She closed her eyes to let his touch fill her up. "Yeah." She spoke quietly. "I think you did."
"When you get back, I'll have my own place, and we can be freer."
She loved the idea. "That will give me something to look forward to," she said, then she snuggled closer to him. "I already miss you." She did, but she had no regrets over her decision to leave. Being apart from Michael didn't scare her at all. Twenty-one years and thousands of miles had done nothing to diminish their bond. Time and distance couldn’t harm it now, either.
"How do you say 'soul mates' in Kinyarwanda?" she asked.
Michael stared at the ceiling of the porch. It took him a minute to respond. "Inshuti?" he suggested.
"Hmm." She was not certain of the translation, but the word sounded soft and satisfying to her ears. "Inshuti," she said, and she settled easily into the comfort of his arms.
Epilogue
Eight Months Later
The curtain-call bells were ringing as Helen and Rachel left Hans's dressing room in the Kennedy Center. Helen slipped her arm through her granddaughter's for the walk down the corridor toward the concert hall. "He has such focus," she said to Rachel. "Couldn't you see him pulling in while we were talking? Withdrawing from us as he's preparing to perform? I remember seeing him do that any number of times in the old days."
"Yes," Rachel agreed. "He looked as if he was trying to hold in his energy until he gets onstage."
Helen smiled to herself. It was that energy, that unbridled, out-of- control side of Hans that had always attracted her, that attracted her still.
They turned to walk through the concert hall door to the right of the stage.
The orchestra was tuning up, the chaotic frenzy of sound exciting to Helen's ears.
"Michael's already there." Rachel nodded toward the front row, and they walked toward him to take their seats. Michael hadn't joined them in Hans's dressing room because he wanted to call Jason before the concert. Helen knew he didn't like to let a day go by without some contact with his son.
It was May sixth, the debut performance of the slightly doctored cadenza for Reflections. She and Hans had spent several joy-filled months over the winter secluded in her house, collaborating on a new version of the third movement. They tried to remain true to Peter's vision of the piece as a whole, and they were able to create new variations on the theme from parts of the cipher so that, at least symbolically, the message Peter had embedded in the music would remain.
She'd talked to Hans about the anguish she'd experienced in letting the world know the truth about Peter.
"Don't you see?" Hans had responded. "Peter wanted all of this to happen. He knew the addendum to his will would force you to see me. He was granting us permission to finally be together."
It was an aspect of Peter's intentions she had not considered. She wasn't certain Hans's interpretation was accurate, but the thought comforted her all the same.
Hans had been most fascinated by the music Helen had written since Peter's death, music she had created and tucked away. She'd had no outlet for it; Peter Huber could hardly have composed from the grave. But Hans was thrilled by the music, and he was making it his own. He was planning to play a couple of those compositions that evening as encores.
Michael leaned forward from his seat. "Feeling a little better than the last time we were here, Helen?" he asked.
"Lord, yes." She felt fine, but she was still a little worried about Michael. He'd been depressed the past few months as the loss of his ministry caught up with him. But things were turning around for him now, and she felt confident he would be all right. Rachel didn't seem concerned in the least.
"He just needs to feel worthwhile again," Rachel had said to her. "Everything will fall into place come September."
She was probably right. Only the day before, Michael had signed a contract to begin teaching theology at the college in Elizabethtown in the fall, and he was joining a pastoral-counseling practice in a few weeks. Rachel would be teaching learning-disabled kids in Lancaster come September, and the two of them would be married in October, once Michael's divorce was final. They would also be the godparents of Lily and Ian Jackson's baby, due in August. And they were building a house on Helen's land, on the other side of the woods from her house.
Michael had been all set to join Rachel in Zaire in January. He'd had his inoculations and was already packed when flooding hit California, and he knew the need was more urgent there. So off he went to Los Angeles with other Mennonite volunteers. Helen knew how anxious he had been to see Rachel, and she admired him immensely for that personal sacrifice. She wrote as much to Rachel. I could never sacrifice my own desires for others in that way, she'd written, and Rachel had written back, You're joking, right?
She supposed she had sacrificed a good deal over the years, but there was no longer any need to. She had all she could ever want now. Hans had arrived and never left, except for a few visits to his wife before Winona's death in early October. He and Helen had been married on Christmas Day. Rachel teasingly complained that they should have waited until her return in February so she could have attended the wedding.
"Sorry," Hans had said. "We're too old for a long engagement."
He'd hired someone to rebuild the tree house and surprised Helen with it as a wedding gift. He'd had two rocking chairs set inside the screened-in structure, and a long, curved staircase now led up to the door. Helen knew that the day would come when neither she nor Hans could get up those stairs, but for now it was one of their favorite places to sit and talk.
The conductor walked onto the stage, and the audience applauded. He smiled at his orchestra, then looked down at Helen with a nod before holding his hand out to welcome the pianist.
