The duvet cover was ruined. It was such a stupid thing, in comparison with everything else, but it was the thing that made Claire’s throat tighten; it was the thing that nearly made her cry.

“Come down to breakfast,” she sniffled.

At ten thirty, the phone rang. Claire was upstairs trying to strip the vomity sheets off the bed with Zack clinging to her neck, and the sound of the phone took her by surprise. She zipped downstairs to get it. Siobhan, she thought, and her heart lightened. Or Jason. Or . . . Lock. But no, it was Sunday; he would never in a million years call her house on a Sunday.

The caller ID said Unknown Number. Telemarketer, she thought, her heart sinking. Zack started to bang his head against her breastbone and cry. It was not a good time to take a call. But Claire was grateful that anyone wanted to talk to her, even a salesperson. She picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Claire?”

It was a man. It was Lock? It was not Lock, but the voice was as familiar as Lock’s voice. It was ringing the same bells in her head.

“Yes?” she said.

“It’s me.”

She paused, then said tentatively, “Me who?”

“Matthew.”

“Oh,” she said, astonished. Matthew? Really, it was Matthew? “Oh, God, I can’t believe it.”

“You got my message?” he said. “Back in . . . ?”

“October. Yes, I got it.”

“I’m home now,” he said. “Well, not home home, but in California.”

Zack was crying. Claire couldn’t hear Matthew. She said, “Can you hang on a second?”

“Is this a bad time?”

“No!” she said. “No, God, no.” The voice all of a sudden made sense; it clicked, that famous voice. It had been so long. “I have to talk to you. I mean, I need a friend, and all of my other friends, and my husband, for that matter—well, I’ve pissed them off. I’m pretty much persona non grata around here.”

“That makes two of us,” he said.

“Hold on one second,” she said.

She set the phone down and tried to shush Zack, but he was in a full-blown tizzy; there was nothing she could do with him. But she wanted to talk to Matthew; they had known and loved each other long before Jason or Siobhan or Lock had come into her life, and there was a reason he was calling now, this morning. It was a sign; it was what she needed.

She buckled. She had no choice. She knocked on Pan’s bedroom door.

Pan opened the door a crack. She was wearing a gray athletic shirt and black panties and her hair was in her face. She had been asleep.

“I am so, so sorry,” Claire said. “But can you please, please hold him for ten minutes? I have to take a very important phone call.”

Pan did not respond, and Claire thought maybe she was sleepwalking. Zack lunged for her, and Pan reached out instinctively, took Zack, and shut the door.

“Thank you!” Claire said to the closed door. “Thanks, Pan! Ten minutes!”

She hurried back to the phone. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“Thank God,” Claire said. She moved outside and settled on the top step of the deck, where she sat in the sun. She was warm, outside, for the first time in months. “Thank God you called me.”

“Tell me what’s happening,” Matthew said. “Tell me everything.”

Only then did Claire cry. Max West was a rock star, yes. He had played for the sultan of Brunei, the Dalai Lama, an amphitheater full of Buddhist monks. He had won Grammys and met presidents. But he was her childhood, her adolescence; he was a part of her, he was who she used to be, and he was who she still was, somewhere deep inside. Back when they were friends, before they were lovers, he would come to her house on Saturday mornings and help her with her chores: dusting and vacuuming the front of the house. Before he had his growth spurt, he would stand on top of the vacuum, and Claire would push him around the living room. He showed up, one time, in the middle of the night and found Claire asleep with her hair wrapped in treated paper to straighten it, and they both laughed until they nearly wet their pants. His junior year, he drove a 1972 yellow Volkswagen Bug that had no turn signals and no ignition, and even in February when it was fifteen below zero, he had to crank down his windows and stick his arm out so that oncoming traffic would know he was turning. He had to run alongside that car to get it started, and Claire was right there with him, running, pushing, hopping into the passenger side. He worked as a busboy one summer at a seafood restaurant on the boardwalk, and Claire would meet him after his shift, and once in a while he would pull lobster tails from behind his back. They were extras. A gift from the cook. They used to eat the lobsters with their bare hands in the dunes, looking at the black ocean. On those nights of the pilfered lobsters, the breeze in her face and Matthew’s bare leg knocking against hers and the hour growing so late that the lights of the boardwalk were shutting down behind them, she felt something rare. She thought to herself: I never want my life to change.

But change it did.

“I’m okay,” Claire sobbed. How had she gotten here? So far away from that dune in Wildwood. She lived somewhere else now, and she had four children and a husband and a career and a house and a best friend and a lover and this unwieldy commitment that was causing her so much angst—but the gala was also bringing Matthew back to her, and along with Matthew, these memories. They gave her strength, if only because they were reminding her of who she was at her core. But this second, she was like Zack; she couldn’t stop crying, despite the sunshine. “You talk first. You tell me.”