Reflection (5 page)

Marge gave Lily a hug and a kiss on the cheek, as she did every morning. She would tell anyone who would listen that Lily had saved her by stealing her away from the last beauty parlor she had worked at. Marge was a boon to business. She brought in the older customers who loved having someone close to their age do their hair.

“Your dad called,” Lily said to Polly.

“Thanks.” Polly turned to CeeCee. “You took my blow dryer again.”

“You shouldn't have gotten such a good one, then.” CeeCee filled her spray bottle at the sink.

Polly reached for the phone and dialed, while Lily straightened the pile of magazines on the square, glass-topped coffee table.

Polly suddenly turned toward Lily, her mouth open, eyes wide. “You've got to be kidding,” she said into the phone.

Lily stood up from the magazines to look at her, and Marge and CeeCee stopped what they were doing.

“God, she has her nerve.” Polly gave a raised-eyebrow look of disbelief to her coworkers, and the three of them completely abandoned their tasks and waited for her to get off the phone.

Polly finally hung up and put her hand to her mouth. “You will not believe this,” she said. “Dad called Helen Huber to check up on her. You know, he put her dog to sleep a few weeks ago, and then she got struck by lightning and was in the hospital and everything?”

The women nodded, eager for her to get to the point.

“So he called to see how she was, and she said she's doing fine, that her granddaughter got into town on Wednesday and is taking good care of her.”

“Her
granddaughter
?” CeeCee looked astonished. “You mean… Rachel Huber?”

“One and the same,” Polly said.

The air in the room suddenly seemed very warm, and a gray haze slipped across Lily's field of vision. She felt as if she might pass out if she didn't sit down. She steadied herself with a hand on the counter.

“She came back.” Marge uttered the words softly.

“She's out of her mind,” CeeCee said. “I was doing Sue Holland's hair a few weeks ago, and we were talking about her husband—you know how crazy George is—and she was saying that he's actually a pussycat, that he's hated only one person in the whole world and that's you-know-who.”

“Maybe she'll stay all summer,” Polly giggled. “Then she could lead the Reflection Day ceremony in September.”

“She won't survive here all summer,” said CeeCee.

“If she has any sense at all, she'll stick close to Helen's,” Marge suggested. “Maybe no one would have to know she's back, then.”

No one pointed out to Marge the obvious flaw in her thinking: Once a piece of information had made its way into Hairlights, it was as good as known by everyone in town.

“Maybe she'll apply for a teaching job.” CeeCee laughed.

“Yeah,” said Polly “My sister has way too many kids in her fourth-grade class. Maybe Rachel could take over teaching for her.”

CeeCee howled as though this was the funniest thing she'd ever heard, and Lily walked toward the rear of the beauty parlor and through the open door to the supply room, where she leaned against one of the shelves and waited for the gray haze to lift. Gradually, she became aware of their voices, nearly whispering now, and she cocked her head to listen.

“…your
insensitivity
,” Marge was saying. “How do you think those kind of jokes make Lily feel? And here she is, getting ready to go to her uncle's funeral today and all, and you're joking about—”

“You're right,” Polly interrupted her. “We were terrible. I completely forgot.”

“It's not like something you think about every day,” CeeCee said. “I mean, Lily's so well adjusted and everything.”

“I don't think we should talk about Rachel Huber in front of her again,” Marge said.

Polly and CeeCee muttered words of agreement.

“All I can say,” Polly said, “is that this town's going to chew her up and spit her out in little pieces.”

Lily took a bottle of shampoo from one of the shelves and left the supply room. At her approach, the other women immediately busied themselves at their stations.

“Tomorrow's my mother's birthday,” Polly said. “I thought I'd get her that striped skirt in the window of Daley's.”

“Oh, no! I love that skirt.” CeeCee fluffed her short, dark hair in the mirror. “I wanted to get it.”

“So get it,” Polly said. “You and my mother don't exactly attend the same social events.”

Lily stopped in the middle of the room. “I think she has guts coming back here,” she said.

They all turned at the sound of her voice.

