Wiping the tears from her eyes, Adrienne went to the kitchen table, and began to make a list.

She had always been a list maker, imposing order on chaos, even if it was only on paper. When Marlena died, Adrienne had helped Deck sort through her foster mother’s belongings. She’d come upon Marlena’s trove of memorabilia: a fat folder for each child. In Nikki’s folder: valentines made of doilies, snippets of fabric lace, faded red construction paper. Wild, even gorgeous, drawings in magic marker. Elaborate and intricate cutout snowflakes. Poems. In Adrienne’s folder: a stack of straight-A report cards, some tidy little snowmen, and some of her childhood lists, carefully printed on looseleaf paper.

Yes, she had been a child who felt it necessary to remind herself to “play.” Unlike the spontaneous and chaotic Nikki, whose motto was, if anything, Play it as it lays. She, Adrienne, had been the “good” girl to Nikki’s charming and spectacular rogue. Nikki never did her chores without being nagged to death, never came home on time for dinner or from dates, always cajoled her way into getting extensions on her school projects. Nikki was always in trouble, and yet… Everyone loved her. She lit up the room, even if she sometimes made you want to roll your eyes. Because you wouldn’t believe, you couldn’t believe, someone so beautiful and vivacious could be so daring—and so funny. How did it happen? Adrienne wondered. How did someone so… glorious… turn into a recluse?

It made her wonder. It made her shudder.

As for her own lists, which were meant to keep everything in order, the last one had included: Dinner with Nikki. But it had not included Barrett Albion, a funeral urn, or a sniper rifle.

Adrienne gave her head a quick little shake, as if to clear her mind, and opened the organizer notebook in which she kept her many lists. One by one, she enumerated the things she had to do:

She thought for a moment. What else? There was something else. And then she remembered.

She hadn’t really looked at it. Just the one glance in Nikki’s apartment. Enough to tell her that she was the executor.

She looked at her watch, and saw that it was 9:15. She had a meeting that afternoon with Curtis Slough to discuss some “worrisome” documents in the Amalgamated case. And the truth was, she hadn’t even finished annotating the papers, much less writing a memo about the ones they should try to protect. She just hadn’t had—didn’t have—wouldn’t have—the time. And yet, she’d have to find it.

She really ought to take a day off, or even two, but how could she when she had this Amalgamated thing hanging over her head? It would take too long to bring anyone else up to speed. And it was the first substantive case she’d worked on for the firm. If she let them down in the middle of discovery… well, she might as well look for a job adjudicating parking tickets.

Do it by the numbers, she told herself. Just do what you have to do, one thing at a time. And so she did.

She filled out the release for the M.E.’s office, and faxed it to the officious Ms. Neumann. Cross that off. Then she dialed the number on the back of her Visa card and listened with gritted teeth to a long and irrelevant spiel on tape. Finally, she heard the option that she wanted, tapped the number eight, and learned that the cost of her sister’s cremation would not exceed the limit on her Visa card. In fact, she was surprised to learn that she had more than two thousand dollars in credit—the result of a recent upgrade to Platinum status.

So she crossed that off, too, and began to feel a little better.

Going into the bedroom, she pulled on some clothes, tugged a hairbrush through her hair, and did the sixty-second makeup (mascara—lipstick—a dab of foundation on her forehead). Then she grabbed her keys, gave Jack a pat, and rushed out the door.

Only to return an instant later for Nikki’s laptop. Because why not use it until the new one was delivered? She hated not having one. Even so… , she thought as she closed the door behind her, if she was going to take it to court, she’d do well to find a more subdued carrying case than the flaming pink Cordura number that Nikki had used.

When she got to her office, she found that Slough had left a message of his own, saying that he couldn’t do lunch after all—so how about tomorrow? That gave her an extra day to deal with the Amalgamated documents. And handle the will.

It was in the laptop’s carrying case and, as she took it out, a chord of sadness ran through her. The pathos of her sister’s death was impossible to ignore, emblazoned as it was by the banner-ad at the top of her last will and testament.

Wills were not something that she’d ever handled before. She would probably have to file it with the Clerk of Courts, close out her sister’s bank accounts, deal with the insurance (if there was any), and…

It occurred to her, suddenly and for the first time, that Nikki had not been broke. Her Eurotrash boyfriend (or, more accurately, his parents) had settled a sum of money on her. Half a million dollars. It must have been invested. Even in a money market account, it would have pulled in twenty-five thousand a year. So even with the apartment in Georgetown and the twice-a-week visits to her Cleveland Park shrink, it was hard to see how Nikki could have made too much of a dent in four years. It wasn’t like she ever went anywhere.

The realization that she might inherit that money, which she then could use to pay down her student loans, sent a frisson of excitement—and a feeling of shame—through her. She didn’t want Nikki’s money. That is, she did, but… She didn’t want her sister’s death to be like winning the lottery.

Her eyes drifted down the page:

Adrienne shook her head, wistfully. Ramon would be happy, both that Nikki and he had been on the same page about Jack and—who wouldn’t be?—about the money. She read on. Making a will was so unlike Nikki, and yet…

Adrienne blinked. “‘The secrets of my childhood,’“ she muttered. “What ‘secrets’?” And then, a moment later: “‘Come to terms’? She electrocuted herself!” The will dropped from her hand as Adrienne fell back in her chair, tears springing from her eyes.

A soft knock came at the door, and Bette leaned in. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I was just—”

“I have to go out,” Adrienne said, grabbing her handbag and jumping to her feet. “Cover for me.”