After the Fire

by Meredith Rae Morgan

  Chapter 18

  The next morning was Saturday. Bev decided not to go to Paul Morehouse's office. The truth was she didn't have anything to do. There was nothing for her to do until the police issued the official report. She would need to stay in touch with the attorneys and decided to call on each of them over the next few days. That might piss off Peters, who was trying to position himself as “lead counsel,” but she had to at least acknowledge their involvement. She made a note to make those calls on Monday. In the meantime she puttered around the house, trying to be quiet until Emily got up.

  Once Emily was awake – although not yet out of bed where she was curled up watching TV – Bev did some cleaning. Then she stuck her head in Emily's door and said, “Okay, sleepyhead, are you going to stay in bed all day?”

  “Yep. I have a free weekend for the last time until football season is over. I'm hanging around the house all day, and I might not even get dressed. I have a paper to write and I want to get it out of the way.”

  “I feel like getting some exercise. I think I'll go for a ride.”

  “Okay. Don't go on a real long one. It's supposed to be really nice tomorrow. Save some energy and let's go to the park tomorrow for a ride and a picnic.”

  “Deal.”

  While she was riding, her cell phone rang. She didn't answer it, but found a roadside pull off with a picnic table and a trash barrel. She returned the call to Frank Rittenhaus. He said, “You are not checking your emails today?”

  “No, I haven't. I'm actually sort of taking the day off. What have you got?”

  “I sent you a long email sort of filling out the bios on all the people who were in the building the night of the fire. I also sent a copy to Ben. You should probably get it to Ed Casey as soon as possible. I don't know how much time the cops have spent on learning about the victims. Some interesting stuff.”

  “Such as.”

  “Such as my gut all of a sudden perked up. I looked at Sonderland again, and I found some interesting things. Sonderland's got a very interesting family. They're all a bunch of yin and yang opposites. Sonderland's a loud obnoxious car-salesman type of guy. His wife is quiet. She does charity work and she's kind of a church lady. As you know the son is a pharmacist and seemed to be living his life at some distance from his coarse car dealership family. I think he was kind of a social climber.

  “Sonderland's dealership always did okay, but in recent years, it's been doing extremely well, on account of the most interesting member of the Sonderland family, Donna. When we first started hearing about the Sonderland daughter, I thought she was a kid, the baby sister of the groom. In fact, Donna Sonderland is the older of the two. She was 32 years old.

  “The old man started out in the car business as a 14 year old kid working as a runner in the service department at a dealership in Toledo. By the time he graduated from high school, he had worked his way up to a shift manager in the service department. Occasionally when people came in with cars that weren't worth fixing, he'd steer them in the direction of a good used car. Eventually he was selling as many used cars out of the service department as some of the salesmen. They put him in sales, and before he was 25 he was the top selling guy in the dealership, and well on his way to being sales manager. By the time he was 30, the manufacturer had offered him the dealership in Stanforth if he would move. He was reasonably successful.

  “Donna started working in the accounting department at the dealership when she was in high school. When she graduated from high school, she worked part time at the dealership and lived at home while majoring in finance at Shawnee U. When she graduated three years later, with perfect grades, she went to the Carnegie Mellon school of business where she took an MBA, finishing the whole program in one calendar year. She had beaucoup job offers from much bigger companies, but she came home and went to work for her dad.

  “She turned the business around. Updated systems and technology. Opened a relationship with other dealerships in the Midwest which made it easier to move cars around from one dealership to another in order to fill special orders without waiting for Detroit. Sonderland promoted her to General Manager. He came in a few days a week as a sort of figurehead, but Donna was the Boss.

  “Donna Sonderland also owed three other dealerships on her own. One in Dayton, one in Akron and one in Bellefontaine. She's very successful with all of them. She is the darling of the manufacturer in Detroit.

  “I thought that was interesting and decided to dig a little more. Women in the car business have to be tough. Tough women make enemies. I decided to look into who might have an ax to grind against her.”

  Bev chuckled and interrupted, “Don't tell me: there's a line.”

