That night, she had nothing to make for dinner, so she threw eggs into the skillet with chopped-up deli ham, shredded cheddar, half-and-half, chives, and halved cherry tomatoes, and she served this with buttered wheat toast. Jason regarded his plate with disbelief and said, “What’s this?”

She said, “We didn’t have anything else in the house and I didn’t have time to go to the store.”

Jason said, “Why didn’t you call for pizza? I could have stopped on my way home and picked it up.”

At the mention of pizza, the kids started to clamor, even Zack, who didn’t know what pizza was.

Claire stood up from the table and glared at Jason. “Fine,” she said. “Get pizza.”

That night, as Jason climbed into bed, he said, “Do you want me to call Carter tomorrow so you can settle this thing with Siobhan?”

Claire reread the e-mail in the morning and found it just as egregious. She had cashed in a once-in-a-lifetime favor and gotten Max West to play for free, she had spent a month of Sundays in the hot shop, working on the g.d. chandelier—and now, now, Isabelle had basically set forth a mandate that Claire cough up $25,000 for the concert. Claire got it: hard work and favors were one thing, but when it came down to it, one’s contributions were measured in terms of cold, hard cash.

Twenty-five thousand dollars: it felt like a dare.

It was the first week of May, and every day had brought a cold, steely rain. This was comforting. Claire retreated to the hot shop and blew out a pair of vases; she was too aghast and distracted to work on the g.d. chandelier. The awful thing was, she could see Isabelle’s point. Claire had agreed to be cochair, she had taken on that responsibility, and it would be naive of her not to understand that part of the responsibility was fiscal. But Claire could not swing it. Two tickets at $2,500 was $5,000; this would be an extreme stretch for them. (It would have been more palatable had Claire been producing income over the past four months with a paying commission, instead of slaving over the g.d. chandelier.) To take an entire table at $25,000 was out of the question, for a number of reasons. Let’s say Claire paid for the table up front and then asked the people sitting with her to kick in for their tickets. She would (a) never have the guts to ask for the money and (b) never find anyone she was friends (or even acquaintances) with who would agree to pay that much, even if she were gutsy enough to ask. She was offended that Isabelle had checked on her past ticket purchases. Claire and Jason had not sat in the “back”—they had sat in the middle, and last year they sat with Adams and Heidi Fiske. Adams Fiske, president of the board of directors, hadn’t even bought a $2,500 ticket. He was back in $1,000-a-head land with all the other normal people. Claire could not think of anyone she knew who would be willing to cough up $2,500 for a seat. Certainly not Carter and Siobhan (it was safe to say at this point that they wouldn’t go at all), not Brent and Julie Jackson, not Tessa Kline, not Amie and Ted Trimble, not Delaney and Christo Kitt. Possibly Edward Melior—but Claire had just alienated him, so no. Possibly the clients of Jason’s who owned the house in Wauwinet, but did Claire really want to sit—on one of the most important and glamorous nights of her life—with clients whom she barely knew? She did not. She wanted to be with her friends. So . . . she would not be taking a $25,000 table.

But to say so would be to say a bunch of other things as well. She would be saying that she didn’t have the same means as Isabelle French, which would be a blow to her pride. But why? Claire had grown up in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey, where her family had been decidedly middle class, the middlest of middle class. In comparison, she and Jason lived the life of royalty—the house, their businesses, the opportunities for their four kids, the au pair. They had every material thing they needed and many they wanted, but they did not have $25,000 to spend on one evening out. No one Claire knew did—and that was perhaps the dicier issue: in not taking a $25,000 table, Claire felt she was cementing the differences between summer people and locals. Isabelle French and her compatriots from the city had more money than Claire and the wonderful people who shared her foxhole. They had a lot more money—why pretend it wasn’t true? They were all donating to the cause—raising money for the hardworking families of Nantucket—just in varying degrees.

The more Claire thought about it, the more angry she became at Isabelle for even asking her to make such a colossal financial commitment. Claire became convinced that this was more of Isabelle’s passive-aggressive behavior. Isabelle had asked Claire, knowing that Claire would either say she didn’t have the money (which would underscore their class differences or, worse, make it seem as though Claire wasn’t as gung ho or dedicated to the cause as Isabelle) or Claire would come up with the money and cut the legs out from under her family financially.

Horrible woman! Claire ranted.

She could not take this problem to Jason. He would see it only one way because he was a man, because he had no emotional attachments to money other than happiness (or relief) about what it could buy you. He would say, If we had twenty-five thousand dollars to spend on a table up front at the gala, we would be buying a boat instead.

So in the end, Claire called Lock. She was hesitant about doing so, because more and more lately, it felt like her problems were becoming ones that only Lock could solve. Or only Lock could understand. Or Claire had been brainwashed, somehow, because she believed in his authority (There is no hell), and hence he was the only person she wanted to take her problems to, despite her concern that he would soon see her as a person who constantly had problems that needed to be fixed. But this thing, Isabelle, the money, the gala: this fell squarely under his umbrella of expertise.