“I know,” Claire said. “But that’s not my fault. How can she blame me?”
Siobhan didn’t answer. She held up a lobster; there was a tub of them, crawling all over one another, on the floor. They were really quite unappetizing-looking creatures.
“Here,” she said. “Rip the claws off, remove the rubber bands, throw it into the pot.”
Claire made a face. “I can’t do that.”
“You came to help,” Siobhan said. “This is what I need done.”
“What about making the gazpacho?”
“I finished that an hour ago,” Siobhan said. “If you’d been here at two like you said—”
“I know,” Claire said. “Sorry. But guess what, on top of everything else?” She paused. Waiting for what? A drum roll? “Pan has the chicken pox!”
Siobhan laughed, though this, she realized, was cruel and may have been crossing the line. “The chicken pox?”
“She’s very sick,” Claire said. “And contagious to boot, though my kids all had the vaccine. But she can’t work. What am I going to do about a sitter?”
“Who’s watching them now?”
“Jason. He should be at work, but he agreed to help. What am I going to do about the gala, though? Nightmare.”
Nightmare? She wanted nightmare? Siobhan could redefine nightmare: Carter had spent three days surfing and skulking around the house like a derelict, doing little more than drinking beer and eating the junk Siobhan bought for the children—Go-Gurts, barbecue-flavored Fritos, Slushee pops. Then she caught him on a suspicious phone call on their land line. He’d claimed it was Jason, but the call log showed a number with an unfamiliar area code, and that did it, the camel was on its knees: Siobhan threw him out. She loved repeating the phrase
threw him out,
though in reality what she had said was,
Please make yourself scarce, Carter Crispin. Go away, take a trip, leave the island for a few days, get out of my hair until this gala mess is behind me. Then we can start over, I can focus, we can talk, and we will work this out and find you some much-needed help. Okay?
And Carter had said,
Okay.
Siobhan gave him three hundred dollars from her secret till. On the one hand, she couldn’t believe he hadn’t offered to stay and help her with the gala. How in God’s name would she pull it off alone? But on the other hand, she was glad he was respecting her. She had fired him, she was the boss. He would do exactly as she said.
He packed a small bag. Siobhan watched him, both defiant and sad. She loved the man, yes, she did, but he was little more than rocks in her pocket right now.
Where will you go?
she asked him.
He shrugged. And did not meet her eye.
Probably the city.
New York City, she thought at the time. It was only after he was gone that she understood he’d meant Atlantic City.
With Carter gone, Siobhan had been forced to leave the boys at home alone. They were nine and seven and would be able to survive for weeks as long as they had potato chips, a working bathroom, and the TV remote. However, Siobhan felt guilty, guilty, guilty. It was a beautiful summer day and her two healthy sons were sitting in their darkened bedroom, eating tooth-rotting, heart-stopping junk and turning their brains to mush on reruns of
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
. She might have brought them with her to the kitchen, but in her past attempts to get them to help, to foster an appreciation of her work and perhaps spark an interest in learning to cook themselves, they had complained incessantly, eaten her
mise en place,
and played obnoxious practical jokes like making tea sandwiches out of their boogers. Siobhan could not jeopardize this job by bringing Liam and Aidan to the kitchen, and yet since she left them, she had done nothing but worry—that they might choke on a pretzel rod, or electrocute themselves, or engage in a fight that left them both bleeding, that they might notice the beautiful day and venture out to the beach on their bicycles, which would lead either to their drowning in the ocean or to their getting hit by a car in the road. It was not safe to leave a seven- and a nine-year-old alone, but Siobhan did not have a live-in au pair, with chicken pox or otherwise. She was her own au pair. She was, for the next few days, a single parent, as well as the sole owner and operator of this catering business, which was attempting to pull off a seated dinner for a thousand people. Six hundred lobsters to poach—was she insane? Genevieve at À La Table would have bought the lobster meat frozen (to buy it fresh was prohibitively expensive). However, frozen lobster meat was watery and bland, and despite her diminished circumstances, Siobhan wouldn’t compromise.
