“Not only did they show up here, but Elena asked if you were going with us. Sounds very much as if she plans to go.”
“I’m sorry,” Meredith said defensively. Shelly noticed that Meredith’s eyes were red and her voice raspy. “I’ll go talk to them. May I borrow your robe?” Meredith punctuated her sentence with a series of deep coughs.
“You don’t have to,” Shelly said, backing down. “I’m sure I’m making a bigger deal out of this than it is. You’re not feeling well, are you?”
“I feel awful.”
Shelly let out a sigh. “Stay in bed. Get better. I’ll figure this out. Sorry I jumped all over you.”
“Honest,” Meredith said, covering her mouth as she coughed again, “I didn’t say anything to Jonathan. You know I wouldn’t. I promised.”
“I know. Thanks.” Shelly tried to regain her composure. She left the room, quietly closing the door, and faced the waiting group. Her years of working for the airline had taught her diplomacy. She could handle this situation. “I appreciate you guys coming over, but I’m afraid we’ll have to cancel our plans. Meredith has come down with a cold. Thanks anyway.”
“Don’t you still want to go?” Jana asked. “Hilsbach is only about forty kilometers. You can be there and back in a few short hours.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s …” Shelly hadn’t expected any resistance to her backing out since Meredith was sick.
“You don’t know when you’re ever going to be back here again,” Mike said.
“The sun broke through a little while ago,” Jana added. “Could be a nice Sunday-afternoon drive. Besides, you and Jonathan haven’t had time to catch up yet.”
“I’m sure Jonathan and Elena have better things to do than to spend the afternoon with us,” Shelly said smoothly. She thought it wouldn’t be so bad to go to Hilsbach with Mike and Jana, but since it hadn’t yet been defined who was going on this jaunt, she thought it best to start her own process of elimination.
“Oh,” Jana said. “Mike and I weren’t planning to go. We have a counseling situation with one of our staff members that will pretty much take all afternoon.”
“You, Jonathan, and Elena should go,” Mike urged. “Have some fun. To be honest with you, we kind of need you out of the house while we have this counseling meeting. It’s okay for Meredith to stay, of course, since she’s in bed, but our place isn’t really big enough to have a private meeting.”
“So we’re going to go?” Elena said.
Shelly glanced at her and gave a sweeping glance at Jonathan, trying to read his expression. The smile was there. The eyes were looking down at the keys in his hand. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. It had been too long. Not a jot of their former mind reading remained.
There seemed to be no choice. “I guess we are.” She checked her jeans, black turtleneck, and black ankle boots and decided she should be warm enough with her jacket and a scarf. Her hair was pulled up in a loose French twist, which she usually wore at work. It showed off her small gold hoop earrings. “I’ll grab my jacket,” Shelly said.
Hurrying back into the bedroom, she reached for her thin-strapped shoulder pouch that held her passport, driver’s license, and money.
“Are you going?” Meredith asked and then blew her nose.
“I guess I am,” Shelly said. “Mike and Jana pretty much let me know this is what I need to do.”
“You’ll be fine,” Meredith said.
“Do you want me to bring you anything?” Shelly asked, reaching for her paisley scarf and her jacket.
“No, I think I’ll be okay. Why don’t you take my camera? It’s on top of the desk.” Meredith turned over and coughed again. As Shelly was about to leave, Meredith said, “I’ll pray for you.”
Shelly laughed. “Thanks, but I think it’s a little too late for that.”
Jonathan and Elena led the way to his car, which was parked down at the end of the next street because parking was such a problem in the old town. At least with the two of them walking ahead of her, Shelly could find her pace and catch her breath. The sun had gone behind the clouds and then reappeared for a moment. The air was cool, much cooler than it had been her first day here, and Shelly was glad for her warm jacket. She felt no emotions. She wasn’t nervous, remorseful, or angry. Only cold.
Jonathan unlocked the car doors, and Elena climbed into the backseat stating, “You’re our guest, Shelly. You ride in the front.”
