A/N: Literally hot off the press, and as is becoming common with this fic, the first part of what really is a ginormous chapter. I had a simple scene, and it blossomed from there. I began pulling in things I had planned for later, and if Myka seems off-kilter throughout, the off-kilteredness (?) will only increase. My fic schedule is completely out-of-hand, so who knows when Chapter 11/Part 2 will be ready - I'm hoping for around March 26, based on its slot in the rotation . . . .

Myka hadn't planned on Helena attending the charity 10K run with her. When she had first mentioned the idea to Pete, she had been envisioning that she would somehow inveigle herself into a group of Barrington Academy alumni, whether they were bunched at the start line and led all the way or fell to the back of the pack a kilometer or two in. She would use the same story that she and Helena had used at the academy, that she and her wife were looking at schools for their daughter, in large part because she hoped that Bryce DeWitt would be there as well. She had no alternative plan, no other, better story, in the event that DeWitt wouldn't be attending, and no plan for how she wanted to approach DeWitt if he were there. Ordinarily she was scrupulous about thinking things out several steps ahead, but this seemed a situation that might yield more positive results if she let things evolve, a course of action that normally was foreign to her. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling, something perilously close to one of Pete's hunches, that going to the event without plans and fallback plans was the best plan.

So when Helena let drop the information that she had become Facebook friends with the wives of some of DeWitt's old teammates, Myka had been surprised by the strength of her dismay when Pete suggested (or, more accurately, jumped on the implicit suggestion that Helena had left dangling) that she should go as well. It would cost the agency another outrageous entry fee, but two attending meant triple their chances, in Pete's math, of leaving the event with something that might implicate DeWitt or one of his friends in the fraud.

"You have ears," he said, pointing at Myka and then swiveling his chair to point at Helena, "you have ears, and, together, you have, like, multiple ears all at once. Three opportunities."

They were sitting at the conference table in Pete's office. He and Helena were snacking on pistachios; Myka was on her sixth cup of coffee for the day. She didn't read anything into their mutual eating of the pistachios, which Helena was bringing with her to the office on a regular basis, that or almonds or cashews. Pete loved to snack; he would share anything edible that anyone might bring in with him. It could be Bernie Madoff with sunflower seeds or Nate Burdette with potato chips or a terrorist with candy corn. Helena's motives had been murkier until she explained with a sly smile at Myka that Charlotte, Alex McCrossan's wife - and Alex and Bryce were like this, Helena had said, crossing her fingers - was recommending nuts as a power snack, full of good fats and protein. You just exercised a little harder to burn off the extra calories.

When Myka only stared at her, Helena said, "Did I not say that I was going to make use of social media in this investigation? Hoping they might reveal something interesting in a public space wasn't going to go very far. I had to make myself their friend. I did as DeWitt suggested and humbly inquired about Barrington and what they or their husbands had most loved about it. Our friendships blossomed from there." As Myka rolled her eyes, Helena added impishly, "Allison's been quite forthcoming about what she's done to, ah, stoke the fire in her marriage. I've let on that we've had some problems in that area."

Pete dribbled a pistachio from his lips while Myka groaned and hid her face in her hands. "Helena, Jesus, what if one of them decided, while you were chatting or IMing or whatever, to run some Google searches on you?"

"Since no one's unfriended me or," Helena softly cleared her throat, "suggested that we shouldn't 'wun' together at the race, I don't think you have much to worry about." Impatiently, she explained, "'Wun' is a combination of 'walk' and 'run.' It's not my term, it's theirs." As Myka finally lifted her head from her hands, she thought the expression on Helena's face mirrored the severity of her least favorite teacher or maybe it was the sneering of the kid from her junior high who liked to snap the back strap of her bra. In either case, the expression reminded Myka of why she had never truly enjoyed school until she went to college. She sensed there was an unpleasant or, at the very least, irritating "learning moment" in her immediate future. "Remember what I said about selling emotion, not fact." Helena was even wagging her finger. "Convince people that you feel the same about what they hold most dear."

"And what was that?" Pete demanded derisively. "Money and more money?"

Helena narrowed her eyes at him. "You couldn't con people into giving you the lint from their pockets." Sighing, she said, "Who doesn't want to believe that she's relatable? That, fundamentally, she's not all that different from anyone else, just richer. These women love their husbands and their children, most of them do, anyway, so I played the same card. I had Claudia help me to set up an online profile that would underscore the two most important things in my life, my daughter and my wife." She trained her eyes on Myka, the severity and sneering gone - if they had existed outside Myka's mind in the first place - replaced by a vulnerability so naked that Myka wanted to look away. Refusing to give her that out, Helena said, "It wasn't much of a stretch, Myka." Then the vulnerability was gone, too, and she was shrugging, saying lightly, "Most of the pictures are of Christina, of course. But I still had one or two of us, from happier times, that Claudia was able to work her magic on. Some," she shot another withering look at Pete, "might have thought there would be a few wives who would have disapproved of my having a wife, but that's in such bad taste nowadays."

