Claire sat by the phone, waiting for Siobhan to call back with details from Fidelma, her Irish connection at the police station, who was getting information from her cousin Niamh, who worked as an intensive care nurse at Massachusetts General: Daphne’s going into surgery. It’s touch and go. They don’t know what they’re going to find. Daphne was going sixty miles an hour down the ridged dirt road that led to her house. Sixty miles an hour—the car must have been rocking like a washing machine. And then the deer, from out of nowhere. She cut the deer in half; the car flipped onto its side. No one saw or heard the accident—the road was lined with summer homes and it was the middle of March. No one was around. Daphne was pinned in the car, unconscious. The person who found her, finally, was her husband, Lock Dixon. After calling her cell phone forty times and getting no answer, he left their ten-year-old daughter, Heather, asleep in the house and set out to find his wife. She was two hundred yards shy of the driveway.

Claire cried; she prayed, working her way around the rosary beads while her children watched Sesame Street. She went to church with all three children in need of a nap and lit four candles—one for Daphne, one for Lock, one for the daughter, Heather, and one, inexplicably, for herself.

“It’s our fault,” Claire whispered over the phone to Siobhan.

“No, baby, it’s not,” Siobhan said. “Daphne is a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions. We told her to get in the bloody cab, and she refused. Say it with me: She refused.”

“She refused.”

“We did what we could,” Siobhan said. “We did our best.”

Tense hours spun into tense days. Claire’s phone rang off the hook. It was Julie Jackson, Amie Trimble, Delaney Kitt, all witnesses.

“I can’t believe it,” Julie Jackson said.

“I know,” Claire said, her heart pounding, the guilt rising in her throat like bile.

“She was so drunk,” Julie said.

“I know.”

“And then she drove,” Julie said.

“I should have made her get in the cab,” Claire said.

“Mmmmmm,” Julie said.

“I feel horrible.”

There was a long pause, during which Claire could feel pity rather than a sense of shared culpability.

“Are you going to . . . I don’t know, set up meals or anything?” Julie asked.

“Should I?” Claire said. This was what they did when someone was sick or had a baby: one person organized, and everyone signed up to take food. Was Claire the one who should organize? She didn’t know Daphne well enough to send over a parade of unfamiliar faces with covered dishes.

“Let’s wait and see what happens,” Claire said, thinking, She has to live and be okay. Oh, Lord, please!

“Keep me posted,” Julie said. “And know I’m thinking about you.”

About me? This was meant to be comforting, Claire knew, but it gave texture to her shame. People would hear about Daphne’s accident and think of Claire.

“Thanks,” Claire said.

Daphne survived the surgery. She was hospitalized in Boston for weeks, though it wasn’t clear what was wrong with her. There were no broken bones, no spinal cord injuries, thank God, and no significant blood loss. There was a concussion, certainly, and some other problems that fell under the umbrella of “head injuries.” There was amnesia of a sort—and here the stories varied. Did she know her name? Did she know Lock and Heather? Yes. But she didn’t remember anything about the night out, and when Lock told her who she’d been out with—Julie Jackson, Claire Danner Crispin, Siobhan Crispin—Daphne shook her head. I don’t know those people. The memory came back, eventually, but certain things were rattled out of place. She wasn’t the same; she wasn’t right. There was some irreparable damage that had no name.

The guilt stayed with Claire. She was the one who had invited Daphne to come out in the first place. She had bought the last, godforsaken drink, when Daphne had already overimbibed. She had tried to cajole Daphne into the cab, but she had not dragged her by the arms the way she should have. She had not called the police or enlisted the help of the bouncer. She turned it over and over in her mind. Sometimes she exonerated herself. How could this possibly be construed as her fault? But the truth was brutal: Claire had failed to exercise the common sense needed to keep Daphne safe. A sin of omission, perhaps, but a sin just the same. It will never come out.

When Daphne came home from the hospital, Claire filled a basket with homemade clam chowder and chicken salad and two novels and a jazz CD and some scented soaps. Something was wrong with Daphne mentally, that was the rumor, but no one knew what exactly. Claire sat in the car outside the Dixons’ monstrous summer home for a long time before she summoned the courage to take the basket of goodies to the front door. She was propelled forward by guilt and held back by fear. If Daphne opened the door, what would Claire say?

She knocked timidly, feeling like Little Red Riding Hood with her basket; then she chastised herself. She was being ridiculous! Siobhan liked to point out how ironic it was that Claire was named Claire, or “clear”—because Claire was blurry. No boundaries! Siobhan would shout. All her life, Claire had had a problem figuring out where other people ended and she began. All her life, she’d taken on the world’s hurt; she held herself responsible. But why?

Footsteps approached. Claire stopped breathing. The door opened, and Claire found herself face-to-face with Lock Dixon. He was, as everyone knew, a terrifically wealthy man, a billionaire, though it was now rumored he would sell his superconductor business in Boston. It was rumored that he was going to live here on Nantucket full-time and take care of things until Daphne was herself again.