"Do you think," she asked Zeke, "that we should aim a little bigger? At least on your end? There's not much I can do to bring more money in. But if you don't change up, we're going to be working almost every other day. We burn through money so fast, what with motels and eating in restaurants."

"A man has to know his capabilities," he said. "Look at your father if you ever doubt the wisdom of that."

Natalie didn't have much affection for her father, but hearing him criticized caused the usual defensive reflex. "My father lost his temper at a bad moment, that's all. He was good at what he did."

"Yeah, but he got in over his head, didn't he? That's all I'm saying. He tried to be a big shot and ended up crossways with the wrong guy. Look, I learned how to do this. I paid attention, I listened. Small is the way to go. Small towns, small places, as close to state lines as possible. Just be patient."

As if she hadn't already waited forever, as if she hadn't proved she was more patient than almost any woman on the planet. She was beginning to think Zeke was a person who loved the planning, the buildup, just a little too much. She always did everything he told her to do, only to find there was still one more thing required of her.

There was a legend in Natalie's family about a relative, a great-uncle or something like that, who had hidden himself in a cupboard at the end of World War II and stayed there for two weeks without moving. He was the only person in his family to survive the destruction of his village. He was fourteen at the time, small for his age, and he never grew another inch after he came out of that cupboard. Natalie's mother said he was forever known as the "Little Uncle." But there were no photos of him, and Natalie's persistent questions threatened to unravel the story. (Where was the village? What year was this? Weren't the Germans in retreat by then?) Her mother finally made it clear that the Little Uncle was an article of faith in her family and Natalie was a bad sport for trying to undermine the tale. "This is what happens, when you come to America," her mother had complained at last, throwing up her hands. "Your children become Americans."

"Where are we going?" Natalie asked Zeke.

"Not Indianapolis," he said. "Too big."

"I didn't ask where we weren't going."

He gave her a look, but he liked that she had spirit, that she talked back to him.

"An-ti-ci-pation," he sang. "You'll know where we are when we get there."

"But how long?" She couldn't help thinking of Isaac, back in the trunk.

"Not long. Not long at all. Get your game face on."

The Plymouth hit a bump just then, and Natalie wondered if Zeke had done it on purpose, hoping she might cry at the thought of Isaac in his little nest. It helped if she cried, they had found that out the first time, when he had hit her. Well, not hit her, because Zeke would never hit her, just pushed her a little, shook her, when she had balked. At first she hadn't wanted to do her part, didn't see why they couldn't get by on his efforts alone. Moshe had never expected her to work. But this was a partnership, a one-two system, and Zeke couldn't do his part unless she did hers. The near miss back in Mount Carmel had convinced her of the brilliance of his plan.

But what if the story of the Little Uncle were true? What if Isaac, already small for his age, never grew into his height because Natalie let Zeke put him in the trunk? No, it was for his own safety, for his own good. Isaac was as stubborn as his father and his mother combined. He would keep trying to call attention to them, and the one thing they could not risk was being noticed. Zeke had been pounding on that point from the moment he met the children.

"Act like normal and you'll pass for normal," he kept saying. "If anyone's looking for you, they're looking just for you and the kids. They don't expect to see you with a man."

They jolted over another bump. But Isaac had those blankets and a pillow, and it was such a big trunk, and it wouldn't be for more than an hour, maybe less. An hour couldn't possibly stunt his growth. But the fear must have registered in her face, for Zeke glanced over and frowned at her, and the twins began to cry as if on cue.

"Jesus, pull it together, Nat." Zeke then called over his shoulder to the twins, "I'm going to teach you a song, a song my dad taught me when I was your age and we took trips. I'll sing a line and you sing it back to me, okay? Okay?"

The twins stammered between their tears, but the noises they made sounded like agreement.

" 'We're hitting the road'-come on, sing it back. 'We're hitting the road.' "

Natalie sang, providing cover for the twins' small, garbled voices.

" 'Without a single care!' " Zeke's voice was booming, almost too loud, and Natalie knew that his song was scaring the twins more than it was cheering them up. But she didn't want to criticize him when he was trying so hard.

" 'Without a single care,' " Natalie and the twins echoed.

" 'Cuz we're going, and we'll know where we are when we're there.' Wait-don't sing that one. But then you come in again: 'We haven't got a dime.' "

" 'Haven't got a dime,' " the twins lisped dutifully after a confused pause.

" 'But we're going, and we're going to have a wonderful time, yes, sir, we're going to have a wonderful time!' " Zeke slapped the dashboard as if they were having a wonderful time, but it all fell a bit flat in Natalie's opinion. The twins went back to crying, although not quite as loudly, and Zeke looked hopeless, his scariest look of all.

"You know," he said to Natalie, "there weren't supposed to be any kids. I told you-no kids."

"But mere are." She tried a light, careless laugh, as if Zeke were complaining about something at once trivial and beyond anyone's control, like the weather.

"There weren't supposed to be."

She let it drop, knowing him well enough by now to pick her battles. He was just being obstinate. The children couldn't have stayed with Mark. Children needed their mother. Besides, Zeke would soon love them as much as she did. Natalie had no doubt of that. Zeke would come to love them as he loved her, and they would be a real family at last.

TESS HAD NEVER DOUBTED SHE WAS A HIGHLY suggestible person. So it was only natural that Vera Peters, living on Labyrinth Road, would remind her of a Minotaur. Or perhaps thoughts of Minotaurs were unavoidable no matter where Vera Peters lived, given her enormous head, snoutlike nose, and the two tufts of white-blond hair sticking up like little horns. The short, stocky woman also was about as welcoming as a Minotaur in its lair, yanking open the door of her modest row house and bellowing "WHAT?" only after Tess had depressed the doorbell for twenty long seconds.

Or, more accurately, "VAT?" The woman's accent was thick, another surprise in a morning of surprises, the first of which was this modest, lower-middle-class neighborhood deep inside the city, as opposed to the upscale suburban home Tess had imagined for Natalie's family: Given Mark Rubin's appearance and business, not to mention Natalie's well-groomed beauty, she had assumed that the runaway wife was… well, a JAP. Tess didn't think of the Jewish-American Princess as a negative stereotype, more of an exotic species that happened to occur in Northwest Baltimore, like some butterfly found in a particular rain forest. JAPs were seldom glimpsed this far inside the Baltimore Beltway.

"Vy do you keep ringing my bell?" demanded the woman, presumably Vera Peters, although maybe she was a deranged housekeeper. If so, she was falling down on the job, judging from the dark, cluttered interior Tess glimpsed through the narrow space between door and frame. "I don't vant to buy anything-or talk about God, if that's vat you do. I have my own God, not that he does me any good. Go away, go bother someone else."