Pete sent her a grimace in turn before sidling an uneasy glance at Myka. She refused to meet his eyes. Popping another pistachio into his mouth, he asked Helena, "How would you have saved face with all those friends of yours if we weren't paying that pricey entrance fee for you? You don't expect me to believe that you have that kind of cash lying around your house, do you? Plus there's the little matter of the race's location being outside the range of your monitor."

"I would have managed, I generally do." Helena's hand searched the bag for more pistachios. "The opportunity this event presents is too good to pass up. One or more of these women know what's going on. I just have to find the right key." She smiled sweetly at Myka. "Shall I expect you at my apartment bright and early on Saturday morning? I even purchased appropriately expensive running clothes. On my stipend," she emphasized for Pete's benefit. "I'll be surviving on oatmeal and Ramen noodles for the next several weeks."

Myka only played with her empty coffee cup in response, but Helena was still smiling as she resealed her plastic snack bag of pistachios. Pete slanted them a longing look before tipping back his chair and appearing to count the panels in the ceiling. "So what did the Real Wives of Barrington have to say when you asked them about bringing sexy back? Just curious, they seem the type to delegate sex with their husbands to their nannies."

"Funny you should mention that since one of them advised me to take a lover and let my wife amuse herself with our investments. The others thought Laura was joking, but I'm not so sure. She's the one whose husband seems to be closest to DeWitt, and she's posted many," Helena theatrically paused, "many pictures of the three of them." At that, Myka stopped playing with her coffee cup. "And you were thinking it was all idle chatter," Helena said reprovingly. She leaned forward, resting her chin on interlaced fingers, eyes bright with malice as she looked at Pete. "But just in case Mrs. Trained Monkey is looking for a little more from you in the romance department, make time for her, let her know you appreciate her. That's what Allison says works for her, although in your wife's case, I suspect that absence is what makes her heart grow fonder."

Letting his chair spring upright, Pete flashed her a sour smile. "Time to fly away on your broomstick."

Helena laughed and, rising from the table, tossed him the bag of pistachios. "I hear there's another Lattimer on the way. You must be so proud and your wife so . . . resigned."

Pete waited for several beats once she had left the office to ask Myka, "How much is she messing with your head?"

"No more than usual." Myka started playing with her coffee cup again, uncurling the lip and thumbing the paper up. She considered telling Pete about her intention to become part of Helena's plan to ensnare Burdette, the lovelorn agent willing to betray the FBI. But Pete would likely think it was foolhardy and less a testament to her suspiciousness about what Helena might actually be up to than a desire, at best unrecognized, at worst denied, to protect her.

He waited for her to say something else, but she merely tore pieces from the shredded paper of the cup. A small pile had accumulated on the table before he said, "I guess I'll get the sign-off on the registration fees. Talk to Parker about taking her monitor off so she can go with you to the event without looking like a felon. That is, if you feel you can trust her for a couple of hours." He opened the bag of remaining pistachios. "If we're getting no traction on Burdette, we can shake a tree to see if DeWitt falls out of it." He jiggled a handful of nuts and then crammed them into his mouth, using the heel of his palm to hold them in as he chewed. Myka had seen far worse displays when Pete was eating. She swept the pieces of paper into the cup and tossed it into the wastebasket as she left the room.

Early on Saturday morning, the sun was out, although its light was already milky-looking, as if it were being filtered. The forecast called for rain, but later in the day, after the 10K was over. Myka paused, looking up at the sun; thin clouds were already beginning to trail across it. Last Sunday she had stood on this walk, and Helena had suggested that they find the Bowdoin works and then take Christina and Jemma and run far, far away. She had thought about it more than she should have and spent an evening at the office, not going home until midnight, rereading the files they had on the Wellses, all three of them. Interesting what could leap out at you after a third or fourth go-around.

Though she had pressed Helena's doorbell, it was Mrs. Frederic who opened the door. She was wearing an apron that had "Grandma's Kitchen" printed on it in large, old-fashioned letters, the ones that had curlicues linking them together like ivy. The apron was dusted with flour and streaks of batter, but the linen blouse and slacks were without spots or smears and the complicated weave of her hair, designed to defy humidity rather than accommodate it, hadn't relinquished a single strand. "You're just in time for the first batch of cookies from the oven, Agent Bering."

So said the spider to the fly, but Myka's stomach growled loudly as she entered the foyer and smelled chocolate. "Helena's with me in the kitchen," Mrs. Frederic explained, leading Myka back to the back of the house. Myka was able to do no more than glance into the rooms as they passed them, one the dining room she had seen before and another that held an old-fashioned banker's desk and bookcases. The computer monitor faced away from her, and she wondered what files might be stored on the CPU; doubtless they would make for some interesting reading. Too bad she didn't have cause for a warrant. As they approached the kitchen, Myka heard Helena's and a child's voices commingling. For a moment, she had the confused impression that one of Mrs. Frederic's grandchildren was visiting, and then Helena said clearly, unmistakably, "Don't touch the cookie sheet, pumpkin. It's hot."

Myka squeezed her eyes shut. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to ruin the surprise," Mrs. Frederic said, inclining her head slightly so she could look at Myka. The impassiveness of her expression was broken only by the smile touching the corners of her mouth.

