if she loved him, why was she willing to be with Lock? Because she was willing. All through the fall, through the holidays, and into the winter, she met him. Some nights they stayed in the office; some nights they met in the garden at Greater Light, now a preserved (but little visited) historic site, and they made out like teenagers, with Claire sitting on the chilly cement steps as Lock reached into her blouse, then into her jeans. Sometimes they drove in Claire’s Honda Pilot beyond the water tower or to the end of Capaum Pond Road, where they grappled for each other over the children’s car seat, their feet muddling the pages from coloring books and empty juice boxes on the floor of the car. Lock was reluctant to make love in the car, not because it was uncomfortable (though it was), but because the children’s presence was almost palpable. The Honda was a piece of Claire’s actual life, it was an extension of her home, and Lock felt like an intruder. But Claire loved to have him in her car; she got a delicious satisfaction, she said, from remembering their coupling as she drove the children to school. And so they went out in the car frequently because, more than anything, Lock wanted to make Claire happy. Unlike Daphne, Claire could be made happy, and this was what satisfied Lock the most, what filled him up. Claire smiled, she laughed, she giggled. I feel like a kid again, she said. You’ve changed my life.
He had gotten her back into the hot shop, back to work. He hadn’t thought of it as a come-on; if he thought of it at all, it was as a public service. The world, in his opinion, should not be without the art of Claire Danner Crispin. When he asked her to create a piece for the auction, he was pretty sure she’d be thrilled, flattered. He had not, at that time, understood why she had stopped working. He thought the break was temporary, a maternity leave. Now he knew the whole story, and while there was much that Lock wanted to say in response, he kept his mouth shut. He was glad he had gotten her back into the hot shop, working again.
You would have gone crazy, he said. Spending the rest of your life sponging countertops.
Oh, I don’t know... , she said.
But it was clear she loved being back at work. She was fired up again, she said.
Lock had a harder time convincing her that neither the fall nor Zack’s early delivery was her fault.
I was the one who fell, she said. I was dehydrated. I wasn’t drinking enough water. The temperature was unsafe, I knew that. My doctor warned me . . .
She talked all the time about Zack. Lock had only seen Zack once, in passing, though Claire described him as very needy and “way behind” where her other kids were at his age. Lock thought it sounded bad, or potentially bad, and in an attempt to help, he gave Claire some information about Early Intervention (Nantucket’s Children funded them every year) as well as the name of a doctor in Boston. Lock thought Claire would be grateful for this information, but it immediately became clear that she resented it.
“You think there’s something wrong with him!”
“I don’t even know him, Claire. I haven’t spent five minutes with him. I only gave you the information because you seemed concerned and I wanted to help.”
This turned into an argument. For the first time, they parted on bad terms. Claire was sobbing about Zack—there was something wrong with him, it was her fault, she knew it—and there was Lock, rubbing her nose in it, giving her the number of a doctor in Boston, and of Early Intervention. If I thought he needed Early Intervention, she screamed, I would have called them myself! Lock had only been trying to help. He facilitated things like this all the time; it wasn’t his job to make a diagnosis, only to put people with problems in touch with people who could solve the problems. He’d tried to explain this to Claire, but she was having none of it. She drove off.
Lock didn’t hear from Claire for five days. Five empty, nearly unbearable days. He was distracted at work; every time the phone rang, he stopped what he was doing and watched Gavin, listening. Was it Claire? No. Every time he heard the door open at the