Reflection

by Diane Chamberlain

  She'd gotten Rachel out of the house, asking her to stay away, to spend the night elsewhere. "I want to get used to being alone while you're still close enough to call," she'd told her.

  Rachel had looked surprised for a minute before responding. Then she smiled, shaking her head. "You're still trying to push Michael and me together, aren't you?" she'd asked.

  Helen had shrugged noncommittally. It didn't matter what Rachel thought. She just didn't want her granddaughter around while Hans was here, not until she knew how this situation was going to turn out.

  At ten after three she heard a car on the gravel driveway. The muscles in her legs shook as she stood up. She felt as if something were expanding inside her chest and that it was going to explode soon and spill out of her. She walked out onto the porch. It was cool outside, the weather almost autumn-like, and she hugged herself as she watched Hans get out of the white rental car.

  He was half the pianist from the Kennedy Center and half the man from her memory. She had forgotten how tall he was. He was slimmer than she remembered, and he was wearing glasses. She walked down the porch steps, and he shut the car door and smiled, walking toward her, holding out his arms. She sank into his embrace as if she were falling and felt the strength in his body. Leaning wordlessly against him, she was finally able to whisper only one thing.

  "I was struck by lightning," she said, and then she began to cry.

  She helped him settle into the room that Chris had used. In the past, he had always stayed in Rachel's room with its wonderland of books, but he seemed quite content with the smaller space, and he stared out the window toward the thick greenery of the woods for several minutes before beginning to unpack.

  She sat on the bed and watched him with a longing she had never expected to feel again. "Thank you for coming," she said, over and over, and he replied that he had stayed away far too long.

  Once his clothes were hung up and put away, she offered him an early dinner.

  "Do you still take walks?" he asked.

  "Yes, though not with quite the energy I used to have."

  "Can we go for one before dinner? Is the tree house still there?"

  "In part." She smiled.

  They set out on the walk. She told him about her injuries and about Rachel coming to help her. He told her that Winona was in a nursing home.

  "Alzheimer's," he said. "She doesn't know who I am anymore, but I guess we were lucky that she didn't develop it until five or six years ago. So many people get it when they're young."

  "You had a long marriage together." Helen didn’t want to think about how he had filled all those years they had been apart.

  They came to the tree house. Hans looked up at the splintered wooden platform and smiled. "We were young," he said. "How did we ever get up there?"

  "Come here," she said, walking around the tree to where the ladder stood. "Are you game?"

  He laughed and started up the ladder, quite nimbly, then reached down to help her up. They sat on the edge of the boards, legs dangling. She felt like a child.

  "It's even more beautiful and peaceful than I remember it," he said. For a moment they were quiet, listening to the cicadas hidden in the forest. After a few minutes he turned to her. "Tell me why you called me here," he said.

  "It can wait." Now that he was here, she wanted to savor the time before she told him.

  Hans didn’t press her. He leaned his head back to breathe in the scent of the forest. "I had to give up performing a couple of years ago," he said. "I have a little bit of a tremor."

  He held up his hand, but she could see no sign of shaking. Instead, all she could see was a hand she had once loved to hold, to feel against her skin.

  "I occasionally perform all-Huber concerts, though. I've never lost my love for Peter's music."

  "I've seen you perform recently," she said.

  "Yes, I know," he said. "You were at the Kennedy Center."

  Of course they had told him. "My granddaughter took me precisely because it was an all-Huber program. I didn't want to go, and she had no idea that the pianist was anyone special to me. I thought you were extraordinary."

  "Why didn't you tell me you were coming?" he asked gently. "Why did you leave?"

  "Too painful." She shook her head. "I had to get away."

  "I'm so sorry, dear. I would have felt the same way, I'm sure." He touched her hand lightly, then took it fully in his own. "Winona and I had a good life together, but I never forgot you. I never lost my feelings for you."

  How is it that pain can remain inside a person for so long, she wondered? It was as if her body had a memory for it, and when that memory was triggered, the pain returned in full force, with all its nuances and sharp, cutting edges.

  She couldn’t speak. Instead, she simply wept the tears she thought she'd emptied herself of so long ago. "I still remember sending you away," she said. "Watching you leave. My arms ached to hold you one last time." She lifted her arms in the air, and he caught them, locked them in an embrace.

  "Trust at least, Helen," he said as he held her, "that you were never alone in your sorrow."

  Once back in the house, she fed him supper, then brought out the folder containing Reflections. She explained the dire situation facing the town and the imminent development of the Hostetter land. She turned on the television, and they didn't have to wait long before seeing some of the footage from the day before. It showed the human blockade at the entrance to the woods. It showed an irate Ursula Torwig and Marielle Hostetter's red-faced nephews, along with a few police officers, who were trying to suppress their grins as they slowly made arrests.