Entering the kitchen, Myka noticed only that it was larger and more modern than she had expected before Christina, yelling "Myka," was sliding down the chair she had been sitting on and ran toward her, holding up her arms to be lifted. Myka picked her up, kissing her cheek, which tasted of chocolate, and glared over her ear at Helena. Helena, who remained seated at the large center island, was finishing the last bite of a cookie. She held up a finger for Myka to wait, swallowed, and said, as no apology at all, "I suppose I should have told you." She leaned across the island to take another cookie from the cookie sheet. "The blessed event occurred earlier this week, and the Winslow family finally has a son and heir. Ben has suspended Christina's visits until he and his wife and the baby are more settled." She broke the cookie into two. "The loving father," she said dryly, biting a half into quarters and giving Mrs. Frederic an "Mmmm" and an appreciative glance. "I thought it might be a good idea if we took Christina with us to the 10K."

"A good idea?" Myka repeated, her tone sharp. Christina was oblivious to her displeasure, pushing at Myka's shoulder as a sign that she wanted down. Myka lowered her to the floor, letting Christina tug her to the island as Mrs. Frederic swept around them, low heels, her apparent concession to kitchen safety, clicking on the tile as she bent to open the oven door. Stone tile, expensive-looking stone tile, and the oven was professional caliber. How did a retired community organizer and project manager afford a kitchen like this? But Myka stopped trying to square retirement benefits with a kitchen renovation that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars as Helena deposited a handful of cookies on a plate in front of her.

"Eat them. I could hear your stomach growling from across the room." She went to the refrigerator, and Myka, noticing how small Helena's waist was, set off by the skin-hugging lycra of her running tank and capris, remembered how spannable she had found it, attempting to encompass it between her hands; her fingers had never met but there hadn't been much space between them. Seeking refuge from memories, she inspected the cookies on the plate.

"If you'd prefer oatmeal raisin, those should be ready in a few minutes," Mrs. Frederic offered, her smile directed more at Christina, who had crawled up into her mother's chair to launch a raid on the remaining cookies on the cookie sheet.

Without turning her head, which was craned around one of the refrigerator doors, Helena said reprovingly, "Christina Rosalind Wells, put those cookies back. You've already had your share and more."

Christina almost dropped the cookies in surprise before she broke into giggles. With a mischievous look at Myka, she returned three cookies to the sheet, continuing to hold one and hiding it behind her back. Moving from the refrigerator to a cabinet, a half-gallon of milk dangling from her fingers, Helena took a glass from the shelf. "Put back the one you're hiding, too." Helena poured milk into the glass and gave it to Myka as she sternly watched her daughter drop the cookie onto the sheet.

"Rosalind," Myka murmured, breaking off a chunk of one of the cookies.

"Why not Rosalind? It's a lovely name." Helena had already turned away, intent on returning the milk to the refrigerator.

It was one of the games Pete loved to play with anyone new to the office, "Guess Myka's Middle Name," or as he called it when he and Myka were alone, "Guess Myka's Crazy-Ass Middle Name," because to call it that in front of a newbie was to give away too much since her middle name was crazy-ass. Pete always gave everyone five tries, but no one had ever guessed it. Helena had been no more successful, but Pete had given her only three tries. "She swans around here, thinking she's so smart," he had explained later, "so let her prove it." In the three weeks since Helena had become the team's consultant, Pete had gone from pretty much naked ogling to a wariness that didn't prevent him from letting his gaze linger on her ass but reduced the frequency with which he stared at it. When Myka had asked him what it was about Helena that bothered him, besides the obvious - her arrogance, her smugness, her arriving late (the last didn't really bother Pete but Myka had included it because it bothered her) - Pete had irritably rolled his shoulders and said, "I don't know. I just feel that she needs to be watched." At Myka's snicker, he had said, "Not like that. Okay, yes, like that too, but more the 'I think you're hot but I don't trust you' kind of watching."

Myka was never invested in the game. She took no pride at all in her middle name, not even the perverse pride that it was so off-the-wall no one could guess it, but she was disappointed that Helena had put so little effort into her guessing.

"Mmmm . . . Oliphant," she had said distractedly, more absorbed in the case file she was reviewing.

Pete had pressed her for a second guess. "O'Leary," she said finally, exhaling loudly in annoyance. She looked Myka up and down. "Fair skin, hair with a bit of red to it, I imagine there's some Celt in her."

Third and last chance, he had announced, rubbing his hands. Helena had stared at him, the way, Myka noticed, that she stared at poorly executed counterfeits, as though they were an affront to her. "Ocho," she said flatly. "Her parents were going through an 'All Things Spanish' craze, or perhaps she was conceived on a trip to Mexico." She slapped the cover of the file folder shut. "I'm going down to the coffee shop for some tea. Does anyone want anything?" She had walked out of her cubicle, leaving them to look at each other.

"Just for that, I'm not going to tell you what it is," Pete had said to her retreating back, thrusting out his chin.

