Alice started with the bedroom, which she’d seen, of course, but managed to avoid ever actually entering. It was a lovely room, with elaborate white cornices and a scrolled ceiling and four tall windows that let in the morning light beautifully. At the center was an enormous bed made of burnished wood, the sheets rumpled in a way that implied sex was recently had. Suppressing a shudder, Alice cut her eyes, turned toward the dresser. A series of framed photographs lined the top, but only of Richard and Maggie, a few of Alice and Charlie. Alice walked over to Richard’s closet. When she opened the double doors, her heart sank. It could’ve belonged to any man: lots of shoes and belts, hanging suits and jackets and shirts and slacks, more ties than any one person would ever need. Alice got more aggressive in her search, looking inside every drawer, every cabinet, under every rug, behind every shelf. Other than a faint medicinal smell, the smell of a sickroom, which was probably only in her imagination—surely Martha would have been cared for in a hospital, with state-of-the-art medical equipment—there wasn’t so much as a hint, a speck, a whisper of the former occupants of the house. And she had no better luck with Richard’s office, a little messier than the bedroom, but just as impersonal.

An hour after Alice began her search, she ended it. She sat down on the top step of the staircase, wiped the sweat from her forehead, slightly ashamed of the greed of her investigation, more than slightly ashamed that the greed had failed to yield results. It was like, she thought to herself, all evidence that Richard had ever had a wife, other than the present one, or a daughter, other than the two step, had been systematically eliminated. It gave her a sort of spooky feeling. Like she too could vanish from the world without a trace.

Not that Camilla had left no trace. Quite the contrary. People seemed to remember her pretty vividly. She’d killed herself almost a year ago, and they still hadn’t moved on. Had Tommy so much as looked at another girl since? Alice bet not, not seriously. Even the fact that Richard erased Camilla’s presence from his house so completely was in itself a kind of tribute to just how unforgettable she was. Like a single reminder of her would be more than he could bear. Her absence, Alice realized, was as striking as she had been. Who besides her mother and her sister, and maybe Patrick, would remember Alice if she were to die? Her dad sure found it easy to act as if she’d never been born.