A Summer Affair Read Free

question. It was like the time she fainted during track practice, when she was seventeen, and she became convinced that she was pregnant. She was dead certain; she had Matthew ready to sell his guitar so they could pay for an abortion, but she cried herself to sleep, worried that she was going to burn in hell, and she decided to keep the baby. Her mother would raise it while Claire went to college . . .
    When Claire went to the doctor, he said, You’re not pregnant. The problem is that you have anemia.
    Anemia! She had shouted the word with glee.
    “Chairing?” she said now.
    “It’s a lot of work, but probably not as much as you think. You’ll have a cochair. I know you’re busy, but . . .”
    Yes, three children and a baby and a glassblowing business put on hold for the foreseeable future so she could focus on her family. She was not the right person to ask. Not this year. Maybe down the road, when she had her head above water. Then it dawned on Claire why he was asking her: The summer gala was a concert . Lock was coming to her because they wanted Matthew to perform. Max West, her high school sweetheart, now one of the biggest rock stars in the world.
    Claire took in some of the rarefied yacht club air. There were a million thoughts zipping through her mind: Jason would kill her. Siobhan would laugh and call her a pushover ( No Boundaries! ). Margarita, no salt. It will never come out. Would Matthew do it if she asked? She hadn’t spoken to him in years. He might, he just might. Anemia! Nantucket’s Children was a good cause. The best cause.
    Trumping all those thoughts was this: Lock Dixon was the one person Claire could not say no to. What had happened the night of Daphne’s accident hung in the air between them, unfinished business. It hung between them in a way that made Claire feel she owed Lock something.
    “Yes,” Claire said. “I’d love to. Really, I’d be honored.”
    Even though she had four children to raise? Even though she hadn’t blown out so much as a single goblet since Zack was born?
    “Really?” Lock said. He sounded surprised.
    “Absolutely,” she said.
    “Well, okay, then,” Lock said. He raised his sweating glass of iced tea, as did Claire, and they touched glasses, sealing the deal. “Thank you.”
    Jason was going to kill her.
    They had been married for twelve years, together for fourteen. They had met here, on Nantucket, during the hottest summer on record. Jason had been born and raised on the island, he knew it inside out, and he took pride in sharing it with Claire. Each day was like a present: They went clamming naked at sunset on the south shore. They went skinny-dipping in the private swimming pools along Hulbert Avenue (Jason knew which pools had security systems and which didn’t). Theirs was, in every aspect, a summer romance. Claire had just graduated from RISD with a degree in glassblowing. She was torn between taking a job offer from Corning and teaming up with a traveling crafts fair and seeing the country. Jason had graduated from Northeastern with a degree in political science, which he declared useless. Four wasted years, he said of college, except for the beer and the proximity to Fenway, and the introduction to de Tocqueville (but she was pretty sure he was only saying that to impress her). He wanted to live on Nantucket and build houses.
    They were in love that summer, but what Claire remembered was how temporary it felt, how fragile, fleeting, ethereal. In truth, they barely knew each other. Claire told Jason about her years with Matthew—Max West, the Max West of “This Could Be a Song”—but Jason didn’t believe her. Didn’t believe her! He didn’t believe she could blow glass, either. She showed him her goblets and footed candy dishes; he shook his head in wonder, but not in acknowledgment.
    They sailed on Jason’s Hobie Cat, they fished for scup and stripers, they dove off the boat into the dark water, they had bonfires at Great Point and