Laura Lippman - By A Spider's Thread

"The kids-mere's always a chance Isaac will try to make a run for it if we stay out too long. He's always looking for a chance to get away."

"His eyes won't open tonight. I put a little vodka in their cocoa."

"Really?" He put his hand up to her mouth, trying to push her back. She sucked his fingers, but he snatched his hand away and grabbed her chin so she had to look at him. "Where'd you get vodka?"

"At the shopping center, where I bought the cocoa and the pull-ups."

"So you had this all planned."

"I need you, Zeke."

"You have me. Don't you remember anything? Back at Jessup, visiting me? We held hands on the top of the table, not underneath. We held hands and we made our plans, and wasn't that a thousand times better than anything you ever felt before?"

"Yes, but… we're together now. There's no reason to wait anymore." She started to weep. "You don't love me. If you loved me, you would make love to me."

"I love you more than anyone has loved you or ever will. I love you so much that I won't let you treat me like one of the men you used to be with, back when you turned tricks in parking lots just so you'd have enough money to buy makeup and go to the movies."

"You always said you didn't mind, that you wouldn't hold that against me."

"I don't. But what we have has to be different."

"It's different, all right. Are you sure you're not a fag? Is that what happened to you in Terre Haute? You decided you like boys?"

He slapped her, and her tears were heavy enough to make her choke. She tried to get out of the car, but he seized her wrist. She wanted to rake her nails down his face, draw blood, show him that she would never again allow such treatment. Yet she was almost grateful for his hold on her because she honestly didn't know what would happen if he let her go. Her arms might go anywhere, strike anything, and there was no doubt in her mind that she could shatter the windows, the windshield, Zeke's face. Her own rages frightened her and she had tried hard, since the children were born, to control them. Zeke had brought them back. She could never be completely in control when Zeke was around.

"Just like my father," she said between hiccups. "Just like my father, the one thing you said you'd never do."

"You mustn't speak to me like that, ever," he said, holding tight to her wrist. "I can't allow that. Look, you're stressed out, it's understandable. You've been a trouper. All I ask is that you be patient for a few more weeks."

"Weeks? How many weeks? What is it that we have to wait for?"

"Just for some details to be worked out. Trust me. Have I ever lied to you?"

The fact was, he had not. Once, just once, he had withheld something from her, but even that had been from love, for love. Zeke had not trusted her with the information about his federal time at first, fearing that Natalie wouldn't allow herself to love him if she knew. But that wasn't really a lie.

"Have I ever wavered in my love for you? Did I ever give up?"

His voice was pitched low now, husky. This was the voice that had come to her in hundreds of arranged phone calls over the years, collect calls made to Lana's number. The complicated plans and timetables that these conversations had required had been as thrilling as a spy movie to Natalie. It got to the point where her blood would race just looking at a phone.

"When we met, you'd already had sex with dozens and dozens of men. Did those men love you?"

Natalie shook her head.

"For the past ten years, you've been married to a man who thinks he loves you, but he loves a person we made up, you and I. Would Mark Rubin love you as you are, if he knew everything about you? Would he forgive what I've forgiven?"

She rubbed her face against his shirt front, saying no and drying her tears at the same time.

"Who loves you?"

"You do."

"Who will always love you?"

"You, Zeke, you."

"Who do you love?" Almost singing it now. "Who do you love?"

"You, Zeke, you."

It was an old refrain, one repeated in letters and telephone calls.

"Did your mother love you?"

"No."

"Your father?"

"No."

"Does anyone else love you as much as I do?"

She broke the ritual. "The children."

Zeke paused. "Yes, the children. The ones you drugged tonight, so you could come out here and crawl all over me. The children love you, Natalie. But do you love them? Really, truly?"

"Of course I do."

"Don't be so quick. Think about what I'm asking. If you had to choose between me and them, who would you choose, Natalie?"

"Don't ask me that. I could never make that choice."

"I won't, Natalie. But Mark will. He'll never let them be with you and me. And he has all that money, which he'll use to hire lawyers and grind you down. In the end you won't have your children, but you and I will be out whatever cash we've managed to put away. Did that even occur to you?"

"They're mine," she said. "They would be lost without me."

"Well, then, I guess you've made your choice. Them over me."

"I didn't say that."

"Natalie-I'm going to be honest. I'm not sure I can love Mark's children like a father. I think they'd be better off with him, with their real father."

"They like you," she said. And she believed they would, one day, when they were settled. Isaac would come to see how extraordinary Zeke was, and Penina would stop wetting herself, and the twins would give up the gibberish they now spoke most of the time.

"But I'm not their father, and they're not my children. I want my own children. Did you know that? I want my own babies with you." He reached under her skirt, began moving his hand back and forth. She tried to resist it, but their routine was so perfected, so efficient, that it took no more than a minute for him to finish her.

"Okay," he said, signaling that it was her turn to do the same for him. She bent down, her tears still fresh in her mouth, a pulse pounding in her temple. He needed her.

TESS MOVED HER ALDEN ACROSS THE WATER WITH Swift, sure strokes, but rowing could not soothe her this morning. Even as her body found peace in the automatic rhythms, her brain revved, like an engine in overdrive, stuck on one thought. She had promised not to reveal to Rubin anything that Boris Petrovich told her. But she had made no such promises about the men in the group. So where did Larry Kirsch's confidences fit in? Her shell skimmed across the water, and the morning sounds all seemed to coalesce into a refrain of advice: Call him. Call him. Call him. Tell him. Tell him. Tell him .

She did the first part, reaching him on his cell when she got off the water at seven, but her resolve crumbled when she heard the eagerness in his voice, the optimism.

"Did you find out anything?"

"Not much," she said. "But the men all spoke so fondly of you, I can't help thinking that Amos would open up more if you came with me to Grantsville." Open up and tell you that your wife was sort of a whore before she met you, which would keep me from having to inform you of same.

"Really?" His voice seemed to brighten. "The men liked the group?"

"Really. And this may be a key interview. The one person who keeps coming up, wherever I go, is Lana Wishnia-she was even on your father-in-law's visiting list-and she was married to Amos briefly. Plus, Mickey Harvey said Amos was tight with your father-in-law as well. So I think it's worth the three-hour drive, if you can afford a day away from work."

"I have to make a trip to our storage facility, which is out near Finksburg but sort of en route. Could you be there within an hour?"

"I'll meet you there," Tess promised.

What would she do if Amos didn't conveniently drop the bombshell she needed him to drop? What were the ethics of withholding information from a client, in hopes that someone else would be the bearer of bad news? Tess thought about asking the SnoopSisters, then decided against it. The only problem with the Sisters was that they tended to say what they really thought.