Three Fates

she hoped not.
    “I’ve never done anything special in my life. Nothing that really mattered. I’ve never stood up for myself, not really, not when it became uncomfortable or easier to fade back into a corner again. No one who knows me expects me to. Except the people in this room. She has our property,” she said, nodding at Malachi. “Yours and mine, and she doesn’t deserve it. The Three Fates belong together, and I . . .” She trailed off, flushing a bit when she realized everyone was looking at her.
    “No.” Malachi watched her. “Go on. Finish it out.”
    “All right.” She steadied herself as she’d learned to do before a public lecture. “Everyone here has a connection to the Fates and, because of them, to each other. It’s like a tapestry. The Fates spun, measured, cut the threads of Henry Wyley, Felix Greenfield, the Cunninghams, even the White-Smythes. The design, the pattern they made is already begun.”
    “You’re saying it’s all been ordained,” Jack began, but she shook her head.
    “It’s not as simple as that. Fate isn’t black or white, right or left. People aren’t just plopped down and made to follow one route in life on the whims of the gods. If that were true, we’d have to say Hitler was only a victim of his own destiny, and therefore blameless. I’m getting off track.”
    “Uh-uh,” Cleo disagreed. “You’re going under it. It’s cool.”
    “Well. I suppose what I’m trying to say is we have decisions to make, actions to take, good ones and bad ones that make up the texture of our lives. Everything we do or don’t do matters,” she said to Jack. “Everything counts at the end of the day. But the tapestry that started with the people who came before us isn’t finished.”
    “Now we’re the threads,” Malachi said.
    “Yes. We’ve begun to choose the pattern, at least individually, that we hope to make. We’ve still to agree on, to decide the pattern we want to make together. I believe there’s a reason we’ve come together like this, a reason we have a pattern to make. We have to see it through, try to find a way to complete it. I believe we’re meant to try. However foolish that sounds.”
    “It doesn’t sound foolish.” Malachi stepped toward her, kissed her brow. “Here we have the heart of the thing,” he said. “No one cups the heart of the thing in her hand quite like you do.”
    “You didn’t ask me what I’d do,” Jack commented, and Rebecca turned to him.
    “I’ll speak to this one, Tia. You’ve set your sights on the goal, and that’s it for you. You’re a single-minded man, Jack. That’s how you’ve gotten where you are in the world.”
    “Good call. Now that we’ve got that settled, we can move on to how we intend to reach that goal.”
    “That wasn’t meant to be an actual compliment.”
    “I got that, too,” he said to Rebecca. “These are photographs of Morningside, and Anita’s house. Burdett handled security upgrades on both locations.”
    “That’s handy, isn’t it?” Interested, Malachi moved over to study the photos. “That’s quite the place she’s got there.”
    “Marry a rich fool old enough to be your grandfather, wait it out till he keels over, and pull in the big pot.” Jack shrugged. “Paul Morningside was a good man, but he was deaf, dumb and blind when it came to Anita. And to give her credit, she played the role perfectly. You don’t want to underestimate her. She’s a smart woman. Her weakness is greed. Whatever she has, it’s never going to be enough—”
    “That’s not her biggest one.” Tia nearly jumped when she realized she’d interrupted. “I’m sorry. I was thinking out loud.”
    Jack angled away from the board. “What’s her biggest weakness?”
    “Vanity. Well, ego, really, of which her vanity plays a large part. She sees herself as smarter, more clever, more ruthless. More everything than other people. She stole the first Fate from Malachi. She didn’t have to. She could have bought it from him. She could have doctored an analysis to convince him the piece was of little value, or some variation of that. She stole it because it was more fun, and it fed her ego. ‘Look, I can take this right out of your hand, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ She gets what she wants, and she hurts and embarrasses someone. That adds a shine for her.”
    “That’s an excellent psychological profile for a mythologist,” Jack commented.
    “You spend your life getting