“How did it happen?” she demanded. “Who knocked it over? It didn’t just fall over all by itself! And where is the security guard? He was supposed to be watching it!”

No one answered. Isabelle, Claire thought. She left the tent, and then, seconds later, the chandelier fell. She had been so disillusioned with Claire from the beginning . . .

“Where is Isabelle?” Claire asked.

“She’s back in the tent,” Adams said. “Eating dessert.”

“I can’t find Gavin,” Lock said. “I thought he was having a cigarette, but I’ve looked everywhere. He’s vanished.”

Vanished? Claire thought. Gavin wasn’t her favorite person, but there was no reason for him to break her chandelier. Topple it and run, like some kid who had put a baseball through a window.

“Someone probably knocked it over by accident,” Jason said.

By accident? Claire thought. By what, carelessly swinging a purse? It would have to have been a pretty big purse. By carrying a tray loaded down with dessert samplers? Siobhan had been in the back of the tent, crossing herself: In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Do you not care about your soul, Claire? Claire had seen her—but now where was she? Where was she now, when Claire needed her? Siobhan was angry; Claire knew it. She was resentful. She had not wanted to cater the gala. She had wanted to be eating and drinking and wearing her sexy black dress, not waiting on everyone hand and foot, like a servant. She had sat in judgment on Claire; she had quite possibly decided on her own to make Claire hang.

“I can’t believe nobody saw what happened,” Claire said. “Where was the security guard?”

“There were crashers,” Adams said. “A bunch of girls trying to get in without tickets. He was dealing with them.”

Claire strode up to the bar and cornered the bartender. Hunter, his name was. He had worked for Carter and Siobhan for years. “Did you see who did it?” Claire asked him. “You must have seen something.”

He held up his palms. “My back was turned,” he said. “I saw nothing.”

There were only a few people who had seen what happened, and one of them was Max West, who had been standing outside the door of the greenroom, drinking a cold, stinging Tanqueray and tonic. Max had had his eyes glued on the opening of the big tent; he was trying to hear what was being said inside.

The blue Solo cup was filled to the top with forbidden gin. Everything, for Max, was swaying and shimmering. He had finally arrived at that place he liked to visit when he was drinking, that place where he wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t, that place where the world and the people and events and circumstances in it seemed to have been created for his bemusement. Constantly, while drunk, he tilted his head in wonder.

He had seen the chandelier fall, had seen who knocked it over, but he was afraid to open his mouth, to blow the whistle, because it just as easily could have been his fault. He had been lurching after only a few steps; he, too, was capable of causing a catastrophic accident. The chandelier fell, it smashed in the grass, although the word “smash” indicated sound, and all Matthew heard was a muted crunch. Matthew looked at the chandelier in the grass. Should he pick it up? He thought, I have to stop drinking.

Back in the greenroom, he threw back two shots of espresso and tried to get Bruce on the phone. Bruce was at the gym in Burbank, on the treadmill; he was hesitant to get off. (He had to lose twenty pounds, his doctor said, or he was going to have a heart attack.)

“Is this an emergency, Max?” Bruce said.

Matthew said, “Yes.”

Matthew tried to explain it as concisely as he could: The auction item, a chandelier that Claire had made, had broken, and the charity would need something to auction in its place. What can we give?

“It has to be something really good,” Matthew said. “They expected this chandelier to go for, like, fifty grand.”

“Fifty thousand dollars?” Bruce said. “Jesus, Max! Haven’t you done enough for this woman? You’re playing a free concert. And you bought her table, right, for twenty-five grand? That’s enough, Max. That’s plenty. Why do you feel you have to give her anything else?”

“I don’t have to,” Matthew said. “I want to.” How to explain it? He would do anything for Claire. He was on a mission here! “What can we give them?”

Bruce sighed. “How about two tickets to your London concert on Christmas Eve with two backstage passes?”

“That’s a start. But it has to be bigger than that. Think big, Bruce!”

“How about we add first-class airfare, seven nights in a suite at the Connaught, and Christmas Eve dinner at Gordon Ramsay’s place with you, Elton John, and Paul McCartney?”

“I’m having Christmas Eve dinner with Elton John and Paul McCartney?”

“You are.”

“Genius,” Matthew said. “Thank you, Bruce. That should do it.”

Gavin hurried down the grassy strip on the edge of Old South Road with only the tip of his cigarette for illumination. He was running, but because he was pitifully out of shape, he would lose his breath, hack out a cough, and be forced to stop and walk. He had called the airline from his cell phone and booked himself, under an assumed name, on the last flight off the island.

He was leaving Nantucket. He had dumped all the money—minus five hundred dollars to get him wherever he was going—into the backseat of Ben Franklin’s Lincoln Continental. He told himself it wasn’t stealing, since he had given the money back—it was just some awful game he’d had fun with for a while. It killed him to leave Isabelle, but she deserved better than him; she deserved someone powerful and clever, not some two-bit criminal. Leaving now, he was doing Isabelle a favor. And Lock and Claire, too. He could ruin their lives, rip apart both their families—but what would that accomplish? Nothing but heartbreak.