Her eyes narrowed, and I knew she was wondering why I wanted to know.
Why did I want to know? To find out how he’d said it, if he’d been embarrassed or remorseful about leaving me behind? To find out if the situation really had been “crazy”?
“He told me you were living with your Amish grandparents until his next tour was over.”
“How did you respond to that?”
She thought for a long moment. “I suppose I should have thought to ask why he hadn’t brought you with him. But at the time the only thing that came to mind was, well, at least Sadie’s son made it back, even if she never did.”
TWENTY-SIX
I awoke Friday morning before dawn, wondering if snow was falling on Lancaster County as predicted. I wanted to be able to picture where Rachel was, what she was doing. I crept downstairs to my dad’s study, turned on his computer, and opened an Internet browser so that I could check the Weather Channel’s website.
Indeed, it said they had already received several inches and more was to come. A travel advisory had been issued for practically all of Eastern Pennsylvania. It was difficult to imagine that I wasn’t on another planet. The forecast for Orange County was sunny skies and a high of seventy-three degrees.
I turned the computer off and closed my eyes, picturing Rachel in her wool cape and heavier bonnet, walking from her house to the dairy barns in the blue-white of morning snow. The cows would raise their big heads when she walked inside the milking parlor and slowly blink their long-lashed eyes. The breath coming out of their nostrils would look like wisps of gauze. They would be anxious to be milked, ready for breakfast, waiting for the human contact that would bring both. But Rachel would walk past the milking stanchions into the nursery to feed the new calves, change their bedding, and rub the little nubs of growing horns before they were removed. She might be humming a song as she did these chores. Was she thinking of me? Was she missing me?
This was the hardest part of my ponderings. Imagining the flip side of those musings: a morning without Rachel in it.
It was wrong to join the church solely for the love of a girl. I wouldn’t do it. But Rachel was a part of the equation, just as my dad had been a part of my mother’s equation when she was seeking peace for her situation.
“Rachel deserves to be happy,” I said aloud to God. “I want her to be happy.”
When she and I talked tomorrow, I would assure her I wanted this more than anything else, even more than my own happiness.
After lunch, I borrowed Liz’s car and headed to my next photography lesson. Before I was halfway there, however, Lark called to see if we could postpone for an hour. One of her professors had offered a special study session after class and it was running a little long.
I assured her that was no problem, though after I hung up, I pulled over into the nearest gas station while I tried to figure out what to do with myself between now and then. I could always turn around and go back to the house, but I didn’t want to. An hour to kill, the car at my disposal, nobody else aware of where I was or what I was doing…
What I really wanted was to go to my father’s storage unit and dig around inside until I found the box of my mother’s photographs, the ones I hadn’t stopped thinking about since the moment he’d first mentioned them.
I had the key on my key ring. I had the security code on a piece of paper in my wallet. I could easily find my way there, get inside, and more than likely dig up those photos. Of course, that would mean rooting around through my father’s private things without his permission, but was that really such a big deal?
For that matter, would he even have to know about it? After all, they weren’t really his pictures to give. They were hers. And she was my mother. Maybe that really did give me the right to seek them out on my own.
A sensation of unease swept over me.
More than unease. Guilt. Shame.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go over there and rifle through my dad’s possessions, much less do so and then keep it a secret afterward. Before he left, he said I could have the pictures; they were practically mine already. But they weren’t mine yet. Not until he handed them to me himself.
Outside the car, movement at a nearby dumpster caught my eye, and I turned to see a trio of seagulls fighting over a discarded sandwich. Their presence reminded me of the ocean not too far away and of God’s magnificent handiwork on display there.
The moment my thoughts turned to Him, I could hear His words to me from earlier in the week. Like notes on a breeze, they came floating back now.
Honor others before yourself.
This would not be honoring my dad, jumping into his privacy to find something he had already said he would give me when he returned. This was just me jumping ahead and doing what pleased me without concern for how he would feel.