“Promise?”

“Promise.”

After dinner, Claire gave the younger three kids a bath, got the girls into their bedroom with books, and dressed Zack in his pajamas. She handed him to Jason, who was zoned out in front of Entertainment Tonight.

“Can you make his bottle?” Claire asked.

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I can do it, but I have to get ready.”

“Get ready for what?”

“My meeting.”

“Why do you have to get ready for a meeting? You look fine.”

“I’d like to change.”

“Why?”

Claire was shaking from anger, frustration, guilt, nerves. “Forget it,” she said. “I won’t go. Give me the baby.”

Jason scowled. “You’re acting like one of the kids.”

“I am?”

“Go get ready for your meeting,” Jason said. “I’ll take care of things here. Again.”

Claire went into the kitchen and fixed Zack’s bottle. She couldn’t do this. She could not leave her home, her kids, she could not even leave her infuriating husband to go to Lock. She wasn’t cut out for it; it required guts that she didn’t have. She felt something pop inside her—the bubble of expectation that had been expanding every second since Lock said, See you tonight. He would be there, in the dark office, waiting for her. When she came up the stairs, he would smile.

Claire brushed her teeth and changed into jeans and a cashmere sweater. She did nothing with her hair and she did not put on perfume. Earrings? No. Earrings would be a red flag.

“Okay,” she said to Jason. “I’m going to my meeting. I’ll be back by nine.”

He said nothing. She hesitated. He hadn’t even heard her. Or he had heard her and was ignoring her. Stop me! she thought. But she only wanted him to stop her so she would have a reason to go in anger. As it was, she was going to have to take this step of her own free will. The decision was hers.

“Jason?” she said.

He was wrapped up in Jeopardy! He waved.

When Claire reached the office, she was shaking. She couldn’t keep herself from shaking, even though she’d told herself that nothing had to happen, that it would all just be very innocent. Gala business. We insist things be done in an aboveboard way.

Lock was at his desk with two glasses of wine already poured, but they didn’t even get to the wine until afterward, after he had taken her, with insane hunger, incredible electric urgency, up against the wall. It was fast, animal-like, there was clawing and biting. They were like a pile of gasoline-soaked rags that someone took a match to, they went up in flames, whoosh, just like that; they were two crossed wires that caused an explosion. Boom. Hot. Claire had no thoughts other than thoughts about her body and what it wanted. He touched her here, he kissed her there, she could not get enough, she did not want it to end. His body was so different from Jason’s. Jason was lean and muscular; he had six-pack abs that he was very proud of. Lock was softer, pudgier in the midsection, his chest was hairy—it was so foreign to Claire—but his arms were strong and he touched her with skill and desperation. He caressed her body, then grabbed it; he sucked, then bit. He was a man who had not made love in a long time, and his unchecked desire was touching, heartbreaking almost. Claire wanted to hand herself over: Yes, take me, gobble me up, it’s okay.

She had landed. Welcome to Adultery.

When it was over, Claire slid to the ground, stunned, and Lock, too, despite the lack of decorum, sat on the floor next to her and pulled her head into his lap and gently stroked her hair.

“How are you?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Me, either,” he said.

“I’m all messed up,” she said.

“I know,” he said.

She was grateful that it had happened quickly, so quickly that there had been no time for deciding—yes, no, right, wrong. When she thought back on it later, it seemed like an act of nature visited upon them—a tornado, a bolt of lightning. Lock.

She cried on the way home. Her whole body shook, despite the glass of wine, whose purpose all along, she realized, had been to calm her nerves. She was sad because she had done something very wrong: She had betrayed not only her husband but her own set of values. She was an adulteress. Then, too, she was sad because the sex had been amazing, it had been transporting, she was a hostage to it, to him, Lock. She was sad because she had to leave him. He would stay at the office, get cleaned up, and go home to Daphne, while Claire would go home to her kids. And Jason. She said, When will I see you again? He said, I’ll be in touch.

It continued. They met once a week, twice a week; they arranged it by text message or by e-mail. Claire couldn’t explain it, she didn’t understand it, she was a captive of the country: Adultery. Lock had infected her, he was something she’d caught, he was a sickness—maybe, like the common cold, it would wear off in a week or two, but maybe it would linger and grow like cancer. It would kill her. Claire couldn’t decide if the worst thing about adultery was the guilt or the fear. The guilt was debilitating. It was worse than the guilt she harbored about Daphne and worse than the guilt that attended Zack’s birth. Those had been accidents, mistakes. They had been unintentional. This affair was deliberate, the most deliberate sin she had ever committed. As a child, she had memorized the act of contrition: O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you . . . A priest once told her that sinners only thought about God after they had sinned, not before. This was Claire. She slept with Lock, she begged for forgiveness, as contrite as all the world, and then she slept with him again.