It was Saturday. In her previous lives, Saturday was hardly different from any other day of the week. Before Christina, before Stuart, Helena had treated Saturday, and often Sunday, as workdays, particularly if Charles had been sending her out during the week to charm their clients into reaffirming their commitment to Wells Financial Management. The client meetings and the meetings with the so-called captains of industry whom Charles had identified as prospective clients were distractions from what she considered her real work for the firm, which, in the end, was what kept their clients happy, not her willingness to flatter and banter with them. All that charm and a flirtatious smile would get her without the returns that Wells Financial Management provided would be a lot of unwanted dinner invitations but no promises from their clients that they wouldn't look elsewhere.

Her real work was forecasting movements in the markets and translating those movements into formulas. If the price of Chinese steel skyrocketed or, conversely, plummeted, how would it affect the stock of manufacturers worldwide? More specifically, how much would the price of a share of GM stock go up or down? Anyone seeing her devour foreign news media, business blogs, social media, the Wall Street Journal and other US news outlets, and then page through a presentation given by a professor at the London School of Economic a week ago would find it hard to believe that she was the same woman who had breakfasted that morning with the president of a major waste management firm. The hair that had so silkily spilled over the shoulders of her blazer now stuck out from her head in clumps, betraying her tendency to grab at it in frustration, her blouse bore more than a few coffee stains, and the eyes that had crinkled in amusement at the CEO's joke that "We're big believers in 'garbage in, garbage out'" were red-rimmed and bleary. The nice thing about working on Saturdays and Sundays was that she could work in her bathrobe if she didn't feel like dressing.

When she and Stuart started dating, her work habits didn't immediately change, although she tried not to work in her bathrobe quite as much. But her pregnancy and her decision to leave Wells Financial Management, the latter underwritten, in a sense, by Stuart, gave her the freedom to treat her forecasting and modeling of stock prices as a project rather than as a job. She felt like a grad student again, working when she felt inspired and letting Stuart whisk her away for a few days in Tahoe or Miami when she didn't. (Of course, there had been no Stuart McKnight in grad school. Smoking pot and having sex with her girlfriend or boyfriend of the moment had been her budget version of "getting away from it all.") After Christina was born, the years she had spent assisting Charles in building Wells Financial Management seemed ever more remote, even Giselle seemed less like the siren who had tempted her, for a time, to throw her laptop and the equations on it out the nearest window, than a spoiled – and bad-tempered – daughter of privilege. She began more willingly to accompany Stuart to events, to act as his stand-in at the charity events that he was all too eager to skip; she was becoming Mrs. Stuart McKnight in all but name, and even that, she was beginning to believe, she would accept in time. Helena had never given much thought to having a family, her relationship with her parents had always been distant, and until she discovered that she was pregnant, she had never seriously considered having children. "Family" had always meant school holidays spent with two adults who never seemed to know what to do with her; they had been more at ease with Charles, seven years her senior, so much so that she had concluded early on that she had been an unexpected and unwanted addition. Christina was unexpected, but once Helena had reconciled herself to the pregnancy, she had sworn that her child would never, ever feel unwanted, and Helena filled her days forging a closeness with her daughter that had eluded her and her mother. Her job, her passion was her child. There were no weekends off, every day was a workday.

Christina was still the center of all that she did, but that was the only thing that hadn't changed. With Stuart no longer available to fund a lifestyle that permitted her to play with their daughter in the mornings and take her on strolls and bike rides (secured in a bright yellow trailer) in Central Park in the afternoons, she had had to enroll Christina in daycare as she scrambled for work. The income they had lived on as every asset she and Stuart owned was taken away was a fraction of what she had enjoyed since she had taken her first job as a financial analyst, when she was a very, very bright but very, very young 21-year old, and it was only possible because she had shares in Wells Financial Management to sell. Every day was a work day because when she wasn't depositing Christina at daycare as she looked for a position at a firm that wasn't too frightened by her history to hire her, she was on the dilapidated sofa in their tiny Queens apartment completing assignments that a few old friends and mentors had given her as crumbs to survive on. The position that Nolan Amundson had offered her, which had taken her and her daughter away from that Queens apartment and the cockroaches that had scuttled for cover when she turned on the lights in the kitchen, gave her the stability she needed and, frankly, craved, but it didn't provide much in the way of luxury. There was nothing left over for a personal cook or trainer, no money for housekeeping staff or for a service to pick up and return her dry cleaning. So she had come to treasure her weekends as she had never had to before. Saturdays she spent cleaning the townhouse, doing laundry, ironing, and grocery shopping, if she could squeeze it in. Sundays she grocery shopped if she hadn't been able to get it done on Saturday and she cooked for the week ahead, simple dinners for her and Christina. Sundays were also when she would spend her afternoons coloring with her daughter or playing dolls or letting her romp in the play areas in nearby parks. The outing to the fair a couple of weeks back had been a rare treat, marred, unfortunately, by Christina's brief but panic-inducing disappearance and then by the discovery that her daughter's rescuer was an FBI agent. It would be a long time before they would go to the fair again.

