“What are you saying, four year olds don’t listen to music? I listened to music when I was four.”

“Four year olds don’t download music,” Michael said. “Why didn’t you just get them cellphones?”

“That’s next year.” He sipped his wine, winked. “Four is too young for cellphones. What kind of parent are you?”

Michael laughed, but it occurred to him that his daughters weren’t all that far off from cellphones and laptops and cars and dating. He barely survived them going to preschool. How was he going to handle the teen years? He threw a quick glance at Charlotte and Emily, who were tearing into a new pair of presents.

They were still little girls.

Thank God.

BY FOUR O’CLOCK THE party was winding down. More accurately, the parents were winding down. The kids were still jacked sky-high on cookies, chocolate cake, Kool Aid, and ice cream.

As Tommy prepared to leave, he caught Michael’s eye. The two men gathered at the back of the yard.

“How’s the girl?” Tommy asked, lowering his voice.

Michael thought about Falynn Harris, the quiet girl with the sad angel’s face. She was the star witness – no, the only witness – in his next homicide trial. “She hasn’t spoken a word yet.”

“The trial starts Monday?”

“Monday.”

Tommy nodded, taking it in. “Anything you need.”

“Thanks, Tommy.”

“Don’t forget Rupert White’s party tomorrow. You’re coming, right?”

Michael instinctively glanced at Abby, who was cleaning the frosting off a neighborhood boy’s face, neck, and arms. The kid looked like a chubby pink fresco. “I have to clear it with command and control.”

Tommy shook his head. “Marriage.”

On the way out, Michael saw Tommy stop and talk to Rita Ludlow, a thirtyish divorcee from the end of the block. Tall, auburn-haired, shapely, she had probably populated the daydreams of every man under ninety in Eden Falls at one time or another.

Not surprisingly, after just a few seconds of chatter, she handed Tommy her phone number. Tommy turned, winked at Michael, swaggered off.

Sometimes Michael Roman hated his best friend.

BECAUSE THE INVITATIONS said noon to four, when they heard the car doors slam out front, it could only mean one thing. Abby’s brother Wallace was making his regal entrance. He was not just fashionably late. He was fashionista late. Which was all the more ironic, considering his past.

Angel-hair thin, freckled and balding, Wallace Reed was the kid in high school who ironed his book covers, the kid who would have played triangle in the school band if he hadn’t gotten smoked in the audition and ended up playing second triangle.

Today he was chairman of WBR Aerospace, pulling down something north of eight figures a year, living in a McMansion in Westchester, and summering in one of those sea-foam green Gatsby places in Sagaponack featured in Hamptons Magazine.

Still, despite his card-carrying status in Nerds Anonymous, Wallace had romanced an astonishing array of beautiful women. Amazing what a few million dollars can do for your image.

This day his belle du jour didn’t look a day over twenty-four. She wore a Roberto Cavalli halter dress and a pair of burgundy ballet flats. This according to Abby. Michael wouldn’t know a ballet flat from a flat tire.

“Now here’s a woman who knows how to dress for cake and Kool Aid,” Abby said, sotto voce.

“Be nice.”

“I’m going with Whitney,” Abby whispered.

“I’ll take Madison.” It was a running five-dollar bet they had.

“There’s my favorite sister,” Wallace said. It was the standard line. Abby was his only sister. He kissed her on the cheek.

Wallace wore a bright plum Polo, razor-creased beige chinos and green duck boots. Barney gone LL Bean. He gestured to the girl. “This is Madison.”

Michael could not look at his wife. He just couldn’t. The twins came running over, sensing fresh chum.

“And these must be the girls of the hour,” Madison said, getting down to the twins’ level. The girls did their shy act, fingers to lips. They hadn’t figured out the woman’s gift-potential yet.

“Yes, this is Charlotte and Emily,” Abby said.

Madison smiled, stood, patted the girls on their heads, like they were schnauzers. “How adorable. Just like the Brontë sisters.”

Abby shot a desperate glance at Michael.

“Right,” Michael said. “The Brontë sisters.”

Here was a party-pause longer than the one where Rock Hudson came out of the closet.

“The authors?” Madison said, blinking, incredulous. “The British authors?”

“Of course,” Abby said. “They wrote . . .”

The second longest pause.

“Wuthering Heights? Jane Eyre?”

“Yes,” Abby said. “I simply adored those books growing up. So did Michael.”

Michael nodded. And nodded. He felt like a bobble-head doll in the back window of a car with busted shocks.

The girls circled the four adults. Michael could almost hear the theme from Jaws. Presents from Uncle Wallace were like the Oscars. Best picture was always last.

“You ready for your gifts?” Wallace asked.

“Yes!” the girls chanted. “Yes we are!”

“They’re out front.”

The girls made a move to rocket across the yard, but instead waited for Wallace, taking him by the hand. They were no dummies. They knew how to work their quarry. Even though Charlotte once said Uncle Wallace smelled like pickles.

“He said they’re out front,” Michael said, once they had disappeared around the corner. “They’re. As in they.”

“I know.”

“He did not buy them bikes. Please tell me he did not buy them bikes. We talked about this.”

“He promised me, Michael. No bikes.”

Getting your daughters their first grown up bicycles was an important thing, a father-daughter thing to which Michael Roman was greatly looking forward. He was not going to let a millionaire who wore eau de gherkin take that away from him.

When Michael heard the yay come flying over the house, his heart sank. Moments later he saw his daughters come racing around the corner in their matching pink motorized Barbie Jeeps.

Oh, Jesus, Michael thought.

They’re driving already.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER the final few guests gathered in the driveway. Thanks were proffered, cheeks were kissed, promises were made, and teary little ones were bundled into SUVs – the party was over.

On the back patio, Charlotte and Emily shared a piece of chalk. They drew a hopscotch pattern on the concrete. Emily found a suitable stone in the flower garden, and the girls played a full game. As usual, they did not keep score, neither wanting to best the other in anything.

When they tired of the game, they began to draw something else on the concrete, an intricate figure of a big blue lion with a long curling tail. They worked in silence.

At six o’clock, as deep violet clouds gathered over Crane County, New York, their mother called them inside. The little girls rose, looked at their drawing. They each whispered something to the other. Then, in their private way, they hugged, and went inside.

Twenty minutes later it began to rain; huge gobbets of water falling to earth, soaking the grass, giving life to the spring garden. Before long, small ponds pooled on the patio, and the symbol was washed away.

TWO

SOUTH-EASTERN ESTONIA

The valley was silent the morning he left, as if in its stilled branches, its songless robins, its hushed streams and posing wildflowers, it knew there would soon be change.

The tall man in the black leather coat stood at the split rail fence that surrounded the main section of his property. He had already shuttered the structure, armed its systems, and programmed its photosensitive lighting grid. From the outside the dwelling – although not a large house by any means, not by the standards of the young “minigarch” Russians who had begun to buy property throughout Estonia – appeared to be a sturdy but humble building. Inside, in its heart, in the heart of its builder and owner, it was a fortress.