  "My granddaughter started the protest," she said. She couldn’t keep the pride out of her voice.

  She showed Hans the codicil. "Peter said the land would be preserved if you were given this, his last work, to critique."

  He looked puzzled. "Why on earth? How odd." He stroked his chin with those long, beautiful fingers. "Why me? Why…and you waited so long to give this to me. It's down to the wire now, isn't it? You waited because—"

  "Because I made up my mind forty-some years ago that you no longer existed for me and that I must no longer exist for you," she said. "I kept track, though. I knew Winona was still alive. I wouldn't dare interfere with your life. And because…well, I think you'll understand once you study the music."

  He opened the folder, frowning mildly at the contents. Then he stood up and walked into the living room. She didn’t follow him but rather waited at the kitchen table, holding her breath. How long had it been since she'd heard Hans play the piano in her home? She listened as he felt out the warm and quiet theme in the first movement, the tense mystery of the second. He muddled through the tumultuous central passage of the third and closed with the splendid beauty that marked the final strains of that movement. Peter had had such talent. He never should have hidden behind hers.

  An hour had passed by the time Hans returned to the kitchen, and she was still sitting at the table, the last notes of Reflections lingering in the air around her.

  "Something very strange," he said. "I don't believe this is the right work." He set the open folder on the table and shook his head. "I mean, I see that he wrote Reflections here at the top, but it doesn't sound like a Huber. It doesn't play like a Huber. Though I like it. It's a lovely piece, although this third movement…" He stared silently out the window, then looked at her. "There's a cipher in here, isn't there?" he said. "There's a cipher in that third movement."

  "Yes."

  "Do you know what it says?"

  "Yes."

  "And you're not going to tell me?"

  She shook her head, and he closed his eyes, opening them again with a weak smile. "Ah, Peter, old friend." He chuckled. "I guess I have my evening's work cut out for me, then, don't I?"

  She nodded, wondering if she should simply tell him. No. She would let the revelation proceed as Peter had wanted it to.

  Hans was still up studying the music in the library while
she watched the eleven o'clock news. The townspeople were vowing to return to the blockade again on Monday, and some of the students from the local colleges were promising to join them.

  He was still up when she went to bed. She didn’t expect to sleep, didn’t even bother to turn off the lamp on her night table. But she must have dozed off, because she awakened to a shuffling in the hall outside her door. The door creaked open, and she sat up to see Hans

  walking toward her. He stopped in the middle of the floor. She read his face as easily as she used to, and in his features she saw shock and awe.

  She drew back the covers, the empty side of her bed an invitation. He moved into it easily, and for the second time that day, she let herself sink into his arms.

  –45–

  Rachel's room in the bed-and-breakfast was large, with a canopy bed, floral bedspread and draperies, and broad windows overlooking a pasture. She'd checked in around five, when the pasture had been filled with black cows, some of them just a few feet from her window. She'd sat on the small antique sofa in her room, watching the cows for nearly an hour before taking herself out to dinner. Now she was on the sofa again, waiting for Michael. He would not be able to spend the night with her, but at least she would have him for a few hours. It was Saturday; she was leaving in less than a week, and Katy was home. This could very well be their last time together.

  Gram had told her in no uncertain terms to stay away from the house tonight. She wanted to practice being on her own, she'd said, but Rachel guessed there was more to it than that. Gram had something up her sleeve. Whatever it was had lifted the older woman from her sulky, leaden depression to a state of agitation, and Rachel decided that was preferable. She wouldn't interfere. She called the bed-and-breakfast in Elizabethtown, far enough from Reflection that with any luck her name would not be recognized when she made the reservation, and as far as she knew, it hadn't been.

  Then she'd told Michael where she would be and left it up to him to decide whether he could spend some time with her. She was relieved when he said he would.

  He arrived at seven-thirty, carrying red roses, a bottle of sparkling cider, and an ancient Kinyarwanda dictionary. She arranged the roses in the ice bucket while he poured the cider into glasses he found in the bathroom.

  "If I'd been thinking, I would have brought some wineglasses with me," he said.

  "No, this is perfect." She sat cross-legged on the bed, balancing the glass in her hand.

  He sat down and leaned back against the headboard, then he reached out to touch his glass to hers. "To a safe, successful and personally rewarding journey to Africa," he said.

  "Thank you." She took a sip, meeting his eyes over the top of her glass. "I'm so glad you came," she said.

  He nodded. "I didn't lie to Katy, but I didn't tell her the truth, either. I just said I was going out. I knew she wouldn't ask. She wouldn't want to know."

  "This must be difficult for her." She knew he felt no malice toward his wife for her betrayal. She doubted she could be so forgiving.

  "Yes, I guess it is, although Katy's being typical Katy. She holds it all inside. Doesn't like to deal with anything painful or difficult. So I'm not really sure what's going through her head."