Helena had thrown away the piece of paper with Myka's number on it. Myka's friend had meant well, but she wasn't interested in dating, and if that situation changed, she wouldn't be seeking anyone in law enforcement. She also wouldn't be seeking anyone working at Amundson Securities, which would disappoint Nate. Since their afternoon at the fair, he had been trying to devise a way to ask her to lunch or out for coffee that wouldn't smack of harassment, commenting casually that if she ever wanted a break or to try a new place for lunch, he would be interested in joining her, but she had gently brushed aside his cloaked invitations. A 250-calorie Lean Cuisine was adventurous as she got these days. Her straitened means also didn't allow for a gym membership, so she made do with some early morning yoga and core-strengthening exercises. Lunches out were too expensive for her budget and her waistline.

As she carried another basket of laundry down the stairs to the main floor (a stackable unit was in a closet-sized room off her kitchen and it ran pretty much all day on Saturdays), Helena saw a nondescript sedan park on the other side of the street from her row of townhomes. The back of her neck prickled and she stayed where she was, holding a basket full of Christina's play clothes and pajamas as she waited for the passengers to get out. They might be here to visit the families, predominantly made up of single mothers and their children, in any one of the townhomes, but the car was parked directly across from hers. She didn't know anyone well enough for a co-worker to be dropping by unannounced, not even Nate. If Nolan wanted to see her, he would have called first and, in any event, he would have had her drive out to his home. He wouldn't leave his Prairie School style estate on the northwest edge of the city to drive to her dreary little house. The Amundsons were this state's version of a first family; first, there were no unscheduled visits, and two, there were no visits, only summonses. The FBI had used to arrive like this, without warning, in a dark sedan or SUV. They would double park if they couldn't find space on the street, and though they wore nothing identifying them as FBI, they would almost fall into formation as they walked toward the entrance of the high rise from which she peered down at them. They spared no glance for anyone or anything outside the tight focus of their interest, No smiles at passersby, no casually appraising looks at how the other half lived.

She wasn't surprised when she saw Myka's friend and, more significantly in this context, fellow agent, Pete, shut the driver's side door, although Helena was surprised by the intensity of her dismay when Myka came around from the passenger's side to join him. She hadn't expected to see Myka again, and she especially didn't want to see her now, like this. For those few moments on that Sunday afternoon, they had been equals, even if Helena hadn't been at her best. The easy humor and sureness that Myka had displayed . . . yes, if they had met each other in a different lifetime, before Stuart McKnight had shaken up and then destroyed everything she had known, she would have been interested. But Stuart had happened and Myka was FBI, and nothing positive could develop from that collision. She could regret that other realities didn't exist, but this was the only reality she had, and seeing Pete and Myka walking up to her door, she knew that somehow she had become a suspect once more.

She set her basket at the foot of the stairs. It was warm enough that she had opened the windows and the front door to air out the house, and Pete and Myka waited on the other side of the screen door for her. They were dressed casually, Myka in jeans and a polo shirt, as she had been the day Helena had met her, and Pete in jeans and a deep purple button-down shirt with the cuffs folded back, but their expressions were serious, although Myka attempted a small smile. "I don't suppose this is a special delivery from the Cookie Shack," Helena said dryly, feeling the old stubborn refusal to let anyone, especially anyone sporting a badge, see that she was off-balance. After her first few "conversations" with the various agencies investigating Stuart, she had steeled herself not to give anything away, not in a look, not in a twitch. She hadn't needed an attorney to tell her that; it was self-preservation kicking in, that and a fierce determination to shield Christina from the chaos that Stuart had introduced into their lives.

"No, sorry, the Cookie Shack is closed for the season," Myka said and then blushed, as if she realized that she had spoken too lightly or too literally. Lifting the hair from the back of her neck, the mass of its chestnut-colored waves having been effectively disguised by the baseball cap she had worn that Sunday Helena realized, Myka added in explanation, "We're here to talk to you in a professional capacity."

"Then, by all means, come in," Helena responded, not bothering to soften the mockery of her tone. She unlatched the screen door and stood aside as they entered. "Did I forget to register with your field office when we moved here? Your counterparts in New York didn't inform me that I'd be treated like a sex offender for the rest of my life."

Casting quick, assessing glances at the entryway, the stairs, and the unprepossessing living room to their right, Pete said, "The investigation of you in connection with the Stuart McKnight fraud has never been closed." Helena tried not to draw into herself at his words. "But he's not why we're here."

