“Okay, well, if you’re not going to do it, who else should I call? I have to get someone today.” Claire’s phone beeped. The display said, Isabelle French. “Oh, shit, Isabelle’s on the other line. I’ll call her back. Who else should I ask?”

“To feed a thousand people in ten days?” Siobhan said. “Nobody I know. It’s August, Claire. People are booked and overbooked. If someone is free, there’s a reason, and you shouldn’t hire them.”

“Great,” Claire said. “So you’re telling me the only people I want are people who aren’t available?”

“Pretty much.”

Isabelle’s number beeped in again. Claire should switch over, but she wasn’t ready for that brand of hysteria.

“Okay,” Claire said. She knew she should be panicked. They had no caterer for the gala—no food, no drink. But Claire felt calm. She had woken up with a bad feeling, and here it was, realized. J.D. walked into the bedroom in his bathing suit with a towel around his neck. Should she bag on him and instead spend all day in the office with Isabelle, dialing every caterer in the phone book? Was this the right thing to do? The right choice was usually the more difficult one. Who had told her that? Father Dominic? Her mother? But putting the gala before her family and disappointing her son could not be the right choice here. So in this rare case, the right choice was the less difficult one. “Listen, I’m taking J.D. to Nobadeer, just the two of us. Want to meet me there with the boys?”

“I am up to my tits in Pops,” Siobhan said. “But what the hell, I’ll come for an hour.”

The hours Claire spent at the beach were like hours spent dreaming. The sun was hot, the water refreshing, and J.D. was happy and exhilarated by the waves and by his cousins. Siobhan came for an hour and brought Claire half a chicken salad sandwich, a cup of gazpacho, and a bottle of fancy Italian lemonade. Claire’s phone rang off the hook—Isabelle, Lock, Edward, Genevieve—but Claire didn’t take a single call. She would deal with the catering problem later, and quite possibly, by the time she gave it her full attention, it would be solved. It was liberating to let it go; it was fortifying to spend four hours being herself—a woman who loved the beach, the mother of a ten-year-old boy. She even tried to boogie-board a few times—it was too hot to stay out of the water. She rode the waves to shore, enjoying the swell and the rush, enjoying even the sand in her suit and the salt stinging her eyes.

They left the beach at quarter to five, in time to get home and relieve Pan. Claire was so relaxed that she let J.D. sit in the front seat next to her. His dark blond hair was damp, his bare torso suntanned and rippling with emerging muscles. He, like Jason, would be handsome and strong. J.D. switched the radio station fifteen times—ah, to finally be in control of the music!—and he polished off his Coke, then casually hung his elbow out the open window. As they turned the corner onto their street, J.D. said, “Mom, that was awesome. You rock.”

Claire grinned. Her face was tight and warm from the sun. Ten, she decided, was the perfect age for a boy. J.D. did not need the constant caretaking that the other kids needed, but his heart and mind were still those of a child.

“You were great company,” she said.

There was an unfamiliar car in their driveway. As Claire pulled in, her good mood evaporated. It was not an unfamiliar car at all; it was a green Jaguar convertible, the car Lock drove in the summertime. Lock was not a man who got excited about cars. As the director of Nantucket’s Children, he always said, he should be driving a twelve-year-old minivan. But this car he loved. The XKR was sleek, curvy, and fast, in a prestigious racing green. He would not park it on the street; it spent all summer in the yacht club parking lot. Now here it was in Claire’s driveway. Lock sat in one of the Adirondack chairs next to Claire’s mudroom door. He was wearing a khaki suit, a pink seersucker shirt, a darker pink tie, and loafers without socks. A hanging geranium twirled above his head; a few pink petals had dropped onto the creamy shoulders of his jacket. How long had he been sitting there? He was pitched forward, his forearms on his knees, staring expectantly out at Claire’s cul-de-sac. Willing her to appear? Well, yes, obviously. Claire had never known Lock to idly wait anywhere, for anything. The man was a model of efficiency, always on the phone, or reviewing paperwork, or drafting letters, or reading relevant articles in philanthropic magazines or the Economist or Barron’s. It was almost like this wasn’t really him.

“Who’s that guy?” J.D. asked.

Claire was frozen. She could barely twist her wrist to remove the key from the ignition. She was stunned by Lock’s presence. He had stopped by unannounced only one other time, and that was back in January, when he had entered her hot shop while she was working. Back then, she had been surprised, yes, certainly, but back then a part of her had been expecting him. Back then, he was always on her mind; thoughts of him followed her everywhere, so the fact that he had appeared out of the blue seemed right. That day had marked the first time Lock had told her he loved her. It had been magic, his appearing to declare that; it had been supernatural. But now, today, Claire was tense, on guard; she was a little repulsed. Part of this was because she looked awful. As she got out of the car, this came into clearer focus: the fronts of her legs were sunburned, she was wearing a damp cotton beach cover-up that had at one time been white but was now the color of old chewing gum, and her hair was like a clump of seaweed, tangled and salty. Her feet were sandy and she could feel freckles popping out all over her face. She did not want Lock to see her this way, looking like something that had washed up on the beach. Nor did she want to see Lock in all his seasonal pink, sockless, his thinning hair windblown from a ride in his convertible. She had done a thorough job of blocking him out of her mind and had successfully forgotten all about the catering nonsense.