That was where the story ended, sitting on a hillside on a dull October day overlooking a desolate landscape, listening to Lotty until she could talk no more. It’s harder for me to figure out where it began.
Looking back now, now that I’m calm, now that I can think, it’s still hard to say, Oh, it was because of this, or because of that. It was a time when I had a million other things on my mind. Morrell was getting ready to leave for Afghanistan. I was worrying most about that, but of course I was trying to run my business, and juggle the nonprofit work I do, and pay my bills. I suppose my own involvement began with Isaiah Sommers, or maybe the Birnbaum Foundation conference-they happened on the same day.
I Baby-Sitters’ Club
They wouldn’t even start the funeral service. The church was full, ladies were crying. My uncle was a deacon and he was a righteous man, he’d been a member of that church for forty-seven years when he passed. My aunt was in a state of total collapse, as you can imagine. And for them to have the nerve to say the policy had already been cashed in. When! That’s what I want to know, Ms. Warashki, when was it ever cashed in, with my uncle paying his five dollars a week for fifteen years like he did, and my aunt never hearing word one of him borrowing against the policy or converting it.”
Isaiah Sommers was a short, square man who spoke in slow cadences as if he were himself a deacon. It was an effort to keep from drowsing off during the pauses in his delivery. We were in the living room of his South Side bungalow, at a few minutes after six on a day that had stretched on far too long already.
I’d been in my office at 8:30, starting a round of the routine searches that make up the bulk of my business, when Lotty Herschel called with an SOS. “You know Max’s son brought Calia and Agnes with him from London, don’t you? Agnes suddenly has a chance to show her slides at a Huron Street gallery, but she needs a minder for Calia.”