"Why?"
"Jay was from India. Sanjay was his full first name. We were both fairly traditional products of our own cultures. Even telling each other's parents about us would have been a major step."
Lenore stopped.
"I met him when I was taking classes at Fairmont State, of course."
Mary Ellen nodded.
"It's funny. Dad actually saw us together once. He was walking through the student union with a batch of other parks and recreation officials who were there for a conference. We were at a table with our study group. One of the girls said, 'Hey, Lenore, there's some old fart staring at you,' and when I looked over there, it was Dad. He just smiled and waved and went on."
"Do you think he connected the two of you?"
"There wasn't really anything to connect, back then. We were friends for a couple of years before anything else. On Friday nights, if I didn't have to work at the store, we'd eat take-out while he finished up at the department and then go to something. There was always something free to do on campus on Friday evening, if you looked hard enough. Once we went to a lecture on control and eradication of multiflora rose."
She blinked.
"Then it got to the point that we realized that there would be something else. Something more. One night, we were about to leave the lab. There were sirens outside, police cars and a fire truck in the parking lot. We'd already switched the lights off. We were standing there, looking out the window, wondering what was going on. Jay put one of his hands on the back of my neck. I took his other hand and put it against my collar bone. Nothing flashy. But we knew.
"I did all the sensible things. Went to the clinic, got the pill. A couple of months later, there was a terrible storm. I called home from his lab and left a message on the answering machine that I would stay overnight with a friend rather than try to drive from Fairmont to Grantville with a risk of flash flooding and mud slides. And I did stay with a friend."
Lenore swallowed hard.
"When I got home the next evening, Mom was very unhappy. She had called the dial-back number and got the telephone tree for the chemistry department, so she didn't really know where I was the night before if she had needed to reach me, she said. And, and… Dad told her that she should at least be glad that it wasn't some honky-tonk bar. He was teasing, but she didn't see that he was being the least bit funny."
Mary Ellen wasn't quite sure what to say. Lena had never really been known for having a sense of humor.
"Good God, Mary Ellen. We were both twenty-five! What do people expect?"
"I think, maybe, it's that you were always such a perfect lady, Lenore." And, she thought to herself, also that every guy in Grantville knows perfectly well that it wasn't him, which adds some intrigue to the speculation.
"When the Ring of Fire came, we'd gotten to the point that we were thinking and talking about that when he finished his MS at Fairmont, if his application to WVU for the Ph. D. program was successful, I might stop living at home and working and taking classes part time. That I might move to Morgantown, go to college there, and we would live together. And I wish that I had been in Fairmont with Jay that Sunday afternoon. He wanted me to come."
Mary Ellen held Lenore while she finally cried. Not for Bryant, not for Weshelle, not for herself, not for her injuries, but for a young man left up-time, for whom she had never let herself grieve because no one else had even known he existed.
"I'm sorry, Lenore," Jeff Adams said. "But what you were thinking is right. You're pregnant."
She looked at him. "February," she said. "I didn't want a second baby. I really didn't."
"It's a little late. But I can deal with it, if you want me to. Under the circumstances."
She sat there.
Then she shook her head. "It isn't the baby's fault what Bryant did."
"Under the circumstances…"
"Would you go out and shoot Cory Joe and Pam and Susan, just because Velma Hardesty is the pits?"
Adams looked at her again. That was where the spirits divided. For Lenore, this fetus fell into the same category as those three young adults. Was just as much a person. He'd known that the minute she referred to it as a baby.
He hoped that she knew what she was doing. But, given that viewpoint, if she was to come through this sane…
"I've learned something, though."
He raised his eyebrows.
"Sometimes the proverbs we were brought up on are wrong. Sometimes stoical endurance isn't the right response. No, 'you made your bed and now you have to lie in it.' No, 'no use crying over spilt milk.' I've learned that Clara has a point, the way she approaches things. Sometimes it makes sense to run away. But sometimes the right thing to do is to scream and scream and scream until someone comes to help you deal with it."
Lenore stood up and picked up her purse.
"I hope it's another girl," she said. "I think I'd have trouble dealing with a boy. Especially when he started to get older. Under the circumstances."
Apparently she did know what she was doing. At least she had the kind of family that would rally around her.
He sighed. It was her call, after all. No matter what he thought about the wisdom of her decision, it was her call.
Frankfurt, May 1635
Lola climbed off the freight wagon, asked the postmaster for directions, and walked to Nathan Prickett's office.
She was the last person Nathan had expected to see. Except, of course… funeral arrangements. She was Bryant's sister, his nearest kin inside the Ring of Fire. Except for his cousin Shannon, and Lenore and Weshelle, of course, about his only kin.
Bryant was on ice, in a cave not far from town, waiting for someone to do something about him. It was just as well she had come.
"For public consumption here in Frankfurt," she said, "Lenore hasn't recovered from her 'accident' yet. Not that everyone in Grantville doesn't know what actually happened."
"Ah, yes. I'll take you over to the mayor's office. That's where you will need to pick up permits and such."
"I'm not paying to take him back," Lola said. "And I'm not dumping a bill for it on Lenore, either. It's not as if there's a traditional family cemetery or anything. Our parents were still alive in Clarksburg when it happened. Uncle John and his wife were left up-time, too. Our grandparents are still alive. They agree with me. There's no reason to take him back."
"So why did you come?"
"To make arrangements here. To do whatever is necessary to get him into the ground, given that he doesn't belong to any church that prevails around here."
"There's a kind of potter's field. For beggars and vagrants. People they don't know what religion they are."
"Okay. That'll do. Take me to the mayor."
"For that, I think the city clerk will do. And the sexton at the church. He's in charge of the cemetery. Grave digging and such."
"Take me to the city clerk, then. You know your way around Frankfurt. I don't."
"Where are you staying?"
"With you. If you think I'm paying for a room when you have space, you're crazy. Jim McNally pays a reasonable wage, but I've got two kids to feed."
"Doesn't Latham pay support?"
"When he's in the mood. Which he rarely is, now that he's moved to Magdeburg and doesn't have to look me in the face. He's not been what you could call an involved father since I threw him out. It's not anything I can rely on. When it comes, I put it in savings. For emergencies. Medical expenses and things. The regular bills come out of what I earn and I make sure there aren't more than I can cover."
"I'm not sure it will look right, having you stay with me."
Lola glared at him. "I have news for you, Nathan. I don't care how it looks. Either you let me in your front door and provide me with a place to sleep or I'll crawl down through the chimney like old Saint Nick. I have had it about up to here with this whole mess."
The arrangements took most of the day, which annoyed him. He had several tasks on the list of things he intended to get done today. Now they would all have to be pushed over into tomorrow. Plus what he had scheduled for tomorrow. Some of which would have to be rescheduled for the next day.