Reflection (49 page)

“My God,” Rachel said.

“When your grandfather found out what happened, he was wracked with guilt. It was his money that paid for Marielle's medical care, and he'd take her presents over the years. He wanted to be sure she would never be forced to leave that land as long as she was still living in the cottage. Anyhow”—Gram shifted in her chair—”your father always wondered about Peter's relationship to the Hostetters, finally coming to the same conclusion you'd reached—that Marielle might have been Peter's child. That's when we told him the truth. I think his original suspicion would have been more palatable to him. An affair with a woman John might have been able to understand. But the truth sickened him. He didn't want to be around us, and he was afraid for you to be around us, too.”

She had a vivid recollection of her father referring to homosexuals as “perverts.” “Daddy was a bit of a bigot, I'm afraid,” she said.

“I never did understand that,” Gram mused. “We raised him to be anything but.”

Karl Speicer finished his coffee and set the mug on the table with a flourish. “Well, young lady,” he said, changing the subject. “You must be wondering what I'm going to do with this music?”

“Yes, I am.” She was relieved he was addressing the topic. The bulldozers were still at the pond, ready to begin knocking down trees the following day.

Hans smiled. At eighty-three he was a stunning man. She could easily imagine how attractive he would have been at forty.

“It's all taken care of,” he said. “Helen has spoken to the attorney…what's his name?”

“Sam Freed,” Gram said.

“And we're going to hold a press conference in a few hours. Your friend—” He looked at Gram again.

“Michael,” she said.

“Your friend Michael is arranging it, and then the entire world will know the truth about Helen and Peter Huber. The attorney seems to think that will do the trick. Reflection should be safe.”

“Wow.” Rachel smiled. “You two have had a busy morning.”

Hans and Gram exchanged looks and laughed like embarrassed teenagers, and Rachel guessed the business between them this morning had not been limited to saving Reflection.

“ARE YOU READY?” MICHAEL
looked at the two men sitting on the other side of his office desk.

Sam Freed and Karl Speicer nodded solemnly.

“Yes, sir,” Karl said. “Let's go face the music.”

The three of them laughed at that and stood up.

Michael had agreed to escort the two men to the press conference. Helen and Rachel had wisely chosen to avoid the crowd and stay home. The conference would be televised. They wouldn't miss anything.

He led the men to the back door of the church basement. Outside, they walked around the path to the front of the church, and from there they could see the crowd gathered by the pond.

The street was clotted with vans, and men and women dodged among the crowd carrying video equipment. Local television crews and a variety of reporters had been covering the story for the past two days, but after receiving the call from Helen this morning, Michael had alerted the national media.

“We will be making an announcement of international significance to the music world,” he'd said in his phone calls. Apparently, everyone had taken him seriously.

The police were everywhere. Michael called one of the officers over, and two others quickly appeared to escort them to the statue of Peter Huber in front of the pond. Once they had reached the statue, cameras clicked and microphones materialized from all directions. Michael worried about the two elderly men being intimidated by the crush of people, but they didn't seem at all disturbed. As a matter of fact, the two of them looked as if they were having a good time.

Sam Freed began speaking, and the crowd hushed.

“When Reflection's favorite son, Peter Huber, died ten years ago, he left a will with an odd addendum. No one other than his wife, Helen, myself, and the Hostetter family knew about it. The fact is that Mr. Huber was the owner, through inheritance, of the land that has come to be known as Hostetter land.”

There was a wild buzz in the crowd. Michael caught sight of his cousin standing a few feet away. Ursula's mouth was open in disbelief.

Sam waited until the din had died down before speaking again.

“In his will, Mr. Huber specified that Marielle Hostetter be allowed to live on the land for as long as she wanted. After moving out of her cottage, the land would be treated as hers to dispose of as she saw fit. That is what has happened—Ms. Hostetter has chosen to develop the land. However, Mr. Huber made a contingency in his will. He stated that if his last musical work, a piece called
Reflections
, was presented to pianist Karl Speicer, the land would be made a gift to the town and the royalties generated by that work—which should be considerable—would go to Ms. Hostetter.”

