She heard Lock call up from the bottom of the stairs. “Hello?”

“I’m up here,” she said. She did not see the chandelier. She heard Lock reach the top of the stairs, and she said, “I can’t find it.”

“It’s right here,” he said.

She turned as he lifted the chandelier from a white box. Lock held the chandelier from the top, where Ted had affixed a silver chain; at the end of the chain was an inverted sterling silver bowl that held the wires. The chandelier dangled from Lock’s hands; it twirled, even in the still heat of the room.

“God,” Claire said.

“It’s gorgeous,” Lock said. He traced the arc of one of the chandelier’s arms with his finger. “It is absolutely gorgeous.”

Claire knew what the chandelier looked like; she had its shape and form memorized. She had spent more time with this piece than with any other piece in her career. And yet when Lock held it, when she gazed at it from afar, it was like seeing it for the first time. That deep, luscious pink, those twisting, draping arms—it was glorious. It was graceful; it was, as far as glass went, a work of genius.

Claire felt her eyes burning with tears. She was thinking of all the hours that had gone into the creation of that goddamned chandelier—the effort, the energy, the hours that she could have spent, should have spent, doing other things: tending to her children, her marriage, her life. The chandelier was the opposite of where she had failed; it was where she had succeeded. And in two days, she would sell it to the highest bidder.

“I don’t know if I can let it go,” she said. “I don’t know if I can part with it.”

“It will be in safe hands,” Lock said softly. “It will be in my hands. I will pay whatever I have to in order to get it.”

This sounded like one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to Claire; the words were meant to comfort and to compliment. Claire thought back to the first auction meeting, when Lock began his campaign to get her back to work. It had been an idea then—and now it was a resplendent reality, dangling from Lock’s hands. Just as their attraction to each other that first night had been a tiny seedling of thought, of curiosity. And now what was it? It was as complicated and as fragile as the chandelier.

What was left unspoken, of course, was that the chandelier would hang in the house that Lock shared with Daphne; it would grace the meals they ate together. It would never hang in the house that Lock owned with Claire. Lock would never own a house with Claire; they would never be together. This, suddenly, was as obvious and oppressive as the heat in the room. Even though Lock would most likely buy the chandelier, Claire would never see it again.

“I have to get out of here,” she said. “This heat is making me dizzy.”

“Right,” Lock said. “I’ll help you get this to the rec fields.”

They tucked the chandelier back into the box and padded it with Bubble Wrap. They closed the box and sealed it with electrical tape. It was safe. Lock carried it down the stairs with Claire following behind on unsteady feet. Lock set the box in the back of Claire’s Honda Pilot.

Claire said, “Would you drive?”

Sure. He took her car keys, got behind the wheel of her car, adjusted the seat. They were alone in her car on legitimate gala business; every other time they had been alone in her car, it had been illegitimate business, the business of their love affair, and this thought made it too awkward to speak, even though Claire had things she wanted to tell Lock: about Isabelle’s adamant silence, about her own anger over what had happened with the catering. Claire couldn’t speak, but she wanted him to speak. She had fallen in love with him—the silver belt buckle and the bald spot and his deep reservoir of kindness and generosity and the new idea of herself that he had given her. The viognier, the Bose radio, the gardens at Greater Light, kissing him on the chilly cement steps—she had felt like a teenager again, like a person, a woman desirable to him and to herself. It was not tawdry or careless. It was real. She wanted a life where she could reach out and straighten his tie, where they could share a sandwich, where they could stand in line together at the post office, his chin resting on her head. The worst thing about adultery—their kind, anyway—was that that life was never going to happen, and it was so, so sad.

She stared at him. His cheek, his ear, the creases at the corners of his eyes—she knew every inch of him intimately. But he said nothing. Nothing!

The silence was oppressive. If Claire opened her mouth, she knew what would come out. This is pointless. We have no future. We’ll never be together, not properly. Continuing is emotional suicide. What are we doing? How can it possibly be worth it?

We have to stop.

We should never have started.

Lock pulled into the parking lot of the rec fields. The tent was up now, a white elephant, a spaceship.

Lock cleared his throat. “It was nice to see you.”

At eight thirty the next morning, there was no sign of Pan, and Claire, because she was busy cleaning up breakfast and deciding how to attack the problem of Isabelle—should she apologize for the NanMag article even though she didn’t write it?—let the kids run around outside in their pajamas. Claire knocked, tentatively, on Pan’s door. This was highly unusual. Claire couldn’t remember another time when Pan had been even five minutes late; it simply never happened.

There was a groan from inside, which Claire took as a cue to open the door. Pan lay in bed with her hair in her face. The room was stuffy; Pan never opened her windows because she found even summer nights too cold.