A Summer Affair: A Novel - By Elin Hilderbrand Page 0,108

isn’t safe. You should have learned your lesson the last time. You hurt yourself and we nearly lost Zack.”

Claire started to cry. There was a frozen slab of blue gel strapped to her forehead, she realized, making her head heavy and hard to move. Had Jason just said that? No, he had not said that. It was the heatstroke. It was her guilt.

She looked at Jason. His eyes seemed to be two different colors, but she couldn’t remember which one was true. His eyes were blue, or green? Years ago, when she had made the nesting vases for the museum in Shelburne, she had created one that was the same color as Jason’s eyes. But had it been blue, or green? Or both? “I’m confused,” she admitted. “I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not real.”

“Because you have heatstroke!” he said. “You were in the shop too long, it was fifteen hundred degrees, you were out of water, you pushed yourself too far, and you fell down again—again!—and you passed out, again. And you almost died. Again! You’re like one of the kids, Claire. You do not listen!”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She remembered apologizing when it happened with Zack, on the operating table, as they took him by cesarean section. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. They don’t know about the baby. She had thought they were going to deliver him dead, but he had lived and he was fine. Kids developed at different paces, even siblings. Claire tried to sit up.

“It’s not like you even went back to work for a good reason!” Jason said.

“You mean a paying reason.”

“I mean a good reason! The gala! The auction item! Lock Dixon asked you! Who cares? It’s not worth it. Let them get something else—a trip to Italy, a Hinckley picnic boat! It’s not worth risking your life.”

“I’m not risking my life,” Claire said. But there they were, in the hospital.

“You’ve become like some robot that these people have programmed!”

“It’s nearly over,” Claire said. She decided trying to sit up was pointless, so she lay back and closed her eyes. She was tired. “In six weeks, it will be over. And I can’t quit if Matthew is coming.”

“He doesn’t care if you’re in charge or someone else is.”

“The whole reason he agreed to do it is that it’s my thing. So now he’s coming, and if I quit, what does that say? That it wasn’t important to me after all? That I don’t care about it? I can’t quit. I made a commitment and I intend to honor it.”

“Even if it costs you your marriage?” he said. “Your kids?”

“Is it going to cost me you and the kids?” Claire said.

“I don’t know,” Jason said. “I just don’t get it. You tell me you want to stay home with the kids, give the glass a rest for a while, you want to be a mom, spend time with Zack and all that—and then out of the blue, without even discussing it with me, you take on the gala, which is like a full-time job and then some. All those meetings—if they paid you by the hour, you’d be making a hundred grand. And on top of that, you’re back in the hot shop, back at the glass, blowing out this piece that’s going to be your magnum opus—great, whatever, I’m happy for you. Too bad you won’t get paid a dime, but Lock Dixon asked you, and the committee, whoever the hell that is, expects it, and now you’re on the hook.” He swallowed. “They’ve stolen you from us, Claire. You’re gone. Even when you’re sitting at the dinner table, even when we’re in bed and I’m on top of you, it feels like you’re somewhere else.”

What could she say? He was right. She was amazed he’d noticed.

“I need you to stick with me for six more weeks,” she said. “And then it will be done. Over.”

“You could have died, Claire,” he said. “If Pan hadn’t checked on you when she got home from the beach, I would be picking out your casket right now.”

“I’m sorry . . .”

“You’re sorry? You were unconscious, Claire. Knocking yourself out, literally, over the goddamned chandelier.”

Two arms left, Claire thought involuntarily. Then she thought, He’s right. I’ve been brainwashed. I am not myself. How to return to myself? Quit? Leave Lock? Tell Isabelle to take her “Petite Soirée” and go to hell?

The door opened and the doctor swung in. “Well,” he said, “I hear you’re lucky