Rachel sat back in the chair. She looked tired and defeated.
"Yes," she said. "I think I finally do."
–40–
Michael worked in his office on Wednesday morning, barely able to concentrate. There were too many interfering thoughts vying for his attention, too much looming over him. To begin with, Drew was due back the following night. What would he say to him? And what would he say to Katy the next time he spoke to her? He was not looking forward to either of those conversations. He would have to think them through carefully.
And in less than a week the board would put the Hostetter project to its final, inevitable vote, and next Friday morning the bulldozers would begin leveling the woods surrounding Spring Willow Pond. All the while Helen held the solution in her stubborn hands. He would have to talk to her tonight, plead with her to relinquish that music.
He was thinking about what words he would use to convince her when his phone rang.
"Michael Stoltz," he said into the receiver.
"Hi." It was Katy.
He closed his eyes at the sound of her voice. So much for careful preparation.
"Hi, Katy." He was tempted to ask her if she'd had a nice little vacation. No. He wouldn't play games with her. Yet he didn’t feel ready to blurt out all he knew.
"Michael," she said, and he was surprised by the rasp of tears in her voice. "I'm going to come home early."
Come home early? He sat up straight. "You sound upset," he said.
"I need to see you. I miss you and Jace. I think I'm… I'm just not doing very well."
He felt a stab of worry. His tough, armor-coated wife didn’t talk this way. "Katy," he said, "I know about you and Drew."
Several seconds of silence filled the line. "I…What do you mean?" she asked finally.
"I mean, I know he's been over there. I know you two have been together. I know you were seeing him before you left, although I don't know how long it was going on. And I know you're pregnant."
She was crying. "I'm sorry, Michael. I've made a mess out of things. I can't believe what I've done. How did you…I didn't ever want you to know. To be hurt by it. I wanted it to be between me and God."
He had to work to keep his voice calm and controlled. "How could I not be hurt by it, Katy? Drew was pretending to be my best friend. He pretended to care about stopping the Hostetters."
"I think he was sincere about that. He—"
"Oh, Katy, dream on! Drew's a con artist. A manipulator."
She said nothing.
He picked up a paper clip and began twisting it out of shape with his fingers. "How serious is it?" he asked. He wanted it to be serious.
"It's not," she said. "It never was, and it's over. Completely over. I was crazy. I didn't know what I was doing."
It was his turn to remain quiet. None of the responses he could think of would be charitable. He held the phone between his ear and shoulder, using both hands to straighten the paper clip into a long, kinked piece of wire.
"He told me Rachel Huber's still there," Katy said.
"Yes."
"He said you're seeing her."
"We're old friends, you know that."
The tears again. "Are you sleeping with her?" Her voice cracked on the last word.
He dropped the paper clip into the wastebasket under his desk. "Let's not talk about this over the phone," he said.
"Oh, Michael."
He shut his eyes.
"I'm coming home. In a week, I hope. As soon as I can get out of here."
"Katy…how far along are you?"
"I'm not pregnant."
"I heard you were."
"Who told you that?"
"Doesn't matter."
She hesitated a moment. "I was," she said.
"You had an abortion?" He would believe anything of her at this point.
"Miscarriage."
He leaned his elbows on the desk. "I don't know what to say. Do I say I'm sorry? I don't know the rules of etiquette for this sort of situation." He heard the sarcasm in his voice and was annoyed with himself for it.
"I don't blame you," she said. "I know I've made a terrible mistake, Michael. But I need you. And I love you. Please remember that. I'll be home in a few days, and I'll make it up to you. We can start over. See a counselor. I'll do anything. And please tell Jace I love him, all right?"
"Katy…be safe," he said. "Be careful."
He felt sick when he hung up the phone. He sat quietly for a few minutes, then left his office and walked upstairs to the sanctuary, where he sat down in one of the pews to wait for the comfort of his church, the comfort of prayer, to wash over him. But comfort was elusive this morning. It had been elusive for a while.
Prayer used to fill him with peace, no matter how difficult the trials he was facing. Prayer calmed him, gave him direction. The choices in his faith, while not always easy or simple, were clear: a Mennonite should seek to emulate the life of Christ. He'd been doing a poor job of that lately, and his praying this morning seemed hollow and hypocritical. He could muster no remorse for his sin. He could muster no love for his enemy.
So Katy wanted to save their marriage. He had never heard her sound so full of pain and remorse. Never so vulnerable, and his heart ached for her. It had been easy to put her feelings aside when she seemed to have none. This morning, though, her needs and fears were so near the surface, so thoroughly human, that he couldn’t turn his back on them. Was he meant to sacrifice his happiness for the sake of his wife and son? For the sake of his congregation? Or did one man have the right to set his needs above those of so many others?
* * *
Rachel met him outside when he arrived at Helen's that night.
"We need to talk before you come in," she said, grabbing his arm and leading him toward the woods. He glanced back at the house, wondering what was going on inside. What had occurred that put the urgency in Rachel's hand on his arm, the red in her eyes?
