Noelle Murphy rode into Grantville just before noon. It was well after dusk when she finished the in-box that had been waiting for her. People had started dropping things into it a month earlier, as soon as they found out she was coming back from Franconia. She looked at the note from her mother again. It wasn't very long and was dated right after Judge Tito had decided that Pat Fitzgerald had been married to Dennis Stull all along. Common-law, but married. It was certainly . . . different . . . to find out that her parents were married to each other.
Since I'm living with Dennis now, I decided to stop paying rent on the trailer the end of this month and gave your key back to Huddy Colburn's office. We cleaned it out and moved the things that were in your bedroom over to his ma's house, so they'll be there when you get back. Most of the time, he's working in Erfurt. Love.
It was a very "Mom" kind of note, Noelle thought. It brought up an interesting question. She got up and went down the hall to Tony Adducci's office. Normally, a field auditor in the Department of Economic Resources wouldn't just drop in on the Secretary of the Treasury of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, but he was, after all, her godfather. And it was after regular business hours.
"Tony?" she asked. "Ah. Mom's given up the trailer. Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?"
She handed him the note.
Tony looked at it for a while, thinking. "You're welcome to stay with us, of course. I can call Denise and have her put sheets and a blanket on the sofa. But . . ."
He dialed the phone. To his great gratitude and relief, someone picked up on the other end. Someone else who was working late. "Joe, is that you? Can you come over to my office for a few minutes?"
He and Noelle chatted, mostly about the Ram Rebellion. Then a man came in. Noelle looked up as he entered. Not tall, very thick in the neck and chest. He looked more like a bullfrog than anything else she could think of.
Tony got up. "Noelle, I'd, uh, like to introduce you to Joe Stull. He's, um . . ."
She stood up and held out her hand. "The Secretary of Transportation for the state. Dennis' brother. My . . . uncle. I'm . . . I'm glad to meet you, sir."
Tony looked acutely uncomfortable. "He's got a key to Juliann's house. Where your stuff is. He can take you over there, if you'd rather. It makes more sense, in a way, than having you on our sofa, because you'll be in town for a while and that's where they put your things. But you're welcome to stay with us, of course . . ." His voice trailed off.
Joe was shaking Noelle's hand, looking at her. The girl didn't much resemble a Stull. Luckily for her. Medium height, maybe five-four, more blonde than anything else. Broader in the shoulders than Pat Fitzgerald. That might be Dennis' contribution to the finished product or it might just be modern sports. Otherwise, he thought, this was Pat's daughter.
"Sure. I'd be glad to take you over there. Show you where it is. Just let me get my coat. There are extra keys on a pegboard in the kitchen, once we get there, so you can come and go. If that's what you want, just let me call Aura Lee over at city hall. We'll need to stop there and pick her up on the way. Since we live to the east, right at the edge of the Ring of Fire, I had our pickup converted to natural gas early on. There's a natural gas furnace in Ma's house, too, so the place will warm up quickly enough."
"That's very kind of you." Noelle voice was a little stiff. She looked at Tony. "That might be better, really. For me to go on over there. I don't have much luggage with me and I'd love to get into some clothes tomorrow that I haven't been wearing for the last several weeks."
"I hate leaving you on your own."
"That's okay. I've gotten pretty much used to being on my own," Noelle answered.
Joe cleared his throat. "I guess it was pretty much a shock to you to hear that Pat and Dennis, ah, got back together this fall."
She smiled at him. "Not as much as you might think." She paused a minute. "I know where the house is. Actually, I've been there."
Both men looked at her in surprise.
"After Mom rented the trailer here in Grantville—after she gave up the house in Fairmont because Maggy and Pauly and Patty were all on their own and we didn't need another room and we did need money if I was going to go to college—I'd . . ." Her voice trailed off a little. "Well, I'd wonder more about Dennis, sometimes, than I had in Fairmont. And what he had been like. Because, well, because he was . . ."
"Your father." Joe Stull nodded.
Noelle nodded. "And I'd never met him, of course. Because . . ."
"Because he left Pat before you were born." Joe didn't really believe in circumlocutions.
She nodded again. "So I heard that house was where his mother lived. It wasn't that far off the route I took when I walked down to the strip mall. I walked by it several times. And finally, one afternoon—it was the semester I didn't have any classes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Mom was at work, of course—I just stopped in front of it. And walked up to the door and rang the bell. She came to the door and I said, 'Hi, I'm . . .' Then I didn't want to say 'Noelle Murphy,' so I just said, 'I'm Noelle.' And she asked me to come in, so I did."
To say that both men were surprised would have been an understatement.
Not that Joe was surprised that Juliann had never mentioned to any of them that Noelle had come. Ma had been able to keep her own counsel.
"Actually, I, ah, went several times. She said that first time that I was welcome to come back, so I did. I didn't think she'd say it unless she meant it."
Joe nodded. "If Ma said it, she meant it."
"And she was the only person who ever sort of explained it all to me. I mean, you know, when Mom took the older girls to see Paul and Maggie Murphy, I had to wait outside. They wouldn't let me in their house, but nobody really bothered to explain how come. Until Keenan told me it was because I was a 'fucking little bastard.' "
Tony looked down at the floor. "Damn Keenan."
"Well, I was about eight then. And he was a teenager. I was sitting in the car out front while Mom took Maggy and Pauly and Patty in to see them. Wondering why I was always left behind in the car. At least he gave me an answer, which was more than anyone else would. Mom sure never did."
Tony and Joe just looked at her again, Tony thinking that there were probably a lot of things none of the rest of them knew about that had gone into the making of Noelle. Reasons that had contributed to making her so unexpectedly . . . resilient . . . as a field agent, considering how young she was.
Noelle was looking at Joe again.
"Juliann said that Mom and Dennis, over the years, had hurt each other just about as bad as two people could. More than once. That Dennis hurt Mom when he wouldn't believe her about what was happening when he came back from Viet Nam and then again when he wouldn't stay with her unless she divorced Keenan's dad. And she hurt him when she married Francis in the first place and then again when she wouldn't divorce Francis after she got pregnant with me."
Joe nodded, looking at her carefully.
"But she said, too, that they couldn't have hurt each other so much if it hadn't been that they loved each other so much and for so long. That she didn't think they'd ever be able to stop loving each other. And that she still wouldn't be surprised if they got together again if they ever had an opening. So that's why it wasn't so much a shock to me, when Steve and Anita told me what had happened."
She paused and turned to Tony. "Thanks for your letter, by the way. I didn't get it for a long time. It kept following me around Franconia, from one place to another. It was weeks before it caught up. At that, it got to me before Mom's note did. And it explained a lot more than Mom's note did."
All Tony had written was a summary of what Pat had said as she sat on the floor of the funeral home. If Pat had written even less . . . "I don't really know what went on between them the first time," he said a little uncomfortably. "I wasn't really old enough to know what was going on."
"Juliann played me a song," Noelle looked at Joe. "She had a lot of nice old 78s and a turntable that still played them. I hope nobody got rid of those."
"They're all still there. We haven't done anything to the house, yet."
Noelle bit her lip. "When you do . . . if you all wouldn't mind, of course . . . do you suppose that I could have that record she played for me? As a memento, sort of."
"I don't see why not. What was it?"
"It was on a collection of 'golden oldies' that she'd ordered from a television advertisement." Noelle started to hum.
I've got you under my skin.
I've got you deep in the heart of me.
So deep in my heart,
You're nearly a part of me.
"God damn it," Tony shouted, breaking the mood.
The other two looked at him, startled.
"A song with lyrics to match that one that Ron Koch keeps throwing at me. I've always told him that country music covers everything." He paused. "Never heard that one, though."
Noelle shook her head. "Well, it isn't country music. It's Cole Porter, I think. From some old Broadway musical. Way back in the 1930s."
"Hell," Tony looked disgusted. "Well, I guess a guy can't have everything. It ought to be country music, though. It's got the right spirit."
"It's not getting any earlier," Joe interrupted. "We'd better go pick up Aura Lee."
Aura Lee looked at Joe. "We can't just leave Noelle in that house with nothing to eat. I don't really want pizza. We'd better stop at Cora's for carry-out." She turned to Noelle. "Billy Lee and our Juliann both have things at school this evening. They won't be finished until nine-thirty or so. That's why Joe and I were both working late. Let's stop for something and we'll eat with you after Joe unlocks the house."
"That's fine," Joe opened the door on the driver's side. "You two stay in the truck. I'll go in and get today's adventure in cuisine. Whatever it may be."
"Thanks," Noelle was grateful. Not only grateful for the company, but she had missed lunch. She had been sort of wondering what to do about supper and not looking forward to going out again by herself once Joe Stull had let her into Juliann's house and found her a key to use.
