Epilogue

Chad was less nervous about getting married than he was about becoming a father. He was pretty sure he could figure out how to be a good husband. But he knew next to nothing about being a father. True, he knew teenagers pretty well, but that would be a decade and a half in the future. He had to get there first, and that worried him. This worry resulted from the home pregnancy test Claire used to convince her doctor that he needed to take a second look at her menstrual condition.

He apologized profusely about misdiagnosing her condition.

Claire had more faith in Chad than he did, himself. Likewise, when it came to her own capabilities, she wasn't worried. It may have been that she wasn't saddled with the emotional baggage of her previous life. Not having that tends to make a person more confident about her own potential, and hopeful about the future.

So can simple social rituals, such as when Claire invited Howard Stinson, the security guard at Martin, and his girlfriend, Michelle, to dinner at her house. Chad was there, too, and they all had fun as Howard regaled them with tales of his duties at Martin. Such as the time he responded to an alarm only to find that a contract administrator had chosen to have a quickie with his secretary in a part of the building that had motion sensors installed, and which was clearly posted as being off limits to unauthorized personnel. Needless to say, neither the contract administrator nor his secretary were authorized.

And time can also even out the rough edges in life. As can having a mission, such as house hunting for a family of three, with the potential for that family growing even larger over the years.

They were hard at work, looking at homes, when Claire got the call that John's plea deal had been approved. On December the fifteenth, he was sentenced to thirty years in a federal penitentiary, with no provision for parole. Part of the deal was that he had to make a full and complete confession, to include how he found someone to hire to kill his wife, and all the people in that chain. He also had to testify against Edwin Petrike. He had seen Brewster and Helterbrand, but hadn't spoken with them, so his testimony against them was of less value.

Following close behind, just before Christmas, was the resolution of Brian Brewster's plea deal. As a "minion" in the conspiracy, and by virtue of his cooperation in identifying John, his eight year deal was approved. He would be eligible for parole in two years.

Those two events were, arguably, Claire's Christmas present that year. Chad's was getting married on Christmas Eve in a ceremony attended by only two witnesses, Danny and Cindy Richardson.

Major life events for the newly formed Morgan family continued to be paralleled by events in the criminal justice system.

In January, Chad and Claire signed a contract on a five bedroom, two story 80 year old farmhouse on twenty-five acres of wooded land about ten miles from the city limits of Millvale. It was surrounded by tilled farmland that had been sold off by the original owners when "Grandpa" got too old to farm, and none of the kids wanted to take over the family business.

Their plans were to renovate the house, updating the insulation, doors, and windows first, and then each floor independently. Money wasn't the problem. They just wanted to be able to live in the house while the renovations went on. The exterior was saved for last

The event in the criminal justice system which paralleled that joyous time in their new life, was that Ronny Helterbrand attempted to rat out another inmate in exchange for consideration for the deal he kept trying to make to avoid life in prison. He was found dead in the exercise yard, in the one place where cameras didn't cover. He had been stabbed eighteen times with a knife made from three strips of formica, taped together. The formica had come from the edge of a table in the dining hall. As a result, a two million dollar contract was awarded to replace all the tables with stainless steel ones that were bolted to the floor. Prisoners immediately complained that the setting was "too institutional" and robbed them of what little human dignity they had left.

On February twenty-third, Claire had her mid-pregnancy ultrasound. She'd felt the baby moving in her belly twice, but Chad hadn't been there either time, so she wasn't sure if it had really happened or was her imagination. The doctor told her it was entirely possible for the fetus to be moving at that stage. After the ultrasound, he informed her that her little boy was eleven centimeters long, from crown to rump and probably weighed in around a hundred and forty grams.

Two days later, Claire pointed to Edwin Petrike in open court and identified him as the man who had come at her with a knife, and whose leg she had broken while defending herself and her running partner. A week later he was found guilty of entering into a conspiracy to commit murder and then attempting to kill Claire Bonneville and Chad Morgan. He was sentenced to life in prison. He would not be eligible for parole until he was seventy-two years old. Assuming he lived that long.