Later that day, Helena stopped at her desk. "Ophelia," she said, without smirking, without the impatience she would show when others hadn't arrived at the answer as quickly as she had. In fact, she said it as casually as she might have said, "Let's go over that digital piracy case again." When Myka gaped at her, and it was a completely dropped jaw that Myka presented her with, Helena said, "I cozened it out of someone in HR. I said I was in Accounting and that I couldn't process a travel reimbursement for you without having your full name." As Myka scowled at her, Helena said, "You may call it cheating, but I call it getting what you want as quickly and painlessly as possible."

Helena was wearing one of her subtly mismatched outfits, a striped gray suit jacket with striped gray pants. The grays were the same shade, but the stripes were different, thinner and more narrowly spaced on the pants. She dug the heel of one of her slingbacks into the carpet and spun toward the cubicle's opening.

"Rosalind," Myka blurted. Helena turned around, equally surprised. "If my father had to name me after a woman in Shakespeare, why not Portia or Miranda or Rosalind? Rosalind had some pluck, some daring. Ophelia," she finished sadly, "he names me after one of the most pitiful figures . . . ."

Helena chuckled. "I was named for some rotter in a distant branch of the Wells family. She left England for America in the nineteenth century and ended up on trial for murder." She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, suddenly ill-at-ease. "We have to hope we don't live up to our namesakes, don't we, Myka Rosalind Bering?"

Myka tried the chunk of the cookie she had broken off. In addition to the chocolate, there was a sweet crunch, toffee. Irene Frederic might have a torture room in her basement and someone currently in it, but she made good cookies. Helena had reclaimed her chair at the island, holding only a slightly squirming Christina on her lap. Three pairs of brown eyes were watching her as she ate her cookies and drank her milk - she wasn't much of a milk drinker but she had always liked a glass of it with cookies, damn Helena for remembering - one set cool and vaguely predatory, one set warmer but a little too avidly staring at the remaining cookies on her plate, and one set focused on her milk-moistened lips as if the mouth and tongue below those eyes were ready to suck all the sweetness from them. Choking, Myka put the last cookie down and coughed into a napkin that Helena thoughtfully offered, eyes wide with concern . . . and perhaps a little mockery.

Voice more wheeze than voice, Myka said, "Having Christina here is in violation of your agreement with her father. Why do you want to compound it by taking her with us? Are you that eager to take on the Winslow family?"

Helena reflexively clutched Christina tighter to her. "As far as they know, she's coloring in her books and eating waffles with her nonni, unless you plan to tell them something else." The eyes had turned hard, and if Helena's mouth and tongue were to launch an offensive on hers now, Myka figured she would be spitting out blood and pieces of her cheeks. Christina began to squirm in earnest, saying, "Daddy told me I had to be a big girl 'cause there was a new baby." Helena let her jump down, and Christina, chirruping "I'm a big girl," ran over to Mrs. Frederic, who was dropping spoonfuls of cookie batter on another cookie sheet. One just taken from the oven rested on the stove top. "Besides I, we need to take Christina with us. My new friends are expecting to see her there. It's a family fun event, and your family needs to be seen with you."

"She's four, Helena. What happens when she tells one your 'friends' that I'm not her mother or that you don't live with her?" Myka felt that her glare was undercut by her practically stuffing the last of Mrs. Frederic's chocolate chip and toffee cookies into her mouth.

"She's four, Myka," Helena repeated derisively. "Will they believe her when she says she lives in a room full of princesses or that she keeps tigers and polar bears as pets?" Gathering plates and dirty glasses and carrying them over to the sink, she said, "I'm more concerned about what you'll tell them or fail to carry off. We might be experiencing a few problems in our marriage right now, but we're committed to each other. Can you convince them that I'm the one who, despite our issues, you want to be with?" Helena had turned around and was leaning against the countertop, arms crossed over her chest.

The running tank was truly skin-tight, and how Helena had crossed her arms gave her breasts an extra, and unnecessary, lift. It probably wasn't by accident, Myka reminded herself as her eyes began to drop past Helena's jawline, Helena had always viewed her undeniable good looks as simply another tool to be used. She might not be planning to do more than walk with Christina and even then only as far as Christina's much shorter legs would take them before she grew tired or bored or both, but Helena looked more toned than nights spent confined to her apartment would explain, and the crossed arms, though barely flexed, showed the curve of muscle. Whether she could be convincing as Helena's wife, Myka wasn't sure, but she ruefully acknowledged that she would find it no hardship to put her hands on Helena's body.

A few minutes later when she was kneeling to remove Helena's ankle monitor and her face was in close proximity to Helena's thigh, Myka blamed Pete all the more loudly in her mind. Her plan had had the virtue of simplicity; she would show up, mingle, and through some casually initiated conversations with Barrington Academy alumni try to identify any with a special connection to DeWitt or each other. She might not get a lot, but she wasn't risking a lot either. Investigations were built on the accretion of evidence, and as accretion implied, the process of collecting it was often time-consuming and arduous. Instead, she and Helena and, now, Christina were going to stroll in as the happy family, the tension and resentment and, on Helena's part, desperation that were the mortar holding the two of them together transmuted, somehow, into something no more scarring than spousal bickering, while Christina . . . . No matter how cute she was, she was a risk. It wouldn't take too many ill-advised remarks and corrections of the same before the Barrington wives started to doubt Helena's hastily constructed version of reality. And if one of them became suspicious enough to tell her husband or DeWitt himself that the couple who had been checking out Barrington for their daughter weren't what they seemed to be, the investigation could come to a rapid and dissatisfying end.

