Reflection (30 page)

Rachel followed her with a sense of defeat. There was nothing more she could say. Becky was going to believe whatever she wanted to, and Rachel couldn't change it.

“You're wrong about us,” she said as they stepped outside. “I can't prove it to you, but as long as you have no proof to the contrary—and I know you can't possibly—then I wish you'd give me the benefit of the doubt.”

“I wish I could, too, Rachel.” She waved at a woman who was standing by her car. “I'll be right there,” she called, and Rachel had the sinking realization that in a few minutes Becky and the woman would be gossiping about her.

She held back as Becky caught up with her friend, then slowly headed toward her car where it was parked in front of the small brick chapel across the street. Her eyes were on the Mennonite church next door.
The last place you should go, Rachel
, she told herself.
The very last place.

She was nearly to her car when she saw the light on in Michael's basement office. With a glance over her shoulder, she turned and walked quickly toward the rear of the church. The welcome cover of darkness fell around her.

She looked through his office window. His back was to her. There were half a dozen books spread out on his desk, and he was writing something, his hand busy on a yellow legal pad.

She hesitated a moment before knocking on the glass. He looked up, and the smile came to his face so quickly that she laughed. He didn't speak, but as he rose from his desk, he nodded in the direction of the building's rear entrance.

She walked around to the basement door, and he met her there. He stood in the doorway, not inviting her in.

“Sorry.” She hugged herself. “I have no right to be here, but I'm upset and it just feels like I should be able to see you if I want to.”

“Yeah, it does,” he agreed. “What's upsetting you?”

“I just had a run-in with Becky.”

He glanced behind him, and she wondered if anyone else was around.

“Let's take a walk,” he said, stepping out into the darkness. “Come on.”

They walked toward the path around the pond, quickly, silently, and she knew they were in hiding. She felt both her body and his relax when they reached the woods.

“So,” he said, “tell me about Becky.”

She described the conversation, and he groaned. “Where is this stuff coming from? This town must be hard up for a good piece of gossip.”

“She said your marriage is the best in town.”

Michael snorted. “If mine's the best, I'd hate to see the worst.” He caught her arm and pulled her low as an overhanging branch suddenly appeared in the darkness.

“I'll call Becky,” he said. “Set her straight.”

“Don't bother on my account.” Rachel ducked to avoid another branch. “I figure my reputation can't get much worse. But maybe you should talk to her for your own sake.” She looked up at the trees and let out a sigh. “I don't know how I'm ever going to make Chris understand what's going on here,” she said. Chris had called that morning to say he could come on the twenty-eighth and stay for a week, and she was both delighted and unnerved by the thought of having her son here with her.

They were walking on the far side of the pond, where the woods surrounding the path were so thick that even at midday it would feel like evening. At eight-thirty it was very dark. Neither of them spoke, as if some hidden being might overhear them. Rachel shuddered. They were on what had been the scariest part of the path when they were kids. They couldn't be far from Marielle's cottage back here.

“I still have that key Marielle Hostetter gave me.”

Michael glanced at her. “I can't believe she gave it to you.” He reached above his head and snapped off a twig. “Let's do it,” he said.

“Do what? See if it fits her house?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, right. I wouldn't walk through these woods in broad daylight when I was an immortal teenager,” she said. “I'm not about to do it now.”

“Come on.” He nudged her arm.

She looked at him through narrowed eyes but couldn't read his face in the darkness. “Are you serious?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It's too dark. We'll get lost.”

“I have a flashlight in my office. Wait here for me, and I'll go get it.”

She darted a look over her shoulder. “I'm not waiting here,” she said. “I'm coming with you.”

They walked back to the church, and she stood in the shadows outside while he got the flashlight and a compass. They made their way back up the path in silence, and when they reached the spot where they'd turned around, Michael shined the light into the woods.

“I don't see a path,” he said, “but look here.” He pointed the light toward an area where the brush seemed thinner, newer. “I think we can get through. You game?”

“Sure.” She feigned courage.

Michael led the way, and it was slow going as he walked with the flashlight in one hand, his other arm outstretched to catch branches before they slapped him in the face. The woods were eerie and quiet, the only sound the crackling of twigs beneath their feet. It was a minute before she noticed the fireflies. They were high above them, silently blinking in the trees like pale yellow stars. Rachel stopped walking. “Look up,” she said.

Michael turned off his flashlight, and for a moment they stood still, mesmerized by the lights. “Late in the summer for them,” he said.

“I don't think I've ever seen so many in one place,” she said, then reached for the flashlight. “I'll lead for a while, if you can promise me we're going in the right direction,” she said.

He held the compass into the beam of light. “We know the cottage is east of where we started out. We'll just keep walking east. And we're on a legitimate path now, don't you think?”

He was right. It was narrow and overgrown, but there was no doubt that someone had at one time cut this path through the trees.

They plodded on in silence. From somewhere high above them, an owl hooted, sending a shiver up Rachel's arms. She stopped in the middle of the path, realizing she no longer heard Michael's steps behind her. Turning around, she saw nothing but empty forest in the beam of the flashlight.

“Michael?”

“Bat woman!” He grabbed her from behind, and she jumped in the air. She spun around to face him, annoyed she'd fallen for his old childhood stunt.

“God, don't
do
that.” She laughed.

His arms were still around her, the pressure of them light, barely there, and she rested her hands on them, flashlight dangling from her fingers. His eyes were locked with hers; there was no smile on his face, and for a moment neither of them spoke. Above them the owl hooted.

“You were wrong to come to the church tonight,” he said, “and I was wrong to open the door to you.”

“I know.” She felt the slight contraction of the muscles in his arms beneath her hands.

