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 Würzburg 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 Würzburg."
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."