Claire ripped the arms off the lobster with no small amount of gusto. “You know, this is cathartic. I need to let off a little aggression.” She ripped the arms off another.
Twelve months ago, Claire would never have been able to rip the arms off a living creature, and now here she was—enjoying it! What did
that
say? Siobhan shook her head.
“I was pretty shocked to find Edward here the other day,” Claire said. “Is there something going on between you two that I should know about?”
“Something going on?” Siobhan said.
“Yeah. Are you two . . . friends again?”
Siobhan reached into the boiling cauldron with her twelve-inch tongs, pulled out the steaming scarlet lobsters, and dropped them into a sink full of water to cool. She would literally be here all night shelling them, and that thought alone was enough to make her cry.
She turned on Claire with all the fire she could muster. “I’m not like you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I am not a cheat like you. I am not a Madame Bovary in love with someone else!”
“I only asked if you were friends!” Claire said. “I didn’t say anything about—”
“You insinuated.”
“I did not! I just thought it was strange. You have to admit, it
was
strange, you and Edward here alone . . .”
“Adultery is a sin, Claire. It’s evil. You want to know what I think? There it is. You are committing an evil sin. Against Jason and against your children and against yourself. You are betraying yourself. You are a good person, a person who remembers the mailman’s birthday, a person who picks other people’s rubbish up off the beach. But now you’re different. Look at you—dismembering the crustaceans!”
“You asked me to! You said this was what you needed done . . .”
“It’s like all of a sudden you don’t care about your soul,” Siobhan said.
“My soul?”
“You’re going to tell me you love Lock Dixon. You’re going to tell me Jason is emotionally unavailable and that the most intimate moments you have are when he reads to you from
Penthouse Forum.
It doesn’t matter. You took a vow, my darling, to love him.
Forsaking all others!
Remember that? I was standing there! You’re breaking that vow every time you kiss Lock, every time you call him.” Siobhan was on a roll; she was pulling lobsters and dumping them as she spoke, and the steam was heating her up. The truth was bubbling out of her. Claire had lost her moral compass, or it was going haywire. “Either you stop this thing with Lock, or I’m telling Jason.”
Claire stared at her. “What?”
“I’m serious. End it. Or I’ll end it for you.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
“I mean it. I will tell Jason everything I know. I’ll tell everybody.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“I would so. Because I love you, Claire. And I can see how this is changing you and making you crazy and weak. It’s ruining you. You have to put a stop to it.”
Claire stared, shaking her head. Siobhan stared back for a defiant moment. She had not planned to lay down an ultimatum, but now that it was out, it felt right. Siobhan had had her chance to sleep with Edward, but she hadn’t gone through with it, and she was glad. Her soul was clean—or sort of. There had been the kissing and the groping at Isabelle’s house, and then when Siobhan had agreed to take on the catering of the gala, Edward had called to thank her. He had called in his official capacity as head of the catering committee, but they had ended up talking for nearly an hour, and Siobhan told him about Carter’s gambling. Edward made Siobhan promise that she would call him if she needed help, and Siobhan said,
Any time you want to swing by the prep kitchen, I’ll be there working by myself.
He had come the very next day. He had held her hand and touched her cheek, and they had kissed again, once, softly, and it might have gone further had Claire not come barging in. Siobhan had, in fact, called Edward that very morning on her way to the kitchen to tell him about Carter’s exodus to A.C., and about leaving Liam and Aidan alone, and Edward had offered to cancel all of his appointments in order to take the kids out to Great Point in his Jeep. Siobhan had turned him down—the kids didn’t know Edward, and news of any outing they took with Edward would make its way straight back to Carter. But it had felt good to have him offer. It was comforting to know that Edward would do anything for her—anything—because he loved her so. Siobhan was such a bloody hypocrite—but God, who wasn’t? She was acting in bad faith with Edward, using him as a stanchion when her own husband was failing. She didn’t love Edward, and implying that she might was disingenuous and would stop right now, this second. She would sell the engagement ring and give all the money—every penny—to charity. She was going to walk the path of virtue! And by way of her moral policing, she would make Claire walk it, too.
