The Ring - Chapter 20

 

 

BETHANY STEINER

“WHEN I HAD my parents to dinner to meet Tobias at my place, Mutti and Papa were really relaxed much to Tobias’s relief. I expected nothing less. We talked about it after they left.”

Bethany was walking with Regina, a lab assistant and friend. The two women were on the way to eat at the university Mensa.

“Papa never took anyone I dated aside and said, ‘If you don’t treat my daughter right, you’ll answer to me’ as some fathers did. Maybe because Papa insisted I take karate. He also thought I would be too smart to be psychologically manipulated. He said he worried more about the poor guy being the manipulated one.”

“And then over Schwarzwaldkuchen, which Hans-Peter bought at the Bäckerei around the corner with coffee I made, Hans-Peter told Tobias about the curses on the ring. Mutti said they’d talked about it when they were in Sweden.”

Rachel stopped on the path to let three students pass them. “You don’t believe in curses, do you?”

“No, but I was surprised when my father said he wrote a paper on them about six years ago. He went to dig it out of his filing cabinet, only to discover he had put it in storage. It was that long ago.”

While he was gone, I cleared the table. Because it was mostly cartons and chopsticks there wasn’t that much. Mutti was not that much help other than organizing the stuff on the table for me to throw away glasses – napkins, paper ones. “’Kill a tree, not waste water,’ she said’.” Maybe I’ll put it on a T-shirt for her.”

They were at the Mensa. Rachel held the door for Bethany. Since it was the end of lunch hour the smells of roasted chicken still hung in the air. Most of the fifty tables were empty. Six held students with textbooks or laptops.

“So your parents are getting along. Think they’ll get back together?”

“I asked Mutti that. If they might.”

“What did she say,” Regina asked

‘“Why shouldn’t we get along?’ Mutti asked me.”

“Because you’ve been divorced since I was 11. I’m now 27, I told her.”

The two girls were the only students in line in front of the serving station. The two servers were out back and didn’t realize there were students still waiting to be fed until Rachel called.

Trays filled, Bethany continued her story. “Nothing more happened. Hans-Peter came back with the paper and started talking about Scandinavian skalds and bards writing poetry.”

“Tobias admitted meeting my parents scared him. He said they seemed so accomplished.”

“They aren’t Nobel Prize winners,” Regina said, “Just good in their fields.”

“Anyway, next week they’re going back to the States. Together. Had she been in the States, she’d have said, “Stay tuned, film at eleven,” but that wouldn’t mean anything to Rachel.