The house was dark when they pulled up. That was no surprise to her.
It was a surprise that after Joe opened the door, it was warm and there were lights on in the rec room at the back of the little hallway and sound from a television.
Joe paused. "Ah. We'll go on into the kitchen and get the table set. You might want to go on back there, Noelle. Dennis and Pat use the house when they're here rather than in Erfurt."
She walked down the hall, pulling off her hat and suspecting that she had been set up by Tony. She paused at the open doorway. Feeling a little betrayed, but maybe it was better that she hadn't been given a chance to duck it.
A man she couldn't remember ever seeing before was lying on the sofa, his feet up. Her mom was lying next to him, her head on his shoulder. The man was rubbing her mom's temples. She had her eyes closed.
"Excuse me." Noelle rested her hand on the doorframe. "I got Mom's note. The one that said my stuff was here. Joe let me in."
Pat's eyes popped open. She sat straight up on the sofa, folding her hands in her lap.
The man got up. Noelle looked at him. He was a couple of inches taller than Joe Stull—maybe about five-nine. Longer in the neck, not quite so burly in the chest. Gray hair, darker than her mom's shade of gray.
Noelle took a couple steps forward. "Joe and Aura Lee are here. In the kitchen. Aura Lee thought they should get carry-out."
The man grinned. "As long as I have known her, and that's over fifteen years now, Aura Lee has been hungry. We hadn't eaten yet, so that's fine." He held his hand out. "I'm Dennis Stull."
Noelle shook it. "I'm glad to meet you." She hoped that she meant it. Then she sat down and put her arm around Pat's shoulders. "It's all right, Mom. I'm not going to make any kind of a scene."
"Well, brother," Dennis put his feet up on the sofa. The women were washing dishes. "I have to say that you took something of a calculated risk."
"How so?"
"There have been quite a few evenings, when I wasn't quite so bushed as tonight, when I was lying there on the sofa watching the news and massaging various parts of Pat's anatomy that are less suitable for public viewing than her forehead."
"I don't think that Noelle is all that easily panicked. Given the reports we got on the way she handled things with von Bimbach and all that."
"Maybe not. But Pat is. I can tell that she's all upset, even this way, that Noelle walked in on us. Of course, she's way more upset about these hearings over at St. Mary's. She would just as soon have had them over before Noelle got back, I think. That's why I came down. I didn't want her sitting through those, all day, and then coming home to an empty house."
"Noelle would have found out everything anyway."
"Sure. But it's not quite the same thing."
"Noelle isn't going to be sitting there listening to the testimony," Joe pointed out. "She does have a full-time job."
"There's that." Dennis put his feet on the floor and leaned forward on his elbows. "Pat was a little worried by the letter that Noelle wrote her last summer, right after she found out about the shooting. The one that asked if Pat was sure that she knew what she was doing. She's afraid that Noelle doesn't approve of us."
Joe looked at Dennis. "Look, brother. That was nearly three months ago. It has to have been a good-sized shock to the girl when it happened and there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then. She's not made any fuss since she got back to Grantville. She didn't make any fuss this evening."
"That's what I'll remind Pat. But it won't help much. It's been pretty clear that quite a few of the wives of my employees up in Erfurt don't quite approve of us. And all of the discussion about bigamy isn't going to help much. The way most of them see it, either she was married to Francis and committed adultery with me or was married to me and committed adultery with Francis. Six of one and a half dozen of the other. Thank god for Amber Lee and Lorrie."
"What am I going to do about it?" Noelle asked.
"I can't see that it's such a problem," Bernadette Adducci answered.
"It is to me. Now that I know Mom wasn't ever married to Francis Murphy. After all the testimony at the hearings at St. Mary's. Even before the Ring of Fire, there were times that I felt awfully self-conscious about calling myself 'Murphy.' Several times, if I'd had the time and money and had been willing to go through all the hassle of changing my transcripts and stuff, I thought about going into court in Fairmont and asking to have it changed to 'Fitzgerald.' Now, with everything that's been going on, I guess that's not appropriate, either. And anyway . . . Well, I guess we can skip that."
"I can see your point," Tony looked at his wife. "What do you think, Denise?"
"Why not 'Stull'?" she asked.
Noelle shook her head. "Not unless they invite me. It's . . . Well, I don't want them to think that I'm pushy. It's not as if any of them in that family know me, really. I'd just like to get rid of 'Murphy.' "
Tony scratched his ear. "Let me think about it a bit."
"You could always," Bernadette commented, "get married."
Noelle grinned at her. "Women are keeping their maiden names these days, unless they deliberately ask for a change, so that won't help automatically."
Bernadette shook her head. "Face it, honey. Becoming a nun won't, either. The new order isn't going the 'Sister Mary Anselm' route. If you ever do join up, you'll be stuck with 'Noelle Whoever-you-are' for the rest of your life."
"Even if I did marry and take my husband's name, I still wouldn't want Murphy for a maiden name. There's no one around I want to marry, though."
"Let me think about it a bit," Tony said again.
After Noelle left, Bernadette looked at the other two. "I know the pair of you think I'm being too hard-nosed with her. But did you hear that? 'There's no one around I want to marry, though.' Not, 'I don't want to marry, though.' That there isn't anyone around now is certainly no guarantee that there won't be. She's only twenty-three. I have no intention in the world of letting a situation develop where Noelle is in a religious order when 'anyone' comes along. No matter how firmly I have to put her off. Or how long."
"You know what, Dennis?" Amber Lee Barnes looked up from the papers on her desk.
"What?"
"She's triple sharp, that girl of yours. Noelle. We spent all day on accounts. I'm taking her home for supper with me to hash over some more of it, if you and Pat are willing to spare her. I can get the guy downstairs to walk her over to her room when we're done."
"That's fine. Um. She and Pat are having a little trouble finding things to say to each other right now. And it's not as if I really know her."
"Are you going to claim her?" Amber Lee asked.
Dennis looked at her. "What do you mean by that?"
"She's still going by 'Murphy.' Don't you want her to be a Stull? As I said, she's triple sharp."
"I hadn't really thought about it."
"Maybe you ought to," Amber Lee advised.
"She frightens me a little."
"How?"
"When I first saw her standing there in the doorway at Ma's place, I thought she was another Pat. A little taller, a little sturdier, a shade less blonde, but Pat. Until she shook my hand and looked at me with those eyes. Not blue like Pat's. Dark gray. Not judging, exactly. Measuring. Assessing. Evaluating."
Amber Lee examined him. "She's yours, too. Have you ever looked at your eyes in the mirror? Are you going to claim her?"
"The day after the shooting, in the hospital, Joe was wondering if she would be willing to claim me after all these years."
"That's probably what she's evaluating," Amber Lee went back to her paperwork.
"I think we're done." Noelle closed the ledger she had been using. "At least, as done as we can get until we go through some more of the records tomorrow. Bolender, Bell, Cunningham. I knew that I was looking for those names. But with the peculiarities and discrepancies in these requisitions for machine parts, I keep thinking I should add a couple more. Barclay. Myers."
Amber Lee frowned. "Maybe I should talk to my mother about this. I have a feeling that Barclay and Myers have some kind of a family tie, but it escapes me. I don't know either of them, myself. Maybe you ought to ask Scott, too."
Noelle raised her eyebrows.
"Scott Blackwell, my ex. You must have met him when you were down in Franconia."
"Oh. Sure. But why would he know?"
"He and Stan Myers were both in the fire department. And in the National Guard together. So he may know what kind of a person he is. Or I can ask Dennis to do it, if you don't want to. I just feel a little odd about asking Scott myself, now that I've remarried."
"Yeah." Noelle tucked one foot underneath her, making her perch on the high three-legged stool a little precarious. She balanced by leaning one elbow on the podium desk that held the ledger.
"Not that we're on bad terms. We married in '93 and divorced five years later. Married because we were getting to that age and everyone said we were so well suited and every now and then we had sex, which was, errr, nice, because neither of us was having sex with anyone else. And we had known each other a long time and each of us knew that the other one didn't have herpes or genital warts or any of the other nasty STDs to which human flesh is heir. So my parents paid for us to get married with all the usual trimmings. Then after five years and no kids we realized that we bored each other so thoroughly that we could scarcely remember why we got married, so we divorced."
Noelle raised her eyebrows.
"Sorry to disillusion you, kid. Just having a lot in common really doesn't mean that a couple ought to get married. Scott and I tried to make it work. Counseling, various things that were supposed to put the zip back in a marriage like going out on dates, or having getaway weekends. We worked on communication. All that stuff. We bored each other just as much on a date or at a resort as we did at home. We didn't fight. He'd go and find a golf game or head for the library to do homework for his classes and I'd go to the gym and talk to the other aerobics instructors."
