The Castaways

ADDISON

A ddison’s memory, in regard to Tess, went back only as far as the first time he had kissed her. December 27, in Stowe, Vermont.

He wasn’t sure if he could go back and think about it. Well, wait, maybe, give him a minute. It was sort of like asking him if he could go down and touch his toes now that his femur was broken. But then it occurred to him that all he had left of Tess were these memories, and since no one knew about their relationship, there was no one in the world to talk to about it other than himself. It had crossed his mind to make a truly mind-blowing announcement at Jeffrey and Delilah’s house following the reception. Why not just confess? Make a scene? But Addison loathed scenes. Even now, when he thought about Phoebe shrieking in the parking lot of the Galley, he closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. Never mind the way she’d shattered like a teacup on September 11. Addison decided not to come out with the truth for many reasons—and really, his distaste for scenes was at the bottom of the list. First of all, he didn’t want to hurt Phoebe. Second, he loved his friends, and he wanted to keep them. And somewhere in there was another niggling reason: he feared that if he told everyone that he and Tess had fallen in love, no one would believe him.

Why? Because Tess was married to Greg, who had muscles chiseled out of mahogany, a voice that fell somewhere between Frank Sinatra and John Mayer, eyes that made even Florabel, the receptionist in Addison’s office, who was a lesbian, tremble with nerves and excitement so that she almost spilled her coffee every time Greg walked in. Why why why would Tess turn around and have an affair with Addison, who was bald and bespectacled, and who could not even get his own wife to kiss him with tongue?

No one would believe it. They would laugh.

In your dreams!

But it had happened. It was real.

They had all gone to Stowe on the day after Christmas, for what was their sixth (and final) group vacation. Adults only, five days of ski and apres-ski. Addison had gotten hold of the 4br condo for free in the usual way, which was to say that a man who had bought a five-million-dollar piece of land on Pocomo Point from Addison in the fall had offered the condo to Addison as a thank-you for doing the deal.

Addison said, Oh, really, Jack, it was nothing.

Jack said, Take the condo. Week after Christmas, it’s yours. Wife and I are going to St. Barts.

The group vacations were always fun. They were always the best (though in Addison’s mind the best of the best had been Vegas, and every trip since had been an earnest attempt to live up to Vegas). This trip to Stowe was especially handicapped because of what had transpired between Tess and Greg. The whole mess with April Peck had been murderous. Addison had heard only Greg’s side of the story: Tess would not forgive him. She would act like she’d forgiven him and then either something would happen (she’d bump into someone at the grocery store who would want to vent their feelings on the topic) or nothing would happen—out of the blue, she would just flip out. She would make Greg tell her the whole story again, she would get angry again, she would declare that she could never trust him again . She wanted him to quit his job, she wanted to move away, she wanted to move out.

Still, they had agreed to the trip to Stowe; they asked Cassidy Montero, on Christmas break from her freshman year at Dartmouth, to baby-sit. Greg was gung-ho about the skiing in a way that made Addison nervous. Addison, despite his many other talents and accomplishments, did not ski. He liked the atmosphere of skiing—the fire-warmed lodge, the view of a snowy mountainside, the clean air, the drinks—but not the sport itself. Addison suspected that Greg’s opinion of his own prowess was inflated—this was generally the case—but at any rate, Greg’s enthusiasm fueled a sense of great expectation for the trip.

So there they were, the eight of them, in colorful Gore-Tex parkas and snow pants, with probably a hundred zippered pockets among them. The Chief and Andrea had their own skis and boots, as did Greg, as did Jeffrey and Delilah. Phoebe had brought her ice skates and her cross-country skis and boots, all carefully preserved relics from her high school years in Wisconsin.