A scuffling sound at the top of the stairs and a sleepy child's voice asking "Mommy, did Emmie come over to play?" forced Helena to straighten her shoulders and say cheerfully, coaxingly, "No, love, just some people to talk to me. Why don't you go back into your bedroom and finish your nap? Or you can draw me a picture that I'll take to work."

Christina cautiously ventured halfway down the stairs, hand scrubbing at her face. "I want peanut butter and apple," she whined. Her expression brightened as she recognized Myka and Pete. "Cookie lady!" Pointing a finger at Pete, she said almost chidingly, "You're the silly man. You're the cookie monster." She put both hands to her mouth and worked her jaws in a pantomime of Pete's gobbling down cookies.

"She's got you dead to rights, Cookie Monster," Myka murmured.

"What can I say? Ladies any age love me." He cocked his head at Helena. "How about peanut butter and apples all around?" More quietly, he said to her, "It's just a conversation, Helena."

She wasn't going to be charmed or soothed. "That's what they all say – right up to when they start threatening you that the next time you'll see your daughter she'll be graduating from high school." Christina, having negotiated the rest of the steps, sidled next to her, ready, should the situation demand it, to run behind her mother for protection. Poor protection she offered, Helena thought, since she was shorter and decidedly less fit than the agents still standing on the shoe mat. "Why don't we talk in the kitchen as I make Christina her snack? If you don't want peanut butter and apple slices, I have grapes and baby carrots."

"You're not obliged to feed us. A glass of water is more than enough." Myka scowled at Pete.

"Speak for yourself. I haven't had an apple sliced for me since I was a kid," he protested.

Christina hoisted herself onto a chair at the breakfast bar while Myka and Pete sat at the kitchen table in the dining area bordered by the breakfast bar, on one end, and sliding glass doors that opened onto a small patio at the other. Ordinarily Helena wasn't claustrophobic, but the kitchen and dining area seemed even smaller with two extra bodies in it. She took some steadying breaths as she sliced an apple. It was tempting to think about yanking Christina from her chair, flinging open the flimsy screen door, and running out of the house, never to return. She should dash water on that fantasy as soon as possible. "If you're not here to talk to me about Stuart," Helena glanced at her daughter, but Christina didn't react to her father's name, absorbed in the snack preparation, "what do we need to talk about?"

"We'd like to talk about your job at Amundson Securities," Myka said.

Helena fanned the apple slices on a plate and placed it in front of Christina. The fact that they knew where she worked made a farce of her steadying breaths. She had wanted nothing more than anonymity after the painful years of the fraud investigation; she had told Charles and their mother that she was leaving New York for a new job and, she hoped, a new life, but no one else. She suspected that there was hardly anyone at Amundson Securities who didn't know who she was, but there had never been any overt acknowledgment. It would have been akin to pointing out that she had broccoli caught between her teeth or toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe, only much, much worse. Had a co-worker or even one of Nolan Amundson's sons, distressed at the thought that Stuart McKnight's ex-girlfriend was employed at the company, called the FBI? But the FBI wouldn't be paying her a visit because someone had complained that her presence tarnished the Amundson name . . . someone had called the FBI and accused of her a crime.

"Mommy," Christina said, frowning down at her apple slices, "where's the peanut butter?"

"Coming up," Helena said with a brightness that she didn't feel. She took the jar from a cupboard and fumbled for a spoon in the silverware drawer. "I have milk, juice, and sparkling water in the refrigerator." Gesturing toward the much-used teakettle on the stove, she said, "I can also heat up water for tea."

"Chocolate milk?" Pete asked hopefully. Myka rolled her eyes.

"Chocolate syrup. You'll have to make your own chocolate milk." As Pete muttered, "That's too much work," Helena dropped two generous spoonfuls of peanut butter onto Christina's plate. Her daughter chose to coat her finger rather than an apple slice with peanut butter. "I work in the company's IT area. I design custom programs and reports, but since we're a small company, I troubleshoot problems and provide extra batteries and power cords as needed." She stole some apple from Christina's plate and widened her eyes in mock surprise at her daring as Christina shouted in outrage, "Mommy!" But the teasing felt flat with the agents sitting just a few feet away. She lifted a shoulder in Myka's direction. "Saying that I'm back-office operations only probably doesn't give you much comfort."

"I'd love a cup of tea." Myka's look at her gave nothing away, other than a clear signal that their "conversation" might be a long one.