Shelly hesitated, then got in. It felt strange. She hadn’t been in the front seat of a car with Jonathan since that night in his friend’s truck. This was awkward.
“I have a map,” Jonathan said, reaching down next to his seat and pulling it out. He handed it to Shelly. “Is the name of the town Hilsbach?”
“Yes. I have the information here.” She pulled out the note from her grandmother and unfolded it. “It doesn’t say much. Just ‘C. C. Rudi, October 5, 1827, Evangelische Kirche, 1509, Hilsbach, Baden.’ Then she left a space and wrote, ‘Weiler, Ludwig Rudi, St. Annakapella.’ Does any of that make sense to you?”
Jonathan kept looking straight ahead and drove down the street out of Heidelberg. “I’m not sure. Your grandfather is C. C. Rudi, right?”
“Great-great-great-grandfather. On my mom’s side. I think he’s the one who was the pastor in Hilsbach.”
“At the Evangelische Kirche, no doubt,” Jonathan said.
“What is that?” Shelly asked. It seemed easier to talk with a common goal to work on.
“The church. In most German towns there’s the Catholic church and then the church that came about as a result of the Reformation. That’s probably where your grandfather preached.”
“I guess,” Shelly said. “You know, this could all be a worthless goose chase. If you guys want to just drop me at a museum or something, I’d completely understand. You don’t have to do this.”
“It was my idea,” Elena said from the backseat.
Shelly turned around and forced herself to make eye contact with Elena.
“Listen, Shelly,” Elena said, leaning forward, “Johnny told me that you two were best friends when you were growing up. I think that’s so cool. I also thought it might seem kind of uncomfortable for you to show up and have us announce our engagement and everything, since you didn’t know before you got here.”
Shelly didn’t mean to, but she looked away, as if something out the window required her sudden attention. “I was the one who crashed your party,” she said. “I mean, I should have let Jonathan know I was coming.”
“I’m just glad you came,” Elena said. “I wanted you and me to have a chance to get to know each other. To hear Johnny tell it, you two were inseparable the whole time you were growing up. Besides his parents, you’re the closest thing he has to a relative.”
Shelly pursed her lips.
“Since I haven’t met anyone else in his family, I wanted to get to know you,” Elena said. “I hope we haven’t been too pushy about it.”
“Actually,” Jonathan said, adding to Elena’s sentence, “I wanted to spend some time with you, too. I thought it might be good.”
Shelly nodded slowly and tried to find all her professional, accommodating responses. “I appreciate both of you being so thoughtful. Thanks for giving up your Sunday afternoon to drive me around.”
“So, tell me about yourself,” Elena said. “Johnny says you’re a flight attendant.”
“Yes.”
“It sounds exciting. What’s it like?”
“I don’t know. It’s, ah … it’s actually not as glamorous and exciting as you might think.” Shelly wondered if Jonathan picked up any hidden meaning in her words. Would he perceive that her endeavor to go off and see the world hadn’t panned out the way she had hoped?
“And you live in California? Is that right?”
“I did,” Shelly said. It felt underhanded communicating information to Jonathan through Elena’s questions. “I recently moved back to Seattle.” She was ready to drop the bi
g shocker that she lived in the Tulip Cottage on Whidbey Island, but somehow Shelly couldn’t bring herself to slip that information to Jonathan. Perhaps Meredith had already told him anyway.
“Where are you from?” Shelly said, eager to turn the attention off herself.
“Akron. I grew up there. I came over this summer on an outreach trip with my church youth group, and then I decided to stay.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Since the middle of June,” Elena said.
Shelly did a quick count. Four months? You’ve known this girl less than four months, Jonathan?
“Is that when you two met?” Shelly felt a little peculiar asking. It was as if she were playing a game with Jonathan.
“Yes,” Jonathan said firmly. “June 17. We met at the quarterly staff meeting.”
If Shelly was reading his body language correctly, he wasn’t comfortable with the brevity of their acquaintance.
