spend a lot of time together. Do you have feelings for him? Claire’s relationship with Lock seemed to be reaching beyond the normal, beyond the everyday; it seemed to have taken on an intimacy that overstepped the appropriate. But Siobhan was not brave enough to bring it up with Claire. And so they were at an impasse. Claire would not confide in Siobhan about Lock; Siobhan would not confide in Claire about Carter’s gambling or anything else. Their friendship was suffering. It had been a brutal winter.
Siobhan took the five hundred dollars from Carter, stuffed it in her jeans pocket, and went into town. As she was leaving the house, Carter said, Buy yourself something pretty! Like he was a gangster and she his moll. What a joke.
Saturday afternoon in the middle of March: Federal Street was deserted—the place was a ghost town—and yet there, parked on the street, was Claire’s car. Siobhan saw it as she walked into Eye of the Needle. This was Claire’s favorite store; maybe they would bump into each other and go to the Brotherhood for a Baileys. But Claire was not in the store. Siobhan stepped outside and called Claire’s cell phone, and it went straight to voice mail. Instinctively, Siobhan knew that Claire was at the Nantucket’s Children office on Union Street—she just knew it. Why not go and see for herself, and end the questions once and for all? Siobhan felt like Nancy Drew, girl sleuth; she felt like Angela fucking Lansbury.
Siobhan scooted down Federal Street, charged with an energy it was hard to describe. She was going to catch her best friend at . . . what?
Siobhan saw Claire tripping down the front steps of the church. Siobhan checked her watch. Four thirty. Mass was at five, but Claire was leaving the church, not going into it, and every good Catholic knew there were only three reasons to go to church in the middle of the afternoon: wedding, funeral, confession. Siobhan didn’t see a bride and groom, nor did she see a hearse.
“Claire?”
Claire whipped around. Guilty. Caught.
“Hey,” she said weakly.
Siobhan glanced, pointedly, at the church. “What are you doing?”
Claire said, “What are you doing? God, town is dead.”
“Were you at confession?” Siobhan asked.
Claire looked behind her at the church, as though surprised to find it there.
“Yeah,” she said. “I was. You know, I try to get J.D. and Ottilie to go, but they won’t, so I figure, lead by example or whatever. A little repenting never hurt anyone.”
Claire was the easiest person in the world to read. Now she had two hot spots on her cheeks. Siobhan, girl sleuth, had another clue. Although she had been raised in County Cork, and Claire had been raised in godforsaken coastal New Jersey, their Catholicism was the same. Siobhan hadn’t been to confession since she was twelve years old, and she knew Claire hadn’t, either. It would have to be a pretty big sin to send her there.
“I’m out shopping,” Siobhan said. “Do you want to go somewhere and get a drink? Do you want to talk?”
“No,” Claire said. “I can’t.”
“Just one drink. Come on. I feel like I never see you anymore.”
“I have to get home,” Claire said. “Jason, the kids, dinner. You know what my life is like.”
Siobhan nodded, they kissed, and Claire boogied for her car. Siobhan headed around the corner, ostensibly to check for “something pretty” at Erica Wilson. But she really just moved out of sight so she could catch her breath from the shock. Claire at confession.
You know what my life is like.
But did she?
There was a song the kids liked about having a “bad day,” and when it came on the radio, Claire was required to turn up the volume, and the three older children sang along while Zack cried. Claire hated the song; it taunted her. The spring—a season of rebirth and new hope—was turning out to be a disaster for her. She had one bad day after another, after another.
Take, for example, what was going on in the hot shop. For months she had been trying to get started on the pulled-taffy chandelier for the gala auction. But it was all false starts and wasted time. She blew out a beautiful globe, which was to be the center of the chandelier, the body; it was colored a transcendental pink, the most luscious pink Claire had ever achieved because of the painstaking way she had crushed the frit with a mortar and pestle. The globe was