“I won’t.”

He fell onto his side as if shot. Phoebe would not accept this. She crossed the invisible boundary into Addison territory (he had the western half of the bed, she the eastern) and slid her hand beneath the drawstring waistband of his pajama pants. She touched him, hoping. But he was shriveled, flaccid. She retracted her hand and thought of apologizing.

And then Addison started to sob.

Still, she thought, she wanted something. If that something was Addison, she could wait it out; she could be as patient as he had been. She could fix their relationship—sew the head back onto the doll, rescue the fallen soufflé.

* * *

She found the poem—or it found her—on the hottest day of the summer. Addison came home from the office at four and said he wanted to stay in the pool until nightfall.

“Okay,” Phoebe said. “Just as long as you keep your head above water.” This was said lightly, though Phoebe worried that Addison would pour himself four or five bourbons, lie on his inflatable raft, fall asleep, and inadvertently slip to the bottom of the pool without her noticing. Another drowning.

He couldn’t get into his swim trunks fast enough. Addison, who was always fastidious, very sloppily emptied his pockets all over the granite countertops too close to where Phoebe was attempting both to brew iced tea and to shred a rotisserie chicken for chicken salad. Phoebe had never been much of a cook, but she had watched Delilah make chicken salad a hundred times (watched her through someone else’s prescription eyeglasses, it seemed now). It was easy. Shredded chicken, celery, chives, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and the secret ingredient, straight out of Mary Poppins—a spoonful of sugar. Tonight, Phoebe thought triumphantly, they would eat a dinner she’d prepared herself.

When Addison opened the door to go out to the pool (full Jack-over-ice in hand), the hot wind lifted the poem off the pile of debris evacuated from his pockets—the money, the change, the business cards, the single piece of root-beer-flavored hard candy, a couple of pieces of pilled red felt—and it wafted into the melee of ingredients that was to become the chicken salad.

Phoebe lifted the poem with her nails; her fingers were coated with chicken grease.

A poem! Ripped from somewhere.

She read the poem, keen to understand it. Literature was her friend now; she had finished Catcher in the Rye and was halfway through the Ellen Gilchrist. The poem was straightforward; she got it, but not really. A birthday party in a restaurant, the men’s room, someone pissing Asti Spumante. Macho! Then Phoebe came to the underlined verses. My life with you has been beyond beyond/And there’s nothing beyond it I’m seeking/I wouldn’t mind being dead/If I could still be with you.

Phoebe set the poem back down on the pile of Addison’s things and weighted it with his keys.

She had seen the poem before. She had seen it at Tess’s house. Tess had handed it to her. She’d said, Look at this. Phoebe had pretended to read it, but of course the words had been little more than ants on sugar.

It’s beautiful, she had told Tess.

Tess had sniffled a little bit. Everything made that woman cry.

Phoebe scooped mayonnaise into the bowl with abandon. Addison could not be saved. She would have to find something else to want.

THE CHIEF

He summoned them to the Begonia because he didn’t know where else to go. And because he hadn’t yet decided whether he should tell them about the tox report or keep it a secret. If they went to the Begonia, it could be passed off as simply the three of them meeting for beers. Since the evening after Greg and Tess’s funeral, they had done nothing as a group. Nothing—it was odd, and the unexpected thing was, the Chief missed it. He missed gathering, he missed drinking cold beer out on the Drakes’ deck, he missed being invited to swim in Addison’s pool, he missed Delilah’s cooking (she had a knack for always knowing what he was craving), he missed sitting on the beach in a semicircle, talking about boats and listening to the Sox game on the last transistor radio in America, which he had bought on eBay. Delilah called the house once to invite them and the twins over for a barbecue, but Andrea had said no. When the Chief asked why, Andrea said, I don’t care if I ever go over there again.

So along with Greg and Tess, something else had died.

The Chief got to the Begonia first, and Faith greeted him at the door. He kissed her rouged cheek. She said, “How you doin’?” in a way that seemed to be asking more than the obvious, and he said, “Oh, Jesus, Faith. As well as can be expected, I guess.”

Faith said, “We sure do miss him.”

He could do a little detective work here; the Begonia had been Greg’s “third place,” after home and the school. If Greg had been talking to someone who sold drugs, Faith might know about it. But it was imperative to keep things under wraps, and Faith, while a decent woman, was Nantucket’s answer to a daily newspaper. If it was happening, she would tell you about it.

He asked to be seated at the back table, the one that was shielded by half-walls. Everyone called it the Mafia Table. Normally the Chief liked to sit at the bar where he could see the TV and lend an air of neighborhood security to the establishment, but tonight he needed the Mafia Table.

He said to Faith, “I’m meeting Add and Jeffrey.”

She nodded, set down menus, and said, “Please know that Thom and I are thinking of you. And we’re thinking of Andrea.”

The Chief said, “Appreciate that.”

Faith lingered a second and the Chief panicked. He did not want to get involved in a conversation. He picked up his menu even though he always ordered the bleu burger, and Faith reluctantly wandered away.