Eric Flint - TITLE - Grantville Gazette.Volume XVIII

He shook her hand and left in search of Mary Timm.

The upstairs boy's room had large windows.

Jacqueline loved human emotions.

She collected them like a painter collects pigments, as a warrior collects scars and stories.

Now, for the first time, young Jackie wasn't so certain of her love of those things.

She had, in her short life, never seen desolation before. She wasn't sure if she could write David Weller's story now that she saw what it might mean.

"Are you okay, Jackie?"

Jacqueline plummeted into Allan's arms.

"Jackie?" he asked.

"Promise me." She prayed the prayer of all artists, punctuated by tears. "Promise me that when I die you won't try to forget about me."

"I won't. I promise."

Grantville, January 1635

"Why are you asking, Missy?" Debbie Jenkins asked.

"You know Pam Hardesty. In the going-to-be-a-librarian-someday classes with me. She's thinking about when she comes to get married. If she does. And what she's going to tell a respectable down-time man about that blank spot on her birth certificate. If she should marry one. A respectable down-time man, that is. Not that he's asked her, yet. If there was one on the horizon. So I thought, maybe… Well, everyone knows what Velma Hardesty was like, so maybe nobody knows. But I thought that maybe you and Dad had picked up some gossip back then. About who her father was, I mean. Or might have been."

"If even Velma knew." Debbie could be a little catty at times.

"Someone else had that tow-blond hair like Pam's," Chad Jenkins said.

Debbie raised her eyebrows.

"Cory Joe has it. Her brother," Missy pointed out.

"He's obviously not her father," Debbie said. "Cory Joe was only two when Pam was born."

"Besides Cory Joe," Chad said. "George Trimble."

"You're right." Debbi nodded. "George Trimble and all three of his sons, before they went prematurely gray. And George's mother. Mary Margaret Lang, she was. She just died last year."

Chad folded his newspaper and put it down. "Betty Mae Trimble's boys had it too-the Lunds, George's nephews. It ran all through those Langs. Harry and Tom Lund both had to get married. Either one of them would have been perfectly capable of it."

Debbie nodded her head. "I'd put my money on Rodney Trimble, though. If I were a betting woman."

"You know what?" Missy said.

"What?"

"They've all gone prematurely gray. Every single one of them. More like prematurely white. Pam is not going to be pleased at the thought that she's likely to have snow white hair by the time she's forty."

February 1635

Pam Hardesty climbed the steps to the assisted living center. She hadn't wanted to come, really. But after Missy told her what she had gotten from her parents, she couldn't seem to let it go. Mr. Trimble might be the easiest one to talk to. He hadn't married for, oh, years and years after she was born, and his wife was from California. She might not be so uptight about past history as Harry Lund's widow was likely to be.

If she didn't learn anything from Rodney Trimble, maybe she would screw up her courage and talk to Tom Lund next. His first wife had died in 1632 and his new wife was German. Past history for her, too. Harry Lund was dead. No way did she intend to tackle his widow Cheryl about it. Ever. She'd been in the same high school class as Jonathan Lund, Harry's son. His mom was a holy terror.

The only thing was that Rodney Trimble had been in the army. He might not have been around at the right time, no matter what Missy's mom thought.

But he might know something, even so. All the people who had this kind of hair were his cousins on the Lang side. And even if he got mad at her for coming, he was crippled up real bad, everyone said. So bad that he had to be in the center. His wife couldn't take care of him at home, any more. He wasn't going to hurt her.

But it wasn't that hard.

It was sort of like looking into a mirror, except that his hair was snow white.

When she said her name, he just looked at her for a while. Then he said, "Well, I guess Velma got it wrong when she decided to collect child support off the books from the lawyer who handled her divorce from Joe Lang."

Then he said, "I'm sorry I said that about your mother."

She answered, "I know Velma pretty well. I've been her daughter all my life."

"I'm not sure you know her all the way. We lived next door to each other. Ben was busy in the mines. Gloria Kay had to go to summer school every year to keep her teaching certification up because she only had a two-year degree. Velma was pretty much on her own. They counted on Irene to keep an eye on her, but she was six years older and had other things on her mind. We were fourteen when we did it the first time. We went steady all through high school. She thought that Gloria's 'keep your legs crossed' chat was a real scream, considering that it came two years to late. By then, we were doing it as often as most married people. Her folks were glad that I went into the army when I graduated. Looking back, they probably shouldn't have been. She missed it and started dating Joe Lang, Cory Joe's father. That marriage was okay for her while I was gone, I guess, but we started up again every time I came back on leave."

He looked a little uncomfortable at that. "I mean, that was what we did with each other."

This lay between them for a minute or two.

"When Joe found out, he got real mad, yelling that she was cheating on him. Velma pointed out that he wasn't missing anything-it wasn't as if she wasn't doing it with him, too, whenever he wanted it. Joe didn't see it that way and divorced her. Velma-well you should know the way she sees things, I guess. She thought that he was being just terribly unreasonable about it all."

Pam nodded. That was exactly what her mother would think in a situation like that.

"He wanted to take Cory Joe, but Velma realized that she could get back at him by keeping custody, so she did. Judges always favored the mother, her lawyer told her. He was from over in Fairmont. She didn't have any money. She couldn't pay his bill, so he wrote it off for nooky. Could have been disbarred, if he'd been caught playing those games."

Rodney Trimble looked at the girl. She was as white as a sheet. He'd never actually seen that happen, before. But she was so pale-complected to start with.

"Maybe she really did think it was the lawyer, the second time. She'd never gotten caught when she was doing it just with me, all those years through high school, but she got pregnant with Cory Joe real soon after she married Joe Lang."

Pam looked at him. "Thank you."

Rodney watched her leave, walking down the corridor from the sun room where they had been talking to the street exit. He hoped she was feeling a little better. He'd invited her to come back again if she felt like it. She seemed like a nice kid.

That's why he hadn't mentioned the other obvious possibility. People being people and Velma being the kind of girl she was. The one that had never seemed to occur to anyone but him. He'd adopted Laura Beth's two kids and given them his name before they came back from LA. They hadn't had any more of their own.

Joe Lang? He'd been awfully mad at Velma, but that probably hadn't stopped him from wanting her. And he'd been at her place twice a week, to pick up the boy for visitation and to bring him back.

If it had been Joe, who had been such a good father to Cory Joe and apparently had never given the girl a glance, well, that could really have hurt her feelings.

Himself, he sure wouldn't mind claiming a daughter like that one, if some down-time nutcase refused to marry her unless she had an official father.