Noelle said, "I see." But she didn't.
"I heard he's married again. A German woman. All I know about her is that she works for Veronica Dreeson's schools. I hope he hasn't chosen someone else just because she seems to be suitable. Not again."
"I haven't met her, but she's pregnant, I know. Should be very close to term, by now."
"That's good. But, ah, Sterling still feels a little bad about it all because Scott had a couple years of college and he only has a GED, plus Scott's the top military administrator down in Würzburg and Sterling's just an ordinary soldier, so sometimes he starts worrying that he's a comedown for me. So I'd rather not ask Scott myself. Especially since Sterling's up north in Wismar and I'm here in Erfurt."
"Is he?" Noelle asked.
"Is who what?"
"Is Sterling a comedown?" Noelle asked.
"You don't beat around the bush, do you, honey?"
"Well, I sort of need to know. I expect they're going to send me back to Franconia. We haven't seen the last of this scam yet. So it's better if I figure out where the pitfalls are, if I'll be working with both of you—with you here and with Scott down in Würzburg."
Amber Lee looked at her. "Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. Economically, Sterling's something of a comedown from what I had when I was married to Scott, but not all that much. Scott wasn't a top military administrator back then. He was working as a security guard at night and going to college during the day. In any case, I hadn't been married to Scott for a couple of years before the Ring of Fire and I didn't have alimony or anything. I was self-supporting and not all that high-paid. Then when I got caught in the Ring of Fire, I joined the army as a private. Grantville didn't have much use for aerobics instructors in 1631. That's not high-paid, either."
Noelle nodded.
Amber Lee went on. "Sterling's not a comedown from a personal point of view, for sure. I was married to Scott for five years and never wanted to get pregnant. I was on the pill the whole time. Once I started sleeping with Sterling, I never even tried to get hold of birth control, whatever they have here down-time. I wanted to have a baby as soon as I could. By him. Whether he married me or not. He hadn't said anything about marriage in advance. But he hadn't said anything about birth control, either and he sure wasn't using anything, so I figured that I was playing fair enough. And when I told him, he thought about getting married right away. In fact, he said that he'd been trying to get me pregnant so that I might think about getting married to him. He couldn't believe that I would for any other reason."
Noelle giggled. "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments."
"What?"
"It's poetry. One of Shakespeare's sonnets. Whenever I'm in Grantville, I get Father Smithson at St. Mary's to read some Shakespeare out loud to me, so I can hear how it would have sounded at the Globe Theater."
"Poetry always left me cold. No matter how much of it they made me read in English class." Amber Lee smiled. "I just wish they'd send Sterling back so I'd have a chance at getting pregnant again. I'm thirty-four, so I don't want to put it off any longer than I have to. But, I suppose, since I'm still nursing the twins and they're only five months old, my chances wouldn't be all that good."
"Oh." Noelle looked at the playpen behind Amber Lee's desk. "They're so sweet. Jamie and Pel, that is. If you need a babysitter while I'm here in Erfurt . . ."
"I may take you up on that. But back to what you asked first, about whether Sterling is a 'comedown.' One thing to keep in mind is that the way you feel about a guy doesn't necessarily make sense to anyone else."
"That is one thing that I've never doubted. Considering the way Mom has run her life."
"Which sort of brings us back to your parents." Amber Lee twisted her braid around her index finger. "I scarcely know Pat. I only met her since Dennis brought her up to Erfurt after Maurice Tito dismissed the divorce case. But you do know her—grew up with her. As for him . . . Actually, Dennis is a very good boss. One of the best I've ever had. Fair and really concerned about his employees. You might want to give him a chance, so to speak. You might get to like him."
"I'm trying." Noelle unwound her feet and stood up. "I'm trying."
"I'd rather," Noelle put her coffee cup down. "Rather have a place of my own than take up a room in Juliann's house, since you and Mom are using it whenever you're in Grantville. And I'm pretty sure that Mom would rather that I did. Have a place of my own, I mean. Uh. It seems to embarrass her a little having me there when the two of you have . . . ah . . . taken up with each other again. Even if you both spend most of the time here in Erfurt."
Dennis thought, a little reluctantly, that Noelle was probably right about that. Almost certainly right about that. In Erfurt, Noelle was staying in temporary employee housing, to Pat's obvious relief. His place only had one bedroom. It wasn't as if he had needed more than that before Pat came up, so he had let couples with children have the larger apartments.
"The Casa Verde apartments are nice," Noelle went on. "Not as fancy as Casa Blanca, but nice. Almost as new and a lot more affordable. So I'll rent an efficiency there as soon as I can get the money saved up. That's all I'll need when I spend so much time out of town. I just thought I ought to let you know that I don't intend to perch on your doorstep indefinitely."
"You do have money. Quite a bit of it, as a matter of fact."
Noelle looked at Dennis blankly.
"Part of it's in the bank in Grantville. Part of it's in real estate, though most of that was in Clarksburg and got left behind in the Ring of Fire. Part of it's invested in the business." He looked at his fingernails.
"Where did it come from?"
"Pat wouldn't take child support from me."
"Why on earth not?" Noelle exploded. "God knows, there were plenty of times we could have used it."
"She said that she didn't want to set up a situation where you were better off than the other girls." Dennis sighed. "I told her that would be fine. That she should just use the money for whatever she needed. For all of you. That she didn't have to spend it just on you. But . . ."
He shook his head. "It was just one more of those eternal head-banging arguments that we used to get into. She didn't want any of the privileges of being a wife, she said, unless she was carrying out the duties." He looked at Noelle with a kind of helpless frustration.
"Never mind. Yeah, I recognize the way Mom thinks. That a wife paid her husband to support her and the kids by letting him have sex whenever he wanted it. And then she apologized to God for having sex by having the kids and needing to change diapers for them and such. Going around in a circle. She learned that was how it was supposed to be. That's what they taught her when she was growing up. She never thought she deserved anything from you because, um, she never felt dutiful about you. You, uh, had maybe better ask Bernadette and Denise about that stuff, not me, if you want to find out more. All I know is what I wasn't supposed to overhear."
"So I just set it aside for you." Dennis thought he would ignore the rest of what she had just said, at least for the time being. "When you were getting ready to start college, when you were eighteen, I wanted to give it to you. So you could pick the school you wanted and not have to scrape and scrimp. But Pat got upset about the other girls again."
Noelle folded her hands on the table in front of her and closed her eyes, trying not to clench her fists. The money had been there. She could have gone to a four-year college for a four-year degree. She could have gone to WVU in Morgantown, like Jen Richards. Could have majored in what she was interested in, instead of making the hard calculations about what field would bring her a living wage as soon as possible. But then she would have probably been left up-time like Jen and Mom would have been here with no one, really. It was hard to count Keenan, and Aunt Suzanne had her own family and was busy. So did Denise. Even if Mom and Dennis had gotten back together, there would still have been a couple of years when Mom was alone.
"That's okay," she said. "Don't worry about it. But the others didn't want to go to college, anyway. Maggy's grades weren't good enough, to start with. They could have been, but she just didn't focus, and she was as happy as a clam working at the riding stables. Pauly got married right out of high school. She and Dillon bought a tow truck together and she drove it from his father's garage for Triple-A. Patty just wasn't interested. She made quite a bit of money waiting tables at the lounge, right away—more than a beginning teacher makes. And she liked to party."
"Anyway." Dennis came back to the topic at hand. "The money's there, in your name. If you'll come down to the bank with me one of these days, when we're both in Grantville, I'll have Coleman Walker put your signature on the account instead of mine. I'll take you to talk to Huddy Colburn so you can find out what's coming in from the real estate that's left in more detail. I've just been having him reinvest it in more when enough built up and checking the quarterly reports. I'll give you those. They already have your name on them and I can have him take mine off. And if you want to draw on the part that's in the business, just give me a couple of months' notice. There's more there, really. It's more profitable than drawing interest in the bank. But what's in the bank should be enough to cover just about anything reasonable that you need right away."
"Okay. Uh. Thanks a lot."
"You're welcome." Dennis didn't want to push things with the girl. He was just glad that he had been able to help her out with this.
When Noelle looked at the papers covering the bank account, she thought that there certainly was enough to cover anything she needed right away. Including the safety deposit and three months' advance rent on an apartment of her own. It was more money than she had ever expected to see at one time in her life.
Of course, that hadn't been much. Her financial expectations had been pretty modest.
"How did it go in Erfurt, Noelle?" Tony asked.
"I got to know Dennis a little better."
"Did you like him?" Denise asked. She put down saucers with fruit cobbler on the coffee table.
