Music from a glass flute. Who had asked for the glass flute? She couldn’t remember, nor could she remember if she’d made it or not. It had to be possible. Lock loved the flute; she knew this because they listened to so much classical music on the Bose radio. She loved Lock; it was wrong, but it was true. How many weeks had she gone to confession, how many weeks had Father Dominic implored her to pray for the strength to stop, how many weeks had she said, Yes, okay, I will, but then found herself unable? She wondered how many other people she knew had a secret love. Anyone? Everyone? Not Siobhan. Siobhan thought Claire was a heathen. Claire’s head ached; she had to lie down. She meant to ease her head back, but she misjudged the distance to the floor, and her head met the concrete with a cracking thud. Only two arms left.

Darkness. Heat. Hell.

She came to in the hospital, in an antiseptic white square box of a room, where she was lying, crookedly, on a blue vinyl table covered with paper. Jason was there, and a heavyset nurse Claire didn’t recognize was holding a packet of cool blue gel to her forehead.

Jason said, “Claire?”

“Hi?” she said.

“It happened again,” he said. His face was red and the skin around his eyes was puffy. She had seen him look this way before, but when? She couldn’t remember.

“Two arms left,” she said. She didn’t think Jason would know what she was talking about, but his face clenched in angry recognition.

“Would you excuse us?” he said to the nurse.

“A doctor will have to see her before she’s discharged,” the nurse said. “She has heatstroke. She’s not free to go just because she’s awake.”

“Fine,” Jason said.

The nurse slipped out. Claire looked at Jason. “Heatstroke.”

“Again,” Jason said. “You did it again.”

She waited a minute to see if he would go on or if it was her turn to speak. Everything was moving so slowly, it was practically going backward.

“You have to stop,” he said. “The whole fucking thing. It’s like a cult you’ve joined, the gala committee. It’s like a planet you’ve moved to. Planet Gala. It is taking over your life, and you have to stop.”

She meant to say, Yes, okay, I will, but instead she said, “I can’t.”

“You have to stop,” Jason said. “I’d like to say you never should have started up again. Fine, I will say it: You never should have started up again. Because it’s dangerous—you don’t know when to stop, you push yourself until it just isn’t safe. You should have learned your lesson the last time. You hurt yourself and we nearly lost Zack.”

Claire started to cry. There was a frozen slab of blue gel strapped to her forehead, she realized, making her head heavy and hard to move. Had Jason just said that? No, he had not said that. It was the heatstroke. It was her guilt.

She looked at Jason. His eyes seemed to be two different colors, but she couldn’t remember which one was true. His eyes were blue, or green? Years ago, when she had made the nesting vases for the museum in Shelburne, she had created one that was the same color as Jason’s eyes. But had it been blue, or green? Or both? “I’m confused,” she admitted. “I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not real.”

“Because you have heatstroke!” he said. “You were in the shop too long, it was fifteen hundred degrees, you were out of water, you pushed yourself too far, and you fell down again—again!—and you passed out, again. And you almost died. Again! You’re like one of the kids, Claire. You do not listen!”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She remembered apologizing when it happened with Zack, on the operating table, as they took him by cesarean section. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. They don’t know about the baby. She had thought they were going to deliver him dead, but he had lived and he was fine. Kids developed at different paces, even siblings. Claire tried to sit up.

“It’s not like you even went back to work for a good reason!” Jason said.

“You mean a paying reason.”

“I mean a good reason! The gala! The auction item! Lock Dixon asked you! Who cares? It’s not worth it. Let them get something else—a trip to Italy, a Hinckley picnic boat! It’s not worth risking your life.”

“I’m not risking my life,” Claire said. But there they were, in the hospital.

“You’ve become like some robot that these people have programmed!”

“It’s nearly over,” Claire said. She decided trying to sit up was pointless, so she lay back and closed her eyes. She was tired. “In six weeks, it will be over. And I can’t quit if Matthew is coming.”

“He doesn’t care if you’re in charge or someone else is.”

“The whole reason he agreed to do it is that it’s my thing. So now he’s coming, and if I quit, what does that say? That it wasn’t important to me after all? That I don’t care about it? I can’t quit. I made a commitment and I intend to honor it.”

“Even if it costs you your marriage?” he said. “Your kids?”

“Is it going to cost me you and the kids?” Claire said.

“I don’t know,” Jason said. “I just don’t get it. You tell me you want to stay home with the kids, give the glass a rest for a while, you want to be a mom, spend time with Zack and all that—and then out of the blue, without even discussing it with me, you take on the gala, which is like a full-time job and then some. All those meetings—if they paid you by the hour, you’d be making a hundred grand. And on top of that, you’re back in the hot shop, back at the glass, blowing out this piece that’s going to be your magnum opus—great, whatever, I’m happy for you. Too bad you won’t get paid a dime, but Lock Dixon asked you, and the committee, whoever the hell that is, expects it, and now you’re on the hook.” He swallowed. “They’ve stolen you from us, Claire. You’re gone. Even when you’re sitting at the dinner table, even when we’re in bed and I’m on top of you, it feels like you’re somewhere else.”