Nancy clipped crossword puzzles out of the paper.

She clipped all the puzzles, crosswords and word jumbles and number games. She subscribed to free daily puzzles delivered via email. Sam had learned to walk clutching her mother's hand as they hunted up and down the narrow cramped aisles of the local used bookstore, between the shelves stacked high with foxed and dogeared mystery novels. Nancy watched crime procedurals and legal dramas, and had almost been sucked into a particularly twisty storyline of a soap opera, but had loosed herself of the addiction when the killer was revealed to be the heroine's twin sister, after a nasty bump on the head and through the suitably evil influence of her spurned suitor. She'd clicked on links and pop-up ads promising a private investigator's license through a fast and easy correspondence course a thousand times, but couldn't bring herself to do it.

Nancy was curled up in her favorite brown leather recliner, legs tucked up underneath her, a crossword puzzle in her lap, when Frank let himself in, tossed his keys on the hall table, and dragged a pair of suitcases into the living room.

"Hey," Nancy said, her eyes lighting.

"Hey," Frank said, his voice rough with exhaustion, but he bent to kiss her softly. Her eyes were still closed when he pulled back.

"How was your flight?"

Frank made a noncommittal noise and finished dragging his bags into their bedroom. "Long," he called. "Boring." He came back into the living room in stocking feet and swept Sam up, away from her blinking, buzzing toy. "Hey little girl," he said, and kissed his daughter. Nancy smiled at the scene.

"I ran into an old friend while you were gone."

"Oh?"

For the two Christmases she and Frank had celebrated as a married couple, Callie had sent cards to them. Nancy had found this year's card when she'd come home, after her unexpected encounter. From the look in Frank's eyes, the guarded half-frightened look, she could guess what he was thinking.

"Yeah, Ned was at our grocery store," she said. She laughed lightly, naturally. "Weird, huh?"

"Weird," Frank agreed, looking down at her. He took a seat near her on the couch and snagged the remote. "Does he live around here now?"

Nancy shook her head, her attention back on the puzzle. "Just on business."

Sam tired of her game and walked over to her father, raised grasping hands, and Frank smiled as he picked her up and planted her firmly on his lap. "I missed you guys."

"We missed you too."

After dinner, after Sam had been put to bed and had stopped talking to herself from behind their closed bedroom doors, Nancy stared up at the ceiling only once he had rolled out of her embrace and pulled his shorts back on. She could hear him, the soft smack of a fresh pack against the heel of his hand as the screen door swung open. She ran one hand over her face, through her hair, then leaned over the side of the bed and tugged her shirt back on.

She was still awake when he came back to bed. "I'm sorry I was gone for so long," he said. They rolled to the middle of the bed with the ease of long habit, into each other's arms, her forehead against his collarbone.

"You were only gone for a few minutes," she murmured into his chest, but she was smiling.

"I mean on the trip," he said. She felt him drop a kiss against her scalp. "Maybe tomorrow we can go look at houses. Something a little bigger, something closer to the city."

She made a soft approximation of a nod, her fingertips sliding down his bicep. "Okay," she whispered.

He kissed her temple, nestled against her. "Good," he murmured, and soon the three of them were asleep.

--

They had a relaxed lunch at the kitchen table. Frank told her about his trip. Sam finished her meal, suffered her hands to be briskly toweled off by her mother, then made her way to her toy chest in a tireless effort to entirely empty it. Joe came over with Vanessa in tow, Joe see his niece and Vanessa to tag along on the house viewing.

Nancy watched them all chatter, her chin propped on the heel of her hand. She took up plates and loaded them into the dishwasher. She put a bright plastic cup of juice in Sam's grasping hands. She stood at the kitchen window and looked out at the dim patch of grass that had been their backyard for two years.

The pack of cigarettes was still unbroken in her purse.

She sighed and wiped her hands, passing the living room, where Joe had Sam in his arms, up above his head, and she was screaming with joy. Frank was smiling at something Vanessa was saying. The light caught on a bracelet circling her slender wrist. Joe swung Sam down to cradle her in the crook of his arm, in his lap, and she squirmed down to grab a book and bring it to him. His eyes lit up. Vanessa watched Joe help Sam back up into his lap and crack the book.