The condo was located two hundred yards from the parking lot of the mountain. It had two stone fireplaces, four sumptuous bedrooms, each with its own marble bath, a gourmet kitchen that Jack the Client had, as a surprise, stocked with Swiss Miss and marshmallows, fondue cheese, exotic salamis, olives, white wine, champagne, and a handle of spiced rum. A deck with an eight-person hot tub overlooked the face of the mountain; from the deck, Addison could pick out tiny figures whooshing down the trails. The furnishings were “luxe lodge”—suede sofas and deep armchairs, a coffee table fashioned from a tree trunk. There were two flat-screen TVs and a sound system with speakers throughout the house.

It was impossible to walk into that condo and feel like anyone except the luckiest person alive. If the fluffy duvet sheathed in English flannel on your bed wasn’t enough, if the deep shearling throw rugs under your feet weren’t enough (it was as if there were fur coats strewn across the floor), then step out onto the deck, where the hot tub was steaming like a cauldron, take a hot buttered rum from the tray Delilah was passing around, help yourself to a cracker topped with goat cheese and hot pepper jelly and look at the mountain while snow fell gently onto the shoulders of your Spyder ski jacket.

“Are you happy?” Addison had asked Tess. He had asked her randomly, because she happened to be standing next to him.

“Deliriously,” she had said.

Had it started there? Not quite. But Addison had been affected by that answer. Something had bloomed under his layers of goosedown, Gore-Tex, cashmere, and 100 percent cotton. He had, via the unexpected perks of his profession, been able to make Tess, who had been sad and anxiety-ridden for months, deliriously happy . What had bloomed in Addison’s chest was not love, but self-congratulation. It was a start.

In the morning, everyone drank coffee, munched toast, grabbed bananas or stored them in one of their many zippered pockets for later. Off to the mountain! The ski car—the Chief’s Yukon—was leaving.

Phoebe would take the other car, her and Addison’s Range Rover, up to the Trapp Family Lodge, where she would cross-country ski, get lunch, and have a massage. Phoebe had a little duffel packed with all her stuff, she had her boots hanging over her shoulder by the laces, and her hair was done in two braids, just like the Swiss Miss.

“Okay!” she said. “See you later!”

She looked fine, normal, happy—a woman out to relive the winter sports experiences of her youth and then indulge in the pleasures she had discovered as an adult. Addison would have been fooled had it not been for the tinny quality that her voice took on when she was medicated, as opposed to the pure, melodic silver of her actual voice, though Addison heard that sterling quality so rarely anymore that he wondered if he would even recognize it.

When he checked in the trash of their bathroom, he saw that she’d taken two Percocets (prescribed to her “for pain”) as well as her Ativan—and he knew she had secret stashes of oxycontin, valium, and Ambien with her at all times. But he wasn’t going to waste time hunting them down. He hoped she didn’t fall through a hole in the ice or get lost in the woods.

That left Addison in the condo… with Tess. He hadn’t realized it, but Tess did not end up going along with the others. She didn’t ski, though Greg had spent much of their four-hour, wine-soaked fondue dinner the night before trying to convince her to take a private lesson. Tess had been reluctant, but Greg seemed to have persuaded her in the end. And yet when Addison closed the door behind Phoebe (he stayed at the sidelight until Phoebe pulled away, wondering if it was wise even to let her drive in the snow, much less ski) and returned to the kitchen to his coffee and the Wall Street Journal, there was Tess at the table, wearing a heather gray Nordic sweater and black leggings and socks, assiduously punching numbers into her cell phone again and again.

“There’s no reception here,” she said.

“Who are you trying to call?”

“The kids. The baby-sitter.” Tess smiled, then flushed, embarrassed. “I know they’re fine, but…”

“You’re a good mother,” Addison said. “And good mothers worry.”

She set the phone down on the kitchen table and looked at him. Really looked at him with her wide blue eyes. It took him by surprise.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for saying that.” She cast her eyes down at the table. “Greg thinks it’s ridiculous how much I worry. But they’re my children. I like to know they’re okay. I like to know what they’re doing, what they’re eating, if they slept well, what they dreamed about.”

