaned a ladder against it and sat beneath the canopy of leaves while Rachel told Michael the story of her grandmother's lost love.
When they returned from the walk, they loaded their bicycles onto Rachel's car and drove to Gettysburg, where they biked incognito along the roads surrounding the battlefields, stopping occasionally to munch on fruit and talk.
They agreed to put off any decisions, to live one day at a time for as long as they could. That was fine. Rachel feared that any decisions they might come to would put an end to their being together at all. Neither of them wanted to talk about the future or to acknowledge the fact that, more than ever, they feared being seen together in public. Although everything had changed between them, nothing had changed in the eyes of Reflection.
Michael went home in the late afternoon, and Rachel, bravely, went to the church to help sort through the donated clothes and blankets scheduled to be sent to the refugee camps. Celine was there, along with two other women. The four of them worked in one of the rooms in the basement, sorting the items on long tables. Rachel worked quietly, listening to the women talk among themselves. They had little to say to her. One of the women talked about her college-aged son, and Rachel considered telling them that Chris was arriving the following day, but they didn’t seem interested in including her in their conversation, and she kept her thoughts to herself.
Celine talked about the small camps the Mennonites were operating in Zaire. The volunteers were building latrines and shelters, she said, and providing both physical and emotional support. A few volunteers were escorting people back into Rwanda. Rachel could picture the scene vividly, the people and the need. But she couldn't bring herself to share the images with the other wome
n in the room. She was aware of her guilt. She had slept with their minister. She was no longer innocent.
Michael returned to Gram's house for a few hours that night, but he was clear that he didn't want to make love. "I have to deliver a sermon in the morning," he said, by way of explanation. He and Rachel were sitting on the porch swing, sipping tall glasses of iced tea. "I'm going to talk about forgiveness again, even though I addressed that topic a few weeks ago. This time it's for me, though. I'll be preaching to myself as much as to anyone."
She took a few sips from her tea before responding. "You mean, you feel as though you need to forgive yourself for what you've done?" she asked.
"What? Oh, no." He slipped an arm around her. "I know that what you and I did would be considered a grievous offense in the eyes of my congregation, and I'm still certainly…conflicted about us. But I'm through with the guilt. I have nothing to forgive myself for."
The words relieved her. "So you're talking about your desire to forgive Katy and Drew."
"My need to forgive them," he said. "Forgiveness is the only way to put an end to suffering. It's not the same as condoning what they did. It's not a denial that something hurtful occurred. But it's a way to be done with it, once and for all."
She knew he was talking about Katy and Drew, but she was thinking of herself and Reflection.
"It's freeing for all concerned," she said.
"Exactly." He lifted her chin with the tips of his fingers and kissed her, his lips cool from the tea. "And now I've got to get home to my son."
* * *
Chris was the first passenger off the plane at the Harrisburg airport and Rachel couldn’t get her arms around him fast enough. His hug was brief but enthusiastic.
"You're getting skinny," he said as he let go of her.
"Yeah, well, I've been working on it," she said, pleased.
He had a carry-on suitcase, his laptop computer, and an electronic keyboard. "I'm traveling light," he said. "I hate waiting around for luggage." He sounded as though he traveled often, and although she knew that wasn't so, his words added to her sense of him as someone she no longer really knew. It had been only six weeks since she'd seen him, but the distance she felt from him these days had little to do with time or geography.
She wanted to get reacquainted with her son before sharing him with anyone else, and so she'd told Gram she planned to take him out to dinner on their way home from the airport. Excited though Gram was to meet her great-grandson, she supported Rachel's idea. Gram had been very agreeable this weekend, ever since she'd spotted Michael emerging from Rachel's bedroom on Saturday morning.
Rachel carried the computer in its soft-sided case as they walked toward the exit of the airport and out to the car. They said little, and she wondered how she was going to make Chris understand all that was going on in her life.
"So, this is the Pennsylvania Dutch country," Chris said as they began driving through the patchwork of farms.
"Is it like you imagined?"
"I feel like I've been here, you've got so many picture books around the house."
She did. Every time she saw another coffee-table book containing pictures of this part off the world, she bought it.
"Oh, cool!" Chris's eyes widened as he spotted a horse and buggy on the road ahead of them, and Rachel made a conscious effort to forgive his tourist-like gawking.
"Remember, this is their home and you're a visitor, Chris. They just want to go on about their business,"
"I know that." He sounded annoyed, and rightfully so. She had told him about the Amish, read him stories from the time he was very small. Chris was a stranger to Reflection but not to the ways of its people.
"Tell me about your summer," she said, carefully passing the buggy. To his credit, Chris didn’t even turn his head to look at the driver.
