“I’m going to need you to be charming tonight. Talk to people, make conversation, even though you hate it, okay, Jase?”

“Okay, boss,” he said.

Claire avoided the prep kitchen. Siobhan would put her to work, and although she didn’t have time to punch out five hundred rounds of brioche with a biscuit cutter, she would be too cowardly to turn Siobhan down.

Claire did not see Lock, nor did she see Isabelle.

When she drove back to the house to pick up Matthew, she found him commingling with the gawkers on the cul-de-sac. Had any of them given him alcohol or weed? She was suspicious, but she didn’t have time to investigate.

“We have to go!” she said.

In the car, Matthew said, “Are you breathing?”

Claire said, “If we don’t haul ass, we’re going to be late.”

He said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.”

They picked up Terry and Alfonso and drove back to the tent for the sound check. This time, Claire did look for Lock and she did look for Isabelle—no luck—and she felt a flash of self-righteous indignation. Where were they? Why weren’t they helping—the executive director and the event cochair? Claire checked the greenroom again while Matthew was onstage. No alcohol in here, right? Right. Claire went to her hair appointment. She had her head tipped back in the sink and hot water rushing over her scalp when the stylist said, “You seem kind of tense.”

Right, Claire thought. Could she even begin to explain? Today was the day, tonight the night; it was the culmination of a year’s work. So much had happened, so much had changed. She had changed. She had spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars (thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars). She had experienced all of the stress and heartache promised to her at the beginning, and then some. And in eight hours, it would be over. Claire would be in bed. The thought should have been the source of enormous joy and relief, but instead, Claire felt depressed. All that anticipation and buildup and preparation, and like everything else, it would end. They would be left with . . . what? A pile of money. Hope and happiness for kids who needed it. That was the whole point.

Gavin arrived at Isabelle’s house at five o’clock. They had time for one drink, and then they had to go: Gavin had myriad responsibilities at the tent. The gala would not come off properly without him there, directing. He should skip the drink and proceed posthaste to the tent, but Isabelle had been adamant—Come at five, we’ll have time for one drink — and Gavin found her impossible to deny.

She was sitting on the bench by the koi pond in the foyer when he arrived. He didn’t have to knock; the front door was wide open and she was waiting for him, dressed in a stunning red valentine of a gown, with her hair like a waterfall over her shoulders. She raised her face when he walked in, and he could tell she’d been crying.

“Are you okay?” he said.

She all but collapsed in his arms. Hopes for a light, breezy—and quick—drink went down the drain.

“I just got off the phone with my ex-husband,” she said.

He didn’t have time for this. He had to get to the tent; there were fifty volunteers currently donning black T-shirts and eating a staff meal of hot dogs and macaroni salad, donated by the Stop & Shop, waiting for him to give them their orders. Gavin knew nothing about the business of ex-husbands, or of emotional intimacy in general. Call him self-absorbed—that was probably true—but no one else’s problems had ever captured his full attention. But in this case, his reticence was well founded. He had to get to the tent! Run the gala! Isabelle was the cochair; she should know this.

“Is everything okay?” he said.

“He ostensibly called to wish me good luck tonight,” she said. “But every time we talk, we get sucked down into the same old emotional quagmire.”

Gavin was holding her tentatively. She was warm in his arms, and she smelled like powdered sugar.

“I made such a fool of myself last fall,” she said. “There was another man. I was in love with him; he said he was in love with me. In fact, he said he was in love with me first, and that was why I fell in love with him. But he was a compulsive liar. He couldn’t leave his wife, never had any intention of doing so, despite frequent promises to the contrary, and then he claimed that he was staying with her for financial reasons, that he loved me but he couldn’t let her put him through the wringer. And he had kids, a retarded daughter in a home, and two boys at Collegiate. He didn’t want to lose them . . .” She stopped. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Uh,” Gavin said, “sure.” He took a deep breath. The koi pond made bubbly noises at his feet, and he watched the fish darting through the water. It might have been better if he’d been born a fish. The world of human beings, of relating to them in a meaningful way, bewildered him. (Lock and Claire, Edward and Siobhan, the guys who’d led him astray at Kapp and Lehigh, poor Diana Prell in the broom closet, even his own parents—he had never understood them.) He didn’t know how firmly or gently to hold Isabelle. She had thrust herself upon him, but he’d been holding her now for a few minutes. Should he let her go or pull her closer? “But we should probably leave soon.”

She raised her face to him. “Would you kiss me?”

It was official: he was flustered. How many times had he chastised himself for not kissing Isabelle on the night of the invitation stuffing, when they were alone, standing close together under the intoxicating spell of the moon garden? That had been a painful moment of cowardice on his part, a missed opportunity. But this was different. The sunlight was intense, and Gavin’s every muscle and tendon was alert with the pressing need to get going! He was always on time (his father’s fault: To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, to be late is to be forgotten). There was no time for kissing, and yet Isabelle was poised—eyes fluttering closed, face raised, lips parted ever so slightly. Gavin was a man; he did not need to be asked twice. He kissed her. The kiss was soft and sweet; she was a cookie, a confection. He had in the past been too aggressive with women, but that was perhaps because other women had not been as delicious as Isabelle.