Clouds (17 page)

“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
 

T
he 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.

Shelly knew she had heard the phrase he used before. What did it mean? She broke down the familiar words, and the meaning came to her. “Who am I looking for?” she repeated to the man. He looked like the gardener. Maybe he knew some of the names from having tended this garden graveyard.
“Mein grosse, grosse, grosse Grossvater,”
Shelly told him, hoping he could understand her limited German. Then in English she explained. “My great-great-great-grandfather. His name was C. C. Rudi.”

“Rudi!” The old man’s eyes lit up. “
Ja
, Rudi,” he began and then let go with a string of words that were impossible for Shelly to decipher. He reached over and shook her hand vigorously, his eyes still aglow. She couldn’t understand a single syllable.

“Eine
moment,
bitte,”
she said, holding up her hand in a gesture to get the man to stay put. “I’ll be right back. Wait here. My friend, ah …” She tried to use her German again. “
Mein Freund sprechen Deutsche
. Wait.”

She turned to run back and bring Jonathan to interpret for her, but it was Elena who saw her and came hurrying over.

“Come with me,” Shelly said excitedly. “There’s a man who can tell me everything.”

Elena plunged into the conversation with the man by greeting him formally, and then after her flow of perfect German sentences, the man shook his head earnestly and excitedly told his story again.

“Wow,” Elena said.

“What?”

“Your ancestors are highly respected around here. Rudi was one of the founding families of the neighboring town called ‘Weiler.’ There’s a castle there, the man says, and a monument to your ancestors.”

“Seriously?”

“Do I look as if I could make all this up?” Elena said in her perky way.

Shelly kept herself from answering that question and realized again how much Elena sounded like Shelly five years ago. She suddenly wished she could go back and apologize to all her high school teachers for her case of terminal perkiness. She had never known how irritating it could be.

“He says we should go see the castle,” Elena said.

“Would you ask him if he knows where my grandfather’s grave is?”

Elena began her question and then stopped. “How do you say grave in German?” she asked Shelly.

“Can’t help you there,” Shelly said.

Turning back to the gardener, Elena acted out what she
wanted to know. First she put her hands around her throat and strangled herself back and forth. Then she closed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, dropping her head to the side. With quick hand motions, Elena pantomimed the ground with a big grave marker.

“Grab?”
the man asked carefully.

“Yes, of course,” said Elena, tapping her forehead. “
Grab
. Grave.”

“Where’s his grave? Can you show us?” Shelly jumped in.

The man began to speak in earnest. He pointed and tipped his head. Jonathan arrived and listened in.

“Can you understand him?” Jonathan asked Shelly.

“Not a word.”

“There’s a graveyard in the next town. Isn’t that what he said?” he asked Elena.

“Yes. I don’t quite understand what he’s saying. Something about the way the graves are tended.”

“Thank you very much,” Shelly said, extending her hand to the old gentleman.
“Danke.”

“Bitte,”
he replied with a smile. He tipped his head once more, but he didn’t take Shelly’s offered hand.

Shelly turned to Jonathan and Elena. Elena had slipped her arm through Jonathan’s and was sharing his coat pocket with his hand.

Seeing them snuggling like that made Shelly feel sick in the pit of her stomach. She tried to ignore it and said, “That’s great news, isn’t it? At least we know we’re on the right trail. Wrong graveyard, but we’re not far.”