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 Wurzburg 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 Wurzburg."
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."