A Summer Affair (27 page)

“No one thinks you are. Least of all, me.”

“And yet you’re conducting an affair under my nose.”

Lock thought he might feel something at this declaration, but it fell into a pattern with Daphne’s other rants: she started out with an “innocent” question (did he find Isabelle French attractive?), then ramped up to a flat-out accusation. It was a little more troublesome in this instance because she happened to be partially correct. She sensed something.

“I am not having an affair with Isabelle French,” Lock said with conviction. “And I do not like being accused of such on the last night of what has been a very pleasant vacation.”

Daphne looked amused. “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you.”

“I’ve been thinking of hiring a private detective.”

“You have got to be kidding.”

She took a long sip of her drink—okay, now Lock’s blood pressure was up a little bit—and then she said, “Yes.”

He almost lashed out at her—she was infuriating, it was inconceivable that she was constantly unearthing new ways to rattle him. Would it never end? Would she ever level off? Would he ever truly be the fortress he thought he was, inured to her attacks? But she chuckled a little and turned her attention to the menu, and Lock let the stream of breath he had unconsciously been holding go, and thought,
Isabelle French. Jesus.

When Lock arrived home from vacation, when he was finally, finally,
finally
back in the office, sorting through the neatly organized piles that Gavin had left on his desk, thoughts of Tortola and the hot sun and the cool water and the books he had read, and Daphne and her taunts of a private detective, all faded away. All Lock could think about was when he might see Claire.

How was your vacation?
Gavin asked. Lock stared at him blankly, then said,
We had good weather.

Lock called Claire’s cell phone and said, quickly (even though he had prudently waited until Gavin left for the bank with a deposit), “I’m back. Can you stop by later to pick up the . . . maybe seven o’clock?”

Daylight savings time had ended, though. Seven o’clock was too early—it was still light outside at seven. They had to stay in the office, hidden; they couldn’t tool around in her car. Lock should push her back to eight, but he would never be able to wait that long.

So . . . Claire came at seven. Lock heard her running up the stairs, yes, running, and that echoed in his heart, his heart was running, God, only a few more seconds until . . .

He met her at the top of the stairs. He didn’t even look at her, he didn’t have to, he didn’t care what she looked like, anyway—he just wanted her in his arms. He crushed her, and she was crying and he was struggling for air, overwhelmed as he was with love, relief, comfort, peace.

“That was too long,” he said. “I’m sorry . . .”

“I nearly died without you,” she said. “Everything went to pot . . .”

“I could barely breathe at times,” he said. “I missed you so much.”

“Never go away again,” she said. “Never leave me like that.”

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t.”

It was a rush, a torrent. The week following his return from Tortola he saw Claire four times. Four times! It was unprecedented, unsafe. But Lock told Daphne (truthfully),
You should see the work that stacked up on my desk while I was away.
And Jason had some kind of deadline at the end of the month and he was working even later than Claire stayed out. He was angry at her, anyway. They’d had an argument, and Jason was sleeping, alternately, in the guest room or on the sofa. Lock had heard about this, he’d heard about Edward and Siobhan (Siobhan wasn’t speaking to Claire, either; they had not talked in almost seven days), and he’d heard about Zack’s birthday and the encouraging news from the pediatrician. He and Claire had to catch up in bits and pieces because most of their time was spent holding each other, reassuring each other that they were really there. In a way it was the best week they’d ever had. Their emotions ran from rapture to delirium and back again; the despair of being apart was in their past. Guilt had been suspended, as had fear. Their first thoughts were not of being careful—twice, Lock had to keep Claire from embracing him in front of the twenty-paned window (the private detective, stupidly, haunted him). Their first thoughts were only of each other.

