Diane Cleary was a hotshot realtor in her early forties. She was slender and toned, had collar-length dark-blond hair, and was wearing a navy blue suit that probably cost more than the left side of Abby’s entire closet. Her son Mark was a junior at Princeton, her to daughter Danielle was in kindergarten. Abby didn’t know her well enough to ask about the disparity, but Diane and Stephen Cleary had one of those marriages that were either hell on earth, or textbook romance perfect. Regardless, Diane had the kind of metabolism that allowed her to eat anything and everything – Abby lost count at four pieces of birthday cake at the previous day’s party – and not gain an ounce. She hated her.

Abby opened the door. “Hey.”

“Any cake left?” Diane asked with a wink. “Kidding.”

Diane stepped inside, made a beeline for the kitchen.

“Time for coffee?” Abby asked.

“No thanks. I’m showing a condo in Mahopac.”

“Say hi to Mrs Cleary,” Abby said to the girls.

“Hi,” Charlotte and Emily said, neither looking up from their egg-decorating chores.

“You know you have the cutest girls in the world.”

Now the girls looked up and smiled. Such little divas.

“You guys have to stop getting cuter every day,” Diane added. “You have to save some cute for the rest of us.” Diane looked at her own face in the toaster. A funhouse visage looked back. “I need all the cute I can get.”

Abby could almost hear the lead sinker break the surface of the water. Diane Cleary spent half her time fishing for compliments, the other half refusing to reel them in.

“Oh, I don’t think you have any problems in that department,” Abby said, taking the bait.

Diane smiled. “So who was that guy who looked like a younger, taller Andy Garcia at the party?”

“That was my husband’s friend Tommy. They work together.”

“He’s a prosecutor?”

“Yep.”

“Maybe I’ll get arrested.”

Abby laughed. “You’ll have to do it in the city.”

“Speaking of which,” Diane began, looking out the kitchen window, at the absolute blackness of the night, “I’ve never asked you this, but do you miss living in the city?”

Abby didn’t have to think about it too long. “Well, except for the noise, pollution, crime, danger, and general apathy, not so much. On the other hand, I’m not that suburban. I haven’t burned my little black dresses yet.”

Diane laughed, glanced at her watch, which probably cost the entire right side of Abby’s closet. “Anyway, I just wanted to remind you about tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? Abby wondered.

“The block sale?” Diane asked.

“Oh, right, sorry.” Twice a year a dozen or so of the neighborhood families pooled their junk and had a block garage sale, hosted by the luck, or misfortune, of the draw. Abby had done her time the previous sale. “I have the boxes in the garage.”

“Great,” Diane said. “If you have any big stuff let me know. Mark and some of his friends are coming in for Easter and they’ll be happy to haul it over.”

Abby desperately wanted to get rid of the old waterfall buffet they’d had since she and Michael were married, but it was one of the few things Michael had left that belonged to his parents. It was probably not the right time, or the right way, to dispose of it. “I’ll let you know.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Bye, girls,” Diane said.

“Bye,” they said.

Abby made a note about the block sale and put it on the refrigerator with a Care Bears magnet. She was getting terribly forgetful in her old age.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, with two dozen brightly colored eggs drying on the kitchen counters, the girls turned their attention to coloring an Easter egg drawing. Or, more accurately, a portion of an egg. Emily was drawing the top half; Charlotte the bottom. Even this was not entirely accurate. They were each drawing what would turn out to be a third of an egg – top and bottom – leaving out the center.

Charlotte was working on the top of the egg with her usual precision and care, colors never straying over the lines. Emily was working on the egg with her usual flair – bright colors, bold lines, abstract images.

Abby sipped her tea, watched with amusement and no small measure of puzzlement. The girls were leaving out the middle. It was the second year running for this. To Abby’s bewilderment, they’d made the same sort of drawings the previous Easter (and, now that she thought about it, the previous Halloween too, leaving out the center third of all their pumpkin drawings).

When they were done, Abby took the two drawings and taped them together. The edges didn’t line up, but probably would have if there had been a center to the drawing.

Why was there always a missing third to everything the girls did? Abby wondered. Three chairs at the tea table in their room, three Peppermint Patties at the store the day before. Abby tacked the big egg on the refrigerator. The two girls stood, admiring their work.

“It’s very pretty,” Abby said. “Daddy is really going to like it.”

The girls beamed.

Abby pointed to the odd shapes. At the top and bottom of the egg were a pair of strange looking little creatures. “What are these?”

“That’s a duck and a bunny,” Charlotte said, pointing to the figure at the top.

“That’s a bunny and a duck,” said Emily, pointing to the other.

On the top of the egg, the duck seemed to be inside the rabbit, and inside the rabbit looked to be another egg. On the bottom, it was the exact reverse.

To Abby it looked like the drawing she had seen in the Russian folk tale book at which the girls were looking in the library. Right down to the needle inside the egg.

Kids were like sponges, Abby thought. They absorb everything with which they come in contact.

She kissed the girls on top of their heads. “Okay, my little duck and bunny,” she said. “Let’s brush up.”

The girls giggled, then took off for the stairs and the upstairs bathroom.

Abby glanced again at the drawing. An egg inside a duck inside a rabbit. Inside them all, a needle.

WITH THE GIRLS TUCKED IN, Abby checked the messages on her cellphone. Nothing from Michael. She knew that he would call if he was going to be any later than midnight. He was out with Tommy, and she knew he wouldn’t drink too much – he never did on the night before a case started – but if it all ran late he would call, and probably crash at Tommy’s place in Littleneck.

She left a few lights on and headed upstairs.

ABBY HAD DISCOVERED Pilates in her second year at Columbia. With all the stresses of second year she had found that she was sleeping two hours a night, eating once a day – many times while cycling across campus – and drinking a bottle of sauvignon blanc just to get sleepy enough to crash for two hours and wake up with a hangover so she could pop a fistful of Advil and start all over again. She had found a yoga center near the campus that practiced Satyananda yoga, but for some reason it did not stick. She was an A-type personality, and yoga seemed a little too passive for her. She found a speed-cycling class in the West Village, and for a while that worked.

But the problems of getting there – two trains at least – stressed her out to the point where the class was only neutralizing the excess stress.

Then she discovered Pilates. The emphasis on strengthening ligaments and joints, increasing flexibility, and lengthening muscles, combining with the quality, not quantity of workout, seemed like a perfect fit.

Now it was a natural part of her day.

She slipped on the earphones, and began warming up. She stretched for a few minutes, and would soon move on to her pelvic tilts and abdominal exercises.

At first she had needed almost complete silence to practice, but when you have toddlers in the house, near silence, any silence at all, was a distant memory. In the past two years she could work out with a 747 landing in the living room. This was good news and bad news. Good news because she could grab twenty minutes when she needed it. Bad news because she, at times, seemed to block out the rest of the world. She could still hear what was going on around her, of course, but sometimes it mercifully drifted away.