He let her lead him toward the woods without a word, and only when they were in the shelter of the forest did she loosen her grip on him.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"Can we sit up there?" She pointed toward the floor of the old tree house, and he nodded.
He followed her up the ladder and took his seat next to her, legs hanging over the side of the platform.
"Oh, Michael," she said. "I don't know where to begin. I guess with the cipher."
"The cipher?"
"Yes." She proceeded to tell him about Chris unearthing an encoded message in Reflections, and Michael couldn’t mask his shock.
"No," he said. "Helen? You're saying that Helen wrote all that music?"
"Yes." She explained how Helen and Peter had joined together in their lifelong duplicity, and Michael shook his head.
"So this is why she doesn't want the music to go to that Speicer guy? He'll crack the code, and then everyone will know?"
"Yes, but that's only part of it." She told him about the rape, and about Peter marrying Helen and raising her son as his own. She told him about Helen and Hans, and he found the story unbearable in its inevitable conclusion. He listened to every word without interruption. Rachel had tears in her eyes by the time she had finished.
"So…" Michael said, "the pianist we saw with the symphony in Washington was once Helen's lover?"
"Yes," Rachel said. "She hadn't seen him in over forty years."
He shook his head. "No wonder she was so upset that night." He looked up at the dark canopy of the old oak above them. "But I still think it's time she got her due. I think she–"
"No," Rachel interrupted him. "I understand completely how she feels. It would be like me bringing public disgrace to Phil's memory after all the things he did for me."
He closed his eyes and tried unsuccessfully to put himself in Helen's place. Then he sighed. "All right," he said. "I have to let go of this. I have to accept that the development's going to happen and move on."
"She equates us—you and me—
with her and Hans," Rachel said. "Star-crossed lovers. That's why she wants us to be together so badly. It's as though she can live out what she wanted to do through me. My poor grandmother. It would be as if you and I made a firm decision to be together and then Katy begged you to take her back."
He couldn't speak. He put his arms around her and buried his head in the hollow between her throat and shoulder.
"Michael?" There was concern in her voice, and something else. Trepidation?
"Katy called this morning," he said.
"Oh."
He drew away from her and looked into her eyes. They had not lost their redness from telling him Helen's story. "She's coming home early," he said. "Next week. She says it's over with Drew. She was very upset and contrite. She wants to see a counselor with me. Make our marriage work."
Rachel studied his face for a moment before looking away from him, and he suddenly felt guilty for having begged her to remain in Reflection when she'd wanted to return home.
Rachel reached out to the tree branch in front of them and broke off a twig. "And what do you want?" she asked.
"I want to do what's right," he said. "I just don't know what that is anymore."
She ran the twig slowly across the back of his hand. "And I want you to do what's right, too," she said softly. "My only fear is that what's right for you might not be right for me."
He nodded. His fear was the same.
He pulled her close again, knowing that, for now, all they could do was hold each other. There was nothing else to say.
* * *
Michael sat in his car in front of Drew's house at ten o'clock the following night. Drew had told him he'd be getting in—supposedly from California—around nine, and Michael didn't know if that was the time of his arrival at the airport or the time he expected to be home. So he'd been waiting for over an hour by the time Drew's car finally appeared on the street. Drew didn’t seem to notice him as he pulled into the driveway. Michael got out of his car and walked up the driveway to meet him.
Drew got out of his own car and opened the trunk. He looked up when he heard the crunch of Michael's shoes on the gravel driveway, and the light from the street lamp caught the surprise in his face. He looked away quickly, back to the trunk, reaching for one of his suitcases.
"Hey, Michael. Didn't expect to see you here." He set the suitcase on the ground. "You all set for the hearing?"
"I know you've been with Katy," Michael said.
Drew opened his mouth as if to protest, then seemed to think better of it. "How did you find out?"
"Doesn't matter. But I'm very angry. You betrayed me. I trusted you completely."
"Look." He shut the trunk. "You should know some things. First of all, it's over with Katy and me."
He wanted to ask exactly how long it had gone on. What did it matter, though? Did he really want to know?
"She was going through some sort of midlife thing," Drew continued. "She was not very happy with herself, or with you, or with her life in general. She needed something you weren't giving her."
Michael winced, fearing there was truth in that accusation. He'd failed Katy somehow.
"Being over there gave her time to think things through, and she came to the conclusion that she doesn't want to screw up her marriage. So it's over. And I know you've had some complaints about her in the past, but I think now she'll do anything to make things work with you."
"Sounds like you were using her. Taking advantage of her unhappiness, her weakness."
"Oh, please." Drew smirked. "We were using each other. We were grown-ups. We knew what we were doing."
"Were you sleeping with Ursula, too?" Michael asked.
"Not for a while. Not since I've been seeing Katy."
Michael kept a lock on his surprise. He hadn't been serious with that question.
"Do you have a conscience, Drew?"