"It's been the best summer of my life," he said. He launched into a description of the band, how good they'd gotten, how successful their gigs had been. They had a female vocalist now, and one of the guys was writing some music of his own. They'd be playing one of the new songs for the first time at a party when he got back.
It was as if she'd unleashed his tongue, and she knew he could talk about the band all day if she were willing to listen. Her arms stiffened on the steering wheel.
"Look, Mom—" He suddenly interrupted his own chatter. "I was serious about not going back to school. I know you've been hoping I'd change my mind, but it's definite. I mean, registration for classes is next week, and I'm not going."
She opened her mouth, but he rushed ahead to block her attack. "I'm learning so much more about music by playing it with the band. Maybe I'll go back someday. Probably I will, so don't freak out. But right now, this is what I really want to do. And I can make some money at it. It's not like I'm just wasting time."
Rachel couldn't speak. She had the terrible and overwhelming feeling that his life was over, that he was about to ruin it. "We can talk more about it over the next few days," she said.
"Well, we can talk about it, but it's not going to change my mind," he said.
They were quiet as they drove. Rachel's head filled with images of Helen's house, of the inescapable music, the pianos, the books about composers. Chris would have a week in that house. A smile formed on her lips and she tried to keep it in check.
Turning onto Farmhouse Road, she wondered how much of a tour to give Chris on his first day in town—and how much she should tell him. She decided to begin with Winter Hill to show him the breathtaking, almost aerial view of Reflection.
Once she'd reached the peak of the hill, Rachel pulled the car to the side of the road, as she had done on her own nearly six weeks earlier.
"Awesome!" Chris said as they got out of the car.
Rachel smiled. He'd always had a sense of wonder, an appreciation of everything. She'd forgotten that about him. She and Phil had taken his scout troop to the Grand Canyon when he was ten, and while the other boys roughhoused and spit pieces of hot dogs at one another and told dirty jokes, Chris had sat awestruck on the edge of the canyon by himself for over an hour. She'd talked to Phil about it, a little worried that he was not like other kids.
"That's right, he's not," Phil had said. "He's extremely special."
She saw a shadow of that same awe in her son now, and she stepped next to him on the crest of the hill.
"This is the view that inspired your great-grandfather to write Patchwork," she said.
"I can believe it," he said. "It's like this incredible example of what God and man can do when they work together, you know?"
She put her hand on his back. She had never heard Chris mention God before; he'd grown up in a rather God-deprived home. But his description of the scene in front of them was perfect.
She pointed toward Huber Pond, where the reflection of the Mennonite church lay still and clear in the water. "There's probably going to be a change soon, though," she said. She told him about the proposed development of the land adjacent to the pond. "There's going to be a hearing tomorrow night, and we're hoping a lot of people will come to make their wishes known. It may be too little too late to do any good, though."
Chris shook his head as though personally wounded by the thought of harming that patch of green. "Greed," he said. "People don't think, sometimes. They just go after the money."
They drove through town, following the same route she had taken when she'd first arrived. She showed him the triplex where she and Luke and Michael had grown up and the statue of Peter Huber, which he said gave him goose bumps. She loved this boy. This young man. She wished he were not so intent on throwing his future away.
She had planned to take Chris to a restaurant outside of Reflection for dinner, but he spotted the Brahms Cafe on their drive through town, and she knew they were doomed. Inside the cafe, they were seated in the same booth she and Michael had shared. Although there were only a few vegetarian items, it took Chris a long time to decide what to order, because he had to read the descript
ions of all the entrees to see how they related to the composers after which they were named.
While he was studying the menu, Rachel said, "Your great-grandmother loves this game where I play a few notes from a classical piece on the CD player and then she guesses what it is and who wrote it. You could probably give her a run for her money."
Chris smiled at her. "You know, I still love classical music, Mom. Don't get scared or anything that I'm gonna limit myself. I love the music I'm playing with the band, but I know where my roots are."
She nodded. She wouldn't push him. She just might push him away from the music he was meant to study.
Chris decided on the Puccini Pasta; Rachel, the Chicken Verdi. They closed their menus and waited for the waitress to take their order, but the woman—the same one who had waited on her and Michael—steadfastly walked past their table, looking straight ahead as if they weren't there. Rachel had no doubt that she was the cause of the poor service. The waitress tossed her blond ponytail and began taking the order of a table of diners who had arrived after them.
"We were here before them," Chris said to Rachel. "She acts like she can't even see us." He raised his hand when the waitress walked away from the newcomers' table. "Excuse me?" he said. "We've been waiting a long time to give our order."
The waitress wore a sullen expression as she walked toward their table. She said nothing as they gave her their orders, nothing as she turned and headed toward the kitchen.
"I thought you said this part of the country was so friendly," Chris said, too loudly. "She's a bitch."