"How does this involve Pam?"
"Good grief, Dad. Naturally, he looked up the family of his new aunt-by-marriage. The first time this Jean-Louis saw that tow-blonde hair on top of Pam's head, he went into meltdown. Also, she's in charge of the circulation desk at the State Library now and sometimes she gives the class. She taught the section he took, so when he found out that she works there, it gave him a doubled and redoubled reason to haunt the place."
"Is she flattered?"
"Part of her wants to melt back; part of her doesn't want to get a reputation like Velma's. The rest of her, which doesn't ever want to see Velma again, which she would probably have to if she got involved with her stepfather's nephew, is trying to referee. So until she decides what to do, the one thing she's absolutely sure of is that even though she wants to be with him, she doesn't want to be alone with him. So Ron and I told her that we'd play backup. That was before she knew Cory Joe would be here. His schedule between Grantville and Magdeburg is pretty irregular. Anyway, you can't play cards with three people, and Cory Joe didn't have a date."
She turned her head to the hall. "And you might as well come back in, Mom. I know you're there."
Debbie came back, having the grace to look a little ashamed. "Um. Is Cory Joe doing well in the army up in Magdeburg?"
"Cory Joe is on General Jackson's immediate staff and serving as his personal liaison to Don Francisco Nasi."
That stopped the conversation temporarily.
"Look, Mom. He'll be twenty-five in another couple of weeks. Pam splurged on a whole cup of sugar and is going to bake a little half-sized cake for him and Susan—her birthday was in December—before he goes back to Magdeburg. I wonder when someone will reinvent powdered sugar so we can have frosting again. We're growing up. All of us. Time didn't stop when the Ring of Fire happened. That's something you've got to face. If we were back home in West Virginia, I'd be away from home, half way through my first year of college."
Missy stopped, then started again. "And about Ron . . . This is important for you."
Her mother looked at her.
"He isn't going to go away. No matter what happens between him and me. If anything ever does. Ron and Bill . . ."
"Bill?"
"Bill Hudson. Remember Bill? My cousin Bill? Your nephew Bill?"
Debbie nodded.
"While he was fighting that diphtheria epidemic down at Amberg last summer, he decided that when he got out of the army, he was going to work for Ron's dad. That it was more important in the long run to make the medicines that doctors can use than to be a doctor himself. Uncle Ray wasn't too pleased at first—he'd thought that Bill would go to the new medical school in Jena once he got out of the army, since he'd already gone as far as EMT.
"But now they've settled it that Ron and Bill, along with Reichhard Hartmann from Oberweissbach, will be setting up a subsidiary of the pharmaceuticals side. Right now, until they draw up formal papers, they're calling it 'Whatever Works.' I'm not sure exactly why—it goes back to something Tom Stone said, I think. Not just to reconstitute up-time drugs, but to figure out what can be developed from what people use here, down-time. Maybe, using modern analytical methods, come up with things derived from herbals that we didn't have before the Ring of Fire. The point is that Ron and Bill are going to be business partners, which means that Ron is going to be a sort of, um, permanent fixture as far as the family is concerned. Your side, the Hudson side, at least, no matter what Nani thinks about it. You might as well get to know him."
Ron walked down the front steps of Missy's porch. He knew that he could wait until tomorrow. There wasn't any special reason that he needed to tell someone this today rather than tomorrow, he expected. Mr. Jenkins' office wouldn't be open. It was probably not the right place, anyway. He was in charge of Consular Affairs, after all—Grantvillers abroad, not foreigners in Grantville. Otherwise, though, he wasn't sure even who was in charge of that stuff since Mr. Bellamy took a job in Magdeburg. He couldn't quite take it directly to Mr. Piazza.
Cory Joe would tell Don Francisco, but he'd be looking at things from the Magdeburg perspective. Broad brush, so to speak. That wasn't quite the same thing as local developments.
And if Ron waited until tomorrow, he'd have to make a special trip back into town from Lothlorien. Or try to explain it on the phone, which never seemed to work for him quite as well as face to face. Or try to explain it on the phone to some functionary who was trying to prevent cracked nuts from using up an important person's time.