"I'm not sure. Juliann used to talk about him some, and his brothers. She said that he was different from Joe. That when storms came down, Dennis was like a tough old tree with deep roots growing into a cliff side. That he'd bend over before the wind and water and then, when the calm came, manage to stand up straight again. With some scars and gouges, the worse for wear, but stand up again and keep going."
"Interesting." Bernadette put down her cobbler. "What about Joe?"
"That he was like a flint boulder. He wouldn't bend in a storm. He'd just sit there and part the waters. Until they eroded the ground out from under him. Then he'd crash down the cliff and break into a thousand fragments." Noelle put down her empty saucer. "Thanks for having me over, but I really do have to go."
"It's odd." Tony sat down again after seeing her out the door. "When she first came back from Franconia, I was thinking to myself how unexpectedly resilient Noelle had been as a field agent, considering how young she still is. We've mostly still been thinking of her as Pat's. There may be more of Dennis in her than we thought. Maybe Juliann Stull spotted that. Of course, Juliann knew Dennis a lot better than any of us did."
"Noelle's not like Pat." Denise gathered up the cups to take them into the kitchen. "Don't be fooled by her looks. She's been feeling responsible for Pat for the last ten years. Totally responsible for her since Patty finished high school in '95 and moved out."
Bernadette picked up the forks and saucers. "If you ask me, the greatest kindness Dennis could do her is somehow convince her that he'll really take Pat's problems over now, for good, and cut her loose to live a life of her own without that constant worry."
"What do you think, Joe?" Aura Lee asked.
"Hard to tell. Noelle seems friendly enough. A little reserved, I guess, but that's not so surprising under the circumstances. That she's a little hesitant."
"Do you think that she might be a little more . . . forthcoming . . . maybe, with someone younger. Maybe if Eden talked to her?"
"We could try it, I guess. But Economic Resources keeps her pretty busy. She doesn't have a lot of time to socialize. They'll probably be sending her back to Franconia one of these days."
Aura Lee looked at him. "Doesn't that tell you that we ought to get a move on?"
Eden Stull decided to leave the dishes for the time being. Supper hadn't gone badly. But it hadn't gone particularly well, either. So far, she hadn't found any opening to bring up the question of whether Noelle would be willing to change her name to Stull. "I was there. When Francis Murphy shot Dennis, I mean. With the babies. My parents were really ticked off that he shot into the parlor of the funeral home with the five of us there. As if we ought to be immune to that sort of thing happening."
She stood up. "Help me get the kids to bed, will you? After that, if there are any questions you want answered, fire away. That's why I asked you over."
"I'm not sure you can answer my main question at all." Noelle got up too. "Considering that you weren't even born back when it was going on and Harlan was just a baby. Why did my mom fall in love with your husband's uncle, who's my father, to start with?"
"Well." Eden started to shoo her sons in the direction of the stairs. "That's a good one. You might as well ask why Julia fell for Tom. Those are Harlan's parents—they were left up-time. Or Aura Lee for Joe. Or why I went nuts over Harlan. Or, for that matter, why Blanche Leek fell for Ben—he's the guys' first cousin, son of Juliann's sister Lula. They're up in Magdeburg. I suppose you don't see any obvious reason or you wouldn't be asking."
"Well, I've never met Harlan or his father," Noelle stopped on the first step. "Or the Leeks. I don't think I ever even heard of the Leeks. And since Tom Stull was left up-time, I'm not likely to meet Harlan's father."
"They're no better looking than Joe and Dennis," Eden smiled. "In fact, Harlan looks more like Joe than he does like Dennis. When it comes to the rating scale, Dennis is the best of the lot. Lucky for you. No girl in her right mind would want to look like Joe or Harlan. It's just lucky that Little Juliann looks more like Aura Lee. I'm really happy that both my kids are boys. It doesn't seem to handicap the Stull boys."
"Okay," Noelle dropped a rubber ducky into the bathtub. "Where did you get the ducky? You didn't have kids before the Ring of Fire."
"It was Aura Lee's. She and Joe could have sold it for a bundle to the dealers who come through looking for up-time collectibles, but she gave it to me, instead. And I'm glad. I want my kids to have a rubber ducky. I know that when I finally get to go join Harlan, out of Grantville, we'll probably have a wood stove and a little round tin tub. I'll sort of miss central heating and a real bathroom, but the rubber ducky goes along. They can still have that and I want them to have that. I want them to have something from . . . from the real world, if you know what I mean."
"I know. It's odd what we miss." Noelle dipped her fingers into the crock of soft soap and dropped a dollop into the tub. "I miss bananas. That's what I used to have for breakfast. I'd just pick up a banana and run out the door. I've gotten used to a lot less sugar and a lot more fish, but I guess I'd just never imagined a world without bananas."
Eden pulled a couple of washcloths out from under the sink. "Anyway. Back to the Stulls. What really gets to the parents of their wives—at least, what got to my parents—is that they home in on us so early. And my parents didn't know the half of it. I was allowed to start dating when I was sixteen. And I had my first date with Harlan, who's ten years older. They didn't like it a bit."
"Well." Noelle thought a minute. "I mean, I can see why."
"What would really have made them mad," Eden grinned, "is that I'd known for almost three years that he'd call on my sixteenth birthday and ask me out."
"Good Lord!" Noelle exclaimed.
"I was in McDonald's one day, with a batch of other kids. I take after Mom in my looks. That is, I was as tall then as I am now and just as filled out. On top that is, at least when I'm not nursing. I got a bit more hips with the kids. I was leaning against the rail, waiting to order, when Harlan leaned on it from the other side, smiled at me, and asked me who I was. I told him, and who my parents were. He looked at the kids I was with and asked me how old I was. I told him that, too. Thirteen. And he said, 'I was afraid of something of the sort.' Then he asked, 'When are Nat and Twila going to let you date?' I said, 'when I'm sixteen.' He said, 'I'm Harlan Stull. Nat and Twila are in the phone book, so I'll call you then. When's your birthday?' And he did. Right in the middle of my birthday party. He asked me to the movies in Fairmont the next Saturday and I said that I'd go."
"That's . . . well, that's . . ." Noelle sputtered.
"Yeah, my parents thought so, too, when he called. So did the Mulroneys when Harlan's dad—Tom, that was—started dating Julia. Though that was just two years difference, not ten. They'd have married sooner than they did except that they were waiting for Julia's sister Barb to turn eighteen so she could marry John Nash without parental permission. And probably the Hudsons, when Joe started eyeing Aura Lee when she was fourteen and kissing her the next year. As for your parents, Dennis is more than four years older than Pat—closer to five years older. She may have run off to him on her eighteenth birthday, but she'd been waiting to run for a year, at least. Willing to run for two or maybe a little more.
"They just sort of . . . focus . . . on the girl they want when she's awfully young. Not putting pressure, exactly. Just moving in and occupying all the mental space she has available for thinking about guys. So he's the only guy she ever really thinks about. At least, that's the way it worked for me. I was so preoccupied with waiting for Harlan to call on my sixteenth birthday that I just more or less ignored all the other boys in town."
Eden grinned suddenly. "In a way, I think what makes the parents maddest is that they can't even call the guys pedophiles, because they actually do wait until the girl is of dating age to do something. Joe moved in on Aura Lee earliest, but even then . . . I suppose a person could say that she sort of provoked him occasionally, from everything I've heard."
Noelle frowned. "But why did it preoccupy you that much? After all . . ."
"Well, yeah. Probably if it had been anyone else who tried that trick, I'd have forgotten it in a couple of days. But it was Harlan, and if he called, then we'd have a date, and if we had a date, then some day he'd kiss me, and if he kissed me, then eventually . . . You can sort of see how the train of thought went. Trust me, it was plenty to keep me ignoring all the other guys. Of course, if he hadn't called, I'd have had to restructure my picture of my future life drastically. But he did, and like I said, I never doubted that he would. Honestly, the only thing on earth that my parents had against him was that he was ten years older.
"Plus the fact that I moved in with him on my eighteenth birthday, which was a year before I finished high school. But he wasn't on a 'barefoot and pregnant' kick. He paid for me to finish a two-year degree in laboratory technology and then I worked two years before we got married. I guess we could have gotten married earlier, but there didn't seem to be any real reason to. For that matter, there wasn't any real reason in 1997 more than there had been for the last five and a half years, but we woke up one morning and decided it was time, so we did. We went to the courthouse and had a judge perform the ceremony with Joe and Aura Lee as witnesses and sent my parents a photocopy of the certificate.
"It didn't change the way we lived. I didn't get pregnant the first time until after the Ring of Fire and now I've got two kids. I predict I'll end up with a few more, because birth control down-time isn't what it might be. We've talked around all the angles and Harlan and I aren't likely to give up sex any time soon, thank you.
