Another Homecoming (13 page)

Joel followed their example and listened to the strange words. He strained to understand with Mr. Miller’s accent, and he wondered how praying felt so natural in this household.

“Amen,” the whole family chorused, and instantly the noise and tumult resumed. Joel looked from one face to the next and could not help but compare it to home. Mother would set the plates down, then take her place across from Father. They would sit there, the three of them, not looking at one another, with rarely a word said among them. Here there was not the slightest hint of discomfort. The baby squalled and was plucked up by Mr. Miller, set on his one good knee, and bounced. The child squealed with delight and tried to catch the fork as it rose and fell. It seemed as though four or five different discussions were going on at once, and everyone seemed genuinely excited about listening and talking and arguing and laughing. Joel ate and watched and wondered. He had never heard so much laughter at one table.

After dinner, Mr. Miller took up his crutches and walked out to the front porch. When Mrs. Miller refused his offer to help clear the table, Joel followed, almost as though he was being drawn by something beyond himself. As he was leaving the kitchen, Ruthie called out, “You’re not leaving so soon yet, are you, Choel?”

“I . . .” His voice trailed off. He pointed vaguely in the direction of the front door, not understanding at all the reason.

Ruthie turned from the sink and gave him a smile that seemed to transform her from girl to woman. “Don’t leave now—leave next time.”

“Sha, child, sha,” Mrs. Miller quietly scolded.

Ruthie blushed and suddenly was once again Simon’s younger sister.

Even more confused than before, Joel turned and walked toward the front door. He found Mr. Miller seated in the big porch swing. The day had warmed up, so if he sat in the sun, it felt genuinely comfortable. Joel selected the side of the front step that would direct his face toward the sun and eased himself down.

Simon came out for a moment, looked at them, and left. The two of them sat there a long time, looking out at the street. Joel wondered how it was that he could remain alone with the older man and feel so comfortable.

Finally Mr. Miller said, “The things my son tells me, Choel. Things like, your father is not a happy man.”

“No, sir.” There was no hesitation. The comment seemed to pull an unseen plug deep within his heart, and before long the words were spilling out. How his family was, how his father acted. Mr. Miller sat and rocked and stroked his beard and listened, his craggy features set in somber lines.

Joel talked until he ran out of words. Then he just sat there, not knowing what else to do or say. He felt as though he had suddenly become connected to someone. The emotions he had kept stored up inside for so many years had formed some sort of barrier. Now that they were out, the barrier was gone, and he could think and feel at a different level.

Finally Mr. Miller said, “Hearts of darkness. Hearts of stone.” The words were a gentle rumble, like distant summer thunder arching through a clear sky. “Is such confusion, to think they can ever heal, no?”

“Yes,” Joel agreed and found himself trying to swallow a sudden lump in his throat.

“Ach, such sorrow one heart of stone can make. Impossible sorrow. Yah, yah, I know. Impossible pain. But one way there is to find healing. One way, for the hurt and the heart both. For the one who moves in blindness, and for the one who cries deep down. The same One way.”

Despite the heavy accent, despite the rolling speech, the words seemed etched in the air between them. There was such a power that even Joel’s heart could not suppress the surge of hope. “How?”

“Ach, that I cannot say with words. Such words I do not know. Not in English—not even in Cherman.” And yet he spoke with a smile. A soft one, but with incredible meaning upon those broad, strong features. “Perhaps there are no words for such a heart, yah? Only that which is
beyond
words. Only that which straight from God comes. Only His healing miracle.”

He leaned over close, his voice falling to a murmur. “What to do, I think, is you must speak with the Master. Perhaps if you are healed, then the healing you to others can give, yah?”

“You mean, pray?”

“Ah, my son Simon, he says you are a smart young man. Smart, yah, I can see. You listen. You think. That is the good sign.”

“But I don’t know how to pray,” Joel said, and somehow saying the words were not hard. Not here. Not with this strange, big, comfortable man.

Mr. Miller stopped his rocking and leaned over until he had brought his face down close to Joel’s. “Well, well. An honor it would be, such an honor indeed, if would you let me pray the words with you.”

11
 

The reading of the will
was postponed indefinitely. The caterer was canceled. Abigail’s secretary was hastily summoned and spent a frantic weekend contacting all the relatives and telling them not to come. From a quiet corner, Kyle watched the racing back and forth. She listened to her mother’s voice, sometimes on the verge of panic, commanding everyone within reach. For some reason, her mother never called for her or ordered her about, which was strange. Usually when these storms struck the household, Kyle was treated with the same imperiousness as the servants. But not this time. Her mother did not seek her once. It appeared that Abigail preferred not to have her around.