“They’re lucky to have you,” Addison said.

“I don’t want them to think I’ve just abandoned them, the day after Christmas. And the tree is still up with the lights on it, and I told Cassidy not to build a fire, but it gets so cold in our house, so then at the last minute I told her that if it was freezing then it was okay for her to build a fire, and I was up half the night worried that she would build a fire and the house would burn down…”

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Addison said. “I get it.”

Tess sighed. “I guess I’ll have to call them from town. What are you up to today?”

“I’m going to the fitness center right now,” Addison said. “Then I thought I might walk into town for some lunch.”

Tess was staring at him. She was pretty, like a doll. Of course, Phoebe was pretty like a doll, too. Phoebe was an exquisite china doll, delicate, fragile. Tess was pretty like a Bobbsey Twin, like Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island. She was cute, perky, freckled, kindergarten-teacher pretty.

“What?” he said.

“I like it that you made a plan for yourself,” she said. “You’re not worried about the others, you’re not worried about Phoebe—”

I’m always worried about Phoebe, he thought. But he would never say this to Tess.

“You just asked yourself what you wanted to do today, and you’re going to do it.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m very selfish.”

“My New Year’s resolution is to be more selfish,” Tess said. “To do things that I want to do—not that the kids want me to do, or Greg wants me to do. What I realized—this year, you know—is that I put far too much time and effort into looking out for Greg. And meanwhile, Greg is looking out for Greg. He’s doing a terrible job, of course.”

Here Tess gave a weak laugh, and Addison thought, Are we going to talk about it?

Tess paused. She looked for a moment like she was sizing him up. Was he worthy of a conversation about the big, forbidden topic?

He was not.

She said, “So one of the things I decided is that I’m going to spend more time and energy taking care of myself.” She fiddled with her iPhone; with its yellow cover, it was as bright as a child’s toy. “I don’t even know where to start.” She glanced up. “So for today, can I tag around with you?”

Had it started then? Getting closer.

Addison filled with warmth. And anticipation. Would it seem odd to the others if he and Tess spent the day together? The hallmark of these group trips had always been unexpected alliances. Addison remembered the four-hour canoe trip he and the Chief had taken during their vacation at the Point, on Saranac Lake. They had gotten lost somehow, had debarked and carried the canoe over their heads like Indians until they came across a dirt road, where they hitched a ride back to the Point with two dope-smoking hippies who seemed markedly less jolly when they discovered Ed was a police chief. That story was now legend. It remained the touchstone of Addison and Ed’s friendship.

So today would be his day with Tess.

“I’d love it,” he said.

They went to the fitness center, which was down the hill, at the base of the condo complex. Addison signed them in under Jack’s name. The place was deserted except for a very fit-looking older gentleman on the elliptical and a muscle-bound kid of about twenty-five who was wearing a complicated knee brace and pumping iron. Both the older man and the kid eyed Tess in the mirror as she stripped down to her workout clothes—a pair of incredibly flattering yoga pants and a jog bra that left the pale, toned plane of her abdomen bare. Addison wore gym shorts and the tattered gray Princeton T-shirt that he’d ordered ten years earlier from the back of the alumni magazine. It was a revolting spectacle, according to Phoebe, but it was the T-shirt he liked to work out in.

He got on the treadmill. Forty minutes, level 7 with hills, just as he did six days a week at the gym. Why did he feel like a stranger to this machine? Why did he feel self-conscious and uncoordinated? Tess was on the mat in front of the mirror, stretching. Or doing yoga—Addison couldn’t tell. She was incredibly flexible. The young guy was watching her, too; Addison was surreptitiously watching him watching her. Okay, it was impossible to exercise this way. Addison put on his headphones and tried to keep up with the pace he’d set.