If she and Pete were familiar with the investigation of Stuart McKnight and his company, they would know that it was through the back-office operations that much of the fraud was facilitated. Most of the brokers working for McKnight Investments didn't know that the securities they were peddling were of nonexistent companies. The websites looked professional, and there was always someone young, bright, and seemingly knowledgeable to answer the phone, but try to find the street address, and you would find an abandoned warehouse or a vacant strip mall. Even when the securities were real and packaged into various custom funds, Stuart and his co-conspirators – college buddies intermixed with cronies of Stuart's stepfather, Vincent Crowley, and misanthropic quants whom Stuart had managed to charm – would tweak the returns, the "unpredictable losses" over time outnumbering the gains. When clients complained, Stuart would move their money into more stable investments, and then, once they were assured their capital was growing, he would persuade them to re-invest in what he call his "warrior securities" and "warrior tranches." Helena had heard his pitch at more than one party. "You're not going to make a killing in the market unless you're ready to lay it all on the line. If you're not strong enough to stand the punishment, you're not going to be strong enough to enjoy the reward." Invariably the men to whom he was talking, and he never launched into his warrior spiel if the men didn't outnumber the women in his audience, were between 35 and 60, old enough to feel the encroachment of middle age (receding hairlines, spare tires, marital boredom) but not so old that they didn't give a damn whether the world still saw them as warriors. When it came to manipulating old men, Stuart worked on their fears about their legacy and the value of their estates, marketing the custodial services that McKnight Investments offered. His "back-office guys" would be tasked with designing a new set of false reports, and the trusts' cash and marketable securities would steadily be siphoned off, stashed away in nested LLCs and LLPs that Stuart indirectly owned. It hadn't been enough for him to embezzle from trusts the old men had established for their grandchildren. He had lobbied his clients to donate money to certain charities, a wink and a grin his only suggestion that more benefits might be in store for them than tax breaks. What the wink and the grin didn't suggest was that the charities were as fraudulent as McKnight Investments itself.

Helena decided not to refresh Myka's and Pete's memories. To dwell on how Stuart executed his cons in order to bolster her claim that she couldn't, wouldn't do something similar would only make her look worse. Her knowledge of how he defrauded his clients, no matter that it was after the fact and patchwork, gleaned from what the FBI knowingly and unknowingly disclosed, would lend credence to the belief in many quarters that she had been a part of it and just gotten lucky. On the other hand, for those like her brother, her knowledge only pointed up some fatal flaw within her, a profound gullibility or willed blindness that permitted her to remain ignorant when others "would have suspected something, for Christ's sake." Rarely a day passed when she didn't hear the echo of Charles's jeers. She would wake at the alarm, but the fog of sleep and depression that would otherwise keep her in bed wouldn't be truly banished until she recalled him shouting at her, "How could you be so bloody idiotic? You were supposed to be the gifted one, smarter than all the rest of Wellses put together."

Instead she let the agents lead her question by question, providing responses that were as factual as possible, offering no explanations of or context in which to understand her duties at Amundson Securities unless she was specifically asked. When they asked her about the people she worked with, she limited her descriptions to their names, titles, and job functions. At Nate Phillips's name, Pete's eyebrows shot up and the corner of his mouth curved in a tiny smirk. "Your date at the fair."

"It wasn't a date," Helena said swiftly. "Nate's befriended me and Christina since we moved here. That's all." Pete's smirk seemed permanently fixed and the light in his eyes, both bright and challenging, spoke less to their current conversation and more to the one they had had at the fair, when he had told her that Myka was interested in her and given her Myka's number.

Suddenly both the smirk and glint in his eyes disappeared and he bent over to massage his ankle. "Ow," he said plaintively to Myka, "that was unnecessary."

"So was your comment about Nate." After a sip of her tea, Myka asked Helena, "It sounds like you have a good relationship with him. Do you have similar responsibilities?"

"Do you mean, are we colluding together on whatever nefarious things I'm supposed to be doing?" As her sarcastic reply hung in the air between them, Helena saw Myka's eyes narrow in irritation. "Nate's job is to keep our systems running. He's all IT; he has no background in finance." Leaning across the table, she said with emphasis, "And not a dishonest bone in his body." She picked up her virtually untasted mug of tea and drank it down, her eyes not dropping from Myka's. "I could help you more if you told me what I've been accused of. That's why you're here, isn't it? Somebody's told you that I'm picking up where Stuart left off." She looked away from Myka, forcing herself to see the kitchen as they must see it: the low-end appliances, the cheap cabinetry, the dirty dishes from breakfast. Her circumstances were reduced, but they would get better. It was as Nolan had told her when he offered her the job at Amundson Securities. "It's beneath your talents, but it's a base you can build on." Rebuild on might be more accurate, but this home, the routines she and Christina had established, they were her new Stuart-less foundation. Christina was upstairs in her room, which wouldn't qualify as a walk-in closet in the penthouse in which they had once lived, drawing pictures for the three of them. It wasn't much, what they had now, but she would protect it.