She must have sighed because Helena said, "I know there are risks, but sometimes you have to play big to win big. This can work, if you follow my lead. Will you do that, Myka?"

The monitor unlatched, and Myka, without answering, took it off her leg. Helena rubbed at the skin that the monitor had covered. "It's not paler than the rest of you," Myka said curtly, and Helena frowned. Myka put the monitor on the end table next to her. They had decided to remove the monitor in the living room since Christina's eagerness to assist had been more hindrance than help, and Mrs. Frederic had enticed her to stay in the kitchen with freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookies. Most of the time Myka had seen the living room only when it was shrouded in darkness, Mrs. Frederic off hatching schemes or torturing victims elsewhere, but in the hazy, filtered sunlight of a Saturday morning, it looked like the living room of a woman who took pride in her family, based on the number of pictures hung on the walls and crowding surfaces, and occupied much of her free time with books. They were more numerous than the pictures of her sons and grandchildren. Many of them appeared to be nonfiction works by their titles, histories for the most part. If she was planning to take over the world, she would want to learn from the mistakes of those who preceded her.

Helena was wiggling and flexing her leg, a very expensive running shoe coming uncomfortably close to catching Myka in the jaw. She murmured an insincere apology, then moved away from the end table, walking around the room like a patient unsure whether her legs would support her. Myka bit the inside of her lip in impatience. It had been a lightweight plastic monitor, not a shackle attached to a chain. Grinning, sensing that she was testing the limits of Myka's patience, Helena said, "Let me run upstairs and grab the bag Jemma left when she dropped off Christina, and then we can go." The grin turned mocking. "Unless you think you need to accompany me for fear I'll shimmy down a drainpipe."

"Depends on what's in the bag." Myka drifted toward one of the bookcases.

"Sunscreen, bottles of water, wet wipes, and extra pairs of shorts, socks, and underwear for Christina." Myka froze, a book partly worked out from the shelf. "Timing her trips to the potty is not something she's completely mastered." Helena laughed, and it sounded light and affectionate and very much like it would have sounded nine years ago had she been equally amused by her look of horror, Myka realized, and she was as compelled to smile in response now as she had been then. They both were quiet for a moment before Helena rapidly crossed the room and started charging up the stairs. She shouted toward the kitchen, "Christina, we're getting ready to go." More offhandedly she called to Myka, "Can you check on her and make sure she's not covered in cookie dough?"

She felt as she sometimes did on the Sunday afternoons she spent with Helena and Christina that a life different, but not so markedly different, from her own was on the other side of a wall so tissue-thin she could put her hand through it. It was a life in which she and Helena and Christina were a family, and she was as responsible as Helena for ensuring that a four-year-old wasn't bringing the world to an end in another room. Walking to the kitchen as carefully as Helena had circuited the living room, lightheaded at the thought that those two realities might be merging, Myka entered the kitchen. The world wasn't about to come to an end; Christina was once more on a chair at the island, eating cookies. She smiled, unrepentant, her lips opening wide over a gummy mass of baked batter and half-chewed raisins.

"Swallow that and then we'll wash your hands and make sure you've gone to . . ." she felt ridiculous saying it but said it anyway, "gone to the potty." Christina industriously swallowed and monkeyed down the chair, holding up her hands for Myka's inspection.

"No, they're not clean." She turned to Mrs. Frederic, who was sitting at a table in the dining nook at the end of the kitchen. Windows and a set of double doors looked out onto a yard hardly bigger than a welcome mat. She was drinking coffee as she read a newspaper spread out on the table, but Myka was confident that Mrs. Frederic had missed nothing of her awkward attempt to play the parent to Christina. "Where's a bathroom I can take her to?"

She hadn't sounded particularly pleasant as she asked it, but Mrs. Frederic was unruffled by the abruptness, genially directing them across the hall. Just as genially she said, as Myka was urging Christina toward the hallway, "You should relax, Agent Bering. There's no need to be on guard against the child."

Looking down at Christina whose hand had instinctively searched for her own, her hair, dark and lustrous like her mother's, but having the flypaper-like capacity of a four-year-old's for spontaneously generating tangles and trapping food, in this case, cookie crumbs, Myka thought, I have every need to be on guard against her. Her second thought was, as Christina peered up at her, eyes as black as her mother's but as trusting as Helena's were mocking or hostile, I have no defense against her. It wasn't so terrifying an admission.

When Helena swept into the kitchen ten minutes later, Christina was waiting for her, hands washed, hair combed, and, Myka hoped, bladder sufficiently emptied. Mrs. Frederic had packed snacks, cookies and juice boxes for everyone, she had announced, her gaze falling on Myka and her lips twisting slightly. Christina was holding the soft-sided lunch box in which Mrs. Frederic had stored them and showed it off to her mother. Helena showed off her larger bag, which Christina found comical in the way only small children could find the ordinary uproarious, and as she giggled, Myka stared at the obnoxiously large diamond wedding ring Helena was sporting on her left ring finger. Helena said, "The only thing of value Jim Wells gave my mother, unless you count me, and I doubt you feel that's the case." She stretched her arm out and admired the ring. "I had it sized for me for several years ago, and it's come in handy a number of times. I remember when I was a child and Jemma used to pawn it to keep the creditors away. Precious, precious memories," she finished wryly. "But one of us needs to be wearing a ring and, more importantly, one that fits her. I don't suppose you still have the Neanderthal's ring."

