A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand

wasn’t exactly true, was it? Every winter, someone on Nantucket had an affair—the circuit judge, or the high school chemistry teacher, or the woman who gave private piano lessons—and everyone else heard about the gory details: caught in bed with a manager from the Atlantic Café . . . threw her belongings into the front yard. Siobhan was a big fan of the Annual Affair Story. She was the first to castigate the couple—for having an affair, and for getting caught.
    Immoral, sneaky, deceptive people, Siobhan said gleefully. Stupid! Careless!
    What always crossed Claire’s mind was how brave the person must have been, and how unhappy. Claire was not brave (she hadn’t had the courage to suggest a night meeting herself; she had merely willed Lock to do it). And Claire wasn’t unhappy. She loved her kids, she loved Jason, she had Siobhan and a host of other friends, she had full-time help and a newfound zest for her work. She was not unhappy.
    And since she was not brave and not unhappy, nothing would happen. She would tell Lock the incredible news about Matthew—it was such big news, it should be announced in person—and then she would leave.
    The office was so dark that Claire thought it must be uninhabited, and immediately she panicked. Had Lock forgotten? If he had forgotten, she would be wounded, but also relieved. She would slip out of the office and try to forget that anything interesting had ever transpired there. But then she rounded the corner into the office, and there was Lock at his computer, working. The desk lamp was off, as was the radio. There was very little light and no music—and no sandwich, no wine—but Lock was there, at the computer, wearing his glasses. Claire studied him: He was just a person. A balding, slightly overweight middle-aged man with deep eyes and a magnetic smile and (maybe this was the most attractive thing about him) an unquestionable authority.
    “Hi,” Claire said.
    He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as though he were having a dream that was too good to believe.
    “I saw you coming down the street,” he said.
    “Did you?”
    “I did. I’ve been watching for you for . . . oh, about five days.”
    “Oh,” Claire said. She was tongue-tied and jumbled up. Had he really just said that? Had he meant it? She wanted to say something equally sweet back to him, but it was as if she was holding an instrument she didn’t know how to play. No matter what she said, she would strike the wrong note.
    He stood up and she approached the desk. She thought they were taking their places: she would sit in the chair and he would sit on the edge of the desk. But he bypassed the desk and came toward her. She stopped. He stopped. Lock looked at her, and her stomach dropped away—whoosh!—gone. He touched Claire’s cheek, then ran his thumb across her lips. He kissed her.
    Ohhhhhhhhhh.
    It was so deeply entrenched as a fantasy in Claire’s interior life that she couldn’t believe it was actually happening.
    Lock Dixon kissed her only once. Then he pulled away. Claire thought she might fall over backward. She was afraid to move, afraid to speak. She was in a bubble where all that mattered was that Lock had kissed her and might kiss her again.
    “Claire,” he said. He spoke her name with wonder and respect, as if it was a beautiful name, as if she was a beautiful woman. Was she a beautiful woman? She hardly ever felt beautiful. She was too harried, too often in her yoga pants, with her wild red hair in a bun. Jason came after her in bed all the time, but did he think she was beautiful? If she asked him, he would laugh and say something patronizing. The part of their marriage that had dissolved was the part where he told her she was beautiful; it was the part where they held hands at dinner or had a drink together in front of the fire. It was the part where, when she said she had something to talk to him about, he turned off the TV instead of merely muting it. The part of their