Maura
Quick Facts
- Role: Adventurous, passionate partner to Nina; becomes a public face of short-stringer activism
- First appearance: Early in the novel, opening the boxes with Nina
- Key relationships: Nina (girlfriend, later wife), the short-stringer support group (notably Ben and Hank)
- Defining identifiers: Dark curls, smooth dark skin, and a small turquoise nose ring she’s worn since college
Who They Are Bold, curious, and unafraid of a little chaos, Maura is the book’s most intimate portrait of what it means to live under a countdown. She’s the character who pushes the plot and the people around her forward—first by insisting she and Nina open their boxes, then by refusing to let fear dictate the shape of her days. Her short string exposes her to the rawest edge of public and private grief, and she transforms that grief into action, becoming a clear voice against rising Discrimination and Social Division. At the same time, her love story with Nina becomes a case study in Love, Loyalty, and Sacrifice: how two people build a real life knowing it will be cut short.
Personality & Traits Maura’s personality is a study in contrasts: brash curiosity paired with startling vulnerability; a performative fearlessness that gives way to honest fear—and eventually, to principled courage.
- Adventurous, Impetuous: She insists on opening the boxes despite Nina’s hesitation, the same restlessness that once had her bouncing through five jobs and several relationships in seven years.
- Passionate, Bold: Her wall of vintage celebrity mug shots doubles as a manifesto—live loudly enough to be remembered for who you are, not the “crap that happened along the way.”
- Vulnerable: The short string triggers a physical and emotional collapse; later, a sidewalk breakdown exposes her private longing for a child she believes she can’t have.
- Defiant, Activist-Minded: In the support group, her anger coheres into purpose. She becomes a public advocate, eventually leaving publishing to fight for short-stringer rights at the Johnson Foundation.
- Loyal: She offers Nina an “out” after the string arrives—not to abandon but to protect the person she loves. That protective love culminates in marriage.
Character Journey Maura begins as the sparkplug of experience—curiosity first, consequences later. The strings flip that script. After she discovers hers is “barely half the length of Nina’s,” bravado cracks into dread: panic attacks, sleeplessness, a body registering what the mind can’t control. The support group becomes the hinge of her arc. There, Maura’s private fear becomes collective clarity; friendships with Ben and the loss of Hank tether her to a community fighting the same clock. As society codifies suspicion into policy, Maura’s voice sharpens. She chooses purpose, trading a stable publishing job for the Johnson Foundation and reshaping her remaining time around service, love, and impact. Her marriage to Nina isn’t denial; it’s her ethic in action—the conviction that meaning isn’t a matter of duration but of deliberate, daily choice, the novel’s living argument for The Meaning and Measure of Life.
Key Relationships Nina Maura and Nina are foils—Maura the impetuous explorer, Nina the cautious planner—and their strings expose that difference with brutal specificity. Maura’s short future and Nina’s long one create an immediate imbalance that tests how they define commitment. Even when Maura offers Nina a way out, the gesture is an act of love, not surrender; their eventual marriage at City Hall reframes time as a resource to be spent together, not a limit to fear.
The Support Group The group is Maura’s pressure release and forge. With Ben, she finds companionship in the margins—shared commentary, gallows humor; with Hank’s death, she confronts the tangible stakes of her timeline. Inside this circle, anger gains direction. The group’s solidarity is the engine that turns Maura’s grief into activism and her voice into leadership.
Defining Moments A life measured not by length but by choices—Maura’s story pivots on scenes where she refuses passivity.
- Opening the Boxes: She pushes to see the strings, catalyzing the central conflict. Why it matters: This choice embodies her curiosity and sets the emotional terms of the novel.
- The Sidewalk Breakdown: Seeing a young mother and child, Maura stops and sobs—startled by her own sudden, fierce desire to be a parent. Why it matters: The moment reveals the scope of what the string threatens: not just time, but imagined futures.
- “Joining the Fight” after the STAR Initiative: In the support group, she names the pattern—how fear hardens into policy—and calls for resistance. Why it matters: Personal fear becomes civic action; Maura evolves from victim to advocate.
- City Hall Wedding: She and Nina choose joy under a deadline. Why it matters: An act of defiance and devotion, it reframes their story around presence rather than loss.
- Leaving Publishing for the Johnson Foundation: She redirects her career toward advocacy. Why it matters: Purpose becomes practice, ensuring her limited years have lasting reach.
Essential Quotes “And what if this box can really tell you how long you’ll live? My god, Nina, isn’t the curiosity killing you?” This line captures Maura’s catalytic curiosity—the trait that propels her into risk and, paradoxically, into truth. It foreshadows how inquiry, even when painful, becomes the path to agency rather than paralysis.
“They’re a reminder that sometimes we screw up, and sometimes the system screws with us, but if you live your life with enough passion and boldness, then that’s what you’ll be remembered for. Not the crap that happened along the way.” Her mug-shot credo distills Maura’s ethos: identity forged by intentional living, not by accidents or injustices. The quote also seeds her political awakening—shifting from personal boldness to collective resistance against a system that “screws with” people like her.
“I just don’t understand why you’re so fixated on these strings, when you’re not the one whose life’s been completely fucked!” Here, raw resentment surfaces the asymmetry in her relationship with Nina. The outburst isn’t cruelty; it’s grief recognizing privilege, a necessary rupture that eventually deepens their honesty and solidarity.
“It’s like we’re living in a fucking time loop where no one’s learned anything from history! Once people start believing that a certain group is out to get them... it doesn’t take much to get us to turn on each other.” Maura articulates the social mechanism of othering, connecting personal precarity to historical cycles. This marks her turn from anxiety to analysis, the moment her private fear becomes public critique and organized action.
“Tell them that I always wanted to be an explorer. That I always tried to take the first step... And now I’ll be the first to know what happens next, the first to find out what’s waiting for us all. I promise to do enough recon that I can tell you all about it when you get here.” Her final message reframes death through her defining metaphor—exploration. It offers comfort without sentimentality, transforming loss into a promise of continuity and cementing her legacy as someone who faces the unknown on behalf of others.