Drew sighed. "Certainly not as refined and perfected as yours. You're so honorable all the time, aren't you? It's made me sick. It's been so…refreshing to hear you talk about wanting to get inside Rachel Huber's jeans. So refreshing to hear you sound like a flesh-and-blood man instead of some sort of saint. But you know"—Drew pointed a finger in Michael's face—"I was getting pretty sick of listening to you talk about how hung up you are on the…fucking bitch who's responsible for taking my son's life. Did you ever think about that? What that felt like to me, hearing you go on about what a wonderful person she is?"
Michael felt himself color, embarrassed that he'd exposed so much of his interior to a man who had been mocking him—hating him, it seemed—behind his back. He could imagine all in a flash the conversations Drew had had with Ursula about him and Rachel, and he suddenly felt sorry for his onetime friend. How terrible to have no clear sense of right and wrong, of good and evil.
"I don't think we have any more to say to each other," Michael said. He began backing away from the car. "I hope someday you can find a way to be happy without harming other people at the same time."
Drew's mouth curved into a sneer. "You self-righteous bastard," he said.
Michael turned and walked down the driveway. Maybe Drew was lucky to have no conscience. He felt a little envious. He knew only too well the difference between right and wrong. It was choosing between them that was the hard part.
–41–
"You want to do what?" Celine Humphrey's reaction to Rachel's proposal was so startled and disbelieving that Rachel nearly laughed into the phone.
"I want to go to Zaire as a Mennonite volunteer," she repeated. "My background in Rwanda with the Peace Corps should be a plus. I'm nearly fluent in French, and my Kinyarwanda should come back to me. I know the people. I understand the culture." She'd made up her mind the night before to see whether she could volunteer, and an odd peace had settled over her ever since making that decision.
"Well, you are a surprise, Rachel," Celine said.
"Am I?" Rachel asked the question rhetorically. She worried that Celine, whose dislike for her was obvious, might try to stand in her way.
"Yes, indeed you are, and I don't pretend to understand you," the elder said. "But I do believe your interest in helping out in the refugee camps is sincere. It will be tough on such short notice, but I'll do all I can to help you through the screening. You'll have to get your medical clearance quickly, though, and a hideous number of inoculations."
"That's fine." Rachel felt relieved.
"All right," Celine said. "I'll get right to work on it, then. And God bless you, Rachel."
It was Rachel's turn to be startled. "Thank you," she said, and she hung up the phone with a smile.
* * *
She took Chris to the airport the following day, and she was pleased when Gram agreed to come along for the ride. She didn’t feel comfortable leaving her alone. Gram seemed to have aged a year in the past few days, ever since telling Rachel the truth about her marriage and the sad ending to her relationship with Karl Speicer. Apparently there had been nothing cleansing, nothing freeing in that telling. Instead, Gram seemed weighed down by the memories. She leaned on Rachel, clung to her, and Rachel worried that her grandmother was sinking into the sort of depression she'd experienced after cutting Hans from her life.
She worried, too, about how her grandmother would react to her decision to go to Zaire. She'd already spoken to Chris about it, and although he'd initially expressed surprised concern, he encouraged her to go. She would talk to Gram about it on the way back from the airport. And then she would have to tell Michael.
Chris leaned forward from the backseat as Rachel approached the crest of Winter Hill. "I want to see the church reflected in the pond one last time," he said.
They reached the crest of the hill, but they couldn’t see the pond at all.
"Something's in the way," Rachel said. She squinted into the distance. Their view was blocked by something yellow, big, and bulky, like a trailer or a Dumpster.
It wasn't until they reached the center of town that they c
ould make out the obstacles to their view: bulldozers, backhoes, and trucks littered the lawn around the western end of the pond, poised and ready for their attack on the forest.
"I don't believe it," Chris said with the naiveté of someone young enough to still trust in the system. "How can they be here already? The vote's not till Tuesday night."
"It's a fait accompli," Rachel said. "The Hostetters obviously have no doubt how the vote's going to go."
"That's disgusting." Chris slouched down in the seat, and Rachel saw his look of dismay in her rearview mirror.
"I feel sorry for Michael," Chris said. "His church shouldn't have to sit in the middle of a bunch of office buildings."
Rachel wished Chris would stop talking about the development. She glanced at Gram, whose eyes were on the small militia surrounding the pond but whose face remained impassive. Rachel gently squeezed the older woman's hand. She didn't want her grandmother to feel responsible for this. She didn't want Gram to think she blamed her.
She felt sorry for Michael, too. Not only because of what was about to happen to the setting for his church but for the dilemma he was in, the crisis he was facing in his family and his faith. It was a crisis in which she played too great a role.
She was going to lose him, one more time. She'd heard it in his voice when they'd sat in the tree house the other day. He wanted to do the right thing. She knew what that was. They both did.
The road blurred in front of her, and she quickly shifted her thoughts to other things. She didn’t want to cry with Chris and Gram in the car.
"Are you excited about your gig tonight?" she asked her son.
"Yeah, sort of," Chris said. "The band needs a lot of work, though."
It was the first negative thing she'd heard him say about the band.
"And Mom?" he asked. "I was wondering if I could call the piano tuner and have her come out?"