Myka had lost it, a plain platinum wedding band, ten months into her marriage, but she hadn't had it replaced. She told Sam she had never been one to wear rings, or much jewelry of any kind, and he hadn't seemed disappointed at her lack of interest in a replacement ring. He had continued to wear his, even after they had decided to divorce. "It would have looked out of place next to that rock, anyway." She took the bag from Helena and slipped it over her shoulder. "Let's get going." Pointing toward the front of the house, she said, "Car's out there," and placed a guiding hand on Christina's shoulder.

"We're not taking that medium-priced gray four-door of yours and parking it in a sea of Benzes and BMWs." Helena hadn't moved and she had crossed her arms over her chest, but there was no surreptitious lifting this time; her forearms were pressing her breasts flat. "You can make jokes about being born with a stainless steel spoon, like you did when we were at the school, but we need to show the women I'll be with - and their husbands - that we belong in their world." Both her smile and her tone became brittle, and she had never looked more like her father. "It still comes down to what tribe you belong in, Myka, and if you don't look like you belong, if you don't act like you belong, you don't belong." She gestured toward the bag Myka was carrying. "In one of the outside pockets, you'll find the keys to Irene's BMW. She's graciously allowed us to borrow it for the day."

Somewhere between getting Christina's car seat into the BMW, which was a much smoother process than getting it into her own sedan, and then getting Christina into it, which was a more protracted process, Myka downed a few ibuprofen with a bottle of water to take care of an incipient headache. She hadn't had one before she arrived at the brownstone. The pain medication kept it to a dull throb as they drove to the public park, close to the academy, that was hosting the event. She was already sweating, and the race hadn't started. She tried to distract herself by puzzling out how Irene Frederic had the funds to remodel her kitchen and own a late-model luxury car. Her husband had been an attorney, but he had represented the type of community organizations that had employed her, not a lucrative source for billable hours. Even if he had managed to create a solid nest egg for her, he had been dead for many years, and if she had been living off that egg all this time, she wouldn't have had the money to sink into . . . this, and Myka was helpless not to let a pleasurable hiss escape her as she sank deeper into the leather seat and felt the cool air of the virtually silent AC pour over her.

Christina was singing quietly to herself, occasionally interrupting her songs about dolls to ask if they were any closer to the park, and Helena, after patiently answering each time, "We'll let you know when we're close, pumpkin," went back to reading her phone, eyes narrowing in concentration. Although Myka hadn't asked what she was doing, Helena volunteered, "I'm rereading all the notes I took on them. You don't have to know everything about them, but we have to act as though I did pass on the interesting tidbits to you."

When they encountered an unexpected slow-down on the interstate, which had Myka anxiously checking the car's clock, Helena began feeding her the tidbits. Charlotte appeared to be the leader of the group, and she made much of the fact that, at one time during the '80s, her father was the ambassador to Uruguay. "She likes to trot out her Spanish," Helena said. "Maybe I'll throw her some of the stock phrases I learned in high school and she can correct me," Myka said. "Even better," Helena replied. Allison seemed the most sociable, if the pictures posted to her Facebook and Instagram accounts were anything to go by. "Lots and lots of parties," Helena said, glancing at Myka from the corner of her eye. "You probably won't have to say anything at all." Meredith was the only one of the friends who had attended Barrington. "She doesn't post as much as the others, and she hasn't reached out to me individually. She's also the only one who works full-time. I believe she's some kind of quant for an investment firm. However," and at this point in her summary, Helena's tone became arch, "she brags quite a bit online about her amazing recall of trivia. You might want to test her." She paused, becoming more serious. "And that leaves us with Laura. If DeWitt is screwing anyone's wife, she's it. She's gorgeous, and it's not hard to read between the lines of posts and understand that she's disenchanted with her husband. And as I said before, there are many pictures of her, her husband, and DeWitt, and her loving gaze isn't on her husband."

"And what do I talk to her about?" Myka began checking the exit signs. They would take the same turn-off as if they were going to Barrington, but they would take a different set of side streets to get to the park.

"You don't. You let her see you talking to DeWitt."

Myka was positive that if she had lowered the BMW's windows, Christina would have done her best to hang her head out of the one closest to her, sniffing the air much like a dog would. It was enticingly green here, broad swaths of well-tended lawns and flower beds, and these were just the medians and the green spaces between the occasional sidewalk and the curb. The homes were much farther back, hidden behind protective screens of trees and shrubbery as well as security gates. Picture postcard-loveliness bankrolled by millions of dollars; there was probably more income concentrated here than in many small countries. The headache that the ibuprofen had kept to an ignorable throb was beginning to intensify, and Myka, no less sweaty for having driven an expensive car not her own to Connecticut, was growing irritable. This was high school all over again, except the golden ones were hidden from view in their walled enclaves. Not all of them, there would be plenty at the park, and her thoughts went back briefly to the conference room in the Marston Oil building and the Marstons with their golden hair and their golden, sarcastic laughter.