"Are there 'nefarious things' going on at Amundson Securities?" Myka's flash of irritation had passed, and Helena sensed in her, as she had that day at the fair, a responsiveness, a generosity of spirit that made her want to trust her. Myka wasn't the kind of FBI agent who would come in with guns blazing; she would want to do what they were doing now, talking over the situation. She seemed willing to listen, she gave the impression that she could be fair; the problem was those weren't the qualities that Helena had learned to associate with the FBI. The investigation of Stuart McKnight and his business interests had taken months and the agents had changed over time, some being reassigned, others leaving the FBI, but each and every one of them had assumed she was guilty. It had taken years, notwithstanding the lack of evidence, before they decided not to charge her, and as Pete had cockily reminded her, they hadn't closed the investigation. In fact, the agents in the New York office would likely reexamine everything from Stuart's case in light of whatever Myka and Pete thought they had on her now. No, Myka might be a nice FBI agent, but she was still an FBI agent.

"You seem to think there are," Helena parried. She rapidly tried to recall all the scuttlebutt and office gossip she generally ignored – about investments going sour, brokers going crazy, and clients going to court. Nothing came to mind, which should be a lesson to her not to pass up break-room or cube-row conversations for the quiet and relative privacy of her desk. Rumor and speculation were as much the lifeblood of the work as FOMC meetings and earnings releases. Amundson Securities wasn't a big firm or one that prided itself on financial innovation. With the exception of certain very wealthy, very influential clients, mainly Nolan's friends and business associates, the firm catered to the mid-range professional, successful but not Bill Gates- or Jeff Bezos-successful. Amundson Securities' clients were typically looking to grow their nest eggs, not lose them in a high-flying venture. The firm did provide more speculative opportunities for select clients with capital to spare, offering complex investment products and promising, if risky, start-ups in need of investors. Sometimes the complex investment products and start-ups failed spectacularly. She had seen it first hand in the reports she designed comparing the profitability and ROEs of the firm's pet alternative energy start-ups with energy sector funds, a custom portfolio of energy companies, and other start-ups with similar profiles. Investing in energy companies was always a high-risk enterprise, and alternative energy start-ups even more so. There had been no method of massaging the data to make Amundson's start-ups look better, not one that wouldn't lead the firm into some very gray areas.

"Is it about the failed energy start-ups?" She couldn't believe she had blurted it out and stared at her empty mug in shock. There had been some grim faces when news of the bankruptcy filings had begun circulating among staff, and Scott Amundson, Nolan's youngest son and president of the firm, had spent much of one day in his office with the door closed, trying to console angry investors over the phone. Or so Helena had supposed as she passed outside his door. She remembered similarly painful conversations with unhappy investors when she had been at Wells Financial Management. Even though the reports she had put together had clearly shown the deterioration in the companies' financials, some investors assumed a level of outrage completely out of proportion to their shrewdness – and the reiterated explanations of risk. They would bluster at her that they had been misled, that she and Charles had perpetrated a fraud; she had learned over time to let them vent, reminding them only when they had spent themselves that they had been warned, repeatedly, that the investments were high risk and that the financial information they had been provided had disguised nothing. Eventually they would forget how angry they had been and, within a short amount of time, sometimes just a day or two, they would be back, asking her to find them another diamond in the rough. But why would an enraged investor associate her with the start-ups' failures? She didn't interact directly with the clients, and it wasn't broadly known, outside the firm, that Nolan had hired Stuart McKnight's former girlfriend.

She couldn't endure the scrutiny and suspicion again, the endless so-called interviews, the endless revisiting of every, every aspect of her and Stuart's life together, especially the aspects she had known nothing about. ("Did you know that he was making monthly payments to the mother of his other daughter? Cute little thing, just turned eight. He has a son, too. Senior in college. Mother's his high school sweetheart.") Whereas before she hadn't wanted to give Myka and Pete more than what they had asked for, she had the opposite impulse now. If she told them everything they wanted to hear, even if she had to invent it, would they finally leave her alone? Perhaps in an alternate reality in which you really were innocent until proven guilty. But they were here because someone had whispered her name in their ears, her name and the suggestion of questionable financial dealings at an investment firm. Of course she could endure the scrutiny and suspicion again; it was better than prison. None of it was as intolerable as the possibility of losing her daughter.

She lifted her eyes and smiled, albeit wanly, at them, gesturing toward Myka's mug. "More tea?"

