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."