“The minute I saw him, I was smitten,” Elena said, reaching up and massaging Jonathan’s neck. “Then I found out his name was Johnny, and I about flipped. My dad and my brother are both named Johnny. It was like a sign.”
Shelly briefly considered rolling down her window to let the fresh air slap her in the face and keep her from bursting out laughing. Three months? Your name was a sign? Jonathan, what has happened to you?
Shelly was dying to ask Elena how old she was, but she didn’t know how to do it subtly.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Elena suddenly asked Shelly.
Why was I so concerned about being subtle?
Jonathan suddenly slammed on the brakes and barely missed ramming into a large truck that had swerved in front of them.
“That was close!” Elena said. “I tell you, people here drive crazy. Crazy and fast. Have you been on the Autobahn yet, Shelly?”
“No, not yet.” Her heart was pounding, not only from the near accident but also from the way Jonathan had automatically reached out his right arm to protect her. He had done that once before when they were in high school driving his mom’s car home from school. A dog had run into the road, and Jonathan had reacted with his human arm barrier to protect Shelly. That time she had yelled at him because in his quick reflex, he had tagged her jaw. This time he didn’t touch her at all.
“You both okay?” Jonathan asked.
“Yes,” Shelly said calmly.
“Not a scratch,” Elena said. “So what were we talking about?”
Shelly made a wish that Elena wouldn’t remember and bring up the question about a boyfriend again. It crossed her mind to lie and say yes, just so Jonathan would never suspect that she had been busy the past few weeks rekindling her long-lost feelings of love for him.
“I remember. I was going to ask you how you do your hair up like that. It’s really pretty. I don’t think mine is long enough. Do you just twist it, or do you have to pin it first?”
Jonathan remained silent the rest of the trip. Elena stayed on her friendly course of conversation, asking about Shelly’s sisters and telling Shelly about her family. The longer they talked, the harder it was for Shelly to dislike Elena. She was young and a little blunt, but Meredith was right: Elena not only resembled the way Shelly had looked when she was in high school, but Elena also seemed to have some of Shelly’s old mannerisms, especially the one habit Shelly had tried so hard to break and finally had—nail biting.
Jonathan had never said anything about Shelly’s bad habit. It was possible he was used to it, having grown up watching her chew on her nails. But once they started to date, Shelly was the one who had decided to stop biting her nails. When they held hands, Jonathan would rub his thumb over her thumbnail. She had been sure it was a subconscious gesture, but it served as a subtle reminder that her cuticles were rough and her thumbnail was a jagged stub. She had wanted her hands to be smooth and beautiful for him, so she stopped biting her nails.
Elena nibbled away at hers all the way to Hilsbach. She also flipped her hair over her shoulder the way Shelly used to. Molly had cured Shelly of that habit by teasing with the observation, “You look like a nervous person shooing invisible bugs away from your shoulders.”
Watching Elena and listening to her, Shelly felt she was around one of her younger cousins. She never would have expected to feel the kind of camaraderie that she did.
“This is it,” Jonathan said, pointing out the sign beside the road that marked the small town of Hilsbach, Baden. “Now where to?”
“I guess we find the church,” Shelly said. “Or ask directions from someone. Do you feel like practicing your German?”
“I only know enough to get by,” Jonathan said. “Elena is fluent.”
“You are?” Shelly hadn’t expected her face and her tone of voice to carry as much surprise as they did. “German is big in Akron, Ohio, is it?”
“It’s big in my family. My grandmother lives with us, and her original language was German. I grew up hearing it, and then I took it in school.”
Shelly didn’t want to admit that she grew up hearing German from both her grandparents and also took it in school. Apparently very little of it had stuck.
“I think we can ask some people in here what we want to know,” Jonathan pulled into the parking lot of a small, modern bakery. The sign in the window read “Bäckerei.”
“It looks closed,” Elena noticed. “That’s right. It’s Sunday afternoon.”