Winter slowly moved to spring, and still the will was not read. Kyle knew only because there were occasional visits from irate relatives, who would arrive unannounced and demand to see Abigail immediately. They would convene in the library, where soon the voices rose to a pitch that seemed to rattle the house’s very foundations. Kyle took long walks down along the yard’s perimeter whenever the relatives arrived. She hated those bitter arguments. She hated even worse how her father’s study was turned into a battlefield. Those visits sent tremors through her, as though their angry words sullied his memory.

By March, gatherings at the house began to take on an even grimmer tone. Groups of dark-suited men arrived, to be instantly met and taken into the library. They sat behind closed doors for hours, their voices droning on and on, punctuated by Abigail’s strident tones. Kyle heard Maggie mutter to Bertrand about how business should be taken care of in the office, not at home. But he always shushed her after a quick glance at Kyle.

Kyle was not the least bit sorry to be excluded from those proceedings. Just as she was glad not to have to go down to the office. She did not want to visit the top floor of Rothmore Insurance and view it without her father. She was glad to not be a part of any of it. The little snippets of words she caught whenever the library doors opened and closed were more than enough—those and the harried glances the dark-suited men cast her way. She did not want to know what was going on. She wanted to keep her father’s memory detached from all this friction and scheming. He had been a businessman, yes, a good and honorable one. But he had also been a kind and loving father. Kyle wanted to know nothing that would shake her hold on this remembrance.

There were a number of very nice things about that reluctant spring, and Kyle clung to them. Focusing on them helped to ease her through the worst moments of loss and reestablish some feeling of balance. She would be graduating from St. Albans and had been accepted to Georgetown University. To her surprise, her mother seemed almost relieved at the news. Abigail’s concern was apparently not whether Kyle would go to college, but whether she would continue to live at home. Kyle desperately wanted to study at the university. She was willing to continue living at home if that was all it took to avoid a confrontation with her mother.

Another good thing about that winter and spring was that Kyle saw Randolf Crawley almost not at all. For some reason, his visits were now limited to occasional swift meetings with her mother. Whenever Kyle greeted him in his comings and goings, he would glance furtively toward wherever her mother had last been seen.

Emily Crawley had apparently been bitten by the same bug, for she seemed to avoid contact. Yet whenever Kyle saw her at school, Emily cut off conversation and watched her pass, her gaze thoughtful. Could it even be envious? That surprised Kyle as much as anything, for Emily Crawley had never been envious of anyone else in her entire life.

That March, the weather seemed to match Abigail’s gale-force moods. Occasionally days would warm up, as though spring was struggling to break free, only to be beaten back by fierce winds and freezing temperatures. The first day of April was marked by a freak snowstorm that brought Chevy Chase and Washington to a shuddering halt. Kyle spent the day building a snow family with Bertrand and Maggie’s four grandchildren, whose weekend visit had been extended by impassable roads. They rolled up a portly daddy snowman and a smiling snowmom, then made eleven snowkids, from a nine-foot basketball player down to a snowbaby only six inches tall.

Kyle was grateful for the company and the reason to stay outdoors, because Abigail paced the front hall and railed against the weather with anger that frightened her. Kyle could not understand what the commotion was about. She knew Abigail was supposed to have gone to court that day. Kyle wondered if all the meetings and arguments of that winter were coming together, focusing down upon this time in court. The delay caused by the snowfall left Abigail almost speechless with rage.

Two days later the snow admitted defeat. But as the days and weeks flowed on toward May and Kyle’s graduation, the stormy cold continued to do battle with spring. Mornings remained frosty, the days overcast. Jim joined her for early walks, muttering about how his entire garden was a month and more late. Even the tulips seemed afraid to rise above the earth and face the unseasonably chilly weather.

April began to approach May, and still spring was held at bay. The weather began to make the news, with announcers vying with one another to describe the freakish weather. Kyle continued the ritual begun by her father, joining her mother for the evening news. Secretly she glanced over from time to time and noted that often Abigail seemed not even to be watching. Her mother remained strangely silent. Even at dinner Abigail did not take up her normal criticisms of how Kyle sat or ate or talked. She said almost nothing at all.

Finally, the first week of May, the bitter weather faded so swiftly it was as if it had never existed. Warmth blasted in, and overnight everything blossomed. Kyle’s morning walks became explorations of wonder, for the entire garden bloomed at once. Colors were so brilliant that she felt ready to cry aloud with joy.

By this time, the birds knew her so well they awaited her arrival just outside the kitchen door, chirping irritably if she was a few minutes late. Even the shy sparrows would flit in and land on her fingers, accepting bread from her hands. The household staff took to gathering at the kitchen window, sipping their morning coffee and watching as Kyle coaxed everything from cardinals to tiny finches onto her outstretched arms.

On Tuesday afternoon, Kyle had returned from St. Albans and was upstairs changing when she heard Maggie exclaim, “Mrs. Rothmore, are you all right?”

“Where’s Kyle?” came her mother’s flat reply.

