The phone sang as I was looking over the defense's motion to dismiss. “It's the universal ring,” my law clerk Bysshe said, reaching for it. “It's probably the defendant. They don't let you use signatures from jail.”

“No, it's not,” I said. “It's my mother.”

“Oh.” Bysshe reached for the receiver. “Why isn't she using her signature?”

“Because she knows I don't want to talk to her. She must have found out what Perdita's done.”

“Your daughter Perdita?” he asked, holding the receiver against his chest. “The one with the little girl?”

“No, that's Viola. Perdita's my younger daughter. The one with no sense.”

“What's she done?”

“She's joined the Cyclists.”

Bysshe looked enquiringly blank, but I was not in the mood to enlighten him. Or in the mood to talk to Mother. “I know exactly what Mother will say. She'll ask me why I didn't tell her, and then she'll demand to know what I'm going to do about it, and there is nothing I can do about it, or I obviously would have done it already.”

Bysshe looked bewildered. “Do you want me to tell her you're in court?”

“No.” I reached for the receiver. “I'll have to talk to her sooner or later.” I took it from him. “Hello, Mother,” I said.

“Traci,” Mother said dramatically, “Perdita has become a Cyclist.”

“I know.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I thought Perdita should tell you herself.”

“Perdita!” She snorted. “She wouldn't tell me. She knows what I'd have to say about it. I suppose you told Karen.”

“Karen's not here. She's in Iraq.” The only good thing about this whole debacle was that thanks to Iraq's eagerness to show it was a responsible world community member and its previous penchant for self-destruction, my mother-in-law was in the one place on the planet where the phone service was bad enough that I could claim I'd tried to call her but couldn't get through, and she'd have to believe me.