Once more she let the agents lead her question by question. Yes, she had created reports for the brokers, the officers, the board of directors on the performance of the start-ups, as well as other investments. Yes, there had been concern at the firm about their poor performance; they had begun to hemorrhage money, running through their capital at an alarming rate. Sales contracts had fallen through, cost-saving technologies hadn't developed as anticipated, borrowing costs had increased. Demands for more information from them had gone unanswered. Their failures wouldn't be a large financial loss for the firm – it hadn't invested its own money in the companies – but Nolan's friends and associates would lose money. The reputational cost to the firm could be high, but the money that had been invested and lost, the potential hit to the Amundson "brand," those weren't her concerns. She took the data her management gave her and found the data they were seeking, and she combined it, calculated it, and presented it in bright, colorful reports with lots of visuals, bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts. Explanatory text was sparse and no more than a few sentences. Let the numbers do the talking was the adage.

"We have information that suggests you did more than populate a spreadsheet with financial data." Frowning, Myka dug at her forehead to smooth out the worry lines. "It suggests that you may have conspired with others at Amundson Securities to present a misleading picture to investors."

"I'm surprised that your informant hasn't suggested that I took a page from Stuart's book and created the start-ups out of thin air. It's amazing how a little money well spent can get you millions in return. That's one thing I learned from him – never do a con on the cheap." Helena leaned back in her chair and circled her arm to encompass the kitchen and dining area. "Look at this and tell me I have the funds to seed a good con." Despite her intention not to show how frightened and angry she was, bitterness crept into her voice. "I have less than a thousand dollars in my savings account and only slightly more than that in my Amundson Securities' 401(k). I'd probably have to take out a loan for a major car repair."

"You have to admit that you're more than back-office support. My brother-in-law is in IT, and he doesn't do the kind of specialized reports you've talked about. You have the skills and the knowledge to distort the data, Helena, not just present it," Myka said in gentle rebuttal.

"But not the desire. Do I miss my old life? Of course I miss putting a thousand dollar pair of shoes on my credit card and taking spur-of-the-moment trips to Belize and Cancun." She laughed to blunt the sting. "I miss people looking at me and not seeing a criminal. But as much as I miss all of that, I love my daughter more."

"Then help us, work with us."

Later, as Helena saw Myka and Pete out the door, each with a Christina Wells's original in hand (Myka's a rendering of the Cookie Shack that inexplicably had a chimney and smoke issuing from it and Pete's a plate of cookies bordered by tulips), she wasn't sure what she had agreed to or if there were any sort of arrangement in place. Pete's vague references to "looping in our bosses" and "getting it squared away" told her nothing. Myka had been more noncommittal, saying only that they would be in touch. On her part, Helena reflected as she picked up the laundry basket from the foot of the stairs and carried it to the washer and dryer, she had said only that she would find out what she could on the start-ups, who, specifically, the investors were, how much each of them had lost, and whether any of them had threatened to bring action against the firm. She had wanted to emphasize that digging for information carried its own risks. To get it, she would have to emerge from her work burrow, initiating conversations with co-workers with whom she rarely exchanged more that "Good morning" or "Have a good evening" and joining, or at least listening in on, the break room and coffee-break gossip she preferred to avoid.

It would make her more noticeable at the firm, chatting, asking questions about things that, in terms of her job duties, weren't any of her business, which was what she dreaded most. While she couldn't pretend that her co-workers didn't know who she was, she didn't want to provide occasions for having to acknowledge it. She didn't want to suffer their curiosity, freed to be openly expressed, about her former life. Having had a high profile, she was content with her virtually nonexistent one, and trying to draw out information could start raising questions about her. There were more discreet ways, more covert ways, of finding that information. She had access to the final versions of the reports she had created on the start-ups that went to senior management and the board, and, if she were careful, she could access the reports and communications sent to the clients. But she would need to be careful, audit logs were reviewed by the firm and by the corporate IT staff who had overarching responsibility for systems and information security at all the Amundson companies. She didn't want to lose her job trying to prove that she shouldn't lose it.

Taking the empty basket upstairs for another load of dirty laundry, Helena glanced into the living room, making sure that Christina was still engaged with her Frozen Lego set and not, say, rearranging the furniture into a fort. She hadn't needed much help putting it together, and though she seemed content to invent stories for the figures and the assorted dolls and plush animals from her bedroom that she had included as secondary characters, Helena made a note to herself to look for a more advanced (but reasonably priced) Lego set soon. Christina had enjoyed figuring out how the bricks interlocked, grasping the order without having to refer to the illustrations in the instructions or her mother's supposedly greater expertise. She was an interesting mix of little girl and civil engineer. She could shift from pleading to keep a pony in her bedroom to logically stating the case for why the moon couldn't be made of cheese (it would melt under the sun's rays, it would crumble) before completely reverting back to being a five-year-old and claiming that if the moon were made out of cheese, it would be too stinky this close to Earth. Calling out to her, Christina asked, "Can we still ride bikes today?" Then she leveled a child's greatest weapon. "You promised."