Nancy saw longing in Vanessa's glance and knew her presence on their trip wasn't entirely innocent.

The pills had started as mild post-partum antidepressants. Frank had honestly tried to limit his travel just after their marriage and after the birth of their daughter, but could not manage to stop it completely. He was catching planes out of the country while she lay with one ear cocked and one eye half-open in the night, waiting for Sam to wail from the bassinet beside the bed. The doctor was very understanding and the insurance covered the pills and she kept them in a bottle marked Extra-Strength Midol with a red X in magic marker on the cap. The incriminating orange bottles had never actually made it all the way home. She took one in the morning, just as she had taken birth control before her doctor had mentioned the seasonal injection and she had reported for that as soon as she could, sleeve rolled up, arm bared and ready.

Nancy did not hate her life. She could, and did, chat pleasantly with the neighbors and the grocer and the deliveryman who brought her husband's latest assignments. She went jogging every morning. She loved Sam with every bit of her being and she loved Frank and, despite some initial friction, her relationship with her father had never been stronger.

The pills just served to cloak the thin sharp blade beneath layers of velvet. When she saw Frank's name in Callie's handwriting. When Frank, as he had at lunch and with no sense of irony, launched into a detailed description of the meeting he'd held with a very valued and deeply underground informant, a high-ranking member of a rival government. When she turned over and the bed was empty. When she saw the inconsistencies in a television show because she'd been on the other side, had taken the fingerprints or recognized the wiretaps or traced someone's movements the very same way. When she felt the choked wordless desperation of the life she'd given up for the sake of that night.

Then she took one and looked down at Sam, and knew that her life had been worth something, even if she so rarely felt it would achieve anything else.

The house Nancy fell in love with was on a lake, in what was otherwise a cookie-cutter subdivision a few miles closer to the city and the airport and what served as the rest of her husband's life. A stained generous redwood deck out back and a view of the water, carpeted staircase and a kitchen with a pantry and no landlord inspecting the crawlspace or demanding a rent check. Nancy and Sam stood at the very edge of the backyard, the wind whipping at their strawberry blonde hair, as Frank and Joe talked to the realtor and Vanessa lingered in the sunken living room. Sam put her hand on the chain-link fence, then looked up at her mother.

"Let's go out," Nancy said, lifting Sam into her arms.

They stood on the shore until Nancy was shivering slightly and Sam was half-asleep and heavy on her shoulder. Then Frank walked up, touched her back gently, and she turned around.

"It can be ours in a month. If you want it."

The realtor stood, expectant, on the deck. Vanessa linked her arm through Joe's and murmured something into his ear. Frank had his hands in his pockets. Sam blinked sleepily at him.

"Yes," Nancy said.

--

When Frank was gone for a week or longer, Nancy stayed with someone or had someone come stay with her. This time she had booked two tickets on a flight to Chicago and then the train to River Heights. Their Christmas was scheduled with her in-laws and she wanted to get in some time with her father and her friends before, because opportunities were all too likely to slip away in the dead months after.

Carson was watching Sam when Nancy, Bess, and George fought their way through the crowd after a concert in downtown Chicago. Bess snuggled deeper into her coat, grimacing at the cold. George perched on the edge of the sidewalk, arm half-raised for a taxi, then shot a questioning glance back at her two friends.

Nancy shook her head. "Can we grab a drink somewhere?"

Bess glanced down at their outfits. George was in a sleek plum gown, her dark hair close-cropped around her face. Nancy wore a black velvet bodice over a midnight-blue metallic satin skirt which whipped just over her slender ankles. Bess was in muted flame and high heels, her hair in smooth, practiced curls.

She pursed her lips, and smiled. "I know just the place."

Two blocks and ten minutes later they were seated in the noisy polished bar, nodding and smiling as the bartender delivered their first drinks. Bess picked the cherry out of her Mai Tai and bit it off the stem, then swirled the drink with her straw. George toyed with the double shot she'd ordered.