Polly approached her, touched her arm. “I'm sorry we were joking about her before,” she said. “Really, Lil, I wasn't thinking.”

“Me neither,” CeeCee said.

“She has guts,” Lily repeated. “And I hope no one gives her a hard time.”

IT WAS NEARLY THREE
-thirty by the time Lily and Ian left her aunt's farmhouse after the funeral service and headed toward the cemetery for the burial. Lily had not been close to her uncle, but she'd felt a certain obligation to be there to represent her side of the family, and she'd found the service moving in its simplicity. She'd had trouble concentrating on the words of the people who spoke about her uncle, though. Her mind was too clogged with thoughts about Rachel Huber.

Ian eased the car over one of the gentle crests in Farmhouse Road, and Lily shut her eyes at the blinding intrusion of sunlight through the windshield. She pulled down her visor and then could see the long processional of buggies ahead of them, a sinuous black snake stretching between their car and Reflection. Ian began riding the brake, and Lily wondered if they should have gone ahead of everyone else to the cemetery. But then she would have felt even more set apart from the others. As far as she knew, she and Ian had been the only people at the service to arrive in a car.

Ian glanced over at her. “It's slow going, but I think it's better this way,” he said. “Makes you feel more like part of the family, doesn't it?”

She smiled. “Yes.” She had long ago stopped marveling at her husband's ability to read her thoughts. Ian was a magician—a
professional
magician—and there were times she was convinced he possessed powers other human beings didn't.

Ian eased up on the brake a little. “Do you wish you'd known him better?” he asked.

Lily sighed, thinking of the reserved man, her mother's brother, whose body lay in a pine coffin in the horse-drawn hearse at the front of the procession. “I'm not sure how knowable any of my Amish relatives are. They've always treated me kindly, but I am my mother's daughter, you know.”

“Ruth the Rebel,” Ian said with some glee. He loved hearing about the adolescent adventures that ultimately led to Ruth Zook's excommunication from her family's Old Order Amish church and to the shunning he considered barbaric. Lily had tried to explain to him that shunning was not punishment but rather an incentive to bring those who had strayed back into the fold—although she knew her mother's interest in the fold was nonexistent. Ruth was still alive, living in Florida. She would not have cared about attending her brother's funeral even if she had been allowed to do so.

“I bet she was like you,” Ian said. “Wild and crazy. I can't picture you Amish, no way, no how. You're too rowdy. Too earthy.”

She smiled. Lily couldn't imagine her
mother
wild and crazy, either, although at one time she must have been, at least by Amish standards. Ruth had been baptized into the church at the age of sixteen, a devout and pious girl, according to all who knew her then. But she'd met a sweet-talking Mennonite clerk in the dry-goods store and had quickly gotten pregnant with Lily and her twin sister, Jenny. Unrepentant, she was excommunicated and banned by her community and family. Lily wished she'd known that spirited girl. Ruth had become a sad woman, soured on life.

The procession reached the more congested section of Farmhouse Road, and the cars of tourists and locals stopped to let them pass. A few people got out of their cars and aimed their cameras at the long line of buggies.

The woods surrounding Spring Willow Pond were on their left, a lush, cool oasis in the sea of farmland. The road hugged the forest for nearly a mile, and since they were traveling at a snail's pace, Lily could see deep into the woods.

“Do you think they'll leave any of the trees?” she asked.

“Not many,” Ian said. “Too expensive. The more trees they knock down, the more houses they can put up and the more money the Hostetters will have in their greedy little pockets.”

Lily looked away from the woods, not wanting to think about their transformation from heaven to tract housing. She turned the air-conditioning up a notch, adjusting the vent so that it blew into her face. The heat had to be unbearable in those buggies.

Ian followed the buggies onto narrow Colley Lane, the woods still on their left, the Amish-Mennonite cemetery with its rows of unadorned headstones on their right. He pulled off the road onto the left shoulder, parking in the shade of the trees, and they got out of the car and walked across the street to where everyone was gathering.