“Stores still close in the smaller towns on Sundays,” Jonathan explained. “I guess we’re on our own. It’s a pretty small town. Can’t be too hard to find the church. Usually the Catholic church and the Protestant church are the only two in town, and they’re close to each other.” He drove down the street, and the houses began to look older. Within a block, they drove past a large church with a cemetery next to it.
“Bingo,” Jonathan said.
Shelly closed her lips. It was strange. She had been about to say “bingo” herself. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Jonathan said. He parked across the street and turned off the engine.
“Well,” Shelly said, grabbing Meri’s camera, “we shall see what we shall see.”
“I don’t believe it!” Elena said as she got out behind Shelly. “That’s exactly what Johnny says all the time. You two really are like brother and sister.”
Jonathan climbed out of his side of the car, and for the first time that day, he looked directly at Shelly. She let her eyes meet his. His dark, gray expression resembled “doom and gloom” clouds. She could only wonder what he read in hers.
Chapter Sixteen
The three of them walked across the vacant street in the little farming town and entered the graveyard. Shelly was amazed to see that it was more of a garden than a cemetery. The sites were all large plots with granite- and marble-carved headstones. Each of the plots was well tended. Many had fresh flowers placed on them or small bushes planted beside the headstones. Some were lined with pansies, which were still blooming even in the autumn chill.
“What name are we looking for?” Elena asked.
“Rudi,” Shelly said. “C. C. Rudi. The only date I have is October 5, 1827. I don’t know if that’s when he was born or when he died.”
“How bizarre,” Elena exclaimed, zipping up her red jacket and sticking her hands in her pockets.
“What’s bizarre?” Shelly asked, looking around.
“October fifth. That’s today.”
Shelly felt a shiver up her spine. She pulled the scarf from her coat pocket and wrapped it around her neck. “You’re right,” she said in a hushed voice. “It is.”
“We should probably split up,” Elena said, looking around at the large space they had to cover. “There are rows and rows to check, and I’m sure they’re not alphabetical.” She giggled at her own joke.
Shelly didn’t find it funny. Apparently Jonathan didn’t either.
“I’ll start to look around here,” Elena said quickly.
“Okay,” Jonathan agreed. “Then I’ll go
to the left, and you go right, Shelly Bean.”
All three of them stopped. Shelly and Elena both looked at Jonathan. It was silent for a moment as the crimson crept up his face. Shelly wondered if it was her imagination, or was he having the same memory flashback?
They were kids, playing football in the school yard. Shelly was on Jonathan’s team, and he was counting on her to make the final touchdown. She went left, and the quarterback threw the ball to her, but she couldn’t quite wrap her hands around it. The ball pirouetted on her fingertips as she fumbled it. It was one of those twilight-zone moments when everything turns into slow motion. She had the ball for one fleeting second in her palm, and then it slipped out, and she crossed the goal line empty-handed.
“Shelly Bean,” Elena repeated joyously. “That’s a cute nickname.”
It wasn’t really a nickname. It was Jonathan’s childhood name for her. No one ever called her that except Jonathan, and he had finally stopped in junior high when, for a stretch of about five months, Shelly was nearly four inches taller than Jonathan and she outweighed him by about ten pounds. She threatened to give him a bloody nose if he ever called her “Shelly Bean” again. He had taken the threat seriously and immediately stopped. She hadn’t heard him use that term in more than ten years.
“Let’s meet back here in about five minutes,” Jonathan suggested, brushing over the nickname slip as if it hadn’t happened. He took off to the left. Shelly went to the right.
Up and down the rows she reverently moved, checking the names and dates as she went. The grass beneath her feet was well manicured. She found a whole row of Müllers and one with a date of 1897. No Rudis anywhere.
She couldn’t see Elena anymore. Jonathan was in the far corner with his head bent, examining grave markers.
“This is crazy,” she said to herself. “What am I doing here?”
Starting to head down another row, she passed a wide old oak tree. She hadn’t noticed the man standing there earlier. When he stepped from behind the tree and addressed her in German, she was startled. He had on simple, casual clothes and a felt hat. Nodding to her, he spoke to her in German again.
Clouds Page 12