"Myka, you're going to overshoot the park entrance. You need to make the turn now," Helena's voice, surprised and faintly annoyed, brought her back to the present. Reflexively Myka turned the steering wheel to the right and though she didn't know exactly how she looked at Helena as she did it, Helena slowly sucked in a breath between her teeth and said with measured patience, "You can't look at me like that in front of them. Being pissed off with me is okay, wanting to eviscerate me is not."

The park's parking lot, not generously sized to begin with, was already full or nearly full, and Myka glided the BMW down the rows, finding a space at the very end of the lot. A dumpster was set close to the line, and Myka didn't realize she was holding her breath until she had successfully squeezed the car in between the dumpster and a neighboring Porsche and let it out in a relieved sigh. After collecting Christina and their bags, she and Helena, Christina between them, crossed the lot toward a crowd gathering around a few picnic tables placed end to end. Beyond the picnic tables were flags and banners and a few runners dramatically going through a series of stretches. Myka narrowed her eyes at them; it wasn't a marathon. From what she could see, the 10K's course was a walk/run path that appeared to follow the borders of the park, which would make this a relatively large park. Swing sets and play areas dotted the grass beyond the path, and the picnic tables that were in front of them must have been taken from another area of the park; there were no grills, no fire pits, no picnic shelters nearby. Myka looked down at her well-worn running shoes; that was real grass beneath them, not a patch of crabgrass or dandelions to be seen.

"C'mon love," Helena said, motioning her to one of the picnic tables. "You need to get your number."

Myka brushed around a family who had halted in front of her to put on their bib numbers. Christina already had a bib number affixed to her chest, and she was busily peeling off emoji stickers and placing them haphazardly on the paper. A woman sitting at the picnic table held out a pen to her, and she automatically signed her name on the line. The woman handed her a bib and pushed another sheet toward her. "If you would like more information about the foundations the money you've donated will be going to or would like to receive information about upcoming charity or volunteer events, please write down your e-mail address." As Myka looked at her, she saw the same amber-colored eyes she had seen across the conference table from her at Marston Oil. She wrote down an e-mail address she had discontinued using years ago, smiling brightly, wickedly at the woman. She wasn't Hilary Marston whoever she was, but it didn't matter. She was of their breed.

Joining Helena and Christina who had wandered to a less congested area, Myka put on her bib number. Helena was shading her eyes, although the hazy sunlight was becoming hazier as clouds thickened across the sky. "It's almost impossible to make out anyone, same hair, same running clothes," she muttered. Then she lifted her hand above her head and began to wave it. "Ah, I think that's Charlotte over there. Her Facebook photos are just a little flattering," she said snidely, as she took Christina's hand and began to walk toward a group of women attended by children of varying ages claiming a play area. Myka shrugged on their bags and fell in behind Helena and Christina, trying to her work her expression from grim to neutral. She wasn't sure she could manage friendly just yet.

Cries of "Hello" and "Great to finally meet you" welcomed them as they neared the group. One of the women left her friends to walk toward them, saying to Christina, "And you are just as cute as can be, Christina," and Christina giggled and ran, not to Helena, but back to Myka and clutched her legs. Helena threw a triumphant glance over her shoulder at Myka, as if to say, "Don't worry about Christina, she's a Wells," before air-hugging the woman and exclaiming in the same too-loud voice, "Of course, you're Allison." Hooking her arm around Helena's, Allison led her toward two other women, "Charlotte and Meredith," and then Myka and Christina were swallowed in a rush of introductions, names coming out and fingers pointing at children with such speed that Myka was never clear on whether Grey was Charlotte's son or Meredith's and whether Ella, Meredith's daughter, had jumped ahead two grades or one. She had managed to glue a friendly enough smile on her face that when Charlotte said, "Helena told us you were an attorney, but she didn't say what firm you worked for," it had hardly slipped before Myka thought quickly enough to say, "Actually I went solo a few years ago. I have a few clients, whose estate and investment planning I manage. I wanted more time to spend with Christina." As if she had been cued at that very moment, Christina ran from the slide to shout at her, "Myka, come swing me!" And Myka said, with an indulgent smile that she feared might show more relief than indulgence, "That's exactly why I rethought my career. If you'll excuse me, I have a daughter to spoil."

She watched Helena interact with the women as she propelled the swing in which Christina kicked her legs and yelled, "Faster, faster." Nothing in her expression betrayed any disinterest or desire to be distracted; she was completely absorbed in whatever conversation she happened to be having. At times she would look for the two of them and wave, her ever-present smile only widening, before she dipped her head down again, being utterly convincing in her performance that she hadn't wanted to spend her Saturday any other way than with some over-privileged families she couldn't even fleece. Myka was so transfixed by Helena's role-playing that she missed the arrival of the women's husbands and DeWitt, who was trailing the others, a very pretty blonde clinging to his arm, but Helena's head shot up and her smile began to develop a feral curl as DeWitt removed the blonde's hand from his arm, his gaze zeroing in on the swings.