He gave it more than usual. He gave it too much. He was running at a 9 with hills, he was sweating like a wild boar, the Princeton T-shirt was dark and sopping. Addison’s face was red, and he was forced to remove his glasses because they kept slipping down his nose. He set them on the tray next to the Newsweek he was too pumped up even to open, but without his glasses, he couldn’t see Tess. Or rather, he could see her—first on the exercise bike, then doing sit-ups on the inclined bench, then lifting weights and chatting with the young stud in between sets. But Addison’s eyes were very bad (everyone told him to get Lasik surgery, but he could not abide the thought of a laser or anything else touching his eye), and hence he could not see Tess’s facial expression, he could not see the muscles in her stomach tense and release with the sit-ups, and he could not hear clearly what she was saying to the young stud. Blind people, apparently, had a keen sense of hearing to compensate for not being able to see, but without his eyeglasses, Addison felt completely adrift. He might as well have been up on the mountain, buried in a snowbank. He heard Tess laugh, heard her say “Nantucket,” heard her say, “Oh, that’s too bad. Such bad luck.” Maybe this guy was telling her the reason for the knee brace. (Ski accident, Addison guessed. Torn ACL .) It was as if Tess and the guy were speaking a foreign language, and not one of the three Addison was fluent in.

Had Tess noticed him? Did she see how fast he was flying up one electronic hill after another?

He realized simultaneously that he was trying to impress Tess and that he was jealous of the kid with biceps the size of grapefruits and a sympathy-evoking knee injury. Jealous! But no, not possible. He asked himself: if some blond, hulking Adonis on the cross-country trail decided to accompany Phoebe and then later join her for lunch, would Addison be jealous? The answer was no. Men hit on Phoebe regularly because she was so beautiful, and Addison’s prevailing emotion for these men was pity.

She doesn’t see you. And even if she does see you, she won’t let you in. She lives in a chamber where there is only enough oxygen for one.

Addison got off the treadmill shakily. He was going to have a heart attack. He staggered around on the AstroTurf carpet, disoriented for a second about which way was up. He collapsed onto the floor and put his head between his knees. His vision was blurred. Then he realized he needed his glasses! But he didn’t have the energy to stand up and retrieve them.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see the older gentleman.

“Are you okay?” the gentleman asked.

There was an audible gasp in the gym. Tess set her weights down on the bench.

“Addison!” she said. “What’s wrong?”

Well, he had trumped the kid in the knee brace. But Addison wasn’t after Tess’s sympathy; he had wanted to be impressive. He had wanted Tess to see that although he wasn’t careening down the side of a mountain at thirty miles per hour with two Popsicle sticks strapped to his feet, he was still an athlete.

“I’m fine,” he said, smiling. He could not see her expression, though she was standing right over him. “Never better. That was a great workout!”

Tess said, “You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. I’m just cooling down.”

“Okay,” she said. “Great! I have three sets left. Bill is helping me with my form. He was on the ski patrol here, but he hurt his knee jumping from the lift. He was trying to rescue a little boy.”

Sounded like a load of shit to Addison, but he said, “Wow! Okay, I’m going to do some stretching and we’ll leave when you’re ready.”

No doubt about it: Addison was jealous.

Tess giggled. “It was so cute. Bill thought you were my husband .”

They walked out of the fitness center into a light snow. With the fir trees and the condo units looking like Alpine chalets, and the snow coming down so softly that the flakes seemed suspended in the air, it was so lovely and peaceful that when Addison spoke, he whispered so as not to disturb the silence.

“Do you want to go back to the condo to shower, or should we just go for our walk?”

“Let’s walk,” Tess said.

There was a path that led out of the condo complex and headed down, parallel to the mountain road. The path was in the woods, and there were small footbridges that delivered them over tiny streams.

“It will lead us into town eventually,” Addison said. “And you can call your kids and we can get some lunch.”

Tess linked her arm through his. “You are such a prince.”

“I aim to please.”

They walked along ten steps, and then twenty, with Tess’s arm twined through his.

