Sister's Forgiveness

by Anna Schmidt

  Joseph had continued to talk, and she forced her attention back to him.

  “…about two out of every three cases referred to the program result in a face-to-face mediation meeting.”

  Matt shook his head. “So they meet, and Sadie says how sorry she is, and Uncle Geoff and Aunt Jeannie get to say how sad they are. Then what?”

  “Like I said—the meeting is only the first piece of it. The meat of the program is both sides sitting down together and drafting what’s called a ‘restitution agreement.’” He anticipated Lars’s question. “The victims lay out terms by which the offender could make restitution for the crime. For example,” he said, turning his attention back to Matt, “if Matt here had spray-painted my garage, I might make repainting the garage a condition of the agreement.”

  Matt’s mouth fell open. “But Sadie…”

  Emma was on her feet before her son could finish the sentence she saw coming. “How about another piece of pie, Joseph?”

  Joseph hesitated then pushed his plate away and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “No thank you, and my apologies for monopolizing the conversation.”

  “Not at all,” Emma said, relieved that he had given in to her need to change the subject.

  “How often does it work?” Matt pressed. “How often does the offender actually repaint the garage or do what the victim wants?”

  Joseph focused his attention on Emma, getting her permission to return to the discussion. When she nodded, he kept looking at her as he gave Matt his answer. “In over 90 percent of the cases, the offender completes the terms of the agreement—often within one year. Compare that to court-ordered restitution where there’s only a 20 to 30 percent success rate.”

  “That’s impressive,” Lars said.

  Emma sat down again and took a deep breath as they all turned their attention to her. “I realize that you have Sadie’s best interests at heart, Joseph, and of course, Hester is a dear friend. She’s also a close friend to Jeannie and Geoff.”

  Joseph nodded. “She told me that when the offender takes personal responsibility—instead of being ordered by a court to take responsibility—statistics show that everyone benefits.”

  “And in this case? Sadie cannot make this right,” Emma quietly reminded him. Surely she did not need to state the obvious—that what Geoff and Jeannie understandably wanted was Tessa back in their lives.

  “I asked the same question. Ms. Kaufmann made the point that the terms of any such agreement must fall within the realm of the possible. Restitution may be only symbolic. The key is to find ways to build a sense of justice between the victim and the offender. In her case, the young man is getting his high school diploma and attending weekly meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he’s written several articles on the dangers of drinking and driving that have been reprinted in a variety of newspapers.”

  A silence fell over the gathering. Emma looked at Lars while Matt looked from one parent to the other. “It could be over?” he asked Joseph finally.

  Joseph cleared his throat. “Everyone needs to understand that this does not replace whatever the outcome of Sadie’s adjudication may be. If the judge orders her to serve time, this won’t change that.”

  “Then what good is it?” Matt asked.

  “It gives you—all of you—a chance to practice what you have told me is ‘your way.’ It gives you the opportunity to forgive Sadie, and perhaps most of all, it will help Sadie to forgive herself. Of course, Sadie would have to—”

  “No,” Emma said. “I know you mean well, Joseph, and I can see where this sounds appealing, but having to face Geoff and Jeannie—” She could not find the words to describe the suffering that her child had already endured.

  “Your sister knows about the program. She met with Ms. Kaufmann yesterday,” Joseph said quietly.

  “And Geoff?” Lars asked incredulous at this bit of news.

  “I’m not sure whether he knows or not.”

  “I’ll go tell him. He’ll listen to me. I know just how to explain it,” Matt said. He was up and out the door before anyone could react.

  “Lars, stop him,” Emma pleaded.

  Lars nodded and headed out the back door. Emma could hear him calling for Matt to come back, and she could hear Matt’s shouted reply. “It’s okay, Dad. I know where Uncle Geoff will be.”

  Lars returned to the kitchen and shook his head. “I’ll take the car and catch up to him,” he said, picking up the keys.

