Lea looked at her skeptically. "Was that the whole reason you came over here, to get dibs on my jewelry? Maybe you made up the whole story about this gold bracelet. Maybe you've never even met Wink."

"I met him. I talked to him just last Friday." At least this was the truth.

"What did he say?"

"He said you were very good to him, that you had a good marriage." And this was sort of true.

Lea might have pressed her for more details, but a key was turning in the lock. Tess assumed it would be her mother and the children, but there was only one person, someone with a heavy, irregular tread. A tanned man in a navy windbreaker came into the room. It took Tess a second to place the familiar face in an unfamiliar place. Paul Tucci. Tooch.

"Oh, Tooch!" Lea said. "Wait until you hear, this woman is from Weinstein's Jewelers, where Wink bought me the most beautiful bracelet last week." She held up her arm so he could inspect it.

"Weinstein Jewelers? That a fact?" Tucci stared at Tess, who hoped he would not be able to match her to the sweat-slick cyclist from Durban 's. Certainly Wink's conquests and would-be conquests must blend together over the three decades he and Wink had known each other. "When did you say Wink stopped by?"

"I didn't, but it was recently. Just last week."

Tucci looked at Lea's face. You couldn't call it happy, but it was slightly more animated than the dull, flat countenance that had greeted Tess. Lea was looking at the bracelet, as pleased as a child. Over her head, Tess shot Tucci a pleading look. Yes, I did something really shitty, but don't take this away from her. Let her believe her husband did something nice for her before he died.

"Nice work," he said. "Very classy. Maybe I'll stop by Weinstein's, pick up something for my mama's birthday."

"Call first. I'll personally help you."

"Oh, I'm counting on that," Tucci assured Tess.

Tess was just pulling out of the Cotswolds when she caught the latest traffic report on the radio. "An accident on the inner loop of the Beltway has traffic there backed up all the way from Providence to Security," announced a cheerful man who happened to be hovering above it all in a helicopter. "Better find an alternate route unless you have a lot of time to kill."

This day was just getting worse and worse. Sighing, Tess snapped off the radio and resigned herself to making her way home along secondary streets. But her mind was still back at the Wynkowskis'. Would Tucci tell Lea who she really was? How dear a friend did someone have to be to warrant his own house key?

Preoccupied, she didn't notice she was on Route 40, not even a mile from her parents' house, almost as if her car had a homing device. Perhaps the Toyota was looking out for her best interests: surprise visits were worth big, big points in her family. And her mother had sounded a little plaintive at the hospital. A drive-by schmoozing, if handled properly, might erase all Tess's other demerits.

The Monaghans lived in a too-big house in Ten Hills, a neighborhood that had run to huge Catholic families when Tess was growing up. Six kids, eight kids, ten, eleven, twelve. This was normal; it was Patrick and Judith Monaghan, with just one child, who had seemed freakish. Tess's classmates had assumed the Monaghans hadn't had more children because they eschewed sex, an abstinence adolescents found admirable in their parents. Tess had seen no reason to disabuse her friends of this notion. How much more embarrassing for them to find out her parents were certifiable voluptuaries. But now that she was grown, she was secretly proud her parents' marriage was still a passionate one.

Judith was sitting at the kitchen table, rubbing a foot just freed from an Italian pump, and reading the morning paper. For a second, Tess saw her as the rest of the world must see her-not as her maddening, monochromatic mother, but as a handsome woman, even a pretty one. She was both right now, her face smooth, without the frown lines her daughter so often provoked.

"Tess!" Judith cried when she sensed her standing there. Then, almost reflexively: "Your hair."

Tess put a hand up to her forehead, unsure what offense her hair had committed this time. It was loose, which her mother usually preferred to other styles-the long braid down the back, the ponytail low on the neck. Wait, here was the problem: she had used an old plastic headband to hold it back, one in a tortoiseshell pattern. Her mother did not approve of headbands for females over fourteen. Judith wore her glossy brown hair in a short, thick pageboy, which required exactly twenty-five minutes with a blow-dryer every morning. And today's outfit was perfect, as always, if not exactly fashionable. Navy shoes, now discarded, navy hose, navy skirt, white silk blouse, and navy jacket. Her earrings were lapis, dark enough to match the suit, and set in silver, which went with the silver beads at her neck.

"When a woman turns thirty, she shouldn't have a mane," Judith chided. "You need to shape it."

"I was in a hurry this morning. I've been working on special assignment."

"As an…investigator?" Her mother was lukewarm about the job with Tyner. When Tess was unemployed, she had insisted any job would do. Now she longed for Tess to be a professional, someone with regular hours, a fat salary, and a thin husband.

"Yes, as an investigator, although this is a contract job. But I think I'm suppose to keep things confidential. Like a lawyer."

The word "lawyer," even in passing, had a softening effect on her mother. If Tess worked at a law firm, perhaps she would go to law school and become someone Mrs. Monaghan could brag about, ever so casually. Better yet, maybe she'd meet a doctor on a malpractice case. Tess knew how her mother's mind worked.

"Would you like something to drink as long as you're here? A Coke? Tea?"

Although still full from her Marconi's lunch, Tess knew this was a cheap way to make her mother happy. "Tea would be nice. Let's have a cup together."

The kitchen had been redone three years ago, and it reflected Judith Monaghan's single-minded approach to color. Almost everything was white-walls, cabinets, appliances, the tile floor-with a few red and blue accents placed carefully throughout. As the water boiled in a bright blue teapot, Tess took down fire engine red mugs. The spoons, the everyday ones, had blue wooden handles. A bright red Le Creuset casserole sat on a back burner. When spring was further along, there would be red and blue flowers in a white vase on the whitewashed table. Perverse Tess sometimes longed to bring her mother pink tulips, or something yellow, to see if Judith could tolerate these unchosen, clashing colors.

"Forsythia," she said out loud, and her mother looked out the bay window in the front, to the row of ancient forsythia beginning to bud.

"I told your father to cut it back last fall, but I think he got carried away. It looks straggly, doesn't it?" Then, without transition, without any change in inflection, "That car again."

A brown car, with ever-larger portions of salmon showing through, was driving slowly down the street, the Buick that had trailed Tess the night before. Damn, my car is in plain view. But it seemed unlikely they could have followed her today, from downtown, through the maze of the Cotswolds and on her aimless journey. Were they keeping tabs on everyone close to Spike?

"Again. You said, ‘That car again.' Have you seen it before?"

"It was here on Saturday, when we got home from the hospital. It drove up and down a couple of times, so I called the neighborhood patrol. That's one good thing about the mayor's people moving into this neighborhood. You get action when something is going on."