This was the life she had chosen. She repeated certain thoughts like a mantra—Good mother! Only young once! Enjoy them! — as she shepherded them out the door.

Claire drove the kids to school. She took two to the elementary school and one to Montessori. Zack was strapped into his car seat, crying for his bottle, which none of the other three deigned to give him. Shea plugged her ears. The car was always loud, but Claire made a point to call Siobhan anyway. Siobhan had stopped at two kids, but Liam and Aidan were total hellions and fought incessantly, and Siobhan’s car was just as noisy.

“I woke up this morning and checked my calendar,” Siobhan said. “I see I missed your meeting last night. How was it?”

“Oh,” Claire said. The meeting had been a scant twelve hours earlier, and yet it had slipped down the drain with the dishwater. Her excitement had vaporized. But something lingered, some feelings about Lock Dixon. Could she share these feelings with Siobhan? She and Siobhan were married to brothers; they were frank with each other about their marriages. They loved to complain—sneaking cigarettes, too much TV, always bugging me for sex—and they loved to one-up each other when they complained. (Because Siobhan and Carter worked together, she claimed they were twice as sick of each other at the end of the day.) Siobhan had a crush on the Korean UPS man; Claire thought the twenty-year-old who picked up her trash was cute. They talked about other men in a funny, harmless way all the time. But Claire decided not to say anything about Lock, if only because she couldn’t tell what her feelings were, exactly. “It was fine. We talked about preliminary stuff.”

“Do you have a cochair?” Siobhan asked.

“I do. A woman named Isabelle French.”

“Isabelle French?”

“Yeah. Do you know her?”

Siobhan was quiet. This was very strange. Claire checked her phone, thinking it had cut out.

“Are you there?” Claire said.

“Yep.”

“Is everything okay?”

“We did a luncheon for Isabelle French this summer,” Siobhan said.

“You did? Where does she live?”

“Out in Monomoy. But not on the harbor. In the woods. On Brewster Road. Between Monomoy and Shimmo, really.”

“Okay, so what’s the deal? Did she not pay her bill? Was she a total bitch?”

“No, she was fine. With me.”

“Was she rude to Alec?” Alec was Siobhan and Carter’s Jamaican head server. “Did she use a racial slur?”

“No,” Siobhan said. “She was fine, agreeable, very nice. There was just this awful moment when she was out on the porch chatting away, and a coven of witches were in the kitchen slicing her to ribbons. I guess there was an incident in New York. She was at some big party and she drank too much and she kissed some woman’s husband on the dance floor, and it turned into this big thing where no one would speak to her and she stopped getting invited to things. She used to sit on the board of one of the big hospitals, but I guess they asked her to step down. It didn’t sound too good.”

“They were talking about her behind her back in her kitchen?” Claire said.

“Yeah. It made me nauseated, honestly.”

“Did they know you were there, listening?”

“I’m the caterer. Did they care?”

“So, do you think it’s bad that she’s my cochair?”

“No, I don’t think it’s bad,” Siobhan said. “Just so you know, her own people don’t like her.”

Claire and Zack walked back into the house at ten past eight, and the silence was like a big sigh of relief. Pan sat at the counter eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, a cereal forbidden to the children.

Why does Pan get to eat it?

Well, Pan is an adult.

Pan was twenty-seven years old, from an island off the southwest coast of Thailand, in the Andaman Sea. Pan had arrived after Zack was born to work as an au pair, although Claire liked to think of it as a “cultural exchange.” With Zack’s difficult birth, and with the demands of a fourth child, having an extra set of hands in the house seemed wise. Having Pan around allowed Claire to be a better mother. Pan played creative games with the older children, she cleaned and straightened, she prepared mouthwatering Thai food, but she was the best, perhaps, with Zack. In Thailand, apparently, babies were never put down. They were constantly carried and therefore they did not cry. When Zack was with Pan, he was held and carried. When Zack was with Claire, and Claire, out of necessity, set him down—I have to get dinner ready, sweetie—he howled. Sometimes it was so bad that Pan came out of her room and picked him up, and although Claire was then relieved, she was also suspicious. Maybe Zack’s problem was that he was coddled, spoiled, soft. Maybe all of Pan’s nurturing had quelled Zack’s natural desire to explore, to learn, to interact. Or maybe Pan held him all the time because she, too, sensed there was something wrong.

“Here,” Pan said. “I take.” She stood up from her stool and reached for Zack.

“You finish. I’ve got him.”

“I take,” Pan said. Zack was no fool. He lunged for her.

“Okay,” Claire said. And then, like an automaton: “I have a hundred things to do.” Such as the breakfast dishes—plates sticky with syrup, cups with chocolate sludge coating the bottom—and then the counters and the stools. Then Claire went upstairs. The kids nominally made their beds, but Claire had to remake them. She was put out by the thought of her children climbing into a sloppy bed. She liked crisp, clean sheets and a neatly folded comforter. She flushed the toilet in the kids’ bathroom, put all of the toothbrushes into the plastic cup, and rinsed the dried toothpaste out of the sink. But what she realized was that she was watching herself do these things rather than just doing them. She was doing them and at the same time wondering what Lock Dixon would think if he were watching her. Or Matthew. God, she had to find Matthew.