“I’m drinking again,” Matthew said. “I’m drunk now.”

“Ohhhhhhh,” Claire said, through a blockage of teary snot in her nose. “Oh no.”

“Yes,” he said. “I was away for months, on tour. I was in Asia—remote Indonesia, far-flung islands with dragons—and I was in wildest Borneo, where there are still cannibals. It was a freak show. I thought I could handle it. But then my sponsor got sick and left me on top of a volcano in Flores, where the lakes were pink, purple, and turquoise because of mineral deposits. The lakes were mind-blowing, they were like something Disney came up with, but they were real—and then my sponsor, Jerry, Christian fellow, got really fucking sick, and I could tell you that that was when I lost my way, but the fact of the matter is, I lost my way well before that. I started drinking in the airplane bathroom before we even left LAX, and basically never stopped.”

“No.”

“Yes. When I came home to California, Bess divorced me. I let her down, she said. She wasn’t willing to do it anymore. And I said, ‘You knew I was vulnerable. You should have come with me.’ ”

“Yes. Why didn’t she?”

“She hates touring. Hates it. She’s a homebody. She didn’t want to leave the dogs.”

“Ahhhh,” Claire said, sniffling. “The dogs.”

“So we’re done. It’s over. She’s going to marry my accountant and have children. I’m giving her three million dollars, even though she claims she doesn’t want it. And she doesn’t want the house, even though she helped design it and decorate it in that Zennish Bess way, but I can’t live in it—it’s her house—so we’re selling it. But she’s there, for the time being, with the dogs—she’s taking custody of the dogs, of course—and I’m renting a place in the hills, trying to keep myself to two gin and tonics per hour.”

“Oh, Matthew.”

“I know. This is the bottom. Everyone thought the bottom was when Savannah and I got caught coming out of the Beverly Hills Hotel . . .”

“That was pretty bad.”

“That was just a media blitz, except for the fact that the husband took a contract out on me with the Belarussian mob. They tried to kill me.”

“Well, no one’s threatening to kill you now,” Claire said. “So this is better.”

“It’s worse,” he said. “Because I am, very slowly, killing myself.”

“You have to stop,” Claire said.

“I can’t stop.”

Right. She had seen it in the tabloids: in and out of rehab, where he was treated and deprogrammed, medicated and talked to, but as soon as he got out, as soon as he was left to his own devices, he sought the very thing he was trying to stay away from. Claire understood it now, better than she ever had before, because she was addicted to Lock. She was unable to give him up, despite the fact that staying with him was ruining her life.

“You can’t stop,” she whispered.

“It’s a disease,” he said.

Claire thought back to Labor Day weekend, 1986, a few nights before their senior year was to begin. There was a late-night party in an empty rental house, thrown by their friend E.K., whose mother was a real estate agent. There was beer; there was strip poker. Claire, for some reason, was the only girl at the party after midnight, or the only girl playing strip poker, and Matthew did not want her to take her clothes off, but that was the game, so she took them off, unconcerned, because E.K. and Jeffrey and Jonathan Cross and everyone else were her good buddies, buddies since nursery school—they were like brothers. Claire sat in the circle practically naked, feeling skinny and sexless—they were her brothers!—but Matthew got quietly upset, he drank and drank and drank, and when the sun came up and they all got dressed again, Claire had to carry Matthew to his doorstep. He was babbling, making no sense, saying, You make me crazy. I love you. I’m crazy. You make me crazy, Claire Danner.

Claire had considered leaving Matthew draped across his front porch, but she was afraid he would choke on his vomit and die the way they were always warning you of in health class, so she tapped on the screen door, which brought Sweet Jane Westfield outside with her cigarette and her cup of tea. Claire thought Jane would be mad—they had stayed out all night, drinking—but Matthew had four older siblings, all out of the house by that time, and Sweet Jane was used to teenage shenanigans. She took Matthew inside and waved good-bye to Claire, and as Claire wandered down the Westfields’ walk, she heard Matthew say to his mother, That girl of mine makes me crazy.

When Claire thought of Labor Day weekend, 1986, she thought, That was when it started. Matthew’s alcoholism. But that might have been her feeling pointlessly responsible again. No boundaries! The truth was, in the years since they’d both left Wildwood, Matthew had known excesses Claire couldn’t even imagine.

“Tell me about you,” Matthew said. “Tell me why you’re sad. Never in a million years did I expect to call and find you sad. I never think of you as being sad. Remember when you told me that once you were out of your parents’ house, your life was going to be perfect?”

“Ha!” Claire said. She had told Matthew that. She had promised herself she would leave Wildwood Crest with a clean slate. And her life had been happy; it had been blessed. Until . . . when? When had the trouble started? With Zack’s birth—or before that? On the night of Daphne’s accident? Where would Claire start if she wanted to explain about Lock? What would she say? I love him the way I used to love you, with heedless abandon, with pure emotion in that aching, longing, dangerous way.