A Summer Affair: A Novel - By Elin Hilderbrand Page 0,10

the spring.”

Isabelle French. Did Claire know her? She pictured a woman with her hair up, wearing dangly earrings and some kind of funky Indian-print tunic that reminded Claire of the Beatles in their psychedelic years. That was what Isabelle French had been wearing at the gala. She had been drinking a cosmopolitan, she had been dancing; Claire had seen her come off the dance floor pink-faced and breathless. Claire wondered if she was remembering the right woman.

“I . . . think so,” Claire said.

“She’s very nice. She’s eager to get more involved.”

“She lives . . . ?”

“In New York.”

“Okay. Does she . . . ?”

“Work? No, I don’t think so. Other than doing things like this, I mean.”

“Does she have . . . ?”

“Kids? No, no kids.”

There was a beat of silence between them. The charity was called Nantucket’s Children; it was for people who cared deeply about children, which generally meant having one or more of your own.

“No kids?” Claire said, wondering if Adams Fiske had been brazen enough to put someone on the board solely because of her pocketbook.

“No kids,” Lock confirmed.

“Is she . . . ?”

“Divorced,” Lock said. “From a guy I went to college with at Williams, actually. Though that has no bearing. I haven’t seen Marshall French in years, and honestly, I know Isabelle only slightly. Adams was the one who brought her aboard. But I know that she’s very nice. And eager.”

“Great,” Claire said. And then, lest she not seem eager herself, she pulled a notebook out of her bag—a notebook she had bought for this very reason—and said, “Should we get to work?”

The Nantucket’s Children Summer Gala: The goal was to sell a thousand tickets. The evening started with cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres. Cocktails were followed by a seated dinner, during which Lock showed a PowerPoint presentation of the programs that Nantucket’s Children funded. By the time dinner ended, the guests had (presumably) imbibed a few drinks and the wheels were greased for the auction. The trademark of the Nantucket’s Children Summer Gala was that they only auctioned off one item (one fabulous item, expected to go for at least fifty thousand dollars). The brief auction gave way, finally, to a concert by a performer or band that had highly danceable hits, like the Beach Boys (2004), like the Village People (2005), like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (2007). With underwriting, the event made well over a million dollars. That money was distributed to the twenty-two initiatives and programs set up exclusively for island kids.

“The most important element, no matter what anybody says, is the talent,” Lock told Claire. “It’s what sets our event apart. Anyone can put up a tent. Anyone can hire a caterer and throw together an auction. But we get music. That is what makes us sexy. That is why people come.”

“Right,” Claire said.

“And rumor on the street is that you know—”

“Max West,” Claire said.

“Max West,” Lock said. Again the smile, this time hyped up with admiration. Well, yeah, of course. Max West was a superstar; he was right up there with Elton John, Jon Bon Jovi, Mick Jagger. He’d had more than thirty hits. He’d been singing for nearly twenty years, since the summer after his and Claire’s high school graduation, when he played the Stone Pony in Asbury Park and an agent heard him, and . . . yeah. Rock star. Claire’s heart had been broken. God, had she cried, every night after the show, back behind the club, where it smelled like empty beer bottles and trash—she had cried and held on to Matthew’s neck because she knew it was ending. She was going to RISD, and he was going to . . . California. To record an album. They had been different people then. He had really been a different person—Matthew Westfield—before he became Max West and played the inaugural parties in Washington, before he played for Princess Diana, before he sold out Shea Stadium six nights in a row, before he recorded a live album in Kathmandu, which went double platinum. Before he got married, twice, and went into rehab, three times.

“Yes, I know him. We went to high school together. He was my . . . boyfriend.”

“That’s what someone told me,” Lock said. “But I didn’t—”

“You didn’t believe it?” Claire said. Right. No one ever believed it at first. Claire and Matthew had been best friends since seventh grade, and then, one night years later, when they were old enough to