A Tangled Web

by Judith Michael

  Praise for

  A TANGLED WEB

  “The suspense . . . is tightly drawn.”

  —Booklist

  “A neat, twisty plot.”

  —Cosmopolitan

  “The web of deceit begun in Deceptions continues in this well-crafted sequel. . . . Even without having read the first novel, readers will relish this intriguing story.”

  —Library Journal

  Here’s what critics have said about the bestselling novels of

  JUDITH MICHAEL

  “A thought-provoking character study . . . with a surprising amount of suspense. . . . A sure winner.”

  —Library Journal

  “Countless layers of betrayal overlap in a tightly knit tale. . . . First-rate commercial entertainment.”

  —Publishers Weekly

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  Contents

  Epigraph

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part II

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part III

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  About the Author

  Once more, for Cynthia, Andrew and Eric

  “I think it’s the most special blessing of all: to like our children as companions.”

  —Garth Andersen

  “Oh, what a tangled web we weave,

  When first we practice to deceive!”

  —Sir Walter Scott

  Part I

  CHAPTER 1

  Sabrina took a deep breath and blew out the birthday candles—thirty-three and one for good luck—closed her eyes and made a wish. Please let everything stay the same. My children, my dearest love, my friends, my home: close and safe. And truly mine. She opened her eyes, smiling at everyone around the table, and picked up the antique silver cake cutter she had brought back from her last trip to London.

  “What’d you wish, Mom?” Cliff asked.

  “She can’t tell us,” Penny said. “Wishes don’t come true if you tell them.”

  “They don’t come true anyway,” Cliff declared. “Everybody knows that. It’s all a myth.”

  “Oh, too cynical,” Linda Talvia said, putting her hand on Marty’s arm. “Lots of my wishes came true.”

  “And all of mine,” Garth said, his eyes meeting Sabrina’s down the length of the table. “Even one or two I hadn’t thought of.”

  “They can’t come true if you don’t wish them,” Cliff scoffed.

  “Sure they can,” said Nat Goldner. “Dolores and I didn’t even know we wanted to get married, all those years ago, and then all of a sudden we were and it was exactly right.”

  “And I wished for wonderful children,” Sabrina said, “smart and fun and full of love. Was that a myth?”

  “Oh. Well, sometimes they come true.” Cliff grinned as the others laughed. “I mean, if you make the right wish . . .”

  The right wish.

  I made a wish once. So did Stephanie.

  Oh, Stephanie, look where it took us.

  Sabrina folded into herself as the others talked, remembering Stephanie, longing to hear her voice, to look into her eyes and see her own eyes gazing back at her, her own face, her mirror image, her identical twin. It’s your birthday, too, Stephanie, not just mine; you should be celebrating today; you should be—

  Here. She should be here. If Stephanie were alive, she would be sitting at this table, surrounded by the family and friends that were hers long before she and Sabrina dreamed up their plan to switch places. It had been a mad and careless idea, though at the time it had seemed like a lark, a daring adventure. One year ago, only a year, they both had had troubles in their separate lives and lightheartedly wished for a chance to live a different life, just for a little while.

  And then it became serious. And so, at the end of a trip to China, Sabrina went home as Stephanie Andersen, to a husband and two children and a shabby Victorian house in Evanston, just outside of Chicago. And Stephanie became Sabrina Longworth, divorced and living alone in the elegance of a Cadogan Square town house in London. Just for a week, they said, one week of escaping into another life, and then they would switch back, with no one the wiser.

  But they had not switched back. Sabrina broke her wrist in a bicycle accident, and Stephanie, her marriage to Garth already shaky, pleaded with Sabrina to stay in Evanston until her wrist was healed, the final X-ray taken. Then, when once again they were identical in all ways, they could safely return to their own lives.

  But the weeks of healing turned their lives upside down. Sabrina fell in love with Garth with a passion she had never known, and found a deep love for Penny and Cliff, while Garth discovered a wife quite different from the one who had been drifting away from him, whom he had barely looked at for many months. He found her enchanting and exciting, and told himself she was consciously changing herself since her trip to China, to save their marriage.

  Stephanie, in London, made new friends, and began an affair with Max Stuyvesant, a man of wealth and mystery and social connections who was involved with the world of art and antiquities. And she managed Ambassadors, Sabrina’s exclusive antique shop, growing more self-confident with each day that she pretended to be her glamorous sister. Still, they would have changed back, but first Stephanie begged for just a few more days for a cruise with Max on his yacht. One last fling, she told Sabrina. One last fling.

  And then she was dead. The yacht exploded off the coast of France, and the news came that everyone on board, including Lady Sabrina Longworth, had been killed. Sabrina and Garth went to London, where everyone mourned the loss of her sister, and in the funeral home Sabrina said goodbye to Stephanie, almost blinded by tears of loss and guilt. At the funeral, trying to tell the truth, she fell to her knees beside the grave, crying, “It wasn’t Sabrina who died . . . It wasn’t Sabrina . . . !” But no one would listen; they said she was unbalanced by grief. And Sabrina, in a turmoil of despair and confusion, could not fight them.