  “Oh, yeah. A long line, but it's not what you'd think. It's not car people; in the car business she's known as a stand-up gal and everybody loves her. Her problems are on a personal level. Donna lives at home with her parents when she's in town, but she has a condo near her dealership in Dayton. As I said, she's never been married. She's one of those women who refuses to be tied down in a one-on-one relationship with a man. She never had any trouble getting a date. In fact, the guys she dated tended to really fall for her. Who wouldn't? She was very pretty. Extremely smart. Well off financially. And they tell me the girl was a barrel of fun. She liked to gamble and went frequently to both Vegas and Atlantic City, where she often won, sometimes big. She was a great girlfriend. Problem was she was never willing to be anything more than a girlfriend, although often the guys she was seeing wanted a more permanent relationship.

  “For all her talents and abilities, breaking up with guys was not her strong suit. She left a string of scorned lovers across the Midwest for the last seven or eight years.”

  Bev looked at her watch. This was taking too long. “Any connection between anyone in the restaurant and one of those jilted sad-sacks?”

  “I'm working on that.”

  “Good. Keep me posted. This is an interesting turn of events. My gut's not reacting yet, but let me think about it.”

  “I'll be in touch next week.”

  Bev clicked off the phone and started to get back on her bike, but then decided to have a snack first. She sat on the picnic table, with her feet on the bench watching a family of birds working on their winter nest. A vehicle pulled into the apron and parked beside her bike. She turned around and saw her uncle Hank's pickup truck. For a moment she was irritated. Those people had not had anything to do with her in her entire life, and she had too much going on to want to make nice now. She hesitated to blow him off, however, because she knew Emily was curious about her family. If there was any possibility for Emily to get to know the Dellers, Bev didn't want to screw it up for her daughter.

  She walked over to the passenger's side of the truck. Hank was driving. There was a woman in the passenger's seat whom she took to be Hank's wife. The woman said, “We have never met. I'm Betty, your dad's youngest sister. Hank and I are both widowed now, so we're living in the family home together. One of his sons and his family live there too and run the farm.”

  Bev shook her hand and said, “It's a pleasure to meet you. Do you want me to call you Aunt Betty?”

  “You can if you want, but it's not necessary. We will understand if you're a little suspicious of us.”

  “I don't think suspicious is the word. Confused might be a better one.”

  “We've discussed it. We think that our parents were unfair with your dad. Times were different then and the leadership of our community was much more conservative and isolationist than our new leadership. We now manage to continue to have relationship with some of our kin who go away. I have to confess to you that most of the ones who go away and live in ways we don't approve of are still shunned. But, kids go away to school and come back. Some people work in town for wages. We are not as hard nosed about it as they were when Aaron went away. If your dad were a kid today, we'd let him go to school and be a f
ireman and still be in relationship with the family.

  “I know that there may be way too much water over the dam for you to feel kindly towards us. But, we want you to know that we're aware you're going through a really hard time right now and we believe that your daughter is struggling with it also. We want you to know that we're here for you and/or for her if you need us.”

  Bev started to cry, which embarrassed her, but it seemed like the appropriate response. She wiped her eyes on the back of her arm and nodded, “That may be one of the kindest things anybody has ever done. I'm doing okay but Emily is struggling and she's trying not to lean on me too much because she knows I'm up to my eyeballs in stress. She's also very curious about her family. She's asked a lot of questions I can't answer. I'd like for you to meet her.” She shook her head and held up her hands in a surrendering gesture, “I'll confess she's a modern kid who will get on your last Mennonite nerve, but she's basically a good kid who's totally rootless and wants to know something of her heritage.”

  “Maybe we can help with that. Would you like to come to dinner tomorrow? Say around 2:00 in the afternoon?”

  “Let me talk to Emily.” She paused. “Do you have a phone?”

  The woman leaned back and laughed with a high, tinkling, delighted sound, “Yes, we have a phone. One big old black one in the kitchen. Still has a rotary dial. We're very modern folks.”

  Bev laughed. “I guess we'll leave our smart phones at home.”

  Hank leaned over and said, “Oh, no. Bring them. I think our kids are as curious about you as your daughter is about us. We will not tell our pastor, but we'd all like to get a look at one of those phones.”

  Betty gave her the number which Bev stored in her phone. They waved and pulled back out on the road.

  Bev rode home in something like a fog. Emily was on the telephone, so Bev puttered around the house doing some cleaning. When Emily came out of the bedroom, Bev offered her some fruit and granola. She mentioned her encounter with Hank and Betty. Emily smiled and said, “That's odd, but kinda nice. Do you want to go to dinner?”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah. Let's go. What should I wear?”