Hans strode across the stage with that familiar, commanding presence. He dove right into playing the dramatic opening passage of Reflections, and Helen played along with him in her mind.
Nearly an hour had passed by the time Hans and the orchestra had finished the piece, and the audience was quick to give the musicians a standing ovation. The conductor asked Helen to rise, and the applause thundered around her as she waved to the crowd. It was the first time she was being acknowledged as something more than the wife of an important man, she thought. The experience was surprisingly gratifying.
Hans joined them in the foyer during the intermission. "I think we should all enjoy a glass of champagne out on the terrace," he said.
Michael got their champagne—and his club soda—and they headed for the doors to the terrace. Only then did Helen notice the lightning. It flashed against the windows, and she had one moment of panic before she remembered the opine and Saint-John's-wort in her beaded handbag. She'd clipped fresh sprigs just that morning and wrapped them in plastic to bring with her on the trip. Now she clutched the handbag close to her side as she accompanied her husband through the doors.
The broad terrace stretched the entire length of the Kennedy Center, high above the Potomac River. It was not yet raining, but the air was charged with the approaching storm. Thunder grumbled in the distance, rising up in waves, and lightning turned the water of the Potomac silver. Helen felt her breathing sharpen, quicken, and she consciously worked to slow it down. Her palm was perspiring where it pressed against the handbag.
"I want to walk out to the edge," she said to Hans.
He looked surprised for only a second before nodding and taking her elbow, guiding her toward the far side of the terrace. The lights from a plane moved toward them through the darkness before slipping over their heads, and to their right Georgetown glittered in the sky and the river.
"All right, dear?" Hans asked, and she nodded, drawing in a few long, calming breaths.
Rachel and Michael stood a short distance away from them. Rachel pointed toward Georgetown, and Michael put his head back and laughed, the sound carrying like an echo above the river. Rachel glanced over at them and said something to Michael before walking toward Helen and Hans.
"
Are you all right out here, Gram?" she asked. "Would you rather be inside?"
"I'm absolutely fine," Helen said with an assurance she was beginning to feel in her bones.
Rachel smiled at her. "Good for you," she said. She walked back to Michael and took his arm, and Helen watched with a sense of contentment as the younger couple began to stroll down the terrace.
The lightning grew fiercer, surrounding her and Hans with arrhythmic splashes of white light, and the thunder settled into a constant, deep-throated rumbling. Helen lifted her face to the sky as the first tentative raindrops fell. As if he knew she needed to take this fearless stand against the storm, Hans waited quietly at her side.,
"It's a beautiful storm," Helen said, and she meant it. Her love of treacherous weather was being reborn inside her. The river suddenly lit up like a long, sinewy pool of mercury. "Look at that!" she exclaimed with childish delight, and Hans chuckled.
In the next flash of lightning, the buildings and spires of Georgetown were abruptly altered, washed in silver, transformed into something entirely new—the way the lightning had transformed her, transformed all of them.
It was raining harder. "We should go in, Helen," Hans said. "I need to get backstage. Can you tear yourself away?"
She nodded, reluctantly turning her back on the storm to walk with him across the terrace. She was a new woman as she crossed the grand foyer, calm and brave and invulnerable as she listened to her husband play a piece she'd written only a year ago. And it wasn't until the end of the piece, when she reached into her handbag for a tissue to blot her tears, that she discovered something she had probably known all along: she had left her herbs at home.
Acknowledgements
I'm grateful to the following people for sharing their expertise and ideas with me during the writing of Reflection:
April Adamson, Judy Harrison, David Heagy, Mary Kirk, Don Rebsch, Ed Reed, Joann Scanlon, Cindy Schacte, and Suzanne Schmidt, along with the Mount Vernon Writers' Group and my teatime colleagues, the Online Book Group. Also, I'm forever grateful to the young couple I met in the parking lot of Mennonite church in the Pennsylvania Dutch country, who not only invited me to sit with them during the service but who read this manuscript with open minds and encouragement.
Other Books by Diane Chamberlain
All of my in-print books are available as both print books and e-books for every type of e-reader and I am gradually making my backlist available as well. You can keep up with availability on my website, where I maintain a printable booklist on the "Books" page. Visit me at:
http://www.dianechamberlain.com
http://www.dianechamberlain.com/blog
In Print Titles
(also available as e-books)
The Shadow Wife (originally published as Cypress Point)
The Lies We Told
Secrets She Left Behind
Before the Storm
The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes
The Bay at Midnight
The Courage Tree
Summer's Child
Breaking the Silence
Keeper of the Light
Kiss River
Her Mother's Shadow
Backlist Titles
Secret Lives
The Escape Artist
Reflection
Brass Ring
Fire and Rain
Private Relations
Lovers and Strangers
Diane Chamberlain, Reflection
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