Claire would smile, laugh it off. What else could she do? Jason was mute at her side, barely paying attention, while Lock’s eyes grew wider and sadder. He would take Daphne’s arm and try to redirect her, lead her away, but that hurt, too, separating, seeking other conversations. Lock would later try to find Claire to apologize. That’s just how she is. Believe me, I know—I have to live with her. I’m so sorry. You look beautiful.

Claire glared at Lock, wounded and livid.

“I love you,” he whispered in line at the bar.

She nodded, tight-lipped.

Little League ended, school let out, it stayed light until nine o’clock at night, and it was impossible to get the kids into bed. The days stretched out, impossibly long, and yet impossibly short. With dropping off and picking up to and from camps, lessons, trips to the beach, Claire had little time left to get into the hot shop. The g.d. chandelier had only three arms; it was beautiful in its incompletion, her best work without question, but that didn’t make it any less incomplete. No matter how sunny or filled with possibility the early summer days made Claire feel, there was always a nugget of guilt and dread inside her, emitting radioactivity. The g.d. chandelier. Must finish it!

She would get it done before July 10, she decided. July 10 was the day the invitations to the gala were being mailed out. On the evening of July 9, the gala committee would gather at Isabelle French’s house in Monomoy and they would stuff the invitations into envelopes, stick on labels, and seal the envelopes up. Isabelle herself was arriving on Nantucket on July 8 with the boxes of invitations in tow, so really, Claire’s deadline for the g.d. chandelier was July 8, because she couldn’t live with the stress of having Isabelle on the island and not being finished with the g.d. chandelier.

First, Claire looked at what she had: a glorious pink globe in the center with three gracefully trailing arms. She needed five more arms; then she needed to make the tiny bell-like cups to hold the bulbs. Ted Trimble called each week to see if the chandelier was ready to be wired.

Not yet, Claire said. Soon.

Claire went at the g.d. chandelier as if it was an exam she had to take, or a paper she had to turn in. Being Catholic, she held the belief that to create something truly great, truly holy, there must be sacrifice. And so for five days, she gave up all the things that she enjoyed. She gave up her evenings alone with Lock, she gave up a very fancy cocktail party at Libby Jenkins’s house on Lincoln Circle, where she knew she would see Lock, she gave up three perfect, sunny afternoons at the beach, and she gave up the Fourth of July fireworks with her kids—Jason and Pan took them instead, with a gorgeous picnic that Claire had prepared but not eaten. In the days that she set aside to finish the g.d. chandelier, Claire ate pasty, tasteless foods—rice cakes, dry whole wheat toast, saltines with organic peanut butter, edamame, radishes—and something Pan made called Thai fire broth, which was insidiously spicy and which Claire drank only to stay awake.

With such sacrifice, with such a dedicated effort in the hot shop, Claire thought the remainder of the g.d. chandelier would come easily. She did very few things in her life with extreme self- confidence, but blowing glass was one of them. She could make glass do what she wanted; it was a gift. After so many years of blowing out globes for the Bubbles or making the glass do other wildly creative things for people like Jeremy Tate-Friedman of London and Mr. Fred Bulrush of San Francisco, Claire knew how the gather would behave. She had a clear idea of what she wanted the arms of the chandelier to look like: she had a sketch taped to the marvering table for reference. Her Catholic soul believed that since she had sacrificed sleep, yoga, sunshine, viognier, all food other than twigs and leaves, and the delighted cries of her children when the fireworks exploded overhead, she would be able to finish the chandelier. She would, through her own willpower, climb out of this hell.

But it was hard. She tried ninety-six times to get the fourth arm just right—and then she nearly dropped it, she was so weary. But it was fine, whole, undamaged. It went into the annealer and she was so tired she could have cried, but she made herself go back to the pot furnace for another gather.

Her arms ached, her sight blurred, she tried and tried again. Four more arms. They needed to fall and twist just so. She thought she knew the perfect angle, she could see it in her mind, but she could not make the hot glass take the angle; if it happened, it happened because of luck. But no, she couldn’t think like that; she had to believe it was within her control. Time and time again, she tried; she was sweating, she was drinking gallons of water—gallons!—and yet she was always thirsty.

One afternoon, when Pan and the kids were at the beach, when she was roasting like a Thanksgiving turkey, she got the fifth arm—perfect, beautiful—into the annealer. Ten or eleven tries later, she got the sixth arm. Yes! Two arms in the space of an hour, and only two left to go . . . She could finish that very afternoon, the afternoon of July 6. She went back to the pot furnace for another gather and pictured herself driving out to the beach for a swim. She thought of the cool, cold water; then she thought of cool water trickling over the side of a stone fountain, a necklace of cool jade stones lying against her breastbone, a bowl of chilled cucumbers, music trilling out of a glass flute, a frosted glass of lemonade, chilled silver cups for mint juleps, ice swans, diamonds. A bead of sweat fell from the tip of Claire’s nose, hit the steaming iron of her punty, and hissed, evaporated. She closed the door to the pot furnace, set her punty down, and staggered to the bench. She felt like she was going to vomit. She bent in half and retched onto the concrete floor. She pushed her goggles up onto her head, ripped off her gloves, and hobbled over to the water basin, where she dunked her hands and splashed her face. She fell back onto her butt.