Inez Wiley looked at Ron. "Sit there," she ordered.
He thought he was probably sitting on a toy chest. Missy sat down next to him.
"I don't hold with that early bonding mystique. As long as the baby is asleep, she'll be as fine with you as with her mother. Human arms, human body temperature. Don't disturb her, but the minute she wakes up and starts to want to eat, have Missy rouse me so I can get Clara up. I'll be next door with Kortney, on a folding bed in Lenore's old room. I do believe in getting them on the breast right away. You can't miss it. She'll open her mouth, start to make noises like a little sump pump, and then start rooting at your chest like a piglet."
"Yes, Ma'am," Ron said.
Mrs. Wiley rolled down the hall in the same direction that Kortney had gone.
Ron sat there, thinking about adults.
That there had been something in the life of the calm, cheerful, competent, confident Mrs. Jenkins of Consular Affairs-the serene, unflappable Clara who had blown off every old cat in town by proclaiming that she was the luckiest and happiest woman in the world-something that led to her wanting, when things were over, to have her husband wrapped around her like a cocoon while she slept, warding off whatever things that went bump in her own personal night.
That Mr. Jenkins did it for her.
That growing up the way he had, on the commune, Ron probably didn't know much about husbands and wives. Dad might: he hadn't grown up on a commune. He and Magda got along great. But they kept things between themselves pretty private, and they were in Italy, anyway.
Missy put her head down on his shoulder.
Chapter 63
Grantville
Chandra stirred and looked at the alarm clock. Six-thirty. Somebody was going to have to get up and make breakfast for whoever was still in the house. That somebody was probably her. She showered and headed for the stairs. Mrs. Wiley was sitting with Dad and Clara, who was holding the baby. Presumably, at some time during the early hours, her new half-sister had decided that it was meal time. Mrs. Wiley made sshhh-ing gestures, so Chandra tiptoed down.
She paused at the open double doorway that led into the living room. Ron and Missy were sound asleep in the recliner. In order to fit into the limited space, they had assumed a position usually associated with words like "consensual." Chandra grinned. Either Aunt Debbie's direst suspicions were fully justified or else Missy had a lot more confidence in Ron's powers of self control than she had ever had in Nathan's back before they were married.
She knocked on the doorpost. Ron roused first, shook his hair back, and briefly looked down at Missy with an expression of such sharply intense delight that Chandra thought, Okay, girl. If he looks at you like that very often, we can forgive you for going totally bonkers over a kid who doesn't demonstrate many of the attributes of a Prince Charming clone on other counts.
It only lasted a couple of seconds. Then he shook Missy and said in the ultra-casual tone of voice that he usually produced when in the presence of her relatives, "Hey, it's morning. Wake up, Dumpling. We're going to have to coordinate to spring ourselves out of this thing."
Chandra stood there, wondering. He had not been using those mannerisms the day before. Not at all.
A crash at the end of the hallway, followed by several more, indicated that Weshelle was awake. The noise would come from her tossing all the ample contents of the crib onto the floor. Weshelle seemed to have a hunch that Noah's flood might recur during any night. If so, she intended to take her worldly possessions with her as she floated away.
Thinking that in another week, Weshelle would be able to get out of the crib as well as the playpen, Chandra started that way. The crashes stopped. Weshelle must have run out of ammunition. A loud thump, followed by a wail, indicated that her prediction as to the date of successful crib escape had been off. Lenore's voice, half asleep, offered comfort and consolation. She didn't sound panicked, so presumably Weshelle hadn't done herself any damage. The kid was one of those natural climbers.
Kortney appeared at the top of the staircase, carrying her little lady and asking if anyone had seen Wes' briefcase. Then asking if Ron and Missy could get Inez downstairs. Chandra yelled first "no" and then "yes."
The doorbell rang. Ron, still barefoot, got it. It was Aunt Debbie and Gertrude with Mikey, Tom, Sandra Lou, and Lena Sue. Mikey and Tom wanted to know why she hadn't come home to see them the night before. She hugged them and said that it was because they were having a new aunt and she had been busy.
This led to a foray up the stairs, as soon as Missy and Ron finished carrying Mrs. Wiley down, to see Grandpa and Clara. And the new aunt. Wes, who had taken a perch on the toy chest, showed them the baby.
That was an aunt? Mikey and Tom were sadly disillusioned. Aunts were, by definition, old enough to take kids to the park. Each of the three girls began to assume that defiant " I'm the baby" expression.
Kortney called for Ron and Missy to bring Inez' wheelchair back upstairs so they could move Clara and the baby into the master bedroom.
Chandra sighed. One of these days she would have to try to decide, in a methodical and analytical way, sensibly, practically, what to do about Nathan and their marriage. Some day when she had time. Probably about the same time the cows came home. She headed for the kitchen.
The phones were still down, which was only a mild hindrance to circulation of the news of the Jenkins' blessed event. Starting at Cora's during breakfast, where it was announced by Veronica on her way to work, with a secondary source at the administration building once the offices opened and Don Francisco confirmed the outcome, and tertiary sources at the middle school and high school courtesy of Minnie and Denise, it simply flew.
"Fifteen minutes" was designated as the winning bet. It had a flair that attracted bettors. The more academic conclusions reached by the health class at the high school were a distant third. They had been based on "fifteen minutes" as the starting point, anyway, which was part of the reason that Vic Saluzzo had been so annoyed by the project. This meant that there was no single large winner to take the pool. "Fifteen minutes" had been the most popular odds by far.
An intransigent coalition of Grantville wives obtained the book that Irv Sonderman had been keeping at the Thuringen Gardens and forced the winners to pay up to the Red Cross.
Outwardly, the happy grandmother accepted the donation graciously. It was a substantial amount of money and the organization had a lot of obligations.
Inwardly, Eleanor Jenkins ground her teeth.
Preston Richards looked at the rest of the people around the table. Politics. Politics was always a problem when it impinged on what should be straightforward police business. But here were Ed Piazza and Don Francisco Nasi, who said that Mike and Rebecca were waiting at the other end of the telegraph to put their two bits in. Arnold Bellamy. Not Wes Jenkins. Someone might need to express an opinion that it would be too hard for Wes to hear. Not to mention that he had a new baby at home.
The issue, once again, was how to deal with the Bryant Holloway situation. More specifically, how to handle his death. The death, obviously, had to be announced. How much of the circumstances had to be announced seemed to be negotiable. The only outsiders who definitely knew about it, Nasi said, were Nathan and Chandra Prickett.
In other words, the State of Thuringia-Franconia could attempt to minimize external interest in Holloway's role. Now that he was dead, to what extent would justice be served, Don Francisco asked, by making a federal case of it? Literally. Since the papers were safely in hand, his role could be perceived as entirely local. An unwitting dupe. A sympathizer who ended up holding the bag. That would be enough to explain why he headed out of town.