Again the buzz. Sam held up a hand for quiet.

“Until very recently,” he continued, “that particular Huber composition couldn't be located. But it has been found, and Mr. Speicer is in receipt of it. And I will now turn the floor over to Mr. Speicer.”

Michael tensed as the microphones shifted toward the older man. He hoped this would not be too much for Speicer but knew instantly he had nothing to worry about. It was obvious that the pianist was accustomed to public speaking. He had an odd, engaging accent and a dramatic flair in his presentation, dramatic enough to match the impact of what he was about to say.

“The Huber work,
Reflections
, was delivered to me last night,” he said. “When I played it, I thought it might be a fake, because although it is, for the most part, a lovely piece of work, it was entirely different from Peter Huber's work in the past. The third movement in particular was quite choppy, and at first I was mystified by it. Then I recalled that, long ago, when Peter and I were close friends, we were fascinated by ciphers in music—codes that a composer might employ to add a message to his work. I realized that Peter had wanted me to see the work because he knew I would be able to unravel his cipher. And although it took me half the night, I have done so.”

The crowd waited silently for him to continue.

“What I am about to say will stun the music world,” he said, “as well as this beautiful town. But it must be said, and it should have been said long, long ago. Peter Huber is not the composer of the music we have come to treasure. Rather, his wife and Reflection's longtime resident, Helen Nolan Huber, is the creator of all the extraordinary works attributed to her husband.”

There was a collective gasp from the crowd, and then the steady murmur of disbelief. Ursula's face was hideously contorted by anger.

The questions began. Karl detailed the complicated means by which he'd broken the music's code, but it was Sam's assertion that the pristine tract of land surrounding Spring Willow Pond was now a gift to the city and protected from any future development that drew the loudest cheers.

“The Hostetters will sue!” someone called out. It might even have been Ursula, but it didn't matter. Not a soul was listening.

MICHAEL WATCHED THE COVERAGE
of the event on the news that night from the couch in his family room. Jason was in his room playing computer games with Patrick Geils, but Katy watched the news as well, sitting in front of Michael on the floor, her back against the couch. She was very tired, she said. Indeed, he'd noticed a sluggishness about her, an emptiness these past few days. She'd returned to her medical practice the day before and was having trouble keeping her mind on her work. Even though she'd been home for several days now, jet lag still seemed to be taking a toll on her.

They didn't speak as they watched the press conference unfold on the TV. Karl Speicer looked too old to be up there handling that crowd, but his voice was full of confidence, and his accent and sense of melodrama made Michael smile.

“The protest was started by Rachel Huber,” the newscaster said after footage of the conference had been aired. The two pictures the news stations had been showing for three days now, the high school yearbook pictures of Rachel and himself, appeared on the screen. “Miss Huber was quickly joined by her childhood friend, minister of the Reflection Mennonite church, Michael Stoltz.” The pictures remained on the air as the newscaster talked about Rachel's past in the town, a story people had to be tired of by now.

The pictures were mesmerizing. Side by side, he and Rachel looked like a couple, as if they were meant to be together. Katy must have noticed it, too, because she began to cry, quietly.

He touched her hair with his fingertips. “Katy?” he said.

She shook her head, and he knew she didn't want to talk. He didn't know if he should feel anger or relief. It no longer really mattered.

DESPITE THE FRIVOLITY OF
the last twenty-four hours, Reflection Day found the town quiet and subdued. Storm clouds gathered in the sky, churches held special services, and shops and schools were closed.

At the last minute Rachel decided to join her grandmother and Hans—who was still in town and showing no sign of leaving—at the Reflection Day observance in the high school. After all, what could the townspeople do to her now? She was leaving on Friday. Besides, several people had called her, offering quiet apologies and gratitude for her role in saving the land.

She also wanted to see Michael's small band of Mennonite teenagers present their program. More precisely, she wanted to see Michael.

They were late and had to take seats in the last row of the auditorium. That was good, Rachel thought. Few people would notice her.

The stage was bare, except for the eight teenagers and Michael sitting in a row of chairs. At exactly two o'clock Michael stepped up to the dais, and the light chatter of the audience subsided.

