Household Gods

Telephone conversations with preschoolers range from incoherent to downright surreal, but Nicole managed to assure both Kimberley and Justin – fighting at top volume over who got the phone – that she loved them, that she was feeling better, and that she would see them soon. Her throat kept locking up, which was annoying. As fond as she’d become of Lucius and Aurelia, as much as she’d mourned Aurelia’s death, these were her babies. Her children. If she’d had any chance at all of getting away with it, she’d have left the hospital right then and there, and gone straight home, and hugged them both so tight they squealed in protest. Even their shrieking, which she’d done her best to train out of them – God, she hated screaming kids – was a blessed thing, because it was theirs.

She hated to let them go, but they were getting overexcited. She heard Dawn round them up, a soft murmur that sounded more than ever like Julia taking Lucius and Aurelia in hand. Then Frank came on the line. “How soon are they letting you out?” he demanded.

Trust Frank not to miss the essentials. “Another day or two,” she answered, “if everything looks good.” Something tugged at her awareness. Something she should be remembering. Some crucial thing about the kids.

Yes. That awful day on top of too many awful days, when she’d prayed to Liber and Libera, and to her lasting amazement, been answered, there’d been one crisis that she couldn’t let slip from her mind. “I’m going to have to look for a new daycare provider,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I’ve heard all about Josefina – the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’ve been looking for someone to replace her.”

“You have?” Nicole was flat astonished. Frank, exerting himself for anything of that relentlessly mundane sort?

Well. Frank was an asshole, but he wasn’t stupid. If Nicole was going to be incapacitated for some unspecified time, he’d want to get on with his life. He’d been perfectly happy to kick back and let her handle the kids. If they were suddenly thrown into his lap – cold-bloodedly efficient was the term that came to mind. “Any luck finding a new provider?” she asked.

“There’s this preschool over in Tarzana,” he said. “I was going to take them over this morning, see how they liked it, see how Dawn and I like the setup,” he said. “Woodcrest, that’s its name.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Nicole said dryly. “It’s supposed to be good. It’s not cheap.”

“So? What is, these days?”

Frank was perfectly willing to spend the money when it was his convenience that was at stake. But would he pay child support while the kids were in Nicole’s custody?

Stupid question. Nicole would deal with it in due course. Los Angeles had ways and means that had never been dreamt of in Carnuntum, if she only had the will to use them. She’d let things slide too long. It was time to start cracking the whip.

But not just this minute. “Go ahead and take the kids over to Woodcrest,” she said, not so warmly she’d alarm him into wondering what she was up to, but not as rudely as she could have, either. “Tell me what you think of the place. Can you bring the children by to see me tonight?”

“I’ll take the kids to the school,” he said, “but I can’t bring them to you. Hospital rules. No one under six anywhere but in Maternity. That’s hard and fast. We already tried it.”

“Oh, did you?” Careful; don’t sound too skeptical. Maybe he had. In which case, she had to give him credit.

Push on. Focus on realities, the daily details, the things she’d never needed to think about while she was a tavernkeeper in Carnuntum. “Look, if you get a chance, will you park my car in the hospital lot? Bring my purse, too, and some clothes. I’ll drive myself home.”

“I’ll take care of that,” he said. She’d expected he would. It saved him trouble, and saved him having to deal with her face to face. It was cold and rather inconsiderate on the face of it, but it was just as she preferred it. All in all, a decent way of arranging things.

“One last thing,” she said. “Did you call any of the family?”

“I called your mother,” he said. “She’d have come out here, but one of your sisters is pregnant again, and her oldest one needs new braces, and I forget what else – your mother does go on a bit. She didn’t offer to take the kids.”

Nicole suppressed a sigh. Her mother was preferable to Atpomara by a wide margin, but it had been clear ever since Nicole left Indiana for Los Angeles, and particularly since the divorce, that charity began closer to home. Nicole’s sisters had stayed right in the city, married a nice Indiana boy and a nice Polish boy, and proceeded to populate the world with little Johnsons and Kursinskis. They needed a grandmother more, it had been implied, than Nicole’s infant Angelenos.

Even a coma hadn’t been enough to get her mother out of Indiana. If she’d died – would that have done it?