The Dreeson Incident(110)

Ron blinked. The principal? Well, the president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia?



"He's Italian," Clara said gently. "There was red wine. Annabelle says that at least New Years Eve is not a wedding or a wake."





By a week or so later, it became clear that Bill Hudson was wasting an awful lot of time getting back and forth from Willie Ray's place to Lothlorien. Ron suggested that he might as well move in, since it didn't seem likely that his brother Frank would ever need his room there again.



They packed up the personal stuff that Frank had left behind when they left for Italy a year before into barrels and put those in a storeroom. Then they moved Bill's stuff with his father's team and wagon.



This involved meeting Bill's grandmother. Who was also Missy's other grandmother, the Hudson one, the one she called "Nani."



It was a sort of interesting experience. The kind of thing that made Ron glad that she had introduced him to her Jenkins grandmother first. That had to be saying something.



They were standing next to the wagon, waiting for someone to bring out another load of stuff on the dolly. She appeared and demanded fiercely, "Are you the young man who kissed Missy while she was riding a motorcycle last fall?"



Perhaps he shouldn't have answered, "Like this?" and demonstrated the procedure.



It certainly hadn't helped that Missy responded to the old lady's glare by throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him again. With considerably more verve.





Chapter 35





Grantville


"Good morning, Lenore. It's nice to have you back." Faye Andersen jumped up and gave her a hug. "We have an in-box waiting for you and can you work with Donella an hour or so every day? She's learning, but she hasn't had a chance to work in one of the down-time chanceries yet."



"Oh, Faye, it's so good to be back." Lenore leaned across the desk and gave the older woman a hug. "Hi, Linda Beth. Donella, I love your engagement ring. Catrina, oh golly, you have the baby right here. Isn't he a doll. I wish Bryant had let me do that after Weshelle was born. Where's Andrea? She said she still had some more forms for me to fill out."



"Meeting with the judges. You'll have to wait till that's over. Jon Villareal is our liaison with the consular service now. He's in the meeting, too. All okay at your end? No child care problems?"



"Great, Faye. Chandra is babysitting for Weshelle, so everything is smooth at home. Your problems must be nearly over by now."



"Sometimes I think they're worse when you have teenagers. Toddlers at least have the good grace to stay where you put them, so to speak, until you come back and pick them up again. Brandon and Hanna have so many activities now . . ."



"Are you on your own, again?" Linda Beth Rush asked.



"Bryant left for Magdeburg again the first thing this morning. He's got to make some stops on the way, though." Lenore grinned. "Give me some records to transcribe and I'll transcribe them."





"Back in the swing of things?" Chandra asked when Lenore knocked on the door to drop off Weshelle.



"Three days at work and it's as if I had never been gone."



"Did you eat breakfast?"



"You know me too well, Sis." Lenore laughed.



"Well, I'm hungry, and we have time. But I'm out of eggs. I've got to drop Mikey off anyway, and then Tom, so let's both walk downtown and stop at Cora's."





"When is she due?" Cora asked as she deposited the plates of buckwheat pancakes in front of them.



"Who?" Chandra broke a piece of hard bread in three pieces and gave one each to Lena Sue, Sandra Lou, and Weshelle to teethe on. She had dropped Mikey off at school on the way, but Tom was running around the table at a rate which made her yearn for the moment when St. Veronica's Academy would open its doors and receive him for the morning.



"Stop pretending you don't know who, Chandra. Your stepmother, of course."



"Um."



"When?"



"Late May."



"Didn't waste any time, did they?"



"Shoo, Cora." Chandra watched the proprietress head for another table, taking their coffee pot, and turned to her sister. "Cora Ennis has no shame at all."



"I think everyone in Grantville is asking the same question," Lenore answered. "And some of them are making bets on how long it took between the time they married themselves to each other and start of the pregnancy. I understand that the heavy money at the Thuringen Gardens is on fifteen minutes. The 250 Club types aren't conceding that the vows came first, on the grounds that German women are all whores." She blushed.