This, for Addison anyway, was when it began. Because this was when he started to feel like he was fourteen years old. Tess’s arm through his was a distraction, but he realized he would be crushed if she separated from him. But then he worried: did she want to separate from him?

This was also when Tess asked, “How is Phoebe doing?” in a grave way, as though Phoebe had cancer. And instead of giving his usual sunshine-and-butterfly answer of She’s fine, great, really great, Addison expelled what felt like all the air from his lungs and said, “I just don’t know.” It was the honesty of his answer that opened the floodgates between them. They were going to talk, really talk, really open up, really share things about their respective marriages that they would never think of sharing with the rest of the group. He told Tess everything as they walked. It was easy, the words flowed out of him; he told her everything he would have told a therapist, but both he and Phoebe had given up hope in therapists. Addison and Tess crossed bridges and left matching sets of footprints in the snow. Addison found he couldn’t talk fast enough.

Addison told the truth. He said things like Phoebe is not the woman I married. She’s changed. But that doesn’t do it justice. She emigrated. She’s a refugee of her grief. It has colonized her, reorganized her. She’s different down to her cells, her molecules. And it’s eight years later. So it’s not grief anymore, it’s the drugs. The so-called medication, the substances applied to her pain. They are her captor now, and she suffers from Stockholm syndrome. She loves the drugs. They are more important to her than Reed ever was.

Tess knew how to listen (perhaps this was a result of having a classroom full of five-year-olds vie for her attention one hundred and eighty days a year). She did not automatically take Phoebe’s side, as Addison had expected (“Let me play devil’s advocate here…”). She was hearing Addison’s side; she was—still!—holding on to Addison’s arm.

Addison said, Our sex life is a shambles. Once, twice a year, and only when she’s been drinking.

Tess said, That must be difficult. To have this gorgeous woman right there in your bed and not be able to touch her.

I’m used to it, Addison said. That is the screwed-up thing. I am used to a crippled marriage.

They reached town—a charming covered bridge, a steepled church. Because it was a heavy-lidded, gray day, all of the twinkling Christmas lights were on. Snow-dusted wreaths hung from lampposts. They strolled past shops with cheese and chutney, maple syrup, nutcrackers, wind chimes, pottery, wine and spirits, specialty kitchen equipment, woolen hats, gloves, scarves, sweaters.

“Anywhere you want to go in?” Addison asked.

“Maybe later,” she said.

“Want to call your kids?” he asked.

“Yes!” she said. She decided to call from the middle of the covered bridge, leaning on the railing, overlooking the river. “It is so liberating to be here with you. Every time I call the kids around Greg, I feel guilty, like I’m sneaking a cigarette. Ridiculous, right? Because if anyone should feel guilty, it’s Greg.”

Addison let that comment hang for a second. Were they going to talk about it?

But at that second the baby-sitter answered, and Tess said, “Cassidy? Hi, it’s Tess! How is everything?”

She was visibly lighter when she got off the phone. “It’s snowing at home! Cassidy is taking them to sled at Dead Horse Valley, and then home to have hot chocolate and change into dry clothes. Then she’s taking them for dinner and a movie at the Starlight. They’ll be in bed at eight-thirty, which is very late, but what the heck, it’s vacation!” She grinned at Addison. She was wearing a red cashmere hat, and the curled ends of her dark hair poked out beneath it. She was lovely. Addison was overcome with the desire to kiss her. Kiss Tess MacAvoy! He was sure he would be struck by lightning or the railing he was leaning on (indeed, depending on for support—after the treadmill and three miles of walking, his legs were shot) would give way, dumping him into the icy river.

“What do you want to do now?” he asked.

“Lunch!” she said.

It was, they agreed afterward, the lunch of a lifetime. They went to a small French cafe called Nous Deux (We Two) that had a blackboard menu and banquettes that used to be church pews and were now upholstered in bright Provencal fabrics. The woman who seated them was the owner, Sandrine, a Quebecoise, Addison discovered, as he and Sandrine chatted for a moment in French. Sandrine was visibly delighted by Addison’s French. He asked for a table in the corner. He and Tess each slid onto a pew and Sandrine left them with the menus and the wine list.

