Opening
Part 2 pivots to a single, intimate voice: a long letter from Rainey to Tricia. Decades after Saigon, Rainey’s quiet Maryland life collides with the past when she meets Dominic Carey—and discovers a Saigon Barbie in his home that once belonged to her mother, Charlene. That coincidence ripples into confession, connection, and a sudden tragedy that drives Rainey to write.
What Happens
Chapter 2: Part 2
Rainey, now married with grown children, moves with her husband, Doug, to a “country place” in western Maryland. Their neighbor, Dominic, a retired teacher, lives with his adult son, Jamie, who has Down syndrome. At a small gathering in Dominic’s home, Rainey and Doug meet a household steeped in quiet ritual—daily kindness, volunteer “meals-on-wheels,” and unforced faith—an ethic that throws Doug’s weary sarcasm and cultivated cynicism into harsh relief. Dominic’s kindness, just as Part 1 portrays him, draws Rainey in.
During a visit, Rainey sees a Saigon Barbie in Dominic’s display case. He explains that Charlene gave it to him in 1963 when his daughter was born. The shock unlocks a rush of memory: her teenage rebellion; meeting Doug in court-mandated drug counseling; their ideals calcifying into suburban habit; Saigon’s beauty and menace; Charlene’s cancer and death; and her aunt’s hint that Charlene had a lover in Vietnam. Writing to Tricia, Rainey tests every shard of this history against her present, circling the theme of Memory, Storytelling, and Perspective: which story is true, and which self?
Snow falls. When Dominic plows their driveway, Doug erupts—an inexplicable burst of rage that later reads as the first flare of his dementia. Feeling estranged, Rainey returns alone. She spends a morning by a stream with Dominic as Jamie looks for stones. Dominic recounts Charlene at a Saigon hospital—furious at a child’s needless death—and admits that her fierce compassion made him love her. He reveals Jamie is adopted: an abandoned infant in Vietnam, saved by an American surgeon’s miraculous heart operation. Their talk of selfless acts and “answered prayers” turns toward Morality, Good Deeds, and Absolution, the goodness that asks for nothing back.
The next morning, catastrophe erupts from the ordinary. Jamie falls into an open septic tank. Dominic climbs in, hoists his son to safety, and is overcome by fumes before help arrives. He dies as he lived—gentle, steady, and brave. In the aftermath, as Doug’s diagnosis arrives, Rainey writes to the only person who might understand how Saigon and Maryland, Charlene and Dominic, a doll and a death, all thread one life together: Tricia.
Character Development
Rainey’s letter reframes the entire narrative, revealing not just what happened but how she becomes the woman who can admit it. Conflicted, incisive, and bruised by privilege and rebellion, she measures her life against two kinds of goodness—Charlene’s whirlwind charisma and Dominic’s unadorned care—and discovers how memory can accuse and absolve.
- Rainey: Central narrator whose voice is skeptical yet exposed. She confronts her mother’s legacy, her marriage’s erosion, and a late, aching need for connection. Dominic’s death shocks her into action and truth-telling.
- Dominic Carey: A moral center defined by humility, service, and paternal love. His past in Saigon links him to Charlene; his final act cements him as a model of selfless goodness.
- Douglas “Doug”: Once anti-establishment, now curdled into sarcasm and anger. His violent outburst and confusion foreshadow dementia, recasting his bitterness as an illness and a loss.
- Charlene: In Rainey’s telling, both controlling and formidable. Hints of a lover in Vietnam, Dominic’s story of her righteous fury, and the Barbie’s afterlife complicate Rainey’s judgment and deepen Charlene’s shadow over the present.
Themes & Symbols
Rainey’s epistolary voice embodies Memory, Storytelling, and Perspective. By narrating to Tricia, she tests her memories for meaning, allowing time to revise old judgments and expose new truths. The past refuses to stay inert; a toy in a display case becomes a hinge between eras, and a neighbor becomes a witness to a mother’s secret life.
Against this, Morality, Good Deeds, and Absolution takes humble form. Charlene’s high-profile charity contrasts with Dominic’s day-by-day service; both are “good,” but only one asks to be seen. Dominic’s sacrificial death functions as an ultimate act of love, and Rainey’s letter itself becomes a kind of confession, a reaching toward forgiveness. Surrounding these is an evolving story of motherhood and fatherhood—adoption, illness, and loss—and a retrospective critique of American naïveté and imperialism through Doug’s view of corporate greed and the war. The personal and the political braid together, then fracture at a septic tank’s rim.
Symbols:
- The Saigon Barbie: A tangible bridge between Saigon and Maryland, collapsing decades into a single “weird coincidence” and forcing Rainey to re-enter her mother’s story.
- The Septic Tank: The hidden danger beneath pastoral calm; ordinary life turns lethal, and heroism looks domestic, grim, and real.
- Jamie’s Stone: A small, fused beauty found in a stream—pure connection, a moment of grace before loss.
Key Quotes
“Country place.”
- Rainey’s clipped description of the Maryland house underscores her uneasy settlement into the very domesticity she once resisted. The phrase promises peace yet quickly becomes the stage for violence, illness, and grief.
“Meals-on-wheels.”
- The simple, unstylish language captures Dominic’s ethic of daily service. No fanfare, no audience—just consistency, which becomes the moral counterweight to Doug’s performative cynicism.
A “Saigon Barbie” in a case.
- The display turns an emblem of Charlene’s projects into a relic that binds strangers. It literalizes how the past sits behind glass—visible but untouchable—until memory cracks it open.
“Answered prayers.”
- Dominic’s way of naming Jamie’s survival reframes miracle as community effort and self-giving love. The phrase points Rainey toward a goodness that is patient, practical, and costly.
“Oil companies” and corporate greed.
- Doug’s refrain recasts American benevolence abroad as cover for profit, complicating the women’s charitable work in Vietnam. Rainey must decide which history—moral service or imperial project—she believes, or whether both can be true.
“The only other person who might understand.”
- Rainey’s reason for writing to Tricia turns the letter into an act of rescue—of memory, of self, of shared history. Connection becomes the form absolution takes when answers fail.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
Part 2 is the novel’s hinge. The switch to Rainey’s letter reveals an epistolary design and recasts earlier events with adult skepticism and longing. Charlene’s image grows more complicated; Dominic emerges as the moral center; Doug’s outburst quietly foreshadows the illness that will remake their marriage.
By bridging Saigon and Maryland, the section shows how old stories persist in objects, neighbors, and sudden catastrophes. Dominic’s death catalyzes Rainey’s self-reckoning, pushing her to confront what kind of goodness she trusts and what kind of forgiveness she seeks. Writing to Tricia sets the stage for the conclusion: the past is not gone, and the only way through it is together.