"After I get this load in." Sometimes before dinner on Saturdays, Helena would take her on a circuit around the townhome development. The purple bike with tassels and a basket, and training wheels, had been Christina's birthday present in July, and she could already work up a good head of steam, bent over the handlebars, legs churning. Helena foresaw wheelies and jumps by the time Christina turned six. She wanted to see that – not the daredevil acrobatics – but Christina riding her bike without training wheels, riding with her friends, already impatient to turn seven. She didn't want to start worrying that by next summer she would be facing a trial or worse.

She stripped the sheets from Christina's bed, then she went into her bedroom to take the sheets off her bed. Her one luxury buy for herself, a queen-sized bed with "advanced memory foam technology" or whatever the salesperson had called it. She would reserve one area of her life in which she could completely relax, put her anxieties about her and Christina's future aside, so her bed bloody well needed to be comfortable. As she smoothed out the mattress cover, Myka's face popped unbidden into her mind, the green eyes looking intently at her, no, into her as she had seemed almost to be pleading, "Then help us, work with us." Helena had wondered, for a dizzying moment, if Myka had felt every burst of rage, every spike of fear that she had tried to hide during their . . . conversation. Not just sensed but sensed and understood, that look telling her, I know it's awful, but we'll get through it. This was madness. She and Myka weren't psychically connected, and she definitely didn't need to be thinking about Myka anywhere near a bed. She picked up the basket and marched downstairs with it.

Christina asked hopefully from the living room, "Is it time for bikes yet?"

"I haven't put the load in, love."

"I like her," Christina said with a child's blithe indulgence in nonsequitors. She got up and followed Helena down the hall. "I'm glad I found her at the fair."

"I'm glad you found her too," Helena said dryly, opening the lid to the washer. Christina stood on tiptoe trying to peer in.

"Maybe she can ride bikes with us sometime."

"Maybe."

"Maybe she'll bring cookies."

"Maybe." Helena started the washer and tossed in a Tide pod. She reluctantly left her own bedsheets in the basket as she stuffed Christina's into the washer tub. She would have another load to do once they came back from their ride. Dinner tonight would be one of the frozen pizzas in the freezer – and wine. "Go get your jacket," she said, forcing enthusiasm into her voice, and Christina spun around to race to the coat closet.

Before she and Pete had left, Myka had said, much too casually, "Remind me how you got the job at Amundson Securities."

Funny choice, "remind," because Helena had never told them how she had ended up at the firm. Also a funny choice because she doubted that Myka needed to be reminded of anything. "Nolan Amundson is a family friend. He'd been in contact with my mother during the investigation and offered to help any way he could." It was true, the family friend part, the part about his being in contact with her mother, but she hadn't included the parts that were also true, that, until her relationship with Stuart had become newsworthy, he hadn't spoken to a member of the Wells family in years, that her mother disliked him with an intensity the otherwise glacially cool Cynthia Wells reserved for displays of affection, the public spotlight, and, Helena often thought, her own daughter, that her mother hadn't told her of Nolan's willingness to help until she had sold the last of her stock in Wells Financial Management to Charles. Her mother had given birth to two children, but only one was the child of her heart.

Myka needed to know none of the oedipal drama of her family. She had given Myka what she requested, nothing more, nothing less. Yet there was that look, that calm, thoughtful, patient look, as if Myka were willing to listen to all that she hadn't said, listen and not judge. Eventually Myka glanced away, turning her head toward Pete but not before observing, "Serendipitous, wasn't it? Stepping in and offering you a new start exactly when you needed one."

Myka didn't need reminding and casual wasn't her default mode. She would always mean what she said because she took care about what she said and how she said it. Helena doubted that there was anything she didn't put care into, except, possibly, her hair. It was a glorious mess, that hair, and it was likely the only thing that Myka let escape her attention. The offer to come work at Amundson Securities and, little more than six months later, the whispers of suspicion, or what amounted to the same (or worse) that the FBI had in their possession about fraudulent activity at the firm was some interesting timing that wouldn't have escaped Myka's notice. Helena didn't want to think it, but it was there – that the two events weren't a coincidence, that Nolan had had a motive other than a desire to help out the daughter of an old friend. What better way to cover illegal dealings at one of your companies than to hire a woman on whom they could be so easily blamed? He would be accused of bad judgment or senility. There might be rumblings that he should step down as chairman, not only of Amundson Securities but of all his companies. The bad press, the demand for a public apology, the questioning of his capacity, the unflattering light shown on the Amundson name, all of it was better than going to jail. She knew that better than anyone.