Myka slowed the swing. "Why don't you run over and see your mother? I bet she misses you." Christina hopped out without a look backward and began running toward Helena, her bib number flying off her chest and landing in the grass. DeWitt bent to pick it up and hand it to her, and Christina snatched it from him with a little shriek before she resumed her gallop toward her mother.

It was her wariness and reserve, Helena had surmised, which had attracted DeWitt's interest the day they had met with him and Mrs. Carmichael at Barrington, and Myka didn't find it difficult to begin drawing away from him as DeWitt came closer. A predator confident in his abilities, Helena had said later that day, always likes a bit of a chase. He stopped at the swing next to hers, taking its chain between his fingers.

"It's an unexpected delight to see you and Ms. Wells here today." He grinned at her, his teeth as painfully white as they were when they had met him, but the hair was blonder. New highlights? He was holding out his hand, and Myka reached over to limply shake it. She would have preferred to squeeze it as hard as she could, but she was supposed to be shy, not aggressive. He was wearing baggy gym shorts and a faded Barrington Academy tee. He must believe that his attractions needed no enhancement.

"We did as you suggested and reached out to some of the alumni. Helena's already becoming friends with some of them." Myka tilted her head in the direction of the group.

"They're great people. I went to Barrington with a few of the guys and Meredith was a freshman my senior year." His voice was casual, easy, but there was something suspiciously like a question in his eyes. Great people, but only one of their names had been on the list of contacts he had given them.

"We worked off your list, and then Helena was doing some Internet searches and came across Charlotte's Facebook account. She thought the wider the net, the better the results." Myka tried to make her smile warmer. She wasn't sure that her reply had fully answered the question he had left unspoken between them, but his appraisal of her had become bolder, lingering on her shoulders before dropping down to her hips.

"Whatever brought you here is fine by me . . . are you running?" He stepped into her space, his finger a millimeter from a corner of her bib number.

Myka retreated a step or two. "Yes, I'm the one who's going to try and get some cardio out of this."

"Good, I'll see if I can catch you." He winked at her, and then as Helena, almost crossly, shouted "Myka!," he began to back away from the swings, cockily smiling at Helena as she strode past him.

"Darling," she said in exasperation, "the race is about to start, and here I find you chattering away with Bryce." She had said it loudly enough for DeWitt to overhear her, but the look in her eyes counseled Myka to remain silent until she was closer. She placed an arm around Myka's back and rested her hand on Myka's abdomen, which felt weirdly intimate, as if she were pregnant and Helena was trying to embrace both her and the baby. Weird but not unpleasant, and Myka didn't find herself pulling away. Helena whispered in her ear, "Very nice. Laura couldn't take her eyes off the two of you."

"He's creepy," Myka complained, keeping her voice low, and feeling childish as she did so. Maybe it was Helena's hand on her belly that had her suddenly hungry and out of sorts and wanting nothing more than to put her feet up somewhere and nap.

"Because he doesn't see you, he sees a mark, somebody he can use." Helena's hand had begun to move a little bit on her belly, and Helena's breath was tickling her ear.

"And how is that different from what you did?" Myka wasn't absolutely sure she had said it until Helena's hand left her belly and gripped her chin, not gently, to turn it toward her.

She met a look that was equal parts fury and hurt. "Because you should have been a mark, but you weren't. You became more than that to me. I loved you, Myka, I still do." Myka shut her eyes, ready to elbow Helena away from her when Helena's arm around her back tightened and the sound of Helena's voice seemed to thrum against her own lips. "I imagine it's the last thing you want to do, but you're going to have to let me kiss you. Those women expect to see it. You're my loving wife about to head off to the field of battle, although if you can't place well among a bunch of teenagers and paunchy, middle-aged men, then you're clearly not the woman I thought you were." At the ragged humor in her voice, Myka opened her eyes. The hurt was still visible, but the fury had not so much subsided as wilted, as if Helena had realized that the greater outrage would always be, should always be Myka's.

Her own voice unsteady, Myka said, "So help me, if you slip your tongue in, I'll fucking bite it off."

"That shouldn't be arousing, but it is," Helena admitted, the hand leaving Myka's chin to thread itself through Myka's hair. The kiss was firm but brief and prim, and Myka could have been on her first date or in a 1940s movie but for the way Helena held her, no, the way she let herself curve around Helena. Then it was done, and Helena was letting her go, calling out for Christina, who ran to her from where she had been chasing Allison's six-year-old in a two-person game of tag. "Wish your mommy luck," Helena instructed her, lifting Christina to her hip, and Christina blew Myka a kiss like a Broadway veteran, shouting "Luck, My-ka!"

Myka adjusted her running shorts and her tank, pretending to ignore how much her fingers were trembling. She blindly veered off from the swings, realizing a few paces on that she was heading in the wrong direction. Correcting her course, she jogged toward the race's start line, behind which a mass of runners had loosely congregated. Barrington had achieved a good showing today, and, as if to underscore it, DeWitt's head bobbed above most of the others at the line, his hair glinting in the sunlight, the highlights a hard, bright gold that had her blinking and looking away.