A Summer Affair: A Novel - By Elin Hilderbrand Page 0,13

she said. He didn’t ask her to elaborate, and Claire thought, Why bother? Her definition of amazing was completely different from Jason’s definition of amazing. Jason was a contractor; amazing for him was the plumber showing up on time. It was a thirty-nine-inch striper caught with a fly.

“Come to bed, please, Claire. Please, baby?”

“Okay,” she said. She brushed her teeth, then took her time washing her face and moisturizing, then wiping down the granite vanity and the bowl of the sink, hoping that Jason would fall asleep. But when she crawled into bed, Jason had his light on. He was facing her side of the bed with his hands out, like she was a basketball he was about to catch.

“The kids didn’t wear you out?” she asked.

“Naw, they were great.”

“You read to them?”

“I read to Zack. Ottilie read to Shea. J.D. did his homework, then read his chapter book.”

“Good,” Claire said, relaxing. “So, the meeting . . .” She paused—not because she was hesitant to admit that it had only been her and Lock at the meeting, but because Jason’s hands were already traveling up inside her camisole. He wasn’t interested in what had transpired at her meeting. Claire grabbed Jason’s wrists, but he was persistent, and she let him go. Their sex life was robust, but there was a part of their marriage that had withered, if it had ever existed at all. What was it? They didn’t talk. If Claire said these words now to Jason, We don’t talk, he would tell her she was being silly. He would say, We talk all the time. Yes, about the kids, about what was for dinner, about the car being serviced, about Joe’s fortieth birthday next week, about what bills needed to be paid, about when he’d be home from work. But if Claire tried to explain her meeting with Lock and its many tangents—Matthew, how it felt to think about Matthew, how it felt to think about Daphne and the accident, Lock’s interest in Claire’s glass and his request that she come out of retirement on behalf of the auction item—Jason would glaze over. Bored. She would be keeping him from what was really important—the sex! Furthermore, he might grow angry at what Claire told him: Who was Lock Dixon to tell his wife to start blowing glass again? It was easier for Claire to keep her mouth shut, to indulge Jason physically and try to quiet the agitation in her mind.

Find Matthew. Museum-quality piece. Silver belt buckle. The Jungle Series. Whalebone corsets. Viognier that tasted like a meadow. Fifty thousand dollars. Classical music: she really should learn more about it.

She closed her eyes and kissed her husband.

CHAPTER TWO

He Haunts Her

The Crispin children started waking up at six thirty. They awoke in reverse order to their age—Zack first, then Shea. At four and a half, Shea was very challenging. J.D. and Ottilie had always been labeled “the big kids,” which left Shea and Zack as “the babies,” but Shea did not appreciate being called a baby, nor did she like being lumped in with Zack. As a result, she was constantly trying to distinguish herself; everything had to be done “the Shea way.” Her pancakes had to be cut with a chef’s knife because she liked “square pieces”; otherwise the pieces would be called “ugly” and were therefore inedible. She would not sit next to Ottilie at any meal, and she would not have her hair styled like Ottilie’s, nor would she wear any of Ottilie’s hand-me-downs. Ottilie, for her part, was preternaturally beautiful, with long hair streaked the colors of fine wood—mahogany, heart pine, Brazilian cherry. She was, at the age of eight, already a teenager, already using her ballet training to swing her hips provocatively. Ottilie was precocious, brilliant, adept at sweet-talking her parents, her teachers, her legions of friends. And J.D., Claire’s oldest, was a golden child, reading three grades above level, a leader on the ball field and the basketball court, an altar boy at Saint Mary’s. He was pleasant and easygoing and respectful. If Claire received compliments about her parenting, it was because she had great kids. But they were great on their own; they had been born great. Claire didn’t want to take any credit.

She did, however, try hard as a mother. She would say she’d always tried hard, had always put her children’s needs before her own—but now that there was no glass in her life, she channeled all her frenetic, creative