  And so she returned to Stephanie’s family. She knew it could not last—she could not build a life on a deception—but for the next three months, weaving through her grief was a happiness greater than any she had ever dreamed of: passionate love with a strong man; warmth and cherishing and humor with two bright, loving children.

  But by Christmas, almost four months after the sisters switched places, before Sabrina had gathered the strength to tell Garth she was leaving, he unraveled the deception himself. Enraged, he ordered her out of his life, out of his children’s life. She fled to London, her world in ruins from that mad act she and Stephanie had so carelessly committed.

  But, alone in his home, Garth slowly came to understand the depth of Sabrina’s love for him and his children. He understood that she, too, had been trapped by the deception. And he knew that he loved her more deeply than he had ever loved before.

  “Stephanie? You still with us?”

  Sabrina started slightly and saw Nat Goldner looking at her with concern. Nat, the close friend, the doctor who had set
her wrist when she broke it one year ago, looking at her with affection. “I’m sorry,” she said with a small smile, “I guess I drifted away.”

  Garth came to sit on the arm of her chair. “It’s usually professors who get accused of that, not professors’ wives.” He put his arm around her. “This isn’t an easy time.”

  “You’re thinking about Aunt Sabrina, aren’t you?” Penny asked. “It’s her birthday, too.”

  “I miss her,” Cliff said. “She was lots of fun.”

  Tears filled Sabrina’s eyes, and Dolores Goldner leaned forward. “How awful for you, Stephanie; such a happy day, but filled with sadness, too.”

  “I guess I need to be alone for a few minutes,” Sabrina said, standing up. “Cliff, you’re in charge of cutting more cake.” She leaned down and kissed Garth lightly. “I won’t be long.”

  She heard Cliff taking orders for seconds as she climbed the stairs to the bedroom. The bedside lamps were on; the sheet was turned back on either side of the four-poster bed; their clothes had been put away. Wonderful Mrs. Thirkell, Sabrina thought. I brought her from Cadogan Square in London, where her only concern was Lady Sabrina Longworth, and plunged her into a family of four in an old three-story house that always needs repairs, and in the eight months she has been here she has never once seemed flustered.

  Lady Sabrina Longworth. Sabrina sat on the curved window seat and looked into the front yard, palely lit by streetlights and the windows of neighboring houses. There is no such person as Lady Sabrina Longworth anymore, she thought. Mrs. Thirkell calls me, from habit, “My lady,” to the children’s endless amusement, but Sabrina is dead; to the world, she died on a cruise with Max Stuyvesant last October. To me, she died when I realized I could never go back to my own identity, because that would give away the deception to Penny and Cliff. They would know that their mother had thought it would be a lark to pretend to be Sabrina Longworth, free and on her own in London while her sister took her place at home. They would know that their mother had been traveling with a man not their father when she was killed. I could not let them know that. And so there is no more Sabrina Longworth. And often I miss her, miss being her, miss living her life.

  But she had been Stephanie Andersen for a year of love and discoveries, and most of the time she missed her other life simply as a child misses a bedtime fairy tale: something dreamlike and perfect, not real. Not real, Sabrina told herself. Not real. Below, on the dark grass, she spotted Cliff’s T-shirt, tossed to the side that afternoon in the heat of an impromptu soccer match. That’s what is real: all the little things and the big ones that make a family. That was my wish, a year ago, when I wanted to live Stephanie’s life. And it came true.

  But it came true with a terrible dark side.

  Because Stephanie died. And because she was murdered.

  “You’re not responsible,” Garth said from the doorway. “You couldn’t know what would happen, and there was nothing in your life that led her inevitably to her death.”

  “I tell myself that,” Sabrina said, her voice low. “But I keep wondering . . . How did the police know that the bomb was put on the ship just to kill Max? What if it was to kill Stephanie, too? Because to them she was Sabrina and she might have gotten involved in something. Once, when I was at Ambassadors after the funeral, I was sure that was what happened, that she had said something that made them feel threatened. I don’t know, I just don’t know. But if I hadn’t been so happy here, I might have pushed her to tell me what she was doing, what Max was doing, and whether she knew anything about it. Maybe I could have warned her. I knew those people and she’d just met them. But all those months I was living her life. happier than I’d ever been and turning my back on everything over there. I never asked.”

  Garth sat behind her on the window seat, his arms around her, and Sabrina rested against him. “Maybe couldn’t have done anything. I don’t know. But I do know that all I really cared about was you and the children—”

  “Listen to me, my love.” His voice was patient; they had gone over this so many times, but still he went through it each time as if it were the first. “You told me you’d talked to her about the forged artworks and she handled the whole thing brilliantly. She kept Ambassadors out of that scandal; she protected its reputation as if it were her own shop. You did warn her to stay away from Max, not because he was the head of a smuggling operation—none of us knew that until it was too late—but because you’d never liked him or trusted him. She had plenty of information from you, and she probably had learned a lot more that you didn’t know. She was a smart, grown-up woman who chose her own path. You can’t hold yourself responsible for the choices she made.”

