A Summer Affair Page 92

“The van Dykes are a yes,” Gavin said. “Do you know them?”

“No,” Isabelle said. “They must be friends of Claire’s.”

Gavin, pointedly, did not keep any notes. With each phone call, he became more and more indispensable. Claire was effusive. God, thank you, Gavin, what would we do without you? You deserve a raise! In September, when this is over, I’m going to bring it up at a board meeting. I’m going to tell them what an enormous help you’ve been. I could not do all this myself—I simply do not have the time.

Daphne called. Since discovering Lock and Claire in the office, back in April, Gavin had done his best to keep his conversations with Daphne short and to the point. Oh, hi, Daphne, would you like to speak to Lock? He just stepped out. I’ll tell him you called! Gavin could not gossip with the woman while keeping a huge secret from her himself. He had limits. He even, at times, experienced guilt. Daphne had no idea about her husband’s infidelity, or rather, she had every idea but she had identified the wrong target. Was it cruel keeping the news of Lock and Claire from her, or was it kind? Gavin chose kind. He was old enough now, mature enough, sophisticated enough, to realize that really, what you didn’t know—what you might never know—couldn’t hurt you.

This day, Daphne did not want to talk to Lock. She was adamant about that from the beginning.

I’m calling to talk to you, Gavin. I want to tell you something.

Surprisingly, the “something” she had to tell him was not about a third party—not about the postmaster dating a twenty-year-old Bulgarian house cleaner, not about Jeanette Hix’s being addicted to diet pills, which gave her insomnia, which led her to prowl the Cumberland Farms at four in the morning and shoplift a ninety-nine-cent bag of caramel Bugles.

Instead, Daphne said, Lock tells me you’re doing a fantastic job. You, my friend, are a wizard. I hope you’re planning a nice, long vacation after this is over, someplace exotic. You deserve it, darling. I’m proud of you.

Well, thank you, Daphne, Gavin said. He hung up the phone, impressed. A conversation with Daphne, and not one sideways reference, not one barbed word. Only sincere praise, or a passing along of praise, because she wanted him to know. He was proud of himself.

One night, when Gavin was getting ready to leave at five o’clock (heading home, where he would sit on his parents’ deck looking at the ocean, drinking wine, smoking, listening to Mozart, reading his Lonely Planet guide to Southeast Asia . . . Vietnam was sounding better and better), Lock stopped him.

“Gavin?”

Gavin stopped by the door. Lock’s tone of voice was ominous. Was this it, then? Gavin wasn’t prepared! Think! Whip out the weapon. He had the knife sharpened in his mind; all he had to do was wield it!

Gavin smiled expectantly, his mind a whirlwind. What was it he had planned to say? Before you contact the authorities, let me say one thing: I know about you and Claire. I came into the office one night in April. I saw you two . . . together.

Lock was slow to speak. He looked pained. God, this was torture! Gavin stood there, caught in the force field of the insidious thing he had done—stealing from the very cause he was working so hard to promote!—and he was overcome with remorse and nearly unbearable disgrace. Lock was going to put a name to his acts—theft, robbery, embezzlement. This acknowledgment alone would kill Gavin. Committing the crime was one thing, but having it exposed was quite another. Had he learned nothing from taking advantage of Diana Prell in the broom closet, or from the debacle at Kapp and Lehigh? Gavin experienced what could only be described as pure, unadulterated shame. He was, as they said in certain Asian cultures, losing face. Gavin understood this turn of phrase now. Even as he stood, waiting for Lock to lower the hatchet, his face was stiff and burning. He could not look Lock in the eye, so he gazed beyond Lock, out the twenty-paned window into the late summer afternoon.

Lock rose and approached him. Instinctively, Gavin backed up, but he was not fast enough to get away. Lock caught him, clapped him on the shoulder.

“I know things haven’t been easy around here,” Lock said.

Gavin’s eyebrows shot up. He thought of Rosemary Pinkle and how disappointed she would be. She was such a nice woman and she believed in Gavin. Tomorrow he was supposed to join her for drinks in her garden with a niece she wanted him to meet.

“With the gala, I mean. All the phone calls. Isabelle pushing you one way, Claire pulling you the other.”

Gavin nodded, uncomprehending. His parents were due in next week. They would not appreciate arriving to scandal. Gavin wasn’t quite sure what they thought of him—he had never been quite sure—but he knew it wasn’t terribly good. He hadn’t measured up, somehow.

“And I just want to say thank you. You’re doing a great job.” Lock squeezed Gavin’s shoulder in emphasis, so firmly that it hurt.

“I am?” Gavin said reflexively. He breathed out his fear.

“I’m so grateful. If this gala comes off in the legendary way I think it will, it’s in no small part because of your hard work.”

“Oh,” Gavin said.

“But you’re not off the hook yet,” Lock said.

“No?” Gavin said.

“The worst is probably still to come.”

“You think?” Gavin said.

“Yes,” Lock said.

CHAPTER TEN

He Blows It

There was only one time previously in his life that had been as frenetic and difficult as this summer. He had been in the process of buying a company, one bigger than his own; he had someone else handling the financing so that he could focus on the negotiations, which were primarily with an older gentleman named Gus MacEvoy, who owned the other, bigger company, and who was reluctant to sell. Most of Lock’s dealings were classic M&A stuff, pages right out of his business school textbook, but that didn’t make it any less stressful or consuming. And to make matters more complicated, Daphne was at home with Heather, who was eighteen months old and driving Daphne crazy. Daphne had undergone surgery to remove her ovaries a few months before, and she was still in pain and was suffering from a hormonal imbalance. When Lock got home (with all that was going on in the office, this was sometimes not until eight or nine at night), Daphne was alternately whimpering, fuming, or despondent. Her life, she said, was tedious beyond belief. It was Sesame Street and peekaboo and endless putterings up and down the street while Heather picked a dandelion, or put a pebble in her mouth, or ran ahead, stumbled, and cried. Heather threw her food instead of eating it. Heather spilled things, she broke things, she ripped pages out of Daphne’s magazines, she fussed unless Daphne read The Runaway Bunny three hundred consecutive times. She had to be held. She screamed in protest every time she had her diaper changed. Daphne took her to the playground, and one of the other mothers made a sideways comment because Daphne was reading the New Yorker while Heather was playing in the sandbox.

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