“Well . . . ,” Claire said.

“Do you really think I’m having an affair?” Jason said. “Do you really think I’m that kind of lowlife? That kind of skunk?”

“It’s dark upstairs,” she said. “Pitch-black. What was I supposed to think?”

“You think I’m a cheating scum. Like your father! Come on, we’re leaving.”

“No.”

“We’re leaving. I’ll get our coats.”

Claire sat down on the bottom step and held her burning face. In the other room, the music was getting louder, couples were probably dancing, and Siobhan had probably popped the cork on a bottle of vintage Moët, but Claire and Jason Crispin were leaving.

Jason threw her pashmina at her. “Here.”

“But Siobhan . . .” Siobhan would really be mad at her now, for picking a fight at her party, for leaving early.

“Let’s go,” Jason said.

They marched out of the house, slamming the door. When they were on the sidewalk, Carter stuck his head out.

“Jase, man, where are you going?”

“My wife’s dragging me home.”

“Already? Dude, we still have food coming. I’m grilling sirloin . . .”

“Sorry, man,” Jason said. He climbed into the truck and Claire climbed into the truck and they sat there, cold and silent and seething.

Claire said, “You stay.”

“No,” Jason said.

“Fine, then I’ll stay.”

“No,” Jason said.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” she said. “You don’t own me.” She kicked her high heel at the glove box. “I hate this truck.” Jason said nothing, and this infuriated her. “I think it is so stupid the way you’ve named this truck Darth Vader. Ever considered what an imbecile it makes you seem like to drive a truck named Darth Vader?”

Jason deftly extracted the truck from their parallel parking place and gunned it for home. Claire braced herself with one hand against the dash. She saw Jason’s face when they passed under a streetlight. His mouth was a pinched line.

When they screeched into the driveway, Jason yanked the keys from the ignition. His eyes were filled with tears. He said, “I call the truck Darth Vader because the kids like it. They think it’s funny.”

Claire stared at him, defiant. She would not be a shrinking violet; she would not wilt. But Jason, in tears? This was new, this was awful, this was something she had done. She bowed her head. Jason was not an imbecile. He was not stupid, small-minded, backward, or limited. He was a man who liked to see his kids smile, who liked to hear squeals of terrified delight (Shea) when he revved the truck’s engine in a menacing way. And Jason was not a cheater. When Claire had seen Jason coming down the stairs with Julie Jackson, she had thought: I know what that means. She had seen herself. Claire was cheating, Claire was lying, Claire had had sex with Lock Dixon on the conference table in the Nantucket’s Children boardroom—she’d had sex with Lock, countless times, in her own car, the Pilot, which she now did not allow Jason to ride in. Claire had projected her behavior onto Jason; she had splattered it all over him like paint.

Claire was the skunk.

The following morning, Claire woke up with the worst hangover of her life. It wasn’t just the alcohol, although her head hammered with pain and her stomach squelched and she released foul gas that Jason certainly would have complained about, had he been in bed. But Jason’s side of the bed was empty, smooth; it had never been slept in. He had spent the night in the guest room, which they had agreed never to do except in case of marital emergency, because J.D. and Ottilie were both old enough to construe what this meant, and neither Claire nor Jason wanted stories, true or false, about their sleeping arrangements leaving the house. So the fact that Jason had spent the night in the guest room indicated that matters were dire indeed. Claire had insulted him; she had called his love, and his character, into question, and what offense was worse than that? Once they were inside the house and once Pan had slipped away to her room, Claire tried to explain that she had been upset by her conversation with Siobhan and she’d been drinking her fourth or fifth glass of wine, and when she’d seen Jason and Julie coming down the stairs, she’d jumped to conclusions. She’d accused him, yes, but she was sorry and she begged him to take into consideration the circumstances.

The circumstances are, Jason had said, stumbling over his own soapbox, located six feet from the TV, remote control in hand, that you suck. He’d turned the set on and begun hunting for Junkyard Wars.

Claire, meanwhile, got a glass of water for herself and said, Come to bed. I’ll make it up to you. She was not used to fighting with Jason. They had divided up their life into his territory and her territory; they ruled peacefully, side by side, and their common ground—the marriage—rarely came up as a topic of conversation the way it had tonight. Tonight, their marriage was the Gaza Strip. But even so, Claire was pretty sure she could win Jason over in the usual way.

No, Jason said.

You’re turning down sex, again? she said.

I’m sleeping in the guest room, he said.

She had alienated her husband and she had alienated her best friend. The first had happened suddenly; the second had been taking place slowly, over the course of six months. Claire felt despicable; her heart was pumping out black blood, sludge, sewage. She could barely lift her head off her pillow or move her feet to the floor.