“No,” she said. “Not Chick. I’m going to create a piece for the gala auction.”

“Jesus, Claire,” Jason said.

“Lock asked me,” she said. “He thinks it will bring in a lot of money.”

“It’s too much to ask,” Jason said. “You’re already chairing the damn thing.”

“I know,” Claire said. “But I’m ready to go back. I want to get back in there. I miss it. It’s who I am.”

“It’s a part of who you are,” Jason said.

“An important part.”

“And what about the kids?”

“They’ll be fine. I have Pan to help me. It’s not going to take a lot of time.”

“Sure, it is,” Jason said. “They’re not asking you to make cupcakes for a bake sale, Claire. They want an auction piece. Something intricate.”

“What I make is my choice.”

He shuddered, jarring the baby. Zack started to cry. Bitterly, Jason said, “Great. You woke him up.”

Claire said, “I was hoping you would understand. I was hoping you would get it. I’m ready to go back.”

“Here.” Jason held Zack out to her. Zack clawed the air like an upside-down bug. Jason said, “It hasn’t even been a year. Zack is still a baby, and a baby needs his mother. You should have said no. Not just to the glass, but to all of it. The whole thing. The gala.”

Claire took the baby and kissed his forehead. She didn’t know how to respond, and it didn’t matter. Jason went back to watching TV.

There was no predicting how happy the idea of going back to work would make her. Claire was both her old self and a new person. She was more energetic with the kids, solicitous, playful. She kissed J.D. on the cheek and he freaked out, and Claire laughed merrily and kissed him again and tickled him under the arms until he said, “Mom, quit it!” with a big grin on his face. She bought a new sketchbook and a set of number two pencils; she sharpened the pencils and stroked the heavy, creamy paper. She then spent two hours sketching the pulled-taffy chandelier in meticulous detail. It was going to be nearly impossible to execute by hand, on her own, but this galvanized her.

Siobhan called just as Claire was ready to take a break.

Siobhan said, “How’s the work going?” She had been skeptical when Claire told her the news. She didn’t understand why Claire would work if she didn’t have to; she didn’t understand why Claire was going back to slave over a project that she wouldn’t even get paid for. You’re a bloody fool, Clairsy! No boundaries!

Claire said, “It feels better than a hot stone massage.”

Siobhan said, “Oh, come on!” and laughed.

“Really,” Claire said.

“You’re soft in the head,” Siobhan said.

It felt good to have a mission. Setting the two hours aside for “work” made the rest of her day go more efficiently: She did not languish in useless yoga positions, and she did not spend precious minutes trying to entice Zack to pick up a Cheerio. She accomplished more. She found herself with a spare hour before pickup, and when was the last time that had happened? She could cut Pan a break and take Zack for a walk to the beach. But she wanted to return to Lock on Monday with a gift, a surprise, a thank-you for the change he had brought about in her life, and so she took the phone into her room and locked the door. She rifled through her address book, which was filled with the torn corners of envelopes and assorted “We’ve Moved” announcements—Claire did herself the favor of dating these things, but she never found time to write them down.

Matthew Westfield (aka Max West): there was a cell phone number, which Claire knew to be useless. The last time Claire had tried to contact him was two years earlier, on behalf of Siobhan’s brother, Declan, in Dublin, who wanted concert tickets. She had been unable to reach Matthew on the cell phone that time, and so she left a message for him with his agent, Bruce, in L.A., and sure enough, tickets arrived by DHL on Declan’s doorstep. But the last time Claire had actually spoken to Matthew was nearly a dozen years earlier. He had called her from the Minneapolis airport. He was on his way to Hazelden for rehab.

“I can’t beat it, Claire,” Matthew had said then. “The bottle. I can’t fucking beat it.”

The bottle, Claire thought, should have been easier than the cocaine—but in the past twelve years, Matthew had been in three times for alcohol abuse. Claire thought back to high school. In those days, she was the only one who could get away with buying beer. She put her hair in hot rollers and wore her mother’s long black skirt and sensible flat shoes—she looked, Matthew used to say, like one of the Amish, but she never once got carded. They drank in fields, in the woods, and, in summertime, at the quarry, where Matthew, plastered, used to dive into the jade green water from the highest outcrop of rocks. He had been so cavalier; he had thought himself indestructible. They drank at the beach or at one of the empty rental houses on the street across from the beach. They wandered the boardwalk, ogling its carnival atmosphere—the blue and green neon spokes of the Ferris wheel, the strings of round lights outlining the Kettle Korn, taffy, and Slushee stands, the hundreds of kitschy shops (Greetings from Wildwood!)—with a sense of hilarious wonder. The drinking had been innocent, a mood enhancer, and it was rebellion, too, of course. It was usually only part of the night and not the night itself (though there were exceptions to that, nights when either she or Matthew, or both of them, drank so much that they puked until dawn). For the most part, the nights of their youth had been about music. Matthew took his guitar everywhere; he slung it over his back and placed it next to them on the beach or in the grass when they made love. He sang to their group of friends, to strangers, he sang to Claire, he sang to himself. There had been plenty of times when Claire grew jealous of the music, when she accused Matthew of being obsessed with it. Music was his drug back then.