  “No, let me call Jeannie.”

  Lars looked at her with something that she could only identify as pity. “She won’t answer,” he reminded her.

  “Why don’t you and I go after the boy?” Joseph offered. “My car is blocking yours anyway. I could drive while you keep an eye out for Matt.”

  Lars nodded, and the two men headed out. “He’ll be at the ball field,” Emma called after them. “Geoff will have just finished football practice.”

  Lars waved from the open window of Joseph’s car, and as Emma watched them go, she felt the need to do something—anything that might help her feel as if she was in control of something—so she picked up the phone and punched in her sister’s number.

  Chapter 29

  Geoff

  Practice had not gone well, and Geoff was glad there was no game scheduled for this week. After suspending Dan Kline for a month, Geoff had finally given in to pressure from other parents and alumni and let him come back. But the boy’s head had been somewhere else, and he’d fumbled the ball so often that his teammates had begun to grumble. Geoff’s work at school—especially his role as coach—was the one thing he counted on for a respite from the constant memory of Tessa’s accident and the oppressive silence that had fallen over the house he shared with Jeannie from that day to this.

  Shortly after Tessa’s death, Jeannie had asked him about his feelings toward Dan. Of course, those had been the days when he and his wife were actually talking to each other. It was a fair question. It was also one that Geoff had not yet been ready to consider. The team needed Dan if they had any hope of repeating as conference champs this season. That might sound shallow to some, but Geoff could not ignore the power that such an accomplishment could have for the entire student body.

  “Kline,” he barked as he watched the players trudge toward the locker room, “what’s your problem?” Stupid question. What did he think his quarterback’s problem was?

  Dan paused but did not turn around, while his teammates continued on their way. Even wearing shoulder pads, Dan walked like a young man defeated. Geoff had the urge to shake him, but he realized that his irritation with Dan was rooted in the fact that the boy had been in the car that day, had agreed to let Sadie get behind the wheel, had been texting his buddies instead of coaching her. Or at least that was the gossip he’d heard around school—gossip that stopped the minute he passed in the hallway or entered a room. The hours he spent at school had been filled with moments like that, but even so, it was better than the isolation and emptiness he felt at home.

  For the last day or so though, it was obvious that Jeannie had something on her mind, something she was reluctant to talk about with him. Whatever it was, she’d been working overtime to soften him up. After several nights spent sleeping in Tessa’s room or the guest room, she had come back to their bed the night before. And that very morning, instead of being up and out for her run before his alarm went off, she was in the kitchen cooking a regular breakfast for the two of them.

  Knowing Jeannie, she had come up with some plan for putting the family back together again—reconciling with Emma and forgiving Sadie. As if he ever could agree to such a thing. If he never saw Sadie again…

  “Coach?”

  He’d completely forgotten that he’d called Dan back. His quarterback was facing him now, his helmet dangling from two fingers as he squinted at him in the setting sun. Apparently he’d muttered some excuse and was waiting for Geoff to accept it.

  “Go on, hit the showers,” Geoff growled,
and Dan hesitated only half a second before trotting off the field. Geoff picked up the small whiteboard that he used to outline plays and acknowledged the wave of the manager across the field. The kid worked hard. He’d just finished putting away the equipment and locking the shed. As he headed for the locker room, he tossed Geoff the keys.

  “See you, Coach.”

  “Good job.”

  The kid looked surprised but pleased and broke into a trot as he left the now deserted field. Geoff realized that he couldn’t remember the boy’s name.

  He took off his sweat-stained baseball cap and rubbed his forearm across his forehead. He was already drenched in sweat, so a long run before he showered seemed like a good idea. Besides, it would use up another hour before he had to go home. Before he had to face another evening of a house without Tessa. Another night of not knowing what to say to Jeannie. Another cluster of hours when he had to face his failure as a father and husband.