"Though having him over in Fulda really cuts down on the frequency. Once they get something going over there that doesn't mean that a lab technician is of six times more use to the world in Grantville than in Fulda, I'll be on the first freight wagon out of here. We're lucky that he's the budget officer, so he gets to come back more often than most of the guys in the administration there do. He'll be in town in a week or so. I'll have everyone over for dinner.
"The guys started to make a scrapbook about Juliann, after the visitation got shot up. Joe has it, I think. You'll have to ask him to let you look at it. They put in their favorite 'Ma' stories, so I'm not going to spoil things by telling you any of them."
"But Nat and Twila were with you at the visitation. So you must be getting along now?"
"Oh, that. When I finally had a baby, they couldn't resist. They showed up at the hospital nursery looking wistful, so Harlan told them to come on in and we all had a good cry together and made everything up. And we named the baby Nathan. On the theory that we were likely to have more, given the birth control situation, so we could name kids on down the line Tom for Harlan's dad and a Harlan Junior, maybe. Tom we've already got. He was born last May."
Noelle started to towel off the older boy. "If you ever need a babysitter when I'm in town . . ."
"My favorite story about Grandma for a scrapbook?" Harlan Stull asked. "God, it has to be the day that Eden moved in with me. June 11, 1992. It was a Thursday." He winked at his wife.
"I think I remember that one. The famous Lady Godiva of Grantville?" Joe grinned at him. "We were living in Fairmont then, but somebody called Aura Lee at work and the story that Eden had been streaking was waiting for me when I got home for supper."
Harlan grinned back. He had always considered his youngest uncle more of a cousin, considering their ages, and never gave him the 'uncle' title.
"One thing sort of led to another," Harlan turned to Noelle. He thought she was looking a little intimidated by her first family dinner with the entire world supply of Stulls all at once.
"Nat and Twila didn't really like it that I started dating Eden when she was sixteen. Considering that I was twenty-six. From the perspective of the parents of a girl, they might have had a point. Although I was very good. Even by their standards. For the first six months or so, at least. I took her all sorts of neutral places, like to historical reenactments up at Prickett's Fort State Park, as if she really wanted to watch eighteenth-century gunsmiths at work, and to the district fair and stuff. Concentrating on Saturday afternoons. Sunday afternoons. Hiking and things like that. Roller skating. Co-ed volleyball in the high school gym."
Eden interrupted. "Until I got a little pissed off and told him that I was perfectly willing to try to cram ten years' worth of growing up into two years or so, since it looked like I'd need to, but he had to give me a fair chance. Introduce me to his own friends and things."
Harlan shrugged. "Well, by that time, the people I'd gone to school with were mostly either married with a kid or two or doing things I didn't want to introduce Eden to, so my 'friends' list got remodeled. Pared down a lot in pretty much of a hurry."
Joe laughed. "Funny how that works."
"Anyhow, one thing led to another. Eden was born at 1:40 in the morning. She looked it up on her birth certificate. So on June 10, I kept her out beyond her weekday curfew so I could stick an engagement ring on her finger at the very instant she turned eighteen in the early a.m. She didn't think Nat and Twila would be happy about it. The Davis household always had breakfast at 6:30 a.m. She asked me to be outside with the car by seven, because it might not go over very well. I called into work first thing in the morning and took the day off too, just in case. But I sure didn't expect what did happen."
"Which was?" Dennis asked. "Remember, Pat and Noelle don't know the story at all."
"Well, Eden came down to breakfast and served herself with toast and scrambled eggs. Nat started in on her about breaking curfew. She put her hand down on the table and showed them the ring. Itty bitty diamond on a very skinny platinum band. Nat told her to take it off. She refused and pointed out that she was of age. He said that either she took it off or he would throw her out. She said, 'then toss me down the steps.' He said that he had paid for everything she had and that none of it would be going with her."
"Oh." Noelle sounded a little surprised.
"Eden just looked at him. Then she got up from the table, went to their little half-bath downstairs, and stripped. Stripped everything, including her underwear and shoes. Took the bobby pins out of her hair. She even left her glasses behind. They were probably the single most expensive thing she had, given her prescription. Walked out the front door, down the steps, down the sidewalk, and got into my car just as bare as the day she was born, except for her engagement ring. With Twila screeching on the porch, by the time she closed the car door."
Dennis reached for the baked beans. "I was over in Clarksburg, then. But about that time of the morning someone called me, too. So I probably heard before Joe and Aura Lee did."
Harlan winked at Eden. "So we drove over to my place. She parted her hair in back so it would hang in front and sort of hunkered down on the seat while I ran in and got one of my shirts. It was a little later by then and more people were up and about in my neighborhood."
Eden tossed her head. "I'd have been willing to walk in just as I was. If that's what it took. But it was nice of him to get the shirt. I had a lot of hair—still do—but not anywhere near as much hair as Lady Godiva is supposed to have had and I really preferred not to show that many people how I was built."
"Ah." Harlan looked at the ceiling. "Having her there, so conveniently undressed, and having the day off, what with being engaged now and all, we spent the next three hours or so very pleasantly. We figured that the way Nat had behaved that morning sort of cancelled all the limits on our behavior that he had imposed in the way of dating rules. Somewhere in the middle of it, the police phoned. Eden talked to them, pointed out that she was eighteen, and told them that she was quite happy to be exactly where she was. When Ralph Onofrio asked where she was, she answered, 'in bed with Harlan,' which made the state of affairs pretty plain. Ralph must have figured out what had Nat and Twila in such a twist, because he just laughed."
Noelle was struggling with a desire to laugh, too. Or, maybe, a desire to cry a little.
"Then we began to think about slightly more practical things. Like getting her some clothes. Without her glasses, Eden couldn't even see to write down a list. I couldn't quite imagine myself over at the Bargain General buying clothes for her. Or trying to, even with a clerk to help me. And I thought that taking her there wearing one of my shirts and no shoes would sort of fuel the gossip that was bound to be going around. Plus, without glasses, she couldn't read the labels and I'd have had to read them out loud to her to get sizes. I could just see myself doing that."
"Yeah," Dennis was looking at the beans again. "I can just picture it."
"So I called Grandma. Mom and Dad were at work. Someone had already phoned her, of course. She came over and took a look at the two of us, Eden blinking at the world through a fog, so to speak, and trying to get the tangles out of her hair with a dinky little six-inch plastic pocket comb." Harlan paused and ran his hand over his scalp. "Well, working at the mine, I kept a crewcut. It was a lot easier to keep clean. Why would I have wanted a brush? Grandma started to laugh so hard that I thought she would never stop. Eventually she did, though. Eden told her the sizes, I took her over to Bargain General, and she asked, 'How much can I spend?' I gave her five twenties. I'd stopped at the bank the day before, sort of expecting that I'd need some cash somewhere along the line. Grandma said that she'd probably never spent that much at once in her life and that she intended to have a good time. She got the practical stuff, toothbrush and hair brush and things. But then she picked out a couple of sets of pretty fancy underwear, a pair of jeans, a tee shirt, a pair of sandals. Said she expected I'd prefer it if she forgot about pajamas."
Joe laughed again. "Ma to the hilt."
"Then she looked at me and grinned. Asked, 'Do you really want to frost Nat and Twila?' By then, I sure did. 'You got any more money?' she asked. I gave her a couple more twenties. She said, 'Then take Eden to First Methodist with you Sunday,' and picked out a sort of rose colored tee with little frilly arms and a skirt with a background the same color and a little ruffle around the hem. And a headband that matched and a pair of little pink pearl earrings. And lipstick and nail polish."
Joe leaned back. "Whodathunkit? I'd scarcely have thought it of Ma."
"Well, I guess with three boys, you two and Dad, she never had a little girl to dress." Harlan grabbed the last of the beans before Dennis finished making up his mind about thirds. "She made the most of it. Then she ordered me to go by Nat and Twila's. She got out. I didn't think she should go up by herself, just in case Nat was still there, so I went with her. Charlene answered the door. Grandma said that they were certainly welcome to give the rest of Eden's things to the Goodwill if it suited them, but she did need her glasses and they wouldn't do anyone else much good if they threw them into the box at the Lions Club."
"Now that I would think of Ma," Dennis inserted into the conversation.
