Siobhan did not knock—though with the boys always underfoot, knocking before entering a room was law—because the closet was not a proper room. Siobhan flung open the door, and there was Carter, naked as the day he was born, sitting his hairy ass on her velvet footstool, the newspaper in his lap. On the phone with Tomas, his bookie in Las Vegas (where it was three in the morning!), betting on the bloody Red Sox. What Siobhan heard Carter say was, Put down five thousand even. Schilling is pitching.

How to describe the scene that ensued? It was cinematic. It was Shakespearean. Siobhan snatched the phone from Carter’s hand and ran like a jackrabbit into the master bath. She eyed the oval pool of the toilet, and her gag reflex kicked in. She was going to be sick. She heard Carter coming. There wasn’t time! She flushed the phone down the toilet.

What the hell? Carter said.

Siobhan canceled their credit card. Stolen, she said. When she hung up, Carter was staring her down. Five thousand dollars! She fired Carter right there and then—fired Carter from the business that they owned together, the business in which he was the head chef. Siobhan had no idea if she had the legal right to do this, but she could not have been more fucking emphatic: You are no longer part of Island Fare. Do not prep any more jobs. Do not set foot in the kitchen. You are throwing every red cent we have earned into some stinking Vegas cesspool.

Carter tried several tacks. He apologized with the desperate mien of a druggie begging his dealer for one last score. He cried. Please, baby, please, one more game. It’s a sure thing, I promise. Schilling is pitching, baby! Siobhan was so livid, she could not speak. She stormed into the kitchen for coffee, and Carter followed, crying, both of them naked. She poured coffee, but she missed her cup; it spilled all over the counter and dripped onto the floor and this sent Siobhan over the edge. In the most venomous whisper she could summon, she said, You’re trying to ruin us!

No, baby, I’m not . . .

Have you no shame? she asked. Because, really, they had a mortgage and, besides that, two little boys upstairs who would, unlike Siobhan or Carter, go to college someday. Carter was confused by the question. Shame? Siobhan said, Look at you. Pathetic.

At this, he became belligerent—You can’t tell me what to do! You can’t fire me from my own business!—and stormed out, though not before stopping in the garage to grab some shorts and collect his surfboard.

Siobhan called Claire. If this had happened last August, Siobhan would have regaled her with all the gory details, right down to her visceral disgust at finding Carter resting his unmentionables on the velvet footstool she had inherited from her grandmother. But now, of course, things had changed; she and Claire were operating on a need-to-know basis, and all Claire needed to know was that yes, Island Fare would cater the gala. They were eager to do it.

Claire yippeed and made some other yee-ha cowboy noises. Yesterday was so bad, Claire said. But then Zack walked, he took his first steps, and now you’re going to cater the gala, just like the two of us planned in the beginning! It feels so right, it’s all coming full circle! Hooray! Claire was eager, then, to get off the phone; she couldn’t wait to call Isabelle and Lock and tell them the happy news!

Claire did not think—would never, under current circumstances, have thought—to ask, Why the sudden change of heart? Why, when Siobhan had been so adamant the evening before, was she so eager now? Had something happened? Claire didn’t ask, and really, it was just as well. Siobhan didn’t need a lot of caretaking. She was a hardscrabble girl, tough as a turnip, mean as an underfed chicken; she was a survivor. She would make this work all alone; she would be better off without the liars and the cheaters and the gamblers to bring her down. She would be just fine.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

She Hides It Away

The days leading up to the gala were a blur, and Claire couldn’t remember which things happened in which order—and in fact, many things happened simultaneously—but each and every detail of these days was charged and important.

On Monday they filled the last table of ten. They had one thousand guests. Gavin answered the phone and took the credit card for the final table, and it was he who led the celebration—high- fiving Lock and hugging and kissing Isabelle, Claire, and Siobhan, all of whom were in the office, ironing out the catering details.

Also on Monday, the late summer issue of NanMag was released, featuring the article about Nantucket’s Children and the summer gala. The text of the article was long, and preachy about the cause in some places, but no worries—few people would actually read it. What mattered were the photographs! There was a shot of Lock standing in front of the Elijah Baker House, surrounded by half a dozen children; there was a shot of the chandelier (unwired), taken in Claire’s hot shop; there was an old snapshot that Claire had dug up of herself and Matthew in high school—they were in the sand dunes on Wildwood Beach, Matthew holding his guitar, Claire staring moodily at the ocean; there was a photograph of Claire and Lock sitting side by side (though not touching) on the edge of Lock’s desk.

They were in the office when they looked at the article—Isabelle was actually the one who got ahold of the copy of NanMag, hot off the press—and all of them skimmed through it together, Lock holding the magazine while Gavin, Isabelle, Claire, and Siobhan read over his shoulder. Lock read certain lines aloud. (“The summer population may believe their beautiful island is immune to the tough realities that face other communities—substandard housing, latchkey kids, petty crime by teenagers, gangs, drug use—but they are wrong. For example, in the winter months, Nantucket has the highest incidence of heroin use per capita in the commonwealth—and too often, it’s the island’s children who pay the price.”) Claire studied the picture of her and Lock. It was, as far as she knew, the only picture of them ever taken. Did they look like a couple? They did not, she decided. They were completely mismatched, a French film dubbed in Italian, a giraffe with tiger stripes. Claire was still stinging from the way the catering situation had fallen out; Isabelle’s words “discouraging and immature” replayed in her mind.