Tess said, “You speak French so beautifully.”

“Six strict years with Madame Vergenot and two and a half years in Paris working for Coldwell. Would you like wine?”

“Wine?” she said, as if he were suggesting an all-night rave at an underground club on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. He remembered suddenly that this was Tess, who during the course of a normal week drank milk at lunch, out of one of the small cartons they gave the kids. But then she said, “Sure. Why not?” with a wicked little grin on her face.

So, really, really really, it had started then, with Tess’s renegade decision to throw caution to the wind and drink wine at lunch with Addison. Addison ordered the most expensive bottle on the menu, a Mersault he positively adored but that one could rarely find on a wine list. Ordering this wine and then praising Sandrine for the fine selections on her list incurred even more favor with this woman than speaking French had. She loved Addison and Tess! She brought them the wine, she poured it lavishly. Then she whisked away their menus and said to Addison, “Allow me.”

A succession of marvels came out of the kitchen—duck confit on a gaufrette, endive stuffed with aged chevre and a balsamic fig, a platter of petits croque-monsieurs, an asparagus salad topped with a quivering poached egg. Tiny ramekins of the most decadent onion soup gratinee Addison had ever tasted. Sandrine, Quebecoise goddess, treated Addison and Tess not like husband and wife but like lovers. She set plates down, she gave a sly smile or a wink, she disappeared.

Tess, defying all precedent, was an accomplished student of such debauchery. She not only drank the wine, she savored it the way it was meant to be savored—mouthful by mouthful, over the tongue, eyes fluttering. (Addison could not help drawing a comparison. Phoebe drank wine the way she took pills: she threw it back with purpose rather than joy, then waited for the numbness to take effect.) Tess ate her food in tiny, delicate tastes. She had a child’s hands; he had always been aware of this, but what he hadn’t realized was how deft her hands were. Addison fumbled with his food (he was nervous, despite the loosening effect of the Mersault), but Tess cut little bites and popped them into her mouth quickly and neatly.

During all this time—the wine being savored (Addison bravely ordered a second bottle), the courses devoured, Sandrine appearing, then disappearing—Tess was talking. She talked about the problems she’d had getting pregnant—the two miscarriages, the baby lost at twenty-one weeks. Then she talked about the twins. She loved the twins too much, maybe, and this was what had caused her problems with Greg.

Again Addison held his breath. Were they going to talk about it? Sandrine popped the cork on the second bottle of Mersault and Tess reached for her glass and drank. And then she started to talk about It, that Sunday Night, April Peck, What April Said, What Greg Said, Holes in April’s Story, Holes in Greg’s Story. How Tess Knew Greg Was Lying. How She Begged Him to Tell the Truth, How He Stupidly Stuck by the Asinine Lies He Concocted.

Addison nodded; he tried to mirror Tess’s own listening techniques. He did not defend Greg’s side of the story. Instead, it felt like he had been looking through the wrong end of a kaleidoscope. Only now, when hearing the story from Tess, did it all make sense.

“We’ve been married eleven and a half years,” Tess said. “Andrea tells me not to let one measly night ruin so many years of hard work and devotion. But what Andrea doesn’t understand is that the ‘one measly night’ was representative of so many underlying problems in our marriage. The fact that I can’t get the truth. Greg won’t come clean! What Andrea doesn’t understand is that the hard work and devotion have been one-sided. Me giving to him.” She carefully constructed a masterpiece bite out of farmhouse bread, Roquefort, apricot preserves, and a candied pecan. Sandrine had just dropped off a cheese plate worthy of Auguste Renoir. Tess eyed the morsel thoughtfully, then looked at Addison. She had tears in her eyes.

Oh no! he thought. She was going to cry!

“I want to leave him,” she said.

“And go where?” Addison said.

