Addison turned off the car. He wasn’t sure that he could go into that house and pull off the acting job that was required.

“He killed her,” Addison said.

Phoebe turned to him. “What?” she said.

There had been a text message, sent to his phone at quarter to ten that morning. Addison had been in his office, reviewing the purchase-and-sale agreement for the big deal. He saw that the text was from Tess and he willed it to say I love you—he found he needed constant reassurance of this from her—but when he opened it, it said, I’m afraid.

He had stared at the message, wondering how to respond. Tess was right to be afraid. Addison himself was terrified. Greg was pulling out all the stops to win her back. She had to be careful, she had to resist him! The text came just as they would have been sailing out of the harbor, so Addison thought that Tess meant she was afraid of the water. She had nearly drowned in Dorchester Bay as a child. She swam with her kids at the beach, but only on the north shore, where the water was placid, and even then she went right in and came right out. When her kids were swimming in Addison’s pool, she stood at the side, vigilant, even though Chloe and Finn had suffered through years of swimming lessons, born from this very same fear. Sailing, fishing, boating, snorkeling, scuba diving, even the ferry back and forth to the mainland, made Tess uncomfortable. She remembered what it had been like, at age nine, to slip under the water’s surface and not be able to fight her way back up.

Addison shuddered.

Phoebe said, “I think we should offer to take the kids.”

“Let’s go in,” Addison said.

The Drake house was not the Drake house. There was no food or drink, no music, no Delilah. In the living room, Jeffrey sat with the Chief, face-to-face, saying nothing.

Addison said, “We’re here.”

The two men nodded.

Phoebe said, “Where’s Delilah?”

“In our bedroom,” Jeffrey said. “Waiting for you.”

Phoebe said, “Where are the kids?”

“Downstairs.”

“Do they know?” Addison asked.

“Not yet,” the Chief said.

“We’ll take them,” Phoebe said. “We have lots of room.”

“Phoebe—” Addison said. He should have headed off this notion while they were still outside. No one was going to be comfortable with Addison and Phoebe taking even temporary custody of the kids.

“One step at a time,” the Chief said.

“Where’s Andrea?” Addison said.

“Asleep upstairs,” the Chief said.

“Asleep?”

“The doctor gave her something. She can’t handle it. Tess was… everything to her.”

She was everything to me, Addison thought. And no one will ever know it.

I’m afraid, the text had said.

Phoebe tiptoed down the hall to Delilah. Downstairs, Addison could hear the kids.

“What happened, exactly?” Addison said.

“It’s not clear,” the Chief said. “The boat capsized, they drowned. They got caught underneath the boat. Greg’s foot was tangled in the ropes. They had been drinking.”

Addison pictured Tess and Greg on the deck of the boat, drinking champagne, eating strawberries, kissing. Talking—about what? There was so much anger between the two of them, so much suspicion and confusion about what had happened the previous fall with April Peck. Greg had never come clean; he stuck to his preposterous story. Addison had asked him once when they were both very drunk: “Tell me what happened, man. The truth.”

And Greg had hesitated, as if thinking about it. Could he trust Addison? He and Addison were very close friends. But in the end, the answer must have been no. He said, “Man, I already told everybody the truth.”

It ate away at Tess. Her trust in Greg had been destroyed. She didn’t believe in anything anymore: not marriage, not friendship. She had fallen in love with Addison. Or she claimed to have fallen in love. Addison worried that Tess was using him unconsciously (God, of course unconsciously, the woman didn’t have a mean bone in her body) to get back at Greg. She still cared what Greg thought; she worried what Greg did, where he went, whom he saw.

“The Coast Guard retrieved their things. Greg’s guitar, the picnic basket, their shoes…”

“He killed her,” Addison whispered. He said this to himself. He was in such agony he couldn’t help it, and he didn’t care if they knew what he thought. They did not hear him.

The Chief said, “Greg thought he was a better sailor than he was. He had no business trying to get them to the Vineyard. I should have stopped them.”

“I should have stopped them,” Addison said. He had been dying to tell her not to go; he had wanted to give her an ultimatum. If you love me, you won’t go. But at the time he hadn’t seen that this would accomplish anything besides upsetting Tess and, possibly, learning some things he didn’t want to know. Such as that she still loved Greg, despite her anger and distrust. Such as that if Addison forced her to choose—him or me—she would choose him.

But if he’d insisted, she might still be alive.

“I’m going downstairs now to tell the kids,” the Chief said.

“Or I could do it,” Jeffrey offered.

“I had pictured this as Andrea’s territory,” the Chief said. “But she isn’t capable.”

“And neither is Delilah,” Jeffrey said.