G
avin took advantage of the week Lock was away to steal, steal, steal, steal, steal. He skimmed off every check that came into the office, including a check for fifty thousand dollars from a prestigious women’s shoe company in New York, which Isabelle French had enlisted to underwrite the gala. (He kept a thousand dollars for himself.) He had nearly ten thousand dollars in cash stowed away in the utensil drawer of his parents’ kitchen. Gavin found taking money while Lock was gone almost too easy; he was able to cover his tracks, then double-check and triple-check that they were covered. It lacked the risk of skimming funds right under Lock’s nose. It was almost more quickening to pilfer money from petty cash for his lunch (which he also did each day Lock was on vacation). Gavin was happy to see Lock return, not only because it put the fun back into his game, but because Gavin had missed his employer. Lock was a truly wonderful man—this had come into clearer focus after Lock had gone away. Gavin felt bad about deceiving him, but this guilt only added extra oomph to Gavin’s treachery.

He fantasized all the time about getting caught. He had a favorite scenario in which he invited Lock and Daphne to his parents’ house for dinner, and in an attempt to locate a serving fork or an extra dessert spoon, one of them opened the utensil drawer and discovered the money. And they said,
Where did you
get
all this money?

Though they knew there could only be one place.

I am a thief
. Gavin thought this all the time now. He had come around from considering it “skimming.” Skimming was back when his cache was merely hundreds, but now that it was about to top five figures, it qualified as stealing. He was a thief. And clearly his mind had been ruined (as his mother had always feared) by movies and TV, because his self-image took on a more and more glamorous sheen. Instead of seeing himself as a rotten, dishonest brat who was freeloading off his parents and now taking important funds from little kids whose lives were infinitely more difficult than his had ever been, he put himself in a category with Brad Pitt in
Ocean’s Eleven,
someone who disarmed elaborate security systems, cracked codes, slipped on velvet gloves.

There were fissures, however, cracks in his resolve, through which his panic escaped. He could not get caught! It wasn’t that he had much to lose—the nitty-gritty facts were that if he got caught, he would have to move out of his parents’ house, and he would lose his job and his three or four friends. But all of that was going into the rubbish bin, anyway. Once he had enough money (how much was enough? A hundred thousand? Could he actually take a hundred thousand and
not get caught?
), he was leaving. He was off to an island in Southeast Asia so remote it didn’t even have a name (at least not one pronounceable to native speakers of English). It was important to Gavin, however, that he leave on his own terms—in glory, as it were. The people of Nantucket would learn he was a thief, but by then it would be too late. He would have vanished, never to be heard from again; he would have gotten away with it. It was imperative that Gavin get away with it—unlike the debacle at Kapp and Lehigh, where he’d had his hand slapped like a little boy, where his “crime” had been categorized as naive and juvenile. It was important that he succeed in this one thing.

And, too, he was having fun. If he got caught, the fun would come to an abrupt halt.

One night, the week after Lock returned, Gavin experienced unprecedented panic. He was at dinner with Rosemary Pinkle, the recently widowed woman Gavin had befriended at the Episcopal church; they were both fans of the evensong service, and their friendship had grown to encompass monthly dinners out. These dinners sustained Gavin’s altruistic side and reinforced his belief that he was not a complete loss in the human-kindness department. He listened to Rosemary’s stories about her departed husband with careful attention; Rosemary and Clive Pinkle had traveled extensively and Rosemary’s stories were fascinating. She did on occasion lapse into unexpected moments of melancholy—she shed tears, she broke down into sobs—at which point Gavin held her hand, hoping that should his father die first, there would be a young man in Chicago who would fill a similar role for his mother.

On the night in question, Rosemary was in high spirits. She was a gardener and heartened by the fine weather, and by the fact that the deer were staying away from her tulips. She and Gavin were eating at American Seasons, newly opened for the season, a further harbinger of summer. Just as Gavin was delving into his cream of sorrel soup, he was struck by a paralyzing thought. That afternoon at work, he had sent out a letter to the women’s shoe company in New York, thanking them for their underwriting donation and confirming the 501(c)(3) status of Nantucket’s Children, making the donation tax-deductible. As Rosemary detailed to him how she had outsmarted the deer (she had sprinkled the mulch around the tulips with human hair, collected from a salon in town), Gavin questioned the amount he had typed in the letter. The check had been for $50,000; he had “deposited” $50,000 and taken $1,000 as cash, making the net deposit $49,000. That number, $49,000, was the number that stuck in Gavin’s mind—and he became more and more fearful as he pretended to eat his soup, and as he pretended to listen to Rosemary (the salon had been glad to get rid of the hair), that he had typed in $49,000 as the amount of the donation, instead of $50,000. The letter had been signed by Lock (who did not read it), stamped, and taken to the post office. However, if Gavin had indeed typed in $49,000 instead of $50,000, someone from the women’s shoe company would call to inquire, and this would cause either Lock or Adams Fiske to look more closely into the matter.

