“These are for Claire,” Lock said, indicating the pile of letters. “I’m just dropping them off.”

Pan nodded as she moved vegetables around with a wooden spoon. She saw him watching. “You hungry?” she said. “You want?”

Lock raised a hand. “I just ate,” he said. “Thank you.” He should go. When Claire was ready to speak to him again, she would call him. He turned toward the door. Now, however, Claire would know he’d been here and hadn’t made a point to see her, and what kind of message would that send? He cleared his throat. “Can I see Claire? Is she out back?”

“Hot shop,” Pan said. “Working.” This seemed to be an admonishment for him to leave; certainly Claire would not tolerate anyone disturbing her when she was working.

“I see,” Lock said. So he really should go. But it had taken such an effort, emotionally, to come, to cross the line, and he would almost certainly never do it again, so . . . he would see her. He would insist. “I’ll go out back,” he said. “Okay?”

“Claire working,” Pan said. “It not safe.”

True enough. It wasn’t safe. But Lock said, “Please? It’s okay. She wants to see me.”

Pan stared at him. Had he just tipped his hand to the Thai au pair?

She shrugged. “Okay. Be careful. Hot shop hot. Hot shop bright. Wear goggle.”

He smiled. “You bet.”

He left the house by the back door and traversed the slushy, muddy backyard to the hot shop, which was smaller than a guest cottage but bigger than a shed. It billowed white smoke like a nuclear reactor. He had often envisioned Claire at work in the shop, and now he would see her. He knocked on the metal door. There was no answer. She was busy, or she couldn’t hear him. He waited, shivering and tapping his foot against the cold, wondering if Pan was watching him out here. He looked back at the house; the windows were steamed. He knocked again, more forcefully.

“Claire!” he called. The property abutted the public golf course, and his voice echoed out over the frozen fairway. Was this a good idea?

He tried the knob, and it turned. Should he just enter, then? Surprising her was one thing, but what if he scared her so badly she burned herself or cut herself? Well, he didn’t have all day, he needed to get back to the office, and since he was determined to show his face, he pushed into the hot shop.

“Claire?” he called out. Jesus, was it hot! Lock whipped off his earmuffs and unbuttoned his coat. It had to have been well over a hundred degrees in there. The furnace was roaring like a dragon. Lock’s eyes were drawn to the dazzling brightness; it was like looking at the inside of a star. He closed his eyes, and amorphous green blobs danced around. Be careful! He had been here ten seconds and already he’d burned his retinas. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Claire across the room—in a white tank top and jeans and clogs. If he hadn’t known it was her, she would have been unrecognizable. Her hair was gathered in a very tight bun and she wore large plastic welder’s goggles. She was just stepping away from the furnace with a molten blob of glass on the end of a pipe; she turned the pipe deftly so that the blob became a uniform sphere, a perfect globe of yellow jelly. Lock yanked at his tie—it was sweltering, nearly unbearable in here. How did Claire stand it? He noticed she was sweating; her tank top was damp and clung to her. She hadn’t seen him yet, and he wasn’t sure how to announce his presence without scaring the bejeezus out of her. He was fascinated, too, by her movements, by the way she held the pipe, by the way she manipulated the hot glass. The glass was like a living thing on the end of the pipe, with a mind of its own; it wanted to go one way, Claire coaxed it another. She held the pipe to her mouth and blew, and the blob expanded like a balloon. She made it look effortless. She twisted the pipe some more; she lay the balloon against a metal table and rolled it and shaped it and opened the end with a pair of tweezers. Then she turned back toward the furnace. Lock tried to duck out of sight, but he wasn’t fast enough. He didn’t want to scare her, true, but he also didn’t want to stop watching her. She saw him then—her mouth opened, and she jerked the pipe. The vessel on the end of the pipe jerked also and immediately became lopsided. Claire dumped the pipe, vessel-end down, into a bucket of water, causing a lot of steam and hiss. At the same time, Lock’s spirits were dampened. He had made a mistake in disturbing her; he had ruined her work.

He wanted to leave, hastily, but he was here now and she knew it, so he took a few hesitant steps forward.

She closed the furnace door and immediately the room dimmed and grew cooler. She pushed her goggles to the top of her head and blinked rapidly, as if she thought she might be hallucinating.

It’s me, he thought. Surprise! Stopping by had backfired. The five days of silence had been a message. She was finished with him.

But then she smiled. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Can-not believe it.”

“I’m here,” he said. “I dropped off those letters.”

“Letters?” she said.

“For the underwriting.”

“Fuck the underwriting,” she said. She looked around the shop. “This place is safe. The only person who ever comes in here is me.”

“Well, then,” Lock said, moving toward her and putting his arms around her waist, “I can tell you the truth. I came for you.”

They kissed. She tasted like metal and sweat; her lips and the skin on her face were very hot, as if she had a fever. It was different, but not unpleasant. When they both went to hell and they kissed, this was what it would be like.