Isabelle!

“It is now my distinct pleasure,” Adams said, “to introduce the two women who made this evening possible. These women have been working for nearly a year—they have raised money, called in favors, turned over their lives in service to Nantucket’s Children and the summer gala. Please put your hands together for our gala cochairs. Ladies and gentlemen, Claire Danner Crispin and Isabelle French!”

Later, Claire would say she’d heard the crash. The sound was trapped in her subconscious. The sound of glass breaking. And so even as Claire walked up onstage to accept an armload of lilies and delphiniums (prom queen, Academy Award, Miss America), her spirit was in a free fall. About to land with a sickening thud.

The plan for the auction was as follows: Pietro da Silva would walk in from the back of the tent, holding the chandelier aloft. And for additional drama, Ted Trimble had rigged a battery pack so that the chandelier would be illuminated. Pietro da Silva was a professional auctioneer; he moonlighted for every charity on the island, and he liked to make things interesting. Strolling through a darkened tent with the precious chandelier aglow had been his idea. Auction as theater. Why not? The price would go up.

Claire was in a state of heightened agitation. The flowers of the bouquet brushed against her face. She was aware that Isabelle had not come up onstage with her; Claire had posed for the photographers of both island newspapers with Adams alone. Did the audience find it strange that Isabelle was missing? Claire wasn’t sure, nor was she quite sure what was wrong inside her heart, but something was definitely wrong. Onstage, with the lights in her eyes, she tried to locate Jason. Where was Jason? She thought of Jason as she had first known him, his young face glowing warm and orange from the bonfire up at Great Point; he had brought a cooler of cherrystone clams, and he shucked them there on the beach and fed them to Claire, each one a tiny, sweet, perfect present. That Jason was gone, and in his place she now had . . . what? The man who had grabbed her hand when Zack took his first steps, who kissed her throat, the man who had returned to sleep beside her, even though she had strayed so far away from herself. Jason! Where was her husband? She felt that something awful had happened. One of their children had burned to cinders in the hot shop! Where was Jason? His spot at their table was empty. Shea was throwing up in bed, all alone; Ottilie had been stolen from the house by a stranger who had been stalking her for months. In the back of the tent, all the way in the back, Claire saw Siobhan, her face as pale and pinched as a pie crust, genuflecting in her white chef’s jacket. Someone was dead.

When Claire stepped off the stage, Lock was waiting for her with a stricken face. Everything tends to go wrong at the last minute. Here it was, the last minute.

“The chandelier fell,” Lock said. “It broke.”

It fell, Claire thought. It broke.

“Broke?” she said.

“Smashed,” Lock said.

Not possible, Claire thought. The security guard had been hired specifically to make sure that nothing happened to it.

The crowd quieted as Lock led Claire out of the tent by the arm. They did not know what had happened, but they sensed tragedy.

Adams spoke into the microphone with rousing enthusiasm. “Enjoy your dessert! Max West will begin his concert in a matter of minutes!”

It was not a tragedy: the chandelier, after all, was only a thing. And yet when Claire saw it, lying lopsided in the grass—broken, smashed, ruined—she cried out, and then she just plain cried, blubbered, sobbed. She turned to Lock and said, “Where is Jason?”

Hands came around her. “I’m right here, baby. God, I am so sorry.”

Claire collapsed into him. She was crying so hard that Jason couldn’t understand what she was saying. She had to concentrate on taking a breath, repeating herself.

“I want you to call the babysitter. Ask her. Are the kids okay?”

“I’m sure they’re fine.”

“Call her!” There was something terribly wrong; Claire felt it. The lighter! J.D. had set the house on fire with the goddamned lighter. He had been flicking it on and off under his covers. Claire should have taken the evil thing with her when she left the house. The covers of his bed caught fire, and the rest of his room. The rest of the upstairs, where the children were sleeping. They would die of smoke inhalation. Hannah, the babysitter, had decided to crash the concert after all. She had left the children alone, and now they were dead.

Jason called. Claire was limp against him, shivering. Everyone gathered in a loose circle: Lock, Adams, Ted and Amie Trimble, Brent and Julie Jackson. Not Siobhan, though Claire had seen her a few moments earlier. Not Isabelle. Not Gavin. Not Daphne.

Jason hung up his phone. “The kids are fine,” he said. “They’re all asleep.”

“Even Zack?”

“Even Zack.”

“And Hannah’s there? You talked to Hannah?”

“Hannah’s there, Pan’s there. The kids are safe.”

Okay. She was allowed, now, to let go—her anger, her rage, her disappointment, her heartbreak. The house was not on fire; her children were safe in bed. The chandelier was only a thing, an inanimate object, a thing, Claire! She chastised herself for her hot fountain of tears, but they were not to be stopped. Hundreds of hours of work, all that stress and strain, a trip to the hospital—she’d nearly died because of that goddamned chandelier! She’d returned to the hot shop only to create it, it was a labor of love, the best kind of charity, and now it was gone. She turned on the gathered crowd in fury.