Even with the help of modern cosmetology, her face was still too round – doughy, if you got right down to it. Anyone could guess she was a schnitzel-eater from a long line of schnitzel-eaters. She was starting to get a double chin, to go with the belly she had to work a little harder each year to disguise with suit jackets and shirtdresses and carefully cut slacks. And – what joy! – she was getting a pimple, too, right in the middle of her chin, a sure sign her period was on the way.

‘Thirty-four years old, and I’ve got zits,” she said to nobody in particular. God wasn’t listening, that was plain. She camouflaged the damage as best she could, corralled the kids, and headed out to the car.

The Honda coughed several times before reluctantly kicking over. If Frank had got the last child-support check to her, or the one before that, she’d have had it tuned. As things were – as things were, she gritted her teeth. She was a lawyer. She was supposed to be making good money. She was making good money, by every national standard, but food and daycare and clothes and insurance and utilities and the mortgage ate it all up and then some.

House payments in Indianapolis hadn’t prepared her for Los Angeles, either. With two incomes, they were doable. Without two incomes…

“Yay! Off to Josefina’s,” Kimberley said when they pulled out of the driveway. Apparently, she’d forgotten she hated her mother.

Nicole wished she could forget as easily as that herself. “Off to Josefina’s,” she echoed with considerably less enthusiasm. She lived in West Hills, maybe ten minutes away from the splendidly multicultural law offices of Rosenthal, Gallagher, Kaplan, Jeter, Gonzalez Feng. The daycare provider, however, was over in Van Nuys, halfway across the San Fernando Valley.

That hadn’t been a problem when Nicole was married. Frank would drop off the kids, then head down the San Diego Freeway to the computer-science classes he taught at UCLA. He’d pick Kimberley and Justin up in the evening, too. Everything was great. Josefina was wonderful, the kids loved her, Nicole got an extra half-hour every morning to drink her coffee and brace herself for the day.