“Shoot.”

“Why do you work here? I mean, you’re . . . you don’t have to work, right?”

Lock gave her another one of his incredible smiles. “Everyone needs something meaningful to do. I sold my business so I could move to the island permanently, but I never meant to stop working. I never meant to have a life where all I did was golf and talk to my stockbroker. That’s not me.”

“No,” Claire said. “It’s really none of my business . . .”

“I looked around the island to see where I would be happiest. I looked at buying a real estate development company, but that felt a little empty at this point in my life. There was a woman who cleaned rooms at the hospital when Daphne was there for physical therapy. Her name was Marcella Vallenda. Do you know her?”

“No,” Claire said.

“Dominican woman. Four kids, three teenage boys, always in trouble, and a daughter. Husband was a deadbeat, alcoholic; he worked some days, and some days he spent at the Muse, playing keno. I got to know Marcella a little bit. She worked three jobs, she developed a cocaine habit to stay awake, basically, but the house was a hellhole, and the daughter, Agropina, found a rat in her cereal bowl . . .”

“Oh, God,” Claire said.

“It happens,” Lock said. “I had no idea until I met Marcella, but it happens here, just like everywhere else. I wanted to give Marcella money, but money doesn’t help—it goes right to drugs. What she needed was programs, and that was how I found Nantucket’s Children.”

“I never heard that story before,” Claire said.

“Well, everybody wonders why I’m here, but few are brave enough to ask. You asked.”

“Oh,” Claire said.

“Raising money for Nantucket’s Children is the most important job I’ve ever had.”

When Claire stood up, her legs wobbled. She was feeling weepy again. Okay, she was hormonal; she hadn’t been right since she stopped nursing Zack. But no, it wasn’t that; it was something bigger. In her universe, an apocalyptic decision was being made. It wasn’t because of Lock’s spiel about making a difference, or the rat in a little girl’s cereal bowl, at least not completely. Claire was making this decision because she wanted to. She felt like a person she had nearly lost in a crowd: her old self.

“I’ll do the auction piece,” she said.

“You will?” he said. “Are you sure? Now I feel like I goaded you into it.”

“I’m sure,” she said. She waited, not breathing. Was this moment loaded for him, or was the emotion all in her mind? She had, after all, just made a monumental decision. Lock was standing before her, larger than life, a god of sorts, a person who could make things happen.

“I should go,” she said.

“But wait,” he said. There was something in his voice that held her there.

“What?” she whispered.

“Thank you,” he said.

He thought she was doing it for him, or for the cause. But she was doing it, ultimately, for herself.

“No,” she said. “Thank you.”

When Claire got home, Jason was awake, watching TV with Zack asleep on his chest. Because the whole world was now transformed, Claire looked on them tenderly. Her husband and her baby. They knew nothing about her.

“How was the meeting?” Jason asked.

“Oh,” Claire said. “Fine. I have to try to find Matthew tomorrow.”

“He’s on tour in Southeast Asia,” Jason said. “I saw it on Entertainment Tonight.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. The sultan of Brunei attended one of his concerts. It was a pretty big deal. The richest man in the world dancing to ‘This Could Be a Song.’ ”

“Funny,” Claire said. She sat carefully in the chair next to Jason. “Listen, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Jason’s attention was back on the TV. Deal or No Deal.

“Jase?”

“Mmmmmm.”

“I’m serious. I have to talk to you.”

Jason emitted air that was part sigh, part huff. She was horning in on his date with asinine TV.

She had rehearsed a line in the car. Give it to him straight. Skip the cushioning remarks; he didn’t want to hear them. But Claire found the raw words hard to say. Jason was glaring at her. He had only muted the TV; he had not turned it off.

“What?” he said.

“I’m going back to work.”

Instinctively, it seemed, he squeezed Zack. Right. The guilt was so automatic, Claire’s fingers started to tingle. (She had regained consciousness on the MedFlight jet with Jason stroking her hair. They don’t know about the baby, he had said. They don’t know about the baby.) Now, the accusation was loud and clear in Jason’s silence: her work had nearly killed their son. If he had his way, she would never set foot in the hot shop again. She had overheard him telling Carter that he wanted to dismantle it, bomb it, burn it down.

“What?” he said.

“I’m going back to work. For one project.”

“Did Chick call?”

That was the right question. Chick Klaussen had flown to Boston to see Claire in the hospital. He was racked with guilt that Claire had gone down while working on his piece, and Claire was racked with guilt that she had to ask a studio to finish it. She’d told Jason that she would only return to work for Chick, but both of them knew Chick would never ask.