“Upstairs, madam. Should I—”

“No, never mind. Has Randolf arrived?”

“Mr. Crawley? No, madam, there’s nobody here except Kyle and the staff.”

Something in her mother’s voice drew Kyle out of her room and down the stair’s sweeping curve. She held back, able to observe while remaining unseen. Her mother had a wild-eyed look about her. “He should be here,” her mother said. Abigail’s voice sounded rough, hoarse, as though filed with a rasp. “Why hasn’t he come?”

“Madam, I don’t know. Should I call someone?”

Kyle could scarcely believe her eyes. Her mother, whose whole life seemed built around looking impeccably polished and perfect, was in total disarray. Her eyes scattered glances every direction. Her hair was coming down in sparse strands. Her clothes looked haphazard. “He’ll be here. He said he had to stop by the office. But he’ll come. He has to. We must plan. This can’t be final. It can’t be.”

“No, madam,” Maggie said doubtfully. “Should I call the doctor?”

The question seemed to help Abigail focus. “Don’t be silly. I’m perfectly all right. When Randolf arrives, show him out to the back veranda.”

Friday Kyle came out of St. Alban’s to find the family Rolls parked directly in front of the school’s main doors. Bertrand stood beside the open door, his face blank and stony as Kyle hurried over. “I thought you promised—”

“Your mother’s express orders, Miss Kyle.” Bertrand ignored her unease and the whispered comments of other students who gathered and watched. He walked around, slid behind the wheel, and continued, “She wants you to join her down at the office.”

“But it’s Friday,” she protested, knowing it was a feeble objection but not able to come up with anything else.

Bertrand shared a somber look with her before repeating, “Your mother insisted.”

“Well, at least take the long way,” Kyle begged.

Bertrand hesitated, then swung the big car around and headed toward the city’s center, not the Rothmore building. Kyle settled down with a sigh. “Thank you, Bertie.”

They cruised in front of the White House before heading down Constitution Avenue. The Jefferson Memorial and The Mall were surrounded by hundreds of cherry trees, which the Japanese had sent over to symbolize the end of the war. The trees had grown over the ensuing years until many of the branches met overhead. Bertrand slowed so he could turn and look with Kyle, for in the sudden explosion of a delayed spring, all the trees had bloomed together. The walkways were thick with people, all captured by the glory of the moment. The sun was bright and hot overhead, the trees so ephemeral their blossoms belonged more to the clouds than to the earth.

When they finally turned toward the Rothmore building, Kyle became increasingly uncertain and agitated. As Bertrand pulled up in front, he turned to her and said, “It’s all going to be fine, Miss Kyle.”

“Is it?” She searched the familiar face, saw the genuine concern. But it only seemed to make it worse. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know you,” he replied. “And I know you will do the right thing.”

“I’m so scared, Bertie.”

He hesitated a moment, then said, “I find Maggie’s wisdom fits such times very well. Perhaps you should try to find comfort in a time of prayer.”

Kyle glanced up and through the front windshield. She could feel her mother’s presence and all the unanswered questions there waiting for her. “Prayer doesn’t belong in this place,” she murmured.

“That is not true,” he protested. “The Lord saw Daniel out of the lion’s den. He could be with you here, if you let Him.”

The words tugged at her heart, but the dark shadows reached out from the high unseen floors and grasped at her. “I have to go,” she said through wooden lips.

Before Bertrand could come around, Kyle slid from the car. She did not want to wait, to hesitate even a moment. There was too much risk that her nerve would fail and she would not be able to enter at all.

But once inside, the reactions that greeted her were so unexpected she found herself pushed beyond her fears. A pair of secretaries coming out of the ground floor soda fountain stopped to smile and wish her a good morning. She could only vaguely remember having ever seen their faces before. Then the elevator operator tipped his hat to her and kept up a cheerful chatter about the weather. The elevator clanked up the floors, and as others came and went, all of them seemed to have some kind word for her. Kyle had never known such a greeting before. For her father, certainly, all the employees knew him and seemed to have genuinely liked him. But this was directed at
her
.

When she reached the top floor, a passing secretary greeted her with yet another smile and said that she had just seen her mother down in Randolf Crawley’s office. Kyle thanked her but found her footsteps turning toward the far end of the corridor.

She did not hesitate, not even when she pushed through the tall outer door and Mrs. Parker, her father’s secretary, greeted her by bounding to her feet and giving her the most brilliant smile Kyle had seen that day. Instead, she went into the inner sanctum and closed the door behind her.

She stood still, her hands on the knob behind her, and leaned against the door. This, she knew, she had to do alone.

She turned slowly to look at the long-familiar broad chamber. The office was so much like her father, she could feel his presence surround her again. At each step, her heart collided with her chest. She traced one finger along the edge of his desk. She looked at his high-back leather chair and mentally heard the heavy tread as he walked into the room behind her.