Household Gods

will tell him — where a lot of those are, and I’m sure he can find any I’m not aware of. People in the District Attorney’s office have all sorts of interesting connections, and their software is getting better all the time.”

She didn’t know how true that last was, but it certainly rattled Frank’s cage. He howled a suggestion that sounded a lot like Falk’s last name. Then he calmed down a bit, or at least got his voice under control. “That bastard says I owe you some ridiculous amount. I may have missed once or twice, but — “

“Shall I e-mail you the dates of all the checks you missed?” Nicole asked sweetly. “You can add them all up and figure the interest due on each one. If your number doesn’t match the one Mr. Falk gave you, I’m sure he’ll be happy to discuss the discrepancy.”

Glum silence on the other end of the line. At length, Frank said, “I find Woodcrest for you, I pay for the first month, and you go and do this to me. Thanks a hell of a lot, Nicole.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “You can take that off the total; fair’s fair. Now, suppose you tell me when I can expect the rest. If it’s later than Thursday, I expect you’ll be hearing from Mr. Falk again.”

“Thursday!” he howled. “Do you have any idea how much money that bastard says I owe?”

Just about enough for a nice vacation in Cancun, and a couple of payments on the Acura, Nicole thought. She elected not to say it. “I’m sure Mr. Falk will be pleased to discuss the matter with you,” she said.

“He can talk to my lawyer,” Frank snarled.

“That’s perfectly all right with me,” Nicole said equably. “You can pay me, or you can pay me and your lawyer both. I’m sure you can figure out which one is cheaper.”

“Bitch.”

“Thank you. Remember — Thursday. Send it here to the office, so I can get to the bank on the way home. Now that the kids are at Woodcrest, that will be a lot easier,” Nicole said.

Frank had to be on his cell phone. There was no satisfying slam of receiver into cradle. Just a prissy little click. Nicole threw back her head and laughed. Oh, that had felt wonderful! And the beauty of it was, he would pay. She was as sure of that as of sunrise tomorrow. Sunrise in West Hills, what was more — not in Carnuntum.

Cyndi popped her head into the office, wide-eyed and reminding Nicole vividly, just in that moment, of Julia. “What’s so funny, Ms. Gunther-Perrin?”

“Not funny, really,” Nicole said. “But you know what?” She waited for Cyndi to shake her head. “This is a pretty good place.”

“What, the office?” Cyndi sounded amazed. But then, Cyndi had no idea how much she automatically accepted as the physical and mental furnishings of her place and time. Nobody did. Nicole certainly hadn’t, not till she got her nose rubbed in it.

She leaned back in the comfortable padded chair, glanced at the computer screen and the color photos of her children next to it, and took a long breath of clean, odor-free, air-conditioned air. “It’s not so bad,” she said. “It really isn’t.”

Nicole started to wonder about that as she pulled into Woodcrest’s godawful excuse for a parking lot. If Kimberley and Justin had turned out to have a difficult day, she’d be back to square one again. But this time, for absolute certain, she wouldn’t be whining to any gods or goddesses. She had every intention of staying right where she was.

The preschool building was much better than its parking lot, though it had a tired, end-of-the-day feel to it. Kimberley let out a squeal and did her best to tackle her mother. Justin was right behind her. Nicole braced automatically and took the brunt of the double blow, and smiled down at them. They smiled back. From the look of those smiles, they’d had a good day.

Kimberley got hold of her hand and dragged her toward the four-year-olds’ cubbyholes. “Mommy, come here! Look at the picture I made!”

A heavy weight of worry dropped from Nicole’s shoulders. It was all right; the kids were happy. As she initialed the sign-out sheet, Miss Irma appeared from the depths of the room to say, “Kimberley was a very bright, well-behaved girl today. I think we’ll enjoy having her here.”

Justin hadn’t tried too hard to tear the place apart or burn it down, either, from Miss Dolores’ account of his day. For a two-year-old, that was moderately high praise. Nicole left Woodcrest in a warm glow. She’d forgotten how good that felt — and how good it felt to feel good.

Getting home was dead easy, once Nicole escaped that miserable parking lot. Small price to pay, she thought as she did her best to keep her car from getting clipped coming out. If this was the worst she had to do to keep the kids happy, she’d take it.

“We had tacos for lunch today,” Kimberley informed her. “Chicken tomorrow, and hotdogs the day after. That’s what Miss Irma said.” If Miss Irma said it, Nicole gathered, it must have come down from Mt. Sinai with Moses.

“Hogs!” Justin agreed gleefully. He couldn’t say hotdogs very well yet, but he loved to eat them.

Too much fat, Nicole thought automatically. She couldn’t get as exercised about it as she used to. It was food — something she’d learned to appreciate, deeply, when she hadn’t had enough of it.

Dinner went as well as dinner could with a pair of rambunctious kids who were tired from a long and exciting day. When she’d got them both bathed and put to bed — so clean and sweet-smelling, and no nits to pick, not even one — she did a little work with reference books and notepad. Then, yawning, she put herself to bed. Just as she turned out the light, she slid a glance at Liber and Libera on their plaque. “It was a good day,” she said. “It was a very good day.”

She slid back into the routine of her late-twentieth-century life almost as easily as if she had in fact been away for only a week. Everyone’s assumption that she’d been away only that long helped a lot; if she slipped up, they attributed it to her illness, and brushed it off.

She didn’t slip up much, at that. Old habits died hard. Her life in Carnuntum began to fade, to seem more distant than it actually was, like an intense and vividly memorable dream.

On Wednesday morning, she went to see Dr. Marcia Feldman. The doctor wasn’t any happier to see her than she’d been before, or any happier to report, “By all the tests, Ms. Gunther-Perrin, you’re still perfectly normal.” Her eyes on Nicole were accusing, as if she suspected there was something Nicole wasn’t telling.

Nicole wasn’t about to tell it, either. No matter how tempted she might be to share her experience with someone, this meticulous medical scientist was not the person she’d have chosen. She fit her response to one of the things Dr. Feldman must be wondering. “No, I didn’t take any drugs you couldn’t detect. I don’t do that kind of thing.”

“Everything I was able to learn about you from your coworkers and your ex-husband makes me believe that,” the neurologist said, “but it leaves what did happen a mystery. I don’t like mysteries, unless I’m reading one.” That was meant to be a light touch, but it fell flat. She shrugged. “Under the circumstances, I don’t know what I can say, except that I hope it doesn’t happen again. Everything’s been all right since you went home?”

“Everything’s been fine,” Nicole answered truthfully.

“All right.” Dr. Feldman sighed. “In that case, all I can do is give you a clean bill of health and tell you I do not know whether it will last and how long it will last. Just that, for this moment, you are as healthy and normal a specimen as I could hope to see.”

“Thank you,” Nicole murmured, quashing the small jab of guilt. The truth would upset this good doctor a whole lot more than her current uncertainty. Nicole had to remember that.

“Good luck,” the doctor said at last. “That’s not very scientific, I know, but it’s the best I can do for you.”

“It’s good enough,” Nicole said. “Thank you, Dr. Feldman. Really. You did your best for me; I do appreciate that.”

Dr. Feldman didn’t look exactly pleased, but she had the grace to see Nicole out, and to shake her hand at the door of the waiting room. Feeling oddly as if she’d been given a blessing at the church door, the kind of thing a priest did to equip a parishioner with some small defense against the big bad world, Nicole made her way back to the office.