  “What's the most conservative thing you have?”

  “How about that dress you made me wear to Grampy's funeral?”

  “Does it still fit?”

  “I'm not sure.”

  It turned out that Emily had grown a few inches in height since her grandfather's death. The dress still fit, but it was unacceptably short. They dug around in the closet for a skirt that would not be too short and found a loose Indian style skirt that fell to the mid-calf. With a long sleeve pullover and a cardigan, that would be perfect. Bev looked at Emily and laughed, “If you replaced the cardigan with a fringed jacket, you look like a hippie.”

  “Let's not get insulting, Mom.”

  “Do you feel okay in that?”

  Emily looked at herself in the mirror, turned one way and then the other and nodded slightly, “Actually, I think it's cute. I'd never have put this outfit together, but I kinda like it. What are you going to wear?”

  “A suit.”

  “God, Mom, you're so damned boring.”

  “Yeah. Do I need to remind you that you will need to watch you language tomorrow.”

  “Oh, yeah. I guess I'd better pretend I'm at school or something.”

  “Considering the trash you kids talk at school, you'd better go with 'or something'.”

  Bev called the number Betty had given her and informed the person who answered the phone that she and Emily would be delighted to come to dinner. She asked if there was anything they could bring and she was told to just bring an appetite because the women were cooking up a storm.

  The next day they got up early and rode to the park, took one spin around the loop and rode home where they ate breakfast and showered. They lounged around the house reading books until it was time to get dressed to go to Sunday dinner with their family for the first time ever.

  Bev knew she should take some kind of gift with her, and had been racking her brain all day over what to offer. As she was getting dressed, the perfect thing hit her. Her dad had been a nut for hot peppers and he grew all kinds of them, some in the garden, but most in a corner of their glassed in back porch. Bev had continued to cultivate them because she had learned to cook with a lot of spice to suit her dad's taste. She found a small basket which she lined with a tea towel and filled with an assortment of peppers, ranging from mild banana peppers to a couple of scotch bonnets that she wrapped separately and labeled as extra hot.

  Both Bev and Emily were nervous when they pulled into the driveway, but the each took deep breaths and hid their nerves behind pleasant smiles. Bev winked at Emily who gave her the thumbs up, “We can do this!”

  Betty opened the door when they knocked. Bev offered her the gift and was pleased to see the genuine pleasure in her smile as she accepted the gift with thanks. Hank joined them and said, “Wow, peppers! Did you grow those yourself?”

  “Yes, I have quite an assortment of pepper plants. My dad was kind of a hot pepper nut. I inherited both his love of hot foods and a whole bunch of his plants.”

  Betty asked Emily if she liked spicy food. Emily scrunched up her face and said, “I am not a fan of food you have to wear gloves and a mask to handle.”

  Betty raised her eyebrows, “Habaneros?”

  Bev pointed at the small packet, “Dad called them Scotch bonnets, but I think it's basically the same thing. Use with caution, but let me tell you, if you are careful with them and don't use too much they can totally make a fish chowder or a stew.”

  Hank rolled his eyes at Emily and said, “Well, they'll probably spend the day trading recipes. You don't have to worry about hot stuff at this meal. Betty made pot roast and vegetables. That's kind of a safe meal.”

  A horrified look suddenly washed over Betty's face. She asked, “You're not vegetarians are you?”

  They both shook their heads. Emily said, “We eat very little meat at home because Mom's a cheapskate and we're both obsessed with calories. When we have meat at home, it's usually chicken. When I eat out, I always go for beef.”

  Betty visibly relaxed. They went into the kitchen and were greeted by the rest of clan, or at least the part of it assembled for that dinner. Hanks son and his wife had four children ranging from a three-year old to a seventeen year old, whose name was Rachel. She offered to show Emily around the farm while the adults talked. Emily accepted and the two of them were off with a couple of the younger children tagging along.

  Bev offered to help with the final preparations for dinner, but she was told that, as company, her help was not necessary. She sat at the table and talked to Hank and his son, Jerry. They told her a little about their lives. Hank asked about her job. His daughter-in-law called, “Please save that story until we get to the table. We all want to hear it.”

