Reflection (4 page)

“Oh, that's not half of it,” Gram said with disgust. “Imagine what sort of traffic a development like that will generate. And those roads are used by the Amish with their buggies. The Amish and Old Order Mennonites will move out of the area—they're talking seriously about it. They're being run out. Their cemetery butts right up to the woods. The houses will practically be in their burial ground. And then we'll have the golden arches and the colonel and his chicken, all of which Ursula Torwig, our new mayor, thinks will be wonderful. She's all for growth. People are fighting it. I've got my fingers crossed somehow it'll all work out.”

“Who owns the property?”

“Do you remember the little cottage back in those woods behind Huber Pond?”

“Yes! I'm not sure I ever saw it firsthand, but the bat woman lived in it, right?”

“Bat woman?” Gram chuckled. “Marielle Hostetter, I suppose you mean. She owns it.”

Marielle Hostetter. Rachel had not heard the name since her childhood. She pictured a child-eating old hag. “She's still living?”

Gram laughed again. “She's twenty-some years younger than I am. Only around sixty. But she was never
well
, exactly. Never quite right in the head.”

“But she's shrewd enough to develop the land?”

“Well, I'm not so sure she is. She has two nephews, though, who seem to be running things. She's in a nursing home now, and the boys are handling her affairs for her. And
they're
shrewd all right.” Gram let out a long sigh. It seemed to Rachel that she was about to say more, but then she leaned her head against the seat back, closing her eyes as though she planned to sleep, and Rachel decided to let the subject die.

She was eager to see her grandparents' house again. The triplex she'd lived in was close to the heart of Reflection, while the wood-and-glass house her grandparents had built for themselves was nestled in a patch of forest two miles outside of town. Rachel had loved riding her bike out there a couple of times a week to visit them, and nearly every Sunday she would go with her parents to Gram and Grandpa's for dinner. That was before the forced estrangement. Suddenly, her parents announced that Rachel could no longer see them. Her grandparents were involved in “illegal activities,” they said, which couldn't be condoned. Nor could they put themselves and Rachel at risk by being associated with them. Rachel had felt very young and naive. Obviously, the whole situation was over her head. She couldn't imagine her smart and loving grandparents involved in anything criminal, nor could she understand her parents cutting ties with them so abruptly, regardless of what they'd done.

Twice Rachel had ridden her bike out to her grandparents' house after being told to avoid them. She'd hidden in the heavy woods and watched as young men drove in and out of the yard in their beat-up old cars or on motorcycles. Some of the men looked scruffy and scary, others were clean-cut, but none of them were more than three or four years older than she was. It saddened her—angered her really—that these guys had access to her grandparents when she didn't. And what was going on inside the house? She hedged away from that thought, unwilling to accept the most obvious explanation—her grandparents had somehow gotten themselves involved with drugs. Her parents refused to discuss the matter with her.

“The less you know, the better off you'll be,” they'd said.

Gram didn't speak again until Rachel turned onto the winding, forested road leading to her house.

“Listen, Rachel,” she said softly. “When your parents died, cartons of their belongings were delivered to my house. No one had an address for you at the time, or I would have made certain they were sent on to you. There were many boxes of things that I just didn't have time to deal with. It was ten years ago, when Peter was very ill. I had someone carry them up to the attic. They've been there ever since. You're welcome to go through them.”

Rachel was intrigued by the thought. “What's in them?”

“I really don't know. They're on the north side of the house, the side that faces the vegetable garden. There are dozens of boxes up there, but the ones from your family all have your father's name marked on the side.”

Rachel squinted at the driveway that cut through the trees. “Is this it?”

“That's right. Good memory you have.”

Rachel turned the car into the driveway and drove up to the familiar contemporary-style house. A newspaper lay in a plastic bag on the front step, and Rachel smiled. “Do you still get the New York Times delivered on Sundays?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” Gram replied.