  He put down his whiteboard and started to jog around the track. On the second lap, he heard footsteps behind him, gaining on him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Matt dogging his steps with shorter but admirable strides for a kid his age. Geoff felt the predictable flicker of irritation that he’d experienced on seeing Matt ever since the funeral. He thought about picking up the pace. How far down had he fallen to run away from a kid?

  Not just any kid.

  Matt.

  “Hey, Matt,” Geoff called out as if he’d been expecting his nephew all along. “Just finished an extra practice and thought I’d get in a couple of laps, but it’s getting pretty late.”

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” Matt said as he came alongside Geoff.

  The boy was barely breathing hard and certainly hadn’t broken a sweat, although he’d been running full out to catch up. “Okay, walk with me.” He headed across the playing field toward the school.

  “It’s about Sadie—well, all of us actually, but—”

  “Not interested,” Geoff growled. He forced himself to add, “Look, I admit I’ve been avoiding you lately, and I’m sorry about that. If you want to talk about school or sports or anything like that, I’m here for you, Matt. But your sister is off-limits.”

  Matt stopped walking. “But…”

  Geoff wheeled around, his fists clenched at his sides. “Why can’t you people get this? I don’t—no, make that I can’t bear to think about what Sadie did to us much less talk about it.”

  “But this is different.”

  “Give it up, Matt. You and your mom and your dad and everyone else needs to stop trying to convince me that I need to forgive and forget.” He released a laugh that sounded more like a howl. “Do us both a favor and just go away, Matt.”

  Matt was looking at him with those puppy-dog eyes that so many times in the past had pleaded with him to help with some problem at home or school. Geoff sighed and softened his tone. “You’re a good kid, but seeing you makes me think about your sister, and frankly I’m not a big enough man to be able to manage that—not yet. Maybe there will come a day, but this isn’t it, so go home. If you care for me at all, don’t be coming around here anymore.”

  He punched in the security code for the school’s side door then rested his forehead against the doorjamb. “Look, this isn’t about you, Matt. It’s just that right now…” He shook his head and added, “Maybe in a year when you’re enrolled here—maybe then. Okay?” But when he turned around, Matt was running full out again, this time in the opposite direction.

  Feeling frustrated by the very idea that Matt would even attempt to bring up Sadie’s name and also guilty for taking out his grief and anger on the boy, Geoff showered and changed, stuffing his dirty clothes inside a duffel before turning out the lights and heading home.

  The kitchen light was on when he came up the driveway, and he could see Jeannie standing at the sink. She didn’t even glance up when he drove the car into the garage. But her movements told him that it was because she was caught up in whatever she was doing rather than that she was deliberately ignoring him.

  Inside the laundry room off the kitchen, he dumped his dirty clothes in the washer, added detergent, and turned on the machine. Through the open doorway, he could see that the table was set—for three. Seeing a place setting where Tessa normally sat took his breath away.

  Half expecting to find Jeannie in a state of confusion and denial, he steadied himself and then cleared his throat before entering the kitchen. Jeannie was cutting vegetables for a salad at the kitchen sink. “Hey, babe, what’s going on?”

  “Oh, good, you’re home,” she said. “Do me a favor and turn the oven down to three hundred, okay?”

  Geoff did as she asked, all the while looking for signs that his wife had finally lost it and gone fully into the dream world of imagining that Tessa was still with them.

  “I’ve invited a friend of Hester’s to have supper with us,” she said as she tossed the salad and then covered the large wooden bowl with plastic wrap and set it in the refrigerator. “Her name is Rachel Kaufmann. She and Hester were college roommates in nursing school. She’s moving to Sarasota to take a position at the hospital. Oh Geoff, her husband was killed by a drunk driver a year or so ago. Now it’s just her and her son, Justin.”

  “Aren’t you three places short?” Geoff asked, feeling an odd sense of relief that Jeannie was fine after all. “John and Hester and the boy?”