"Charlene went back inside, leaving us standing there on the porch. In about ten minutes, she came back with the glasses. In their case. I thanked her, and she said, 'Could you give me a lift downtown, please?' We did, of course. Didn't know it then, but when she got out at the library, she called Sam Haygood and stayed there until he came over and picked her up. And then they went over to the Davises at supper time and told Nat and Twila that they were getting engaged, too, which sort of distracted them from Eden for a while. A half hour or thereabouts, anyway. As long as Nat and Twila thought the two of them were just getting engaged. But the ten minutes of arguing about whether Eden could have her glasses had been the last straw for Charlene. She told them that she was moving in with Sam, too. Starting that night. They really brought out the big guns. Church of Christ members aren't supposed to behave like that."
Joe pushed his plate back. "Well, if Nat and Twila hadn't kept those girls on such a short leash, they wouldn't have reached the end of it so soon."
"There's that," Dennis admitted.
"Anyway, Grandma and I went back to my place and Eden got dressed. Right after she put her glasses on, she discovered that my refrigerator contained three slices of dried up pepperoni pizza and two cans of beer. She and Grandma took the car keys, extracted some more of my cash, and headed off to Stevenson's Supermarket. And that was when my life really started to change." Harlan grinned. "What with Twila being a home ec teacher and all, Eden had some really distinct views on what it was good for a person to eat. Most of them involving broccoli or fiber—or both. You win some, you lose some." He looked at his wife again. "Overall, though, having Eden move in was a winner."
"You'd better believe it," she answered.
"If you were living together anyway, why did you get married?" Noelle asked.
"We weren't just living together," Eden protested. "We were engaged. I wore the ring and all. Why did we decide to get married? The day we decided to—not the day we actually got married, because it took us a couple of weeks to pull things together and make sure Joe and Aura Lee could take time off from work to be our witnesses—was a little personal anniversary that we celebrated. Not when I moved in with him. That was in June. This was from November, a year and a half before that. When we started dating, Harlan kept taking me places that weren't exactly private."
"Harlan," Eden's husband said of himself, "had a pretty clear idea of how Nat and Twila would react if he deflowered their tenderly cherished virgin daughter. The age of consent might technically be sixteen, which she already was, but given that they weren't likely to see it that way, good old Harlan believed in playing it safe and waiting until the girl was altogether of age and at her own disposal. There were still a couple of years during which Nat Davis could have made dramatic paternal gestures and said things like, 'Never darken the door of our home again, you villain.' "
Eden picked up the story. "So there we were, up in the state park. There was a nature trail, about seven miles or so, and we picked that. It was a nice Sunday afternoon, sunny, not too cold, but not many people were out. Some, mostly families, but it wasn't crowded. We were about halfway along it, talking and holding hands. I kept feeling odder and odder. Finally I stopped. Harlan looked at me and I said, 'I feel really weird.' "
"So I looked at her closely and thought, 'Gee, thank you, Mother Nature. Not only do we have to deal with me wanting to have sex with Eden, now we've got to deal with Eden wanting to have sex with me. Not romantic feelings; plain old physical ones. And she doesn't even know what's bothering her. Time for a little instruction.' So I tugged her off the trail a few feet, backed up against a tree to have a little support, pulled her up against me, and started to kiss her the way I wanted to rather than the way I thought I ought to limit myself to."
"By the time we'd been leaning against the tree a while, kissing like that, with Harlan holding my hips against his, I figured out what the problem was. Which was a considerable relief. I had been starting to wonder if I was getting the flu or something, and I had tests in geometry and world history coming up on Monday."
"Flu?" Aura Lee asked.
"Well," Eden protested a little defensively, "It had been making me feel that wobbly. The health class at school told us something about the mechanics of it all but didn't say a word about the way a person feels while it is going on. At church they just warned us about places like the back seats of cars and the quarry. And the evils of dancing. They sure never said you could start feeling like that while you were hiking along a trail, wearing a down vest and boots, and listening to a guy tell you about improved standards and techniques for air quality measurement."
"About what?" Dennis sounded distinctly startled. "Harlan, you didn't! What a courtship!"
"Well, we had to talk about something. Other than the impact her bosom had on my testosterone, that is." Harlan put his arm around Eden's shoulders. "I was trying to minimize that train of thought about then. And it wasn't exactly courtship. That's when the male bird struts around displaying his plumage and the female tries to decide if she wants him. We had a done deal by that point. We were just working on procedures and implementation."
"It was interesting." The tone of Eden's voice was fiercely protective. "All the stuff Harlan told me about it was one of the reasons that I decided on lab technology when I went to choose a post-secondary course later on."
Dennis grinned at her.
"Anyway, we decided to get married on the seventh anniversary of the day Harlan explained to me the importance of being eighteen, as far as he was concerned. What he said made perfect sense. At the time, though, I wished that it didn't."
"I thought I might as well give her something to look forward to. I also told her that she'd get her engagement ring the instant she was of age and Nat and Twila didn't have to consent. Which she did."
"By the time we decided to go ahead and get married instead of just being engaged, I was twenty-three. Maybe that's why we waited so long. By then, it didn't upset most people so much that Harlan was ten years older. The people at the courthouse didn't ask any questions at all. They just issued the license and the judge married us off. Now that I'm coming up on thirty, it bothers them even less."
Eden stopped talking; then started again. "And I'm sure Noelle has found all of this very entertaining. But hadn't you all better get down to the business of why Aura Lee and I cooked this meal?"
Dennis, Joe, and Harlan glared at her. They would have worked up to the negotiations more gently. Taken an oblique approach.
Pat looked bewildered. The project was going to be a surprise for her, too.
Finally, Aura Lee sighed. Men! "Noelle, they'd like you to think about whether you really want to keep on using the name 'Murphy.' Or if you wouldn't maybe rather be a Stull."
"That could be a question, now that you've been exposed to us." Harlan grinned. "To the unexpurgated version, as they say."
"What the hell are you doing?" Joe asked. "Rooting around in those cabinets? Come on to bed, Aura Lee. It's past midnight."
"I'm looking for the 1997 photo album."
"Why on earth?"
"I just wanted to check something." She closed one door and opened another. "Here they are, in this box. Someday, maybe, we'll get everything unpacked that we brought along when we moved into this house in 1998."
"Check away." Joe knew one thing. The auditor in Aura Lee would not leave her in peace. If she thought something needed to be checked, she would check it. Even if it was midnight and they had to get up as early as ever in the morning.
"I thought so."
"What?"
"Look. These pictures I took the day that Harlan and Eden got married. She was wearing the clothes that Harlan described this evening. The ones your ma bought for her to wear to church the Sunday after she moved in with him. At the time, I thought they weren't what I'd have expected her to pick. She looked pretty in them, but they were definitely a summer outfit and it was almost the end of November."
"Harlan?"
"Umm?"
"At dinner, when you were talking about those clothes your Grandma bought me, I sort of started thinking. You'll still be here in Grantville Sunday, won't you?"
"Yeah. 'Til Tuesday. Maybe longer if a few logjams in the budget discussions don't break up."
"I've gone to First Methodist ever since I went that first Sunday wearing the pink top and the ruffled skirt your grandma picked out. But I've never switched. It's probably time that I did. If it's okay with you, I'll call the Reverends Jones and set it up for this week."
Harlan sat up and looked her over. "You'll make a perfectly gorgeous Methodist."
"What do they think, really, of having the Stulls as members?"
He thought a minute. "Well, they say that everyone has a divine purpose in life. I guess having us in the congregation tends to take the minds of the ultra-righteous off whatever the Jenkinses are doing at the moment. In a way, that probably cuts the Reverends Jones a little more slack than they'd have otherwise."
Eden attacked him with tickling fingers and they both collapsed.
Joe Stull wandered into Tony Adducci's office first thing the next morning. "It was the damnedest thing. Aura Lee said that we wondered if Noelle would be willing to change her name to Stull. Pat crossed her arms on the table, put her head down, and started to sob her eyes out. Dennis picked her up and took her out into the hall. The rest of us stayed sitting there. I guess it was pretty obvious that we wondered what we had done to set her off."
"Ummhmmn," Tony answered.
"Then Noelle said, 'There's nothing wrong. She's crying because you want me, I think.' Then we all just stared at her."
Tony nodded. "How much of it did she tell you?"
"She said, 'There's no way you could know it, but this is the first time I've ever been invited to anyone's family dinner.' That's all."
Tony winced. "I told Carol Koch, a long time ago, that the Fitzgeralds were a bunch of uptight Irish Catholic Puritans. Except Denise, of course. It's not just that Patrick and Mary Liz Murphy wouldn't have her in their house. She's eaten with us and the kids, with Bernadette there sometimes. But she's never even been to Denise's parents' house. Or to Suzanne Trelli's. Because the Fitzgeralds, too, saw her as a child of adultery. So far, the facts that came out at St. Mary's haven't gotten them to change their minds. At least not as far as meeting her goes. That's one reason she keeps so busy at work, I think. And doesn't mind going to Franconia. Let me see if Denise can come downtown for lunch. You maybe ought to talk to her about this. Or maybe Aura Lee could talk to her."
