He opened the door and found Phoebe asleep facedown on the bed, right where he’d left her that evening at seven. And whereas he was relieved, he also wasn’t.

Addison finished another drink. Nearly noon. And that, he thought, was London.

The other picture that grabbed him, of course, was the photograph taken in Stowe. Taken on the last day, out in front of Jack-the-client’s condo.

In this picture, he and Tess were newly and tenderly a couple. They had only shared the kisses in the parking lot at Nous Deux and then a lot of long, meaningful looks, a few hand squeezes, and innuendo.

How was your day, you two? Greg had asked upon his return from the slopes. He was so high from his own experience of skiing and the demonstration of his prowess that he wasn’t really listening for an answer. He didn’t care how their day had been.

It was heaven, Tess said.

And Addison’s heart floated.

They belonged to each other in that picture. Addison was standing behind Tess, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder. If a stranger looked at that photograph, he would think Addison and Tess were husband and wife.

It is important not to get too caught up in your role in the lives of the deceased.

But come on! That was all Addison cared about! The house and its furnishings were boring (he would list the house at $750,000; he would get rid of everything except the pine bar and the photographs). He wanted to find himself in this house, proof of his relationship with Tess, of her love for him. Where was the proof, the evidence only he would recognize? He was drunk enough now to admit that the Tess-and-Greg-ness of this house was gut-wrenching: the photographs of them smiling, Greg’s piano, a framed copy of their wedding invitation. Addison couldn’t take any more. He wanted to find Addison and Tess. Where was Addison? Where was he?

He went into their bedroom. Which was dangerous, he knew. It was a bad neighborhood where his feelings would likely get mugged. He armed himself with a stiff drink.

He ransacked the place. First her dresser. In her top drawer, he recognized her underwear, the bras, the belts, the bathing suits. But there was other lingerie in there that he’d never seen before. Lingerie she wore for Greg. There were pajamas and nighties that he’d never seen because he and Tess had never spent the night together.

In the other drawers were shirts, shorts and skirts, pants and jeans. No Addison. Her side of the closet? Dresses, sweaters, shoes. No Addison.

Her bedside table. A book called Exploring Nature on Nantucket, with pages folded down and passages highlighted. A copy of Olivia Forms a Band. A novel called The Good Wife. Addison scanned the back. The title to this one was too rich to ignore. But Addison was too drunk to make sense of the jacket copy. And, too, he was distracted by the fact that he was sitting on Tess and Greg’s bed. He had never sat on this bed. He had not ever realized that Tess and Greg slept in a regular double bed. They must have slept on top of each other, or at the very least in each other’s arms. A demoralizing thought. He abandoned the bedside table for the desks. There was Greg’s desk, with the laptop computer, which contained, Addison knew, a music library of over fifty thousand songs. And then there was Tess’s desk and Tess’s computer. He turned her computer on.

He was shaking. The desk drawers were right there at his fingertips; he could open them. He would have to open them and decide what to do with the contents—he was the executor! He opened the drawer at the bottom. Hanging folders held… ABCs, counting, colors, shapes: kindergarten lesson plans. He shut this drawer. The other side contained more hanging folders—the twins’ birth certificates, the paperwork for the house, their medical insurance, car insurance, her diploma from Boston College, her Massachusetts teaching certificate… but no certificate of Being in Love with Addison. No Appeal to the Commonwealth for a Divorce from Greg MacAvoy.

He moved up a drawer. It was stuffed with kids’ drawings, snapshots, birthday cards, Mother’s Day cards, end-of-the-year-you’re-a-great-teacher cards. In the opposite drawer, Addison found a stack of journals. Pay dirt! With Parkinson hands, Addison lifted the journal that was on top. Open it? He did not have to open it as executor. In fact, he was pretty sure that as the sage author of Executoring for Dummies he should advise readers not to open it. It was an invasion of privacy. He should give the journals to the next of kin, unread.

Addison opened the journal. Where was he?

The handwriting was odd. It was different. It was, he realized after wiping his glasses on his shirt (as if it were his smudged lenses and not half a bottle of Jack Daniels that was keeping him from understanding just what was going on here), a child’s handwriting. And then Addison saw the date: May 1981. Tess wrote about her first communion. The wafer, she wrote, tasted like cardboard, when all along she had thought it would taste like peppermint.

He riffled through the other journals. All from her life Before. Tess’s youth and adolescence had been well documented. She despised her mother, worshipped her father, her grandmother was sick, the priest came to the house to administer last rites, her grandmother died. She loved her mother again; she did not want her mother to die! She was in love with a boy named Tanner who played kick ball at recess. In 1987 she wrote: When I grow up I want to be a teacher. Kindergarten or first grade. I want two kids, a boy and a girl.

Check, check. Did she want a husband who would lie to her? Did she want a bald, bespectacled lover with his own business and a heart full of love and generosity, who would worship at her feet? She did not specify.

In 1990 she wrote: This summer I want to go visit Andrea on Nantucket.