Joe Lang? He'd been awfully mad at Velma, but that probably hadn't stopped him from wanting her. And he'd been at her place twice a week, to pick up the boy for visitation and to bring him back.

If it had been Joe, who had been such a good father to Cory Joe and apparently had never given the girl a glance, well, that could really have hurt her feelings.

Himself, he sure wouldn't mind claiming a daughter like that one, if some down-time nutcase refused to marry her unless she had an official father.

He was a crock, of no use any more except to go to the sheltered workshop a couple times a week and sew pieces of leather together to make soccer balls. Dead beat for a full day after that little bit of work.

Laura Beth wasn't the kind to take umbrage about something he'd supposedly done a dozen years before they ever met. Just think how, stuck here in a town thousands of miles from her own home, his military disability payments gone with the wind in the Ring of Fire, two kids to support, she'd taken hold, gotten a job right away, then a really good apprenticeship learning to be an elevator mechanic. Not that there were many elevators in Grantville, but once old Howell Tillman died, she'd be the only person in the USE who really understood how elevators worked. In a few more years, Howell had told her, the country would be wanting a lot of elevators and people would be beating a path to her door.

Laura Beth was a great gal.

He wasn't going to last much longer. Maybe he could do this little Pam a favor before he went. It wouldn't be that far off the mark. He and Joe were some kind of cousins, after all.

Late March 1635

Pam sent Jean-Louis LaChapelle back to Haarlem with some forms that he was to get Velma to sign. Rodney Trimble wanted his name put on her birth certificate. Jean-Louis would have to get Velma to agree to that. Jenny Maddox had supplied a whole batch of forms for Velma to fill out.