"I'm sorry I won't be here for Christmas this year," Nancy said, considering her martini, her fingertips resting lightly just below the chilled lip of the glass. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her coat and smacked the new pack against the heel of her hand, unwrapped it, and accepted the light the bartender gave her. She exhaled with her eyes closed, her right elbow propped up on the bar, smoke trailing from between her fingers.

"Me too," Bess said. "Something always seems to happen when you're around."

Nancy took another drag and smiled. "How's life been, George?"

George was answering when the door swung open and the brisk wind swept over them again. Nancy took a sip of her drink, nodding in encouragement, and she saw Bess freeze suddenly, so quick she nearly didn't catch it, her gaze locked on something in the mirror hanging at the back of the bar.

"Excuse me, could I get a Heineken?"

George had stopped midsentence and was staring at the guy who had stepped to the bar. The bartender uncapped a beer and handed it to the man, and Nancy's gaze traced up the green bottle, to the hand, the black sleeve, the full shoulder, the face.

"Fancy meeting you here," Ned said, when their eyes met.

--

"He has a girlfriend," Nancy repeated thickly, collapsing to George's couch. She tugged her heels off and tossed them in the general direction of the front door. "Mind if I smoke?"

"Just one," George said, wrinkling her nose in distaste, as she fell with familiar grace into the armchair. "Bess, do I have any coolers?"

Bess walked into the living room on stocking feet, handed out three capped coolers and bummed a cigarette out of Nancy's pack, which they lit from the same match. Nancy waved it in the air, slowly, and it faded.

"Hey, that's two," George protested.

Bess exhaled her first drag. "I need it," she said simply. "Did you see who he was with?"

"I bet she's a ballerina," Nancy snarled, pulling at the cap. "I can't get this damn thing open."

Bess took it from her and tried to twist it open, then handed it to George, who had already finished half of hers. George opened it easily, then walked with slow deliberation up to the stereo, which she flipped on. "I'm gonna go put on some jeans or something," she said, making a slow dismissive gesture, then vanished into her bedroom.

Bess shook her head and took another swig from her cooler. "It's been ages since I've seen Ned. That was so weird."

Nancy rested her head against the back of the couch, her eyes closed, elbow propped on the arm and smoke wafting from between her fingers. "Yeah," she mumbled. "He was at our grocery store. He was there. He didn't say a word about having a girlfriend."

Bess propped herself up with some effort. "What?" she asked, struggling to focus on Nancy. Between the three of them they had run up a serious bar tab, especially once Ned's girlfriend had arrived, tanned and enameled and petite, all big innocent green eyes and lacquered fingernails against Ned's sleeve as she'd tucked her arm through his. Dark brown hair streaked blonde.

She'd looked possessive. Nancy had simply stared, her cigarette turning to ash in her motionless hand.

"He was-- me and Sam, we were at the grocery store," Nancy said, tossing her arm up, elbow crooked over her eyes. "And Ned, he came out of nowhere. We said hi. He said, he said hi to Sam."

Bess gently pulled Nancy's arm away from her eyes. "Nan."

George walked across the room on bare feet, her face freshly scrubbed, in an oversized sweater and cuffed jeans. "Okay," George said, downing the rest of her cooler in one sip. "Ned has a girlfriend. So what? You have a husband."

"Yeah," Nancy agreed quietly. "I do."

Three hours later the cousins were asleep and Nancy was in one of George's t-shirts, staring up at the ceiling fan. Once the motion made her dizzy she put her arm over her face. Her foot was tapping nervously against the arm of the couch.

She needed another cigarette.

She tossed the quilt off and walked into the kitchen, pulled her trench coat on. George's apartment looked out over a normally busy street, now deserted in the blue-black hours before dawn. She pulled her cigarettes out of her pocket.

A rectangle of white cardstock fell out with it.

Nancy lit her cigarette and put out the match, then bent over to pick it up. She couldn't remember anyone giving her a business card...

Edmund C. Nickerson, she read, running her thumbnail over the heavy black embossed letters. Phone number, fax number, email address.

She flipped it over and saw a cell number, in Ned's handwriting. Thick black script, Chicago area code.

She put it back in her pocket, slowly.