and for free. Claire had let the news slip after a couple of glasses of champagne at Joe’s birthday party—Looks like Max West is playing the gala—and voilà! Five people agreed to be on her committee, including Julie Jackson’s husband, Brent. Hurray! Claire might have been a rock star herself. Joe’s wife put a Max West CD on the stereo and everyone danced, and Claire heard Jason say, “Yeah, he’ll probably stay with us. He’s crazy about Claire. They dated, you know, in high school. They nearly got married.”
So there was no backing out now.
The kids regarded their dinner plates dolefully. Even J.D., who had been so proud of bringing home two bushels of scallops, didn’t want to eat them.
“Do we have to?” Shea asked.
“Yes,” Jason said. He was snarfing down his food, but Claire just picked at her plate, not unlike the kids. She had called Lock that morning and said, I have something to tell you!
He’d said, Great, what is it?
I’d like to tell you in person. She waited a beat, two, three. He sounded like he was shuffling papers. Did he get it?
He said, Can you meet tonight?
As Claire climbed the stairs of the Elijah Baker House, she felt weightless and sick. The symptoms were the same as heatstroke: shallow breathing, hot, dry skin, rocketing heart rate. She was going to pass out. How was she getting one foot in front of the other? She was climbing the stairs to meet with Lock—that was all. The thought that it might be something more was completely inane. Affairs only happened in novels and on TV—but that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Every winter, someone on Nantucket had an affair—the circuit judge, or the high school chemistry teacher, or the woman who gave private piano lessons—and everyone else heard about the gory details: caught in bed with a manager from the Atlantic Café . . . threw her belongings into the front yard. Siobhan was a big fan of the Annual Affair Story. She was the first to castigate the couple—for having an affair, and for getting caught.
Immoral, sneaky, deceptive people, Siobhan said gleefully. Stupid! Careless!
What always crossed Claire’s mind was how brave the person must have been, and how unhappy. Claire was not brave (she hadn’t had the courage to suggest a night meeting herself; she had merely willed Lock to do it). And Claire wasn’t unhappy. She loved her kids, she loved Jason, she had Siobhan and a host of other friends, she had full-time help and a newfound zest for her work. She was not unhappy.
And since she was not brave and not unhappy, nothing would happen. She would tell Lock the incredible news about Matthew—it was such big news, it should be announced in person—and then she would leave.
The office was so dark that Claire thought it must be uninhabited, and immediately she panicked. Had Lock forgotten? If he had forgotten, she would be wounded, but also relieved. She would slip out of the office and try to forget that anything interesting had ever transpired there. But then she rounded the corner into the office, and there was Lock at his computer, working. The desk lamp was off, as was the radio. There was very little light and no music—and no sandwich, no wine—but Lock was there, at the computer, wearing his glasses. Claire studied him: He was just a person. A balding, slightly overweight middle-aged man with deep eyes and a magnetic smile and (maybe this was the most attractive thing about him) an unquestionable authority.
“Hi,” Claire said.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as though he were having a dream that was too good to believe.
“I saw you coming down the street,” he said.
“Did you?”
“I did. I’ve been watching for you for . . . oh, about five days.”
“Oh,” Claire said. She was tongue-tied and jumbled up. Had he really just said that? Had he meant it? She wanted to say something equally sweet back to him, but it was as if she was holding an instrument she didn’t know how to play. No matter what she said, she would strike the wrong note.
He stood up and she approached the desk. She thought they were taking their places: she would sit in the chair and he would sit on the edge of the desk. But he bypassed the desk and came toward her. She stopped. He stopped. Lock looked at her, and her stomach dropped away—whoosh!—gone. He touched Claire’s cheek, then