That immediately struck both of them as a brilliant idea, freeing them of further immediate obligations in regard to understanding the female of the species and permitting them to get back to fulfilling their respective public duties.
"When we were retelling the Harlan and Eden episode of the Stull family history, I couldn't tell from her face whether she was going to laugh or cry." Aura Lee held out her mug so Cora could refill it.
"She probably didn't know either," Denise got a refill too. "She's never had a date, so the . . . freewheeling . . . approach to it all in Dennis' family may have boggled her mind. The first time she ever went to a party was the staff Christmas party at her job, December before the Ring of Fire happened. She didn't want to face it by herself, but she did, and came through it okay."
"Why no dates? Because of that nun idea she has?" Aura Lee frowned.
"No. The 'nun idea' came up since the Ring of Fire. No dates because she wasn't willing to put out the payback that guys over in Fairmont expected from a girl with her background. From what I've picked up as her godmother. Ah, that was confidential."
"Isn't that a bit overblown?"
"Not when you add Patty's reputation as a party girl on top of Dennis and Pat."
"Oh." Aura Lee decided not to comment on that.
"Noelle told me once that when she was young enough to have dreams, back when she was fifteen or sixteen, she dreamed that some day she would leave Fairmont and go someplace like Denver or Seattle, where no one had ever heard of her family, and meet a nice guy at mass one day. Someone who had grown up in an orphan asylum and done well. That they'd fall in love and when she told him about her family he would say that he didn't care and didn't have any relatives who cared, either, and they would get married and live there and Pat would go visit them, but she'd never have to come back to West Virginia again."
"That is as sad as hell," Aura Lee put her mug down. "Twenty-three and talking about when she was young enough to have dreams."
"She was more like nineteen, then," Denise answered. "Instead of Noelle's getting to go away, Pat brought her to Grantville in search of affordable housing. Where she was even more in the middle of it. Going to mass at St. Vincent's, where Pat's relatives never acknowledged she was there. She finally had to give up her pretty daydreams completely when the Ring of Fire happened and she knew that she'd never be able to get away from people who knew about it all."
She sighed. "But it's one of the reasons that Bernadette doesn't take the 'nun idea' all that seriously. It isn't that Noelle didn't date—doesn't date—because she was never interested in getting married some day. She just doesn't believe that she has any chance of it now. Not with a 'nice guy.' "
Aura Lee frowned. "If you look at the available pool, she may not have much of a chance. I can't think of anyone I'd recommend for her. Not since she takes being Catholic seriously. The nice unmarried men within a reasonable range of her age, like Jim Horton or Danny Tipton, Gene Woodsell, maybe, are either Protestants or don't go to church at all."
"The hell of it is, that neither can we. Tony and I've talked about it some, since we're her godparents. The only Catholic guy anywhere her age who is anywhere near worthy of her in the whole town is Lawrence Quinn, but there's no spark there at all. Not on either side. Bernadette won't have her, though. For the new order they're planning, I mean. She says that Noelle's daydreams may have been of marrying a nice Catholic guy, but Pat came up with Dennis, who didn't make any sense for her at all. Which certainly didn't stop them. She's sure Noelle doesn't have a religious vocation. Especially since she gave us such an enthusiastic description of putting Eden's two little ones to bed."
"I hope it doesn't bother you, Denise, since you're Catholic yourself and all." Aura Lee dropped a couple of bills on the table to cover their coffee and a tip. "But that's a big relief from our point of view, the Stulls being Methodists. I'll mention that to Dennis and Joe, if you don't mind."
Dennis Stull spread some apple butter on his pancake. "If Pat won't give you answers, I will. At least to the best of my ability. Where did I meet her? It was a square dance. The fall of 1962. She was there with a bunch of girls her own age from St. Vincent's. Maureen and Theresa O'Meara, I remember. Pat Scanlon, the other Pat, who married Joe Bonnaro. Jeannette Adducci. Two or three more. I cut her out of the herd, so to speak, and asked her to dance. She was so cute. Just unbelievably cute. About five-two. Blonde ponytail. Blue eyes. Tiny little waist. Every now and then, I'd return her to the bunch, with good intentions of leaving her there, but pretty soon I'd ask her to dance again.
"Then, at the end of the evening, we looked for the others and they were gone. So I told her that I'd give her a ride home. Which was all that I did. Got a stony glare from Mary Liz when I took her to the door, but since it was less than ten minutes after the dance closed down, she didn't have any real grounds for complaint. I told Mary Liz that she'd gotten separated from her friends.
"What happened to the others?"
"Pat found out later that they were ticked off because she was dancing more than any of the rest of them and deliberately went off and left her, sort of hoping she'd get in trouble. She was only fifteen. Didn't turn sixteen until the end of December. Kids that age do things like that. They were all supposed to be dancing with a bunch of boys from St. Vincent's, but the boys weren't that interested in dancing, yet, so the rest of them only got out on the floor a couple of times."
"And then you started dating her?" Noelle asked.
"By taking her home, I learned where she lived. I was twenty, then, in college. I was going on a combination of state scholarship and work study, commuting over to Fairmont. Not a frat boy, by any means. I finished two years of credits in December of '63 and then went into the army. Figured that I might as well. My grades were okay, but not outstanding. Better the second year than they had been the first, but not good enough to guarantee two more years of deferment. I'd have been willing to ask her out, fair and square, but she said that if I did, her parents would send her to a nunnery. Which, after I'd found out a bit about the Fitzgeralds, didn't seem as melodramatic as I thought when she said it the first time."
"It probably wasn't." Noelle picked up her toast and then put it down again, tucking one foot under her as she sat on the bench in the breakfast nook.
"So we sneaked around. There's really no other way to put it. The next summer, she'd go to the drive-in with friends, get out after she got there, and get in my car to cuddle up while the film ran. Things like that. The other kids knew, of course. And since we were sneaking, we spent more time in places that were private than in public. With about the results you would expect.
"I didn't push her into doing anything she didn't want to." He smiled. "Maybe I sometimes coaxed her into going ahead and doing something she did want to. Not before she wanted to, though. It was like that, between the two of us. I waited nearly a year for her to be ready enough that she would ignore her scruples. Not just about having sex outside of marriage, but about having sex outside of marriage with a Methodist who made it plain that he intended to use birth control. Those last two items bothered her a lot more than the first one."
Noelle pursed her lips. "Actually, I can see that. In a way."
"The easiest place for us to go was over to Ma's. It was only a few feet from the driveway to the kitchen door. Our pa was gone by then, so Ma was working two jobs. Tom and Julia had married in August of '62, so he was out of the house and I needed to be home to watch Joe as much as I could, to save Ma from having to pay a sitter. So we'd sit at the kitchen table and do homework, all three of us. Me for college, Pat for high school, and Joe for grade school. Which, I think, is why my grades went up the second year. Playing cards or monopoly with him, sometimes. We sure spent more time doing homework than we did making love. There usually wasn't much time between when we finally persuaded Joe to go to bed and when Pat had to meet curfew on week nights. Sometimes none. Lord, but he was a little night owl. She got to stay out later on Friday and Saturday, though."
"You're telling me that you . . . ? Right there?"
"Yeah, that's what I'm telling you. A couple of times, Ma got home before we came back out of my room. The first time, Pat just froze. I don't know what she expected. I introduced them to each other. Ma said, 'pleased to meet you.' Pat barely managed to nod. When we got into the car, she was trembling like a leaf. And I thought that if she was that afraid of her own parents, it must be some house to live in.
"Once I went into the army, we wrote. That had to be sneaked, too. Our go-between was Jeannette Adducci, Tony's aunt. She was the next-to-the youngest of ten, so her parents didn't watch her so closely that she couldn't mail Pat's letters for her or pick up mine to deliver to Pat. I'd rented a box at the post office in my name, so I addressed the letters to myself. And the end of that year, '64, when she turned eighteen, Pat picked up her courage and caught the bus for Leavenworth."
Dennis got up. "I should have married her then, but I couldn't bring myself to sign those promises to have any kids we had brought up Catholic. I'm sorry if that bothers you, since she brought you up Catholic, but it's the truth. And she didn't think that being married except by a priest was different from not being married at all. You pretty much know the rest of it by now."
"I suppose so." Noelle put the lid back on the butter dish.
"Except, maybe, that I loved her so much that it hurt. After I'd gotten to know her a little, not just look at her, she was so sweet. She still is. She can't stand the thought of hurting her worst enemy. That's what Bernadette says. That her sins have almost all been of omission rather than of commission, the way the Catholics put it. Not being able to bring herself to do what she needed to."
