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.”