1635:The Dreeson Incident

Chapter 58

Grantville

Wes came back from his meeting over at the legislative chambers. There were police all over the place around the administration building. As soon as he saw the expression on the security guard's face, he knew that something was wrong. Specifically wrong, for him. Not generally wrong, politically.

"Ah, Sir. I am sorry. Truly I am. I had no way of knowing that I should not admit him. I hadn't been notified. He wasn't on my list. And he is a member of your family."

"Who is 'he'? And what has 'he,' whoever he is, done?"

"Mr. Bryant Holloway, Sir. He came into the building. Quiet enough, when he came in. He went up to your office. To Consular Affairs. Where he tried to knife your wife."

At the expression on Mr. Jenkins face, the guard turned pale. "Ah, she's perfectly fine, Sir. Ms. Bachmeierin, that is. She's upstairs, talking to the police. She yelled, so other people came."

The guard had heard any number of people say, from time to time, that Mr. Jenkins had a temper. He'd never seen any sign of it before.

The policeman talking to Clara was Preston Richards, who had sent Ron and Missy into another room to be interviewed. He also carried out the unpleasant task of letting Wes know that Bryant had gotten to Lenore and beaten her very seriously.

The guard looked up. The way Mr. Jenkins' face had looked on the way up did not even start to compare with Mr. Jenkins' face on the way out.

Ms. Bachmeierin came running after him. Running down those steep old-fashioned stairs, as close to her time as she was. Running, her short legs trying to catch up with her tall husband.

"Look, Ed," Preston Richards said. "If Wes lays hands on Bryant Holloway, the man's life expectancy is going to be very short. And while I don't give a damn about Holloway, we'd still have to arrest Wes for murder. Second degree, anyway."

"Then," Arnold Bellamy answered, "we must find the best way to save Wes from himself."

Ed Piazza didn't answer right away. He was thinking.

Arnold was right, of course.

Arnold could be an uptight pain in the ass a lot of the time, but he was frequently right.

Michael Dukakis had probably been right too, back up-time, when he answered that question about his wife Kitty. Right in an abstract sort of way.

Natalie Bellamy hadn't been among the women standing on the steps of the synagogue the day of the assassination. No one had shot at her. Ed wondered vaguely how Arnold would have reacted if she had been there. Or if someone had tried to knife her this morning. Or if someone beat up his daughter Amy. Amy would be how old now? Nineteen already? She'd been a freshman in high school the year of the Ring of Fire.

This coming spring, a class would graduate that had never attended the high school while Ed had been principal. A whole new school generation, he thought, formed during their freshman year by Len Trout but mostly under Victor Saluzzo's leadership.

"I'm sure you're right, Arnold," Ed said. "Do you have any suggestions?"

"Not really. I was hoping that Preston might."

Ed's thoughts kept wandering. Lots of people sort of wondered about Arnold and Natalie. It was lucky that Amy hadn't been involved in this at all. She worked right here in the building. Who could tell how Arnold would have reacted?

"Ah," Arnold was saying. "Preston, while I have your attention, I think I'd better let you know that several other people were involved in pulling Bryant Holloway out of Consular Affairs than your men found when they arrived on the scene. Amy says…"

"That must have been a sight," was Preston Richards' comment when Arnold had finished his summary. "I guess I had better talk to Minnie and Denise. Minnie has a really amazing memory for things she observes."

Arnold rearranged the papers in front of him into three neat piles. "Amy thought you ought to know. No matter what Christin George's opinion was."

Ed blinked. Amy had been involved in the fight. And Arnold's reaction was-somewhere between perfectly calm and mildly concerned?

Arnold was continuing. "At least she phoned me once she got rid of Christin. She's a lot like Natalie, you know. Amy, that is. Came equipped with a mind of her own from the day she was born. All the paternal guidance I have been able to muster over the past two decades has not sufficed to persuade her that 'Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!' is not necessarily the most appropriate response in every single circumstance that may arise."

He rearranged the three piles of paper. "I really do wish that she were a little more cautious. I thought that working in Internal Affairs would offer comparatively little risk, since she has no desire to teach. Compared, say, to working in Economic Resources or going to Franconia." He frowned. "Minimal risk is difficult to achieve these days, though. Natalie was teaching the day of the Croat raid, and Amy was at school. I had just transferred to the Department of International Affairs, so I was downtown. I was very concerned about their safety. With all the other things that had to be done, and all the confusion, it was almost three hours before I was able to confirm that they had come to no harm."

Clara insisted that Lenore and Weshelle must move in with them, at least temporarily, rather than having Lenore try to find a health aide and stay by herself here, where it happened.

Mary Ellen backed Clara up on this. "The EMTs are still here; the ambulance can move you. Wes and Clara can take Weshelle, and I'll send Simon and Sebastian over to bring your things and hers. They can use a dolly from the church."