  At precisely two o'clock the women put dinner on the table, the kids came in and went to the bathroom to wash their hands. By 2:05 they were seated around the huge round table in the kitchen holding hands while Hank said grace. Bev was seated next to Emily and at the end of the prayer she squeezed Emily's hand. Emily squeezed back and patted the back of her mother's hand as she let go.

  The conversation at dinner bounced around from the kids school -- contrasting Emily's experience at public school with her cousins' experience as home-schooled kids. Bev thought there were pros and cons to each of those choices.

  Each of the adults shared information about their jobs Emily asked question after question about what the family did for entertainment without TV, DVD or computers.

  Jerry said, “We actually have a computer. We use it in our business. We don't bring it in the house nor do we use it for entertainment. It is strictly a work tool, although we do occasionally let the kids use it for research if they're writing a paper for school. In this world, it's important for our children to know how to use c
omputers. They're used in almost every job there is today. We just try to limit how much time they spend on the computer and what we use it for. We think of it as a tool and a library but not a toy.”

  He said, “Dad mentioned you have one of those smart phones. Do you like it? We're actually considering getting one of those for the business. We have customers all over the place and we thought it might be convenient to communicate with them even if we're out in the fields.”

  Bev asked, “What kind of business do you have?”

  “We sell home canned foods and also carved wooden items, mostly hobby horses and baby cradles. We sell everything online.”

  Bev laughed, “That's awesome. Do you make chow-chow?”

  Jerry put his arm around his wife's shoulder, “Grace here has been the reigning queen of chow-chow at the county fair for five years in a row.”

  She grinned, “All my friends are gunning for me this year. Maybe I'll try just a tiny bit of Scotch bonnet in my batch this year. That might help me hold onto my crown.”

  Bev said, “I'll buy a couple of jars.”

  Emily was trying not to make a face. Rachel leaned forward and said in a stage whisper, “It is not necessary to try to hide your disgust. All of us kids think that stuff is just nasty. The old people love it, but I don't know of a kid anywhere around here – Mennonite, Amish or otherwise – who will eat the stuff.”

  Grace shot her daughter a look that was supposed to be withering but it was so comical everybody laughed.

  Emily reached in her purse and took out her I-phone and handed it to Jerry. He put it on the table next to his plate and said, “I'd like for you to show me how to work it after we eat.” The phone immediately started buzzing. He handed it back to Emily. She glanced at the screen, tapped out a few letters and then turned it off. She looked around with a sheepish expression. “That was rude. I apologize.”

  Bev said, “Actually, Jerry, that was a good example of the downside of those things. I have one for work. I keep it with me 24/7. I can tell you that I've received three or four emails and a couple of phone calls since we've been here. In my business, I have to attend to those messages on the weekends and evenings. With your kind of business, I think if you let your customers know you'll respond within 24 hours, you can probably get away with checking email once or twice a day. That would let you control your time rather than letting your customers invade your space whenever they take a notion.”

  Jerry nodded and Bev could tell that the idea of buying a smart phone would be permanently tabled.

  Emily cocked her head and said, “That's interesting. I never looked at it that way, but it's true. We walk around reading email and surfing the internet and getting bombarded with stupid text messages and Tweets. It is kind of an invasion.”

  Bev said, “When I was growing up we had a phone. Like yours. One phone, hanging on the wall in the kitchen. My mom talked on it when Dad was at work. When Dad was at home he turned the ringer off. He only used the phone for outgoing calls. When I went away to college, Dad still left his phone off most of the time except between seven and seven-thirty PM during the week and on the weekends from about eight-thirty to nine-thirty AM. If I needed him, I had to call during those times. If I had an emergency, I was to call his pager. It was probably part of his upbringing, but he did not like the idea of having technology control his time.”

  Emily laughed, “He took to computers pretty fast.”

  Bev nodded, “Dad was a computer whiz, but he saw computers like you do, as a tool. He used the tool, masterfully, but he didn't let it control him. A year or so before he died, we got him a cell phone so he wouldn't have to get up to go in the kitchen to answer the phone. He left it turned off most of the time and only used it for outgoing calls. That drove me nuts when I was out of town and wanted to call to check up on him. I'd have to call Emily and tell her to ask him to call me or turn on his phone.”

