Page 46 of Single Pucking Orc

"Who assembled it?"

"I did."

"Hm," Mildred said, and wrote that down too.

In the kitchen she looked at the bottles, and the sterilizer, and the drawer he opened for her without being asked. Then she stopped in front of the refrigerator and stood there long enough that his stomach turned a slow, undignified somersault.

The schedule was on it. Deb's laminate, and underneath the laminate the paper one, the working copy, the one that got amended. Feeds and naps and a column of small pencil corrections in handwriting that was not his and was not Deb's.

"That isn't your writing," Mildred said.

"No."

Mildred looked over at the table, where Nora had stopped typing.

"And you're⁠—"

"The neighbor," Nora said.

It was true, and it was correct, and he discovered that he disliked it intensely. He had no complaint he could have made out loud. The word was accurate and it was nowhere near the size of the facts. He wanted to take it off the table and hand her a better one. He had no idea what the better one was.

Mildred wrote for a moment. Then she closed the folder, which he had learned in her office was the end of the business. She looked at him with the grey gaze that still reminded him of his third grade teacher.

"Are you sleeping?"

"Some."

"Are you eating?"

"I'm a professional athlete, ma'am. It's most of my job."

"That isn't a yes, but it'll do." She was already moving towards the door. "You've got a working smoke alarm in the hall. I'd like one in the nursery. Otherwise I've got nothing for you."

"That's it?"

"That's it." She paused with her hand on the latch, and for a second she looked almost kind. He'd rather she didn’t. "I told you in September you were allowed to say no. Are you still glad you didn't?"

"Yes," he said without hesitating.

"Good," said Mildred Prescott, and left.

She was gone before the kettle finished boiling. He stood in entry hall holding a speech he had rehearsed in the truck, about routines and support networks and the quality of his childcare arrangements. She hadn’t asked him for a word of it.

"Nursery smoke alarm," Nora said, already writing it down.

"I'll get one today."

"You'll get two. One for the nursery and one for your room." She capped the pen. "She liked you."

"She didn't say that."

"She asked if you were sleeping." Nora went back to her laptop. "Nobody asks that when they're building a case."

The next day he returned from practice, let himself in his front door, and stopped in the hallway. Because Nora was in the living room with Charlie, and she was talking to her.

“—and the trouble,” Nora was saying, in the entirely serious tone of a woman explaining something to an equal, “is that they’ve invoiced for the full retainer but only delivered against the first milestone. Do you see the problem? You can’t bill for all of it when you’ve only done a third of it. It’s called unearned revenue, and it sits on the balance sheet as a liability until you’ve actually earned it, which is a concept a shocking number of adults never grasp.”

Charlie babbled something that had no consonants.