Rachel's eyes were drawn to the bird feeders hanging from the eaves above the porch. More of them hung from the trees standing in the yard. “You still have all the bird feeders!” she said.

“I try to keep the birds out front here and away from the garden,” Gram said. She pointed to the rear of the house. “You can just pull around back,” she said. “If you like, you can keep your bicycle in the shed.”

Rachel drove around to the rear of the house and came to a stop by the back porch.

“Oh, look at that mess,” Gram said.

Rachel followed her gaze to the large square vegetable garden, overgrown with weeds.

Gram shook her head. “I'll have to give up on it for this year. I got everything in and growing, but when Rocky—my dog—got put down, I lost some of my steam, and now with this…” She waved her bandaged hand toward her well-wrapped ankle.

Rachel could see the tomato plants in cages, the row of lettuce nearly buried under a tangle of green. It had been years since she'd taken the time to plant a garden, and here was one already planted for her. “It looks salvageable,” she said. “I'd enjoy working in it.”

Rachel helped her grandmother out of the car. Gram had to lean against the car door, waiting out a moment of dizziness before she could tackle the steps leading up to the house.

Inside, nothing had changed. The two pianos, still nested together, reigned supreme in the living room, the huge window behind them filled with the green of summer. The old couch—could it really be the same couch covered in the same ivy-print fabric that she'd sat on as a teenager?—was plush and inviting. Floor-to-ceiling windows brought the outdoors inside, and those patches of wall not made of glass were lined with books. Rachel had forgotten that about her grandparents' house. Bookshelves adorned every room, even the kitchen and bathroom. And there was a library with a fireplace. She peered around the corner to try to see into that room, but the angle wasn't right.

Rachel stroked her hand across the ebony lid of one of the pianos. Nothing had changed, and yet something seemed wrong, out of place. She couldn't put her finger on it.

“Let me make up your bed fresh for you,” she offered.

Her grandmother looked at her. “I don't like people doing things for me,” she said. “I'm not used to it. Makes me feel old and useless.”

“It's temporary,” Rachel said, although Gram did seem very old to her. And she knew that once the elderly started having physical problems, they could go downhill fast.

The linen closet was filled with white sheets, stacks of them, neatly folded, and Rachel enjoyed making up her grandmother's bed with them. The bedroom was only vaguely familiar to her; she had not been in it often. It was large and square, the furniture made of solid, unadorned pine. Two comfortable-looking chairs rested in front of a picture window, and a huge cedar chest sat on the floor at the foot of the bed.

Rachel helped her grandmother change into a nightgown and watched as the older woman carefully negotiated her way beneath the covers.

“Do you need a pain pill?” Rachel asked.

“No. I'm so tired I could sleep with an elephant lying on my head right now.” She clutched Rachel's hand. “I feel like I'm dreaming that you're here,” she said. Tears glistened in her eyes again, and Rachel leaned over to kiss her forehead.

“I'm really here,” she said with a smile.

After leaving the room, Rachel made up the full-sized bed in one of the other two bedrooms, the one nearest Gram's so she would be able to hear her in the middle of the night. This room was filled with antique oak furniture, an anachronism in the contemporary house. Rachel put away her clothes, then found herself drawn to the aging books on the bedroom's wall of bookshelves. They must have been her grandfather's collection. Hundreds of books about composers, musical instruments, politics, and puzzles. She'd forgotten Grandpa's addiction to puzzles. Crosswords, cryptoquotes.You couldn't get him away from his puzzle books long enough for Sunday dinner sometimes.

She wandered into the living room again. She remembered the beautiful painting above the fireplace—Reflection wrapped in a winter snow, the view from Winter Hill. She shook her head at the thought of that view disappearing under a developer's bulldozer.

Turning to the piano, she swept her fingers lightly across the keys. She had tried to learn to play as a child. With Peter Huber for a grandfather, it seemed terrible not to be able to play his compositions. But whatever talent Grandpa had possessed had skipped her generation and landed in the genes of her son.

