Very strange, Claire thought. Wine in the office.

Lock held up the bottle to her like a sommelier. “This is a viognier. It’s a white from the Rhône valley. It’s my favorite varietal.”

“Is it?” Claire said.

“My wife finds it too tart. Too lemony. But I love its brightness.” He poured Claire a glass and she took a sip. Wine, like classical music, was one of those things Claire wanted to learn more about. She had tried to interest Jason in a wine-tasting class offered through the Community School, but he’d refused on the grounds that he never drank wine, only beer. This wine was bright, it was grassy—should she say that word “grassy,” or would she sound like a complete ass? She wanted to make Lock happy (she could hear Siobhan shouting, No boundaries!), and hence she declared, “I love it.”

“You do?”

“I love it. It tastes like a meadow.”

Another smile from Lock. She had spent the past five years certain that he hated her, blamed her—but here he was, smiling! It warmed her to the pit of her stomach.

“I’m glad you like it,” Lock said. He poured himself a glass equal to Claire’s. Was this okay—drinking wine in the office, alone, with Lock Dixon? Had the meetings with his former cochairs gone this way?

“Is Adams coming?” Claire asked. Adams Fiske, a mop-haired local attorney and one of Claire’s dearest friends, was president of the board of directors.

“He’s in Duxbury this week,” Lock said.

“I invited my sister-in-law, Siobhan,” Claire said. “But I doubt she’ll remember.”

“Okay,” Lock said. He sounded like he couldn’t have cared less. He raised his glass. “Cheers!” he said. “Here’s to the summer gala!”

“To the summer gala,” Claire said.

“I’m so glad you agreed to cochair,” Lock said. “We really wanted you.”

Claire blushed again and sipped her wine. “It’s my pleasure.”

Lock was sitting on the edge of his desk. He was wearing khaki pants, loafers without socks, a leather belt with a silver monogrammed belt buckle. His tie was loose and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone. Claire found him newly fascinating—but why? She knew nothing about him, other than that he was a rich man. That was interesting. Or rather, it was interesting that he had taken this job (which Claire, as a member of the board of directors, knew meant that he made $82,000 a year) even though he was so rich he never had to work again.

“I think we’ve found someone to be your cochair,” Lock said.

“Oh,” Claire said. “Good.” This was good; Claire certainly couldn’t shoulder all of the responsibility of the summer gala herself. And yet she was nervous about having a cochair. Claire was an artist; she worked alone. There was some sense in which she could call Jason her cochair—the cochair of the family—but if Claire got home tonight and found J.D. on the computer (unshowered, his homework incomplete), the girls lying in bed with tangled hair (you had to comb it out carefully), and Zack zoned out on Jason’s lap in front of Junkyard Wars, she would throw her arms up in frustration. “Who is it?”

“Isabelle French,” Lock said. “Do you know her? She joined the board in the spring.”

Isabelle French. Did Claire know her? She pictured a woman with her hair up, wearing dangly earrings and some kind of funky Indian-print tunic that reminded Claire of the Beatles in their psychedelic years. That was what Isabelle French had been wearing at the gala. She had been drinking a cosmopolitan, she had been dancing; Claire had seen her come off the dance floor pink-faced and breathless. Claire wondered if she was remembering the right woman.

“I . . . think so,” Claire said.

“She’s very nice. She’s eager to get more involved.”

“She lives . . . ?”

“In New York.”

“Okay. Does she . . . ?”

“Work? No, I don’t think so. Other than doing things like this, I mean.”

“Does she have . . . ?”

“Kids? No, no kids.”

There was a beat of silence between them. The charity was called Nantucket’s Children; it was for people who cared deeply about children, which generally meant having one or more of your own.

“No kids?” Claire said, wondering if Adams Fiske had been brazen enough to put someone on the board solely because of her pocketbook.

“No kids,” Lock confirmed.

“Is she . . . ?”

“Divorced,” Lock said. “From a guy I went to college with at Williams, actually. Though that has no bearing. I haven’t seen Marshall French in years, and honestly, I know Isabelle only slightly. Adams was the one who brought her aboard. But I know that she’s very nice. And eager.”

“Great,” Claire said. And then, lest she not seem eager herself, she pulled a notebook out of her bag—a notebook she had bought for this very reason—and said, “Should we get to work?”

The Nantucket’s Children Summer Gala: The goal was to sell a thousand tickets. The evening started with cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres. Cocktails were followed by a seated dinner, during which Lock showed a PowerPoint presentation of the programs that Nantucket’s Children funded. By the time dinner ended, the guests had (presumably) imbibed a few drinks and the wheels were greased for the auction. The trademark of the Nantucket’s Children Summer Gala was that they only auctioned off one item (one fabulous item, expected to go for at least fifty thousand dollars). The brief auction gave way, finally, to a concert by a performer or band that had highly danceable hits, like the Beach Boys (2004), like the Village People (2005), like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (2007). With underwriting, the event made well over a million dollars. That money was distributed to the twenty-two initiatives and programs set up exclusively for island kids.