Gavin tried, tried,
tried
to remember. He was hyperaware of every detail of his crime; he would have been paying attention when he wrote this letter, right? But that was the problem: he could not remember typing in the figure $50,000, and he did not remember double-checking it before he took it over to Lock’s desk for a signature. Gavin did not remember typing $49,000, either, but this was the amount he subconsciously attached to the donation. Gavin’s heart was slamming in his chest. He was growing warm and he had to yank his tie free of his neck—it was strangling him—though of course he hated to do it, because there was nothing quite as distasteful as a man with a sloppy necktie. Gavin was positive now that if he had been working from his subconscious, if he wrote the letter on autopilot—which he must have, since he couldn’t remember the most important detail of the letter—then he might have typed in $49,000 instead of $50,000. Lock did not read the letter because he never read the letters—they were all the same—and because Gavin had been looming over Lock’s desk with barely concealed impatience. He wanted to get to the bank, he wanted a cigarette, and some of the letters Lock was signing had been waiting for twelve days. Lock had not noticed the amount. He was tired from his vacation, and if Gavin could put his two cents in, he seemed distracted, as if he had left his ability to focus back in Tortola. Plus, there was never a reason to check Gavin’s work because Gavin never made mistakes. It was bound to happen sometime, though, and it had happened today. Gavin set his spoon on the plate resting under his soup bowl. He could not eat another bite.

Rosemary noticed this. In so many ways, she was like his mother—
Eat up, eat up!

“Are you finished?” she said. “Is it not good?”

“I don’t feel well,” Gavin said. He could not get caught! Okay, say a representative from the women’s shoe company
did
call. Chances were, Gavin would answer the phone. But what if the call came while Gavin was at lunch? What if the call came before Gavin got in in the morning or after he’d left in the evening? What if it came in while he was in the bathroom or on another call? Lock would answer! The sheer torture of waiting for that phone call would be enough to land Gavin in the funny farm.

The waitress came to clear his plate. Gavin said, “It was very good. I just don’t feel well.”

Rosemary leaned forward. She was attuned to people who didn’t feel well. Her husband, Clive, had gone to bed early one night, complaining of heartburn, and had died in his sleep.

“Have some water,” she said.

The most crucial thing, the thing that was pressing with more and more urgency in his chest, and lower, in his bowels, was for him to go to the office and check the letter on his computer. Because what if he was mistaken? What if the amount
did
read $50,000? God, he would be so relieved! He would offer to pay for dinner, he would do more than offer: he would slip the waitress his credit card and ask her to run it without Rosemary’s knowledge. Rosemary would be miffed (she always paid for dinner; in this, she was also like Gavin’s mother), but she would be touched, too. He just had to excuse himself, dash to the office, check his computer, and race back. His heart sank; that would take too long. Rosemary would grow concerned, she would check on him in the bathroom or ask a male waiter to check on him, and he wouldn’t be there—and how would he explain
that?
But staying here through his rack of lamb and then coffee and dessert was not an option.

He tugged at his tie some more, this time for effect. “I hate to say this, but I think I have to go home.”

“Home?” Rosemary said.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Oh, dear,” Rosemary said. “You’d better go then, yes. Don’t stay another second because of me . . .”

“I hate to walk out on you like this . . . ,” Gavin said.

“Go! I’ll tell our waitress what’s happened and settle the bill. Unless you want me to drive you home. Do you want me to drive you?”