He had thrown her a life preserver, or so she had thought, but what did she really know about him? She had been to his home only once, a few days after she had arrived in the city. He had invited her to his home, and she and Christina had had lunch with him, not in the formal dining room, which looked like it could easily seat 20, but in a nook of the kitchen that looked out over a terrace covered in snow. Lunch had been spaghetti and meatballs with chocolate pudding for dessert, a menu sure to please a child, but the meal had been skillfully prepared, attesting to the presence of someone besides the old man, dressed in wool slacks and a flannel shirt, who had minutely adjusted the placement of their silverware with trembling fingers. He hadn't looked the part of the patriarch of the state's first family or the entrepreneur who had taken the family business, which had made its money in lumber and mining, and transformed it into one of the largest privately held organizations in the country. He looked like the old men in the Perkins she and Christina had eaten in the night before; they had folded their newspapers into ever smaller squares as they read them and fussed at the waitresses who stopped at their tables to refill their coffee mugs. To be fair, she probably wasn't what he had expected either, cadaverously thin with a defeated droop to her features, hardly the fashion plate that the more tabloid-oriented social media had routinely excavated from photo archives and posted online.

Nolan had been charmed by Christina, and she had been at her lively but well-behaved best, offering her first impressions of her new home and the state's notorious winters and turning puppy-dog eyes on Helena when she expressed the hope that Mommy would take her sledding sometime soon. Nolan had pointed to the snow-covered terrace outside the French doors, telling her that she could visit him and they would build snowmen and slide down the hills. When Christina said that she couldn't see any hills, he had chuckled and replied that there were hills farther out on the property. "I have lots of land, Christina, and there are lots of hills."

And there it was, in his chuckle, his exchange of amused glances with Helena. His authority had gone unchallenged for so long that he no longer felt the need to assert it. He wore it like he wore his flannel shirt, comfortably. She had encountered old lions like him in her years building Wells Financial Management with Charles, old men in their seventies and eighties who had accumulated enough wealth, pirated was closer to the truth, to last their descendants for generations. They took a perverse pride in their anonymity. Meet them on Fifth Avenue and you might think they were granddads from upstate, taking a day in the city to show their grandchildren the Met. Helena imagined that most people maneuvering their carts around Nolan's in a grocery store wouldn't give this tall, reedy man, stooped and cautious in his gait, a second look. Yet many of the items in their carts would have been grown, processed, packaged, and shipped by the companies he owned.

There had been no afternoon of sledding on Nolan's property. She and Christina had never been invited back. Helena didn't take offense. He had given her more than a job; he had given her an opportunity to reclaim her life. He had done his duty by an old friend, if he had seen it as that, who had been dead for almost 20 years. Helena had been an 18-year-old finishing her junior year at uni when her father suffered a massive heart attack on a business trip. She hadn't known who Nolan Amundson was, had never heard his name, and he hadn't attended her father's funeral. All the more remarkable then that he would risk his reputation by offering her a job. Helena hadn't been able to figure out his interest in her. She encountered him at Amundson Securities on occasion, usually when he was attending a board meeting. He was always pleased to see her, asking after Christina. Their conversations were brief, but she would leave him at the door of the boardroom convinced that he wanted to say more than he had. Though she had never turned around to confirm it, she was certain that he watched her until she disappeared from view. It wasn't a sexual interest that she sensed, but it had a similar hopeful, seeking quality.

Having had the FBI show up on her doorstep, she thought she better understood the nature of his interest. When she had asked him during the lunch why, if he had wanted to offer her a job, he hadn't chosen one of his other companies, he had grinned at her skepticism. "I can weather a little bad press, if that's what happens. I did my due diligence, and I know you're one of the best analysts out there. I'm betting that it won't be too long before you've gotten your confidence back, and you and Scott will be running the place together." His grin faded, and his eyes, which were as dark as hers and a hundred times harder to read, grew piercing. "This isn't charity, Helena. If I didn't think you would make me money, you wouldn't be here." Her stomach lurched at the memory, and she put a hand to the wall to steady herself. Old lions like him didn't live to be old by acting selflessly. He wanted her at Amundson Securities for reasons of his own, not necessarily the ones he had told her.

"Mommy!" Christina shouted. "Where are you? I've been waiting forever. Let's go!" She stomped into the kitchen and down the hall, glowering at her. Helena sighed and closed the door to the utility closet. Christina had already flung open the door to the garage, and Helena could tell by the rattle and clash of metal that she was trying to move her bike. Flicking on the light, she saw that Christina had pulled her bike away from the wall and was guiding it toward the driveway with one hand as she tried to put on her helmet with the other. She winced as the bike careened into the side of the car. Her bike, considerably older and more battered than her daughter's, remained only perilously tilted against the wall thanks to Christina's impatient efforts to free hers. "Let's go," Christina said again, righting her bike. Here was another lion, a cub in jacket and helmet, just learning how to roar.