Someday, Claire would thank her.
Besides, the ultimatum had been issued. She couldn’t back out of it now. Anyone with children would know that.
L
ock was nearly ready to leave for the day when Ben Franklin walked into the office. It was six thirty and the light through the twenty-paned window was slanted and golden, which meant that summer was ending. Summer ending, already? Well, yes, the summer gala was always the last thing on the social calendar, and the charity benefited from the sense of nostalgia people felt when their departure from the island was imminent. Heather would return to Andover on Monday: Lock couldn’t stand to think about it. Because of the chaos surrounding the next few days, he and Daphne were taking Heather out to dinner to the Galley tonight. Their reservation was in an hour. Lock was not exactly happy to see Ben Franklin walk through the door, but he had been meaning to connect with the man all week and, for various reasons, had missed him.
“Hello, Ben, hello!” Lock said, standing up. “Good thing you caught me. I was just on my way out the door.” He reached across his desk for Ben’s hand, but Ben’s arms were loaded down with the financials. “Can I help you with those?” Lock said.
Ben dropped them unceremoniously on Lock’s desk. “There’s money missing,” he said. “A lot of money.”
T
he house was clean. So the objective, on Friday, was to keep it that way.
“We have a visitor coming,” Claire told the kids.
“A rock star,” Jason said.
The day had the feeling of a holiday. Jason was staying home from work. He had been a real trouper since Pan got sick, but his good, accommodating mood seemed to be tied to the fact that the day of the gala was almost upon them and hence almost past them. He was still x-ing out the squares on the calendar with his heavy-lined black Sharpie. Three days until I get my wife back! Two days!
Once again, Claire had been awake all night. Siobhan was breaking every best-friend rule in the book. She was going to blow the whistle on Claire; she was personally determined to save Claire’s soul. This was so ludicrous that at first Claire hadn’t known whether to believe her—but yes, she had to believe her.
I’m doing this for your own good.
Claire had to admit, her relationship with Lock wasn’t strong right now. They were too consumed with the gala, and Lock was busy courting his daughter; they had not connected, they had not been intimate. But could she leave him? Could she go back to the person she had been before all this—Claire Danner Crispin, mother of four, local artisan, generally good and moral person? Could she go back to Jason and Siobhan, snap herself back into her rightful place? What would her life be like without Lock? She couldn’t imagine anymore. The conclusion that Claire had come to while she was lying in bed was that she would tell Siobhan she had ended the affair, and then continue it secretly. She would be back to lying to everyone.
Claire had thought the day before the gala would be busy, but she was wrong. Everything had been taken care of: the tent was up, the production team was hanging lights, setting up the audio, prepping the stage. The contract musicians were flying in that afternoon; Edward had an associate picking them up and delivering them to their hotel. Gavin had organized the table numbers, the seating chart, the who-went-where. The chandelier was safe and sound in the concession stand. Tomorrow it would be unpacked and put on display.
Claire had called Bruce Mandalay one final time to make sure Matthew was on his way.
“His flight leaves in an hour,” Bruce said. “He’ll be there at seven o’clock, your time. You just have to make sure you get all of the alcohol out of your house.”
“Yes,” Claire said. “Absolutely.”
“He went out to the bars for the first time in months the night before last. He found himself a fight and spent the night in jail. It hit the tabloids today.”
“Oh no!” Claire said.
“He needs to get out of town,” Bruce said. “Nantucket will be good for him.”
Claire took the beer and half a bottle of viognier out of the fridge. She took the beer out of the fridge in the garage. She took the vodka out of the freezer. She took the gin, Mount Gay, Patron, Cuervo, vermouth, amaretto, and Grand Marnier out of the liquor cabinet, leaving only club soda, tonic, lime juice, and a sticky jar of maraschino cherries. She put all the alcohol in the supersecret storage place where they hid the kids’ Christmas presents, and she locked the door.
Matthew would be there in a matter of hours.
Claire called the office. It was the day before the gala—surely there were things to do?