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him he can begin making it all up to you by saving your dog from foreclosure.”
    Katherine had stopped crying. It felt as if there had been a major shift in the earth’s surface and suddenly she were viewing it all from a different place. Why hadn’t she seen it from this perspective herself? It made perfect sense. Why should she suffer for his deficiencies as a father?
    Both of the sisters were studying her expression. When they began to chuckle, Katherine realized she had a smile on her lips. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go.”
    “That’s very good,” Hester said, clapping her hands.
    “Will you call us, Kate, and let us know what happened?” Judith asked.
    Kate opened the door and climbed out of the car. “Absolutely. Be sure to have Higgins practice his sits and downs. Next time he’s here we’ll work on down-stays. He could use that.”
    When she shut the door, Higgins woke with a start.
    Judith propped him up on his haunches and waved his paw in Katherine’s direction as they pulled slowly out of the driveway. Katherine waved back at him.
    *   *   *
    A growing elation swelled her chest. She tried to contain it. After all, this was not going to be some big emotional reunion. It was a business transaction. She was going for the money.
    She called out to Joe, who was hosing down the kennels, “Joe, can you hold down the fort for me this afternoon? I’ve got to drive to Austin.”
    Joe dropped the hose and pushed his abundant black hair back from his forehead. “Okay, but I don’t take out that big Doberman while you gone. I don’t even put a hand in there to feed him. Not me.”
    She could barely contain her desire to get on the road. “Tanya can stay in today. I’ll be back tonight.” She started to walk backward as she gave instructions. “You remember that Jack Reiman is picking up Gunner at six. His bill’s on the desk. Don’t forget to give him a flea dip and make him all pretty.”
    Joe nodded in his usual long-suffering way. “Yeah, I remember. He be ready. When do I get paid?”
    Katherine pulled out the check Judith had tucked into her pocket. To the three-hundred-dollar boarding and training fee, Judith had added another two hundred, a sum that more than covered Dr. Burris’s bill. Katherine breathed a sigh of relief. “Tomorrow,” she called back to Joe. “After I deposit this check. Okay?”
    She looked down at Ra frisking at her heels. “Okay, Ra. We’re going to Austin to surprise my father. Out of the mists of the past I am going to appear full-blown, Athena-like, in front of his eyes. We’re going to let the bastard pay his dues. Oh, yes, Ra. The sisters Kielmeyer are right. It is about time.”
    It was one o’clock when Katherine saw Austin’s pink granite capitol dome on the horizon to the north. The drive had taken just one hour. In ten minutes she could be at the Austin Zoological Gardens in Zilker Park. She could see her father, talk with him, touch him. After thirty-one years. The idea made her feel shaky. She needed just a little more time to get mentally prepared.
    She decided to make a quick side trip—the clandestine drive she had made so many times before. It wouldn’t take long.
    That first time, when she was sixteen, she had looked up the address in the phone book, her hands trembling with excitement when she found the name: Driscoll, Anne Cooper, 1007 Woodlawn.
    And today, just as on that first trip, her heart quickened as she exited Mopac onto Windsor and entered the posh old Enfield area, turning onto Woodlawn. The houses got bigger, older, richer. She slowed down, studying each house, feeling, as always, alien to the opulence of this old neighborhood, as if she were a transient who would be stopped by the police for loitering where she didn’t belong.
    She came to a stop in front of the largest house on the street, a stone mansion with slate roof and leaded glass windows. Not a beautiful house, like some of the others on the street, but solid,