  “I know, I know. But”—she looked around the room—“I have all this, I have everything, and she—”

  “Yes, I think of that.” Garth turned her in his arms and kissed her. “My dear love, I think of that more than you know. But I cannot feel guilty for what we have found.”

  “Mommy, don’t you want to open your presents?” Penny stood in the doorway, her eyes wide and worried. “Are you sick or something? Everybody’s worried about you.”

  Sabrina smiled. “Everybody?”

  “Well, Cliff and me. ’Cause if you forgot about your presents . . .”

  “I must be sick.” She laughed and hugged Penny. her somberness lifting.

  Garth gazed at her beauty and thought of all she had been to him since last Christmas, when he had brought her back from London. She had played the shabbiest trick that could be played on someone close and vulnerable, but it had not been done from malice, and in the end, she had been trapped by her love for them and theirs for her. And who could have foreseen that? he mused. We’d never even liked each other very much.

  But she had changed in the years since he had first met her, and she changed again, living with them, so that, after a while, she truly was not always sure which sister she was, and that was another way she was trapped. Once Garth realized that, he let himself love her with a passion greater than any he had ever known with Stephanie or anyone else.

  “So can we go?” Penny asked. “We’ve been waiting and waiting . . .”

  “You’re right, it’s time,” Sabrina said. “But where are the presents?”

  “We hid them in the best place! Guess where!”

  “Oh, Penny, can we play guessing games later? Why don’t you just put them in the living room? Then Mrs. Thirkell can clear the table.”

  “Okay. On the coffee table or the couch or . . . ?”

  “You decide,” Garth said firmly. “We’ll be down in a minute.”

  Penny gave them both a swift look, seeking reassurance, then gave a little nod and dashed out. Sabrina turned again to Garth and kissed him. “I love you. I’m sorry I get so . . . lost, sometimes.”

  “It’s not something you choose. But it is getting better, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes, of course. Time, and so much love, and wonderful kids who demand a lot of attention . . . Do you know, I find myself thinking about Stephanie and then I tell myself, ‘I’ll think about her later, after I have my conference with Cliff’s teacher or take Penny shopping or help Linda with an estate sale . . .’ and I do, in snatched minutes, but then you come home and everything seems wonderful because you’re here . . .”

  Garth’s arms tightened around her. “Everything is wonderful. And I won’t allow us to deny what we’ve found, and that it gets more astonishingly wonderful all the time.”

  “Do you know what I wished when I blew out the candles?”

  “Penny says you’re not supposed to tell anyone.”

  “You’re not ‘anyone,’ you’re my love, and I can tell you anything. I wished that everything would stay the same. You, the children, this house, our friends. I want it all to stay just as it is.” She gave a small laugh. “Dolores would say that’s because no woman wants to have any more birthdays past thirty.”

  “But the truth is, you wished it because it took us so long to find
what we have. I wish it, too, you know, every night when I’m falling asleep with you in my arms. I’d hold back the clock for you, my love, but that’s not my branch of science. Come on, now, we’d better get to those presents. Mine isn’t there, by the way. I’ll give it to you later, when we’re alone.”

  “Is it so private? The children will be disappointed. Remember when I tried that with your birthday present.”

  “Oh, Lord, I suppose you’re right. Where do children get these ironclad ideas about appropriate family behavior? Well, okay, but it is private and special; you’ll understand when you see it.”

  “How mysterious.” Sabrina took Garth’s hand and they walked down the stairs and into the living room, where the others waited.

  “Thirteen years married and still holding hands,” said Marty Talvia. “We should drink a toast to that. And it so happens that I brought a special port for the occasion.” He reached over the back of the couch and retrieved the bottle he had hidden there. “And the admirable Mrs. Thirkell has provided glasses, so I shall pour while Stephanie opens presents. You’d better start, Stephanie, or your kids will explode with waiting.”

  Penny had placed three packages on the coffee table, and Sabrina removed the wrapping paper from the two top ones, opening them at the same time. “Oh, how lovely!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been wanting a new necklace. Penny, how did you know? And is this candleholder made of walnut. Cliff? It’s perfect with our new tablecloth; we’ll use it tomorrow night.”

  “We made them in school,” Cliff said. “Dad said it was better to make things than buy them.”

  “Of course it is. I love whatever you give me, but it’s special when you make something yourself. And I love you. More than anybody in the whole—”

  “Except for Dad,” said Cliff.

  “Always except for Dad.” Over their heads, Sabrina met Garth’s eyes. “Always.”

  “Port,” said Marty Talvia, handing small glasses to the six of them. “Penny and Cliff, you’ll have to wait a few years.”