Opening
A year into marriage, Eleanor Quarles clings to pregnancy as her bridge into the powerful Pride family, even as Rose Pride’s judgment shadows every room. Across town, Ruby Pearsall fights for a future with Shimmy Shapiro that the world refuses to allow. In these chapters, love, ambition, and faith crash into the realities of Socioeconomic Class and Social Mobility, Unwed Pregnancy, Motherhood, and Shame, and raw Race, Colorism, and Prejudice.
What Happens
Chapter 16: Paper and Clocks
On their first anniversary, Eleanor—thirteen weeks pregnant—steps into the Prides’ glittering social world, determined to believe she’s finally “safe.” William Pride gives her a gold watch engraved “Our time is for eternity,” a tender promise she wants to trust. At the gala honoring Rose, Eleanor scans the room like an outsider and remembers overhearing Rose tell William to annul after her first miscarriage: “If she’s not having your child, then what’s the point?”
Rose’s influence hangs over everything—she made Eleanor quit her library job and pushed her to stall her education—so when Eleanor spots William laughing with his ex, Greta, insecurity flares. William pulls her into a dance, and later into bed, steadying her with affection. She drifts to sleep believing this baby will finally secure her place in the family that still keeps her at arm’s length.
Chapter 17: Heaven Help
Ruby is sick, exhausted, and terrified after failed attempts to miscarry using folk remedies from Aunt Marie. With college dreams slipping away under the weight of shame, she tells Shimmy she’s pregnant. He startles, blames, then pivots—vowing they’ll face it together before rushing back to his hospitalized father, leaving Ruby afraid he won’t return.
At home, her blind grandmother Nene mentions dreaming of fish, an omen for pregnancy. Ruby can’t confess. That night, Shimmy calls her to the back of the candy store. He kneels with a ring and a plan: marriage, a future, even Jewish baby names. Ruby says yes, letting herself bask in this secret, golden hope—until the front door closes and their sanctuary cracks.
Chapter 18: The Ritual
Every morning after William leaves, Eleanor slips into a spare closet, dons her old choir robe, and prays like someone fighting for breath—a private faith the Prides’ Episcopal services never touch. This hidden practice becomes her anchor, a small act of control and Deception and Secrets meant to guard the life inside her.
A chance meeting at the Howard University library with her former boss, Mrs. Porter, changes her course: a paid, part-time contract to archive a new collection. The offer wakes up a piece of herself she misses. That night she persuades William to let her take it. It’s a small victory, a reclaiming of purpose and money of her own, despite what Rose expects.
Chapter 19: Dead Meat
The intruder in the candy store is Shimmy’s mother. She catches them, half-dressed, and unleashes a storm of slurs and contempt, calls Ruby a whore, and spits on the idea of their future. Shimmy stands tall—he loves Ruby, she’s pregnant, he intends to marry her. His mother recoils: “Marry her? She’s Colored, you blind fool.” She rips the antique ruby comb from Ruby’s hair—seizing even their tokens of love—and orders Ruby to await “instructions.”
Ruby flees into the night, shaken by catcalls and disgust. She goes to her mother, Inez Pearsall, who is also pregnant. Inez offers nothing—no bed, no comfort—demands the key back, and shuts the door on her daughter. Ruby leaves stripped of dignity, family, and hope, the wound of Mother-Daughter Relationships laid bare.
Chapter 20: Still the Water
At home, Eleanor pores over archival work and reads about Dorothy Creole, a freed woman in 17th-century New Amsterdam who adopts a child and becomes a landowner—a testament to Black endurance. The next morning, her friend Nadine arrives early, and Eleanor skips her prayer ritual for the first time. They share a bright breakfast, and Eleanor asks Nadine to be the baby’s godmother.
At her 18-week appointment, Dr. Avery can’t find the heartbeat with either a Pinard horn or a fetoscope. William arrives from his rounds, ashen, and tells her the truth: no heartbeat. She must be admitted to Labor and Delivery to be induced. Devastated, Eleanor blames herself for missing the ritual and calls herself a “malfunction.” As she’s wheeled past the sounds of laboring women and crying newborns, grief drowns her—and the future she built collapses.
Character Development
Both protagonists move from precarious hope to shattering loss, each undone by forces larger than themselves. Eleanor tries to claim work, faith, and love as anchors, while Ruby clings to the promise of union and belonging—only to be exiled.
- Eleanor Quarles: From guarded joy to crushing grief; her secret prayer practice reveals deep anxiety and spiritual need, and accepting the library job asserts a fragile independence that Rose’s control has long denied.
- Ruby Pearsall: From desperation to a brief, fairy-tale promise and then to isolation; she confronts racism and maternal rejection that sever her from home and imagined future.
- William Pride: Loving but enmeshed in his mother’s world; he steadies Eleanor where he can, yet becomes the bearer of devastating news, helpless before her loss.
- Shimmy Shapiro: From scared boy to defiant partner; he proposes and stands up to his mother but collides with entrenched prejudice he cannot override.
Themes & Symbols
The chapters braid personal longing with societal constraint. Unwed Pregnancy, Motherhood, and Shame shapes both arcs: Ruby faces public condemnation and the threat to her future, while Eleanor endures the private devastation of miscarriage and the social stakes of “producing an heir.” Socioeconomic Class and Social Mobility isolates Eleanor among elites who view her as an interloper; she grasps at work and money of her own to reassert identity. Race, Colorism, and Prejudice detonates Ruby’s dream when Shimmy’s mother weaponizes racist hierarchy to reclaim control. The rupture of Mother-Daughter Relationships leaves both women motherless—in practice if not in fact.
Symbols sharpen these conflicts. Eleanor’s prayer closet embodies her truest, private self—a place where she sheds performance to plead for life and control. The inscribed watch promises eternity, only to underscore the fragility of time. The ruby comb, torn from Ruby’s hair, becomes a theft of agency and love. Dorothy Creole’s story offers an alternate lineage of resilience and family-making that Eleanor cannot yet bear to claim.
Key Quotes
“Our time is for eternity.”
- William’s inscription binds love to forever, but the loss of the baby exposes how precarious that promise is. The line becomes a haunting echo of plans time refuses to honor.
“If she’s not having your child, then what’s the point?”
- Rose reduces Eleanor’s worth to reproduction, revealing the brutal calculus of status and acceptance. The memory drives Eleanor’s fear that a child is her only ticket into the Pride family.
“Marry her? She’s Colored, you blind fool.”
- Shimmy’s mother collapses the future with one sentence, making race the insurmountable wall. The bluntness strips away the couple’s fantasy and lays bare the social power that polices intimacy.
“I’m a malfunction.”
- In the wake of miscarriage, Eleanor internalizes failure, turning grief into self-blame. The word captures how social expectations warp personal loss into shame.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters are the hinge of the novel: both women’s child-centered dreams implode—Ruby’s under the weight of external prejudice and classed racism, Eleanor’s under the silent catastrophe of biology. The parallel plotting invites readers to see different prisons built by the same era: society punishes Ruby for crossing racial and moral boundaries, while Eleanor is measured by her capacity to bear a child into a powerful family.
The fallout resets both lives. Ruby stands outside every door she needs to open—family, love, future—while Eleanor lies in a hospital that has no room for the child she longed to deliver. From here, each woman must invent a path through loss, remaking what “family,” “security,” and “belonging” can mean when the world—and their bodies—refuse to comply.