A dozen children immediately surrounded Ian, trotting along next to him as he and Lily walked toward the crowd. Ian grinned at Lily. He'd been playing with the kids before the service, stunning them silly with magic tricks. With his dark ponytail and magician's charisma, he'd been an immediate hit, earning himself a group of little followers.

When they reached the outskirts of the crowd some of the children walked over to their parents, but a few stuck close to Lily and Ian, standing quietly. Lily watched as four men carried the coffin, supported by two thick poles, to the open, hand-dug grave. She could see the backs of the men rounding as they lowered the coffin into the ground. Then she heard the thumping sound of dirt as the pallbearers began covering the coffin with earth.

Jenny was buried in this cemetery. Lily glanced toward the far corner near the woods, where her sister's plain headstone backed up to the trees. She'd always taken comfort in the thought that Jenny was cradled in the protective green of those trees.
The more trees they knock down, the more houses they can put up
, Ian had said. Lily turned her attention back to her uncle's grave.

Midway through the burial, the men stopped and took off their hats, and a man standing near the side of the grave read something in German. Lily glanced around her. Meticulously manicured farmland surrounded the cemetery on three sides, and across narrow Colley Lane the forest provided a tall, thick shield from town. She tried to imagine the woods replaced by houses, built tightly together, each looking like its neighbor. No privacy for these mourners then. No privacy for the dead. Children would play on Jenny's headstone. Lily's eyes burned. These people would not fight well for themselves. It was up to others to fight for them, others like Michael Stoltz. She trusted Michael to know what to do. Everyone was counting on him.

She and Ian declined the invitation to return to Lily's aunt's house for a meal. Ian gave hugs to the children, promising to teach them a trick or two the next time he saw them, and then they were off, driving away in the only gas-powered vehicle lining the shoulder of Colley Road.

The dogs greeted them when they got home. Lily let them knock her over in the hallway of the small house she and Ian had been renting since they married five years ago. She didn't bother to get up, just lay there on the floor, getting stepped on and licked and nuzzled, and laughing for the first time all day.

Through the blur of gold and black and white fur, she saw Ian drop to the floor next to her.

“My woman's laughing!” He joined the dogs in their affectionate attack, tickling her until she was breathless. “We are extremely happy to see our woman laugh again, aren't we, fellas?”

Lily lifted her arms through the crush of dogs to put them around Ian's neck. She pulled the leather band from his ponytail, and his straight black hair fell on her cheek. “I love you,” she said, raising her head to kiss him.

Ian frowned at her. “Something's bothering you, chickadee. Something more than your uncle.”

“How can you possibly know that?” she asked. “I'm lying here laughing, for heaven's sake.”

“Yeah, you're laughing, but right here”—he touched the space between her eyebrows—”is this teeny tiny little line that you only get when you're upset about something. Or have a bellyache. Do you have a bellyache?” He slid one of his long-fingered hands under her skirt until it came to rest on her stomach.

She shook her head. “No. I wish it were that simple.”

Ian's expression immediately sobered. “What is it?”

Lily sighed. “I found out something this morning,” she said. The floor was growing uncomfortable, but she liked Ian's nearness and the warmth of the dogs at her head and side. “Rachel Huber is in town.”

“Whoa. Damn.” Ian let out his breath. “Is she just passing through, or what?”

“I'm not certain. She's here to take care of Helen, and I don't know how long Helen will need help.”

“Whoa,” Ian said again. He sat up and leaned his back against the wall.

Missing his closeness, Lily reached for his hand. “It's not anything to get all worked up about, I guess,” she said. “It just took me by surprise this morning. Shook me up a little.”

“Sure it did.” He nodded. Ian had moved to Reflection as an adult. He didn't have the memory of September 10,1973, ingrained in his mind as most residents of the town did, and Lily never treated that date as if it were significant. Yes, she closed Hairlights on Reflection Day last fall—it wouldn't have felt right to keep it open when all the schools and other shops were closed—but otherwise she pretended that the second Monday of September was just another day on the calendar. She didn't even attend the Reflection Day observance anymore. But she knew that Ian understood how she felt.