  “It was all so last-minute. John and Hester had a prior engagement, and Rachel had promised her son that he could spend the night with a friend he met at church. She was going to be alone, so I thought… You don’t mind, do you?”

  Geoff almost smiled. This was so typical of Jeannie. She would invite total strangers to join them for a meal, and then when it was a done deal, she would give him those huge green eyes of hers and say, “You don’t mind, do you?”

  He felt a tenderness toward her that had been sorely missing since the funeral. “And if I did?” He kept his voice light and teasing, like the old days. He tweaked her cheek and then cupped her face in his hands. “It’ll do us both good,” he said. “Get our minds on someone else.”

  Jeannie nodded, but Geoff did not miss the way she hesitated as if there was a little more to the story than she was telling him.

  Paranoid. He shook off the feeling.

  “What can I do to help?” he asked as he rinsed his hands under the kitchen faucet and dried them on a dish towel. Just then the doorbell rang, and Geoff glanced out the window and saw a bike parked on the driveway. “How about I get the door?”

  By her dress and manner, Rachel Kaufmann was of the same branch of the Mennonite faith as Lars and Emma. It made sense, of course, since Hester and John were also conservative in their practice. He forgot to smile as he opened the door and took in the pale blue dress, the white starched prayer covering, the tightly bound black hair. Seeing her made him think of Emma—and Matt.

  “Hello,” she said, her smile tentative in the face of his less-than-warm welcome. “I may have the wrong house. I was looking for the Messner home?”

  “Rachel, come in,” Jeannie called from the kitchen. “That’s my husband, Geoff. Geoff, this is Rachel.”

  Geoff smiled and opened the door wider, inviting the woman inside. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said, offering her a handshake.

  “Likewise. Hester tells me that you’re both the athletic director and vice principal at a local high school,” she said. “That’s quite a lot on your plate.”

  “Plus he coaches football and basketball,” Jeannie added, coming into the front hallway.

  Jeannie was nervous. Geoff knew his wife. She had never met a person she didn’t immediately bond with. No, if Jeannie had invited this woman to supper, she had already established a connection of some sort. He decided that her nerves came from being out of the habit of entertaining and making the small talk that came with the territory.

  “Jeannie tells me that you’ve taken a job at the hospital. Are you a nurse?” he ven
tured.

  Rachel laughed. “I was. But one day I realized that it was the emotional and spiritual wellness of people that intrigued me, so I went back to school and got my degree in psychology—counseling—”

  “Oh my,” Jeannie said as she made a dash for the kitchen. “I left the heat on under the rice, and it’s boiling over.”

  Geoff felt his jaw tighten as Rachel followed Jeannie to the kitchen, offering to help. A shrink? Was this a setup? True, he and Jeannie had been anything but close lately. Even before Tessa died, they’d been having problems, but a counselor? They had their minister for that if they needed him.

  Still, he wouldn’t be rude. He was feeling guilty about the way he’d handled things with Matt. On the drive home, he’d thought about how he might make that right. After all, Matt was an innocent bystander in all of this. It was unfair—not to mention downright immature—to blame him or even connect him to what had happened. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to stop by Matt’s house, and the chances of Lars allowing the phone on at this hour were slim. Tomorrow, Geoff had promised himself, he would get a message to Matt to come by practice after school.

  Feeling a little less tense for having come up with a plan for reuniting with Matt, Geoff joined the women in the kitchen where Rachel was filling glasses with ice and water and Jeannie was dishing up their supper. After all, if this was Jeannie’s attempt to get them both to counseling, all he had to do was politely say no.

  “Looks great,” Geoff said, relieving her of the platter stacked with pieces of baked chicken. He set it on the table then pulled out Tessa’s chair for Rachel.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  He waited for Jeannie to sit before taking his own place across from her. He held out his hands for them to take for the silent grace before the meal, and after a minute, he released Rachel’s hand and gave Jeannie’s an extra squeeze before offering Rachel the platter of chicken.