“I would like to ask,” Michael began, “that as you listen to our program this afternoon, you think about making this the final observance of Reflection Day.”

A rush of whispering spread across the auditorium, and Rachel couldn't tell whether there was support or derision in the sound.

“It's been twenty-one years since the tragedy occurred at Spring Willow Elementary School,” Michael continued. “And it is my belief—a belief I think many of you share—that it's time to let go of the destructive grief and move on.”

He returned to his chair, and a short, frail-looking teenage girl stood up and walked to the dais. She had to stand on a box to reach the microphone. She read a poem she had written about the loss of the future when a child dies. Then a few other students read essays they had written on the same theme. Two boys read a poem in tandem about the toll war takes on its soldiers. Another had written about the strength of a solid community. The last girl read a story about a fictional town that held on so tightly to the past that it lost sight of its future.

Rachel's eyes stung as she listened to the young speakers, and a tight pain grew in her throat. It had been a mistake to come.

Finally, one of the boys who'd read the poem about war took his place in front of the dais again.

“Michael suggests that this be the last observation of Reflection Day,” he read from a note card, “and with respect to those people who have suffered, the senior youth group of the Reflection Mennonite Church agrees. Teach us about the horrors of war, the value of life, and individual responsibility, and use September tenth, 1973, as an example of those things, but allow schools and shops to stay open, and allow us to let go of the past. We cannot afford to hold on to sorrow and anger and hatred any longer. Reflection's children deserve a better legacy than that. So we'd like to ask you to vote here today. It won't be binding of course. The town council has to make the final decision. But we can let them know what this audience has to say. So—”

A woman suddenly stood up from the third or fourth row of the auditorium. “Excuse me?” she asked.

The voice was familiar, and Rachel craned her neck to see. Lily.

“I'd like to say something to the audience before we have our vote, please,” Lily said.

The student turned to look at Michael, who nodded, and Lily walked up onto the stage.

“I want to tell you something that happened on September tenth, 1973,” she began, “something you don't already know.” Lily wrapped her fingers around the edges of the dais. “I was a student in Rachel Huber's classroom at that time, and I didn't get along very well with Ms. Huber. As many people could tell you, I didn't get along very well with anyone in authority back then. My sister, Jenny, was the compliant one. The good twin. I was the bad one. And although I'd only been in Ms. Huber's room for a few days, she and I had already butted heads numerous times. One of those times was on the morning of September tenth. I don't remember what it was about; all I know is that I was angry with her.”

Lily looked anxious and pale, Rachel thought. Her usual boisterous self-confidence was missing.

“At some point that morning, Ms. Huber suddenly told us we had to go sit on the floor of the cloakroom,” Lily continued. “We were to take books with us, or something to color, and we had to move fast. It was a game, she told us. She hurried us back there, made sure we were all sitting, and told us to stay there until she returned. Everyone believed the part about it being a game—even me—but because I was angry with her, I wasn't going to go along with it.”

Lily hesitated, looking down at the dais, and Rachel gripped the edge of her seat. She noticed someone quietly walking up the steps of the stage. Was it Jacob Holt? Yes. When he reached the stage, he stood off to one side, close to the curtains, his arms folded as he listened.

“I got up and left the cloakroom,” Lily said, “and I walked into the empty classroom. Ms. Huber was nowhere to be seen, so I decided to take off. But the door was locked.” She looked hard at the audience. “
Yes
,” she said, “
Rachel Huber locked that door
. She did all she could think of to do to protect us in the few seconds she had to come up with a plan. The door was easy to unlock from the inside, though, so I unlocked it and walked out into the hall. And…” Lily's voice suddenly cracked. She coughed, regaining her composure. “Luke Pierce was standing right in front of me,” she continued. “Jacob Holt was running down the hall toward us. And the rest you know. But I needed to set the record straight. Rachel locked the door. I unlocked it. I was only seven, and too terrified to tell anyone what I'd done. I thought I killed, my sister and my classmates. But I'm not seven now. And Rachel's not twenty-three. And no one should judge either of us by our past mistakes.”