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.”