  They all chuckled. Bev said, “I have to tell you that living simply is a great goal, and it's getting harder and harder to do. I admire your discipline.”

  After dinner, the men showed Bev and Emily the workshop where they built hobby horses, cradles and other hand-crafted children's furniture and toys. The craftsmanship was amazing. Bev noted that the house and the workshop and all the outbuildings were immaculate and everything appeared to be in perfect repair. She said, “You guys ought to hire out as maintenance people and yard workers.”

  Hank said, “Actually there's a family up the road that does that. They have eight sons and a couple of sons-in-law. They've been doing lawn maintenance and house repairs for mostly elderly people in the area for a long time. Recently, they started working for some people in town. It's a pretty good supplement to the farm income.”

  Emily asked, “Do all of you have side jobs or businesses?”

  Jerry nodded, “It's getting harder and harder to survive on only the produce and income from farming. Almost every farmer we know has someone in the family who works at a job for wages and a lot of the families run businesses.” He grinned, “We may be simple and live a weird lifestyle by most peoples' standards, but we're hard-working and creative.”

  One of his sons piped up and said, “Besides we have to find something to do with all the hours in the day that other people spend watching TV.”

  They all laughed. Soon Bev sensed it was time for them to go. They shook hands all around, and were rewarded with warm hugs from Betty and Grace. Betty walked them to the door alone. “Please come back and see us whenever you want. Call first so we'll know to put an extra potato in the soup.” She winked. Then she looked at Emily, “We know this business with the fire is difficult, probably more difficult that you've let on to your Mom. If you need to talk to someone other than her, call me or Gracie. If you need a place to go to get out of town, come stay with us. I'll be honest and tell you that you'd have to live in our way, but it will be safe place for you.”

  Emily blinked back tears, but a couple escaped and coursed down her cheeks. She smiled, “I doubt I'll have to take you up on that offer, but I have to tell you just knowing I have an option is a huge help.”

  Emily hopped in the car and attended to the email and text messages that had piled up over the last couple of hours. Bev turned to Betty and didn't try to hide or stem her tears, “Oh, thank you. You have no idea how much it means to me to know that she has a family to take care of her if I'm not around.”

  “Your mother is no longer living?”

  Bev wiped her face and tried to laugh, “My mother is a long story. She's still alive but she's not much of a success in the grand-parenting department ... or parenting for that matter.”

  “What about Emily's father?”

  “He's remarried and has a new family. They are nice people and he loves Emily. Problem is that she thinks her dad and his family are the most boring people on the planet. He's willing to have her visit any time and I make her go occasionally, but she feels very out of place there. I think his wife and kids are pleasant to her because they have to be, but they don't go out of their way to include her.”

  “I understand. Well, we're incredibly boring, too, but we're nearby, and we're here for either or both of you if you need us.”

  Bev started to cry again but shook her head and reined in her emotions, “Thank you. That means so very much to both of us” She started to walk away and then she turned back and added, “I'm sure that I don't know even the half of it, but I suspect that this afternoon is the culmination of a long process that has not been easy for you. I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for it.”

  It was Betty's turn to look up and blink furiously. “The fact that you understand that makes me know for sure we did the right thing.”

  They hugged and Bev got in the car. Neither Bev nor Emily said anything until they were almost home. Bev asked, “Do you want to talk about that?”

  “Not really. We'll just have to see where it goes. I have
my doubts about being an acceptable member of their family even if they think they're willing to try. I have a question for you. After being shunned by your dad's family your whole life, how do you feel about all of a sudden them wanting to be so chummy?”

  “I'm prepared to accept their explanation that the Old Guard that was responsible for that behavior is all gone, and the younger people are more open. I think that's true. It doesn't eliminate the scars from a childhood spent in a town where certain people would literally turn their back or cross the street to avoid talking to me. I've seen most of those people around town, but didn't know who they were. I don't think they knew who I was either, so there was never any awkwardness. Hank must stay away from town. I'd have recognized him.”

  “I guess if you are okay with it, then I'm okay with it, but I want you to know that if you prefer keep things the way they have been, I'm okay with that.”

  “I want you to see what kind of relationship you might be able to build with them. I think I could be friends with Betty.”

  “Okay. We'll let it play out however it does. It was a really good lunch in any case.”