"There's a crib there already," Wes said. "And a playpen. On the sun porch. Just for grandchildren."

Lenore was shaking her head.

"You should have come the first time," Clara said. "Like I told you to. Or the last time, like I told you to again."

Wes' head came up. First time? Last time?

He learned about February.

"Why in the name of God didn't you tell me then?"

"Because you would have killed the man. Just as right now you are on the verge of killing the man if you lay hands on him. And I did not want to see you hanged before you saw our baby. Well, not to see you hanged at all."

"She's my daughter. You had no business taking that on yourself."

Clara stuck her chin out. "I exercised my best judgment."

Then he learned about March. Faye, Lola, Andrea, Chandra, the protective order that had been in place since Bryant came back. With Clara involved again.

"Dad," Lenore said. "Dad. It wasn't…"

Her attempt to intervene didn't do any good.

Chandra? Both Clara and Chandra had known, but hadn't told him?

Wes and Clara were yelling at each other when the ambulance arrived. Still yelling when Mary Ellen left in it, with Lenore, carrying Weshelle herself.

Still yelling when they got home after locking up at Bryant's house.

Just yelling, though.

Mary Ellen sighed and left them to it, wondering how long it had been since anyone in Wes' family had stood up to him. Probably, if the stories she had heard were true, back when his mother tried to talk him out of marrying Lena. Which hadn't worked.

Wes would never have thought of himself as a domestic dictator. And, to give him credit, she thought, if that rubric applied in any way, he had certainly been the most benevolent dictator ever born in the human race. His efforts to elicit a point of view from Lena had been practically superhuman. He had nobly refrained from playing the heavy father to Lenore and Chandra, even when he clearly hadn't been pleased with the choices they made.

But still. He was pretty short on experience when it came to give and take on the home front. Lenore and Chandra hadn't had to fight for their choices. Wes had stood back and deliberately let them make them, which was a different kettle of fish.

Faye looked up from the phone. "That was Mary Ellen Jones," she said.

"Is it true?" Linda Beth asked. "What we heard that Bryant did to Lenore this time?"

Faye nodded. "Bad enough that she's going to have to be off work for several days."

"What do you think? Like your friend Bernadette Adducci says, Andrea, it's really hard to help someone who won't help herself."

"Personally," Faye said. "I think that Lola and Clara were right. She should have gotten out. Not that a protective order would have prevented him from hunting her down at Wes' house. But it sure would have made it less convenient for him to get to her if she had been living somewhere else, with other people around."

"Why on earth didn't she?" Catrina asked.

"She's a masochist?" Andrea suggested.

Linda Beth shook her head. "You have to know something about her family to understand, I think. I'm the same age as her grandparents. Lenore has been surrounded all her life by folks who are pretty nice. Not perfect, but the Jenkinses and the Days, both sides of her family, are basically good people. Lenore and Chandra are both alike, in that way. At some level, they simply expected to be-what's that word in the wedding vows?-yeah, to go on being cherished when they got married. Without even thinking about it. They'd been cherished since the day they were born, after all."

"Maybe you're right," Faye said. "That is sort of what it was like when Lola and I talked to her. When it came right down to it, I'm not sure she actually believed what was happening to her. That Bryant was completely off the deep end. Not even though Lola warned her back in March that he'd gone off it a couple of times before."

Wes said he would set up a folding bed for Lenore downstairs on the sun porch, next to the crib, so she could be with Weshelle. Clara brought sheets, blankets, an extra pillow, all from the linen closet.

While he was doing that, Clara moved her things out of the master bedroom.

Lenore wasn't going to be able to climb the stairs for quite a while. No one but themselves would know that she was sleeping on the single bed in Chandra's old room.

Not even if she cried herself to sleep at night, feeling… a little bit lonely, at times.

After all, she could scarcely stay in the master bedroom. It had been wonderful to sleep in Wesley's arms when his favor had been resting upon her. But she could scarcely perturb him with her presence when it was not.

When Wes came up that evening, he stopped at the door of the bedroom, a little startled. Whatever he might have expected to happen as the next stage in this disagreement with Clara-it wasn't this.

He hadn't really expected anything specific. He had never had a fight with Clara before. Some minor arguments about this and that, but no fights.

He had never had a fight with his wife before, for that matter. Lena had been compliant. Sometimes to the point that it tried his patience, but most certainly compliant. Lena had not been one to stand her ground.

On the other hand, if Lenore had picked up Weshelle and walked out, that night back in February, as Clara had advised her to, it would not have come to this.

Sometimes Lenore was so much like her mother that it was uncanny.

He stood there. Bitte, geh doch nicht weg. Bleib bei mir. It had been so… forlorn. But now, she had gone away. There had to be something that he wasn't understanding. Some piece of this puzzle was missing.

He looked down the hallway. All the other doors were closed. He wondered which room Clara had chosen.