  "You enjoyed Hershey Park with her, though," she said, annoyed with herself as the words left her mouth. He'd already talked to her about it; she didn’t need to bring it up again. She didn’t like the jealousy she felt when she thought about his being with his wife. She had no right to it.

  "Rache," he said, "look—"

  "I'm sorry, Michael. Really. I've tried not to say anything that—"

  "Shh. I know." He grabbed her hand. "You've been terrific. And I've been doing a lot of thinking about my wife and son, and a lot of thinking about you. But, please…I don't want to talk about any of it tonight. Because if I talk about Katy, I won't be able to make love to you. And I want to." He shook his head. "I have to."

  She stared at him for a moment, then set her glass on the night table and leaned toward him. "Good," she said. "Because I need you to."

  With a grin, he set his own glass next to hers, then drew her head down for a kiss, long and deep and feverish. And she knew that, at least for the rest of the evening, Katy would be the furthest thing from his mind.

  She had promised herself she would not cry, wanting the memory of their last time together to be good for each of them. She managed to keep her tears in check until he'd fallen asleep—or at least until she thought he was asleep. He heard her quiet crying, though, and he pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close.

  "Whatever happens, I'm glad we had this summer together," he whispered.

  "Mmm." She pressed her cheek against his chest, loving the way he smelled, missing his scent already.

  "I don't want to leave you," he said.

  But within an hour he was gone, home to his wife and son, and Rachel sat alone on the sofa again, watching the unhurried progression of moonlight across the pasture.

  * * *

  There was a strange car in the driveway when Rachel got home the following morning. As she stepped onto the porch, she heard laughter coming from inside the house. A man's laughter. Curious, she walked into the kitchen to find her grandmother and an elderly man sitting at the table, sipping coffee from mugs. The glow in Gram's face lit up the room, and the lanky, handsome gentleman's eyes crinkled with good humor. It was a moment before she recognized him.

  "Karl Speicer!" she gasped.

  Gram smiled. "Rachel, I'd like you to meet Hans," she said.

  Rachel moved forward as the pianist rose from his seat. She grasped his hand in hers. "You've come. Oh, Gram, you called him!" She let go of his hand to lean over and hug her grandmother. "Thank you!

  "Don't blame her for delaying so long," Hans said. He was very tall. "She had many reasons, all of them honorable."

  "Yes, I know." She looked from one of them to the other. "Please sit down," she said, taking a seat at the table herself. "When did you arrive?"

  "Late yesterday afternoon," he said, and Rachel thought she detected a blush in her grandmother's cheeks. She knew the look well. Gram was with the man she'd always loved, always wanted. They had spent the night together. No wonder she had wanted Rachel out of the house.

  She wondered briefly about Hans's wife, Winona, but swept the thought from her mind. "Has he seen the music?" she asked.

  "I have indeed," he said. "It was quite a shock to me, but after I thought about it, I wonder how I couldn't have known before. The passion of your grandmother's music—it's something I never could understand coming out of Peter."

  She wanted to know what would happen next, but she knew she'd better sit tight. Gram couldn’t be rushed. Nor did Hans seem particularly anxious to hurry things along.

  "How wonderful that you and your grandmother have gotten to know each other again," he said chattily. "She told me you hadn't seen each other since you were fifteen."

  "Yes." Rachel sat back in her chair, trying to relax. "My parents were apparently scandalized by the fact that she and my grandfather dared to help draftees stay out of Vietnam."

  "Rachel," Gram said. "That was only part of it."

  "What do you mean?"

  Gram took in a breath. "Your father learned something about Peter that upset him greatly, and that's when he broke away from us."

  "What did he learn?"

  "It's about Peter and his relationship to Marielle Hostetter."

  "Oh, no." She'd known all along, hadn't she? And Gram had said he'd been a philanderer. "Was Marielle actually Grandpa's daughter?"

  Gram looked momentarily confused. Hans laughed, and she joined him a second later. "No, dear, that wasn't it." She sobered quickly. "No. Your grandfather was…well, these days I guess you'd call it bisexual."

  Rachel sat back in her chair." Oh, " she said.

  "I told you about Marielle's father, right? He was a painter?"

  Rachel nodded.

  "He and
Peter were attracted to each other, both being artistic types and all. They spent a good deal of time together, and they were lovers." Gram spoke easily, as if this were something she had long ago made peace with. "And one day, Dolly—his wife—came home to find them together. She was a crazy woman. I guess many women would lose their sanity if they made that sort of sudden discovery, but Dolly already had half a screw loose. Anyway, Peter immediately left the house, but seconds after he left, Dolly got a handgun from the closet. She was aiming it at her husband when her daughter—Marielle—came out of nowhere and into the path of the bullet. I don't know if Dolly knew what she'd done or not. She was blind with rage, I understand, and she put the gun to her own head and pulled the trigger again."

  "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.