He sneaked out while Isabelle was in the bathroom. He stood on the far side of the parking lot for a few minutes; he couldn’t tear himself away until he learned what would happen to the auction. What happened was this: Pietro da Silva and Max West got up onstage and offered the most outrageous auction package the island had ever seen—concert tickets, backstage passes, airfare, hotel, Christmas Eve dinner with Max, Sir Elton John, and Sir Paul McCartney, or, as Max West self-deprecatingly joked, “two knights and a knave.” It went for a hundred thousand dollars, and Max West offered it again for another hundred thousand. Two hundred thousand dollars! Gavin found his heart soaring. So much money for the charity! So much more than they’d expected! It was weird, the elation that Gavin experienced at the gala’s success. It was backward. He ran.

He was almost to the turnoff for the airport when the lights came up behind him. He threw down his cigarette, squashed it in the grass, then felt ashamed of himself for littering. The lights were not the lights he’d been fearing. Or were they? He debated between turning around to check and simply bolting. How much speed did he have left? Enough to make it to the airport? The airport wouldn’t be safe now, anyway. He would have to hide, but where?

The lights were spinning and flashing. Yes, definitely police lights, but possibly not for him. He turned. A cruiser pulled up right alongside him. There were two cops in the front seat and an old man in the back. Ben Franklin.

“Gavin Andrews?” the driver said.

It was over, then. Gavin sunk his hands deep into the pockets of his madras pants and looked back toward the tent. He was half a mile away, but he could still hear the strains of Max West’s singing. The tune, whatever it was, was catchy.

“Put your hands where we can see them!” the second police officer barked.

Gavin raised his hands over his head, the way he’d seen it done in the movies. Everyone Gavin knew was committing crimes large and small, engaging in scandals, acts of corruption, delinquency, and plain old bad faith—but he was the one who had gotten caught.

It figured.

He had never sounded better. Although Claire was shrouded with sadness and rage, she could still tell how good he sounded. Matthew—Max West—was putting on a terrific show; he was playing all his hits, and the guests were all dancing and singing along at the top of their lungs. Claire was dancing with Jason, Ted and Amie Trimble, and Adams and Heidi Fiske. They were surrounding her in a circle, buffering her, as though she were the one who might break.

The chandelier was gone. Every time Claire thought this, it sickened her. It was Hemingway’s novel, left on a train. It was Degas’ ballerinas, gone up in smoke. The worst thought was that other people might not view her loss that way; they might see it as nothing more than broken glass, easily swept up, easily replaced by concert tickets and dinner with celebrities, which had in fact brought in four times as much money as the chandelier might have. Max West, everyone said, had swung in on a vine. He had saved the day. But that didn’t begin to mend the gash in Claire’s spirit. She had dedicated the better part of a year to the chandelier, it was the finest work she’d ever done, and it would fall into oblivion. There was no consolation for that.

She felt a tap on her shoulder: Lock. Everyone was dancing, but Lock was just standing there, staring at her with an expression that threatened to give it all away.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

“Now?”

“Yes,” he said.

She didn’t want to miss even one second of the concert, but then Max segued into a cover of “Dancing Queen,” and since it wasn’t actually his song, Claire felt okay stepping out.

As they strolled through the tent, Lock tried to take her hand. Claire glared at him.

“What are you doing?” she said. “Are you drunk? Where’s your wife? Your daughter?”

“Daphne left because she thought I was paying too much attention to Isabelle,” he said. “And Heather went downtown to meet her friends.”

“Where are we going?”

“I want to show you something,” he said. “In the concession stand.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Claire said.

“Please? five minutes.”

She followed him across the shadowy field to the dark concession stand. He pointed to the box. “I packed it up for you,” he said. “The remains. What was left.”

“This is what you wanted to show me?”

“I knew it would be important to you,” he said. “Important that it not get thrown away.”

She peered into the box. It was too dark to see clearly, but she could make out the lopsided form of the broken chandelier and a pile of shards. The box was a casket now.

“You didn’t have to keep the shards,” she said. “They’re dangerous.”

“I didn’t have the heart to throw them away.”

This was a gesture on his part, an effort he’d made to say he understood her loss, but he didn’t.

He put his arms around her. “I love you, Claire. All this year, what we’ve been through—it was for that reason. I love you.”

She rested her hands on his jacket lapels. She thought back over the past year—the times she met him secretly, the moments right before they parted when she was sure she would die from longing, the confusing time she spent with Father Dominic, asking herself, over and over again, How can a good person do something so bad? She would have liked to believe that what she was acting on now was the strength she’d prayed for. But the truth was, her feelings for Lock were weakened and confused. She thought about the afternoon he came to the house to talk about the catering; he had been so foreign to her on that day, so distinct from the man she loved, the man she wanted to climb the Eiffel Tower with, reincarnate Frank Sinatra for, even stand next to in line at the post office. On that pleasant, sunny afternoon, Claire couldn’t wait for Lock to leave. She thought about the morning when Lock helped her transport the chandelier. They had sat side by side in the car—Lock driving, Claire riding—as they might have if they were a real couple, but those minutes had been silent and awkward because what was meaningful between them was lost, at least to Claire. And then, last night, when Matthew made his plea—I want you to come with me. Marry me—Claire had thought, I could never leave Jason. I could never leave the kids. But Lock she could leave with ease. It was Lock she had wanted to run away from.