That's what was missing, she thought. Music. She didn't think she had ever been in this house when music was not playing, either on the piano or on a record.

She hunted for a stereo and was surprised when she opened an old armoire and found a compact disc player and a large collection of compact discs inside. Somehow she had not expected Gram to be quite so modern. But here they were, at least two hundred discs in their plastic jewel cases.

She pulled a few of them out. Lots of classical, lots of old folk—Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Gibson. There was a whole section devoted to various pianists and symphony orchestras playing Huber pieces, and Rachel wondered which were the best, which Gram would put on if she were awake. She rifled through them until she found Patchwork performed by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and she slipped the disc into the player and stood back to listen as the first few teasing, eerie notes filled the room. She smiled to herself. This was right. This was the way her grandparents' house should feel.

She went into the large, open kitchen and set an eggplant on the cutting board and began cutting it into slices. They'd have eggplant Parmesan for dinner. She had a garden to weed, a grandma to pamper, and beautiful music all around her. She was very, very glad she had come.

LILY JACKSON ARRIVED AT
the Hairlights Salon at around eight and let herself in. She started a pot of coffee, then took the petty cash from her purse and put it into the register. She nibbled on her cinnamon—raisin bagel as she poured herself a cup of coffee. Leaning back against the counter, she took a sip.

This was her favorite time of day, when Reflection was just waking up and she had the beauty parlor to herself. She'd already been up for hours. Ian had helped her walk the dogs—there were five of them this week, too many for her to handle on her own. Then she'd helped him water the plants in his beloved greenhouse. She'd crawled back into bed with him, snuggling for a few minutes before getting up and rummaging through her closet for something to wear. She'd finally selected a long black skirt and vest and a white blouse. It was the only outfit she owned that would be appropriate for the funeral that afternoon.

She saw the same people every morning on her walk from home. Arlena Cash on her way to her job at the bakery, where Otto Derwich had already been working for hours, filling the streets with the scent of baking bread and cinnamon rolls. She saw Sarah Holland on her way to the bookstore and Russell Martin heading toward the post office.

She would often pass Sam Freed as he walked to his law office. Sixty-seven years old and one of Reflection's three attorneys, Sam walked the four miles into town every day. He had a ready smile for anyone he met along the way. People had always been fond of Sam, but he was particularly popular these days. Marielle Hostetter and her nephews had tried to retain him as their lawyer in their fight to develop their land, but Sam had flatly refused to take them on. People respected him for that.

Every morning Lily stopped in the deli for a bagel and a few minutes' exchange with the cluster of regulars—other shop owners and store clerks, a few secretaries and bookkeepers and bankers. The people who revved up the town in the morning. They always gave her a warm greeting, asking her about Ian or the dogs and occasionally offering or soliciting a few tidbits of gossip. She liked that the other business owners treated her as if she were one of them, even though she'd only owned Hairlights for a little over a year.

She'd been fired from the two other beauty parlors she'd worked at. She had a problem with authority, her bosses told her. That was not news to Lily. When someone told her what she should do, she felt an immediate urge to do the opposite. So she'd started her own beauty parlor. She'd needed to sweet-talk her way to the loan at the bank, and she'd worked on Polly for weeks before her friend agreed to split ownership of the business with her. But here they were, eighteen months later, with a healthy clientele and no one to answer to.

She glanced at the appointment book, then checked the messages on the salon's answering machine and jotted down the information on a notepad: two women requesting appointments, one cancellation, and an early-morning call from Polly's father—one of Lily's favorite human beings and the best veterinarian around. He took care of her foster dogs for free.

Polly, Marge, and CeeCee arrived at the same time, as Lily was setting up her station and drinking her second cup of coffee. Polly was Lily's age—twenty-eight—and CeeCee was twenty-three. They were singing “Love Shack” when they walked in the door, and Marge, who was nearing sixty and had the prettiest silver hair in town, looked ready to stick her fingers in her ears.