Tears dripped down her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “Paris?”

It had started there. They did not need the petites tartes Tatin with Calvados ice cream that Sandrine sent out, nor did they need the chocolate truffles or the slender flutes of rose champagne. (“Billecart-Salmon,” Sandrine said. “Un cadeau.” A gift.) But they enjoyed them anyway.

Addison paid the bill with five one-hundred-dollar bills, which made Tess gasp even louder than she had at the gym when she thought he was in cardiac arrest. He whisked her out of there, stopping only to kiss Sandrine on both cheeks and say, “Le dejeuner de ma vie.”

He and Tess were holding hands as they left the restaurant. Nous Deux. We Two. That morning at eight o’clock, Tess MacAvoy had been Phoebe’s friend and, more saliently for Addison, Greg’s wife. She had been a secondary or tertiary theme in the symphony of Addison’s life; she had been a figure in the background.

Now, however, she was his.

They stood under the awning at the back door of the cafe, facing a small parking area where there was only one car, an ancient silver Peugeot—most likely Sandrine’s. Addison bent down and kissed Tess—and yes, it did occur to him that he’d consumed an entire bottle of wine, followed by a glass of champagne. He was drunk and so was she. The kiss could fail. It could be like kissing his little sister. But their lips connected and there was a spark, an electric charge, a surge of attraction. The kiss was the right thing. He kissed her again. And again. And again, and then they were kissing in the back parking lot of Nous Deux. Tess’s arms locked around him. He pulled her in. She was his now. Did she know this?

So that there was no mistaking what all this meant, he said, “I may have just fallen in love with you. Okay?”

And she said, “Okay.”

Addison was crying now. Of course he was crying. The silly, sad tears of a little boy, though he had no recollection of feeling like this as a child. This feeling was adult. There were so many things he could never bring himself to do again: he would never go to Stowe, he would never order that bottle of Mersault, he would never eat a croque-monsieur. He would never kiss anyone for the first time.

He had Tess’s iPhone, pilfered from the Coast Guard’s bag of her personal effects. He felt guilty for stealing it. But then, guess what? The Chief called to inform him that he was the executor of the MacAvoy wills.

“What?” Addison said. And because his memories of Tess started this past December, it took a while to come back to him.

He had agreed to serve as executor. Back in 2000, when Greg and Tess bought their house on Blueberry Lane. Addison was their Realtor, he was at the closing with their attorney, Barry Karsten, a big, affable fellow of Danish descent. When the papers were all signed, Barry suggested that Greg and Tess make wills. He could write them up.

“Right now?” Greg said.

“All you need to figure out is who you’d like to be the executor and what happens to the house if you both die at the same time.”

Tess said, “We’re trying to get pregnant.”

Barry Karsten said, “Okay! We’ll account for that.”

Addison had barely been listening, but he had been at the right place at the right time (or, as he’d thought of it then, the wrong place at the wrong time). Greg asked him to serve as executor. Since Greg and Tess had both taken the day off from teaching to attend the closing, Barry ended up printing out a boilerplate will for each of them. They all signed.

“And you mean to say that Greg and Tess never signed another will?” Addison said.

The Chief muttered something, throwing in the words “god-damn careless,” but under the terms of the existing wills, the twins got everything anyway. No guardians had been named for the children, and this was the thing that the Chief didn’t understand. It was an egregious oversight. But the last thing Tess and Greg had planned on was… dying.

So, put honestly, Addison knew he was the executor of Greg’s and Tess’s wills, but, like being the permanent treasurer for the Class of 1977 at Lawrenceville, he’d forgotten, because he never expected the job to have any responsibilities.

Tess’s iPhone was suddenly under his jurisdiction. All of the MacAvoy property was under his control. He would go through the house, see what was there; he would have free rein over the most intimate nooks and crannies of Tess’s and Greg’s life—the bank statements, the drawers of the bedside tables, the diaries.

It terrified him.