Addis flipped through the scrapbook. Margaret’s report cards from grade school. Always straight As. A picture of her next to a handmade poster that read, “Vote Mason.” Had she run for class office in middle school? A large group photo taken at what appeared to be a wedding reception. Margaret stood out—sixteen years old or so, but the same wince-like smile. And the tall young man standing to the side of the group? Was that Mumfries? On the next page was stapled a copy of Voices, the literary magazine at her boarding school. The masthead listed her as an associate editor.

“You know,” Addis said, nodding toward the emblem on Jack’s T-shirt, “maybe we should go to another ball game.”

“Sure. But the seats won’t be the same.” At opening day, months earlier, Addis had sat with the President and Jack at the edge of the playing field.

“I bet we can get some good ones.”

“I bet you can,” Jack said.

“I’ll just say they’re for you.”

Jack wiggled his mouth; it was nearly a smile.

Addis turned a bristled page. A Harvard Crimson was tucked into the book. The subscription label was addressed to a library at Yale. Addis carefully unfolded the issue. Nothing on the front page seemed significant. He gingerly opened the paper.

“What’s that?” Jack asked.

“A newspaper from where your father went to college.”

“This is one of my mom’s boxes.”

“Yes, but she must have kept it for him.”

There it was. Toward the back, a four-paragraph story with the headline, “Hanover to Star as Romeo.” The article—there was no picture—previewed a production that was to open later in the week. Addis knew the tale. Margaret had met Bob after a performance of the play. She must have saved this Crimson as a special souvenir.

“Let me see,” Jack said.

Addis held the page in front of him, and Jack looked at the short article.

But, Addis noticed, it was dated prior to the night Margaret met Bob, for the play had not yet opened. Could she have … ? he began to wonder. Had she gone to the play because she already knew Hanover would be in it? Had she engineered a chance meeting? Perhaps after that first encounter she had rummaged through the library at school and retrieved this back issue of the Crimson. But not the issue that contained a review of the play? There must have been more elaborate coverage of the production. Why go back and collect just this brief mention? Had another issue of the Crimson fallen out of the scrapbook long ago? Or had Margaret, while at Yale, been reading the newspaper of another school, searching for references to a man she did not yet know? That would have been methodical. Damn methodical.