Father Dominic had once claimed that there was a hole in the back of his head. People’s sins drained out nearly as soon as they entered, he said. But Claire was pretty sure that wouldn’t happen today.
Father Dominic said, “You will stop? You came to confess, so you understand what you’re doing is wrong. Will you stop?”
Tears fell—Zack’s, and Claire’s own. Of course he would ask her to stop, or demand it.
“I don’t know if I can,” she said.
“You can, Claire,” Father Dominic said. “You must pray for strength.”
“I can pray for strength, but I don’t know if I can stop seeing Lock. I could tell you I’m going to stop, but I would be lying.”
Father Dominic shook his head, and Claire felt an argument rising in her. It was the argument that ran like ticker tape through her mind. Did the adultery automatically make her a bad person? Did the good things that she did—caring for her kids, washing Jason’s T-shirts, chairing a benefit that would bring important programs and enrichment into the lives of hardworking families, being a kind and thoughtful friend, helping injured birds on the side of the road rather than letting them suffer—did these things count, too? Or did only the sins count? Was there some kind of moral accounting that would put her ahead? Because she didn’t feel like a bad person or an evil person. What, anyway, did Father Dominic know about heart-stopping passion?
Zack was crying now; his cries reverberated against the walls of the confessional booth. Claire said, “Can you give me my penance?”
“You have to stop,” Father Dominic said. “Then I can give you your penance.”
She had to stop. She repeated this in the car on the way home. Zack screamed in the backseat and kicked his legs; his cries were echoing inside her. She was not a barroom urchin addled by drink, like her father; she was a reasonable woman. She had to stop.
By the time she got home, she did have a headache, so she took some Advil and lit a fire and poured a glass of wine, all with Zack snuggled against her chest, on his way to sleep. She had a pot of chili on the stove, and corn bread, and homemade applesauce. At five thirty, it was pitch black outside and the kids and Jason came home, their cheeks rosy from the cold and the exercise.
Jason did not ask how she was feeling, but he did taste some chili from the wooden spoon and declared it delicious. J.D. stripped off his pads and his sweaty long underwear while Ottilie set the table in her cheerleading outfit.
Jason touched Claire’s back and said, “This is how I always sort of imagined it. Our life.”
The fire, the pot of chili, her children at home on a chilly fall evening. What was not to love? She had to stop.
Claire nodded. Her heart was a bad apple, soft and rotted. “Me, too,” she said.
PART TWO
CHAPTER SIX
He Loves Her
It was boom or bust, their business, and it was starting to wear on Siobhan. She slaved through the summer and fall, fielding phone calls from impetuous brides-to-be and their mothers; she woke up in the morning knowing she wouldn’t see the boys for five minutes because she had a sit-down lunch for fifteen people at noon, cocktails for a hundred in Brant Point at six, and a dinner buffet in Pocomo at six thirty. (Could she really be in two places at once? She would have to be.) This all-hell-has-broken-loose, wild-ass chaos was slightly preferable to suffering through the winter and spring, making good on all the dinners for eight that Island Fare put up for bid at charity auctions, and constantly worrying about money and illegal staff and getting jobs and money again. The business made a profit, but life was expensive. Liam had hockey, which had cost a fortune even before he broke his arm and took an eight-thousand-dollar jet ride to Boston, where he underwent two surgeries and incurred bills from a three-day hospital stay and five subsequent weeks of physical therapy. That was behind them now, but there was the mortgage, heating oil, and Christmas approaching, and Siobhan was beginning to suspect that Carter had a gambling problem. The man loved sports, but that was hardly unusual; God knows Siobhan had seen a pub full of men, including her father and her five brothers, scream bloody murder at the telly when rugby was on, or even worse, cricket. Carter