He lifted one hand to her cheek, and she closed her eyes at the touch of his fingers. She could remember feeling that hand on her breast long ago. She could still remember the warmth, the tenderness in his touch, and that's what she was thinking about as he pressed his lips to hers. He kissed her softly, without any of the fever that was mounting in her body.

The darkness was disorienting. She felt dizzy when he touched her lower lip with the tip of his finger, when he opened her mouth that way, then leaned forward to kiss her again, deeply this time, and she felt the hunger beginning to rise in his body as well.

He wrapped his arms around her, and she pressed her head against his shoulder, stunned by her tears. After a minute, he spoke softly in her ear. “Why is it,” he said, “that right now I feel no guilt?”

She tried to measure her own guilt and found it nearly absent. “Neither do I,” she said.

She heard his sigh, muffled against her ear. “I feel so damned human these days. Weak-willed. And the worst part is, I can't seem to pray anymore. It scares me.”

She hugged him harder. She thought he was shivering.

“You're shaking,” he said, and she realized it was her own body that was trembling.

“I just want you so badly,” she said.

He rubbed her arms as if he could somehow still her tremor. “I want you, too. You know that, don't you?”

She nodded against his chest.

“And I'm crazy to play at it when we can't have it. I'm not willing to make love to you, Rachel, when there's no hope of anything more than that.”

She was willing, though. It would be wrong. It would be the worst thing she'd ever done in her life, but right now she was willing. “I wish you weren't so strong,” she said.

He laughed, pulling away from her. “If I were strong, I wouldn't be standing here in the dark with my arms around you.”

She let go of him, and they began walking up the path again in silence.

Rachel couldn't recall ever having seen Marielle's cottage, but she sketched a quick picture of it in her imagination. A small living room, a tiny cramped kitchen, and one bedroom, the double bed miraculously made up with clean white sheets.

Damn Katy Esterhaus. Damn the Mennonite church
.

“There it is.” Michael caught her shoulder and pointed to their right.

Rachel shined the flashlight into the woods to illuminate the small, ramshackle, and thoroughly unthreatening cottage. The shutters hung askew; the shingles on the roof were in shreds. The chances of finding a clean bed inside seemed minuscule. Good.

“Incredible that she could live in this little shack all these years at the same time that she owned this valuable piece of land,” Rachel said.

They walked toward the front door. Michael tried the knob, but it was locked. Rachel slipped the key from her pocket and inserted it into the keyhole. It was an easy fit. It turned with a satisfying click.

“I don't believe it,” Michael said.

She glanced at him, shrugged, and stepped over the threshold.

Michael tried a wall switch, and a tiny living room suddenly appeared in front of them. “She didn't have the electricity turned off,” he said.

The room was cluttered with nondescript furniture, old moth-eaten blankets, and a few hundred copies of
Reader's Digest
.

“So now that we're here,” Michael asked, “what are we hoping to find?”

“The Bible, for starters,” Rachel said. She looked around her at the grimy blankets and magazines. “What a firetrap.”

Michael sat down on a hassock and began rooting through a bookshelf. “I'll start in here,” he said.

Rachel walked down a narrow hallway, past the door to the kitchen, which was as tiny and unappealing as she'd imagined it, to the small bedroom at the rear of the cottage. There was indeed a double bed, stripped, the striped ticking of the mattress yellowed and stained.

A wooden cross hung askew on the wall above the bed and a dresser, caked with dust, stood against the wall. Rachel rummaged through the dressers nearly empty drawers, finding a few balled-up articles of clothing, nothing else. The drawer of the small night table was empty.

Discouraged, she stood in the center of the room, hands on her hips. “Have you found anything?” she called into the hallway.

“A great article in a 1972
Reader's Digest
about this blind guy who walked clear across the country with his two dogs.”

“Michael!” She laughed.

“Seriously. It's inspirational.”

She shook her head and opened the door to a deep closet. A few empty wire hangers were clumped together at one end of the rod, and yet another old blanket was bundled onto the shelf above her head. She was about to close the door when something caught her eye. Something dark stuck out from the shelf below the blanket.

She had to stand on her toes to reach it. It was definitely a book. She tugged at it, and the blanket fell over her head as the book landed in her arms. It was thick and leather-covered. Marielle Hostetter's Bible.

She tossed the blanket over the footboard as she sat down on the bed, the Bible on her knees. Now what? She opened the front cover. Someone had scrawled a family tree on the inside pages, the ink a faded purple. She found Marielle's name. The younger of two children, with no offspring of her own.

Leafing through the pages, she was disappointed to see no markings that might help them understand the old woman's thinking. Well, it had been a far-fetched idea, after all.

She was about to close the book when she thought to look inside the back cover. A folded sheet of onionskin paper slipped to the floor. She picked it up and lay it flat on the bed, and what she read forced her to read it through a second time.

“Michael!” she called. “Come here.”

She was reading it a third time when he appeared in the doorway to the bedroom.

“I found the Bible,” she said, “and this was inside it.”

She handed him the thin sheet of paper. He began reading it, and she watched the blood leave his face as he understood its meaning.

MICHAEL DROVE AHEAD OF
Rachel on the way to Helen's, glancing in his rearview mirror from time to time, trying to catch Rachel's eye, trying to get answers to the questions running through his head. On the seat next to him lay the precious sheet of paper they had found in the Hostetter Bible—the thoroughly bizarre codicil to Peter Huber's will. How had it come to be there? Was it legal? Did Helen know about it? And who was Karl Speicer? Nothing made sense.

He wished Rachel was sitting next to him so they could talk about it, puzzle it out. Just as well, though. He couldn't be with her. The walk through the woods had been pure temptation. Each time he saw her, he was playing with fire. If a member of his congregation came to him seeking counsel about a similar situation, he would have no hesitation in telling him or her to avoid the person.