"She tried," Noelle picked up the butter and put it back in the refrigerator. "Most of the time, anyway."
Dennis looked down. "Sometimes, they weren't her sins. I sinned against her, too, the way the Lord's Prayer says. Not the sex thing. I don't regret that for a minute. More important things. When she did try, not having the person listen who should have listened. That first time she came over to Clarksburg, after I got back from 'Nam, I should have kept her there. Or if not the first time she came, the second. Or third, or fourth, or fifth, or sixth. I'll never get over blaming myself that I didn't. She tried to tell me what was going on. I let her down bad. I should never have let her go back to Grantville that spring of '68. I knew in my heart how much she was afraid of them.
"But I thought it would play out the way she promised the last time she left. That on the morning she was supposed to marry Francis, she would get in her car and go over to her classes in Fairmont and call me to say that everything was all right."
"Okay. I got the testimony from the hearing at St. Mary's. I know what happened then." Noelle turned around and looked at him, her gray eyes measuring. Evaluating. Assessing. "Were you as single-minded about Mom as Joe seems to be about Aura Lee or Harlan about Eden?"
Dennis looked back. Not a child. He was meeting this daughter as an adult. A daughter who would have to decide if she wanted to claim him.
"I would have been if I'd had the chance. I was while I was over in 'Nam and she was waiting. The way things turned out . . . While she was married to Francis, there were seven or eight years when I regularly saw, and slept with, a divorcee over in Clarksburg. Eventually she met a guy who was interested in marrying her, which was the end of that. After Pat wouldn't divorce Francis even though she was expecting you, I was so disillusioned that I slept around for a while. A couple of years. Until I figured out that there was nothing in it for me, so I stopped."
Noelle nodded.
"Nobody Pat ever knew. Nobody she ever heard of, I hope. I tried to make sure of that. Then I dated a couple of other women. Didn't live with either of them. Never wanted to. One moved to Indiana with a job transfer after four years. The other lasted quite a while. The Ring of Fire left her in Clarksburg. That's the chronicle of my misspent years. Abbreviated version more than unexpurgated, but the truth. Not that I'm particularly proud of what I did, either. Of the way I handled things. But if I'd spent all those years thinking about the fact that I couldn't have Pat, it would have driven me crazy."
"Thanks for being honest."
"You're welcome. I'd prefer that nobody ever rub her nose in that."
"Yeah. I guess I can understand where you're coming from. I'd never deliberately do anything to hurt Mom."
"Well," Dennis said a couple of days later. "You could think about it again. That is, since we're going to the bank and putting your name on the records, you could think about what name you want on the papers."
"Yeah. I'll do that. Well, not just think about it. Do it. I told Tony and Denise and Bernadette a couple of weeks ago that I had wanted to get rid of 'Murphy' for a long time. But I wouldn't have asked to use 'Stull' unless you all invited me. I didn't want to be pushy."
Dennis looked at her. It hadn't occurred to him that she might be a little afraid of offending them. Thinking that they were measuring and evaluating her. She always seemed so composed. Reserved. Collected.
"Joe said that you told him and Tony that you had talked to Ma a few times."
"Yeah. I did." She looked away. "I hope you don't mind."
"Not a bit."
"I don't know if Mom has said anything to you about it, but Patrick and Mary Liz Fitzgerald never let me in their house any more than the Murphys did. I never met them. Won't ever meet Patrick, since he's dead now. Probably won't ever meet Mary Liz, given the things she said about you and Mom at the hearing at St. Mary's."
"Pat never said anything."
"She wouldn't. But she thought she ought to take the other girls to see them sometimes. Not as often as she took them to Paul and Maggie's, though. Nowhere near. But maybe that was more so she could see Keenan at Paul and Maggie's." Noelle looked across the table at him. "She feels pretty bad about Keenan, you know."
"She hasn't said anything about that, either."
"She does. She thinks she let him down." Noelle took a sip of coffee. She didn't really like it; hadn't ever acquired a taste for it. But it was there in front of her and fiddling with the handle of the cup gave her something to do with her hands.
"But that's really why I never changed my name to Fitzgerald. I wanted to get rid of Murphy. I had wanted to get rid of Murphy for a long time. But even though it was Mom's maiden name, the Fitzgeralds didn't want me, either. The only ones who did were Denise and Suzanne and they go by their married names."
Dennis realized that she was working up to something, but he wasn't sure what. With employees, the best approach was just to keep his mouth shut and listen, so that was what he did next.
"So she—Juliann—was the only one of my grandparents I ever met."
"Oh."
"The first time I walked up to the door, I called her 'Mrs. Stull.' But she said that no one much called her that."
"Nope. Not even the garbage collector."
"So, for a long while, I didn't call her anything." Noelle started spinning the coffee cup slowly around in its saucer.
Dennis just stayed quiet.
"Toward the end, she asked me to call her 'Grandma.' Like Harlan does."
Dennis nodded.
"I wish I hadn't been off in Franconia for so long before she died."
"Things like that happen."
"Yeah."
"Did you?" Dennis asked.
"What?"
"Call her 'Grandma'?"
Noelle shook her head. "I just couldn't, quite. Maybe, eventually, I could have worked up to it. But not then. I called her Juliann."
"If that's easier for you. So far, you haven't called me anything."
"I could probably manage 'Dennis.' "
"That's better than nothing."
"Okay, then." Noelle shook his hand.
"Changing your name doesn't take a court order anymore. The judges are too busy with more important stuff." The clerk pointed her finger in the general direction of Central Funeral Home. "Just go over to the Bureau of Vital Statistics, tell them what you want, swear an affidavit that you aren't doing it for fraudulent purposes, get it notarized, file it, and Bob's your uncle. There are a couple of notaries working right there in the office."
"Noelle Brigitte Murphy?" the clerk asked in a flat voice.
"Yes," Noelle said.
"Changing to Noelle Brigitte Stull?" The clerk fished a form out from under the counter.
"Yes, that's right."
Noelle looked at Pat and Dennis. " 'Noelle' I can understand, since I was born at Christmas. But where did 'Brigitte' come from?"
Pat turned bright red. "It's for me. In a way. I hope the priest thought it was for a saint, but it's for me."
"How do you get 'Brigitte' from 'Patricia'?"
"Hey there," Jenny Maddox came out of the back office. "Hello, Pat, Dennis, Noelle. Focus. We have forms to fill out, I hear."
"Hi, Jenny," Pat said.
"Did I hear a question? Getting Brigitte from Pat?"
Noelle nodded.
"This I know from my parents." Jenny looked mischievous. "Dad and Mom and Dennis were friends back then—he and Mom were in the same class in school."
"I guess there's no escaping my past," Dennis said.
Jenny barged on. "Noelle, did you ever hear of an actress called Brigitte Bardot?"
"No."
"Well, probably not. She'd stopped making movies long before you were born. Tell her the truth, Dennis," Jenny said.
Dennis looked a little uncomfortable. "When Pat was a teenager, when we were dating, I used to tease her by calling her Brigitte."
"Please," Pat said. "Don't ask." If anything, she turned redder. Her skin was very fair.
So Noelle didn't ask. But she did look the name up later. And blushed as red as Pat by the time she was done with the biographical sketch. Being named, even second-hand, for someone whose life history was summed up under the keywords "erotic French sex kitten" just didn't seem to be the proper image for a would-be nun.
"Um, Bernadette," she asked a couple of days later. "Did you ever hear of Brigitte Bardot?"
"Yep," Bernadette answered tersely.
"When we went in to do the name change. Ah, Dennis says that's what he called Mom when she was a teenager. Brigitte. She gave the name to me when I was baptized. For her. Because Patty was already named Patricia, I guess."
Bernadette looked at her. "Well, keep it in mind when you're thinking about whether or not you want to join a religious order."
"What do you mean?"
"You are Pat's daughter and he probably wasn't calling her that for no reason at all."
"Uh?"
"Look, Noelle." Bernadette tried to keep her voice kind rather than brusque. "Nowhere in all that testimony before Judge Tito and Tom Riddle or at the hearing over at St. Mary's did anybody so much as hint that Dennis and Pat waited until they were out in Leavenworth with his dime-store rings on her finger to start sleeping together."
"Oh." Noelle paused a moment. "Well, I guess that wouldn't have been likely. From what I've learned about Dennis' family so far. Actually, Dennis told me that they didn't wait that long. When I asked him about it. It would have embarrassed Mom if I asked her."
"I'm sure it would," Bernadette agreed. "And if you're even thinking about becoming a nun, Noelle, you might give some consideration to what she was doing then that would embarrass her so much if you asked her about it now."
And after that, Bernadette said to herself, you'd better think again.