“You bet,” Claire said. She pushed her cart all the way to the ham, bacon, smoked sausages, pickles, and sauerkraut. She could feel Daphne Dixon behind her, but she was afraid to check. She stopped, feigning interest in sauerkraut, thinking that rather than have Daphne Dixon shadow her through the store, she would let Daphne pass her. She fingered a package of sauerkraut—Claire liked it, but no one else in the house did—and then she studied a jar of kosher dills.

“Pickles?” Daphne Dixon said. Claire was so spooked, she nearly dropped the jar. Daphne was right up against her back. “You’re not pregnant again, are you, Claire?”

Again, Claire laughed. “No,” she said.

“You’re sure? That was one of the things I said to Lock. The problem with asking you to cochair is that you’re always getting pregnant.”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“At least you’re having sex,” Daphne said. “Which is more than we can say about yours truly. And if you’re having orgasms, then you’re really one up on me.”

Claire was annoyed to find her interest piqued by these statements. Lock and Daphne didn’t sleep together? So did Lock have a thing for Isabelle French? Was Claire stepping right into the middle of a messy situation? Friend from college, divorced . . . what if it had been Isabelle at the cozy meeting the week before, and not Claire? Would something have happened between them? But Claire had to cut bait here. Daphne was like an unsightly piece of toilet paper that Claire had dragged out of the ladies’ room on her high heel.

“Do you ever shower?” Daphne said. She sniffed in Claire’s general direction, and Claire looked down at her clothes: yoga pants, ratty sneakers, a white T-shirt that had turned pale gray and had a juice stain on the sleeve that looked like a gunshot wound. She had done some yoga positions that morning, she had attempted the sketch of the chandelier, she had had twenty phone conversations about Liam’s arm—what the doctor had said, the impending surgery—but she had not showered. Should she explain to Daphne about Liam, Siobhan, Children’s Hospital, the roast chicken? She didn’t smell like flowers, certainly, but did she stink? It was true that you couldn’t smell yourself. Maybe she did stink. But Daphne stank, too—like vinegar.

“I do shower,” Claire said, “though I haven’t yet today. I haven’t had a chance.”

“That’s the other thing about Lock asking you to chair the gala. Everyone knows you’re stretched out like old gum. Four kids, one of them a baby, and you let your career go down the tubes . . .”

“My career didn’t go down the tubes,” Claire said.

“Lock and I love your glass. But now it’s gone.” Daphne snapped her fingers. “Dust. Vapor.” She took a deep, dramatic breath. “We need the gala to succeed, Claire. We need someone who can give it a dedicated effort.”

Claire felt tears prick her eyelids. And that was the problem, now, with Daphne: she told you the unadulterated truth about yourself until you cried. She didn’t do it to be mean; she simply couldn’t help herself. Minutes earlier, Claire had been thinking about how things weren’t connected, how there was no tit for tat, no retribution for one’s actions visited on one from above—but maybe she was mistaken. This verbal assault right now was one small piece of payback for everything that had happened the night of Daphne’s accident. The irreparable damage that had no name was this: Daphne was now rude, and not only rude but mean; she forgot things easily; she repeated herself a hundred times—whole thoughts and ideas as well as individual words. It became a verbal tic, this repetition; it became a stutter. She had remarked to Julie Jackson, while her head was still swathed in bandages, “I can see everything now. Everything is crystal clear.” But that seemed to mean she had complete disregard for the rules of polite society, for small talk, for being thought of as kind and amenable. Instead, she was sharp-tongued and venomous; she was notoriously brutal. Nobody liked Daphne Dixon anymore; she set out to sting people, like a wasp. She was her own doppelgänger now, after the accident. She was a bowl of cream gone rancid.

It was always Claire who stuck up for her.

She’s not that bad, really. When she’s on her medication, she’s perfectly fine.

The guilt, old and useless, was tar in her hair; it was an invisible thread snarled around her heart. Claire had bought the last drink, she had not absolutely insisted that Daphne get into the taxi, and a woman’s personality had been forever altered. Daphne was somebody else now, and Claire blamed herself.

Here, in the chilly outer ring of the Stop & Shop, Claire was receiving her just deserts: Daphne was holding up a mirror and forcing Claire to look. How can you chair the gala when you can’t even get a shower? When you were careless in the hot shop and put yourself into preterm labor? When you won’t face the fact that your baby isn’t now, and may never be, right? How can you give it a dedicated effort?

“My nephew broke his arm playing hockey and was medevaced to Boston,” Claire said. “I have to go. I want to make Siobhan some dinner.”

Daphne’s face softened. “Oh, God,” she said. “How awful. By all means, go, go. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

Claire looked at Daphne. Her ears were pink again, like a regular person’s ears. She was, at that second, her old self—but that was part of the problem, too, the inconsistency. Daphne bounced like a tennis ball between two frames of mind. Which personality were you going to get? Claire was no dummy. She was being given a pass, and she was going to take it.