Claire was plagued by memories of her own parents. Her father, Bud Danner, had owned an electronics store in Wildwood. He was a heavy drinker and a wild philanderer. He had not, in the words of Claire’s mother, “been faithful for five minutes.” After work, he would go to the bar, where he caroused with a string of trashy women. Claire remembered her mother crying, her mother blaming herself, her mother so angry at her father that Claire thought she would kill him. She screamed, she threw things, he walked out—he seemed to have no shortage of places to go—and then Claire’s mother would smack herself in the face again and again. It was awful. It was the worst thing Claire had ever witnessed, her mother’s self-loathing. Claire had promised herself she would never be this way. She would not blame herself for things beyond her control. But of course she did, all the time. She had inherited her parents’ worst traits, their most despicable behavior. She certainly never believed she would follow in her father’s flawed footsteps and cheat. And yet here she was. As Claire spoon-fed Zack pureed squash, as she bathed the girls and folded their pretty clothes, as she chose peaches and rib-eye steaks at the grocery store, she recognized herself as a liar. She wasn’t the person her children thought she was; she was someone with a secret life. Even worse than feeling guilty was forgetting to feel guilty. The guilt should have been part and parcel with the adultery; it should have been constant. To not feel guilt was monstrous. Guilt and no guilt: these were the worst things.

We’re going to hell, Claire whispered in Lock’s ear one night.

There is no hell, he whispered back.

The only thing worse than the guilt was the fear of getting caught.

One night, after Claire came home from being with Lock, Jason said, “You smell funny.”

Panic seized Claire by the knees. “I do not.”

“You do. You smell funny. Why do you smell funny?”

She didn’t look at him, though he was sitting up in bed, staring at her. “You smell funny all the time,” she said. “You smell like cigarettes.” She got right into the shower.

One day, she couldn’t find her cell phone. Where was it? Claire looked everywhere—throughout the house, under the kids’ beds, in the drawers, in each of her purses, in the car, outside in the frosty grass, in the hot shop. Where was it? Had Zack taken it? She looked in the toy box. Had she left it at the supermarket? She called the supermarket; no one had turned in a phone. She called Siobhan. Siobhan said, “Call the phone, silly. See if anyone answers.”

Claire called the phone. Jason answered. Claire said, “What are you doing with my phone?”

Jason said, “I have no idea. I didn’t even know I had it until just now, when you called me.”

Claire’s stomach contracted until it was a tight ball of fear. This sounded like a lie. Had he taken her phone to check on her? Had he seen all the phone calls to the Nantucket’s Children office, or to the strange number that was Lock’s cell phone? Had he seen the texts? Meet me here, meet me there? Claire should have deleted them, one and all. She was such a bloody fool, such an innocent—she had not followed the most basic rule in covering her tracks. She got in the car and drove to Jason’s work site, thinking of how to reasonably explain herself. The worst thing would be if Lock called while the phone was in Jason’s possession. But there was an easy explanation: gala business. There were always questions about the gala that needed to be asked or answered.

Still, when Claire got the phone back, she erased every call with a sick and pounding heart. The fear was the worst thing.

Claire wanted to go to confession, but confession was only held on Saturdays at four o’clock, and every Saturday at four o’clock J.D. had a Pop Warner football game at the Boys & Girls Club, and Claire could not miss a game. It would be worse to miss her child’s football game than not to confess to her adultery, she decided, though her desire to confess was pressing. She wasn’t sure she could actually hand the truth over to Father Dominic, the priest who had baptized all four of her children and had administered J.D.’s and Ottilie’s First Communions. Claire adored Father Dominic, she’d had him to the house for dinner numerous times, and twice the two of them had gone to the movies together—once to see Chicago and once to see Dreamgirls (Father Dominic was a big fan of musicals; Jason could not abide them). The longer Claire went without confessing, the more convinced she became that she would not be able to say the words I’m committing adultery to Father Dominic. She would have to wait for a visiting priest, whom she didn’t know and who didn’t know her, or she would confess to Father Dominic to a gamut of general sins and hope that adultery was covered among them. But somehow Claire understood that confessing would not be confessing unless she confessed to Father Dominic about Lock Dixon. Anything short of this would be a cop-out and would not count. And so she went. She left the Pop Warner game at halftime, telling Jason she had a migraine and had to go home.

He said, “Will you take Zack with you, please?”

She said, “I can’t.”

He said, “I can’t watch Zack and Shea—and Ottilie and J.D.” Ottilie was cheerleading, adorable in her N sweater and her blue and white pleated skirt. Shea was kicking a football on the sidelines, chasing it, kicking it again. Zack was whining, clawing at Claire’s neck. Claire could not in good conscience leave Jason with all of the kids, but she had to get to church.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take Zack.”